| Bohdan Rymaszewski is the author of the text.
Photographs are made by Stanislaw Klimek. |
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Now, as centuries ago, the Vistula waters reflect the medieval walls, gates, towers, the enormous block of the Old Town parish church, and a row of old town houses and granaries. The mirror image, which enhances the beauty of the historical panorama, has symbolic significance - it is a gift with which the Vistula rewards Torun for not turning away from it as many towns undergoing modernisation have done.
It was the time of feudal division in Poland and the local Polish princes failed to see the danger in time. First, in 1222, the Silesian prince Henry the Bearded granted the Teutonic Knights the village of Losice located on his land. Three years later, he suggested to Prince Conrad of Mazovia using the Order to defend his land against Prussian invasions. Following negotiations, on 23 April 1228, the Mazovian ruler donated the Chelmno lands to the Order but retained authority over the Knights.
In the summer of 1231 a small detachment of the Knights, supported by Conrad of Mazovia, entered the area, temporarily in the Prussian hands. The arrival marked the beginning of the process of ousting and then total extermination of the Lettic Prussians and creation by the Order of its own state on the captured land.
The first groups of the Knights received from prince Conrad four villages and the town of Nieszawka on the left bank of the Vistula, in close proximity to today's Torun. The Knights then crossed the river not far from the village of Stary Torun to found a new settlement. Around their fortified base quickly grew a town called Torun.
This act started a series of significant events. In the 13th and 14th centuries, it played an inspirational role in the process of founding numerous towns in Poland. The document was issued by the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, Herman von Salza, and the National Master for Prussia and the Slavonic Lands, Herman Balk. The act was named for the place where the ceremony of bestowing the privilege was held.
For the citizens of numerous towns established throughout the 13th and 14th centuries, the document was a very favourable adaptation of the German Magdeburg statutes. A few years before the ceremony in Chelmno, when the Silesian town of Zlotoryja received its city statutes, the act had been adjusted to the Polish conditions. The amended document guaranteed the right of the town to elect its own government and independent judicature. Within its territories, the Teutonic Order reserved the right only to interpret the existing laws, to sanction the highest sentences and approve locally elected town mayors. The citizens' right to elect the mayor, the town council, and the tribunal was a significant innovation in the political system and became the basis for municipal autonomy. Magdeburg itself, which served as an example for Polish towns, did not possess such privileges.
The further, northern part of the city was laid out and built up during the latter half of the century. A large town market (104 m by 109 m) was laid out, where a town hall, a cloth hall, and stalls were built.
The location of Torun on a major water route and at a convenient crossing place was one of the most significant factors contributing to the town's growth. In addition to profits from fishing and the use of its lands, forests, and pastures, from various crafts, including brewing, paper making, pottery, and the manufacture of metal objects, trade also played an important role in bringing wealth to the town and its residents. Their opulence was reflected in the rich output of outstanding artists and house builders.
The deed of location granted Torun some 3,000 ha of land. The land brought in handsome profits and enabled the town to erect and maintain many municipal buildings. Around the mid-13th century, the process of replacing the wooden-and-earthen fortifications around the Old Town with a system of brick walls, gates, and towers was initiated.
The northward movement of the town's territorial limits resulted in the incorporation within its area of the Franciscan monastery. The monks probably settled in 1239 just outside the walls and soon afterwards started erecting the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary and some monasterial buildings. Today's brick temple boasting three 27-metre-high aisles is one of the most magnificent examples of the "high hall" with a beautiful inspiring interior.
The town's market place was initially located in Zeglarska St., which was approximately 19 metres wide. The construction of the brick Church of SS Johns started around 1260. It was extended in the following centuries and achieved its final magnificent form, dominating today's panorama, in the last quarter of the 15th century.
Probably around the middle of the 13th century, at 5 Zeglarska St., the "Social House" was erected. It was built of brick in the form of a "housing tower". Its fa?de was decorated with stone stripes and green-glazed bricks, and finished off with attractive crenels. The edifice belonged to the Brotherhood of St. George, an association of the town's merchant elite. Its aim was "to promote sociability, piety and social action".
