saving ink

Last month, I posted A Brief History of Poland for Non-Poles, which had originally run in the spring issue of Airgate magazine (one of my glamorous freelance writing gigs). The natural follow-up would be a brief history of the city I’ve now lived in for nearly six years: Kraków (which originally appeared in the summer issue of Airgate). Enjoy.

While the nation of Poland had yet to exist before the 11th century, by then Kraków had several hundred years of history under its belt. According to legend (an irrefutable historical source, if you ask me), the settlement was established in the fourth century when a brave shepherd named Krak defeated the dragon living under Wawel Hill, rendering the surrounding lands safe for settlement and flourishing under his rule. Unfortunately, certain killjoys calling themselves “historians” debate this legend, citing instead a tribe of Vistulans as the original settlers of Wawel Hill.

Capital status

Around 990, the first royal dynasty, Piast, incorporated Kraków into their territories, and the growing city became the seat of the Polish government in 1038. The city gained even more prestige in 1364, when King Casimir III founded the Cracow Academy (now the Jagiellonian University), the second oldest such institution in Central Europe. The university, along with the city’s capital status, made Kraków a flourishing centre of learning and arts in medieval Europe, home to such visionaries as Nicolaus Copernicus (Mikołaj Kopernik as they called him at home). Its Jewish history was also cultivated during this time, when the district of Kazimierz was established in 1495 as a home for the area’s Jewish community.

The Renaissance came to the city in the 15th century, and with it new ideas in the sciences and further development of the arts and all good intellectual pursuits. Much of Kraków’s iconic architecture arose at this time, including the famous alter of St Mary’s Cathedral, and most of the structures of Wawel Castle, when King Sigismund I hired a Florentine architect for some major remodelling.

However, Kraków’s role as royal capital would only last until 1596, when Swede Sigismund III moved the capital to Warsaw (a demotion many Cracovians still feel angry about today).

Invasions and partitions

After several Mongol invasions left the city in ruins, Cracovians finally got smart and decided to build a wall – and not just any wall, but a 3 km massive defensive structure with 46 towers at its completion, the most famous of which is St Florian’s Gate, still standing today. However, no amount of towers could prevent the decline of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that began in the 17th century and cumulated in the three partitions of Poland and the end of the Polish nation at the end of the 18th century. For the next 123 years, Kraków’s fate would be in the hands of the Austrian Empire.

Austrian overlords

In 1795, Kraków officially became a part of the Austrian province of Galicia. By most accounts, the Cracovians had it better than Poles under Russian or Prussian rule. The city again became a centre of culture and art, called the “Polish Athens”, after 1866, when Galicia gained autonomy and Polish became the official language of the area once again. This was another golden era for Kraków, when bigwigs of art such as Jan Matejko, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Stanisław Wyspiański and other names you’ll find in the National Museum were flourishing.

At the start of the 20th century, Kraków was a thriving modern metropolis, with a newly built tram network consisting of such wonders as electric lighting. While the First World War did some damage to the city, it was relatively unscathed and had the added benefit of being incorporated into the newly-reformed Polish state in 1919, which lasted a grand total of 20 years before Hitler and Stalin ruined the party.

Modern Kraków

The Second World War devastated the Cracovian population, especially its previously burgeoning Jewish community, but left the city’s infrastructure mostly unharmed. After the war, the new Soviet authorities ordered the construction of Nowa Huta as a working man’s counterpart to bourgeois, academic Kraków. Ironically enough, the district, now a part of Kraków, became a centre of anti-communist protests in the 1980s, and now remains a relic of communist chic since the fall of the Iron Curtain and Poland’s regained independence in 1989.

Though no longer serving as Poland’s capital, today Kraków still enjoys the title of “Cultural Capital of Poland” (and has the UNESCO status to prove it), and Cracovians certainly like to mention this fact as often as possible. And while it may not get the important state visits or high-level bankers that Warsaw enjoys, most Cracovians will tell you that they’re proud of living in an ancient city founded by a dragon-slayer.

