Suchergebnisse

Aus dem Lódzer Getto wurden zwischen 1942 und 1945 über hunderttausend jüdische Bürger in Vernichtungslager deportiert. Welche Rolle spielte Chaim Rumkowski, der "Judenälteste"? Dokumentarischer Roman auf der Grundlage der Gettochronik. (Claudia Bußjäger)

"City of modernity" consists of 33 essays about Lódz, a city that started out as an agricultural settlement and became a metropolis within a single generation, all thanks to technological progress. Its population of 767 in 1820, it had grown to 767,000 by 1939. At the turn of the century, it emblematized modernization and industrialization, and was a symbol of industrial-era modernity. It was often compared to Manchester and its truly American pace of development was admired. The city's rapid economic career was impressive, but it also exacted a high social cost. The authors, representing a variety of fields (history, sociology, literary, theatre and film studies, cultural anthropology) analyze many aspects of Lódz's economic, social and cultural life before the outbreak of World War II. In reference to Lódz modernism, they explore notions like modernity, metropolitanism and peripherality, multi-culturalism and multi-ethnicity (Lódz was a labor destination for German settlers, Polish peasants, Jews, as well as newcomers from the Russian interior), the phenomenon of workers' movements which peaked during the revolution of 1905, and the expansion of mass entertainment. The publication also looks at issues linked to urban infrastructure, animators of cultural life, and the emergence of new religious, political, and emancipation movements

In the 19th century, Łódź grew within a few decades from being an insignificant rural town to become the leading textile city in Eastern Europe. Until the present day, the Łódź region has remained the primary centre of the Polish textile industry. The transformation process in the city industry in Eastern Europe is connected with decisive changes in the organisation of the city centres. In comparison to western cities, the double problems of a simultaneous transformation become apparent: transformation from a planned economy to regional structures of a free market economy, as well as transformation from old industrial to post-industrial structures. The article examines the changes in the regional structures of the city centre of the old industrial city of Łódź in the course of the transformation process. If a temporal delay is given consideration, the location development of the industrial sector in Łódź corresponds in its basic structures to the western patterns. City centre production plants were given up at the start of the nineties in favour of suburban locations. A deviation from western patterns is the prevalence of small companies in city centre locations. In retail trade as well, development tendencies towards western European patterns can also be recognised. Large retail trade outlets are settling increasingly around the cities. The large open markets are one dissimilar element. The dynamic of the quaternary sector and the concentration of office use in the city centre, which goes hand in hand with this, reveal a clear convergence to the developments in western cities. In a summarised sense, we can state that the signs for a convergence to western European regional structure patterns are considerably more pronounced as those which would suggest the emergence of divergent regional structures. The revitalisation of Łódź has made considerable progress in the last few years. The successes are relative in comparison to other Polish cities. This reveals the problems of old industrial structures and the relative proximity of Łódź to the primate city Warsaw.

1940 ließen die deutschen Besatzer Polens 1300 außereuropäische Exponate aus dem Ethnografischen Museum Łódź in ein Leipziger Museum bringen, Teile der Sammlung wurden 1942 nach Köln, Hamburg und Göttingen weiterverkauft. Im nun Litzmannstadt genannten Łódź sollte nach Vorstellung der NS-Ideologen die Dokumentation der "germanischen Vorgeschichte" des "Ostraums" konzentriert werden, für außereuropäische Völkerkunde war kein Platz mehr. Die DDR gab 1967 "ihren" Teil der Sammlung an die VR Polen zurück. Die bundesdeutschen Stellen betrachten die in Göttingen bewahrten Objekte als Faustpfand in den Verhandlungen über die gegenseitige Rückgabe "kriegsbedingt verlagerter" Kulturgüter. Polnischen Forschern werden Informationen vorenthalten oder nur zögerlich gewährt, der Zugang zu den Objekten verweigert. (Osteuropa (Berlin) / SWP)