In Kraków, the concept of “dissonant heritage” covers a particularly tragic chapter in the city’s thousand-year history.
During the German occupation of Poland between 1939 and 1945, Kraków’s fate was tied with the unspeakable Nazi policy of genocide. The city was subjected to a peculiar experiment: chosen by Hitler as the capital of the General Government, Poland’s spiritual heart was deigned to become a flagship German city in the East – uralte deutsche Stadt Krakau. The goal was to rebuild Kraków in the spirit of other great cities of the Third Reich, and the architecture was to serve as one of the tool bolstering policies of de-Polonising Kraków.
The International Cultural Centre has never shied away from difficult topics. This also applies to the broader subject of dissonant heritage, with the architecture of the Third Reich largely regarded as taboo in Poland. The exhibition Unwanted Capital: Architecture and Urban Planning in Kraków During the German Occupation of 1939–1945 is the outcome of many years of research into the painful heritage of the Third Reich in Poland, conducted in Kraków as well as reaching for archives and collections in Berlin, Munich, Warsaw, Vienna and Wrocław. The aim is to present an inventory of the German vision of Kraków as the “Nuremberg of the East” which mostly exists as designs on paper. The few remaining buildings from the period represent a wide range of conflicting memory and oblivion. They stretch from the former Nazi concentration camp KL Plaszow to Hans Frank’s offices in Wawel Castle.
KL Plaszow concentration camp in Kraków, 1943–1944; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, fileno. USHMM.32058, provenance: Leopold Page Photographic Collection
In 1940, Wawel was designated as the headquarters of the occupying forces and turned into a building site. The historic seat of Polish monarch was given the new moniker Krakauer Burg. The hasty adaptation of the royal hill was personally overseen by the Governor-General Hans Frank himself. Between 1941 and 1944, the Nazi occupiers erected the Governor-General’s office on the site of the former royal kitchens (building no. 5 on the western side of the courtyard), rebuilt the western wing of the former Austrian hospital (building no. 9) and built a new gate named Bernardyńska. The goal of this major restructuring was more than just to adapt the existing buildings to the needs of the Governor-General and his entourage; it was also to give the complex an architectural sheen distinctive of the Third Reich. This was particularly true of building no. 5, looming over the hill; its design was finally approved by Hans Frank in March 1941. The shape, façade and carefully arranged interiors left no doubt that the building would function as a monument to the presence of the Third Reich at Wawel.
Construction of the Verwaltungsgebäude der Kanzlei Burg, Wawel Royal Castle; photo by S. Kolowca, file no. NegKOZK-odb (repr. from: Jadwiga Gwizdałówna, Wawel podczas okupacji niemieckiej 1939–1945. Przemiany architektury. Echa architektury nazistowskiej, in: Rocznik Krakowski 77 [2011], 123, fig. 9)
The planned takeover of power by the Governor-General revealed the great ambitions of the new “King of Poland”. This ambition was also to be extended to urbanist visions and plans for spectacular building projects, once again overseen personally by Hans Frank. The goal was to rapidly transform Kraków into a model German city – a “Nuremberg of the East”. Following Hitler’s example, Frank believed himself to be a great architect.
The illusion and euphoria of the grand urbanist designs to be launched in Kraków following the fall of France coincided with the peak of Hitler’s rule and the Third Reich’s victories on the front. In summer 1940, Kraków was chosen as one of the cities to be given a major urbanist makeover alongside other recently occupied municipalities of Strasbourg and Luxemburg. In Kraków’s case, the plan was also to use architecture to implement policies of Germanisation. Frank’s urbanist visions for Kraków, dating back to 1940, were closely linked with his ambitions and active cultural policies in the capital of the General Government which he wanted to convert into a new German metropolis. The implementation of Hans Frank’s visions was a function of events on the front of the Second World and the shifting concept of what the General Government was to be.
