Wrocław

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Wrocław
Main Square
Main Square
Flag of Wrocław
Flag
Coat of arms of Wrocław
Coat of arms
Motto: 
Miasto spotkań ("City of Meetings")
Country Poland
VoivodeshipLower Silesian
City countyWrocław
Urban gminaWrocław
Established10th century
City rights1262
Government
 • MayorRafał Dutkiewicz
Area
 • City292.82 km2 (113.06 sq mi)
Elevation
111 m (364 ft)
Population
 (2006)
 • City635,280
 • Density2,200/km2 (5,600/sq mi)
 • Metro
1,030,000
Time zoneUTC+1 (CET)
 • Summer (DST)UTC+2 (CEST)
Postal code
50-041 to 54-612
Area code+48 71
Car platesDW
Websitehttp://www.wroclaw.pl

Wrocław ([ˈvrɔt͡swaf]ⓘ; German: Breslauⓘ; Czech: Vratislav; Latin: Vratislavia) is the capital of the historical region of Lower Silesia in southwestern Poland, situated on the Oder (Polish: Odra) River. It is also the administrative seat of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship (since 1999), previously of Wrocław Voivodeship. The city is a separate urban gmina and city county, as well as being the seat of Wrocław County (which adjoins but does not include the city). According to official population figures for 2006, its population is 635,280, making it the fourth largest city in Poland. After Warsaw, Wrocław is considered to be the second largest financial center in Poland.

Etymology

The city was first recorded in the year 1000 by Thietmar's chronicle: Johannes Wrotizlaensis, bishop of Wrotizla, a newly established diocese, is mentioned, as was later the city itself (as Wortizlawa). The first municipal seal says: Sigillum civitatis Wracislavie, and a simplified city name is given in 1175 as in Wrezlawe, which developed into Prezla, Bresla(u=w).

Early records show that the medieval city name was Wrocisław in Polish and Vratislav in Czech. The Polish name was later phonetically simplified from Wrocisław to Wrotsław to Wrocław, a name which has been used since the 12th century[citation needed]. The Czech spelling was used in Latin documents as Wratislavia or Vratislavia, while the Polish pronunciation was also influential in the spelling Wracislavia. At that time, Prezla was used in Middle High German, which became Preßlau. In the middle of the 14. century the Early New High German (and later New High German) form of the name—Breslau—began to replace its earlier counterparts as the official name of the city.

The city is traditionally believed to be named after a person called Wrocisław/Vratislav, often believed to be Duke Vratislav I of Bohemia. It is also possible that the city was named after the tribal duke of the Silesians,[citation needed] or after an early owner of the city called Vratislav. There is also another story which holds that the city was named after a Polish duke named Wrócisław, whose name means "he will return famous" in the old Polish language (in the Czech too).[citation needed]

The name of the city today may be an issue among German and Polish nationalists, although the city's municipal website uses Breslau for the German-language version of the site.[1]

Name variations used in other languages:

History

Feudal period

Town square
Breslau and surrounding villages (today: quarters of Wrocław) in 1900.
Source: http://www.breslau-wroclaw.de.

A stronghold situated at a long-existing trading place, later to become the site of Wroclaw, was part of Greater Moravia, then Bohemia. The city was first recorded in the 10th century as Vratislavia, possibly derived from the name of the Bohemian duke Vratislav I, who died in 921.

The history of the city of Wroclaw begins at the end of the 10th century. At this time the city bears the name of Vratislavia and is limited to Ostrów Tumski (the Cathedral Island). In the year 1000 king Boleslaw I of Poland establishes the first bishopric of Silesia. The city quickly becomes a commercial center and expands rapidly to the neighbouring Wyspa Piaskowa (Sand Island), and then to the left bank of the Odra river. In 1163 it becomes the capital of the duchy of Silesia.

By 1139 two more settlements are founded. One belongs to Governor Piotr Włostowic (a.k.a Piotr Włast Dunin, Piotr Włost, Peter Wlast; ca. 1080–1153) and is situated near his residence on the Olbina, and the St. Vincent's Benedictine Abbey[spelling?].

