Because Wroclaw is really a city—an archipelago in full swing. This historic Breslau lies entirely on islands. Twelve islands—although they are counted differently, because the river has often changed its course and there are many artificial channels—are a total urban game changer. The entire urban planning of Wroclaw emerges from this river twisted here immeasurably, multiplied. Islands—Bielarska, Daliowa, Tamka, Ostrów Tumski, Słodowa, Młyńska, Piasek, Kępa Mieszczańska—this is the truest archipelago, like Fiji or Hawaii! And you can also consider other parts and districts of the city as islands (historically or practically, thanks to the numerous existing canals).
one of Wroclaw's marinas—Marina Topacz
© Wroclaw City Hall
I didn't know this, I didn't understand that a city on islands is completely different from a regular city on the mainland. Wroclaw floats, it floats on water. The Oder River does not simply flow through the city here, like the Vistula River flows through Krakow or Warsaw: The Oder in Wroclaw creates an alternative reality.
Of course I knew that Breslau was the former German Breslau, and of course I also knew that it was a city on islands, with a mass of bridges and among the branches of the Oder and its tributaries. I thought I knew Breslau almost well. But that „almost” makes a big difference. The difference between theory and practice turned out to be colossal.
The first day was a dazzling act of discovering Breslau as the most important city in the past from the perspective of the Prussian state. Yes! For Germans, Breslau was—according to my hypothesis—the most important city of Prussia, and we do not understand how German statehood, which was essentially very young, was formed. For many years, Germany was a conglomeration of hundreds if not thousands of more or less independent principalities, dukedoms, free cities and self-governing territories, in theory subject to the authority of the emperor. Modern German statehood derives from the Prussian concept of a state in which German was to be the dominant language.
And what was Prussia originally? It consisted of so-called Prussia, Brandenburg, and after the partitions and wars—also Wielkopolska and Silesia. This original Prussia was almost half Polish-speaking, had a very young, fresh capital in Berlin and several German urban centers of key cultural and economic importance with a longer tradition than the capital. Leading among them were Königsberg, and to some extent Danzig, but the only super heavyweight competitor here was our Breslau. Breslau was the Prussian city with, in my opinion, the greatest civilizational significance. If one were to look for equivalents in Polish history, one could compare the Breslau-Berlin pair to the Krakow-Warsaw pair. When it came down to it, Breslau provided Berlin with cadres and intellectual elites, just as Krakow provided Warsaw after independence. Of course, to some detriment to the cities—the givers of their potentials. This is because what populated both capitals had to leave their home ecosystems. This testifies to the actual role these centers played in the past in the spaces of Polish and German culture and national imagination.
When Poland lost Vilnius and Lvov—the two most important cities for the Polish soul and heart—Germany lost Breslau, a city that played a similar role in their culture and identity. This city was a colossal trauma for Germans, a punishment for the war, a loss that could not be fully gotten over. Rather, there is something of a social displacement effect at work here; after so many years, moreover, the wound is healing—most of those who could remember are no longer alive. Breslau was to Germany a bit like Jerusalem to the believers. And that's why the defense of Festung Breslau was so fierce and long—Hitler had the most important city defended to the last soldier. In order to make such a defense possible, the Breslau crew, surrounded on all sides, built a special airfield in the vicinity of today's Grunwald Square in the center of the city, at the expense of demolishing scores of buildings, thus enabling it to be supplied by the air bridge that the Luftwaffe maintained from April to May 1945. Breslau capitulated only a week after Hitler's death.