In 1313, the function of the building was taken over by an edifice, later called "Artus' Hall", erected in the Old Town Rynek Square. It was the meeting place for Torun's patriciate and the scene of many historic events, e.g. the signing of the second Torun peace agreement.
The edifice was the first Teutonic castle to be built of brick and stone on the Polish soil. By symbolic coincidence the castle also went down in history as the place where the agony of the Teutonic Knights' state was initiated. On 6 February 1454 an attack on the castle by Torun's citizens served as a spark igniting a general uprising throughout Prussia. Following a short siege the Order surrendered. When the Knights left the castle, the Old Town Council in charge of the uprising ordered that the structure be destroyed and the ruins left "as a perpetual warning".
After the Polish king assisted the Prussian towns and knights in their efforts to throw off the burden of the Teutonic Order's rule, the revolt turned into a thirteen-years' war which ended with the signing of the second Torun peace agreement. As an international pact, it confirmed the incorporation of the major Prussian towns and lands, with Torun, Gdansk, Elblag, Chelmno, Swiecie and Malbork, into the Kingdom of Poland. Under the act Pomerania with the Vistula estuary and the Chelmno and Michalow regions were returned to Poland as "lands by nature Polish". The Teutonic Order again became a vassal of the Polish monarch.
For a few centuries to follow, the area of Torun's castle was used as a rubbish dump. Between 1958 and 1966, as part of an archaeological conservation project, the walls of the destroyed cellars and ground floor were uncovered from under an eight-metre-deep layer of rubble. The ruins were left as a natural historical monument of the second Torun peace agreement and the place was also used for an exhibition displaying the castle's history. Most of the conservation work was carried out by volunteers, free of charge. The former residence of the T eutonic Order was also the site of the first Polish light-and-sound programme, showing major events in the castle's history.
The New Town was separated from the Old by a double line of defensive walls with gates, towers, and a moat. In the parts bordering the suburbs, the settlement was protected in the same manner. The town's spatial layout was similar to that of the Old Town, with a vast town square in its centre, where a brick town hall was built already at the beginning of the 14th century.
In the south-east corner of the New Town the parish church of St. James was erected. The foundation stone was laid by Herman, the Chelmno bishop, in 1309, and works were completed in 1350. Five years earlier patronage over it had been given to the nuns from a Torun nunnery, which initially followed the Cistercian and then the Benedictine rule.
The north-west corner of the town was the site of a Dominican monastery. The first monks arrived and settled there even before the location act. Their church and monastery buildings were ready around the middle of the 14th century, but extensive construction and decoration work continued. In 1834, by an order of the Prussian authorities, the church and convent buildings were demolished. This act was preceded by the dissolution of the Dominican order. The magnificent set of stained glass windows from the monastery complex was moved to the Malbork castle and is now on display at the District Museum located in the Old Town Hall. A number of splendid sculptures and paintings found shelter in St. James' Church.
The residences of rich merchants, trading with distant countries, e.g. Flanders, have not survived to our times. Neither have the huts that for many centuries offered shelter to partacze, people illegally plying various trades, outside the official guild structure. The island was a convenient place for concluding commercial transactions; the fact is reflected both in the existing written records and the very name of the place. During the last century the island acquired another concurrent name: Malpi Gaj (Monkey Grove) - it was a place where prostitutes sought asylum, of their own accord or by the Town Council's order.
Lush vegetation has almost totally obscured the outline of fortifications dating back to the 1600 and 1700s. Once the system formed a fortified bridgehead fiercely defended during the two Swedish invasions and the Napoleonic war.
Its convenient location was the reason why, despite the destruction of the town hall, stalls and numerous other buildings, the settlement around the castle was spontaneously revived a number of times. However, as the area was regularly flooded by the Vistula, around the mid-16th century, its inhabitants moved to higher ground, further from the river. The newly-established settlement was called "Podgorz" and is now one of Torun's suburbs. Here in 1644, Stanislaw Sokolowski, the Dybow governor and Bydgoszcz castellan, founded a Baroque church and a convent and handed them over to the Order of Reformati. During the Swedish "deluge" King John Casimir made the convent his headquarters from whence he commanded the troops when they recaptured Torun.