The other settlement is founded on the left bank of the Oder River, near the present seat of the university. At the time it is the trade route that leads from Leipzig and Liegnitz (Polish: Legnica), and then follows through Opole, and Kraków to Kievan Rus'.

Emperor Barbarossa forms two duchies (1157, 1163) in Silesia. The Silesian dukes take their land as fiefs from the Holy Roman Empire[citation needed].

Mongol raids begin and the city is devastated in 1241. The rebuilding was characterised by expanding the boundaries to the area around the Market Square (Rynek). At that time many Germans settle down to join and reinforce the thinned out population. Soon the name Breslau appears for the first time in written records. The rebuilt town is given Magdeburg rights in 1262. Trade is booming which results in the fact that at the end of the 13th century Wroclaw joins the Hanseatic League. However, the Polish Piast dynasty remains in control of Silesia.

Plac Solny (Salt Market)
Wrocław Town Hall

In 1289-1292 the Přemyslid King of Bohemia, Wenceslaus II, became Duke of Silesia, then also King of Poland. With John of Luxemburg and his son, Emperor Charles IV (and king of Bohemia), Silesia was united with Bohemia, but retained its separate Ius indigenatus.

The first illustration of the city was published in the Nuremberg Chronicle (Schedelsche Weltchronik) in 1493. Documents of that time refer to the town by many variants of the name, including Bresslau, Presslau, Breslau and Wratislaw.

During much of the Middle Ages Wroclaw was ruled by its dukes of the Silesian Piast dynasty. Although the city was not part of its principality, the Bishop of Breslau was a prince-bishop since Bishop Preczlaus of Pogarell (1341-1376) bought the Duchy of Grottkau from Duke Boleslaw of Brieg and added it to the episcopal territory of Neisse, after which the Bishops of Breslau had the titles of Prince of Neisse and Duke of Grottkau, and took precedence over the other Silesian rulers.

In 1335, it was incorporated with almost the entirety of Silesia into the Kingdom of Bohemia and was part of it until the 1740s; from 1526, it was ruled by the Empire's Habsburg dynasty. . By this time the inhabitants of mixed Silesian, Bohemian, Moravian, and often of Polish ancestry, had become dominated by influx of German colonists and settlers throughout the centuries.
The overwhelming majority of the population became lutheran during the Protestant Reformation as did most of Lower Silesia, but they were forcibly suppressed during the Catholic Reformation by Jesuits working with the support of the Habsburg rulers.

After the death of the last Silesian Piast ruler, Georg Wihelm of Liegnitz Brieg in 1675, the Habsburg Monarchy of Austria inherited the city of Breslau. They resorted to forceful conversion of the city back to Catholicism. During the War of the Austrian Succession in the 1740s, most of Silesia was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia's claims were derived from the agreement, rejected by the Habsburgs, between the Silesian Piast rulers of the duchy and the Hohenzollerns who secured the Prussian succession after the extinction of the Piasts.

Modern history

Town square and St. Elisabeth's Church
Hala Stulecia (Centential Hall) also known as Hala Ludowa (People's Hall) (Ger.: Jahrhunderthalle) by the modernist architect Max Berg
Department Store (formerly In the Junkernstraße.) Owned by Kaufhaus Petersdorff before the war, it was designed by Hans Poelzig in 1912.
Wroclaw Central Train Station

After the demise of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, Prussia became a member of the German Confederation, and in 1811 the Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität (Breslau University) was re-established. In 1813 King Frederick William III of Prussia gave his An mein Volk ("To my people") speech at Breslau as a signal that Prussia would join the Russian Empire in fighting Napoleon during the Napoleonic Wars. When the Prussian-led German Empire was created in 1871 during the process of Germany's unification, Breslau became the empire's sixth-largest city and a major industrial centre, notably of linen and cotton manufacture; its population more than tripled to over half a million between 1860 and 1910. In August 1920, during the Korfanty uprisings in Upper Silesia, Germans devastated Breslau's Polish School and burned its Polish Library, and in 1923 the city was a scene of antisemitic riots.[1]

