In the 10th century, the area became part of the emerging Polish state under first ruler Mieszko I of Poland.[2] Later, the area was part of the Kievan Rus' and the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia.[2] Kobryn was first mentioned in 1287.[2] In the early 14th century the town formed part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, after the Union of Krewo (1385) in the Polish–Lithuanian Union. It became the capital of a feudal principality within the Polish–Lithuanian realm, existing from 1387 to 1518.[2] In 1500, princess Anna Kobryńska founded the Catholic church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.[2] After 1518, Kobryn was ruled by Queen Bona Sforza, who contributed to its development and visited it several times.[2]
Kobryń came under Polish control in February 1919,[5] four months after the reestablishment of independent Poland.[2] During the Polish–Soviet War it was the site of the victorious Battle of Kobryń in September 1920. Polish rule was confirmed under the terms of the Treaty of Riga in 1921 and Kobryń became a seat of a powiat within the Polesie Voivodeship. After the war, crafts, small industry and trade developed again, and small factories were established.[2] In 1923, the State Gymnasium was founded, which three years later received the name of Maria Rodziewiczówna, a Polish writer living nearby, who co-financed the construction of the school.[2]
From 23 June 1941 until 20 July 1944, Kobryn was occupied by Nazi Germany and administered as a part of the Generalbezirk Wolhynien-Podolien of Reichskommissariat Ukraine. During the latter period, the majority of Jewish inhabitants were first amassed in a ghetto and then murdered by the Nazis in their extermination camps.
Two Polish priests, The Reverend Władysław Grobelny and Jan Wolski from Kobryń near Brześć, arrested for helping the Jews, were executed on October 15, 1942 together with a number of Jews from the Brześć ghetto.[6][7]
Among the historical monuments of the city are the Catholic Church of the Dormition, Baroque Monastery of the Transfiguration, a park founded by Antoni Tyzenhauz in 1768, the Orthodox church of St. Alexander Nevsky, the building of the pre-war Polish Maria Rodziewiczówna State Gymnasium, the building of the pre-war town hall and the Catholic cemetery, where the family of the Polish national poetAdam Mickiewicz is buried.
^Wojciech Kriegseisen, Sejmiki Rzeczypospolitej szlacheckiej w XVII i XVIII wieku, Warszawa 1991, p. 33
^Lech Wyszczelski, Wojna polsko-rosyjska 1919–1920. Wyd. 1. Bellona, Warszawa, 2010, p. 56, 58
^Zajaczkowski, Waclaw (1988). Martyrs of Charity: Christian and Jewish Response to the Holocaust. St. Maximilian Kolbe Foundation. p. 164. ISBN0945281005.
Ye.N.Meshechko, A.A.Gorbatsky (2005) Belarusian Polesye: Tourist Transeuropean Water Mains, Minsk. (in Russian, English and Polish) Minsk, Vysheysha shkola, ISBN985-06-1153-7.