History of the city of Gdynia
The history of the city of Gdynia begins with the settlement of Gdina , which was first mentioned in 1253. The city charter was Gdynia 1926. The main port city of the Second Polish Republic was in the 1930s, with more than 100,000 inhabitants to the big city . During the Second World War , Gdynia, called Gotenhafen during this time, was considerably destroyed. The largest company, Stocznia Gdynia, was the scene of the workers' uprising of 1970 .
Duchy of Pomerania
The oldest news about part of today's Gdynia (Polish: Gdynia) comes from the year 1209, when the suburb Oxhöft (pl. Oksywie, Kasch. Òksëwiô) , which has belonged to the city since 1926 , was first mentioned. At that time, Oxhöft belonged to the Duchy of Pomerania ( Pomorze Gdańskie ), whose territory is now predominantly occupied by the Pomeranian Voivodeship .
The name Oxhöft is probably derived from the Old Saxon word Oxihoved (Ochshaupt). The spelling Oxhöft reflects the Low German form. The place got its name because the Oxhöfter Kämpe (Kępa Oksywska), a coastal formation, resembled the shape of an ox's head in the eyes of the observers at the time. Oxhöft is located in the southeastern part of the Oxhöfter Kämpe. The Archangel Michaelis Church was founded in Oxhöft in 1224 , one of the oldest parishes on the Pomeranian coast. It is the oldest building in Gdynia and is 42.5 m above sea level on the Kämpe. Its current appearance goes back to renovations in the 17th century. The graves of well-known personalities such as those of Antoni Abrahams (1869–1923) or Bernard Chrzanowski can be found in the church's cemetery .
In the documents of the bishops of Kuyavian the settlement of Gdina is mentioned as parish after Oxhöft in 1253, which is the first mention of Gdina . At that time and until the beginning of the 20th century, Gdynia was a village that lived mainly from fishing.
Teutonic Order State of Prussia
In the years 1309/1310 crusaders conquered Pomerania and its then capital Gdansk for the Teutonic Order state Prussia (see takeover of Gdansk by the Teutonic Order ). From 1316 Gdynia belonged to the possession of the Cistercian abbey in Oliva ( Oliwa ) , but later came to Peter von Rozecina (Russoschin, Rusocin, today part of the rural community Pruszcz Gdański ). The Lords of Russoshin granted the villagers fishing rights in the bay, which they confirmed in 1379 and 1384. In 1382 Johannes von Russoschin donated Gdynia to the Charterhouse in Karthaus in Kashubia (kashub. Kartuzë ; Polish: Kartuzy ), which held this property until 1772. The Carthusians built an inn in Gdynia in 1429, which they leased.
Royal share in Prussia and as part of Poland-Lithuania
In 1466, Gdynia belonged to the separatist western territories of the Teutonic Order of Prussia , which after the Second Peace of Thorn successfully established itself as an independent corporate state of Prussia with a royal share . Prussia's royal share sought the protection of the Polish king Casimir IV Jagiełło and received it. The construction of a merchant ship in Gdynia, which a Gdansk merchant commissioned, is documented for 1488. In 1569, Prussia united royal shares with Poland, which soon merged with Lithuania through the Lublin Union to form Poland-Lithuania . During the sieges of Danzig (Gdańsk) by King Stephan Báthory of Poland in 1577 and 1734 by Russian and Saxon troops, Gdynia was badly affected and then rebuilt.
In 1756 the Danzig Natural Research Society described juniper and red spruce stands in Gdynia.
The villages of Groß Katz (pl. Wielki Kack, kasch. Wiôldżi Kack), Klein Katz (1933 to Gdynia, pl. Mały Kack, kasch. Małë Kack) and Koliebken (pl. Kolibki, kasch. Kòlëbki), which now belong to Gdynia , were subordinate feudal landlords who can be proven from 1383. Aristocrats changed hands with Danzig council families. In 1685 King John III acquired Sobieski and Queen Marie Casimire Louise de la Grange d'Arquien Koliebken. After Johann III. Death (1696) used the queen widow Koliebken as a residence. They created a park that still exists today and is known for its old trees. The queen widow later returned to France. Her son Jakob Louis Heinrich sold Koliebken to Count Peter Georg Prebendow (Piotr Przebendowski) in 1720 . His nephew Józef Przebendowski had the Catholic St. Joseph Church built in Koliebken in 1763, which was destroyed in 1939.
Kingdom of Prussia and from 1871 as part of Germany
During the first partition of Poland in 1772, the Kingdom of Prussia annexed Prussia with a royal share of Gdynia, but initially without the free cities of Danzig , Elbing and Thorn . Prussia's royal share - without Warmia - was initially reorganized as the province of West Prussia , to which Gdynia now belonged.
In 1789 Gdynia had 21 houses in which 20 families lived. In ulica Folwarczna (Vorwerkstraße) in the district Adler Horst (Orłowo) is the 17th and 18th century neo-Gothic built Vorwerk Klein-Katz (pl. Mały Kack , kaschkasch. MaLe Kack ), which does not belong to the same neighboring district. Gdynia grew slowly. Between 1820 and 1822 the road from Szczecin to Danzig was paved through Gdynia. The Stargard – Gdansk railway , which runs through Gdynia, was built by 1870 . At that time Gdynia had about 1,200 inhabitants.
In 1871 Gdynia became part of Germany when the Kingdom of Prussia joined the German Empire . In 1872 the Vorwerk Grabau (pl. Grabówek, Kasch. Grabòwka) was incorporated into Gdynia. In 1882 the Deutsche Reichspost opened a post office in Gdynia, which Poczta Polska commemorated on August 21, 1982 with a 100th anniversary celebration. The station Gdynia opened The oldest surviving house of Gdynia 1884, from the late 19th century, the house is two fishing families on Plac Kaszubski 7b (Kashubian Square). The house now houses a café.
At the beginning of the 20th century the rural house of the Skwiercz family was built at ulica Starowiejska 30 (Alte Dorfstrasse), which was inhabited from 1920 until his death in 1923 by Antoni Abraham, a Kashubian fighter for a Polish Pomeranian. The village street was winding back then, which is why the house is not located directly on the street that was later straightened. This house now houses a section of the Gdynia City Museum with an exhibition on the history of the village of Gdynia.
With the emergence of beach tourism from the end of the 19th century, Gdynia changed from a fishing village to a summer resort with several brick houses, including restaurants, cafes and holiday accommodations, and fish smokers as well as a pier for smaller ships. A Gdańsk bathing company built a spa house and a bathing establishment on the beach in Gdańsk Bay and in 1904 a connecting road to the train station, at that time Kurstrasse (ulica Kuracyjna; since 1929 ulica 10 Lutego ). In addition, the Danziger Chaussee (Szosa Gdańska, also Oxhöfter Weg, Droga Oksywska, today ulica Świętojańska ) was created. Also at the beginning of the 20th century, Johann Adler opened a bathing establishment between Gdynia and Sopot, which was named after him Adlershorst (today the Orłowo district). Adler is also reminiscent of his former house, the Café Galeria Adlerówka on Katzer Fließ (Kacza).
In 1910, a jetty for fishing boats was built below Oxhöft and the Catholic Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent von Paul opened a branch in Gdynia. In the course of the later expansion of Gdingen, in 1923/1924 they built the still existing religious house in ulica Starowiejska 2 . The Sisters of Mercy dedicated themselves to v. a. Poor and sick, but they also offered guest rooms. In 1927, the sisters built a hospice at Płac Kaszubski , which was used exclusively as accommodation for vacationers. Shortly afterwards it was converted into a hospital that the sisters still run today.
In 1912 Jan Radtke ( Polish ) built his house, which is still preserved today, at ulica 10 Lutego 2 at the corner of ulica Świętojańska , which is characterized by its wooden corner tower. Radtke (1872–1958) became the first Kashubian community leader and held office from November 23, 1918 to 1926, as a plaque on the house commemorates. Radtke also offered guest rooms and stayed in his house as guests. a. the writer Stefan Żeromski , the Warmia-Polish composer Feliks Nowowiejski , and the builder of the port of Gdynia, engineer Tadeusz Wenda (1864–1948). In 1913, plans were drawn up for development along the coast in Oxhöft and on Steinberg (Kamienna Góra), Gdingen's local mountain. Another house that still exists today - also with guest rooms - was built in 1914 by the Schroeder family at ulica Starowiejska 10a .
Second Polish Republic
The First World War ended to the detriment of the three Polish partitioning powers, Germany , Austria-Hungary and Russia . The western allied victors of the First World War and the defeated Germany agreed on June 28, 1919 in the Treaty of Versailles to cede individual areas. According to the contract, assignments sometimes required the consent of the residents of the areas concerned by plebiscite, and sometimes they were made without the residents' consent.
Gdynia, like 62% of the area of West Prussia, became part of the Pomeranian Voivodeship of the Second Republic of Poland on January 20, 1920 without a vote . The place name was now officially Gdynia. Poland received a 74 km long coastal strip. Since land traffic between the two parts of Germany had to pass through Pomerania, this part of Poland was also called the Polish Corridor . In the enthusiastic mood after the founding of the state, Poland celebrated the marriage to the sea (Polish: Zaślubiny Polski z morzem ) in Putzig (Puck) on February 10, 1920 : General Józef Haller von Hallenburg left in a solemn ceremony in the presence of the military, clergy and political representatives throw a ring into the sea and thus carry out the 'marriage'. A memorial column was erected on site to commemorate this event. With the access to the Baltic Sea the demand was made to build a Polish sea power.
Already in the first summer of belonging to Poland, many Polish summer visitors came to Boża Zatoczka at the foot of the Steinberg and the cliff in Adlershorst to spend their holidays there. Among them was Stefan Żeromski, one of the greatest Polish writers of the time, who settled in Adlershorst in a former fishing hut.
The memorabilia associated with him are carefully kept in the fisherman's hut and the Orłowo Friends Society regularly organizes exhibitions and meetings with historical or other backgrounds.