Breslau's municipal boundaries were greatly extended between 1925 and 1930 by incorporating villages at the city's periphery[verification needed]. Breslauers honoured Adolf Hitler with the title of honorary citizen of the city.[verification needed] In 1933 the Gestapo started actions against Polish and Jewish students[2] (who were issued special segregationist ID documents), Communists, Social Democrats, trade unionists, and other people deemed threats to the state. People were even arrested and beaten for using Polish in public.[3] In 1938 the Polish cultural centre (the Polish House) in Breslau was destroyed by the police[2], and many of the city's 10,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps; those who remained were killed during the Nazi genocide of World War II. Most of the Polish elites also left during 1920s and 1930s, and Polish leaders who remained were sent to German concentration camps.[2] By 1939 the city, as a German city until 1945, was naturally almost entirely Germanised; in other words, ethnically cleansed.[4]

As the Soviet Red Army approached the city in February 1945, Breslau was declared a Festung (fortress) by the fanatical Nazi Gauleiter Karl Hanke, and concentration camp prisoners were forced to help civilian workers build fortifications.

In one area, the population was ordered to construct a military airfield intended for use in resupplying the fortress, and a modern residential district, along the Kaiserstraße (now Plac Grunwaldzki)—was razed. The authorities threatened to shoot as a deserter anyone who refused to do their assigned work, and one eyewitness estimated that some 13,000 died under enemy fire on the airfield alone.[verification needed] In the end, one of the few planes to use it was that of the fleeing Gauleiter Hanke.[5]

When it was almost too late, Hanke finally lifted a ban on the evacuation of women and children, but during his poorly organised evacuation in early March, around 18,000 froze to death, mostly children and babies, in icy snowstorms and -20°C weather. Some 200,000 civilians—less than a third of the pre-war population—remained in the city, because the railway connections to the west were damaged or overloaded.

By the end of the Battle of Breslau, two-thirds of the city had been destroyed and 40,000 Breslauers and forced labourers lay dead in the ruins of their homes and factories. After a siege of nearly three months, the strategically unimportant "Fortress Breslau" surrendered on May 7 1945. It was the last major city in historical Eastern Germany to fall.

Along with almost all of Lower Silesia, post-war Breslau too came under Polish administration under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. Most remaining German inhabitants were expelled to one of the post-war German states between 1945 and 1949, and many of those not directly evacuated left later due to repression by Polish and Soviet communists[citation needed] or poverty. However, as with other Lower Silesian cities, a considerable German presence remained in Wrocław until the late 1950s; the city's last German school closed in 1963.

Wrocław was resettled by Poles either from small towns and villages of central Poland (75%) or from Polish lands annexed by the Soviet Union in the east (25%), like Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), Stanisławów (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine), Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania), and Grodno (now Hrodna, Belarus).

Gradually parts of the the old city and most of the monumental buildings were restored[6]. Wrocław is now a unique European city in present-day Poland, with its architecture under Bohemian, Austrian, and Prussian influence. Wrocław's Gothic style is originally Silesian; its Baroque style owes much to court builders of Habsburg Austria (Fischer von Erlach, Christoph Tausch). Wrocław still has a number of buildings by eminent German modernist architects, such as Hans Poelzig and Max Berg, the famous Jahrhunderthalle (Hala Stulecia (Centennial Hall)) by Berg (1911–1913) being the most important.

In July 1997, the city suffered from a flood of the Oder River, the worst flooding in post-war Poland. Nearly the entire city stood under water, leaving only a small region unaffected. In 2005, Wrocław was hit by a storm that felled a number of trees and killed three people. The storm was local and did not affect any other major cities.

Some matches of the 2012 UEFA European Football Championships in Poland and Ukraine are scheduled to take place in Wrocław.

20th-century events

External links with photo galleries, mostly in Polish

Population

Year Inhabitants
1800 64,500
1831 89,500
1850 114,000
1852 121,100
1880 272,900
1900 422,700
1910 510,000
1925 555,200
1933 625,198
1939 629,565
1946 171,000[7]
1956 400,000
1960 431,800
1967 487,700
1970 526,000
1975 579,900
1980 617,700
1990 640,577
1999 650,000
2003 638,000

Main sights

Prominent residents

Including some who were not born in Wrocław/Breslau

City Hall in 14th century Brick Gothic style typical of the Holy Roman Empire and cities of the Hanseatic League.
Cathedral in Ostrów Tumski.
Aula Leopoldina.

