Niesky is a small town in Upper Lusatia

Lusatia

Lusatia is a historical region in Central Europe. It stretches from the Bóbr and Kwisa rivers in the east to the Elbe valley in the west, today located within the German states of Saxony and Brandenburg as well as in the Lower Silesian and Lubusz voivodeships of western Poland...

 in eastern the Free State of Saxony, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. It has a population of about 11,000 and is part of the district of Görlitz

Görlitz (district)

Görlitz is a district in the Free State of Saxony, Germany. It is named after its capital city Görlitz. It borders the district of Bautzen, the state Brandenburg, Poland and the Czech Republic.- History :...

.

The town was founded in 1742 by Bohemia

Bohemia

Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...

n immigrants. As members of the Moravian Church, they fled from persecution in their Catholic homeland. The name Niesky is the Germanised version of the Czech

Czech language

Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...

 word nízka ("low"). In 1776, at the age of 12, Benjamin Henry Boneval Latrobe, future designer of the United States Capitol

United States Capitol

The United States Capitol is the meeting place of the United States Congress, the legislature of the federal government of the United States. Located in Washington, D.C., it sits atop Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall...

, as well as of the Baltimore Basilica, was sent to the Moravian School at Niesky.

In 1926 the architect Konrad Wachsmann was working in the timber construction firm Christoph & Unmack AG.

Localities of Niesky are Neuhof, Neusärchen, Neuödernitz, Ödernitz, See, Zeche-Moholz, Kosel, Zedlig and Sandschänke.