Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 4, No. 2, Autumn 2019 | Page 15

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
underground movement “Solidarity” (Solidarność) in Wroclaw. In the years
1989–1990, he was co-leader and then leader of the Civic Committee in
Wroclaw, which, representing “Solidarity,” won the first partially free parliamentary
elections in 1989 and the first democratic local elections in 1990. He
holds a master’s degree in applied mathematics and a Ph.D. in formal logics.
Rafał Dutkiewiczs received numerous awards and distinctions, among others:
Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (Poland, 2015),
Legion of Honor (France, 2013); Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of
Germany (Germany 2017), National Prize of Germany (2017), Honorary
Membership Academia Europaea (2011).
I
should�perhaps�begin by talking about the sense of freedom and joy, such as that
vibrating today in Wroclaw’s town square as hundreds of guitarists set out to once again
beat the largest guitar ensemble Guinness world record. We break this record year after
year. Can you imagine a few thousand guitarists simultaneously playing a Hendrix song?
I should�perhaps�start off by describing the urge to explore, which has been such a
nice characteristic of Wroclaw’s cultural life since the Second World War.
I should�perhaps�mention the modernisation processes in Poland, which I would
like to bolster.
But I will start differently because there are a few key ideas�the reasons underlying
Wroclaw’s bid for the title of European Capital of Culture�that I would like to share
with you.
The first one is our desire to bring to the world an important message that flows from
Wroclaw, a message I would like to amplify so it is heard loud and clear. It has to do with
the fact that Wroclaw is probably the only major city where in the wake of World War
II a hundred per cent of the population was replaced. The pre-war inhabitants, mostly
Germans, were expelled, and new settlers, Poles displaced from the former eastern part
of Poland, moved in. Thus, today’s Wroclaw is in a sense the combined effect of three
criminal “inventions” of the twentieth century�Nazism, communism, and World War
II. It was those causes that made Wroclaw a city of the displaced, where�let me stress
this again�a COMPLETE exchange of population took place.
In 1965, the Polish catholic bishops published their famous letter to their German
counterparts. The letter, authored by the Bishop of Wroclaw, Bolesław Kominek, contained
the famous sentence: “We forgive and ask for forgiveness.” If one realises that
this sentence was written barely 20 years after World War II, that it was written by Poles
to Germans, that it was written in Wroclaw, the city of expulsions, one cannot but conclude
that the city’s genius loci are a positive spirit that brings something beautiful,
wise, and unique.
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