In September 2015 students from Germany, Poland, and Hungary met in Gdańsk to examine the region’s multicultural history, where over a thousand years of cultural and political change have left traces from seven different sovereign states and governing entities. Working with artists from Germany, Hungary, and the United States, the group studied the exact site where the Second World War began—the Nazi attack on the Westerplatte peninsula in the then-city of Danzig—and visited Stutthof, the former concentration camp located 35 kilometers east of Gdańsk, confronting the wartime legacy of the area. The program also explored Gdańsk’s role as the birthplace of the Solidarity movement and its central place in the political transformations that culminated in the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, linking local memory to broader European change.

Why Gdańsk?

A city at the crossroads of major commercial and communication routes. An extensive port and deep mercantile traditions. These features have made Gdańsk a meeting place of many cultures and nationalities — an active gateway between East and West where trade, ideas, and people have converged for centuries.

Gdańsk’s story is also one of resilience. The city was left nearly destroyed by war and the fierce fights that accompanied it. Its reconstruction, powered by committed citizens and painstaking restoration, took decades and restored both buildings and civic life. Those years of rebuilding forged a strong local identity rooted in craft, commerce, and community.

Gdańsk is also a city of historic struggle and political change. The tragic events of December 1970, the strikes of August 1980, and the repression of the martial law period are central episodes in the city’s modern memory. From the shipyards and the ranks of workers emerged Solidarność — Solidarity — a movement that began in Gdańsk and helped reshape the political map of Europe. That legacy of peaceful resistance and civic courage remains a defining part of the city’s character.

Today Gdańsk combines its layered past with a dynamic present: a rebuilt historic center, a working port, cultural institutions, universities, and an international community. It is a place where heritage and renewal sit side by side — a living example of how history, commerce, and civic action can intersect to produce a city both historically significant and vibrantly contemporary.