Place:Szczecin, Szczecin, Poland

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Szczecin (,  ; Latin: Sedinum or Stetinum) is the capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the German border, it is a major seaport and Poland's seventh-largest city. As of December 2021, the population was 395,513.^[1]

Szczecin is located on the river Oder, south of the Szczecin Lagoon and the Bay of Pomerania. The city is situated along the southwestern shore of Dąbie Lake, on both sides of the Oder and on several large islands between the western and eastern branches of the river. Szczecin is adjacent to the town of Police and is the urban centre of the Szczecin agglomeration, an extended metropolitan area that includes communities in the German states of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Szczecin is the administrative and industrial centre of West Pomeranian Voivodeship and is the site of the University of Szczecin, Pomeranian Medical University, Maritime University, West Pomeranian University of Technology, Szczecin Art Academy, and the see of the Szczecin-Kamień Catholic Archdiocese. From 1999 onwards, Szczecin has served as the site of the headquarters of NATO's Multinational Corps Northeast. The city was a candidate for the European Capital of Culture in 2016.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Middle Ages

The recorded history of Szczecin began in the eighth century, as Vikings and West Slavs settled Pomerania. The West Slavs, or Lechites, erected a new stronghold on the site of the modern castle.^[2] Since the 9th century, the stronghold was fortified and expanded toward the Oder bank. Mieszko I of Poland took control of Pomerania during the Early Middle Ages and the region became part of Poland in the 10th century. However, already Mieszko II Lambert (1025 ~ 1034) effectively lost control over the area and had to accept German suzerainty over the area of the Oder lagoon. Subsequent Polish rulers, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Liutician federation all aimed to control the territory.^[3]

After the decline of the neighbouring regional centre Wolin in the 12th century, the city became one of the more important and powerful seaports of the Baltic Sea.

In a campaign in the winter of 1121–1122, Bolesław III Wrymouth, the Duke of Poland, gained control of the region, including the city of Szczecin and its stronghold.^[3] The inhabitants were Christianised^[3] by two missions of Bishop Otto of Bamberg in 1124 and 1128. At this time, the first Christian church of Saints Peter and Paul was erected. The Poles' minted coins were commonly used in trade in this period.^[3] The population of the city at that time is estimated to be at around 5,000–9,000 people.

Polish rule ended with Boleslaw's death in 1138. During the Wendish Crusade in 1147, a contingent led by the German margrave Albert the Bear, an enemy of Slavic presence in the region,^[3] papal legate, bishop Anselm of Havelberg and Konrad of Meissen besieged the town. There, a Polish contingent supplied by Mieszko III the Old joined the crusaders.^[4][5] However, the citizens had placed crosses around the fortifications, indicating they already had been Christianised.^[3] Duke Ratibor I of Pomerania, negotiated the disbanding of the crusading forces.^[4][5]

After the Battle of Verchen in 1164, Szczecin duke Bogusław I, Duke of Pomerania became a vassal of the Duchy of Saxony's Henry the Lion. In 1173, Szczecin castellan Wartislaw II, could not resist a Danish attack and became vassal of Denmark.^[6] In 1181, Bogusław became a vassal of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1185, Bogusław again became a Danish vassal.^[7] Despite falling under foreign suzerainty, local dukes maintained close ties with the fragmented Polish realm, and future Polish monarch Władysław III Spindleshanks stayed at the local court of Duke Bogusław I in 1186, on behalf of his father, Duke of Greater Poland Mieszko III the Old, who also periodically was the High Duke of Poland. Following a conflict between his heirs and Canute VI of Denmark, the settlement was destroyed in 1189, but the fortress was reconstructed and manned with a Danish force in 1190. While the empire restored its superiority over the Duchy of Pomerania in the Battle of Bornhöved in 1227,^[7] Szczecin was one of two bridgeheads remaining under Danish control (until 1235; Wolgast until 1241/43 or 1250).^[8]

In the second half of the 12th century, a group of German tradesmen ("multus populus Teutonicorum" from various parts of the Holy Roman Empire) settled in the city around St.Jacob's Church, which was donated in 1180^[9] by Beringer, a trader from Bamberg, and consecrated in 1187.^[9] Hohenkrug (now in Szczecin Struga) was the first village in the Duchy of Pomerania that was clearly recorded as German (villa teutonicorum) in 1173. Ostsiedlung accelerated in Pomerania during the 13th century. Duke Barnim I of Pomerania granted Szczecin a local government charter in 1237, separating the German settlement from the Slavic community settled around the St. Nicholas Church in the neighbourhood of Kessin. In the charter, the Slavs were put under Germanic jurisdiction.

