President of Gdańsk Аlexandra Dulkevych said that the reconstruction of Mariupol will take place with the participation of this Polish city, one of whose streets will be named after Gdańsk, at the suggestion of Mariupol mayor Vitaly Boychenko. From my side Dulkevych replied that there will be a place for Mariupol in the urban space of Gdansk.
The connection between the Ukrainian and Polish ports is obvious: the Poles perfectly remember the events of the Second World War on the Westerplatte peninsula and the heroism of their compatriots who fought against the German invaders, whose army was many times superior to the defenders of Gdańsk.
[I]n't a free city. Prehistory
The sixth largest city in Poland has gone through many trials in its thousand-year history, regularly changing from Gdańsk to Danzig and vice versa. In opposition to the pagans, the Teutonic Knights built a castle here, the Poles made it their main port for grain trade with Europe, and by the end of the 1930s the city had become a besieged fortress surrounded by hostile Nazi forces.
In the autumn of 1933, the British science fiction writer Herbert Wells predicted a world conflict over the possession of Danzig-Gdańsk in the book "The Shape of the Future". And some six years later, the Tricity coast (Gdansk, Sopot and Gdynia) received the first blow of the Second World War. In September 1939, the German army launched an invasion of Poland, which rapidly progressed into the stage of occupation. Gdańsk, then called Danzig, had the status of a "free city" under the leadership of the League of Nations and was populated mainly by Germans, so the popularity of the Nazi party grew here almost as fast as in Germany itself.
Swastikas on the streets of Danzig (now Gdansk) in 1937
The heart of the battle
Since the mid-1920s, Poland has stationed a small military unit on the territory of the "Free City", guarding a military transit depot on the Westerplatte peninsula, a tiny patch of land where one of the branches of the Vistula flows into the Baltic Sea. Army cargo was imported here, and the presence of the Polish military, even in small numbers, greatly annoyed the Nazi leadership of Danzig, so this facility became Hitler's first target.
At 4:45 a.m. on September 1, 1939, shots rang out in Gdańsk Bay: the German training battleship Schleswig-Holstein, which had arrived there six days earlier, began shelling the Polish garrison. In the conditions of overwhelming German troops, the Nazis counted on a quick capture of Westerplatte. However, two hundred and five Poles fought for a whole week, losing only 15 people during continuous massive shelling. On the German side, the death toll was in the hundreds. The result of the defense of the peninsula, of course, was decided in advance, but the Polish garrison demonstrated incredible courage and heroism.
The harbor crane and one of Gdańsk's water gates, located on the Motlawa River, at the end of Szeroka Street. It is one of the branches of the National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk and the largest and oldest surviving port crane in medieval Europe. The crane was set on fire in 1945, the wooden part burned, but part of the walls survived. The gate was reconstructed in the late 1950s. Image source: Gdanskhistoryczny.wixsite.com
Westerplatte was not the only "hot spot" on the first day of the war in Danzig. During the shelling of the Polish garrison by a German battleship, explosions rang out in the very heart of the city — on Hevelius Square, where the headquarters of the Polish post office was located in the former military hospital. There were 57 people inside the post office that night. Surrounded by units of the Danzig SS, SA and city police, they were able to hold out for fifteen hours, but soon the Nazis demonstratively punished the Poles. Of the 57 people who survived until dawn, only four escaped execution.
"...On Bread Street, the loaves remained in the oven, and on Molochnaya Street the milk ran off, and only the building of the Zahidnoprussian insurance company "Fire Insurance" did not want to burn down for purely symbolic reasons..." - an excerpt from Gunter Grass's book "The Tin Drum"
The next five years for Danzig-Gdansk meant the end of hostilities, but not the war and the battle for the right to freedom. The Polish population of the city and its surroundings were sent to concentration camps and forced labor in Germany. Jews who did not have time to leave before 1939 died in gas chambers. When Nazism ended, in 1944, Danzig was subjected to large-scale bombing from the air and from the ground, and before the liberation itself, residents left the city en masse.
Losses
"The New City and the Lower City - everything that was built over the course of seven centuries burned down in three days. In the church of Mary, the fire went from the inside to the outside, showing festive lighting through the pointed windows. The other, not yet evacuated bells of St. Catherine, St. John, St. Brigitte, Barbara, Elizabeth, Peter and Paul, the Trinity and the Holy Crucifix melted on their belfries and dripped down, without a groan, without a bell...
