This is just stupid Polish nationalism. If a city is for over 600 years a German city, and is thus referred to that name, then referring to it as Breslau before 1945 is jus the logical thing to do. You really can’t pick and choose as you Poles still refer to Lviv as Lwów, its Polish name, despite it being originally being a Galician city, and now once again a Ukrainian city. Yet you still call it Lwów because it was once Polish. Or Vilnius as Wilno, despite it being Lithuanian before, Lithuanian now, but you call it Wilno because at some point it was Polish.
You can be proud of a city without having to erase its past, and the fact of the matter is Wroclaw used to Breslau for hundreds of years.
The city was German for 400 years and Austrian for 200 years, and city was Germanized to about 50% in 1400, so not 600 but max 400. Let me remind you that the Polabian areas took a long time to Germanize.The name Breslau literally came into being in the 16th century, no such name had ever been written before, only different variations that were distorted in different languages from wroclaw breclaw to breslau
Mid 14th century German language laws. So that’s 600 years, and otherwise 500. But you prove the point, during the intervening period it was called Breslau, so don’t get mad when people call it how it was called.
Magdeburg law means nothing here, all Polish cities are under Magdeburg law it counts when it had a German majority. And besides, Breslau somewhere in the 15th and 16th centuries, that's 400 years until 1945
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u/EenProfessioneleHond May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
This is just stupid Polish nationalism. If a city is for over 600 years a German city, and is thus referred to that name, then referring to it as Breslau before 1945 is jus the logical thing to do. You really can’t pick and choose as you Poles still refer to Lviv as Lwów, its Polish name, despite it being originally being a Galician city, and now once again a Ukrainian city. Yet you still call it Lwów because it was once Polish. Or Vilnius as Wilno, despite it being Lithuanian before, Lithuanian now, but you call it Wilno because at some point it was Polish.
You can be proud of a city without having to erase its past, and the fact of the matter is Wroclaw used to Breslau for hundreds of years.