My dear Friend of Democracy,
Yesterday, I got on a train in Berlin and travelled a few hundred kilometres to the east.
I am now in the Polish city of Gdynia. It is located on the Baltic Sea and is part of a metropolitan area with a million people (in addition to Gdynia, Gdansk and Sopot are part of that area, also called Tri-City).
Like many European cities, Gdynia has undergone fundamental changes over the past century.
One hundred years ago, Gdynia was a fishing village and a little tourist resort. The reorganization of the European map after the First World War made the neighbouring city of Gdansk a city-state with no national affiliation to Poland (isn't this a crazy thing from today's point of view?), and the newly founded Second Republic of Poland suddenly lacked an international port. So, one was built next door, in Gdynia.
(By the way, The First Polish Republic was founded on 3 May 1791 but vanished from the landscape only four years later.)
So, Gdynia became a big city because of the particular situation in Gdansk. And it was mainly built in the 1920s and 1930s. That is why the city is full of so-called Modern architecture.
You can learn a lot about society at that time by studying this kind of architecture.
The buildings are simple and functional, with no frills. The focus is on living comfort, and the plain architecture reflects the increasing equality of social groups.
Today’s Gdynia (with a population of about 250.000) is an open-air museum about the short period when Poland was a Republic; to be exact, it existed from 7 October 1918 to 6 October 1939. During that time, Poland was an independent state that embodied modern life.
However, the architecture of Gdynia is not specific to the place (it stands out because of the quantity since almost the entire city of Gdynia was built at that time). Many buildings all around Europe were constructed in this way at the time. National characteristics and nationalism seemed to have been partially overcome.
Life in Europe had become partly borderless—for ideas, knowledge, goods, services, and also for people.
But everything changed, and Nazi Germany dragged the entire continent into the abyss.
So, today’s cityscape of Gdynia has a lesson for me. It reminds me that our borderless and, in many parts, peaceful Europe is not something we can take for granted. But only when it stays that way, I can get on a train in Berlin, arrive at the Polish Baltic Sea a few hours later, and have a wonderful weekend there.
And I really love to do that.
See you in Europe,
Johannes
You are getting around!
👍