Portal:Poland

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Welcome to the Poland Portal — Witaj w Portalu o Polsce

Cityscape of Kraków, Poland's former capital

Poland is a country in Central Europe, bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic to the southwest, Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, Lithuania to the northeast, and the Baltic Sea and Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast to the north. It is an ancient nation whose history as a state began near the middle of the 10th century. Its golden age occurred in the 16th century when it united with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to form the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the following century, the strengthening of the gentry and internal disorders weakened the nation. In a series of agreements in the late 18th century, Russia, Prussia and Austria partitioned Poland amongst themselves. It regained independence as the Second Polish Republic in the aftermath of World War I only to lose it again when it was occupied by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in World War II. The nation lost over six million citizens in the war, following which it emerged as the communist Polish People's Republic under strong Soviet influence within the Eastern Bloc. A westward border shift followed by forced population transfers after the war turned a once multiethnic country into a mostly homogeneous nation state. Labor turmoil in 1980 led to the formation of the independent trade union called Solidarity (Solidarność) that over time became a political force which by 1990 had swept parliamentary elections and the presidency. A shock therapy program during the early 1990s enabled the country to transform its economy into one of the most robust in Central Europe. With its transformation to a democratic, market-oriented country completed, Poland joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004, but has experienced a constitutional crisis and democratic backsliding since 2015.

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From Polish history – show another

Life cycle of the Polish cochineal in Johann Philipp Breyne's Historia naturalis Cocci Radicum... (1731)

Ancient Slavs developed a method of obtaining crimson dye from Polish cochineal, a scale insect, whose larvae are dark red sessile parasites living on the roots of various herbs growing on the sandy soils of Central Europe. Despite the labor-intensive process of harvesting the larvae and a relatively modest yield, the dye continued to be a highly sought-after commodity and a popular alternative to kermes throughout the Middle Ages until it was superseded by Mexican cochineal in the 16th century. The insects were killed with boiling water or vinegar and dried in the sun or in an oven, ground, and dissolved in sourdough or in light rye beer called kvass in order to remove fat. The extract could then be used for dyeing silk, wool, cotton or linen. In the 15th–16th centuries, along with grain, timber and salt, it was one of Poland's and Lithuania's chief exports, mainly to southern Germany and northern Italy as well as to France, England, the Ottoman Empire and Armenia. Its historical importance is still reflected in most modern Slavic languages where the words for the color red and for June – the month of Polish cochineal harvest – both derive from the Proto-Slavic *čьrvь, meaning "a worm" or "larva". (Full article...)

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Zishe Breitbart

Credit: National Photo Co.

Siegmund "Zishe" Breitbart, shown here pulling a heavy weight using only his teeth, was a Polish-Jewish strongman and circus performer who was known as the "Strongest Man in the World" during the 1920s. He was widely popular in both Europe and the U.S., but died at the age of 32 after an accident during a performance.

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... that Mikołaj Zyblikiewicz (pictured), the City President of Kraków, obtained Emperor Franz Joseph's approval for saving the royal Wawel Castle from further decay by proposing to make it an imperial residence in Poland's former capital?
... that Polish Jewish resistance fighter Vladka Meed was a primary source for the 2001 television movie Uprising?
... that the Christmas Midnight Mass is known in Polish as pasterka, or "shepherds' mass"?

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Jan Matejko's self-portrait

Jan Matejko (1838–1893) was a Polish painter and academic. He is best known for large canvases devoted to major figures and events in Polish history, such as Stańczyk, Skarga's Sermon, Rejtan, Union of Lublin, Battle of Grunwald, Prussian Homage and Constitution of 3 May. His other works include imaginary portraits of Polish monarchs and mural paintings in Kraków's St. Mary's Basilica. With his style described as "colourful, detailed and imaginative", he reminded Poles of their nation's former glory at a time when it lacked political independence. His vision of national history has been propagated in Polish textbooks to this day. In 1872, Matejko became a rector of the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts, which now bears his name. Among his students were such artists as Maurycy Gottlieb, Jacek Malczewski, Józef Mehoffer and Stanisław Wyspiański. (Full article...)

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Bydgoszcz granaries

Bydgoszcz is a city in northern Poland, straddling the confluence of the Vistula River and its left-bank tributary, the Brda. It is the eighth-largest city in Poland and the co-capital, with Toruń, of the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship. Bydgoszcz is an architecturally rich city, with gothic, neo-gothic, neo-baroque, neoclassicist, modernist and Art Nouveau styles present, for which it has earned the nickname "Little Berlin". The notable granaries on Mill Island and along the riverside belong to one of the most recognized timber-framed landmarks in Poland. (Full article...)

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Poland now

Recent events

On 21 May, Jan A.P. Kaczmarek (pictured), a composer best known for writing film scores, died at the age of 71.
On 10 May, an unusually spectacular aurora borealis was observed in large parts of Poland due to an intense solar storm.
On 8 April, local elections were held throughout Poland, with run-off votes in some municipalities held on 21 April.
On 9 January, police entered the Presidential Palace in Warsaw to arrest former Interior Minister Mariusz Kamiński (Law and Justice party) and his former deputy, both of whom had been sentenced to two year's jail for abuse of power. On 23 January, they were both were pardoned by the President Andrzej Duda.