Lębork (Polish pronunciation: [ˈlɛmbɔrk] ⓘ; Kashubian: Lãbòrg; German: Lauenburg in Pommern) is a town on the Łeba and Okalica rivers in the Gdańsk Pomerania region in northern Poland.

[4] Because Lauenburg remained loyal to the Prussian Confederation and not the Teutonic Order, King Casimir IV Jagiellon of Poland granted the town three nearby villages.

[4] Troops from the Polish-allied city of Gdańsk (Danzig) reoccupied Lauenburg in 1459 when the mayor, Lorenz Senftopf, entered into negotiations with the Teutonic Knights.

After the Teutonic Knights were ultimately defeated in the Thirteen Years' War, Lębork passed to Poland, according to the 1466 Second Peace of Thorn,[6] and was granted by Casimir IV Jagiellon to Eric and his Pomeranian successors as part of the Lauenburg and Bütow Land, a Polish fief.

To gain an ally against Sweden during the Deluge, King John II Casimir of Poland gave the Lauenburg and Bütow Land to Margrave Frederick William of Brandenburg-Prussia as a hereditary fiefdom in the 1657 Treaty of Bromberg.

[6] King John III Sobieski made peaceful attempts to reintegrate the town directly to Poland, but to no avail.

Lauenburg began to develop as an industrial center after its 1852 connection to the Prussian Eastern Railway to Danzig and Stettin (Szczecin).

(He was also created Duke of Lauenburg in 1890 after his resignation as Chancellor of the German Empire, but this title refers to the city of Lauenburg/Elbe in present-day Germany, and should not be confused with Lębork/Lauenburg in Pomerania.)

[12] Despite Polish attempts at regaining control of the region, the Treaty of Versailles did not restore the pre-partition borders and the town remained within interwar Germany.

In the subsequent years many German migrants resettled in and around Lauenburg,[13] while many Poles, including Kashubians, left for the nearby Polish Pomeranian Voivodeship.

After the outbreak of World War II, the persecution of indigenous Poles, including Kashubians, intensified, and the patients of the local psychiatric hospital were murdered in Piaśnica, however, the Polish resistance movement remained present in the district.

[18] The Germans also operated a forced labour subcamp of the Stalag II-B prisoner-of-war camp for Allied POWs in the town.

Most of the Old Town burned in the subsequent Soviet rampage, although the Gothic Church of St. James and the Teutonic castle survived.

Germans remaining in the town were either immediately expelled in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement or were allowed to voluntarily leave in the 1950s.