At that time there was no deep sea port on the Polish coast. Three months after the celebration in Putzig, Vice Admiral Kazimierz Porębski , formerly director of the maritime affairs department in the Ministry of Defense , instructed engineer Tadeusz Wenda to find the most favorable location for the construction of a war port . Wenda reported in June 1920:
“The cheapest place for the construction of the war port (if necessary, also the trading port) is Gdynia and actually the lowland between Gdynia and Oxhöft, located 16 kilometers from Nowy Port in Gdansk . This place has the following advantages: it is protected by the Hela peninsula even from winds that Gdansk is not protected from, the deep water is near the coast, namely the 6 m deep line is 400 m from the coast, and the 10 m deep line is from [the coast] 1,300 to 1,500 m away, the coast is flat and is 1 to 3 meters above sea level, abundance of fresh water, which the Chylonia brook [German: Kielau; kasch. Chëlonô], close to Gdynia train station (2 kilometers), good anchorage in the roadstead ... "
The Polish government chose Gdynia as the Polish port location in the winter of 1920 - also after Porębski's intercession. Wenda still delivered the draft for the port in 1920, which was to consist of three parts: the war, the trade and the fishing port. Gdynia was to become Poland's gateway to the world. The decision to build a port also grew out of bad experience. Russia, which collapsed in a communist revolution, was itself one of the allies of the First World War and not a loser in the war, with whom territorial concessions to Poland could have been agreed within the framework of a peace treaty.
Some advocates of a Polish resurgence attacked Soviet Russia under the leadership of Marshal Józef Piłsudski's . The Polish-Soviet War was supported by Great Britain and France with arms deliveries in order to defeat communism with the Soviet Union . The showmen in Danzig had, however, partly on strike to delete the armaments in order to keep the front of the young Soviet Union, the supposed workers' state, free from ever new weapons aimed at them.
Construction of the port
Construction of the port in Gdynia began in 1921 , but soon came to a standstill due to financial difficulties. According to the Polish census of 1921, Gdynia had 1,179 inhabitants. Stefan Żeromski attentively accompanied the construction of the temporary war port and the berth for fishermen. Inspired by these works, he wrote the novel Wiatr od morza (The Wind from the Sea), in which he provided a surprisingly true picture of the nascent port and the nascent city of Gdynia.
Gdynia had a railway connection, but the routes only led through German or Freistadt-Danzig state territory into the Polish hinterland. In the years 1920/1921 the new railway line Gdynia Główna – Kościerzyna (Gdynia-New World-Gluckau-Kokoschken (Kokoszki)) was built, which connected there to the line Danzig- Langfuhr- Zuckau- Kartuzy ( Kartuzy ), which was built around the turn of the century . From Zuckau (Żukowo) there was a connection to the Polish inland rail network without crossing the border. The connection of this route to Langfuhr is interrupted today by the Lech-Wałęsa Airport of the Tricity of Gdańsk-Sopot-Gdynia.
In 1928 the Sea Fisheries Institute, which opened in Hela in 1921, moved to Gdynia. In 1921/1922 the still existing villa was built on Tetmajera Street , which takes up elements of Kashubian architecture. On January 19, 1922, Gdingen's local council decided to accelerate the expansion of holiday accommodation. So in the 1920s and 1930s the Steinberg was built with villas and guest houses. A park was created on the 52.4 m high peak of the Steinberg, from which one has a good view over the city. Open-air concerts are held here in summer.
In the rest of the city, modern buildings were built that also quote maritime elements such as portholes , bow-shaped house corners and superstructures such as command bridges. A fine example of this is the Abraham House at 10 Starowiejska Street . In 1922/1923, Władysław Granowski built the Hotel Polska Riwiera with wooden bathing stalls and a pier on the ulica Zawiszy Czarnego 1 at the foot of the Steinberg . Today a garrison club of the Polish Navy sits here .
On September 23, 1922, the Sejm passed the law on the construction of a seaport for general use in Gdynia based on Wenda's drafts. Even before the Sejm decided to build the port, officially called the autonomous body of the sea base , Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski , Minister for Industry and Trade, promoted the expansion of Gdynia. In 1922, the steamer 's / s Gdynia' was registered as the first seaworthy ship with its home port of Gdynia. Investments in the port totaled 88 million Polish guilders ( złoty ). This investment was paid off before the Second World War .
In Gdansk the planned port caused concern and unrest, because its source of income, being a port for Poland, it feared to lose to Gdynia. The Senate of the Free City of Danzig under President Heinrich Sahm (non-party) repeatedly intervened with Joost Adriaan van Hamel , Commissioner of the League of Nations : He should remind Poland of its obligations towards the Free City of Danzig. This was declared a Free City in order to serve Poland as a port.
Through donations of the owner of a large farm, Elżbieta Skwiercz, was the construction in 1922 to 1924 by Marian Baranowski and Roman Wojkiewicz built Catholic Collegiate St. Mary in the ulica Świętojańska corner Ulica Armii Krajowej possible the central Polish of shapes religious buildings of the Renaissance and ties in with the Baroque . A meteorological station opened in Gdynia in January 1923, and the port was given a 550 m long pier and was shielded from the sea by a 175 m long wooden breakwater. On April 29, 1923, Poland's President Stanisław Wojciechowski and Premier Władysław Sikorski opened the temporary naval port and a protected temporary berth for fishing vessels. The final fishing port wasn't ready until 1933.
The French s / s Kentucky entered Gdynia on August 13, 1923 as the first ocean-going ship . In order to speed up the construction of the port, the Polish government commissioned a Franco-Polish consortium to do this in November 1924. The consortium commissioned the Danish construction company Højgaard & Schultz with 1700 builders and Wenda as the site manager. By the end of 1925, a small 7 m deep harbor basin, a pier as the southern boundary of the harbor (south pier) and part of the pier in the north, a rail connection and various crane structures were built. However, the work progressed only slowly.
While the navy gradually moved its ships from Putzig to the military port in Gdynia from 1924 , the Senate of the Free City of Danzig under Senate President Sahm asked the League of Nations in October 1925 whether, after Danzig's painful loss of cargo handling at Gdyn’s new trading port, the transfer would at least be a welcome move of the Polish ammunition depot from Westerplatte to Gdynia is possible. But it did not get to that. The Polish Navy built its own workshops, including a naval shipyard, in which naval ships are still overhauled today.
During the so-called German-Polish Customs War in 1925, Germany cut off industry and trade from the former German areas that had become Polish in 1918 and 1920 through trade barriers from their traditional sales markets in Germany. This hit the providers hard and they tried to reorient themselves to the formerly Russian and Austro-Hungarian parts of the new Poland. Since these areas were significantly poorer than Germany and the formerly German areas ceded to Poland, the suppliers switched to exporting to affluent countries in Northern and Western Europe and North America.
The strike of British miners in 1925 led to a significant supply shortfall, which the Polish coal miners made up for with increased exports, which made them permanently positioned in coal exports. Kwiatkowski, Poland's Minister for Trade and Industry, sponsored Gdynia a. a. by creating the Central Industrial Area ( Centralny Okręg Przemysłowy ). From 1926 a provisional transit station for emigrants was built at the port. A coal loading facility also went into operation in 1926 and discounts on the freight tariff of the Polish state railway Polskie Koleje Państwowe made coal transport and export via Gdynia cheaper than the traditional export via Gdansk. The coal export via Gdynia then increased sharply from May 1926.
The coal trains from the Polish part of the Upper Silesian coal area drove a detour via Posen and through Pomerania, as the direct railway connections built before the new border were drawn either through German or Danzig state territory. A new direct, foreign territory not touching 450 kilometers long railway line for goods, coal and ore transports was built from 1928 to 1933 with French credits. This so-called coal main line (Magistrala węglowa, also line D29 131 ) connected the Autonomous Voivodeship of Silesia via Zuckau, Ramkau (Rębiechowo) and Espenkrug ( Osowa ) in a mostly straight line with Gdynia and shortened the detour Polish domestic connections by a fifth, 130 kilometers .
Overall, the cargo handling increased from 10,000 tons in 1924 to 2,923,000 tons in 1929. At that time, Gdynia was the only port that was specially designed for the handling of coal. "With a look at the Polish economic policy, one registered [in Gdansk] in 1928/1929 the rapidly growing competitiveness of Gdynia ... which was fully operational since 1926, and the worldwide decline in the economy."
Expansion into a big city
The systematic expansion of Gdingen into a city began in 1925 when a special commission was formed for this purpose. This year Gdynia was connected to the electricity network.
On February 10, 1926, the Polish Council of Ministers granted Gdynia city rights in accordance with the Prussian municipal code of 1863, which was still valid in the formerly German parts of Poland . On April 14, 1926, the city council was constituted and elected the Kashubian Augustyn Krauze (1882-1957) as mayor, who had learned his trade as second mayor of Wroclaw and mayor of Włocławeks (Leslaus) (1923/1924). Gdynia joined the Związek Miast Polskich (Association of Polish Cities, Polish Association of Cities). The city initially had 6,000 inhabitants - after incorporation in 1926 (including Oxhöft) - this number rose to 12,000 and the urban area was 14 km².
The Navy of the Republic of Poland built a naval base on the Oxhöfter Kämpe. From 1935 to 1939, Marian Lalewicz created the no-frills, cubic, Catholic garrison church and the Akademia Marynarki Wojennej im. Bohaterów Westerplatte (Westerplatte Heroes Naval Academy) in the style of academic classicism . The academy buildings are grouped along three fan-shaped avenues that meet at the gatehouse. This bears the inscription: On November 28, 1918 I order the creation of the Polish Navy, Józef Piłsudski, November 28, 1918.
The Naval Cemetery , built in 1936, is located on Antoniego Muchowskiego Street , also in Öxhöft. The German occupiers left the cemetery devastated, and it was not restored until 1989. The grave inscriptions tell interesting details from the life of the buried. For example, former marine Andrej Kłopotowski, who died in 2004. He was awarded the British Distinguished Service Cross and a Norwegian medal for participating in the battles off Narvik. General Gustaw Orlicz-Dreszer (1889–1936), one of the patrons of the Polish Navy, found his final resting place here.