The Street of the Holy Spirit was burning in the name of the Holy Spirit, the monastery of St. Francis was burning merrily in the name of St. Francis, who loved fire and praised it. And Frauengasse burned at once in the name of the Father and the Son. And of course, needless to say, the Wood Market burned down, and the Coal Market burned down, and the Hay Market burned down, too. And on Khlibnaya Street the loaves remained in the oven, and on Molochnaya Street the milk ran out, and only the building of the West Prussian Insurance Company "Fire Insurance" did not want to burn down for purely symbolic reasons..."
This is an excerpt from Gunter Grass's scandalous book "Tin Drum", the action of which begins in the writer's hometown during the years of Nazism, and ends in post-war Germany. Grass's text vividly illustrates the devastation experienced by Gdańsk during the siege. It was a typical picture for Europe. Warsaw, Cologne, Dresden, Hamburg, Königsberg, Rotterdam had approximately the same appearance: a scorched earth with no hope of revival.
When the fires stopped, the city center was almost dead. Whole blocks quickly burned through the wooden elements of the roofs and ceilings of buildings: the fire brigades simply did not have time to put out the fire. One of the British eyewitnesses of the events said that he recognized only three buildings in the burned-out city. According to various sources, from 80 to 95% of the buildings of the Main City were destroyed.
Gdansk had the status of a free city for 20 years (from 1919 to 1939). Image source: Unsplash
In addition to the damage caused by the German invaders, the city was almost completely destroyed by the Soviet Union. Due to the control of the region by the communists, little information has been preserved. It is clear that 90% of the city's buildings were destroyed, and 80% of the population fled or died.
What's next? Debate about the future
Immediately after the liberation of Gdańsk, a debate began regarding the fate of the destroyed areas of the city. Some suggested destroying the ruins and not restoring anything. Others advocated the reconstruction of a limited number of architectural monuments. Others wanted to design a new center and move the port to another location. The fourth saw Gdańsk as a communist-type city with a wide central thoroughfare and high-rise buildings.
"We will create a model of a modern seaside city in which the commercial and industrial and residential parts will be separated," wrote Gdańsk journalist Henrik Tetzlaff
Many Poles, who remembered the pre-war atrocities of the Nazis, even rejoiced at the opportunity to get rid of the "Prussian" legacy associated with aggression, pain and millions of innocent victims. Gdańsk journalist Henryk Tetzlaff wrote in the main local newspaper Dziennik Bałtycki: "On the site of the old center of Gdańsk with its narrow streets, we will build a modern residential area with wide avenues, sunlit gardens and parks located along picturesque canals.
Thus, we will create a model of a modern seaside city, in which the commercial and industrial and residential parts will be separated. The ideal life conditions of a working person, formulated in the thesis "Don't work where you live".
Gdansk in 1945
By the end of the 1945s, all discussions regarding the restoration of monuments ceased. Practical actions began already at the end of 25 with the clearing of the city from ruins, the construction of temporary bridges, the commissioning of sewage, electricity, gas and transport. On September 1947, XNUMX, the national conference of restorers under the leadership of Poland's chief restorer, Jan Zachwatowicz, adopted a resolution to restore the center of Gdańsk within its historical boundaries. A year later, the Central Department of Town Planning (ZOR) was created, which was mainly engaged in the construction of residential buildings in post-war Poland.
Priority objects for restoration were the most valuable historical monuments and buildings that were minimally damaged by destruction. The second stage involved the reconstruction of destroyed quarters, which were then built up with residential buildings. The first period of the city's renovation lasted from the 1940s to the 1960s. During this time, it was possible to restore a number of iconic buildings in the Main City: the Basilica of the Ascension of the Virgin Mary, the High, Golden and Green Gates, the Prison Tower, the City Hall of the Main City, the Fountain of Neptune, the Court of St. George, the Court of Artus.
Before the war, the center of Gdańsk was built up very densely. The red lines of the blocks limited a continuous row of townhouses of 3-5 floors with narrow end facades that adjoined each other. Image source: Unsplash
Coventry: brutal post-war architecture on the brink of destruction
Historical center. How was it restored?
