JUNE 16 - Walking tour of historic Wrocław today. This city has a real patchwork history, being near the junction of several large powers and thus dominated by a number of empires. With that, a brief historical rundown:
The original 9th Century settlement were located on or near a few sandy islands in the Oder River, which twists, divides, and recombines in this area. It was settled by Slavic people and was eventually incorporated into the Czech dominions to the south.
It was seized by Prince Mieszko I in 990 (of the Piast Dynasty) and then incorporated, along with the rest of Silesia, into the Kingdom of Poland. It grew over the next few hundred years into a center of religious and economic importance. However, the city, along with others in southern Poland, was razed to the ground by the Tartars in 1241.
Upon the departure of those eastern hordes, the city was rebuilt, but in 1336 the Piast Dynasty came to a close, and the Kingdom splintered, with Wrocław being annexed to Bohemia. King Casimir III of Poland was unable to make a deal to keep the city.
Thus began almost 600 years of German influence, first as a possession of Bohemia, then of Austria. Its name became known as Breslau, and ‘Germanification’ of its culture eventually changed its character sharply from its Polish roots.
In 1741 King Frederick II of Prussia seized Silesia, and upon unification of Germany, it continued its course as a German city. This took a dark turn when the Nazis took power, as they began ‘exporting’ the Jewish population, and sharply discriminated against the ethnic Poles still living there.
Post WWII, the Potsdam conference granted Wrocław to Poland, and not surprisingly, there were a lot of vengeance to be wrought upon the previous occupants. The city drained of German-speaking people, and Poles migrated here in large numbers from cities in the east, now within the expanded Soviet Union. In a very short time period, the German history was almost erased and Polish influence dominated the rebuilding and future direction of the city.
