Poland

B

Principal Cities

In the early 1990s more than 40 cities had an estimated population of more than 100,000, but only 5 of those cities had more than 500,000 inhabitants. The major cities, with their populations, are Warsaw, 1,687,600 (2005 estimate), the capital; Łódź, 768,900 (2005 estimate); Kraków, 760,300 (2005 estimate); Wrocław (formerly Breslau), 637,200 (2005 estimate); Poznań (formerly Posen), 573,000 (2005 estimate); Gdańsk (formerly Danzig), 457,400 (2005 estimate); Szczecin (formerly Stettin), 413,600 (2005 estimate); Bydgoszcz (formerly Bromberg), 368,800 (2005 estimate); Katowice, 318,600 (2005 estimate); and Lublin, 357,200 (2005 estimate).

C

Religion

Roman Catholicism is, at least nominally, the religion of some 91 per cent of Poles, and it exerts an important influence on many aspects of Polish life. In 1978, Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, a Pole, became the Roman Catholic pope as John Paul II. The country has about 37 other Churches and religious denominations with a combined membership of some 1 million people. Of these, eight groups are members of the Polish Ecumenical Council, the largest being the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church (about 570,000 members) and the Evangelical Augsburg Church (about 100,000 members). There are also some 115,700 Jehovah’s Witnesses. Before World War II, some 3.5 million Jews lived in Poland; over 90 per cent were killed during the German occupation during the war. Many of the surviving Polish Jews emigrated to the West or to Israel after returning from wartime internment in the USSR. Another wave of emigration was touched off by the government’s 1968 “anti-Zionist” campaign. In the early 1990s there were about 10,000 practising Jews in Poland, but in the late 1990s the population was estimated to be less than half this number.

D

Language

The Polish language (from the Slavic language family) is the official language of Poland and is used by nearly the entire population. Polish uses a Roman script with some letters and accents additional to those in English usage. Ukrainian has 1.5 million mother-tongue speakers while Standard German has around 500,000. Belorussian, Baltic Romani, and Vlax Romani are among some of the other minority languages spoken in Poland.

E

Education

Poland has a long tradition of educational attainment, and education occupies an important position in Polish culture.

During the period of foreign rule of Poland, education was limited to a privileged elite. After World War I, when Poland’s independence was restored, a centralized educational system was established. After World War II, the Communist government installed a school system patterned on the Soviet model. In 2005 the literacy rate was 99.8 per cent of the adult population.

Education is free and compulsory between the ages of 7 and 15. On completion of the eight-year elementary school level, almost all children enter the secondary school system. About 20 per cent of these students attend general secondary schools that prepare them for college or university entrance. In 2000 about 3.22 million pupils attended primary schools, about 3.97 million were enrolled in secondary, technical, and vocational schools, and about 1,906,268 attended higher education.

Poland has a long history of higher education. The University of Kraków (Jagiellonian University), established in 1364, was the second university founded in central Europe. Of the 179 Polish institutions of higher education in the mid-1990s, 12 were universities, 30 were polytechnics, 12 were medical academies, and most of the rest were specialized higher vocational colleges. The universities were located in Kraków, Warsaw, Poznań, Wrocław, Lublin, Łódź, Toruń, Gdańsk, Szczecin, and Katowice.

F

Culture

The great periods of Western cultural and intellectual expression are paralleled by the history of Polish creativity. The Renaissance inspired a great burst of cultural activity. The Reformation sped the development of a vernacular Polish literature, and in the 18th and 19th centuries Poles were greatly influenced by French culture. After World War II artistic freedom was severely circumscribed during the Stalinist period from 1949 to 1955. After 1956 government cultural policy generally became much more liberal.

Poland has attained its highest artistic recognition in the field of literature. The greatest period of Polish literature is generally regarded as the Romantic period of the 19th century, the chief figures being Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Zygmunt Krasiński, and Cyprian Kamil Norwid. Romanticism in drama and poetry was followed by realism, most notably in the novels of Bolesław Prus, Henryk Sienkiewicz, and Władysław Stanisław Reymont. Stanisław Wyspiański is regarded as the founder of modern Polish drama. Among the many prominent figures after 1945 were Jerzy Andrzejewski, Tadeusz Różewicz, Stanisław Lem, Leon Kruczkowski, and Zbigniew Załuski. The émigré Polish poet Czesław Miłosz received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980.

In music, the greatest and best-known Polish composer is Frédéric Chopin. Karol Szymanowski is regarded as the most important figure since Chopin. A school of composers emphasizing avant-garde music developed after World War II. Well-known Polish musicians have included the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska and the pianist Ignace Jan Paderewski.

Poland also has a long tradition of peasant music, dance, and costumes, though these have been heavily affected by post-war urbanization. Folk arts and crafts range across all fields from pottery, fabrics, and embroidery to sculpture, graphics, and painting. Such traditions have survived most strongly in such regions as the Kaszuby, a colourful forest and lake tourist area to the west of Gdańsk.

In painting, Poland has developed little in the way of distinctive styles. Artists have been influenced by various Western styles and trends, although in the 20th century traditional peasant art has exerted some influence. The portrayals of scenes from Polish history by Jan Matejko are of some note. Several Polish film-makers, including Andrzej Wajda, Roman Polanski, and Krzysztof Kieślowski, achieved international reputations after 1950.

Poland has many museums, some of the most notable of which are the National Museum (1862), the Technical Museum (1875), and the State Archaeological Museum (1923), all in Warsaw; the National Museum and the Wawel State Art Collections (1879), in Kraków; the Archaeological and Ethnographical Museum (1956), in Łódź; the Polish Maritime Museum (1960), in Gdańsk; and the Upper Silesian Museum (1927), in Katowice. Major libraries include the National Library (1928) and the Public Library (1907), both located in Warsaw, as well as several university libraries.