The urban expansion was planned and promoted, so that Gdynia became a modern city with an architecture characterized by the Bauhaus style by 1939 . In the course of the expansion to the Polish gateway to the world , the number of residents rose to over 100,000 by 1938. By 1937 the city's street directory comprised 576 streets and squares. Among the newcomers were also Jews , whose number was given in the census of December 9, 1931, with a total of 33,217 inhabitants, as 84. A Jewish religious community was formed in Gdynia in 1932.
In April 1927, the Polish State Meteorological Institute moved from Danzig- Neufahrwasser (pl.Nowy Port; Kasch.Fôrwôter) to Gdynia in a building at ulica Abrahama 5 , before the building, which was built between 1927 and 1930, with its perforated measuring tower in ulica Waszyngtona 42 . On the property at number 44 - not far from Skwer Kościuszki ( Kościuszko Square), Adam Ballenstedt built the building of the initially state-owned shipping company Żegluga Polska (Polish Shipping) from 1927 to 1929 . The simple structure is emphasized by a colonnade with five arcades, with belt arches on the columns and details in the style of Art Deco . Today the High Command of the Polish Navy sits here.
Tax rebates attracted investors to the city from 1927, which grew considerably in 1928. In 1928 the port construction office was established with a small inner courtyard in the style of historical Polish mansions to accommodate the office and apartment of the port builder Wenda, who retired in 1937. A plaque at the entrance reminds of him. Private investors emerged with their buildings, so the Pręczkowski family had one of the first modern houses built in Gdynia in stages from 1928 to 1937 at Skwer Kościuszki 10–12 corner ulica Żeromskiego .
The architect Tadeusz Jędrzejewski created rounded facade walls and a turret that echo the shapes of a command bridge and round ship walls. The Polonia cinema , later renamed Goplana , was located on the ground floor before and many years after the war . In 1929, Stanisław Filasiewicz built a historicist-style building with a magnificent interior and exterior for Bank Polski at ulica 10 Lutego 20/22 (10th February 1926). a. the counter hall under a column-supported vault. In 1930 Jerzy Müller set up the government commissariat for the Second Polish Republic at Aleja Piłsudskiego 52/54 , which was expanded in 1937 with a wing on ulica Bema .
The allocation of public funds had its downsides. “There was corruption, speculation and fraud. With an ordinance of November 24, 1930, the President of the Republic [introduced] a provisional administration for the city of Gdynia - in his office the government commissioner was responsible for both state affairs and municipal self-government. “Today the building, which included a service apartment, serves as a Seat of the City Council and the Lord Mayor of Gdynia.
The Committee of the National Fleet in Pomorze bought the sailing ship built in Hamburg in 1909 by Blohm + Voss as Prinzess Eitel Friedrich in 1929 with donations collected in Pommerellen, for which reason the ship was in Dar Pomorza on June 30, 1930 (Gabe Pommer (elle) ns, denn Pomorze means in Polish both Pomeranian and Pomeranian). She served the Navy as a sailing training ship until 1981 and has been a museum ship on the south pier since May 28, 1983.
The State Maritime School (Polish: Państwowa Szkoła Morska ) founded in 1920 was relocated from Dirschau ( Tczew ) to Gdynia on July 21, 1928 . With the commissioning of the Dar Pomorza in 1930, the nautical school moved into its own building. The Instytut Bałtycki (Baltic Sea or Baltic Institute) in Thorn opened a department in Gdynia in 1930/1931.
In the 1930s the expansion of the town, which had 33,217 inhabitants (1931), continued. Tadeusz Jędrzejewski and Włodzimierz Prochaska built a residential and commercial building for the Stankiewicz family in 1931 at ulica Świętojańska 53 . The current owners have set up a small exhibition on the history of the house in the doorway of the house. In the same year a villa in the style of the old school was built in Kielau (pl. Chylonia , Kasch. Chëlonô ) and in Adlershorst the Villa Weneda and the Pension Gryf . The beach promenade in Adlershorst was built in the 1930s, below which the municipal Witold Gombrowicz Theater, founded in 1964, plays on a beach stage in front of the backdrop of the Baltic Sea and the cliffs. On June 25, 1931, the Morski Państwowy Instytut Meteorologiczny (State Meteorological Maritime Institute) moved into the new building of the maritime observatory at 42 Nadbrzeżna Street (today Waszyngtona Street ).
In 1931 the brothers Robert and Franciszek Wilke founded their company (Robert Wilke - Motorówki Pasażerskie). Wilkes started out with a fishing trawler that they used to take tourists out on sightseeing tours. The brothers sold the cutter, took out loans and ordered the wooden motorboat Delfin from the Stocznia Gdynia SA shipyard . Later the Rekin , the Bajka , the Gryf , the Jaś and the Małgosia were added. In the summer season, Wilkes carried over 200,000 passengers. The trips led through the port or to Sopot ( Sopot ) , to Danzig , Jastarnia or Hela ( Hel ) . The German invasion in 1939 put an end to this. Since 2006, the Żegluga Gdańska company has been offering regular line connections to Hela (60 minutes) and Jastarnia (75 minutes) again.
Thanks to Kwiatkowski's efforts, the port was fully functional by 1930 with docks, piers, breakwaters and many other necessary facilities and commercial operations (such as storage sheds, loading facilities, a rice husking factory). In 1931 he became an honorary citizen of Gdingen. The expansion of the port made it possible to carry out a large part of the trade that was previously via Gdansk via Gdynia. B. “Danzig's timber trade had reached a low point on the tenth anniversary of the Free City in November 1930, which was exceeded in 1931 and 1932, while Gdingen's timber turnover in 1932 was at least 88,000 t - undoubtedly mainly through timber from the Polish State Forestry Administration, the political "did not act economically" and offered their wood at a reduced price when shipped via Gdynia.
From 1931 onwards, Gdingen's port was further expanded with French loans, the total volume of which - not only those granted for the purpose of port expansion - reached five billion French francs in 1932 . After the Bank of England defense solid pound prices for foreign exchange was set in 1931, which fluctuated in sterling measured exchange rates heavily. The Bank of Gdańsk kept the rates in Gdańsk guilders to sterling currencies stable. The Gulden of the Free City of Danzig belonged to the so-called sterling block .
The Polish guilder (zloty) fluctuated with the pound sterling - v. a. downwards - which meant heavy losses for French creditors. Instead of rehabilitating and securing their currencies, many countries switched to import and currency rationing, which dramatically damaged global foreign trade. This made it increasingly difficult for Poland to use export proceeds to acquire foreign currency with which repayments and interest could have been paid to French creditors. As a result, the French willingness to grant Poland further loans faltered, and with it the progress of the construction of Gdingen's port and the coal highway .
There were layoffs. In Pomerania at the end of May 1932 there were bloody clashes in Gdynia, Karthaus and Wejherowo (Neustadt in West Prussia), which cost human lives, between workers from Pomerania and those from formerly Russian and Austro-Hungarian parts of the new Poland who were involved in the distribution of unemployment benefits were given preference with the indication that they were organized in Polish rifle associations. The Polish Navy in Gdynia and the Polish military in Wejherowo refused to proceed against the Pomeranian workers as ordered.
The rapid influx of job seekers exceeded the possibilities of creating adequate living space. "On the outskirts of the city, slums arose where the unemployed, homeless and low-paid unskilled workers lived with their families." The housing shortage drove up rents. This encouraged private construction investments, but rents often amounted to a normal monthly income or more.
In July 1932, French Finance Minister Louis Germain-Martin refused a Polish loan application sent directly to the French government. So not even the construction of the coal main road could be finished, which in its partially developed state in 1932 already used 20 coal trains a day. The total throughput in the ports of Gdańsk in January and February 1932 was 191,174 tons less than in the same period of the previous year. Gdynia was able to increase its throughput by 66,713 tons in the same period, but overall Polish foreign trade declined due to the above-mentioned increasing global protectionism .
But in the fourth quarter of 1932 sales stabilized and in 1933 Poland's exports rose faster than Gdyn's port could be expanded, so that Gdansk was able to handle an increasing volume of goods again. In 1934, Gdingen's port surpassed all other Baltic ports in terms of handling.
Gdynia became a passenger port for overseas trips and on May 1, 1935 an international airport was opened in nearby Rumia ( German Rahmel , Kasch. Rëmiô). The ship passages were served by the Dyckerhoff & Widmann ( Katowice office ) terminal building for overseas passengers Dworec Morski ( e.g. Überseehof), where both tourists and emigrants embarked. The building is open to all visitors today, and a small exhibition provides information about its history.
The state-owned shipping company Gdynia-Ameryka Linie Żeglugowe SA operated seven passenger ships. In the suburb of Grabau on the site of a former Prussian barracks from the 19th century, accommodation for emigrants ( Etap Emigracyjny ) opened in 1933 , and from there they were brought directly to the Überseehof via their own rail link . In 1935, Foreign Minister Józef Beck and Kwiatkowski, now Treasury Minister, officially inaugurated the facility. Many Jewish and Catholic Poles emigrated from here. With the war on September 1, 1939, Polish passenger shipping initially ended.
Political development
Piłsudski had ruled Poland since 1926 and established an increasingly authoritarian government. When the National Socialists established their dictatorship in Germany , the two governments came closer together. In 1934 both signed the German-Polish non-aggression pact . Both governments were close in their anti-Jewish attitudes, but not in their methods. Gdynia thus became an important port for emigrating Jewish Poles. At the Évian Conference in July 1938, the Polish government demanded that not only the possibilities of accommodating Jewish Germans as refugees be discussed, but also Jewish Poles. The Polish government suggested that France open its colony Madagascar as a host country. Gdynia was important for emigrants from the Free City of Danzig.
In 1933, Hermann Rauschning, a National Socialist, became President of the Senate in the Free City, and in the People's Day elections on April 7, 1935, the National Socialists won 59.3% of the votes. Unlike in Germany , they were unable to completely eradicate the constitutional freedoms and rights, as parts of the 1922 constitution - in particular the rights of the Polish-speaking Free Towns of Danzig - were guaranteed by the League of Nations . Nevertheless, the Senate discriminated against opposition, Jewish and Polish-speaking Free City Danzig residents as much as possible, so that especially many Jews tried to leave the Free State of Danzig.