When Barnim granted Szczecin Magdeburg rights in 1243, part of the Slavic settlement was reconstructed. The duke had to promise to level the burgh in 1249. Most Slavic inhabitants were resettled to two new suburbs north and south of the town.

In 1249, Barnim I also granted Magdeburg town privileges to the town of Damm (also known as Altdamm) on the eastern bank of the Oder. Damm merged with neighbouring Szczecin on 15October 1939 and is now the Dąbie neighbourhood. This town had been built on the site of a former Pomeranian burg, "Vadam" or "Dambe", which Boleslaw had destroyed during his 1121 campaign.^[10]

On 2 December 1261, Barnim I allowed Jewish settlement in Szczecin in accordance with the Magdeburg law, in a privilege renewed in 1308 and 1371. The Jewish Jordan family was granted citizenship in 1325, but none of the 22 Jews allowed to settle in the duchy in 1481 lived in the city, and in 1492, all Jews in the duchy were ordered to convert to Christianity or leavethis order remained effective throughout the rest of the Griffin era.^[11]

In 1273, in Szczecin duke of Poznań and future King of Poland Przemysł II married princess Ludgarda, granddaughter of Barnim I, Duke of Pomerania, in order to strengthen the alliance between the two rulers.

Szczecin was part of the federation of Wendish towns, a predecessor of the Hanseatic League, in 1283. The city prospered due to its participation in the Baltic Sea trade, primarily with herring, grain, and timber; craftsmanship also prospered, and more than forty guilds were established in the city.^[12] The far-reaching autonomy granted by the House of Griffins was in part reduced when the dukes reclaimed Stettin as their main residence in the late 15th century.^[12] The anti-Slavic policies of German merchants and craftsmen intensified in this period, resulting in measures such as bans on people of Slavic descent joining craft guilds, a doubling of customs tax for Slavic merchants, and bans against public usage of their native language.^[3] The more prosperous Slavic citizens were forcibly stripped of their possessions, which were then handed over to Germans.^[3] In 1514, the guild of tailors added a Wendenparagraph to its statutes, banning Slavs.

While not as heavily affected by medieval witchhunts as other regions of the empire, there are reports of the burning of three women and one man convicted of witchcraft in 1538.

In 1570, during the reign of John Frederick, Duke of Pomerania, a congress was held at Stettin ending the Northern Seven Years' War. During the war, Stettin had tended to side with Denmark, while Stralsund tended toward Swedenas a whole, however, the Duchy of Pomerania tried to maintain neutrality. Nevertheless, a Landtag that had met in Stettin in 1563 introduced a sixfold rise in real estate taxes to finance the raising of a mercenary army for the duchy's defence.^[13] Johann Friedrich also succeeded in elevating Stettin to one of only three places allowed to coin money in the Upper Saxon Circle of the Holy Roman Empire, the other two places being Leipzig and Berlin. Bogislaw XIV, who resided in Stettin beginning in 1620, became the sole ruler and Griffin duke when Philipp Julius, Duke of Pomerania died in 1625. Before the Thirty Years' War reached Pomerania, the city, as well as the entire duchy, declined economically due to the decrease in importance of the Hanseatic League and a conflict between Stettin and Frankfurt an der Oder.

17th to 18th centuries

Following the Treaty of Stettin of 1630, the town (along with most of Pomerania) was allied to and occupied by the Swedish Empire, which managed to keep the western parts of Pomerania after the death of BogislawXIV in 1637. From the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Stettin became the Capital of Swedish Pomerania. Stettin was turned into a major Swedish fortress, which was repeatedly besieged in subsequent wars.^[14] The next Treaty of Stettin (1653) did not change this, but due to the downfall of the Swedish Empire after Charles XII, the city went to Prussia in 1720.^[15] Instead Stralsund became Capital of the last remaining parts of Swedish Pomerania 1720–1815.

