Wrzeszcz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wrzeszcz (pronounced: 
['vʒɛʃʧ], formerly German: Langfuhr) is one of the boroughs of the Northern Polish city of Gdańsk (Danzig). With a population of more than 65,000 in an area of 9.9 km² (population density 6,622), Wrzeszcz is the most populous part of Gdańsk.
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[edit] History
The name Wrzeszcz comes from the old name of the area - Wrzost, which derives from wrzos, a Polish word for heather. The area of modern Wrzeszcz used to be forest and fields of heather. Historical sources mention Vriezst in 1261 AD, and by the end of the 13th century the Cistercian Monks of Oliwa owned four or five water mills on the Strieß (Strzyża), the creek running through Wrzeszcz.
In 1412 AD, this suburban village was granted to Danzig city councillor Gerd von der Beke, an ally of the Teutonic Knights. The place was know was Langfuhr for centuries to come.
Early area landowners included the Bischof family, who held the increasingly residential settlement in the late 16th century and early 17th century, and the Köhne family, which started acquiring possessions in the Langfuhr area in 1616 AD. Danzig patrician Zacharias Zappio acquired most of the land between today's Slowackiego and Do Studzienki streets and built a palace there. When King John III Sobieski visited the palace in 1677 AD, the little valley where the palace was located was renamed Königstal (Dolina Krolewska), or King's Valley, to commemorate the occasion. Strictly speaking, in the 17th century the name Langfuhr referred only to a small market square, 130 m by 35 m, on what today is known as Aleja Grunwaldzka (Grunwald Avenue).
Between 1767 and 1770, Danzig mayor Daniel Gralath made a personal project of turning the two kilometers of old road between Langfuhr and Danzig proper into the four-lane, tree-lined Grand Avenue, as it was then renamed. Each lane of the avenue was lined by 350 trees imported from the Netherlands, and the entire cost of the project was the immense sum (for the time) of 100,000 guilders.
In the 18th century, residential construction aimed at the wealthy city folk took precedence. The erected residences were mostly classical style with beautiful gardens and the obligatory tree-lined driveways. By 1804, Langfuhr had about 900 residents, most of them working in breweries, distilleries, retailers, and factories making a kind of ash used to bleach cloth (wajdaz[citation needed] in Polish).
On 6 December 1807, under French occupation, the Danzig-Prussian convention made the town part of the Free City of Danzig (Napoleonic). After the Congress of Vienna of 1814/5, Danzig was reincorporated into Prussia.
From the mid-19th century onwards, Langfuhr grew to become a fashionable and wealthy borough with beautifully decorated city villas for wealthier residents and even spacious accommodation for local labourers. In 1872, Langfuhr was joined to Danzig by a horse-drawn tram along the Grand Avenue.
In 1904, the Königliche Technische Hochschule zu Danzig Grand Hall was built, soon followed by the city hospital, which is now the medical academy.
[edit] Effects of World War II
World War II was relatively kind to the buildings of Langfuhr, as only a few suffered damage, but not to its citizens. After Flight and expulsion of Germans during and after WWII, the town was put under Polish administration and renamed to Wrzeszcz. The preservation of its German history had low priority, the communist regime's postwar policy of eradicating evidence of the borough's wealthy capitalists was destructive to the beautiful buildings as they were allowed to fall into disrepair. Owners were evicted and their houses separated into tiny apartments which were then leased to people without means to maintain them.
Buildings that survived in good repair include the consulates of Germany, China, and several other countries, as well as some houses whose owners resisted eviction during the communist era.
[edit] Present
The borough is now developing rapidly. A great deal of commercial activity (particularly banking and shopping) now takes place in Wrzeszcz. A number of international firms such as Citibank, ING Bank, Fortis Bank, and Shell have chosen to locate their offices there rather than in the Gdansk city center, large shopping centers such as Galeria Bałtycka and Centrum Handlowe Manhattan are opening along Grunwaldzka Street, and extensive military properties have been sold to housing developers. Traffic on Słowackiego and Grunwaldzka is jammed daily.
[edit] Famous people
German author Günter Grass was born in 1927 when the area, part of the Free City of Danzig, still retained its German name, Langfuhr. It is the setting of two of his early novels of the Danziger Trilogie, "The Tin Drum" (1959) and "Dog Years" (1963).
[edit] Points of interest
- Technical University of Gdansk
- Medical University of Gdańsk
- Opera Bałtycka Opera Bałtycka
- Centrum Handlowe Manhattan shopping center
- Galeria Bałtycka shopping center
- Gdańsk Wrzeszcz (PKP station) Train station
- Forest Theatre (Teatr Leśny)
- Johannes Gutenberg monument, founded 22 June 1890 at Gutenberghain [1]
- New Synagogue
[edit] External links
- Wrzeszcz district
- Technical University of Gdansk
- Medical University of Gdańsk
- Tricity
- Old pictures of Langfuhr
- Centrum Handlowe Manhattan
- Galeria Bałtycka
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