Stanisław Mikołajczyk is one of the most famous Poles to have come from the Ruhr area. He was born on 18th July 1901 in Holsterhausen (today Herne) and later became the Minister President of the Polis...
Jan Łukasiewicz was one of the most influential logicians of his time: a philosopher, mathematician and one-time Polish Education Minister. In December 1938, in the midst of increasing political tensi...
During the Second World War around 2,800,000 Polish forced labourers in Germany wore the letter ‘P’ on their clothing. The slave workers were forced to toil in factories and on farms for the German “f...
An jenem Donnerstag, dem 17. März 1796, konnten nur wenige von den geladenen Gästen der Hochzeitsgesellschaft ahnen, dass die große Liebe der jungen Eheleute, nicht nur zwei Menschen, sondern auch gle...
“Boring!" was how the 11-year-old Julia described the arguments of her fellow Polish students when they were discussing the nationality of the major astronomer Nicolas Copernicus. “It makes no differe...
In 2011 the Polish Sejm secured the return from Germany of all the documents, writings and personal objects belonging to the writer Józef Ignacy Kraszewski. They had previously been lent to the eponym...
On 31st May 1919 a body was fished out of the Landwehrkanal in Berlin. It was quickly clear that it was the missing Rosa Luxemburg. It was also clear that she had been murdered: and that the motive wa...
The publication of Stanisław Przybyszewski’s “On the Psychology of the Individual” was a bombshell that unleashed a blazing fire for a modern version of the “Sturm und Drang” movement in Berlin. Stani...
At 5.45 on 1st September 2001 a red-and-white wardrobe made of cardboard was destroyed. This symbolic destruction of the wardrobe, that was witnessed by a handful of people, marked the opening of a sh...
In 1933 the Polish citizen Count Antoni Sobański described the “Heil Hitler!“ salute in the following terms: “It is indescribably comical to see two podgy old men with briefcases tucked under their ar...
In 1960 the town of Bochum opened the Kunstmuseum Bochum (as it is now known), in order to be a “foster town” for the pictorial arts alongside its support for music and drama. The town council had de...
Pola Negri was already a star in Poland – the femme fatale of the screen – when she arrived in Berlin to be greeted by hordes of enthusiastic fans. After a series of brilliant theatre performances and...
The history of Polish citizens in Germany is intimately linked with the history of their pastoral care. Most Polish-speaking immigrants to Germany were members of the Catholic Church. In terms of numb...
The first “Sokół” (Falcon) club in Germany was set up at the end of the 1880s to promote the education of Polish citizens by means of sporting disciplines and at the same time to emphasise common nati...
The rector’s office of the Polish Catholic mission was set up in 1976 to replace the Bishop’s Curia which was set up in 1945. It is the central coordination office for the spiritual care of Polish cit...
After the end of the Second World War in 1945 many Polish citizens in the Allied occupation zones decided not to return to their homeland on political grounds. These included members of Polish armed f...
The bank was set up on 8th February 1933 by a credit cooperative which was organised in the “Union of Polish Cooperatives in Germany” (Związek Spółdzielni Polskich w Niemczech). Start capital amounted...