From 1933, the former captain Gustav Pietsch , who lived in Gdansk , ran a fishing and seafaring school in Gdynia, financially supported by Jewish associations , in which mainly young Jewish Free-Town Danzigers were trained. With the school leaving certificate in a practical occupation, the chances of emigrating to the Mandate Palestine or other places increased. Several hundred graduates managed to leave the country by the end of 1938. Those who did not succeed could at least get on a strange ship and leave the country. Pietsch was "one of the Aryans of Danzig most hated by the Nazis." Due to intolerable attacks and reprisals by the National Socialists, Pietsch and his wife Gertrude emigrated to Palestine themselves at the end of 1938, later moved temporarily to Germany and were saved by the Berlin Senate in 1961 honored.
From May 1938 Hitler demanded that Czechoslovakia should cede areas in which German Bohemians and German Moravians lived. Poland's ruling National Democratic advocated a policy that the native language , the nationality must be determined. Poland therefore demanded from Czechoslovakia the cession of the so-called Olsa area west of the Olsa (pl. Olza / czech. Olše) . This claim was underscored by the naming of the Olza , whose construction began on August 28, 1938 at Gdingen's shipyard.
Concerns about the future in the areas claimed by National Socialist Germany, the "Corridor" and the Free City of Danzig, spread, as a result of which international investors withdrew. This included the Det Bergenske Dampskibsselskab shipping company from Bergen in Norway, which, as Bergford, had a branch in Gdynia and Gdansk and offered both for sale in 1936. It was said that it was mainly economic considerations that justified this step. However, the growing tensions between Poland and National Socialist Germany also had an influence to a certain extent, which would have a special meaning for a Norwegian society both in the Polish Corridor and in Gdansk.
In 1937, the modern grain loading facility went into operation with the new grain elevator. Today the facility is a monument to modern industrial architecture.
The Polish Navy expanded its fleet. The British shipyard JS White & Co. Ltd. built 1935/1936 the structurally identical destroyers ORP Grom (ORP = Okręt Rzeczpospolitej Polski / Ship of the Republic of Poland) and ORP Błyskawica (Blitz). The latter was launched on October 1, 1936 and put into service on November 25, 1937. As part of Operation Peking , the torpedo destroyers Błyskawica , Grom and Burza left Gdynia for Great Britain on August 30, 1939. They and their Polish crews remained in service after the country was completely conquered by the German Wehrmacht and Red Army on October 6, 1939. On July 4, 1945, the ORP Błyskawica returned to Gdynia. After the war it was used for training purposes and for air defense.
In 1938 Gdingen's port rose to the tenth largest port in Europe in terms of transshipment and handled 46% of Polish foreign trade with 8.7 million tons (according to other sources 9.2 million tons). The city continued to expand. Between 1932 and 1935, the architect Marian Maśliński created a corner house for Juliusz von Hundsdorff at 7 Starowiejska Street .
In 1935/1936 an office building for the Polish social security ( Zakład Ubezpieczeń Społecznych , ZUS) based on a design by Roman Piotrowski was built at ulica 10 Lutego 24 . It is one of the symbols of modernism of the interwar period with structures of different sizes and an exposed rounded part. The facades are clad in black granite at the bottom and light sandstone at the top. Today the shipping company Polskie Linie Oceaniczne (Polish Ocean Lines, POL) is located in the building.
The Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego was in the ulica 3 Maja 27/31 corner Ulica Batorego 26 (Stephan Bathory-Str.), The largest residential building Gdynia built by Stanisław Ziolowski before the war. The semicircular superstructure tower at ulica 3 Maja (3rd May 1791 street) is striking . The building was modern and equipped. a. with an underground car park. The facades are decorated with limestone from Szydłowiec in the Subcarpathian region . In ulica Wójta Radtkego (Mayor Radtke-Str.) Stefan Reychman and Jerzy Müller created from 1935 to 1938 the market hall, a three-part arch construction.
As part of the urban expansion plans of the architect Stanisław Filipowski, the 600 m long and 120 m wide representative south pier was built in place of the old wooden walkway from 1935 to 1937 as an extension of the axis of ulica 10 Lutega . At the end of the pier, a 10-meter-high obelisk was to commemorate the unification of the tripartite Poland into the Second Republic between 1918 and 1921. That never happened, today there is a statue of the writer Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski made by Zdzisław Koseda . The aquarium was built on the south pier in 1937 - interrupted by the Second World War - and opened in 1971.
Bohdan Damięcki and Tadeusz Sieczkowski built the house of the Polish sailor in 1938/1939 as a further representative building in this good room in Gdingen . A circular projecting component determines the facade to the sailors basin (bases żeglarski). Today the naval navigation school of the Westerplatte-Helden-Marineakademie and a planetarium are housed here. The above-mentioned museum ships ORP Błyskawica and Dar Pomorza are also moored at the south pier . Stanisław Płoski built in 1936, the home of the Swedish sailors in the Ulica Jana z Kolna 25 in which a hotel and a Swedish consulate came.
At Plac Konstytucji 5 , the functionalist building for the district court and public prosecutor's office was built in 1936 . In 1936 the Orłowski family had a modernist corner house built at 68 Świętojańska Street , which consists of a six-story building with rounded corners and windows and a seven-story cuboid building. The facades are faced with light sandstone. A branch of the French department store chain Le Bon Marché stayed on the lower floors until 1939 . Today there is a book and press salon here.
In the same year, also in ulica Świętojańska 122 at the corner of Aleja Piłsudskiego , the architect Leon Mazalon created a corner house for himself and the lawyer Antoni Ogończyk-Bloch with an interesting emphasis on the corner location through vertically superimposed, streamlined winter gardens and similar balconies facing Aleja Piłsudskiego . Opposite the main train station, a monumental building was also built in 1936 according to designs by Zbigniew Karpiński ( Polish ) , T. Sieczkowski and R. Sołtyński. The avant-garde building consists of a main cuboid containing the entrances and the high main hall, two symmetrical curved wings and a straight wing facing the Jana z Kolna street .
At Skwer Kościuszki 16, in 1937/38 Zbigniew Kupiec and Tadeusz Kossak built a modern town house for the Jurkowski family in reinforced concrete skeleton construction with a facade clad with yellow ceramic tiles. Green areas were provided. A park was created on the Steinberg and the Hochredlauer Kämpe (Kępa Redłowska) with its forests and cliffs was declared a nature park with 110 hectares in 1938. A 1½ kilometer long Baltic Sea promenade, the Feliks-Nowowiejski-Boulevard, connects the Hochredlauer Kämpe with the city. In 1939, Kupiec and Kossak created a corner house for the Krenski family at ulica Świętojańska 55 on the corner of ulica Ż Wirki i Wigury with a high corner building and lower wings to the neighboring houses. When the war began, the building remained unplastered, the ground floor without finishing and the imported elevator in the port.
In 1939 Gdynia measured an area of 66 km² (6th place among Poland's cities) and had 115,000 inhabitants (12th place among Poland's cities). In the years 1918 to 1939 the linguistic composition of the population changed, so that the German minority finally made up 9.8% of the inhabitants of Pomerania. Most of the immigrant people were Kashubian Poles, along with other Poles.
Under German occupation and annexation
On August 23, 1939, the National Socialist German Reich and the Soviet Union allied themselves in the German-Soviet non-aggression pact against Poland. On September 1, 1939, the Wehrmacht and the SS Heimwehr attacked Poland. From September 1 to October 6, 1939, Poland defended itself on land. The Soviet Red Army invaded Poland on September 17, 1939 from the east.
The capture and renaming of the city
On September 13, 1939, the Polish military evacuated Gdynia, which the Pomeranian Border Guard Command 1 under Leonhard Kaupisch took the next day. In a special sheet of the Leipziger Volkszeitung from September 14, 1939, the entry of German troops into Gdynia on the same day at 10.15 a.m. and the handover of the city by the Polish commanders was announced. The SS Heimwehr Danzig was the first to move into Gdyn's districts of Adlershorst and Koliebken, which bordered directly on the state territory of the Free City of Danzig . During the defense of Koliebken, the Catholic St. Joseph Church there was destroyed. In Koliebken in aleja Zwycięstwa today a memorial cross commemorates the defenders of the Polish Second Marine Regiment who were killed in the attack of the SS Home Guard in Danzig in September 1939.
On September 14, the Wehrmacht imposed a curfew in occupied Gdynia, and all public life and the economy came to a standstill. Only grocery stores were allowed to open for a few hours, during which the curfew was lifted for residents.
Until September 19, 1939, Polish marines under Stanisław Dąbek (March 28, 1892 to September 19, 1939, Oxhöft) held the naval academy on the Oxhöfter Kämpe.
According to various sources, Hitler visited the conquered Gdynia on September 19, 20 or 21, 1939. During this period, Gdynia was also renamed Gotenhafen . The city was given the name Gotenhafen on December 29, 1939, which had actually been in use since October 26, 1939. The name was a new creation without reference to the German name Gdynia or other historical names of the place. The name alluded to the fact that the Goths probably once settled on the lower reaches of the Vistula . The spelling was briefly Gotenha v en.
From January 1, 1940, Gdynia was considered a city according to the German municipal code of January 30, 1935 and remained an urban district . Immediately behind the advancing units of the Wehrmacht, SS-Totenkopf units roamed the Pomeranians and murdered representatives of the Polish intelligentsia ( intelligentsia ) and those who had been denounced as Germany's enemies by German-speaking Poles who wanted the annexation of formerly German areas of Poland. Many were shot in the Piaśnica massacre . Around 60,000 Poles, including 7,000 Jewish Poles, fell victim to these massacres by the end of the year. The murderers did not spare the patients of psychiatric institutions either; on September 22, all patients in the Prussian Stargard- Kokborowo mental institution were murdered.
The deportation of the Polish population and the settlement of 'ethnic Germans'
In their racism, the National Socialists postulated the superiority of a supposedly existing "Germanic race", to which the National Socialists included all people with a Germanic, in particular German, mother tongue who were not Jews or Sinti and Roma or were viewed as such by the National Socialists. The asserted superiority determined and enabled the members of this National Socialist cliché of "Teutons" to rule. Therefore - in the opinion of the National Socialists - one had to remove all "Teutons" from the subjugated population so that they would not make their superior "Germanic" abilities subordinate to the subjugated, in Nazi jargon it meant "not to leave the blood bases of a leadership to Poland ".
