Srebrna Góra () or Silver Mountain in English, is a village (former city) in the administrative district of Gmina Stoszowice, within Ząbkowice Śląskie County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. It lies on the northern slope of the Owl Mountains range, approximately south-west of Stoszowice, west of Ząbkowice Śląskie, and south-west of the regional capital Wrocław. The village has an approximate population of 1,500. History The settlement dates back to the early 14th century. The silver mining area was mentioned in a 1331 deed issued by the duke Bolko II of Ziębice in 1331, one of the Silesian Polish dukes in Lower Silesia, a Bohemian vassal from 1336. The settlement itself was mentioned in 1417. It was located within the Duchy of Ziębice (Münsterberg), one of the southernmost Lower Silesian duchies created as a result of the fragmentation of medieval Piast-ruled Poland, near the border with the Bohemian County of Kladsko on the mountain pass road to Nowa Ruda, and was often hit by military confrontations, at first by the Hussite Wars, later also by the Thirty Years' War, which left the area devastated. It remained ruled by local Polish dukes of the Piast dynasty until 1428, when the duchy passed to Czech dukes. In the 1470s and 1480s the duchy was under Hungarian suzerainty, before it fell back under Bohemian overlordship in 1490. In 1536 Silberberg received city rights and mining privileges, and after the Duchy of Ziębice as a reverted fief had fallen to the Bohemian Crown, the area was purchased by Bohemian (Czech) aristocrat William of Rosenberg in 1581. (William bought the town for reasons of prestige, because of the right to mint its own coins which has been tied with the town and local silver mines.) It was again ruled by the Piasts from 1599 as part of the Duchy of Legnica, when it passed to Duke Joachim Frederick of Brieg and it finally fell back to Bohemia upon the death of the last Piast duke George William of Legnica in 1675. With most of Silesia, it was annexed by King Frederick II of Prussia after the First Silesian War in 1742. Frederick II had a border fortress of the Prussian Army built at Silberberg, finished in 1778, which after the Napoleonic Wars served as a prison in the pre-revolutionary Vormärz era. Among the inmates was the author Fritz Reuter, arrested here from 1834 until 1837,