Berlin as a New Model for Krakow's Destruction by Post-War German Architecture.

Professor Roger Scruton warned the nascent Krakow Conservation movement Cravovia Urbs Europaea about the impact of the concept of post-war German architectural design being imported into Krakow. It is wholly out of place to throw up German designs into very heart of Krakow.

Unfortunately the dysfunctional organisation and polycentric chaos of these conservation intitiatives and bad leadership have failed to get it organised, disciplined and effective, though hope lies in the academic community of Krakow in gaining the support of prominent thinkers and intellectuals in Poland

The interesting thing about Berlin was that numerous building have been copied on a minature scale in Krakow. Geartner's M65 Meduza building is a direct mini-replica of plate and steel glass erections in Berlin especially around Potsdamer Platz, an atrocity exhibition of grotesque kitsch which was once the heart of Berlin's cafe and night life in the 1920s.

Krakow is not Krakau and was not destroyed during World War Two as was Berlin. Gaertner has no right to impose these designs on a very different city and in the process despoiling it. Geartner is one of the biggest potential threats to Krakow since Nazi Wartime Governor Hans Frank who, unlike Gaertner, did not have the time to destroy Krakow.

With the January Offensive by the Soviet Army in 1945, the city was rigged up with explosives by the Nazis with orders to destroy it on retreat.

Fortunately, the Red Army's advance was so swift, the Nazis did not have time to detonate them. Geartner has plenty of time and official sanction by those like the plodding and dull witted technocrat Mayor Jacek Majchrowski to wreck Krakow piecemeal.
The problem comes from what Scruton terms the "culture of repudiation" whereby in Germany "Stunde Zero" in 1945 mean that a wholly new modernistic Germany should arise from the ashes not merely of the Third Reich but also the Second Reich which ended in 1918 ans whose buildings were mostly destroyed as well.

Yet Nazi building were pompous monumentalist kitsch in a way that the buildings of Berlin's expansion from the 1840s onwards were not. The Kaiserreich ( 1871-1918 ) was far from perfect but neither in historical terms nor in architectural and cultural terms was is some mere simple precursor of Nazi Germany.
Poland preserved it's culture and sense of Polish identity through Krakow. It would be ironical that German capital and architecture was able to ruin the harmony of the city in a way that the Nazis were not able to do during their occupation of Krakau as part of the GG, a sector of Poland nor directly incorporated into the Third Reich.

This is not exactly a joke. English critics called the London County Council in the 1960s more inimical to London's historical fabric and more devastating destructive than the Herman Goering's Luftwaffe and the waves of continued bombing raids during the dark days of The Blitz in 1941.

Yet in Germany where it's death as an Imperial Power was dramatic and conclusive, it seems that after 1945 the "imperial past" was to be utterly destroyed, and not just in Western Berlin, with Erhard's new capitalism where no effort was made to rebuild the old elegant streets of Berlin.
And that, of course, was equally if not more so in East Germany where pure Communist functionality, Stalinist momumentalism and a repudiation of the German imperialism that had led to 'Hitler's War' meant all the more erasing the past under Ulbrich and Honecker's DDR police state.
This never happened in Poland as Krakow survived, Wroclaw as Festung Breslau in what was then then Germany and even Warsaw were extensively rebuilt according to pre-war plans. Ironically, Polish Communist authorities helped rebuild what still looks like an essentially German city, as it was for 800 years.

This is all the more a reason to preserve Krakow as a symbol of Poland's historical destiny as a nation and the cradle of quintessential Polishness in culture. The recent innovations, for which Henryk Gaertner of GD & K Group and the way the Rada Miejska have given him a virtual free hand in Krakow is an international disgrace.

As Professor Roger Scruton put it,

"Krakow is a symbol of Poland and its culture, a city that maintained its moral and aesthetic identity throughout the worst experiences of the 20th century.

For those who came during the last days of communism it offered the face of hope, and its beautiful architecture and dignified streets spoke of the historical Poland, which was determined to endure beyond the years of oppression.

It's ancient university, its royal castle, its churches with their unspoilt interiors, and its magnificent market square all embody the idea of the city as a seat of learning, culture and religion, and a place where the nation shapes itself by building a home. There is no place like this city on our continent, and I fully endorse the work of CUE in its determination to save Krakow for future generations.

All over Europe the predators are at work , exploiting our heritage for financial gain, and in the process destroying it. Let them not succeed here, in the heart of Poland. For if they succeed, the whole nation will suffer in its soul".