Gdansk is a city of northern Poland, on the coast of the Baltic Sea, with a population of 460,000. In the second partition of Poland in 1793, it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia, which later (1871) became a part of the German Empire. Gdansk was founded as the German city of Danzig .In the period between World War I and World War II, it had the status of a free city until it became Gdansk in 1945.
Its medieval Latin name was Urbs Gyddanzyc. Danzig was in earlier times often spelled Dantzig, as a map from 1598 (below) shows. It has also been spelled 'Dantzigk or Dantzk on maps of Prussia (below) from circa 1630. The form Dantzic is common among early English works.
A major regional port since the 14th century and subsequently a principal shipbuilding centre, Gdansk remains an important industrial centre despite the development in the 1920s of the nearby port of Gdynia. The University of Gdansk was created in 1970.
History of the city
Settlements have existed on the site of the present-day city since at least as early as the 5th century. The area of Prussia to Gdansk's south and east was named for the Borussi, a Baltic people displaced for a time by the Goths, a Germanic people who subsequently migrated southwards and westwards. The area to the west became known as Pomerania (Pomorze in Polish, Pommern in German) following the arrival of Slavic settlers around 600 AD.
The town is said to have been dedicated in 980 by Mieszko I, duke of Poland, to compete with the ports of Szczecin and Wolin on the Odra river. One of the earliest recorded dates in the city's history is March 27, 997, when Saint Adalbert of Prague entered Gdansk with soldiers of Boleslaus I, later Poland's first crowned king. The town is called urbs Gyddanzyc in the Life of Saint Adalbert by Johann Canaparius.
The region of Pomerania was conquered by the emerging Polish principality around the same time, but became independent in 1031. Pomerania was conquered again in 1119-1122 by Boleslaus III of Poland. The 12th-14th centuries saw large-scale German settlement here as in Poland's other western and northern lands, as damming of the Vistula and other rivers was undertaken around Danzig and Elbing (now Elblag).
During the Rozbicie Dielnicowe (fragmentation) period (1138-1320) of Poland's division into hereditary principalities, Pomerania became independent again, dividing into Pomerania proper, from 1181 a tributary of the Holy Roman Empire, and Pomerelia (including the Gdansk area), ruled like Pomerania by Griphius (Greif) dukes.
The city of Danzig was chartered in 1224 with the participation of merchants from Lübeck, Duke Swaitopolk I granting the place city rights under the Lübeck law. Danzig rose to become one of the more important of the many trading and fishing ports along the Baltic Sea coast.
After the extinction of the Pomerelian ducal dynasty in 1294, the region was plunged into war involving neighbouring Poland and Brandenburg, during the course of which Danzig was occupied (November 1308) by the Teutonic Knights. In September 1309 Margrave Waldemar of Brandenburg sold his claim over the territory to the Teutonic Order for 10,000 marks.
Danzig became a full member of the Hanseatic League of northern European trading cities by 1361. In 1440, Danzig joined the other Hanseatic League cities of Elbing and Thorn to form the Prussian Confederation, which was supported by Casimir IV of Poland in its rebellion (1454) against the Teutonic Order's rule. The resulting Thirteen Years War ended with the Order's defeat and its cession to Poland of its rights over western Prussia, Danzig and Warmia (second Treaty of Thorn, 1466).
The Hanseatic city of Danzig had full legal rights as a city ruled by a Stadtrat or city council with its own court system and their own army. In 1566 the official language of the city's governing institutions was changed from the Hanseatic Low German language to High German.
A new king of Poland Stephen Bathory tried to conquer Danzig , but was successfully repelled by the Danzig burgher army. The Danzig council hired additional soldiers in Pomerania for their struggle against the Polish troops.In 1577 Stephen Bathory as king of Poland confirmed the rights to self government of the Prussian cities including the surrounding lands of Elbing ,Danzig and Thorn. These city states had already successfully resisted annexation by Poland in 1569.
In 1606 a distillery was founded named Der Lachs (the Salmon), which produced one of Danzig's most famous products, a liquor named Danziger Goldwasser ("Danzig gold water"), made from herbs and with small 22-carat gold flakes floating in the bottle. The recipe for this went with the expellees of 1945 to western Germany, where it continued to be produced.
From the 14th century until the mid-17th century Danzig experienced rapid growth, becoming the largest city on the Baltic seaboard by the 16th century and handling most of Poland's seaborne trade. The city's prosperity was severely damaged, however, by the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) and the Second Northern War (1655-1660), and it suffered a severe plague in 1709.
Danzig and Elbing ships sailed under their own city-state flags.
During the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, Danzig first (1772) exchanged Polish for Prussian suzerainty, and then (1793) was annexed outright by Prussia as part of the province of West Prussia, reverting to direct Prussian rule after a second brief period (1807-1814) as a free city. From 1824 until 1878 East and West Prussia were combined as a single province under the Prussian kingdom, from 1871 a part of the German Empire.
Following Germany's defeat in World War I, Danzig was separated from Germany without its inhabitants' consent in 1920 under the Treaty of Versailles, forming with a small surrounding territory a Free City under a commissioner appointed by the League of Nations. A customs union with Poland was created to give the new Polish republic a Baltic port, though the development of nearby Polish Gdynia proceeded rapidly.
The League of Nations rejected the citizens' petition to have their city officially named: "Freie Hansestadt Danzig" (free Hanseatic city of Danzig). Local opposition to the city's status and support for reunification with Germany culminated in the election of a Nazi government in the Danzig elections of May 1933.
Danzig's annexation to Germany was one of the objectives of the Nazi government which came to power in Germany in January 1933. Following the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, Germany in October 1938 urged the territory's return to Germany, but Poland refused to accept reunification. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and annexed Danzig, initiating World War II. Danzig and areas of the "Polish Corridor" to the south and west became the German Gau (administrative district) of Danzig-West Prussia.
In 1945, at the end of World War II, the Soviet Union placed Danzig under Polish administration as the city of Gdansk. Nearly all of those German inhabitants who had not fled in advance of the approaching Red Army were subsequently removed forcibly to Germany. Polish sovereignty was recognised by the Soviet-installed East German government in 1950, but by the Federal Republic of Germany only upon German reunification in 1990 (though the West German government had acknowledged de facto Polish possession of the city in 1970).
Gdansk was the scene of anti-government demonstrations which led to the downfall of Poland's communist leader Wladyslaw Gomulka in December 1970, and ten years later was the birthplace of the Solidarity trade union movement whose opposition to the government led to the end of communist party rule (1989) and the election as president of Poland of its leader Lech Walesa.
Famous people born in Gdansk/Danzig
- Johannes Hevelius 1611
- Andreas Schlueter 1660
- Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit 1686
- Louise Adelgunde Gottsched 1713
- Daniel Chodowiecki 1726
- Johann Wilhelm Archenholz 1741
- Georg Forster 1754
- Johanna Schopenhauer 1766
- Johannes Daniel Falk 1768
- Arthur Schopenhauer 1788
- Max Halbe 1865
- Guenter Grass 1927
External Links:
![[2]](http://wwwtest.library.ucla.edu/libraries/mgi/maps/blaeu/prvssia.jpg){kind=link}