The Nazi regime made preparations for the deportation of Poles from Pomerania. Germans should be settled in their place. To this end, the Nazi regime agreed with the Soviet regime in a protocol on September 28, 1939, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles and German-Romanians from the areas that both regimes included in the so-called Soviet sphere of interest ( Eastern Poland , Baltic States , Bessarabia ) to relocate. On October 6, 1939, Hitler made his intention to change the ethnographic situation public in a speech , which indicated the ongoing murder, expulsion and resettlement measures. On October 26, 1939, the newspaper Völkischer Beobachter published a very cautious summary of this Fiihrer's speech. On October 7, 1939, Hitler, Hermann Göring , Wilhelm Keitel , Chief of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW), and Hans Heinrich Lammers , Chief of the Reich Chancellery, signed the secret decree of the Führer and Reich Chancellor to consolidate German nationality . Hitler also announced the extermination of the Jews. The decree entrusted Heinrich Himmler , Reichsführer SS , with the management of the expulsion and resettlement measures (officially the settlement of Baltic and Wolhynian Germans and evacuation of Poles and Jews ) and appointed him Reich Commissioner for the consolidation of German nationality for this purpose .
On October 11, 1939, the Immigration Center (EWZ) was founded. Their boss was Martin Sandberger . The following day the EWZ opened an office in Gdynia. In the meantime, the Nazi regime organized the immigration of people who were to become a means of their Germanization policy. On October 15, 1939, in Reval (Tallinn), Germany and Estonia signed a protocol on the voluntary emigration of German-speaking Estonians (they called themselves Estonians in contrast to Estonian-speaking compatriots), provided they were not Jews or were viewed by the National Socialists as Jews. The first resettlers from Estonia arrived on October 22, 1939. With an announcement of October 15, 1939 by the new police chief appointed by the National Socialists, the deportation of Polish residents from the city was announced. The hand luggage of the people was limited to 25 kilograms, all keys to the apartments and accommodations had to remain on site and the bringing of live animals was prohibited. A memorial across from Gdynia Central Station on Plac Gdynian Wysiedlonych ( Gdynian Expellees Square ) commemorates these deportations .
From October 9th to 25th, 1939, 38,000 (according to other information up to 50,000) people and a. Deported to Kalisch ( Kalisz ) , Kielce and Warsaw (Warszawa). There the resettlers were z. Some of them are temporarily housed in temporary wooden houses. From December 1 to 17, 1939 alone, 87,838 people were deported from the annexed areas of Poland to non-annexed, German-occupied Poland, including almost all Poles who were Jewish and regarded by the National Socialists as Jews. When the war broke out, an estimated 700 Jews were living in Gdynia. On November 29, 1939, Hitler issued a decree that "immediately to be shot dead," who returned after the deportation on their own initiative.
The classification of people without German citizenship in Gdynia, as in other parts of Poland annexed by Germany, was arbitrary, an outgrowth of National Socialist racism . People without German citizenship in Gdynia (as in other parts of Poland annexed by Germany) were asked to apply to so-called branches of the German People's List to be classified themselves. Since people hoped to gain more security from the arbitrariness of the occupiers with their naturalization, people who did not approve of the Nazi policy also reported. All non-naturalized adult residents were obliged to work. Anyone who did not provide proof of work was compulsorily obliged by the Reich Labor Service and a. also used in the Altreich. For German-speaking Poles, the German People's List was a complicated procedure for naturalization. The associated regulations and implementation provisions of the Reich Ministry of the Interior were issued on March 4, 1941 on the ordinance on the German People's List and German citizenship in the incorporated eastern regions . Only certain German-speaking Poles should become a means of the Germanization policy in the annexed part of Poland, because not all German-speaking Poles seemed to the National Socialists to be recognized as so-called ethnic Germans. All German-speaking Poles who belonged to the Jewish religious community or who were considered Jews within the meaning of the Nuremberg Laws due to Jewish ancestors were excluded from the start. But many other German-speaking people in Poland (as well as in other areas of Central and Southeastern Europe) had never made a claim to Germanization of the areas they inhabited from their German mother tongue and / or their affinity to German culture, let alone that they would be forced to displace them - and approved resettlement measures of the National Socialists.
Especially people with German-speaking ancestors, whose mother tongue was neither German nor that they felt an affinity for German culture, rejected the external determination of their identity through the National Socialist mania for descent. Such people seemed unsuitable to the National Socialists in the course of their expulsion and resettlement measures as German settlers and carriers of a national identity, including, for example, the Poznan Bambergs living near Poznan . In Nazi jargon it is said that these people entered into "ties to foreign nationalities", they were "poled" people, lived in "ethnic mixed marriages", were "renegades" and "conscious Poles of German descent" or "merged with Poles".
The decree authorized Himmler to design new German settlement areas by assigning certain residential areas to the population in question (especially resettlers from the so-called Soviet sphere of interest). The property of Poles who had fled the fighting or the German occupiers or who were suspected of so-called anti-German actions was confiscated. All Poles who had immigrated to formerly German territory since 1919 were deported to other parts of Poland. What they had to leave behind drew in the empire. The approximately 150,000 Kashubians living in Pomerania should be allowed to stay in the country. It was later to be decided whether the Kashubians should become Germans again - as they did until 1920 - which would also have obliged them to serve in the war.
On October 8, 1939 Hitler decreed in connection with the introduction of Sudetengaugesetzes from April 14, 1939 by decree on the management of territories , effective October 26, 1939, the annexation of the so-called Reichsgaue Posen and West Prussia (so-called fifth partition of Poland ) to which the latter now Gdingen belonged. The Reichsgaue differed in their administration from Prussian provinces in that a civil state administration was not established, but all civil affairs were dealt with by NSDAP party offices.
On October 30, 1939, the corresponding German-Latvian resettlement agreement was agreed. Gdynia became one of the places in which German-speaking Estonians and German-speaking Latvians (today mostly referred to collectively as Baltic German ) lived in large numbers. But mostly they were settled scattered over the annexed parts of Poland.
On November 1, 1939, the EWZ office in Gdynia became a branch. On November 16, 1939, the Nazi and Soviet regimes sealed the resettlement of German-speaking people from the Soviet-annexed part of Poland ( Narew area , Volhynia , East Galicia ) in Moscow by treaty , insofar as the National Socialists considered them suitable as a means of their Germanization policy. The deportations and settlement measures progressed rapidly in Pomerania , so that the EWZ branch in Gdynia closed on December 1, 1939 and moved to Lodsch ( Łódź ) .
In April 1940, NSKK Brigade Leader Horst Schlichting from Sopot , who had been acting provisionally from November 1939, was appointed Lord Mayor for twelve years.
After the deportations and settlement of immigrants, Gdynia still had around 90,000 inhabitants in 1940. In 1940 the SS opened the KL Gotenhafen concentration camp , a satellite camp of the main camp in Stutthof .
On April 30, 1940, with retroactive effect to March 1, 1940, the ordinance on the introduction of German military law in the incorporated eastern regions was issued . All naturalized men of Gdingen who were fit for military service were obliged to do military service. On September 12, 1940, Himmler issued guidelines on how to distinguish between people who were considered suitable for the Germanization policy (Nazi jargon: Volksdeutsche) and unsuitable. The persons concerned were classified into four different categories depending on their suitability (later called sections I – IV of the people's list ).
Gotenhafen as a German naval base
The German navy took over the naval port and shipyard in Gdingen as the naval arsenal of Gotenhafen . The German Navy trained submarine crews in the facilities of the Polish Naval Academy in Oxhöft. The other port facilities were subordinated to a joint port administration of the cities of Gdansk and Gdynia, in which Gdansk residents spoke. Gdansk never dreamed of bringing the rival port of Gdynia under its control, but during the war this had no significant economic effect. "In 1940, the Danzig Chamber of Commerce only indicated in its report on 1939 that" in the course of the reorganization of Eastern Europe and the reorganization of the areas that are now part of our Reichsgau into the old Reich , a profound structural change had taken place. "
The connections to Western Europe and North America were broken, there remained only the relations with the neutral Scandinavian countries and the allied Soviet Union . At the end of 1944, merchant shipping, which since the beginning of the year had been thrown back to the detour and lengthy coastal shipping, had to be stopped because of enemy submarines. Gdingen's local public transport was also taken over by the newly founded transport company Danzig-Gotenhafen .
The Polish Naval Academy, dissolved in Gdynia by the occupiers on September 19, 1939, resumed teaching in Plymouth, England , on November 26, with escaped training officers and other teachers, and from there returned to Gdynia in 1945. Since opening in 1922, it has been the only Polish university to continue its regular training activities without interruption from the German occupation.
The Stocznia Gdyńska SA shipyard was handed over to the management of Deutsche Werke AG , Kiel, in 1941 , which expanded it to include warship construction in 1940.
Resistance during the occupation
Indeed there was resistance, e.g. B. the Armia Krajowa (Home Army), which grew out of indignation at the occupation and the atrocities of the occupiers and was not built on any blood base. The Tajna Organizacja Wojskowa "Gryf Pomorski" (TOW; Secret Military Organization "Pomeranian Griffin") was formed in Pomerania, which is independent of the Home Army . There was “an existential crisis in 1943, triggered by the murder of the commandant of the organization, Józef Gierszewski. The attack ... came from Józef Dambko, a rival of Gierszewski for the leadership of »Gryf« and a vehement opponent of unification with the Home Army. The murder, committed by a Kashubian conspirator with the knowledge of the leadership, and the escalating conflict damaged the reputation of the resistance ... and also led to the resignation of Colonel Josef Wrycz [correctly: Józef Wrycza] from the organization, who had unrestricted authority there up to this point had enjoyed. "
The period from 1941 - the intensification of war and national politics
Another wave of immigrants began on January 21, 1941, after the Nazi and Soviet regimes had agreed on January 10, 1941 to relocate all remaining Baltic Germans from the Soviet-occupied countries Estonia , Latvia and Lithuania to German-occupied Poland. The population of Gdingen rose to 99,950 in 1941. Since 1940, many Germans from the Altreich also settled. a. newlyweds or young families of members of the Wehrmacht who were able to rent vacated apartments for deportees.
