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Wrocław

Wrocław
Wrocław:Flag of Wrocław Wrocław:Coat of arms of Wrocław
(Flag) (Coat of arms)
Motto: miasto spotkań (the meeting place)
Wrocław:Location of Wrocław
Country Poland
Voivodeship Lower Silesian
Municipal government Rada Miejska Wrocławia
Mayor Rafał Dutkiewicz
Area 292,9 km²
Population
 - city
 - urban
 - density
633,700 2004 est.
945,000
2181/km²
Founded 10th century
City rights 1262
Latitude
Longitude		 51°07' N
17°02' E
Area code +48 71
Car plates DW
Twin towns Breda, Dresden, Charlotte, Guadalajara, Mexico, Hradec Králové, Kaunas, Vienne, Lviv, Ramat Gan, Wiesbaden
Municipal Website

Wrocław (['vrɔʦwaf] (help·info); German: Breslau (help·info); Czech: Vratislav; Latin: Wratislavia or Vratislavia) is the capital of Lower Silesia in southwestern Poland, situated on the Oder River (Odra). As of 2004, the city's population was estimated to be 638,000. It is the principal city of the Lower Silesia region and the administrative seat of the Lower Silesian Voivodship (since 1999), previously of Wrocław Voivodship. The city is also a separate city-county.


Contents

Etymology

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

Early records show that the medieval city name was Wrocisław in Polish and Vratislav in Czech, meaning Wrocisław/Vratislav's town. The Polish name was later phonetically simplified from Wrocisław to Wrotsław to Wrocław, a name which has been used since the 12th century. The Czech spelling was used in Latin documents as Wratislavia or Vratislavia, while the Polish pronunciation was also influential in the spelling Wracislavia. At that time, Prezla was used in Middle High German, which became Preßlau. The Early New High German (and later New High German) of the name —Breslau— was used as the official name when the city was part of Austria, Prussia, and Germany for over 400 years.

Wrocław:Town square.
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Town square.

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

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

Name variations used in other languages:

History

Feudal era

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

Situated at a long existing trading place, a city was first recorded in the 10th century as Vratislavia (Wratislaw). The settlement was conquered by the Piast duke Mieszko I in the 990s. Already a place of some importance, it became the capital of Silesia in 1138, where Silesians had founded a settlement south of the river. During the Mongol invasion in 1241 most of the population of the city was evacuated. The settlement was then sacked and burned by the Mongols, but they had no time to besiege the castle where the rest of the burghers found refuge.

Wrocław:Salt Market (Plac Solny).
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Salt Market (Plac Solny).

The rebuilt town was given Magdeburg rights in 1262 and received many German immigrants from the west to replace the population losses. The first illustration of the city was published in the Schedelsche Weltchronik in 1493. Documents of that time refer to the town by many variants of the name, including Bresslau, Presslau, Breslau and Wratislaw.

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

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

Wrocław:Wrocław City Hall.
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Wrocław City Hall.

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

Modern history

After the demise of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, Prussia became a member of the German Confederation. In 1811, the Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität (Breslau University) was re-established. In 1813 King Frederick William III of Prussia gave a speech ("An mein Volk" or "to my people") at Breslau as a signal that Prussia would join the Russian Empire in fighting Napoleon during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1871 the Prussian-led German Empire was created during the unification of Germany. Breslau became the sixth-largest city of the empire and a major industrial centre, notably of linen and cotton manufacture; its population more than tripled to over half a million between 1860 and 1910, during which the city became almost entirely German-speaking. Germans from the west came to Breslau, as well as Polish immigrant workers and their families, which led to the construction of the Polnisch Neudorf suburb. Breslau municipal boundaries were greatly extended in 1928.

Many of the city's 10,000 Jews were killed during the Nazi genocide of World War II. As the Soviet Red Army was approaching the city in February 1945, Breslau was declared a Festung (fortress) by the fanatical Nazi Gauleiter Karl Hanke.

When it was almost already too late, he finally stopped preventing the evacuation of women and children. During his poorly organised evacuation in early March, temperatures were about -20°C. In the icy snowstorms, around 18,000 froze to death, mostly children and young babies. Some 200,000 German civilians remained in the city, as the railway connection to the west was damaged and overloaded. To build fortifications, slave labour was needed to augment civilian workers, and concentration camp prisoners were forced to help.

To re-supply the fortress, the population was given the order to construct a military airfield. A modern residential district, around the Kaiserstraße (now known as Plac Grunwaldzki) was razed for that purpose. Those of the people who refused to work there were threatened with being shot as deserters. According to the estimation of an eyewitness, approximately 13,000 died under enemy fire on the airfield alone. In the end, the only plane to take off was that of a fleeing Gauleiter Hanke.

Following the Battle of Breslau, two-thirds of the city were destroyed. Some 40,000 Breslauers and forced labourers lay dead in the ruins of their homes and factories. After a siege of nearly three months, the strategically relatively unimportant Festung Breslau surrendered on May 7 1945, the last major city in historical Eastern Germany to fall.