The city was on the path of Polish forces led by Hetman Stefan Czarniecki moving from Denmark during the Second Northern War. Czarniecki who led his forces to the city, is today mentioned in the Polish anthem, and numerous locations in the city honour his name.

Wars inhibited the city's economic prosperity, which had undergone a deep crisis during the devastation of the Thirty Years' War and was further impeded by the new Swedish-Brandenburg-Prussian frontier, cutting Stettin off from its traditional Farther Pomeranian hinterland. Due to a Plague during the Great Northern War, the city's population dropped from 6,000 people in 1709 to 4,000 in 1711. In 1720, after the Great Northern War, Sweden was forced to cede the city to King Frederick William I of Prussia. Stettin was made the capital city of the Prussian Pomeranian province, since 1815 reorganised as the Province of Pomerania. In 1816, the city had 26,000 inhabitants.

The Prussian administration deprived the city of its right to administrative autonomy, abolished guild privileges as well as its status as a staple town, and subsidised manufacturers.^[14] Also, colonists were settled in the city, primarily French Huguenots.^[14] The French established a prosperous community, greatly contributed to the city's economic revival, and were treated with reluctance by the German burghers and city authorities.

19th to 20th centuries

In October 1806, during the War of the Fourth Coalition, believing that he was facing a much larger force, and after receiving a threat of harsh treatment of the city, the Prussian commander Lieutenant General Friedrich von Romberg agreed to surrender the city to the French led by General Lasalle. In fact, Lasalle had only 800 men against vonRomberg's 5,300 men. In March 1809 Romberg was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for giving up Stettin without a fight. In 1809, also Polish troops were stationed in the city, while the French remained until 1813.

From 1683 to 1812, one Jew was permitted to reside in Stettin, and an additional Jew was allowed to spend a night in the city in case of "urgent business".^[11] These permissions were repeatedly withdrawn between 1691 and 1716, also between 1726 and 1730 although else the Swedish regulation was continued by the Prussian administration.^[11] Only after the Prussian Edict of Emancipation of 11March 1812, which granted Prussian citizenship to all Jews living in the kingdom, did a Jewish community emerge in Stettin, with the first Jews settling in the town in 1814.^[11] Construction of a synagogue started in 1834; the community also owned a religious and a secular school, an orphanage since 1855, and a retirement home since 1893. The Jewish community had between 1,000 and 1,200 members by 1873 and between 2,800 and 3,000 members by 192728.^[16] These numbers dropped to 2,701 in 1930 and to 2,322 in late 1934.^[16]

After the Franco Prussian war of 1870–1871, 1,700 French POWs were imprisoned there in deplorable conditions, resulting in the death of 600 of them; after the Second World War monuments in their memory were built by the Polish authorities.

Until 1873, Stettin remained a fortress.^[14] When part of the defensive structures were levelled, a new neighbourhood, Neustadt ("New Town") as well as water pipes, sewerage and drainage, and gas works were built to meet the demands of the growing population.^[14]

Stettin developed into a major Prussian port and became part of the German Empire in 1871. While most of the province retained its agrarian character, Stettin was industrialised, and its population rose from 27,000 in 1813 to 210,000 in 1900 and 255,500 in 1925. Major industries that flourished in Stettin from 1840 were shipbuilding, chemical and food industries, and machinery construction.^[14] Starting in 1843, Stettin became connected to the major German and Pomeranian cities by railways, and the water connection to the Bay of Pomerania was enhanced by the construction of the Kaiserfahrt (now Piast) canal.^[14] The city was also a scientific centre; for example, it was home to the Entomological Society of Stettin.