Over the weekend, President Obama visited Poland as the last part of his European tour, which spurned comments across the American blogosphere mostly along the lines of “Why the hell Poland?” (along with the far too frequent “Where the hell is Poland again? Isn’t it like part of Russia?”) So to clarify the situation for some geographically and/or historically-challenged Americans, I thought I’d post an article I wrote last month for the Krakow Airport magazine (one of my glamorous freelance writing gigs). It was originally titled “A Brief History of Poland for Expats”, but I think it can be a bit more universal. 

The polonophile is a rare breed of foreigner that comes to Kraków: a student and lover of Polish history keen to debate even Poles on the lineage of Queen Jadwiga or the finer points of military strategy during the 1920 campaign. The rest of us, however, arrive with only a general idea of recent Polish events: invasion, war, brief freedom, more war, communism, and post-communism, i.e. The Era of EU-Sponsored Hugs and Puppies. Not a very happy picture (at least until recently), and quite incomplete. So for those who would like a more robust view of the beginnings of their adopted country, without taking the time to get a master’s degree in European Studies, read on!

It’s not a stretch to say that Poland has had a colourful history. Though it’s seen as a very Catholic nation today, both its Catholicism and its status as a nation began in the 10th century. Let’s just assume that prior to this era, Poles were running around in animal skins hitting each other over the head with clubs continuously and getting nothing productive done. It may not be the case, but this is a magazine article, not a Norman Davies hardback, and our space is limited.

In 966, King Mieszko I brought Christianity to the heathens and the Kingdom of Poland was established in 1025 (these things took longer before Twitter was around). Not content with rule over a significant portion of the European continent, King Sigismund II Augustus, the last monarch of the Jagiełło clan (yes, the ones the university is named after), joined Poland with its northern neighbour Lithuania, forming the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The fate of the two peoples was sealed in the mid-16th century with the Union of Lublin, and though the two kingdoms were equal on paper, in reality, Poland dominated the partnership, and the Commonwealth’s capital was Warsaw. So while the rest of Europe was mucking around exploring the New World (like anything good came out of that), the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth grew to become one of the largest and most populous kingdoms during the 16th and 17th centuries. It was also one of the first modern quasi-democratic systems, and featured an elective monarchy and a parliament comprised of the nobility, as well as being uniquely religiously tolerant for the times.

Of course, all good things must come to an end, and for Poland that happened thrice over. Like a delicious piece of szarlotka, the Commonwealth was cut into pieces until there was nothing left. One by one, the Cossacks, the Swedes, the Russians, the Prussians, and Hapsburg Austrians invaded, snatching up land as they came through. The constant invasions and warfare took their toll in the form of population loss and economic decline. However, the crisis also gave rise to a period of intellectual and artistic enlightenment, and the May 3 Constitution (now known mostly for creating four-day weekends together with the 1 May holiday) passed in 1791, becoming the first constitution in modern Europe. Unfortunately, it didn’t do much good for the declining state, and with the third and final partition of Poland in 1795, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ceased to exist, and Poles found themselves now citizens of Russia, Prussia, or the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Though Poland disappeared from European maps for 123 years, Poles fought hard to keep their culture intact and even thriving, and widespread rebellions like the 1830 November Uprising kept morale (as well as body counts) high. During this period, the great Polish tradition of emigration to Western Europe, a practice I’m told is quite popular to this day, began, with figures like Adam Mickiewicz, Cyprian Norwid, and Frédéric Chopin all packing their bags to make their names in the West. Eastwards, various Polish puppet states came and went, but for the most part the Polish nation remained under the rule of the three afore-mentioned powers.

World War I brought conflict across Europe, but its end brought Poland’s return to the globe, as the 1919 Treaty of Versailles officially recognised it as a country once again. During the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921, the Polish army took advantage of Russia’s preoccupation with its own civil war to invade and annex old Commonwealth lands in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. This didn’t last long, as Stalin got those lands back and then some thanks to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and invasion by both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in September 1939. The devastation of Poland and near-elimination of what had previously been a thriving Jewish community followed, and then fifty years of Soviet-imposed communism followed that, as we all know. Since 1989, history has been kinder to Poles, a trend we hope will continue throughout the next millennium.

There. Don’t you feel smarter already?