Wrocław:Town square and St. Elisabeth's Church.
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Town square and St. Elisabeth's Church.
Wrocław:Hala Ludowa or Jahrhunderthalle by the modernist architect Max Berg.
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Hala Ludowa or Jahrhunderthalle by the modernist architect Max Berg.
Wrocław:Destruction in the center of the city after 1997 flooding.
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Destruction in the center of the city after 1997 flooding.
Wrocław:Famous department store building known as «In the Junkernstraße», owned by Kaufhaus Petersdorff before the war, designed by architect Hans Poelzig in 1912.
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Famous department store building known as «In the Junkernstraße», owned by Kaufhaus Petersdorff before the war, designed by architect Hans Poelzig in 1912.

Like almost all of Lower Silesia, Breslau was placed under Polish administration according to the terms of the agreement reached at the Potsdam Conference. Most of the surviving German inhabitants were forcibly expelled to one of the post-war German states between 1945 and 1949; the ones not directly "evacuated" left due to Polish repression or poverty later on. However, as with other Lower Silesian cities a considerable German presence remained until the late 1950s; the last German school in the city was not closed until 1963. Wrocław was resettled by Poles either from small towns and villages of central Poland or from Polish lands annexed by the Soviet Union in the east. Many of these had come from Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine), Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania) and Grodno (now Hrodna, Belarus).

Gradually the old city was restored to its beauty. Nearly all of the monumental buildings were preserved. Now it is a uniquely European city of present-day Poland, with its architecture having Bohemian, Austrian, and Prussian influences. Wrocław's Gothic style is originally Silesian; its Baroque style owes much to court builders of Habsburg Austria (Fischer von Erlach, Christoph Tausch). Wrocław still has a number of buildings by eminent German modernist architects, such as Hans Poelzig or Max Berg, the famous Jahrhunderthalle (Hala Ludowa) by Berg (1911–1913) being the most important.

In July 1997, the city was hit by severe flooding of the Oder River. In 2005, the city was hit by a freak storm that felled a number of trees and killed three people. The storm was local and did not affect any other major cities.

Significant events in the 20th century

External links with photo galleries, mostly in Polish

Historical population


1800: 64,500 inhabitants
1831: 89,500 inhabitants
1850: 114,000 inhabitants
1852: 121,100 inhabitants
1880: 272,900 inhabitants
1900: 422,700 inhabitants
1910: 510,000 inhabitants
1925: 555,200 inhabitants
1933: 625,198 inhabitants
1939: 629,565 inhabitants
1946: 171,000 inhabitants (German population expelled, killed, or evacuated.)
1956: 400,000 inhabitants
1960: 431,800 inhabitants
1967: 487,700 inhabitants
1970: 526,000 inhabitants
1975: 579,900 inhabitants
1980: 617,700 inhabitants
1990: 640,577 inhabitants
1999: 650,000 inhabitants
2003: 638,000 inhabitants

Notable places and buildings

Prominent residents

Wrocław:City Hall in 14th century Brick Gothic style.
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City Hall in 14th century Brick Gothic style.
Wrocław:Cathedral in Ostrów Tumski.
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Cathedral in Ostrów Tumski.
Wrocław:Aula Leopoldina.
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Aula Leopoldina.

Nobel Prize laureates

listed chronologically, by year of award

Education

Wrocław:Wrocław University.
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Wrocław University.

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

as well as numerous private institutions of higher education, including

Economy and transportation

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

Major corporations

Government & Politics

Administrative divisions

Wrocław is divided into five boroughs, called dzielnice:

Municipal politics

Sports

Wrocław:Idea Slask Wroclaw

There are many popular professional sports teams in the Wrocław area. The most popular sport today is probably basketball, thanks to Idea Śląsk Wrocław, the award-winning men's basketball team (former Polish champions, 2nd place in 2004). Amateur sports are played by thousands of Wrocław citizens and also in schools of all levels.

Men's professional teams

Wrocław:Slask wroclaw herb

Women's professional teams

Wrocław:A skating rink in the Rynek (Market Square), December 2003.
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A skating rink in the Rynek (Market Square), December 2003.

See also

References

In SOCOM 3: U.S. Navy SEALs, the SEAL team travels to Wrocław during a bad flooding season, in which the team must use a Zodiac to travel around the city.

Sources and references

This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia.

Voivodeships of Poland Wrocław:Flag of Poland
Greater Poland | Kuyavia-Pomerania | Lesser Poland | Lower Silesia | Lublin | Lubusz | Łódź | Masovia | Opole | Podlachia | Pomerania | Silesia | Subcarpathia | Świętokrzyskie | Warmia and Masuria | West Pomerania
Principal cities: Warsaw | Łódź | Kraków | Wrocław | Poznań | Gdańsk | Szczecin | Bydgoszcz | Lublin | Katowice | Białystok | Częstochowa | Gdynia | Toruń | Olsztyn | Radom | Kielce | Rzeszów | Opole | Gorzów Wielkopolski

Coordinates: 51°07′N 17°02′E

Categories


Derived from Catholic Encyclopedia | Wrocław | 10th century establishments

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