Aš

Aš, called Asch in German, is a town of about 13,000 inhabitants in Cheb District in the Karlovy Vary Region of the Czech Republic. It lies in the Fichtel Mountains in the westernmost part of the country, about 19 kilometres northwest of Cheb, on the border with Germany, in the salient known as the Aš Panhandle. Its name probably comes from the High German words for ash tree and for stream, and together with Eš it has the shortest place name in the Czech Republic. The town was founded in the early 11th century by German colonists, passed to the Bohemian crown in the 14th century, and obtained the status of a town in 1872 as a textile industry flourished, when its population grew to 21,880 by 1910. After the Second World War and the expulsion of German-speaking inhabitants its population and importance fell sharply. The climate is humid continental.