On June 22, 1941, Hitler raided the Soviet Union. As a result, Gdingen's international merchant shipping was reduced to Denmark, Finland , Norway and Sweden . Further deportations of Poles from the annexed to the non-annexed part of Poland were postponed, since, in the opinion of National Socialist Germanization politicians, the planned extermination of further Soviet areas meant that German-speaking people would be settled in wide fields. With the Soviet reconquest of their own territory in spring 1944, the German occupiers deported Poland again.
Near Oxhöfts the operational Air Force from 1942 to 1945, the torpedo experimental station Hexengrund (Babie Doly). Torpedo pilots regularly tested new torpedoes in the Putziger Wiek . In 1942 the Nazi city administration of Gdynia commissioned larger-than-life sculptures from the sculptor Joachim Karsch for the cemetery in Gdynia-Wittomin (pl. Witomino, Kasch. Witòmino), but these were no longer delivered until the end of the war.
Allied advance
The US Army Air Forces bombed the port of Gdynia on October 9, 1943 with 378 machines, 28 of which were shot down, and urban areas near the port were also hit. On the night of 18./19. December 1944 four-engine machines of the British Royal Air Force dropped 824 tons of bombs v. a. of the harbor. On 12./13. January 1945 the Red Army's Vistula-Oder operation began . The Soviet Union soon conquered parts of Germany (East Prussia) and German-annexed areas of Poland. Germans living there as well as German-speaking foreigners settled there fled because they feared Soviet reprisals.
The Red Army advanced so quickly that they overtook the refugees who fled on foot with handcart or horse and cart. Many refugees therefore moved to the ports in the hope of being able to flee from the Soviet troops by ship. But Karl Dönitz only granted 20% of the cargo space for refugees, 40% each was used to transport war equipment and the wounded; Not until April 9, 1945 - the Red Army had already taken Gdynia on March 28 - did he increase the proportion of refugees in the cargo hold to 40%, not at the expense of military equipment, but of the wounded.
The navy brought many East Prussians “but just from Pillau to Danzig and Gdynia (Gotenhafen). From there, onward transport was slow - the Wehrmacht had confiscated all railway capacities for itself. ”Gdynia also became an important port of departure for military equipment, wounded and, with third-rate priority, for refugees. After the Soviet troops cut off the land route to the west 122 km west of Gdynia with their breakthrough to the Baltic Sea at Schlawe ( Sławno ) on March 3, 1945, the flow of refugees south of Gdynia reversed north towards the city.
Refugees and their cattle, mobile devices, belongings and goods clogged the city. Anyone who managed to get a seat on a departing ship could only take hand luggage with them. The waiting camped in the streets. Some ships were torpedoed by the Soviet Navy. The Goya and Wilhelm Gustloff became known . With the sinking of the Gustloff , 9,400 people lost their lives, the highest number of casualties that a shipwreck has ever claimed in maritime history.
In this situation, too, the National Socialists withheld life-saving rides from the refugees by reserving shipping space for the transport of concentration camp prisoners to the west just to prevent their early liberation. Concentration camp prisoners from Stutthof and its subcamps were shipped to Neustadt in Holstein (see Cap Arcona ).
The Soviet troops now turned to the conquest of Pomerania . The Wehrmacht stabilized a new front line only 8 kilometers west of Gdingen. On March 11th, Soviet units reached this line. In the afternoon Soviet tanks pushed forward on Groß Katz (pl. Wielki Kack ; kasch. Wiôlgë Kack ), a suburb of Gdingen, but could not overcome the positions of the Wehrmacht. Tens of thousands of people left the city by ship via the port. From March 15, the Red Army fired heavy artillery at Groß Katz. The shells also struck downtown Gdingen and caused panic there. On March 19, 1945, an evacuation order was given in the evening for neighboring Sopot. The Soviet attack that followed on March 20 proceeded so quickly that evacuation was ordered for Oliva as well . On the morning of March 22nd, the Soviet troops reached the Baltic Sea south of Koliebken, Gdynia was separated from Danzig to the south. The Red Army captured Koliebken on the same day.
The Wehrmacht built a new front line in the suburbs of Gdingen from Adlershorst and Hochredlau (pl. Redłowo ; kasch. Wësoké Redłowò ) across the valley of the Katzer River to Klein Katz (pl. Mały Kack , kasch. Małë Kack ), which was already the the inner defensive ring of Gdynia. In the leaflet Marshal Rokossovsky to the garrison of Danzig and Gdynia on March 24, 1945, he demanded the surrender . All who surrendered were promised "the life and the retention of personal property." The fighting continued. On March 28, 1945, the 70th Soviet Army under Markian Mikhailovich Popov took Gdynia. What they couldn't take with them from the port, the German soldiers destroyed. 90% of the plants and equipment were lost in this way. On the night of 28/29 March 1945 the last German soldiers left the port by ship. The Navy sank its battleship Gneisenau in the port entrance to blockade .
End of the German occupation
The German occupation of Gdingen was over. Most of the residents who moved in from October 1939 had fled, and many of those who stayed were killed or deported. The remaining civilians, v. a. Civilians, the acts of violence and rape of Soviet soldiers mostly suffered indiscriminately. The previously deported were not back yet. Few people were in the city, which was jammed with refugee goods. In contrast to the port facilities, the civilian building stock was largely intact. Due to deportations during the occupation, escape from the Soviet conquerors and the destruction of the war, traffic, trade and administration came to a standstill.
Deported Gdingers who wanted to return often had to do so on foot. In order to supply themselves with food, the remaining residents of Gdingen searched the scattered refugee property and the many empty houses and apartments for supplies. The production of basic foodstuffs slowly started up again.
In neighboring Sopot and Danzig in the area of the former Free City of Danzig , the Free City of Danzig , as foreigners, did not receive any food allocations from the Polish authorities. Their state had perished and its guarantor, the League of Nations, was powerless. The remaining Freetown Danzig residents, often German-speaking old people, women and children, tried to exchange their belongings for food from Poland. Since many returned Gdingers, but also new residents from Warsaw, had lost their household items and most of their belongings, the exchange of food for household items and household goods was very welcome.
In Gdynia, as in all of Europe ruled by the Soviet military, the Soviet regime began a campaign against former Soviet citizens who had emigrated under agreements with the Nazi regime and deported tens of thousands to Siberia and Central Asia. In unilateral agreement with the Soviet regime, Poland began the deportations of Germans and Poles who were considered Germans to occupation zones in Germany . This was how facts were created until the Potsdam Agreement in August 1945.
The new beginning
In the course of the reconstruction of Polish administrative structures, the Greater Pomerania Voivodeship revived on March 14, 1945, initially within its old borders, with fighting in Gdynia and elsewhere in the voivodeship area. After taking over the former German eastern territories and the Free City of Danzig in March 1945, Poland gave itself new administrative structures, with Gdynia and the northern Pomeranian districts being united with the former League of Nations mandate area of the Free City of Danzig to form the new Gdansk Voivodeship on April 7th .
On May 19, 1945 the first edition of the newspaper Dziennik Bałtycki appeared in Gdynia . The new Polish government awarded Gdynia the Grunwald Cross III in 1945 . Class for the 1939 defensive battle. The heavily damaged Gdynia shipyard resumed its operations. She initially manufactured gears for gramophones, pipes for ovens, repaired wood-gas-powered vehicles and their cranes and docks. As a result of the annexation of the Polish eastern territories by the Soviet Union (around 51% of pre-war Poland became Soviet), many Poles residing there were forced to relocate to the territorially reduced post-war Poland. The ethnically Polish inhabitants of Lviv (Polish: Lwów , ukr. Lwiw ) and Wilnas (lit. Vilnius) left these cities, and quite a few of them settled in Gdynia.
By July 16, 1945, the port was usable again to the extent that the first ship, the Suomen Neito, sailing under the Finnish flag, entered Gdynia. In September 1945 a new Polish merchant fleet was created, on the one hand Polish ships that were in friendly countries or were going there when the war broke out, on the other hand ships from British or US army stocks and formerly German ships that were handed over by way of reparation. On September 21, 1945, the first Polish warship, the s / s Kraków, returned to its home port.
Gdynia became the most important shipyard location for repairs to Polish ships, as did the other important shipyards, the Stocznia Gdańska (Danzig Shipyard), the former Schichau shipyard in Elbing (Elbląg) and the shipyards in Stettin ( Szczecin ) , as a result of the flight and deportation of their workers were mostly not operational. The shipyard Stocznia Gdyńska SA was expropriated in 1945 and moved to Stocznia im. Renamed Komuny Paryskiej (Paris Commune Shipyard). In 1951 the first ship “Melitopol” built after the war was launched.
The years 1945 to 1949 were characterized by volume growth. Innovations and productivity increases with more efficient use of resources did not determine, “the accelerated economic growth ... at that time took place primarily through the maximum use of manpower reserves, i. H. through professional activation, i.e. mainly through the elimination of disguised unemployment in rural areas, but to a lesser extent through an increase in labor productivity. "
From 1950 to 1955 the main train station, which was destroyed in the war, was replaced by a new building by Wacław Tomaszewski in the style of Socialist Realism , one of the few buildings of this style period in Gdynia. The urban rapid transit railway (SKM) has been running between Gdynia and Danzig since July 22, 1953 (extended to Wejherowo in 1958).
People's Republic of Poland
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In the course of building socialism, the People's Republic of Poland was proclaimed on July 22, 1952 by the new Polish constitution . The new constitution decreed the state monopoly on foreign trade, with which the private import and export merchants in Gdingen lost their trades. In January 1953, food allotment to brands was abolished, but the supply situation remained difficult. From 1954 to 1956, real wages fell continuously in the face of rising prices. The loans taken out in the West from 1956 onwards were used by the Polish government. a. to increase consumption so that real wages rose by a third by 1959 compared to 1955.
