History of Toruń
In the 1420s, King Władysław II Jagiełło built the Dybów Castle, located in present-day left-bank Toruń, which he visited numerous times.
[7] The Confederation rose against the Monastic state of the Teutonic Knights in 1454 and its delegation submitted a petition to Polish King Casimir IV Jagiellon asking him to regain power over the region as the rightful ruler.
An act of incorporation was signed in Kraków (6 March 1454), recognizing the region, including Toruń, as part[10] of the Polish Kingdom.
The local mayor pledged allegiance to the Polish King during the incorporation in March 1454 in Kraków,[11] and then in May 1454, an official ceremony was held in Toruń, during which the nobility, knights, landowners, mayors and local officials from Chełmno Land, including Toruń, again solemnly swore allegiance to the Polish King and the Kingdom of Poland.
[16] The Thirteen Years' War ended in October 1466 with the Second Peace of Thorn, in which the Teutonic Order renounced any claims to the city and recognized it as part of Poland.
In 1645, at a time when religious conflicts occurred in many other European countries and the disastrous Thirty Years' War was fought west of Poland, in Toruń, on the initiative of King Władysław IV Vasa, a three-month congress of European Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists was held, known as Colloquium Charitativum, an important event in the history of interreligious dialogue.
[22] In 1677 the Prussian historian and educator Christoph Hartknoch was invited to be director of the Toruń Gymnasium, a post which he held until his death in 1687.
The restoration of Augustus the Strong as King of Poland was prepared in the town in the Treaty of Thorn (1709) by Russian Tsar Peter the Great.
Additionally, German soldiers stationed in the city were included in census figures as citizens for propaganda purposes.
Major investments were completed in areas such as transportation (new streets, tramway lines and the Piłsudski Bridge), residential development (many new houses, particularly in Bydgoskie Przedmieście suburb) and public buildings.
Just before the Nazi German invasion of Poland, Jews supported the Polish government fund-raising for Air Defence (Dz.U.R.P.Nr 26, poz.
The German army entered the city on 7 September 1939, during the invasion of Poland, which started World War II.
Poles were classified as Untermenschen by German authorities, with their fate being slave-labor, executions, expulsions and deportations to concentration camps.
In October 1939 the new regional gauleiter, Albert Forster, announced in the city that in a few years, not a word of Polish will be spoken here.
[32] In early November 1939, the Germans carried out further mass arrests of Polish teachers, farmers and priests in Toruń and the county, who were then imprisoned in Fort VII.
[32] Large massacres of over 1,100 Poles from the city and region, including teachers, school principals, local officials, restaurateurs, shop owners, merchants, farmers, railwaymen, policemen, craftsmen, students, priests, workers, doctors, were carried out in the present-day district of Barbarka.
[34] By the end of November 1939 the city was declared Judenfrei, with several hundred Jews who chose to stay, deported to the Łódź Ghetto and other locations in the Warthegau.
[36] From 1940 to 1943, in the northern part of the city there was a German transit camp (Umsiedlungslager Thorn) for Poles expelled from Toruń and the surrounding area, which became infamous for inhuman sanitary conditions.
[39] Despite such circumstances, the Polish resistance movement was active in the city,[14] and Toruń was the seat of one of the six main commands of the Union of Armed Struggle in occupied Poland (alongside Warsaw, Kraków, Poznań, Białystok and Lwów).
[43] During World War II, the Germans used the chain of forts surrounding the city as prisoner-of-war camps, known collectively as Stalag XX-A.
Polish, British, French, Australian and Soviet POWs were held in the camp and forced labour subcamps in the region.
Since 1989, when local and regional self-government was gradually reintroduced and the market economy was introduced, Toruń, like other cities in Poland, has undergone deep social and economic transformations.
Locals debate whether the changes have been as successful as they had hoped for, but Toruń has recently reclaimed its strong position as a regional leader, together with Bydgoszcz.
[52] In 1997, the historic city center of Toruń was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and in 2007 it was named one of the Seven Wonders of Poland.
