Wroclaw’s Strength
The strength of Wroclaw lies in the convergence of different traditions and the ultimate success of the processes of social integration, ‘befriending’ the city and reconstructing it. It stems from the history of the post-war decades, the turning point of which were the Solidarity movement and the opposition activities of the martial law years.
.Wroclaw is regarded as a good city to live in and is quite prosperous by Polish standards. It is also an important academic centre. The people of Wroclaw tend to see themselves as an open and dialogue-focused community. It is true that our public discourse also veers towards trivialisation and tabloidisation, but in Wroclaw, reaching a consensus on various aspects of local politics is relatively easier compared to other Polish cities. Wroclaw’s example could inspire the entire state. But good things are not given once and for all. One must constantly ask for and renew sources of strength rather than succumb to the temptation to indulge in unbridled satisfaction with the status quo.
In the latest Oxford Economics’ Global Cities Index, Wroclaw was ranked 96th in the ‘quality of life’ category out of 1,000 global metropolises analysed. This score was also the best of any Polish city. The overall outcome, encompassing all analysed dimensions (including economics, human capital, environment and governance in addition to quality of life), is less favourable – Wroclaw was ranked 236th globally and third in Poland (following Warsaw and Poznan). Such rankings are sometimes questioned due to their reliance on a limited set of criteria. We can still feel accomplished, though. Life in Wroclaw is generally considered to be less hectic than in our state’s capital.
The relatively high level of cooperation between local politicians as compared to the ‘national average’ is another asset of our city. The issue of building a memorial to the Cursed Soldiers is an excellent example. The idea, initially suggested by Piotr Maryński from the Law and Justice party, was adopted by the successive mayors Rafał Dutkiewicz and Jacek Sutryk, whose political affiliations are far from the political right. Despite the lack of unanimity in the City Council, the idea gained considerable support, largely due to the willingness of the decision-makers to make a number of compromises (e.g. on the monument’s name). This led to the creation of a beautiful, internationally awarded memorial. I bring up this example because we all know how heated people can get about such things. In Wroclaw, the dispute persisted, but emotions remained under control.
Our city is considered to be unique – and, at least from a historical point of view, it truly is. The Second World War led to an almost total replacement of the city’s population. The new residents faced a multitude of obstacles, from the daunting task of rebuilding a city in ruins to the complex issues of identity and integrating a congregation of people from different regions. And they had to confront all of this while living under the communist dictatorship. No other major city in Poland has gone through a similar process with such positive results.
The strength of the Breslau community in the post-war period was determined by several factors. The most important was the cultural capital built on the myth of pre-war Lviv and the continuation of the tradition of Lviv’s intelligentsia.
Before the Second World War, Lviv had been one of the most important hubs of Polish science and culture. Displaced persons from Lviv and its environs (or indeed from the whole of the former Eastern Borderlands) were a minority in post-war Wroclaw (various estimates put the figure at no more than a dozen or so per cent of the population immediately after the war). Yet even though they were not in the majority, it was the Lvivians who set the tone for the city and created one of the founding myths of post-war Wroclaw, the ‘new Lviv.’
The main group that came from Lviv to Wroclaw was academics. From the first weeks after the war, newly-arrived professors set about organising academic life in the utterly ruined Wroclaw. The first Polish lecture was delivered by Prof. Kazimierz Idaszewski at the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology on 15 November 1945. The inauguration of the consolidated higher education institutions in Wroclaw was supervised by Prof. Stanisław Kulczyński, the former Rector of Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv. Lviv academics formed the core of the Wroclaw professoriate. Among them were eminent and world-famous figures such as the mathematician Professor Hugo Steinhaus, founder of the Lviv school of mathematics. Lviv professors brought their achievements to Wroclaw, along with the memory of their colleagues killed by the Germans on the Wuleckie Hills in Lviv in 1941 (the massacre was part of the extermination of the Polish intelligentsia carried out by the occupying forces). The academics also brought something intangible – an appealing intellectual climate.
Lviv culture came to Wroclaw on the heels of the world of science. The city on the River Oder became the place of the reconstitution of the Ossoliński National Institute. With a vast selection of books, manuscripts of the most eminent Polish writers and national memorabilia, it remained a unique repository of Polish culture despite wartime losses and the necessity to leave numerous collections in Lviv. In 1956, a significant event occurred when a statue honouring Aleksander Fredro was placed in Wroclaw’s Market Square. The monument, unveiled in Lviv in 1897, found its way to Poland after the war (as did the monuments to Jan III Sobieski and Kornel Ujejski). After some adventures, it was transported to Wroclaw and took up a central position in the city’s public space. Thus, the statue of Fredro became not only an important element of the cityscape but also a ‘companion in fate’ for many Polish resettlers from the former Borderlands. The Racławice Panorama was another work of art brought to Wroclaw. However, the communist authorities prohibited its display for many years. It wasn’t until August 1980, when Solidarity was founded, that the project to build a rotunda to house this cyclorama was approved. The public opening of the exhibition in 1985 was one of the most important cultural events of the period. To this day, Racławice Panorama, a branch of the National Museum in Wroclaw, enjoys enormous public interest.
