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Home
> Warsaw >
History |
|
The
City of Warsaw |
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The beginnings
| The
capital of Poland | Partition
of Poland
Polish Independence
& WWII | 1945-present
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| In
order to better understand Warsaw and Poland, one might ought to
go back and take look at its history. It is rich, fascinating, and
often a very tragic history. |
| The
beginnings |
back
to top |
| Although
almost 700 years old, Warsaw is considered to be a young city by
Polish standards. Warsaw was only starting to emerge as a city
from the Mazovian forest, when cities such as: Krakow, Gdansk,
Wroclaw or Kalisz were celebrating their quincentenaries.
First traces of settlement in the
Warsaw area date from the 10th century. The first notable
structure does not come in untill the beginning of the 14th
century, when the dukes of Mazovia built a stronghold on the site
where the Royal Palace stands today, thus starting a township. The
city's outlay closely followed that of many other medieval Polish
towns: central square with a nearby church and the whole town
surrounded by fortified walls for protection.
In 1413 Warsaw became the seat of
the Mazovian dukes, and the city experiences a wave of
development. At about this period we see the emergence of the New
Town along the northern walls of the Old Town.
In 1526 the last duke of Mazovia died without an heir, thus
putting Warsaw along with the whole of Mazovia under the direct
rule of the Polish King in Krakow. |
| Warsaw:
The capital of Poland |
back
to top |
| In
1569 Warsaw became the seat of the Sejm
(Polish parliment), due to
its central location in the new union between Poland and
Lithuania. Four years later the city became the seat of the royal
elections, however the King still resided in Krakow.
In 1596 Warsaw became the capital
after a fire in the King Zygmunt III Waza's residence in Krakow.
During the 1655-1660 Swedish invasion of Poland, Warsaw suffered
heavy damage this included physical and cultural losses.
The 18th century saw some of the
most splendid growth of the city. It was during this period that
many of the palaces, churches and monasteries were erected and the
cultural life flourished, especially during the reign of the last
Polish King, Stanislaw August Poniatowski. |
| Partition
of Poland |
back
to top |
| By
1795 Poland had been totally partitioned by three countries:
Prussia, Russia and the Austro-Hungarians. Warsaw
found itself
under the Prussian rule and its role was diminished to that of a
small provincial town. Once more in 1807 Warsaw became the
capital, when Napoleon created the Duchy of Warsaw. With the
colapse of Napoleonic France, in 1830 Warsaw fell to the Russian
rule. Despite during the Russian occupation Warsaw continued in
its steady development along with a steady population increase, by
1900 Warsaw had 700,000 inhabitants. |
| Polish
Independence & WWII |
back
to top |
| In
1918 Poland regained her independence and Warsaw
became the
capital of the Second Republic of Poland. Between the wars a
deliberate development of the city was undertaken, and in 1939 the
population of Warsaw had risen to over 1.3 million. When World War
II broke out in 1939, the capital heroically defended itself until
the 27th of September. During the five years of German occupation,
the city's population lived in terror. The Jewish citizens were
forced to live a walled-in ghetto, from where they were sent to
the gas chambers of death camps. When the Germans decided to clear
the Warsaw ghetto in the spring of 1943, the Jews resisted the
Germans in an armed battle rater than to give up without a fight.
In an unequal battle than ensued thousands of Jewish fighters and
civilians were brutally wiped out. Intellectuals were also
persecuted, virtually everyone was in constant danger of getting
arrested in a round up and getting sent to work or to a
concentration camp.
On the 1st of August, 1944, the
Warsaw Uprising broke out. From the beginning the fighters of the
Home Army ( Armia Krajowa ) were doomed, because of lack of help
from the outside. After 63 days of heroic resistance the Warsaw
uprising was brutally supressed. This was the largest act of
rebelion in Nazi occupied Europe and contributed to a quicker end
of the war. However the human costs were incredible. Over 200,000
Poles, soldiers and civilians alike, perished. After the
supression of the uprising, all inhabitants were expelled from the
city and the Nazis systematically burned and blew up the remaining
buildings of the capital. In August 1944 Warsaw ceased to exist. |
| Warsaw:
1945-present |
back
to top |
| Warsaw
was finally liberated on the 17th of January, 1945, altogether
800,000 of its inhabitants had perished during the war. The
survivors came back to their city almost immediately and started
to rebuild it. Warsaw again became the capital of Poland. But once
more its fate was really determined by Moscow, a fact symbolized
by the Palace of Culture( originally named in honor of Joseph
Stalin) towering over the city center since 1955. In 1981 the
communist rulers had to rely on the army to defend their power
against the Solidarity movement of Lech Walesa, announcing martial
law on 13th of December. With the crumbling economy and the
transformations going on in the Soviet Union, the communists
finally had to allow free elections in 1989. These ended in a
complete defeat for the Communist Party. The new government right
away began extensive democratic and economic reforms, and for
Warsaw a great economic boom began. Today, with 1.6 million
inhabitants, Warsaw is trying to catch up with the western
capitals. Despite many problems, the city is growing. Every year
the face of the city changes in a dramatic and surprising way. The
city has also opened up to tourists whom it hopes to attract in
large numbers. Most importantly, however, the city is again free
after decades of foreign rule and influence. |
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