Wrocław [image] [image] (Flag) (Coat of Arms) Motto: miasto spotkań (the meeting place) [image] Voivodship Lower Silesian Municipal government Rada Miejska Wrocławia Mayor Rafał Dutkiewicz Area 292,9 km² Population
- city
- urban
- density 633,700 2004 est.
2181/km² Founded
City rights10th century
1262Latitude
Longitude51°07' N
17°02' EArea code +48 71 Car plates DW Twin towns Breda, Dresden, Charlotte, Guadalajara, Mexico, Hradec Krįlové, Kaunas, La Vienne, Lviv, Ramat Gan, Wiesbaden Municipal Website
Early records show that the medieval city name was Wrocisław in Polish and Vratislav in Czech, which means Wrocislaw/Vratislav's town. The Polish name was later phonetically simplified in two stages: Wrocisław->Wrotsław->Wrocław, and this simplified name has been used since the 12th century. The Czech spelling was used in Latin documents, Wratislavia or Vratislavia, but Polish pronunciation was also influential as shown in the spelling of Wracislavia. Later a Germanized version of the city's name was also created-Breslau-which was used as the official name during various periods of German influence. For example, in November 2004, the warehouse Feniks on the Rynek (built in 1904) showed old pictures of the building. The pictures were described in Polish but used original names such as Warenhaus Gebrüder Barasch, Breslau. [image] The city is named after a person called Vratislaw/Wrocislaw, although it is unclear what, if any, connection exists to a Czech Duke called Vratislav I. It is also possible that the city was named after the tribal duke of the Silesians, or after the early owner of the city, called Vratislav.
The name of the city seems to be an issue for German and Polish nationalists. Among the people of the city, especially those born some years after World War II, the German name "Breslau" is highly unpopular, and they may become offended when that name is used.
Names used in other languages:
Under direct overlordship of the Holy Roman Empire, the emperors granted government positions to members of various ducal and royal dynasties. The city was a member of the Hanseatic League of northern European trading cities. During much of the Middle Ages Wrocław was ruled by its dukes from the Piast dynasty. In 1335, it was incorporated with almost the entirety of Silesia to become the Kingdom of Bohemia and was part of it until the 1740s; from 1526, it was ruled by the Empire's Habsburg dynasty. The overwhelming majority of the inhabitants became Lutheran Protestants during the Reformation, but they were forcibly suppressed during the Catholic Reformation by the Jesuits, who were working with the support of the Habsburg rulers. [image] After the extinction of local Piast rulers in 1675, the Habsburg Monarchy of Austria inherited Wrocław. They resorted to forceful conversion of the city to back to Catholicism. During the War of the Austrian Succession in the 1740s, Silesia was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia's claims were derived from the agreement, rejected by Habsburgs, between the Piast rulers of the Duchy and the Hohenzollerns who secured the Prussian succession after the extinction of the Piasts.
After the demise of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the city remained under Prussian administration and joined Imperial Germany upon its creation in 1871. The kings of Prussia saw to it that Wrocław became a major industrial centre, notably of linen and cotton manufacture, more than tripling in population between 1860 and 1910 to over half a million. Its municipal boundaries were greatly extended in 1928.
Many of the city's 10,000 Jews were murdered during the Nazi genocide of World War II. When the Red Army approached in February 1945, Wrocław was declared a fortress and much of the population, which was German, was evacuated, although some 200,000 remained. To build fortifications slave labour was needed to augment civilian workers, and Concentration camp prisoners were forced to help.
After a siege of nearly three months, "Festung Breslau" surrendered on May 7, the last major city in eastern Germany to fall. Some 40,000 Breslauers laid dead in the ruins, and the city was almost 70% destroyed. During the siege, the German authorities razed a modern residential district, around the Kaiserstraße (now: Plac Grunwaldzki) in order to construct a military airfield that was supposed to re-supply the city. An unknown number of German civilians and slave labourers died constructing the airfield. [image] The incoming Red Army engaged in wanton attacks against the surviving German population. Unwarranted though such action was, it cannot be seen in isolation from the grander sweep of events that had begun with the German onslaught against the Soviet Union (USSR) that began in 1941 and the millions of Soviet civilians who died at the hands of the Germans.
Like almost all of Silesia, Wrocław went to Poland under the terms of the agreement reached at the Potsdam Conference. Most of the surviving German inhabitants either left or were expelled to post-war Germany between 1945 and 1949, however as with other Lower Silesian cities a considerable German presence remained until the late 1950s. In fact, the last German school in the city was not closed until 1963. Wrocław was resettled by Poles either from the small towns and villages from central Poland or those expelled from territories lost by Poland to the USSR. Many of them were from Lwów (now L'viv, Ukraine). [image] Gradually the old city was restored to its beauty. Nearly all the monumental buildings were preserved. Now it is a uniquely European city in present-day Poland, with its architecture echoing that in Austria, Bohemia, or Prussia. Wrocław's Gothic style is originally Silesian; its Baroque style owes much to court builders of Habsburg Austria (Fischer von Erlach, Ch. Tausch); and Wrocław still has a number of buildings by eminent modernist architects, such as Hans Poelzig or Max Berg, the famous Jahrhunderthalle (Hala Ludowa) by Berg (1911-13) being the most important. [image] In July 1997, the city was hit by a severe flooding of the Oder River.
1800: 64,500 inhabitants
1831: 89,500 inhabitants
1850: 114,000 inhabitants
1852: 121,100 inhabitants
1880: 272,900 inhabitants
1900: 422,700 inhabitants
1910: 510,000 inhabitants
1925: 555,200 inhabitants
1933: 625,198 inhabitants
1939: 629,565 inhabitants
1946: 171,000 inhabitants
1956: 400,000 inhabitants
1960: 431,800 inhabitants
1967: 487,700 inhabitants
1970: 526,000 inhabitants
1975: 579,900 inhabitants
1980: 617,700 inhabitants
1990: 640,577 inhabitants
1999: 650,000 inhabitants
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2003: 638,000 inhabitants
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