The Conference EHE’2007 will be held in Wroclaw (Poland).
EHE’2007 will be held
in the Sofitel Wroclaw
offering world-class facilities and services, lies amidst the Old Town –
cultural, business and social heart of Wroclaw. Modern architecture blends
sympathetically into historical surroundings. Clear design of glass-roof atrium
and foyer associates with the best examples of contemporary art.
Wroclaw - Multicultural
metropolis:
(photo, S. Klimek)
Wroclaw is an excellent example of a
multicultural metropolis situated at the interface of ethnically diverse areas.
For a greater part of the city's history, German was the dominant language in
Wroclaw. However, for several generations the city was home to the Korn
publishing house, which printed many books in Polish (250 titles between 1732
and 1790). Here the German playwright Karl Holtei staged a play about the Polish
national hero Tadeus Kosciusko in 1826. The Czechs have also played an important
role in the city's history (in 1335- 1526 Wroclaw belonged to the Kingdom of
Bohemia). As late as 1719, the great sculptor Johann Georg Urbanski of Bohemia
was given the key to the city.
Multiculturalism again left a very deep
impression on the city's character after the Second World War, when the city's
German population was largely replaced by people arriving from various regions
of Poland, including those resettled from the eastern provinces of Poland taken
over by the Soviet Union. In particular, many former citizens of Vilnius and
Lvov settled here. With them came the great library collection of the Ossolinski
Institution from Lvov, which found a new location in the magnificent Baroque
edifice of the former monastery of the Red Star Knights of the Cross. Two other
works of unique significance for Polish culture were transferred from Lvov: the
statue of the leading Polish comic dramatist, Count Aleksander Fredro, and the
Panorama of the Battle of Raclawice, a monumental painting representing the
victorious battle with the Russian forces fought by Tadeus Kosciusko on 4 April
1794, one of only several paintings of this kind to have survived in Europe
until the present. It took over 35 years before it was possible to show the
Panorama to the public, but today it is one of the city's most popular tourist
attractions.