Cipszer

Cipszer, a Germanic people formerly living in a region of present-day north-central Slovakia known as Špis (Hungarian: Szepes; German: Zips). The Cipszers originated in the lower Rhine region, Flanders, Saxony, and Silesia. King Géza II (ruled 1141–62) of Hungary moved them to the Szepes area in the middle of the 12th century. Their local self-government was first recognized in writing by Stephen V in 1271. In 1412 Sigismund of Luxembourg, king of Hungary and later Holy Roman Emperor, gave first three, then 13, of the region’s towns to Poland as security; it was only in 1772, in the First Partition of Poland (see Partitions of Poland), that these towns were returned to Hungary. From the 19th century the economic importance of the Cipszers steadily declined, though in Hungary, where urban development was belated, their communities were considered archetypal bürgerlich, small towns with a characteristic atmosphere that inspired Hungarian novelists such as Kálmán Mikszáth and Gyula Krúdy. After World War II the Czechoslovak authorities deported the Germans from the region, and the Cipszers ceased to exist as an identifiable group.