Nobel laureates

listed by year of award

Education

Wrocław University.
Wrocław University of Technology.

Today's Wrocław has ten state-run universities, including:

as well as numerous private institutions of higher education

Economy and transport

Grunwaldzki bridge.
File:Poland Wrocław - Most Milenijny 3.jpg
Millennium bridge.

Wrocław's major industries were traditionally the manufacture of railroad cars and electronics. The city is served by Wrocław International Airport and a river port.

Major corporations

  • Volvo Polska sp. z o.o., Wrocław
  • WABCO Polska, Wrocław
  • Siemens, Wrocław
  • Nokia Siemens Networks Sp z o.o
  • Hewlett Packard, Wrocław
  • Google, Wrocław
  • Grupa Lukas, Wrocław
  • AB SA, Wrocław
  • Polifarb Cieszyn-Wrocław SA, Wrocław
  • KOGENERACJA S.A., Wrocław
  • Impel SA, Wrocław
  • Europejski Fundusz Leasingowy SA, Wrocław
  • Telefonia Dialog SA, Wrocław
  • TietoEnator, Wrocław
  • Wrozamet SA, Wrocław
  • American Restaurants sp. z o.o., Wrocław
  • Hutmen SA, Wrocław
  • Fortum Wrocław S.A., Wrocław
  • SAP Polska
  • Hologram Industries Polska
  • Zender sp. z o.o., Wrocław
  • MSI (Micro Star International) Polska Sp. z o. o.

Government and politics

Boroughs

Wrocław comprises five boroughs (dzielnice):

Municipal politics

Professional sports

The Wrocław area has many popular professional sports teams. The most popular sport today is probably basketball, thanks to Śląsk Wrocław, the award-winning men's basketball team (former Polish champions, 2nd-place in 2004).

Men's sports

Women's sports

File:Wroclaw rynek skating night small.jpg
Skating rink in Rynek (Market Square), December 2003.

Twin towns and partnerships

Twin towns:

Partnership:

See also

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

  • Encyklopedia Wrocławia. Wrocław 2001
  • Wrocław jego dzieje kultura. Warszawa 1978
  • G. Scheuermann. Das Breslau-Lexikon. Dülmen 1994
  • K.Maleczyński, M.Morelowski, A.Ptaszycka, Wrocław. Rozwój urbanistyczny. Warszawa 1956
  • W.Długoborski, J.Gierowski, K.Maleczyński, Dzieje Wrocławia do roku 1807., Warszawa 1958
  • Microcosm, Portrait of a Central European City, by Norman Davies and Roger Moorhouse (Jonathan Cape, 2002) ISBN 0224062433 (ISBN 8324001727 – Polish translation)
  • Gregor Thum: Die Fremde Stadt Breslau 1945. Siedler, Berlin 2003. ISBN 3-88680-795-9 (Frankfurt (Oder), Univ., Diss., 2002)
  • Till van Rahden, Juden und andere Breslauer: Die Beziehungen zwischen Juden, Protestanten und Katholiken in einer deutschen Großstadt von 1860 bis 1925, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000. ISBN 3-525-35732-X
  • Kulak, Teresa (2006). "Wrocław". Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie. ISBN 97873844728. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: length (help)
  • Codex Diplomaticus Silesiae, Erster Theil: Breslauer Urkundenbuch. Breslau 1870

Footnotes

  1. ^ Davies, Moorhouse, p. 396; van Rahden, Juden, p. 323-26
  2. ^ a b c Davies, Moorhouse, p. 395
  3. ^ Kulak, p. 252
  4. ^ Davies, Moorhouse, p. 394
  5. ^ Davies, Moorhouse, p. 31
  6. ^ Thum, Breslau passim
  7. ^ German population expelled or evacuated.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wrocław.
Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Breslau".

Template:Poland

51°07′N 17°02′E / 51.117°N 17.033°E / 51.117; 17.033

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