The historical center of Gdańsk is more than four times larger than the center of Warsaw. It has a complex combined structure of the street network, the structure of which is broken by the freely located in the center of the dominant — the Church of the Virgin Mary. Interesting fact: unlike any typical medieval city, Gdansk did not have a classic market square. In its place was the Long Market, a wide avenue that stretched from the Coal Market to the harbor canal.
This route is called the Royal Route. Before the war, the center of Gdańsk was built up very densely. The red lines of the blocks bounded a continuous row of townhouses of 3-5 floors with narrow end facades that adjoined each other. The inner-quarter building occupied up to 90% of the territory, where light penetrated through narrow (two by two meter) yards-wells.
The Church of St. Mary or formally the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, located in the center of Gdańsk
The building of the Main City Hall on the Long Market in Gdańsk
When the question arose about the restoration of the historic center after the war, the new Polish leadership chose an unusual scheme. It was not similar to what was done in similar cases in Eastern and Western Europe. Instead of numerous chronicles and drawings, the architects relied on individual preserved monuments of the XNUMXth century, and in the end, after styling the building according to that era, they built an idealized city, a conventional, fantastic Gdańsk. In German, the strict laconic facades of the buildings received a lush decorative design in the spirit of Dutch mannerism.
Instead of numerous chronicles and drawings, the architects relied on individual preserved monuments of the XNUMXth century and in the end, after styling the building according to that era, they built an idealized city. Image source: Unsplash
The principle of simplifying the existing structure was the basis for the restoration of the central quarters. "The center of the center" has preserved its historical layout, no new highways were cut through it, it still exists as a whole organism. The project provided for the complete restoration and modernization of the first row of buildings, which was kept along the red line. New buildings were built in historical proportions: the length of the front street facade was 5–8 m, the length of the longitudinal facades was 10–15 m.
However, it was decided not to preserve the courtyard buildings, but to form new free public spaces in their place. As a result of densification, the first row of buildings in the quarter received another main facade from the side of the yard. But behind the "historical" faces of the buildings, there was a modern filling - new houses with comfortable apartments.
In order to revive public and tourist life in the centers of neighborhoods, much attention was paid to landscaping, and the first floors of buildings were given over to social and cultural functions. As a result of the reconstruction, the group of blocks received improved planning qualities, increased comfort and a partially updated appearance of the buildings.
In order to revive public and tourist life in the centers of neighborhoods, much attention was paid to landscaping, and the first floors of buildings were allocated for social and cultural functions. Image source: Unsplash
It is impossible to forget
During the Second World War, several objects miraculously survived in Gdańsk. Later transformed into a museum, they became monuments to the tragedy of the middle of the last century. Let's talk about some of them.
"No more war," proclaims the memorial inscription near the Coast Guard Monument on the Westerplatte peninsula. As we mentioned earlier, in 1939 it became the Polish Brest Fortress, an incredible symbol of stability in a critical situation. In the post-war years, a large-scale memorial was built on the territory of the former military transit depot.
The territory here has been overgrown with trees again, the ruins left after that battle have been conserved, and the very place where the first of the tens of millions of future victims of the Second World War died was included in the mandatory program for tourists in Gdańsk. Today, Westerplatte is a port, a military unit, an open-air museum, a large park and picturesque seascapes.
Today, Westerplatte is a port, a military unit, an open-air museum, a large park and picturesque seascapes
It is incredible that the post office in the center of Gdańsk, where one of the first battles in the city took place, is still standing. After the end of the war, it was restored. In 1979, Vincenta Kuchma's expressive metal sculpture decorated the square in front of the building: the goddess of victory Nika hands a rifle to a mortally wounded postman, whose bag is spilling letters.
"The center of the center" has preserved its historical layout, no new highways were cut through it, it still exists as a whole organism. Image source: Unsplash
One of the few buildings that survived the war is the city hall. Now the city history museum is located here. A good third of its exposition is devoted to a period of history that was not customary to talk about during the times of socialist Poland - it was too German.