On many occasions the Dybow castle served as a residence or Polish monarchs and their courtiers. Unfortunately, during the first Swedish war it was seriously damaged by a gunpowder explosion and has never returned to its former splendour. However, as recently as 1813, a few dozen Frenchmen who had taken shelter inside it were able to withstand Russian attacks for three months. The earthen fortifications built up by the Napoleonic soldiers have survived to this day.
Nicolaus Copernicus probably began his education in the school of the parish Church of SS Johns, where Lucas Watzenrode, Nicolaus' uncle and protector was the rector. The school was located in a today's Sw. Jana St., formerly Szkolna St. At the end of the 17th century, the building was incorporated into a Jesuit college complex built at that time. The 19th century saw a complete reconstruction of the edifice to suit the requirements of the Prussian troops. Today only a small fragment of a late Gothic decoration pattern on the ground floor facade reminds the visitor of the medieval school founded and maintained with pride by the Town Council.
At the close of the Middle Ages nearly all buildings within the Old and New Town were brick structures. Only a small percentage had wooden frameworks filled with bricks or clay. All houses-granaries and other edifices had steep roofs covered with tiles, often multicoloured.
In the 14th century, the prevailing type of town house in Torun combined dwelling, trading, and storage functions in a way which was characteristic of northern Europe from Bruges to Tallin. The main rooms on the ground floor were called "high anterooms". In their corners, there were hearths crowned with large hoods. Behind the anteroom, there was only one room and there were two more rooms on the next floor. The other floors, as well as the cellars, were used for storage, usually serving as granaries. Few houses had outbuildings. For many centuries the municipal authorities did not allow erecting them for fear of fires.
The work was carried out by Master Andrzej. In the town's archives, there is a complaint lodged against him, stating that "he did not employ German journeymen". This new structure had vast cellars, where beer from the town breweries was sold and drunk.
In 1603, on the initiative of the town's mayor, H. Stroband, the Town Hall was thoroughly rebuilt. A third floor combining Renaissance details and Gothic forms was constructed. Thus the historical character of the edifice was preserved, probably because of the desire to stress the continuity of the time-honoured institutions.
In 1703, during another siege of the town by the Swedes during the Northern War, the Town Hall burnt down in a fire caused by shelling. A similar fate was shared by several dozen other Old Town buildings.
Following the fire, because of the general crisis of the municipal economy, the Council could not undertake to rebuild its hall for a number of years. The reconstruction was completed in 1737, but unfortunately the interiors never regained their former magnificence. The artistry of Torun's eminent craftsmen who had been invited to make their contribution to the new construction can still be seen in the beautifully inlaid door.
Torun's printing art was strengthened by the establishment of a print shop in 1568. It was here that the first-ever edition of Adam Mickiewicz's "Pan Tadeusz" to be printed on the Polish soil by was published in 1858.
A 20th-century contribution to the tradition of the "beautifully printed word" was the development and popularization of a new typeface called "Torun Roman" by Z. Gardzielewski and Gruszka.
During the 1703 siege by the troops of Charles XII, Torun was seriously devastated. For a number of years, it could not return to its former condition, as the Swedish ruler had imposed on the town a contribution of 160,000 thalers. The inhabitants suffered from diseases and famine. No earlier than the middle of the century were they able to pool enough resources to construct about 15 new buildings, among them farm buildings, a mill and a brewery in Przysiek, a few suburban villas and several palaces erected within the Old Town boundaries on the sites of former town houses. One of them is the Fengers' palace, at 14 Mostowa St., built in 1742, where in 1792 Fryderyk Skarbek was born, an economist and professor of Warsaw University and the teacher of Fryderyk Chopin's father. The edifice at 7 Old Town Square, along with the palace of Jakub Meissner, Torun's mayor and the royal burgrave, was rebuilt in the 19th century and did not retain the original Baroque decorations on their facades. But even the original decorations had been artistically inferior to the kind of stucco work created in Torun at the end of the 17th century, whose prime examples are the Dabskis' palace at 8 Zeglarska St. and the house called "The Star" at 35 Old Town Rynek Square.
In September 1456, the mob rioted against the Council's resolution, which supposedly unfairly distributed the burden of an additional tax imposed to cover the costs of a rather special sort of war waged against the Teutonic Knights. The tax was intended to provide resources to buy out the Knights' castles held by their mercenaries, who had not received their pay. Such an action would have had a positive effect on the course of the war. The riot was suppressed with the help of Polish and Gdansk troops who were temporarily stationed in the town. The local authorities severely punished the rebels, publicly beheading 72 people.
