And here on the timeline we reach the time of the Industrial Revolution. Prussian statehood enters the arena of history, and more or less in parallel - the Henckel von Donnersmarck family becomes insanely important to the story. This family, behind the industrialization of Upper Silesia, in cooperation with the imperial power built the power of this region, one of the largest industrial basins in the world of the 19th century. Silesian mines, steel mills and zinc works produced tons of the most valuable strategic goods of the time. To ensure their efficient export, the nascent German state, then an empire, invested (among other things to service the industrial empire of the aforementioned Henckel von Donnersmarck family) a hard-to-imagine fortune in creating a new shipping route - the regulated Oder River. The route began in Gliwice (formerly Gleiwitz). From there, via the artificially created Klodnica (later Gliwice) Canal, smaller barges with coal and metallurgical products departed for the inland port of Kozle (Cosel). Here transshipment to large barges took place. These sailed via Breslau (Wrocław) to Szczecin (Stettin), transporting 3, 4 million tons of cargo per year from Upper Silesia alone. Very profitable cargo, which here met the stream of goods from Berlin and the entire northeastern part of the German inland waterway network. Szczecin handled a total of 8 million tons of goods (annually, before World War II).
It was a huge business. When we add to the Szczecin port the huge steel mill, probably the only one on the Baltic Sea, which of course also belonged to the Henckel von Donnersmarck family, we begin to reconstruct the powerful business model that brought Szczecin into a golden era in its history. Coal transported from Upper Silesia most likely met in Stettin with the world's best iron ore imported from Sweden. Here, in as many as three blast furnaces, the highest quality steel was produced, from which, among other things, engine bodies were cast.
Szczecin's harbor skyline is dotted with "live" cranes and cranes
Photo: author
Yes - it was here that the best German steel was forged (and cast), literally and figuratively. Indeed, the economy of the nascent German empire was based on two industrial basins and two key industrial families. While the Rhine basin with the Ruhr was dominated by the Krupp family with its influence, the Oder basin with Upper Silesia and Stettin was ruled by the Henckel von Donnersmarck family, which transformed the entire area into one of the world's most vibrant industrial complexes. And while the memory of Krupp and the Ruhr area survived virtually unscathed, along with the history of the so-called Recovered Territories, the memory of the latter was lost in the abyss of history, falsified by the victors who rewrote it.
We will not understand Szczecin without this memory. For it gives us very special knowledge. It came upon me when I looked at the Szczecin harbor from many different places, especially from Gryfia Island and the deck of a yacht entering the city and harbor from the Baltic side. Well, at the time I was amazed by the skyline of Szczecin. Much richer in the protrusions that diversify the horizon: the shapes of large ships, cranes, cranes and gantry cranes; there seem to be many more of them here than in Gdynia or Gdansk.
The bench explores the motif of one of the symbols of Szczecin - the characteristic "Dźwigozaur", so named by Kasia Nosowska, who, like Krzysztof Jarzyna, also comes from Szczecin
Photo: author
And here we come to the essence of the discovery: in the 19th century and until the 1930s, Szczecin was probably the most economically powerful port on the Baltic Sea. The business power of the Henckel von Donnersmarck family empire was one of the primary sources of the then peak form of the entire Oder River basin region, both Upper Silesia, Wrocław and Szczecin itself. The system there worked in much the same way that the Vistula River basin, as we know it from our official history until the 17th century, functioned in the golden age: at that time Danzig, like a funnel, accumulated the resources of the entire region and became immeasurably richer on the trade of these accumulated goods. And then it declined - along with the dying trade on the Vistula.
The new face of the city (view from the Chrobry Embankment) - Lasztownia Island with the Dźwigosaurs and the Marine Science Center
Photo: author
Meanwhile, the industrial revolution was followed by the prosperity of the Oder River. The Donnersmarck empire was in some respects even more powerful than the Ruhr, for Upper Silesia had comparable potential to it (a fact few realize today), but the Oder basin was a game changer thanks to the crowning industrial port city of the entire system, which was called Stettin. The Henckel von Donnersmarck family controlled entire supply chains thanks to this - and in business, this is strategic chess-mat. Nearly 3,500 inland vessels ran on that Oder River, transporting some of the world's biggest business. And that city of Szczecin was a powerful metropolis - on par with that success. Later, in communist Poland, this great metropolis was reduced to the role of one of forty-nine provincial cities, in addition, probably the worst-connected to the rest of the country and its capital, abandoned in a mental province, crippled historically, and, well, late for the train of change that had left a dozen years earlier with other cities. In a sense, Szczecin was not so much late for that train - it didn't get on it at all.