It should be stressed that the urbanist visions, following Nazi principles, remained largely theoretical. This includes specific campaigns to de-Polonise Kraków, such as “the task to raze the Piłsudski and Kościuszko mounds as quickly as possible” entrusted by Frank to the Head of Staff and later City Governor Rudolf Pavlu in April 1941. The idea to demolish the mounds formed a part of the concept of the German Quarter (Deutsches Viertel) constructed on the site of Błonia Meadows as a complex of district and governmental administration buildings and other offices of the General Government.
Plans of the German government district on the Błonia Meadows in Kraków, 1941; National Archives in Kraków, Department V – Cartographic materials and technical documentation, file no. 29/1410/0/ABM TAU Konkursy 3 pl. 26
The Leipzig architect Hubert Ritter developed an alternative to the concept of building on Błonia around the same time. In summer 1940, he accepted the commission for Generalbebauungsplan von Krakau and the plan was ready in May 1941. Its most spectacular, original element was the proposed construction of a grand governmental quarter in the Dębniki district, aiming to create a flagship “New Germany” town in the East. According to Ritter’s plans, it would cover 250 hectares and combine administrative and residential functions for around 10,000 clerks and functionaries. The functional project Regierungsviertel proposed building governmental offices, district administration, headquarters of the Nazi party and the Wehrmacht, post office, railway station and other offices of the General Government as well as canteens, casinos, and sports and recreation centres. The proposed designs for the governmental district in Dębniki were easily as spectacular as many metropolises of the Third Reich. Ritter's design was a fascinating attempt – fortunately never implemented – to inscribe elements of Nazi ideology and its poisonous dogma into the structure of the city which had hitherto followed a completely different philosophy for centuries.
Hubert Ritter, Generalbebauungsplan von Krakau, master plan, 1941; Architekturmuseum der Technischen Universität München, Nachlass Hubert Ritter, file no. S/Regal/Ritter,Hubert rit_hu‑167‑1006
Another flagship of the Third Reich in Kraków was to be the German living quarter along the newly-built avenue: Reichstrasse. The history of constructing the housing estate along today’s Królewska Street between 1940 and 1946 is a good illustration of how German architecture developed in the capital of the General Government. The former nur für Deutsche quarter is now one of Kraków’s most attractive residential districts and isn’t seen as dissonant – and this is not an isolated example. The majority of architecture of the Third Reich built between 1940 and 1945 has become an indelible part of Kraków’s urban design.
The wide-reaching urbanist campaign of the Municipal Construction Office under architectural direction of Georg Stahl left its permanent mark in the Śródmieście district. The works included tidying up the surroundings of Wawel Hill, opening the sight line from Krakowska Street to the Church of Corpus Christi, creating arcades in tenement houses along Grodzka and Krakowska streets and by the Church of St Giles, and restructuring the façade of the Phoenix tenement house at the Main Market Square. Stahl’s alterations remain an integral element of Kraków’s historic Old Town.
We believe that documenting the architectural plans and constructions from this dark period should encourage people to reflect deeply on the place of this dissonant heritage of the Third Reich in our collective memory and in Kraków’s cultural landscape of today. Being a form of collective memory, heritage is our daily choice and it co-shapes our collective identity.
Kraków is an unusual example of a city which almost fell victim to ideology but which managed to preserve its identity nevertheless. It did not become the Nuremberg of the East, nor did it share Nuremberg’s fate. However, the few years of the Second World War changed it irreversibly. Kraków – the spiritual capital of Poland and the cradle of independence in 1918 – underwent a tragic and absurd trial between 1939 and 1945. The sheer scale of this trial has no equal even in the highly complex history of Central Europe.
Jacek Purchla
The text was published in the 1/2022 issue of the “Kraków Culture” quarterly.
Jacek Purchla
Photo by Paweł Mazur
A professor of humanities and member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. He heads the Department of Economic and Social History at the Kraków University of Economics and the Institute of European Heritage of the International Cultural Centre; he founded the latter in 1991 and served as its director until 2017. He is Chairman of the Board of the Jagiellonian University, and Vice-President of the Europa Nostra Council.