09 December 2019

Cityscape, Gdansk


Via the Europe subreddit, where I found this observation:
"Parts of the historic old city of Gdańsk, which had suffered large-scale destruction during the war, were rebuilt during the 1950s and 1960s. The reconstruction was not tied to the city's pre-war appearance, but instead was politically motivated as a means of culturally cleansing and destroying all traces of German influence from the city. Any traces of German tradition were ignored, suppressed, or regarded as "Prussian barbarism" only worthy of demolition, while Flemish/Dutch, Italian and French influences were used to replace the historically accurate Germanic architecture which the city was built upon since the 14th century."
And btw, why is it called a citySCAPE?
Abstracted from landscape, the suffix representing Middle Dutch -schap (“-ship”), from Old Dutch -skap (“-ship”), from Proto-Germanic *-skapiz (“-ship”), from *skapaz (“shape, form”). Cognate with Modern Dutch -schap (“-ship”), German -schaft (“-ship”), Swedish -skap (“-ship”), Old English -sceap, -scipe (“-ship”).  
The root words similar to those for shape.

2 comments:

  1. I've been to Gdansk a few times now. When we first went there over 10 years ago much of the architecture was very 'communist bloc' (i.e. grey, drab concrete buildings), even in downtown Gdansk. Even though they were and still are quite a poor country even back then though there was a sort of quiet optimism about the people. Over the years I've seen more and more buildings being painted and the whole area becoming generally more clean and it's great to see that the Polish are continuing to become more independent and more proud of themselves after so long under the thumb of Russia and Germany.

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  2. Considering what happened to Gdansk and Poland in general - this erasure of architectural history doesn't surprise me at all. In fact I think most tortured countries do this (if they recover) throughout history.

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