Along with the Gothic royal hall, decorated with stucco and carvings, there are installations of everyday life from the interwar period. Bourgeois interiors with bent chairs and porcelain, German-made tea and sugar jars, a reconstruction of a shop counter with an antique cash register, a dressmaker's salon decorated with "Singer" are part of the museum's living narrative.
The path of modern Poland
The collapse of the socialist camp and the breakdown of communist ideology gave Gdańsk a new impetus. The "Solidarity" movement was born here, and a new, modern Poland actually appeared with it. Let's talk about the iconic buildings of recent times, which do not flirt with the past, limiting themselves to historical stylization, but at the same time openly talk about it, possessing the strongest property - empathy. They also talk about the future of the city, because the architecture of these buildings is frank, expressive and even to some extent defiant. It will be about the Museum of the Solidarity Movement, the Shakespeare Theater and the World War II Museum.
As the city came back to life, it was built as a modern entity. Image source: Unsplash
European Solidarity Center
Why did the excitement of the 80s of the 20th century in Poland find an outpouring in Gdańsk, making it the cradle of Polish democracy? Gdańsk had the status of a free city for 1919 years (from 1939 to 1981), but at heart it was always like that. Once the working class rose up against the existing system and did it without bloodshed, through factory strikes. As a result of XNUMX, an independent self-governing trade union "Solidarity" was created in Gdańsk, headed by Lech Wałęsa, an electrician at the Gdańsk Lenin Shipyard, which became the scene of action. The activities of this trade union had a huge impact on the collapse of the socialist system, and Lech Walesa became the president of Poland.
European Solidarity Center in Gdansk. Image source: Retencja.pl
In 2014, the European Solidarity Center was opened behind the walls of the legendary passage No. 2. The competition for the best project of the museum building was announced in November 2007. 58 teams participated in it, but the project of Gdańsk architects from the "Fort" workshop turned out to be the best. The construction of the European Solidarity Center cost PLN 232 million, of which PLN 113 million was allocated by the European Union.
The facades of the museum are decorated with corten panels. It gives the impression of a ship under construction. Image source: Retencja.pl
The building consists of five floors and underground parking. The exterior is clad in "rusty" panels to give the impression of a ship under construction. Inside, trees grow right in the hall, and a mini-garden is laid out on the roof. There is also an observation deck from which you can see the boundless expanses of the Gdańsk Shipyard. The museum tells not only about the movement itself, but also about the whole era.
It houses more than 1800 exhibits that do not just lie under glass, but interact with the visitor. The museum is super modern and interactive. Sound and light effects, strict brick walls, narrow corridors and exits from them - all this gives the viewer the opportunity not only to get acquainted with the culture and history of Poland, but also provokes attempts to think about how society develops in general, how universal values are formed.
Shakespeare Theater
The Shakespeare Theater in Gdańsk was opened in September 2014. Its main architect is the Italian Renato Rizzi, and the leading figure in the construction project is Jerzy Limon, the founder of the Gdańsk Shakespeare Festival, one of the largest international theater events in Europe and one of the most prestigious festivals in the country. This festival received the EFFE 2017/2018 award, the most important European award that can be obtained from the Association of European Festivals.
In 2016, the Ukrainian Culture Week was held at the Shakespeare Theater in Gdansk, where performances from the Kyiv Franka Theater ("Eric XIV" and "Maidan Diaries"), the Golden Gate Theater ("Stalkers") and the Kharkiv Theater "Precious Flowers" ("Precious Flowers") were shown Red")
The building was erected on the site of a XNUMXth-century theater known as the Fencing School, where English traveling artists performed works of English Renaissance theater. The new theater is not its exact copy, but in its architecture, which clearly stands out among the surrounding buildings, the voices of past eras are heard. The outside is unusual Gothic shapes and black color, and the inside is the interior of an old wooden theater.
Shakespeare Theater in Gdańsk. Image source: Locals.md
To contrast with the city's red tile roofs, the theater's facade is made of Vandersanden's very dark Morvan anthracite hand-formed brick. Just think, 620 bricks had to be made by hand to cover the building! The building impresses with its scale and closedness, characteristic of medieval castles. The impression is enhanced by the buttresses borrowed from the Gothic, referring to the style of the city's historical center. But their role is far from decorative: buttresses reduce the weight of the walls and the additional load created by the roof, stage mechanisms and technical equipment.
