At the beginning of the 19th century, Pomerania for the most part formed a province of the Prussian state. Only the north-western borderlands, a small fragment of the former Duchy of Pomerania (Western Pomerania north of the Peene River, including the island of Rügen), remained under Swedish rule. In terms of its political system, Prussian…
From seasonal labor to forced exploitation for the economy of the Third Reich The labor market in the German Empire, proclaimed in 1871, was characterized by a distinct wage gap between the western and eastern parts of the country, as well as between urban and rural areas. The rural depopulation (Landflucht), which escalated…
On July 13, 1988, Szczecin was visited by the top leader of the USSR: Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. At that time, he was one of the most recognizable and widely discussed world leaders. The reasons for Gorbachev’s popularity lay in his…
On June 11, 1987, Szczecin was on the route of John Paul II’s third pilgrimage to Poland. The pope’s only visit to the city was a major religious celebration and at the same time a massive organizational undertaking. The election of Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyła as pope in 1978 was met in Poland with…
The birthplace of the V1 and V2 rockets. History and the politics of memory regarding World War II Peenemünde is not just one of many charming tourist municipalities on the island of Usedom in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Until the mid-1930s, this small fishing village—known only as the place where Swedish King Gustavus…
Dynastic policy The reign of Duke Bogusław X, who died in 1523, was a turning point—a transition from the medieval monarchy to the modern state and Renaissance culture (also in its political dimension). He had nine legitimate children: Christopher (d. c. 1521), Anne (b. 1491/1492, d. 1550), George (1493–1531), Casimir (1494–1518), Elizabeth (d. before 1518),…
Augustine was a monk at the Augustinian monastery in Stargard. In older literature, he was referred to as Angelus; however, more recent research indicates that the more accurate form of his name is Augustine. His work, which has survived to our day through copies included in later records, is the so-called Protocol (Protocollum), written in…
There are few figures in the medieval history of Western Pomerania of such stature as the King of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and Duke of Słupsk, Eric of Pomerania. His life embodies nearly everything that fate can prepare for a human being, beginning with his almost miraculous discovery in childhood by the Danish Queen Margaret…
The phenomenon of escapes from communist Poland accompanied the regime almost from its inception. In this context, the years 1945–1949 constituted a particular period in Western Pomerania. It was a time of mass migrations within the newly demarcated state borders and the construction of the structures of the new authorities. The specific chaos accompanying these…
Stargard’s Church of St. Mary, which currently serves as a collegiate church, is the most important Late Gothic monument of Western Pomerania. Its architecture, despite the near-total destruction of the Old Town, did not suffer too severely, and the “renovation of the century” carried out in recent years restored the splendor of its re-Gothicization conducted…
