Practical Information for Incoming Students - UJEP

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trading centre was an important basis
for its development . The steam
navigation down the Labe River was
started as early as 1841 . A significant
chemical factory was founded there
in 1856 next to the sugar refinery,
distillery and textile manufacture .
When this town became the biggest
harbour in the Austrian-Hungarian
Empire at the turn of the 19th and
20th centuries, the river transport on
the Labe River was at its height .
At the beginning of the 20th century
the majority of the people who lived
in Ústí nad Labem were Germans .
Czechs lived predominantly in the
industrial villages near Ústí nad
Labem . This structure of inhabitants
was the reason for the complications
in 1918 when Czechoslovakia
was established . In 1945, at the
very end of World War II, the town
of Ústí nad Labem was exposed to
the most severe air raids on the territory
of Czechoslovakia . At that time
hundreds of buildings in the centre
of the city were destroyed .
The first election after the war was
won by the Communist Party and
from that time it was the leading
party in the country until 1990 . The
first post-war decades in this region
were characterized by the development
of various branches of heavy
industry and the mining of brown
coal (lignite) .
The election of 1990 triggered the
growth of autonomy in the Ústí nad
Labem Region . At that time the border
cooperation with Saxony started
to develop within the Elbe Euro-Region
(Euroregion Labe) .
In 1991 the University of Jan Evangelista
Purkyně was founded, which
resulted in a significant change in
the development of both the town
itself and the whole region . The Marian
Bridge, built in 1998 over the
Labe River, is one of the symbols of
the present-day architectural development
of this town .