Less dramatic were the disturbances of 1523, sometimes called the "guilds' mutiny". They were caused by the deteriorating economic situation of the townspeople caused by restrictions imposed on the right of storage in Torun and also because of the high costs of the war waged against the Teutonic Knights since 1519. The situation increased the citizens' dissatisfaction. The Council was accused of nepotism, discrimination of the common citizens in the municipal management and unfair distribution of financial burdens.
1724 was witness to the "Torun tumult", which quickly earned the city European notoriety. It was directly caused by a street fight between the Jesuit College and the Protestant Grammar School students during the Corpus Christi procession. The skirmish turned into general disturbances and was a bloody finale to a long-lasting dispute over the right to manage Torun's main churches. The argument was, in turn, a manifestation of a power struggle between the Protestant and Catholic communities. It ended the good times of Torun's religious tolerance, when from 1583 to 1596 - SS Johns' Parish Church served as a place of worship for the Catholics and the Protestants alike. The atmosphere of mutual respect among various denominations also resulted in the Colloquium Charitativum held in Torun in 1595. Although the conference did not achieve its intended goal, it is universally known as the first European attempt at ecumenicism.
The Torun tumult ended with a bloody finale. Its perpetrators as well as those who had failed to ensure peace in the town were handed over to the executioner. By royal order some members of the local authorities, including the mayor, Jan Rosner, were beheaded.
These bloody events had one positive effect - the king gave his consent to the proposition to build a Protestant church in Torun. It was constructed in the years 1753-6 in Old Town Rynek Square according to the design by Andreas Baehr from Dresden and a Torun citizen Efraim Schroeger, who later became the royal court architect of King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski. Initially, the church was a steeple-less edifice because that was the condition imposed by the Polish monarch. The present steeple was added in 1898 and was designed in the neo-Baroque style by K. Schafer and H. Hartung. Since 1945 the church has been used by the Jesuits.
This event marked the beginning of over 100 years of Prussian rule, interrupted only by a few years of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and the sieges during the Napoleonic wars. The entire 19th century is characterized by deep transformations of Torun. The city found itself near the Russo-Prussian border. The former trade routes lost all their significance. Of prime importance now was the city's strategic role as a major fortress and garrison. This determined the course of changes that Torun underwent during the 19th century. Even the construction of a railway station in 1862, and then a railway junction, was dictated by military considerations.
In the 19th century, for military reasons, the Churches of St. George and St. Laurence situated outside the city walls were pulled down. Earlier, during the Swedish wars in the middle of the 17th century another medieval church, that of the Holy Ghost, situated outside the Old Town walls on the Vistula bank and a Benedictine convent connected with it were also demolished.
Consequently, the oldest surviving houses in the area date back only to the last quarter of the 19th century. Much older are the names of some districts, e.g. Mokre, Chelminskie, or Jakubskie. Thanks to their sometimes descriptive character, we can identify the areas where different trades were plied a few centuries back. Examples of such names are: Przy Kaszowniku (By the Mill), Winnica (Vineyard) and Rybaki (Fishermen).
Only one of more than a dozen patrician suburban mansions has survived within the limits of today's Torun, in the district of Wrzosy. Originally built in the 18th century, but extensively reconstructed in the 19th and 20th centuries, the estate comprising a Baroque park testifies to the aspirations of old Torun's patriciate. The mansion is known as "Prezydentowka" (Mayor's House), a reference to the fact that between the World Wars it was occupied by the town's mayor.
Since the late 1960s Torun has seen expansive growth of new, suburban districts. The construction of a University campus was initiated. Numerous industrial enterprises, sports centres and housing estates have been built. Torun's population has doubled in relation to the period before the Second World War, reaching 200,000 inhabitants. In accordance with a programme prepared in 1958, the Old Town District has been relieved of an excessive number of inhabitants but still plays an important role as a shopping centre, and above all a tourist and cultural centre. In its efforts to promote culture, Torun can draw upon its rich legacy, which many a city in Europe may be envious of.