The memory of Lviv shone through countless expressions, anecdotes and family stories. ‘Are you from Wroclaw?’ ‘Yes, and you?’ ‘I’m from Lviv too,’ was a popular little joke in the city. The representatives of certain professions, such as the Lviv tram drivers, also kept this memory alive, bringing the Lviv dialect to the streets of Wroclaw in the first years after the war. The commemoration of Polish martyrs in the east, although unofficial and confined to the private sphere, was also important during the communist era. The memorabilia of the Katyn families and the Siberians – victims of Soviet anti-Polish actions in the Eastern Borderlands – collected over the years in the parish buildings on Wittig Street exemplify this.
In Wroclaw, the customs of Lviv blended with diverse influences brought in by newcomers from various regions, primarily central Poland. The Lviv academics were soon joined by eminent professors from other ‘districts’, such as Professor Ludwik Hirszfeld, who co-established the terminology of the ABO blood group system and received a nomination for the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1950. The elite and cultural traditions of Lviv – which had been a multicultural and multiethnic city before the war – created the best environment for the fusion of diverse regional experiences. This fusion, or social integration, was greatly helped by Bishop Bolesław Kominek of Silesian origin, who led the Church in Wroclaw from 1956. He relied not only on his trusted colleagues from the region of his birth but also on priests from Lviv – for instance, he appointed Wacław Szetelnicki, a prominent priest from the Lviv archdiocese, as his chancellor.
A significant part of the post-war reality involved the process of taming the seemingly alien urban space. It proved to be an arduous journey, marked by several infamous events. German cemeteries were razed to the ground, and many buildings from the German era were torn down, even those that had the potential to be effectively renovated. The salvaged bricks were then used to rebuild… Warsaw. ‘Eliminating traces of German presence’ and focusing on mediaeval Piast history was the dominant theme in Communist propaganda. The idea of an ‘eternally Polish Wroclaw,’ promulgated in the first decades after the war, resonated with a population recovering from the trauma of German occupation. However, despite these difficult beginnings, the journey towards affirming the city’s multicultural heritage, including German contributions, has been a successful one. Contemporary Wroclaw residents take a keen interest in the city’s German history, as evidenced by the popularity of Marek Krajewski’s detective novels set in Breslau.
The experiences of the first post-war decades found a remarkable echo in the Solidarity era. On 26 August 1980, the bus depot on Grabiszyńska Street – the starting point of the Solidarity strike, which joined the strike of workers from the coast, and the headquarters of the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee – became a symbol of a turn in the city’s recent history. In Wroclaw, the events of August 1980 had a particular resonance. They not only played a crucial role in the Polish revolution but also became one of the sources of strength for the local community. The strike had no advisers from Warsaw because the local opposition milieu of the post-Lviv intelligentsia was strong enough to support the protesters. It was within these circles that a groundbreaking idea emerged for the entire situation in Poland – instead of advocating for their own strike demands, they decided to support the list of demands put forward by the workers from Gdansk. Krzysztof Turkowski, one of the participants in these events, said that people joined the strike as outsiders from Borderlands and other regions but came out as Wroclawians. Today, the former strike depot houses the Depot History Centre, an institution that helps preserve the memory of post-war Wroclaw. During martial law, Wroclaw was already a leading centre of anti-communist resistance. The experiences of that time formed an elite that took responsibility for the city after 1989.
The strength of Wroclaw lies in the convergence of different traditions and the ultimate success of the processes of social integration, ‘befriending’ the city and reconstructing it. It stems from the history of the post-war decades, the turning point of which were the Solidarity movement and the opposition activities of the martial law years. Lviv’s academic traditions and the transfer of numerous Polish cultural artefacts to Wroclaw played a vital role in the city’s development. They were the leaven, the essential ingredient required to cope with difficult circumstances.
Had things gone differently, we might not have achieved the successes we did after 1989. Wroclaw might not have become one of Poland’s most important urban centres with European aspirations. It could have reached only ‘medium development,’ become provincial and remain a resource to be exploited by the headquarters (as was the case in the post-war years – just think of the bricks taken from Wroclaw to rebuild the capital). The city on the Oder could have been just a stopover, but it became home to many Polish families, whose offspring are now growing up at home.
We need to understand the sources of Wroclaw’s strength if we don’t want to lose them. That is why the formulation of the city’s mission as a ‘city of encounter’ in its strategic documents at the turn of the 21st century was so apt. It was a reference to the words spoken by John Paul II in 1997: ‘It is, as it were, a city of encounter, a city that unites. Here, there meet in a certain way the spiritual traditions of East and West.’ That mission statement, popularised as an advertising slogan, has become something unique and – despite the changes in technocratic documents – is still relevant today. It emerged from a deep reflection on the foundations of Wroclaw’s strength, potential and distinctiveness. That is why I had my doubts when, a few years ago, it was suggested that the ‘city of encounters’ formula has run its course and a new direction, slogan, and city development strategy were necessary (https://wszystkoconajwazniejsze.pl/marek-mutor-wroclaw-miasto-spotkan-wartosci/). It is unfortunate that the recent strategic documents have downgraded the ‘city of encounters’ from a primary idea to a secondary mission statement.
.The sources of the city’s strength can and should be continuously renewed. To this end, we need to focus first and foremost on cultural education, with a strong emphasis on historical education and the post-war history of the city. Equally significant is a wise incorporation of history into the public sphere, achieved through open dialogue, free from the temptation to instrumentalise the past. We need to nurture our Wroclaw academic traditions and preserve our material heritage with all its monuments and relics of the past
Marek Mutor