Directly under the brick shell of the main block is a performance hall that can accommodate up to 600 people. A unique space changing system is designed here, containing 56 elevators to create different stage configurations. Thanks to this, the actors can exist outside the stage framework set from the beginning. This format allows the viewer to immerse himself in the proposed story as much as possible, to become a participant in it.
An interesting technical innovation of the theater is the sliding roof, which makes it possible to watch plays or performances outdoors in the warm season. The roof itself is also the highest observation deck in Gdańsk and offers a wide panorama of the city. Museums are located in the basement of the theater building.
Hiroshima Reconstruction and new identification of the city after the Second World War
Museum of the Second World War. People like us
The center of Gdańsk gives way to open spaces in the north. A cramped poor district called Vyadrovnia was destroyed in 1945, and later 17 hectares of wasteland next to a quiet canal was donated by the city to a museum project. 127 works participated in the architectural competition for the creation of the World War II museum. In 2010, the jury headed by Daniel Libeskind, a native of Poland, supported the project of the Kwadrat studio.
"The architectural concept assumes that all the evils of war are hidden underground, and the 'light' of hope penetrates inside through a crack," explains museum author Jacek Droshch.
The author of the main idea is Jacek Droshch. He says that the museum consists of “three zones: the past is underground, the present is the square around the building, and the future is the tower, a modern dominant. But, on the other hand, we also wanted to avoid too literal associations and leave quite a lot of freedom in interpretation." As for the 40,5 m high tower, it immediately catches the eye. Jacek believes that this is "a kind of exclamation mark that indicates that there is something important here."
Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. Image source: Dezeen.com
127 works participated in the architectural competition for the creation of the Second World War museum, among which the project of the Kwadrat studio took first place. Image source: Dezeen.com
The building has been compared to a bomb dropped on the ground, but this is more of an emotional perception than a description of the physical form. The monumental but at the same time dynamic body of the museum, defying gravity, is directed upward at a crazy angle, as if breaking out of the square. The museum building has four trapezoidal facades. The curved geometry of the tower is unusual.
But the most dramatic architectural element of the complex is probably the 140-meter-long dividing axis that opens the way to the dungeon. When the visitor descends into the underground space of the museum, the crushing mass of concrete feels like the weight of the world. "The architectural concept assumes that all the evil of war is hidden underground, and the 'light' of hope penetrates inside through a crack," explains Droshch.
The main exposition of the museum is an epic that occupies 20 halls. They are located on either side of the axis of a long corridor, which is itself a gallery of everyday military life. The scenography, created by the Brussels-based company Tempora, includes large-scale installations that recreate whole fragments of the era, such as a street of Polish shops before the war, destroyed facades and the wreckage of a city with a Soviet tank.
The lighting of the entire exhibition is muted, but the light in one room is so bright that the viewer wants to blink: this is an exposition about Hiroshima, in the center of which hangs a replica of the bomb. Installations conveying tragedies make the viewer feel completely overwhelmed by encountering them: a constellation of empty plates symbolizing hunger, a wall of neatly stacked suitcases symbolizing Jewish deportation, a black room called "People Like Us."
The 40,5 m high museum tower is a kind of exclamation mark that attracts the attention of the visitor. Image source: Dezeen.com
The post-war reconstruction of Gdańsk is an example of radical historical reconstruction, when historical objects are preserved only along the streets, and the rest of the buildings are subject to demolition. The goal of this approach is to revive the urban fabric in the shortest possible time, to restore the identity of the cultural environment. Keeping the appearance of historical reconstruction, the new Gdańsk became half fantastic and half pragmatic, tuned to the practical interests of the residents, their comfort and health.
As the city came back to life, it was built as a modern entity. Functionality, which was initially "hidden" behind stylized facades, began to "extrude" more and more often on the outside of buildings. And here we must pay tribute to the special feature of the Poles - the absence of contrived piety to the "spirit of the place". Not afraid to include open new buildings in the historical districts, they were able to develop a new sensuous architectural language, where the modern buildings of Gdańsk do not oppose themselves to the city, but are its natural continuation, the evolution of the architectural tradition.
Read also
Tokyo. Destruction during the Second World War and organic urbanization
