Polish history for the Karta Polaka interview

The most important dates in Polish history

This table is the minimum worth knowing before the interview with the consul. We describe the other interview topics in our guide to the Karta Polaka interview.

The beginnings of the state – the Piasts

The history of Poland as a state begins in 966, when Duke Mieszko I of the Piast dynasty was baptised. As a result, Poland joined Christian Europe. His son, Bolesław Chrobry (the Brave), was crowned the first King of Poland in 1025. Gniezno and Poznań were important centres for the first rulers, and later Kraków became the capital.

The last king of the Piast dynasty, Kazimierz Wielki (Casimir the Great), founded the Kraków Academy in 1364 – today the Jagiellonian University. It is said of him that he zastał Polskę drewnianą, a zostawił murowaną – he found Poland made of wood and left it made of stone – because he built many castles and towns.

The Jagiellons and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

At the end of the fourteenth century, Queen Jadwiga married Jogaila (Jagiełło), Grand Duke of Lithuania, and this began the Jagiellonian dynasty and the union of Poland and Lithuania. In 1410, at Grunwald, the Polish-Lithuanian army defeated the Teutonic Order – one of the largest battles of medieval Europe.

In 1569 the Union of Lublin joined Poland and Lithuania into a single state – the Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów (Commonwealth of the Two Nations). Kings were chosen by the nobility in a free election. At the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, King Zygmunt III Waza (Sigismund III Vasa) moved the court from Kraków to Warsaw. In 1683, King Jan III Sobieski defeated the Turkish army at Vienna.

The Jagiellonian era was also the time of Mikołaj Kopernik (Nicolaus Copernicus), who argued that the Earth moves around the Sun.

The Constitution of 3 May and the partitions

On 3 May 1791, the Sejm passed a constitution intended to strengthen the state – regarded as the first such act in Europe and the second in the world, after the American one. Poles still celebrate the anniversary of its adoption today.

Poland’s neighbours did not want a strong Poland. In three partitions – in 1772, 1793 and 1795 – Russia, Prussia and Austria divided its lands, and Poland disappeared from the map of Europe for 123 years. In 1794, Tadeusz Kościuszko led an uprising against Russia; at Racławice, peasants armed with scythes fought – the kosynierzy (scythemen).

The struggle for independence in the nineteenth century

In the nineteenth century, Poles did not have their own state, but they fought for it in uprisings and preserved their language and culture. The most important were the November Uprising (1830–1831) and the January Uprising (1863–1864). Both ended in defeat and repression.

Polish identity was kept alive by artists and writers: Fryderyk Chopin in music, Adam Mickiewicz in poetry (‘Pan Tadeusz’), Henryk Sienkiewicz in novels (‘Quo vadis’, ‘Trylogia’ – the Trilogy). Even earlier, in 1797, ‘Mazurek Dąbrowskiego’ (Dąbrowski’s Mazurka) was written in Italy – the song of the Polish Legions, which is today Poland’s national anthem.

Independence in 1918 and the Second Polish Republic

Poland regained independence after World War I, and the symbolic date is 11 November 1918 – on that day Józef Piłsudski took command of the army. Today this day is National Independence Day.

The young state had to defend its borders. In August 1920, in the Battle of Warsaw, known as the cud nad Wisłą (Miracle on the Vistula), Poland stopped the Bolshevik army. The period 1918–1939 is called the Second Polish Republic.

World War II

World War II began with Germany’s attack on Poland on 1 September 1939; on 17 September the Soviet Union attacked from the east. The war was a catastrophe for Poland: millions of its citizens died, including most of Poland’s Jews.

• In 1940, in Katyń and other places, the Soviet NKVD murdered thousands of Polish officers.
• The Germans built concentration camps and extermination camps in the occupied territories, including Auschwitz-Birkenau.
• On 1 August 1944 the Warsaw Uprising broke out. The fighting lasted 63 days, and after it ended the Germans destroyed the city.

Important in the interview: say ‘niemieckie obozy koncentracyjne’ (German concentration camps) or ‘niemieckie nazistowskie obozy’ (German Nazi camps). The term ‘Polish camps’ is untrue and very painful for Poles.

The Polish People’s Republic and ‘Solidarity’

After the war, Poland came under the control of the Soviet Union, and from 1952 it was called the Polish People’s Republic (PRL). In 1978 the Cardinal of Kraków, Karol Wojtyła, became Pope John Paul II, and his pilgrimage to Poland in 1979 gave people courage.

In August 1980, after strikes at the Gdańsk Shipyard, the independent trade union ‘Solidarność’ (Solidarity) was founded, led by Lech Wałęsa. On 13 December 1981 the authorities imposed martial law. In 1989 the Round Table talks led to partly free elections on 4 June, and Tadeusz Mazowiecki became prime minister – the first non-communist prime minister in this part of Europe after the war.

Poland after 1989

After 1989 Poland became a democracy. In 1997 it adopted its current constitution, in 1999 it joined NATO, and on 1 May 2004 it joined the European Union.

National symbols and public holidays

Questions about symbols are short, but they come up often – it is worth knowing them precisely.

Famous Poles you should be able to say a sentence about

• Mikołaj Kopernik – astronomer; described the theory that the Earth moves around the Sun.
• Maria Skłodowska-Curie – discovered polonium and radium, won the Nobel Prize twice.
• Fryderyk Chopin – composer and pianist; wrote mazurkas and polonaises.
• Adam Mickiewicz – the most important Polish poet of Romanticism, author of ‘Pan Tadeusz’.
• Jan Paweł II – the pope from Poland, previously Archbishop of Kraków.
• Lech Wałęsa – leader of ‘Solidarity’, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, President of Poland.

How to talk about history in Polish

Students make most of their mistakes not in the facts, but in saying dates and in verb forms. A few rules:

• You say the year with an ordinal number: w tysiąc dziewięćset trzydziestym dziewiątym roku.
• The day of the month goes in the genitive: pierwszego września, jedenastego listopada.
• The century – with a Roman numeral and an ordinal number: w XIX (dziewiętnastym) wieku.
• A country name in the plural takes a plural verb: Niemcy napadły, Czechy graniczą. The same applies to several countries together: Rosja, Prusy i Austria podzieliły.

You will find history questions in dialogue form in our list of typical consul’s questions, and information about holidays in the overview of Polish traditions and holidays. If you want to practise these topics out loud with a teacher, see our ‘Karta Polaka’ course – we start with a trial lesson.