On 20 October 1890, some of the city's Poles created the "Society of Polish-Catholic Workers" in the city, one of the first Polish organisations. In 1897, the city's ship works began the construction of the pre-dreadnought battleship Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. In 1914, before World WarI, the Polish community in the city numbered over 3,000 people,^[3] contributing about 2% of the population.^[17] These were primarily industrial workers and their families who came from the Poznań (Posen) area and a few local wealthy industrialists and merchants. Among them was Kazimierz Pruszak, director of the Gollnow industrial works and a Polish patriot, who predicted the eventual "return" of Szczecin to Poland.^[3]

During the interwar period, Stettin was Weimar Germany's largest port on the Baltic Sea, and her third-largest port after Hamburg and Bremen. Cars of the Stoewer automobile company were produced in Stettin from 1899 to 1945. By 1939, the Reichsautobahn BerlinStettin was completed.^[14]

Stettin played a major role as an entrepôt in the development of the Scottish herring trade with the Continent, peaking at an annual export of more than 400,000 barrels in 1885, 1894 and 1898. Trade flourished till the outbreak of the First World War and resumed on a reduced scale during the years between the wars.

In the March 1933 German elections to the Reichstag, the Nazis and German nationalists from the German National People's Party (or DNVP) won most of the votes in the city, together winning 98,626 of 165,331 votes (59.3%), with the NSDAP getting 79,729 (47.9%) and the DNVP 18,897 (11.4%).

In 1935, the Wehrmacht made Stettin the headquarters for WehrkreisII, which controlled the military units in all of Mecklenburg and Pomerania. It was also the area headquarters for units stationed at StettinI and II; Swinemünde; Greifswald; and Stralsund.

In the interwar period, the Polish minority numbered 2,000 people,^[3] less than 1% of the cities population at that time.^[17] A number of Poles were members of the Union of Poles in Germany (ZPN), which was active in the city from 1924. A Polish consulate was located in the city between 1925 and 1939. On the initiative of the consulate^[18] and ZPN activist Maksymilian Golisz, a number of Polish institutions were established, e.g., a Polish Scout team and a Polish school.^[3][18] German historian Musekamp writes, "however, only very few Poles were active in these institutions, which for the most part were headed by employees of the [Polish] consulate."^[19] The withdrawal of the consulate from these institutions led to a general decline of these activities, which were in part upheld by Golisz and Aleksander Omieczyński. Intensified repressions by the Nazis,^[3][20] who exaggerated the Polish activities to propagate an infiltration,^[19] led to the closing of the school.^[3] In 1938, the head of Szczecin's Union of Poles unit, Stanisław Borkowski, was imprisoned in Oranienburg.^[3] In 1939, all Polish organisations in Stettin were disbanded by the German authorities.^[3] Golisz and Omieczyński were murdered during the war.^[3] After the defeat of Nazi Germany, a street was named after Golisz.^[19] According to German historian Jan Musekamp, the activities of the Polish pre-war organizations were exaggerated after World War II for propaganda purposes.

World War II

During World War II, Stettin was the base for the German 2nd Motorised Infantry Division, which cut across the Polish Corridor and was later used in 1940 as an embarkation point for Operation Weserübung, Germany's assault on Denmark and Norway.

On 15 October 1939, neighbouring municipalities were joined to Stettin, creating Groß-Stettin, with about 380,000 inhabitants, in 1940. The city had become the third-largest German city by area, after Berlin and Hamburg.

As the war started, the number of non-Germans in the city increased as slave workers were brought in. The first transports came in 1939 from Bydgoszcz, Toruń and Łódź. They were mainly used in a synthetic silk factory near Stettin.^[3] The next wave of slave workers was brought in 1940, in addition to PoWs who were used for work in the agricultural industry.^[3] According to German police reports from 1940, 15,000 Polish slave workers lived within the city.^[3]

During the war, 135 forced labour camps for slave workers were established in the city. Most of the 25,000 slave workers were Poles, but Czechs, Italians, Frenchmen and Belgians, as well as Dutch citizens, were also enslaved in the camps.^[3] A Nazi prison was also operated in the city, with forced labour subcamps in the region.

