As a small Sorbian village named Gorelic in the region of Upper Lusatia in the March of Lusatia of the Holy Roman Empire, it was temporarily conquered and held by the Kingdom of Poland during Boles?aw I Chrobry's invasion of Lusatia between 1002 and 1031, after which the region fell back to the March of Lusatia under the counts of the Margraviate of Meissen. Around 1072 the village was assigned to the duchy of Bohemia. The date of the town's foundation is unknown. However, Goreliz was first mentioned in a document from the King of Germany, and later Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV in 1071. This document granted G�rlitz to the Diocese of Meissen, then under Bishop Benno of Meissen. Currently, this document can be found in the Saxony State Archives in Dresden. The origin of the name G�rlitz is derived from the Slavic word for "burned land," referring to the technique used to clear land for settlement. Zgorzelec and Czech Zho?elec have the same derivation. In the 13th century the village gradually became a town. Due to its location on the Via Regia, an ancient and medieval trade route, the settlement prospered.
In the following centuries G�rlitz was a wealthy member of the Lusatian League, which consisted of Bautzen, G�rlitz, Kamenz, Lauban, L�bau and Zittau. In 1352 during the reign of Casimir the Great, Lusatian German colonists from G�rlitz founded the town of Gorlice in southern Poland near Krak�w.
The Protestant Reformation came to G�rlitz in the early 1520s and by the last half of the 16th century, it and the surrounding vicinity, became almost completely Lutheran.
After suffering for years in the Thirty Years' War, the region of Upper Lusatia (including G�rlitz) was ceded to the Electorate of Saxony in 1635. After the Napoleonic Wars, the 1815 Congress of Vienna transferred the town from the Kingdom of Saxony to the Kingdom of Prussia. G�rlitz was subsequently administered within the Province of Silesia, and, after World War I, the Province of
