Łódź,Łódź also seen without diacritics as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. Łódź has a population of 655,279 making it the country's fourth largest city.
Łódź was once a small settlement that first appeared in 14th-century records. It was granted town rights in 1423 by Polish King Władysław II Jagiełło and it remained a private town of the Kuyavian bishops and clergy until the late 18th century. In the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, Łódź was annexed to Prussia before becoming part of the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw; the city joined Congress Poland, a Russian client state, at the 1815 Congress of Vienna. The Second Industrial Revolution (from 1870) brought rapid growth in textile manufacturing and in population owing to the inflow of migrants, notably Germans and Jews. Ever since the industrialization of the area, the city has been multinational and struggled with social inequalities, as documented in the novel The Promised Land by Nobel Prize–winning author Władysław Reymont. The contrasts greatly reflected on the architecture of the city, where luxurious mansions coexisted with red-brick factories and dilapidated tenement houses.
The industrial development and demographic surge made Łódź one of the largest cities in Poland. Under the German occupation during World War II Łódź was briefly renamed after Karl Litzmann. The city's population was persecuted and its large Jewish minority was forced into a walled zone known as the Łódź Ghetto, from where they were sent to German concentration and extermination camps. The city became Poland's temporary seat of power in 1945.
Łódź experienced a sharp demographic and economic decline after 1989. It was only in the 2010s that the city began to experience revitalization of its neglected downtown area. Łódź is ranked by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network on the "Sufficiency" level of global influence and is internationally known for its National Film School, a cradle for the most renowned Polish actors and directors, including Andrzej Wajda and Roman Polanski. In 2017, the city was inducted into the UNESCO Creative Cities Network and named UNESCO City of Film.
Name and toponymy
The Polish name for the city, , directly translates to 'boat' in the English language. There is no unanimous consensus on its precise origin, but popular theories link it with the medieval village of Łodzia and the now-canalised River Łódka on which the modern city was founded. It may have also derived from the term denoting a willow tree and the personal Old Polish name Włodzisław.
History
Early beginnings (1332–1815)
Łódź first appears in a 1332 written record issued by Władysław the Hunchback, Duke of Łęczyca, which transferred the village of Łodzia to the Bishopric of Włocławek. The document enumerated the privileges of its inhabitants, notably the right to graze land, establish pastures and engage in logging. In 1423, King of Poland Władysław II Jagiełło officially granted town rights to the village under Magdeburg Law. For centuries, it remained a small remote settlement situated among woodlands and marshes, which was privately held by the Kuyavian bishops. The economy was predominantly driven by agriculture and farming until the 19th century. The earliest two versions of the coat of arms appeared on seal emblems in 1535 and 1577, with the latter illustrating a boat-like vessel and a turned oar.
With the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, Łódź was annexed by Prussia. In 1798, the Kuyavian bishops' ownership over the region was formally revoked during the secularisation of church property. The town, governed by a burgomaster (), at the time had only 190 residents, 44 occupied dwellings, a church and a prison. In 1806, Łódź was incorporated into the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw. In the aftermath of the 1815 Congress of Vienna, the duchy was dissolved and the town became part of the Congress Kingdom of Poland, a client state of the Russian Empire.
Partitions and development (1815–1918)