In February 1940, the Jews of Stettin were deported to the Lublin reservation. International press reports emerged, describing how the Nazis forced Jews, regardless of age, condition and gender, to sign away all property and loaded them onto trains headed to the camp, escorted by members of the SA and SS. Due to publicity given to the event, German institutions ordered such future actions to be made in a way unlikely to attract public notice. The action was the first deportation of Jews from prewar territory in Nazi Germany.

Allied air raids in 1944 and heavy fighting between the German and Soviet armies destroyed 65% of Stettin's buildings and almost all of the city centre, the seaport, and local industries. Polish Home Army intelligence assisted in pinpointing targets for Allied bombing in the area of Stettin. The city itself was covered by the Home Army's "Bałtyk" structure, and Polish resistance infiltrated Stettin's naval yards. Other activities of the resistance consisted of smuggling people to Sweden.

The Soviet Red Army captured the city on 26April 1945. While the majority of the almost 400,000 inhabitants had left the city, between 6,000 and 20,000 inhabitants remained in late April.

On 28 April 1945 Polish authorities tried to gain control,^[3][21] but in the following month, the Polish administration was twice forced to leave. Finally the permanent handover occurred on 5July 1945. In the meantime, part of the German population had returned, believing it might become part of the Soviet occupation zone of Germany. The Soviet authorities had already appointed the German Communists Erich Spiegel and Erich Wiesner as mayors. Stettin is located mostly west of the Oder river, which was expected to become Poland's new western border, placing Stettin in East Germany. This would have been in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement between the victorious Allied Powers, which envisaged the new border to be in "a line running from the Baltic Sea immediately west of Swinemünde, and thence along the Oder River[...]". Because of the returnees, the German population of the town swelled to 84,000.^[22] The mortality rate was at 20%, primarily due to starvation. However, Stettin and the mouth of the Oder River became Polish on 5July 1945, as had been decided in a treaty signed on 26July 1944 between the Soviet Union and the Soviet-controlled Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) (also known as "the Lublin Poles", as contrasted with the London-based Polish government-in-exile).^[3] On 4October 1945, the decisive land border of Poland was established west of the 1945 line,^[3] and the city was renamed to its historic Polish name Szczecin, but the area excluded the Police area, the Oder river itself, and the port of Szczecin, which remained under Soviet administration.^[23] The Oder river was handed over to Polish administration in September 1946, followed by the port between February 1946 and May 1954.^[23]

Post-war

While in 1945 the number of pre-war inhabitants dropped to 57,215 on 31 October 1945, the systematic expulsion of Germans started on 22 February 1946 and continued until late 1947, in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement. In December 1946 about 17,000 German inhabitants remained, while the number of Poles living in the city reached 100,000.^[21] To ease the tensions between settlers from different regions, and help overcome fear caused by the continued presence of the Soviet troops, a special event was organised in April 1946 with 50,000 visitors in the partly destroyed city centre. Settlers from Central Poland made up about 70% of Szczecin's new population. In addition to Poles, Ukrainians from Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union settled there.^[24] Also Poles repatriated from Harbin, China and Greeks, refugees of the Greek Civil War, settled in Szczecin in the following years. In 1945 and 1946, the city was the starting point of the northern route used by the Jewish underground organisation Brichah to channel Jewish displaced persons from Central and Eastern Europe to the American occupation zone.

Szczecin was rebuilt, and the city's industry was expanded. At the same time, Szczecin became a major Polish industrial centre and an important seaport (particularly for Silesian coal) for Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. Cultural expansion was accompanied by a campaign resulting in the "removal of all German traces". In 1946, Winston Churchill prominently mentioned the city in his Iron Curtain speech: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent".

The city witnessed anti-communist revolts in 1970 and 1980. On August 30, 1980, first of the four August Agreements, which led to the first legalisation of the trade union Solidarity, was signed in Szczecin.^[25] The introduction of martial law in December 1981 met with a strike by the dockworkers of Szczecin shipyard, joined by other factories and workplaces in a general strike. All these were suppressed by the authorities. Pope John Paul II visited the city on 11June 1987. Another wave of strikes in Szczecin broke out in 1988 and 1989, which eventually led to the Round Table Agreement and first semi-free elections in post-war Poland.

Szczecin has been the capital of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship since 1999.

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