Antique map - Breslau 1917

Pharus-Plan of Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland) in 1917: the capital of Prussian Silesia, its railway stations, its Jahrhunderthalle, and its Carlowitz garden city.

This Pharus-Plan shows Breslau in 1917. At that time, the city was the capital of the Prussian province of Silesia in the German Empire and had more than 500,000 inhabitants: 512,105 at the 1910 census. Today it is called Wrocław (Vratislavia or Wratislavia in Latin, Brassel in Silesian), and it is the capital of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship in Poland. It only took its Polish name after 1945.

Until the end of 1944, Breslau was not bombed. Hitler declared it a "fortress", the Soviets reached its outskirts on January 23, 1945, and surrounded it in February, and Festung Breslau did not surrender until May 6, 1945, four days after Berlin. The German population was then evacuated or expelled, and later replaced by Poles from central and eastern Poland, many of whom came from Lwów (Lemberg), which had become Soviet. The map shows the city in 1917, before these upheavals.

Places and districts shown:

• The castle and the historic centre - in the Stadtschloss in Breslau, King Frederick William III founded the Iron Cross in March 1813 and issued his call "An Mein Volk" ("To My People"), which marked the beginning of the war of liberation against Napoleon. The castle now houses the city museum.
• The railway stations - the map names three railway stations: the Hauptbahnhof to the south, the Freiburger Bahnhof to the west, and the Oderthor-Bahnhof to the north, along with their goods yards. The Hauptbahnhof opened in 1857 under the name Oberschlesischer Bahnhof, in a Tudor Neo-Gothic style designed by Wilhelm Grapow, and only took the name Hauptbahnhof in 1904, at the end of the reconstruction of its halls. The Freiburger Bahnhof belonged to a company founded in 1841, whose first line, 58 kilometres long, opened on October 29, 1843. It was from Breslau on May 1, 1842, that the first train departed for what is now Polish territory: the line to Ohlau.
• Scheitnig and the Jahrhunderthalle - to the east, near Scheitniger Park, which is named on the map, stands the Jahrhunderthalle, built from 1911 to 1913 by the municipal architect Max Berg for the centennial exhibition of the war of liberation. At the time the largest reinforced concrete building in Germany, it hosted a "Festspiel in deutschen Reimen" by Gerhart Hauptmann in May 1913, directed by Max Reinhardt. It has been listed by UNESCO since July 2006.
• The Carlowitz Gartenstadt - the large inset at the top left, "Gartenstadt Breslau-Carlowitz", shows the garden city whose design was by the Munich architect Paul Schmitthenner. Carlowitz (Karłowice in Polish) was then a separate municipality, separated from Breslau by the Oder; it was not annexed to the city until 1928.
• The Oder and its meadows - the river crosses the map, with the Holland-Wiesen and the Ohle-Wiesen to the east and southeast, vast meadows stretching between the city and villages such as Morgenau or Zedlitz.

Cartographic features: this "Pharus-Plan Breslau" is from the same series as the 1917 plans of Berlin, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Bremen, with the railway stations in red, the tramway lines, and buildings drawn in perspective. The same Magdeburgische Zeitung banners frame it. Two insets, at the top and bottom left, extend the map, and a grid of letters and numbers allows each location to be identified.

In short: for anyone with ties to Wrocław or Silesia, or who is interested in the former German cities of Central Europe, this map shows Breslau, one of the largest cities in the Empire, before the war that made it Polish.

What area does this map of Breslau cover? It covers Breslau (Wrocław) and its surroundings: the centre on the Oder, the three railway stations, Scheitniger Park, the Carlowitz garden city, and the neighbouring villages of Morgenau, Herdain, or Zedlitz.

In what year was this map published? This map dates from 1917. It was published by Pharus-Verlag in Berlin.

Reproduction of the "Pharus-Plan Breslau", published in 1917 by Pharus-Verlag in Berlin.

Printed on 200 g/m² textured art paper. Landscape orientation, standard 50x70cm and 70x100cm formats: easy to frame.