On April 24, 1957, the Gdynia – Montréal passenger line opened . In 1956, with the so-called Polish October , the communist regime allowed cultural liberalization. In the course of this, in 1957/1958 Danuta Baduszkowa and others founded the Danuta Baduszkowa Music Theater, which is named after her. Here u. a. Ernest Bryll , Jerzy Gruza , Adam Hanuszkiewicz , Wojciech Młynarski , Leszek Możdżer and Jerzy Stuhr . The Polish Film Festival Gdynia also takes place in the music theater.
From June 26, 1960, the ORP Burza was ready for visitors as a museum ship on the south pier. In 1963, the ts / s Manhattan , the first ship over 100,000 GRT with 106,000 GRT, called at the port of Gdingen. In the same year the Stocznia received im. Komuny Paryskiej a new, larger dock . In 1969 the city expanded the Baltic Sea promenade, now Feliks-Nowowiejski-Boulevard. In the same year the ts / s "Stefan Batory", a passenger ship, left for her maiden voyage . On April 1, 1970 in the Stocznia im. Komuny Paryskiej with the Manifest Lipcowy , with 55,000 GRT the largest ship built in Poland to date, laid down.
The consumption of the credits bought the regime social peace, but did not bring about an increase in production from which the means for repayment could be acquired through exports. The exports had to be made by reducing the domestic supply. Therefore the government announced drastic price increases for Thursday, December 17, 1970, v. a. for meat products in order to depress domestic consumption and thus free up goods for export. This sparked the December 1970 uprising in Poland .
Workers on the early shift of the Stocznia im. At 6 a.m., armed militiamen posted near Komuny Paryskiej passed by, spontaneous expressions of displeasure ensued, whereupon the militia opened fire and shot some workers. During the day, workers demonstrated through the city towards the town hall, where armed militias attacked them and killed numerous people. Mieczysław Cholewa immortalized those killed in the ballad by Janek Wiśniewski ( Pieśń o Janku [Wiśniewskim] z Gdyni ), a fictional person representing all those killed. A street in Gdingen now bears this name. In Andrzej Wajda's film The Iron Man , Jerzy Radziwiłowicz played the role of Mateusz Birkut, who stood for Janek Wiśniewski. Two monuments today remember the victims of the so-called popular rule .
On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the Sea Fisheries Institute opened the Oceanographic Museum and the Gdynia Aquarium in 1971 . Gdynia, like other Polish cities, grew continuously, the population exceeded the 200,000 mark from 1973. The Polish population increased by 11.7 million people between 1946 and 1979, the cities mathematically absorbed the entire increase and grew in the at the same time by 12.5 million inhabitants, which made the urban housing shortage a constant companion of development.
From 17 to 24 July 1974 which was first tall ships regatta (Operacja Żagiel 74) performed. On May 1, 1976, the ORP Błyskawica , the former naval training ship, opened as a museum ship, in which the history of the Polish Navy is presented. The museum ship ORP Burza was closed and scrapped in 1977. In 2004 the ORP Błyskawica was completely overhauled at the naval shipyard and given the light blue camouflage it was wearing when it was patrolling the North Sea between autumn 1941 and spring 1942 . The exhibition on the history of the Polish Navy has also been revised.
On May 12, 1976, the Polish government awarded the city the Commander's Cross with Star of the Order Polonia Restituta (pl. Order Odrodzenia Polski ) in recognition of the special services of its residents for the development of shipbuilding and the maritime economy. The Stocznia shipyard im. Komuny Paryskiej launched the first ship from her new dock (380 m long, 70 m wide) in 1977. In 1979, Arka Gdynia , the city's football club, won the Polish Football Cup. On October 29 of the same year, the British Baltic Eagle was the first ship to dock in the new container terminal on the Hela quay.
By the 1980s, the economic situation came to a head again. “The effectiveness of the economy was weakening, and at the same time the stimulating role of foreign loans, which had to be paid off before - as it turned out - the planned economic results were achieved, ended. There have been more and more arbitrary decisions on investment projects that ignored possibilities and economic accounting, thereby exacerbating inflationary tendencies and the disorganization of the market. Wage increases were offset or even outstripped by price increases. The increasing shortages in the supply worsened the living conditions of the population even more and had a negative effect on labor productivity. "
From August 14, 1980 the workers reacted to the worsening situation with strikes. In September they founded the independent, self-governing trade union Solidarność . Shortly before Christmas 1981 the inadequate supply situation became virulent again, so that General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared a state of war in Poland on December 13 (repealed on July 21, 1983). On December 17, the Memorial to the Victims of December 1970 (Pomnik Ofiarom Grudnia 1970) was unveiled at ulica Czechosłowacka and aleja Solidarności , which was built as a concession to Solidarność. Solidarność was banned on July 21, 1982.
On July 4, 1982, the Naval Academy took over its new sailing training ship, the Dar Młodzieży (Gift of the Young) as a replacement for the Dar Pomorza , which had returned from her last voyage on September 28, 1981. After its overhaul, it opened on May 28, 1983 as another museum ship on the south pier. On April 14th of the same year the Hotel Orbis opened its doors with 549 beds in Gdynia. The Gdynia – Warsaw line has been continuously electrified since December 19, 1985 and is served by the superekspres express train.
The population of Gdingen passed the 250,000 mark on February 16, 1987. On October 1, 1987, the Naval School (Szkola Marynarki Wojennej) was officially opened in Akademia Marynarki Wojennej im. Bohaterow Westerplatte (about: Westerplatte-Helden-Marineakademie) renamed. On Christmas Eve of the same year, 798 hectares of the town of Rahmel (Rumia) and 55 hectares of settlement area of the municipality of Pogorsch (pl. Pogórze , Kasch . Pògòrzé ) were incorporated into Gdynia. On January 12, 1988, the ts / s Stefan Batory retired from service after 19 years on the Gdynia – Montréal route .
Third Polish Republic
In August 1989, a Polish government was formed for the first time, whose members were not only determined by the PVAP . This is considered a transition to the Third Polish Republic . The end of the dictatorship also opened up new avenues. On November 24, 1990, the ferry connection to Karlskrona went into operation. At the invitation of the naval commander Gdingens, three ships of the German Navy visited a Polish port for the first time on May 27, 1991 . On March 17, 1992, the shipyard, which has since been renamed Stocznia Gdyńska SA, was named "Pierre LD" for the Louis Dreyfus Group, with 165,000 GRT, the largest ship ever built in a Baltic shipyard . From August 7 to 10, 1992, the tall ship regatta Cutty Sark Tall Ships' Races came to Gdynia. On the 23rd anniversary of the December massacre of 1970, the dead were commemorated by a memorial procession from the town hall to the memorial for the dead.
In the course of the administrative reform in 1999, Gdynia became part of the new Pomeranian Voivodeship.
literature
- The “waiting city” - Gdynia - Gotenhafen (1926-1945) , dissertation by Małgorzata Stepko-Pape (2011)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gdynia. In: Stephanie Kirste: Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot. June 2006, accessed September 27, 2011.
- ↑ In Polish usage, Pomorze refers to the areas that are known in German as Pomerania on the one hand and Pommerellen on the other. In the 1920s and 1930s it was still common to translate the Polish name Województwo Pomorskie or, from April 1, 1938, Województwo Wielkopomorskie , the coastal district of Poland that existed from 1919–1939 and 1945–1950, as Voivodeship (Greater) Pomerania . Cf. Witold Stankowski: Camp for Germans in Poland using the example of Pomerania, West Prussia (1945–1950): Review and analysis of Polish archives. Cultural Foundation of the German Displaced People , Bonn 2001, ISBN 3-88557-207-9 , p. 17 (uniform title: Obozy dla Niemców w Polsce na przykładzie Pomorza Gdańskiego (1945–1950) ).
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdynia 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 41.
- ↑ a b c d e Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdynia 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 11.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Historia Gdyni. Section 1, accessed September 27, 2011.
- ↑ Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdynia 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 25.
- ↑ Georg Schwengel: Mr. Georg Schwengel, Rev. Prior of the Carthusian Monastery near Danzig, letter to Mr. Secr. IT Small of some natural peculiarities on the property of this monastery , translated from Latin by Gottfried Reyger: Experiments and treatises of the Natural Research Society in Danzig. Third part, Danzig and Leipzig, 1756, pp. 468/469 ( books.google.com ).
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah Dynia Wspolczesna. In: Historia Gdyni. Retrieved September 27, 2011.
- ↑ a b c d e Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdynia 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 33.
- ↑ a b c d e Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdynia 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 42.
- ↑ Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdynia 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , pp. 11, 44.
- ↑ a b Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdingen 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 39.
- ^ Witold Stankowski, Camp for Germans in Poland using the example of Pommerellen, West Prussia (1945–1950): Review and analysis of Polish archives [uniform title: Obozy dla Niemców w Polsce na przykładzie Pomorza Gdańskiego (1945–1950) ], Bonn: Kulturstiftung der Deutschen Displaced persons, 2001, (Historical Research), p. 17, ISBN 3-88557-207-9 .
- ↑ End of the war 1945: Poland's marriage to the sea In: Der Spiegel . April 4, 2015, accessed June 1, 2019.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Historia Gdyni. Section Powstanie o Rozwoj Portu i Miasta , accessed September 27, 2011.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k About the city: history , section In the beginning was just a dream ( memento of the original from October 9, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed September 28, 2011.
- ↑ a b c d Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdingen 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 12.
- ↑ Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (trans.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdynia 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 14.
- ↑ a b c d e Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdynia 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 13.
- ↑ Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdingen 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 21.
- ↑ a b c d e f Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdingen 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , pp. 13 ff.
- ↑ a b c Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdynia 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 15.
- ↑ a b Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdynia 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 26.
- ^ Wilhelm Treue: On the history of the German timber trade: a quarter of a century "Bergford" (1921–1945). In: Journal of Company History. Volume 25 (1980), Issue 1, pp. 12-27, here p. 18 (online: 6).
- ^ Corresponding Polish laws had not yet been created in view of the abundance of tasks to unify the three parts of Poland.
- ↑ a b c ( page no longer available , search in web archives: "Gdynia - היסטוריה" ), Wirtualny Sztetl des Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich (Museum of the History of Polish Jews) , accessed on September 27, 2011.
