Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor, and Bolesław I, the Piast ruler of Poland, signed the Peace of Bautzen to end the German–Polish War.

Henry II, also known as Saint Henry, Obl. S. B., was Holy Roman Emperor from 1014. He died without an heir in 1024, and was the last ruler of the Ottonian line. As Duke of Bavaria, appointed in 995, Henry became King of the Romans following the sudden death of his second cousin, Emperor Otto III in 1002, was made King of Italy in 1004, and crowned emperor by Pope Benedict VIII in 1014.

Bolesław I the Brave, less often known as Bolesław the Great, was Duke of Poland from 992 to 1025 and the first King of Poland in 1025. He was also Duke of Bohemia between 1003 and 1004 as Boleslaus IV. A member of the Piast dynasty, Bolesław was a capable monarch and a strong mediator in Central European affairs. He continued to proselytise Western Christianity among his subjects and raised Poland to the rank of a kingdom, thus becoming the first Polish ruler to hold the title of rex, Latin for king.

The House of Piast was the first historical ruling dynasty of Poland. The first documented Polish monarch was Duke Mieszko I. The Piasts' royal rule in Poland ended in 1370 with the death of King Casimir III the Great.

The Peace of Bautzen was a treaty concluded on 30 January 1018, between Holy Roman Emperor Henry II and Bolesław I of Poland which ended a series of Polish-German wars over the control of Lusatia and Upper Lusatia as well as Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia.

The Polish–German Wars were wars consisted of a series of struggles in 1003–1018, between the Ottonian king Henry II of Germany and the Polish Piast ruler Bolesław I the Brave. The locus of conflict was the control of Lusatia and Upper Lusatia, as well as Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia. The fighting ended with the Peace of Bautzen in 1018, which left Lusatia and Upper Lusatia as a fief of Poland, and Bohemia became a duchy in the Holy Roman Empire.