2nd World War (1939 -
1945)
Contentions resulting from
the problem of the nationality of Gdansk after 1st World War show that the idea of the
exceptional significance of the town was still alive among the European political circles.
It resulted from the strategic location at the mouth of the Vistula, from the part that
Gdansk still played in the Baltic trade and from the great cultural heritage of the town -
magnificent modern town planning concept (with Mediaeval elements), splendor of the
architecture (from Mediaeval to contemporary) and the unique climate of the town in which
so much happened and where so many precious objects of art. were produced and collected.
Gdansk became so important for both interested nations Poles and Germans that it entered
their national mythology (for instance in "Pan Tadeusz" by
A.Mickiewicz).
Dispute regarding Gdansk was only the tip of an iceberg and an excuse for the war, there
were much wider questions, so Gdansk became a symbol.  First shots of 2nd World War were fired
at Westerplatte - Polish Transit Warehouse. The defence of that small outpost effectively
blocking the entrance to the Gdansk harbour lasted 7 days. Gdansk itself was incorporated
into IIIrd Reich. The war brought the ruin to the town and in particular to the historic
centre. It was a tragedy spread in time. It started with the allied air raids in June
1942, then there were street fights in March 1945 and after that destruction made by the
victorious Red Army during the plunder of the town. The destruction continued during the
autumn-winter storms of 1945//1946.
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For
a thousand years Gdansk, like a sailor with his knots, has been marking the important and
even climacteric dates of its own history in the history of Poland, Europe and the world.
In this statement there is no exaggeration dictated by a merely personal relationship with
the city, which for successive generations of its inhabitants has been a small homeland
and to which they have felt a particular attachment. For Gdansk, apart from this obvious
and subjectively-written history, so dear to each of its citizens, possesses also the
dimension of a city-symbol, and as such it transcends its individual, regional and
national significance, becoming a universal value. Although this may sound rather
grandiloquent, that is in fact how it is.
 After all it was
here in September 1939 that the hell of the Second World War started, the war that was to
realise Hitler's mad plans to make Europe and half the world into the dominion of his
thousand-year Third Reich.
It
was also here that the Solidarity movement was born, the movement that would bring about
the victory of democracy in this part of Europe, which had been subjected, as a result of
the Yalta Agreement, to the domination of another sick totalitarian ideology. These two
facts in themselves, of such importance in the history of Europe and the world, prove that
thinking about Gdansk as an exceptional place, is not just a stylistic manipulation.
Bearing that in mind, it is worth becoming acquainted with Gdansk and offering the city a
good place in one's memory.
The first
critical historic moment was 27 March 997, recorded in chronicles as the official date of
the founding of Gdansk.
A stronghold had already existed on the Motlawa, but it was on that day that the Bishop of
Prague, Adalbert, arrived in Gdansk and brought with him Christianity. The significance of
this moment depended not only on the fact that a new religion had appeared in these parts,
and as the chronicler of Adalbert's mission, Jan Canaparius, noted - huge crowds of people
were baptised - but that St Adalbert together with this religion brought a new culture to
this part of Europe.
Gdansk, by entering the circle of Christian Europe, became a full member of the modern
world with its universal system of values.
The readiness of Gdansk inhabitants to accept the new universals was obviously not
accidental. From the very beginning, the town, because of its location, had maintained
numerous contacts with many nations, while mercantile pragmatism had led to an openness
towards the world, without a trace of xenophobia. Here was the crossing-point of trade
routes from the west to the east and from the north to the south of Europe. As early as
the 9th and 10th centuries luxury goods were arriving in Gdansk from the Arabian states.
In the 12th century Gdansk was an important sea port, and a centre of political and
economic life. The port greeted ships from Byzantium, Persia, England, Flanders, the
Walloon lands, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Courland. The town was full of the sounds of
many tongues, and it absorbed cultural novelties from around the world. Together with the
growth of the individual wealth of Gdansk's citizens, their intellectual aspirations also
increased.
The next
significant date for Gdansk was the year 1224, when merchants from Lubeck, at that time
the greatest experts in the difficult craft of trade, arrived and settled in the town.
They brought with them the greatest achievements of civilisation, including the so-called
Lubeck Law, which set in order and codified all matters to do with trade. It was they who
took upon themselves all difficulties associated with trade and became intermediaries, and
in so doing laid the foundations for Gdansk's strong bourgeoisie.
In 1361 Gdansk became a full member of Hansa, a mercantile organization whose official
foundation had taken place at a meeting in Lubeck in 1356. The Hanseatic League, whose aim
was economic co-operation, attempted to standardise laws, regulations and currencies, to
introduce mutual reductions in payments, and to act together to eliminate competitors. It
was a confederation of many towns, places and communes set up in order for trade
transactions to proceed without interference from the pirates on the seas and bandits on
land routes. It embraced an area which included the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, and even
stretched as far as Portugal, Spain, Russia, Finland and Iceland.
The leader of Hansa was Lubeck, and the highest authority were the conferences, in which
Gdansk participated almost from the beginning, from 1361. In 1494 Gdansk became the leader
of one of the Hanseatic Quarters, which embraced among others Chelmno, Braniewo, Elblag,
Torun and Konigsberg.
Although the golden age of Hansa was brought to an end with Columbus's discovery of the
route to America and with the creation of new trade routes, Gdansk still retained its
outstanding trading position for a further two hundred years. This was made possible also
by the throwing off of the Teutonic hegemony and by the joining of the lands to the
Kingdom of Poland in 1454.
The privileges
granted to the city by Kazimierz Jagiellonczyk, and the links with the natural economic
hinterland - the huge river system of the Vistula - made Gdansk into a city which was
talked about as the granary of Europe.  And so it was. Gdansk in the 15th and 16th centuries fed Europe.
Each year between February and November over 200 ships came into the port of Gdansk for
goods which had arrived along the Vistula from all of Poland. In those days, known as the
golden age of the city, over 75% of Polish exports were loaded in Gdansk. Three hundred
multi-storey granaries were filled with the Polish grain for which Europe waited so
impatiently. The length of the port quays was greater then in London, while the Gdansk
crane, today one of the city`s most popular sights, was, right up until the 19th century,
the largest port crane in Europe.
And so the wheel of modern history has come around again after 300 years, since Hansa has
been revived and a tradition has been restored. Today New Hansa, an association of over
100 European towns including Gdansk, wishes, like its predecessor, to continue economic
and cultural co-operation. The first conference took place in 1980 in the Dutch city of
Zwolle. In Gdansk memories are still fresh of the conference which took place in the
memorable year of 1997, when the city was celebrating its millennium.
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