From this period comes today's afterimage of Szczecin. A great port, a great city, whose wartime and post-war fate stripped it of its previous significance. And the real history fell into oblivion, ba - it was specifically falsified. This happened in two stages: first, after World War I, Poland gained most of Upper Silesia and redirected its production - by means of the new railroad Coal Main Line - to the equally new port of Gdynia, which quickly became No. 1 on the Baltic in terms of transshipments, at the expense of languishing Gdansk and faltering Szczecin, of course. Then, after World War II, Poland took over the rest of Upper Silesia (with Gleiwitz, Hindenburg and Beuthen, i.e., Gliwice, Zabrze and Bytom), the Russians stole the Oder trade fleet, and the previously monstrous logistical structure connecting Upper Silesia via Gliwice to Szczecin gradually began to languish. The city was separated from virtually all of its economic founding myth. The port marginalized, the steel mill declined, the city regressed. Despite its many successes - after all, more than one famous ship or vessel sailed out of Polish Szczecin - it must be remembered that the people who decided the directions of the city and port's development were not fully aware of what they actually faced.
Deprived of cheap coal supplies and cut off from Swedish ore by the Iron Curtain, the steel mill lost quality and strategic sense - attempts to save it were doomed to failure in advance. The port built to handle Upper Silesian production lost it entirely. The shipyards, closely linked to the smelter, the size of the port and the city, and their location on the map of Germany, also completely changed their geopolitical and macroeconomic foundations. Today, the famous keels of proud Polish ferries are rusting in Szczecin's shipyards. Like country, like Hollywood, some mischief-maker would say....
Add to this a look at the map - German Szczecin occupied a completely different place in the world order than Polish Szczecin. The fate of the city was influenced by various events, one of which was certainly the opening of the Kiel Canal in 1895 - goods from Stettin had from now on a 460 (!) kilometer shorter sea route to the rest of Germany, at the same time this route made German trade independent of the Danish straits. It is also worth mentioning here that Stettin was also well connected to the whole of Germany by road, rail and inland waterway, enabling cheap transport of bulk goods and forming the bloodstream of one of the most powerful economies of that world.
Hanza Tower, design: Urbicon
Photo: author
Szczecin in Poland - from that perspective - proved almost meaningless to its existence. As the then British Prime Minister Lloyd George said in 1919 in an extremely condescending tone toward Poland, "The Poles have no sense of organization, no ability to lead and govern. The prime minister is a pianist, the president an idealist without practical ideas [...]. Giving Silesia back to Poland would be equivalent to handing a watch to a monkey."
Sounds pretty ugly, doesn't it? Especially since this "monkey" later very efficiently built Gdynia and the Coal Main Line so that the watch could be used effectively - without having to use the German port of Stettin. But just as most of Upper Silesia went to Poland after World War I, the rest of the system with the Gliwice Canal, Breslau and Stettin was not added to Poland until after World War II. After 1945, the watch was already broken. The whole system stopped working, moreover, there was no point in fixing it: the fleet was gone, the main line to Gdynia was working, and the Soviets could not decide whether to give Szczecin to Poland or to the Germans of the DDR. At that time, the full awareness of that system was lost, the waterway was built up with low bridges, and the development of the region was attempted to be managed - in the absence of the above-described knowledge - in the dark, the victim of which was first and foremost the great steelworks, but also the shipyards and the port, which are to this day incomparable to themselves a century ago.
I know from experience that until a city learns its history, understands its identity - it will not be able to consciously and wisely create its future. That's how it has been with Szczecin so far - the incompatible steel mill was closed down in 2008, after decades of keeping the dying link with Gliwice alive. That Szczecin is no longer there. But there is the Szczecin of today, a city to be understood anew. And there is the Szczecin of the future - a city to be invented today completely from scratch.
A meme city?
We are growing a new Szczecin here, may it be a city to match its golden age - the Oder and the Baltic explain Szczecin, but today this city needs to be invented completely from scratch and told completely differently
Photo: author
So what kind of Szczecin would I see in the future? It really is a great city, as many of my interlocutors ironically summarized it - "a city with potential, ha, ha." Szczecin is also a meme city. The latest installment of the Internet joke about Szczecin "poses this hypothesis that Szczecin does not exist." How aptly it sums up the story described above.
