Kreis Birnbaum

Today the area belongs to the Polish voivodeships of Greater Poland and Lubusz.

The lands around the Greater Polish town of Międzychód had been part of the Poznań Voivodeship since the 14th century, they were annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia during the Second Partition of Poland in 1793.

Part of Napoleon's titular Duchy of Warsaw from 1807, it was returned to Prussia at the 1815 Congress of Vienna.

In the aftermath of the German collapse on the Western Front in World War I, the Treaty of Versailles awarded most of the province, including Kreis Birnbaum, to the new state of Poland.

[1] In 1833 the office of a Wójt (Vogt, reeve) was established in the districts of the predominantly Polish-settled Grand Duchy of Posen, a voluntary administrator who often was a member of the local nobility.