POLAND : Gdansk - History

A Slavic settlement, Gdansk was first mentioned in 997. It soon became the capital of Pomerelia (see Pomerania ). After its settlement by German merchants, it joined (13th cent.) the Hanseatic League and developed as an important Baltic trading port. In 1308 it was conquered by the Teutonic Knights and became an object of struggle between them and Poland. Pomerelia and Gdansk passed to Poland in 1466. Gdansk was granted local autonomy under the Polish crown. In 1576, Gdansk withstood a siege by Stephen Báthory and thus preserved its established privileges against domination by the Polish crown.

After the Thirty Years War the city began to decline. In the War of the Polish Succession , King Stanislaus I took refuge in Gdansk until it fell (1734) after a heroic defense. The first partition of Poland in 1772 made Gdansk a free city; the second partition (1793) gave it to Prussia .

Napoleon I restored its status as a free city (1807). Reverting to Prussia in 1814, it was fortified and, as Danzig, was the provincial capital of West Prussia until 1919, when by the Treaty of Versailles it once more became a free city with its own legislature. In order to give the newly reestablished nation of Poland a seaport, Danzig was included in the Polish customs territory and was placed under a high commissioner appointed by the League of Nations.

As the League's authority waned after 1935, Gdansk came under Nazi control. Hitler's demand (1939) for the city's return to Germany was the principal immediate excuse for the German invasion of Poland and thus of World War II. Gdansk was annexed to Germany from Sept. 1, 1939, until its fall to the Soviet army early in 1945. The Allies returned the city to Poland, which restored the name Gdansk. In 1970 workers' grievances sparked riots in Gdansk that spread to other cities and led to changes in Poland's national leadership. Further labor unrest in the Gdansk shipyard led to the formation of the Solidarity union in 1980.

Tensions arising from quarrels between Germany and Poland over control of the Free City served as a pretext for the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 and the outbreak of World War II. The Jewish community in Gdansk took the opportunity to escape from the Nazis soon before the outbreak of the war. Polish defenders at the Westerplatte peninsula defended against the battleship Schleswig-Holstein for nearly a week, while the Polish Post Office was bravely defended until its capture; its overwhelmed defenders were executed instead of imprisoned for the war's duration. Many members of Gdansk's Polish population were deported to the concentration camp in Stutthof or were directly executed at Piasnica. The Nazis' capture of the city resulted in its annexation into Nazi Germany and its incorporation into the Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreussen.

The city was occupied by Polish and Soviet forces on March 30, 1945 after a fierce battle with defending Germans which left 90% of the old city reduced to ruins. At the Yalta and the Potsdam conferences, Gdansk was transferred to Poland along with the whole territory of the Free City. According to the terms of the Potsdam conference, Germans remaining in the city were expelled. Out of the Free City's pre-war population of 385,000, 285,000 lived in exile in Germany after the post-war migrations were over.

Many Poles impressed with Gdansk's historic prosperity came to rebuild the city from throughout Poland, especially from the regions of eastern Poland annexed by the Soviet Union. The Old City was rebuilt from its ruins during the 1950s and 1960s. Because of the development of its port and 3 major shipyards, Gdansk was a major shipping and industrial center of the Communist People's Republic of Poland.

Gdansk was the scene of anti-government demonstrations which led to the downfall of Poland's communist leader Wladyslaw Gomulka in December 1970. Ten years later the Gdansk Shipyard was the birthplace of the Solidarity trade union movement, whose opposition to the government led to the end of communist party rule (1989); Solidarity's leader Lech Walesa became the Polish president in 1990. Today Gdansk remains a major industrial city and shipping port..