- ↑ Cf. Grzegorz Berendt: The Danziger, Sopot and Gdinger Jews in the 20th century. A historical comparison. In: Michael Brocke (Ed.): On the history and culture of the Jews in East and West Prussia. Olms, Hildesheim 2000, ISBN 3-487-11026-1 , pp. 187-201 (= Netiva. Volume 2)
- ↑ Cf. Agnieszka Wróbel: Żydzi w Gdyni w latach 1926–1939 . Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, Toruń 2005, ISBN 83-7441-123-6 .
- ^ The shipping company was sold to a public limited company in 1932 and part of the shares to private companies. The shipping company survived the war with several ships in friendly foreign countries and was liquidated in 1951.
- ↑ a b Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdingen 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 27.
- ↑ From August 1, 1935, the institute published the new English-language magazine Baltic Countries (from 3rd year 1937 Baltic and Scandinavian Countries ), which was devoted to the problems of the countries bordering the Baltic Sea , as stated in the foreword of the opening edition , the publishers did not include Germany in this group, but took the province of East Prussia more into account from issue to issue. “The Polska Bibljografja Morza i Pomorza” (Polish. [Ische] Bibliography of the Sea and Pomeranian) by St. [anisław] Zieliński <302> is devoted to a specific question, published by the »Sea and Colonial League«, one of most active Polish associations in the struggle for a "greater Poland" appeared. … Zieliński does not stick to the title of his work »Pommerellen«, but often enough includes East Prussia in his considerations. The information in Polish newspaper and magazine articles that are otherwise difficult to obtain for Germans are valuable. ”Cf. “ Annual reports for German history, bibliography ” , on: Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences , accessed on September 27, 2011 (additions in square brackets and omissions not in the original)
- ↑ a b Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski ( excerpt ), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdynia 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 50.
- ↑ Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdynia 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 20.
- ^ Wilhelm Treue: On the history of the German timber trade: a quarter of a century "Bergford" (1921–1945). In: Journal of Company History. 25. Jg. (1980), Heft 1, pp. 12-27, here p. 19 (online: 7).
- ↑ The temporary barracks for emigrants at the port and another accommodation in Wejherowo have been given up. The Polish army now uses part of the emigrant accommodation in the barracks.
- ^ Joshua D. Zimmermann: Contested memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and its aftermath. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick (NJ) 2003, ISBN 0-8135-3158-6 , p. 22.
- ↑ Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): Survival in the Third Reich. Jews in the underground and their helpers , CH Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-51029-9 , p. 159.
- ↑ Wydarzyło się na Pomorzu - kalendarium historyczne , accessed on September 27, 2011.
- ^ Wilhelm Treue: On the history of the German timber trade: a quarter of a century "Bergford" (1921–1945). In: Journal of Company History . Volume 25 (1980), Issue 1, pp. 12-27, here p. 20 (online: 8)
- ↑ Bergenske Dampskipsselskab offered Wilhelm Johannes, who had been Bergford's managing director since May 22, 1933, for 1 million Gulden. Johannes failed to find financiers because no one wanted to risk his fortune in view of the uncertain future. The Deutsche Bank then granted a sufficient loan. In 1937 Johannes was able to buy the Bergford. See Ralph Johannes, Von Bergford über Bergford - Eine Firmengeschichte , Lüneburg: Self-published by Bergford, 1979.
- ↑ A German He-111 sank the Grom on May 4, 1940 while defending Norway . 59 crew members were killed. The Błyskawica and their Polish crew fought throughout the Second World War in cooperation with the British Navy and others. a. at Narvik , Dunkirk (Dunkerque), in the Mediterranean Sea and on the landing in Normandy . The Błyskawica covered 148,356 nautical miles, sank two destroyers and shot down seven aircraft. In addition, the Błyskawica accompanied 85 Allied convoys across the Atlantic.
- ↑ Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdynia 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 43.
- ↑ Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdynia 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 46.
- ↑ Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdingen 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 32.
- ↑ There were three reasons for this: 1. the emigration of German-speaking employees in administrative professions after the introduction of Polish as the official language, 2. the replacement of administrative employees with immigrants from the formerly Russian or Austro-Hungarian parts of the new Poland (both migrations were in Essentially completed by 1921) and 3. immigration from formerly Russian or Austro-Hungarian parts of the new Poland v. a. into blossoming Gdingen.
- ↑ Leipziger Volkszeitung from September 14, 1939 (scan of the special sheet, dhm.de ).
- ↑ a b c d Historia Gdyni , section Wybuch Wojny - Okupacja - Wyzwolenie , accessed on September 27, 2011.
- ↑ The “waiting city” - Gdynia - Gotenhafen (1926-1945) , dissertation by Małgorzata Stepko-Pape (2011), p. 38
- ^ Dieter Pohl : Persecution and mass murder in the Nazi era 1933-1945 . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-534-15158-5 , p. 49; Dieter Pohl: Holocaust: The causes, what happened, the consequences . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2000, ISBN 3-451-04835-3 , p. 36.
- ↑ a b H. H. Schubert, “Volkspolitische Requirements der Deutschen Volksliste” , in: Neues Bauerntum , No. 33 (1941), Issue 4, p. 404 ff.
- ↑ In Nazi jargon, German-speaking citizens of foreign states were called Volksdeutsche , provided they were not of Jewish religious affiliation or were of Jewish descent, and were regarded as disposable assets within the framework of the Nazi expulsion and resettlement policy.
- ↑ Martin Broszat, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen and Helmut Krausnick (eds.), Anatomie des SS-Staates , Olten: Walter, 1965, (= Walter texts and documents on contemporary history: Third Reich), pp. 217–219.
- ↑ Decree of the Führer and Reich Chancellor to consolidate German nationality ( full text ).
- ↑ See Bundesarchiv Koblenz, R 43 / II / 1412, Bl. 53. The original name EWZ Nord-Ost was later changed to EWZ; Staff Order No. 9 of October 8, 1940; AGK, EWZ / L / 2, sheet 7.
- ↑ Their tasks were to classify the people arriving from the so-called Soviet sphere of interest (1) according to whether they were suitable for being a means of National Socialist Germanization policy (in Nazi jargon "racial" were to be assessed as ethnic Germans), (2) so far they were considered suitable to be naturalized to Germans, and (3) to accommodate them temporarily.
- ↑ On October 21, 1939, Italy and Germany signed a treaty on the emigration of German-speaking Italians from the Canal Valley (then Julisch Venetien , 1954–1990 Yugoslavia, since then Slovenia) and from South Tyrol .
- ↑ Location of the monument commemorating the deportations of Polish residents
- ↑ For the purpose of exchanging experiences and to represent common interests, 1939–1945 displaced persons from Gdynia founded the Stowarzyszenie Gdynian Wysiedlonych (society of resettled people from Gdynia) in 1997 .
- ↑ RGBl. I p. 118.
- ^ The Reichsgau was renamed Danzig-West Prussia on November 2, 1939.
- ↑ See Reichsgesetzblatt (RGBl.) 1939 / I, pp. 2042 ff.
- ↑ Baltic Germans emigrated from the Baltic States for a long time. The Russification policy in the then Russian Baltic Sea provinces , which pushed back the use of German in administrative and educational professions, was an impetus. After the founding of the states of Estonia and Latvia, many Baltic Germans had lost their traditional source of income, their large agriculturally used land, through land reforms. The increasing use of Estonian and Latvian in administrative and educational professions since 1918 made it difficult for Baltic Germans in these professions to find a sufficient livelihood. That is why the Baltic German v. a. to Germany. The Nazi regime's offer to organize and finance emigration was therefore attractive to many. They could take household items and sometimes horses, cattle, pigs and sheep with them. Most of them decided to emigrate in 1939, most of those who remained emigrated in a second wave after the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic States.
- ↑ RGBl. 1940 I p. 707.
- ^ A b c Wilhelm Treue: On the history of the German timber trade: a quarter of a century “Bergford” (1921–1945). In: Journal of Company History . Vol. 25 (1980), Issue 1, pp. 12-27, here p. 21 (online: 9)
- ↑ Janusz Marszalec: Life under the terror of the occupiers and the marginal behavior of soldiers of the Armia Krajowa. In: Bernhard Chiari (ed.): The Polish Home Army: History and myth of the Armia Krajowa since the Second World War. Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56715-2 , pp. 325–354, here p. 342 (Articles on Military History, Military History Research Office Potsdam; Volume 57).
- ↑ When Soviet troops recaptured Odessa on April 10, 1944, around 350,000 German-speaking Soviet citizens fled southern Russia because they feared reprisals. They were settled in the annexed Lesser Poland (so-called Warthegau) and naturalized as Germans.
- ^ A b c Heinrich Schwendemann, Inferno and Liberation »Send Ships!«. In: The time . January 13, 2005, p. 84.
- ↑ The British and US Americans, who had not decided on the deportations, approved the expulsions that were already underway, but demanded an end to the acts of violence against the expellees and an announcement of the deportations, since they take in the displaced people arriving in their zones and provide medical care , had to accommodate and feed. The French, who were not represented in Potsdam, did not feel obliged to take in the displaced by Poles in their zone and to pay for them, which is why v. a. Britain and the USA shouldered the consequences of the deportations.
- ↑ Jerzy Topolski: The Birth of People's Poland. Historical tasks. Reconstruction. The first reforms. Consolidation of the people's power. In: Poland - A historical panorama . Interpress, Warsaw 1983, pp. 169–177, here p. 176 (omission not in the original)
- ↑ Wojciech Antoszkiewicz, Mariusz Jablonski, Bogdan Kwiatkowski u. a .: Gdynia: Tourist Vademecum [uniform title: Gdynia: vademecum turysty ], Jerzy Dąbrowski (ex.), Gdynia Turystyczna, Gdingen 2009, ISBN 978-83-929211-0-3 , p. 38.
- ↑ Akwarium Gdyński , section “Historia Akwarium” ( Memento of the original dated November 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed September 27, 2011.
- ↑ Jerzy Topolski: Increased activity of the working class in 1980. The beginning of a new stage in the development of the People's Republic of Poland. In: Poland - A historical panorama . Interpress, Warsaw 1983, pp. 200–203, here p. 201.
