Stary Sopot i nowi Sopocianie. Przewartościowanie miasta i jego architektury po 1945 r.

Abstract

The old Sopot and the new Sopotians. Re-validation of the city and its architecture after 1945

Since the foundation of a new bath complex in 1823, Sopot, a health resort at the Baltic Sea, has continuously attracted vibrant crowds of bathers and holiday-makers including artists and representatives of free professions. Between 1920 and 1939, Sopot was part of the Free City of Gdansk (Freie Stadt Danzig), and after the outbreak of the World War II, it was annexed, along with Gdansk, by Nazi Germany. In summer 1945, it was incorporated into the Polish state. In the face of the almost total destruction of Gdansk, Sopot, having managed to avoid wartime damage, took over many administrative functions of the new national and local structures. As soon as autumn 1945, art schools — the School of Music and the School of Fine Arts — opened. Sopot enjoyed its revival as a trendy health resort and a centre of academic, artistic and cultural life, a destination for Polish incomers from almost all regions of pre- and post-war Poland. Unlike other post-war centres in the so-called “Recovered Territories,” (the former Free City of Danzig and other areas that belonged to pre-war Germany), Sopot had traditional ties to Poland, and traces of the presence and life of Poles were cultivated even after the war. A special role in the national and cultural identification was played by the School of Fine Arts, active in Sopot in the years 1945–1954, gathering eminent pre-war artists who exerted a great impact on aesthetics and art of post-war Poland. The significant contribution of artists from the Sopot School to the post-war reconstruction of the destroyed Gdansk and to the promotion of the aesthetics of socio-political communist propaganda — so-called “social realism” (Pl. socrealizm) — has become subject of recent research and discussion dedicated to the conformist stance of Sopot artists and their role in the formation and spread of Polish “social realism” in the years 1949–1956.