While we were talking about memes, it turned out that the Mother of All Memes, or the cult Internet video from a dozen years ago - "Aaaale urwał!" - originated, of course, in Szczecin (Kusocińskiego Street). And since the criminal world, as we know, is run by the boss of all bosses Krzysztof Jarzyna from Szczecin and "Aaaale urwał!" is from Szczecin - there is something to it. I was reminded of the other famous pram, or "Forfiter," a 2010 video in which a Polish kayaker bravely feeds an alligator on what is probably an American body of water, and immediately a vision of such inflatable rubber green alligators on the Oder River in Szczecin popped into my mind. Divine would be a sight to behold. There is potential in these memes - this energy could be harnessed, transformed - a city with a sense of humor? Szczecin self-ironic? The first Polish city with a distance from itself? Perhaps these are really tempting directions for thinking about building a new Szczecin narrative.
My interlocutors have often pointed out that when a hero in Polish pop culture has to end badly, he usually ends up in Szczecin. If he's lucky, he's still alive, because more often they just find his corpse fished out of the Oder River. Somewhere around Szczecin, that is, nowhere, beyond the event horizon. Knowing all that we already know, we can forge a new, truly magnificent Szczecin.
Herons are all over the water here - these herons, like all of Szczecin, have what is called great untapped potential
Photo: author
"Szczecin stands in a corner because it was naughty." That's what Bartek told me about his city. And I smiled broadly at this rude Szczecin. Yes, this is it! - I thought. The map of Polish cities needs its rebel without a cause, a handsome rascal, a kind of James Dean with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. A bit of a hoodlum, a bit of a sea wolf, a bit of a thug from Goclaw, who takes no prisoners. I feel such a noir-style Szczecin, criminal, a little dark, with mysteries and a difficult, full of puzzles, but extremely appealing past. With nooks and crannies that you are a little afraid to enter. With good music and such a disturbing, but extremely appealing character. Szczecin is that young Holoubek with a parabellum on his hip, with that ballad "Before the Day Rises" resounding in the background.
History at the front, the future at the back; the herring trade was one of the factors shaping Szczecin's former power; a new one is being born before our eyes... I would live
Photo: author
Everything about Szczecin should be rewritten. To plan this completely misunderstood city in Poland from scratch. To finally use the potential of the "city with potential", which at times arouses laughter or irony here.
When we were sailing on the yacht with Bartek and his buddy Marek (another person confirming my observation that it is very easy to bump into a very cool person in Szczecin and immediately make contact with him), I finally saw a city compatible with its officially used brand "Stettin Floating Garden 2050". Stettin viewed from the water, unhurriedly, from all sides, slowly reveals its true nature. It was a beautiful day, I was reminded of the music from the film "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", in our language called "Brother, Where Art Thou?", brilliantly directed by the Coen brothers. Great villainous roles are played there by John Turturro and George Clooney, among others, with brilliant pomade in their hair. I can see such personifications of Stettin, too.
Oder delta like Louisiana - these tiny boxes are tin garages right on the water, very diverse nooks and crannies here
Photo: author
We swam out from behind another island. On the shore some anglers with flasks, rusty tin garages, harbor ruins. Seemingly ugly, but beautiful. Louisiana, chicken," I thought. - I feel like I'm cruising the Mississippi Delta, tangling somewhere around New Orleans. How exciting it all is! Exactly. Because Szczecin is a city with character. Maybe it's a bit of a villain, but you know - in Warsaw the coolest place for some is Praga, and Praga is also such a naughty district. Szczecin in its entirety is such a revir.
All those islands, mostly unused or used chaotically, with no apparent idea. That dismantled steel mill, shipyards with keels of unbuilt Polish ferries, a confused port that itself doesn't quite know where it came from and reflexively reloads something there. A person with an unfavorable attitude, in ugly weather and at an unfavorable time of year, will easily see this place as an urban monstrosity. But taking a different point of view, one will see this Szczecin as a city of incredible possibilities, a wonderful, still somewhat Wild West. Those endless potential waterfronts. That middle class on yachts, cool pubs full of people, lots of signals that this Szczecin is just getting into the game. And once it creates this new version of itself, using the potential of nearby Berlin with its head, it will, in my opinion, amaze the world. Szczecin is only going to retreat
"Beware of propeller" - yes, in Szczecin you have to be careful, because you never know what the naughty city will want to surprise us with....
Photo: author
Szczecin needs to have a good game plan, it needs to make a new opening for itself. The mere slogan "floating garden" and the date "2050" is not enough - although I think it's a pretty sensible signboard. We need to work on filling out the book, for which the city already has a cover ready. The content to be written down is great, but creating a new narrative of the city is an art that requires great skill. It will be interesting to see if such forces, powers and willingness can be found in Szczecin to get the city unleashed in the right direction. This is what I wish for Szczecin, with the hope that my visit and this text will somehow contribute to it.
...Sashaying on a yacht between these ships - something wonderful
Photo credit: Author
Mateusz Zmyślony
Photo: © Author
