Sopot

Sopot, Poland

Kashubian: Sopòt, Sopòtë, Copòtë, Copòt

The origin of the town’s name has not been definitively established. It is likely to be of Slavic origin and to be derived from the word potòk, meaning ‘rushing stream’.

54° 44′ 51′′ north latitude, 18° 56′ 83′′ east longitude. Sopot is situated on the Polish Baltic coast. To the north, the town borders Gdynia; to the south, Gdańsk; it forms the centre of the so-called Tri-City (Trójmiasto).

Republic of Poland; a city with independent municipal status in the Pomerania Voivodeship, with a population of 38,141 (as at 31 December 2010).^[1]

In 1309, Sopot, along with large parts of Pomerelia, came under the rule of the German Order, until the town passed to the Polish Crown in 1466 under the terms of the Second Peace of Toruń. Following the First Partition of Poland in 1772, Sopot became part of Prussia. After the First World War, Danzig and Zoppot were declared the Free City of Danzig under a League of Nations mandate. Following the occupation of Poland in 1939, Danzig and Zoppot were incorporated into the Third Reich. After the end of the war in 1945, Sopot once again became part of the Polish state under the Potsdam Agreement.

Town coat of arms of
, Zoppot/Sopot

 

The city’s symbols are the coat of arms, the flag and the city anthem, ‘Hejnał’.

The coat of arms consists of a shield surmounted by a wall; it depicts a white seagull with outstretched wings on a blue background, alighting on a yellow sand dune with a white (silver) cod.

The flag consists of a rectangle with an aspect ratio of 1.5:1. It has two stripes of equal width; the upper one is blue and the lower one yellow. In the centre is a white seagull with outstretched wings, holding a white cod in its talons.

The Hejnał was composed in 2001 by Tadeusz Kossak to mark the centenary of Sopot; it is a triumphant melody that is played daily at midday from the lighthouse and during official ceremonies.

The first documented mention of Zoppot dates back to 5 March 1283. Duke Mestwin II of Pomerelia (1220–1294) granted 15 villages, including Zoppot, to the Cistercian monastery of Oliva/Oliwa. This donation was compensation for the land of Mewe/Gniew, which had previously belonged to the monastery but had been ceded to the German Order. At that time, Zoppot was a small farming village that was obliged to pay ground rent and perform corvée labour for the monastery in Oliva.

Sopot experienced its first heyday in the 17th century. As Danzig grew in prominence, the surrounding countryside came increasingly under the influence of the Hanseatic city, and wealthy merchants sought places to relax in the countryside with their families. Leasehold agreements dated 1550 between Oliva Abbey and Gdańsk patricians have been found. Wealthy merchant families such as the Borkmanns, Uphagens, Kleefelds, Gieses and von Frantziuses converted the estates into country houses, country retreats and summer residences, or erected magnificent new buildings.

During the Second Northern War in 1655, Sopot was severely affected by looting, arson, the quartering of troops and forced levies. In the wake of the Oliva peace negotiations in 1660, both the Swedish and Polish parties took up quarters in various estates and vied with one another through feasts and courtly splendour. In 1696, the troops of the rival king, Prince Franz Ludwig of Bourbon-Conti (1664–1709), ravaged Sopot and the surrounding area before being driven out by Augustus the Strong (1670–1733) and his forces. Zoppot was hardest hit by the War of the Polish Succession (1733–1736): when Stanisław Poniatowski (1676–1762), who had joined forces with Stanisław Leszczyński (1677–1766), managed to flee from Zoppot to Gdańsk in 1734, the troops of the later victorious King Augustus III of Saxony (1696–1763) burnt the village to the ground in retaliation.

Following the First Partition of Poland in 1772, Zoppot became part of Prussia.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Sopot was plundered by the French in 1807 and then by the Cossacks in 1813. The doctor Dr Johann Georg Haffner (1777–1831) also came to Gdańsk with the French army. He recognised Sopot’s favourable location as a health resort and, in 1823, leased a plot of land on the beach dunes, where he established one of the first ‘cold baths’. The growing number of bathers soon made it necessary to expand the spa facilities; amongst other things, a wide pier was built in 1830, which, at 515 metres, is now one of Zoppot’s landmarks. The opening of the Pomeranian Railway from Danzig to Berlin in 1870 also accelerated the town’s development. Between 1840 and 1899, the population rose from around 800 to over 10,000.

Sopot’s growth was further boosted by its granting of town status on 8 October 1901; numerous spa buildings were erected, including the imposing third Kurhaus. Zoppot emerged from the First World War unscathed. In 1920, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, it became part of the Free City of Danzig as an independent city under the mandate of the League of Nations. The opening of the casino in the Kurhaus (1920) brought the town substantial revenue, which was used to build the casino hotel now known as the Grand Hotel. The Waldoper, built in 1909, also enjoyed a heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. The Wagner Forest Festival made Sopot famous and turned it into a ‘Northern Bayreuth’. By 1929, the population had grown to over 30,000 and the number of holidaymakers to around 28,000. Zoppot enjoyed great popularity not only amongst Germans and Poles; wealthy visitors from other parts of Europe also flocked to the so-called ‘Riviera of the North’. This was due to the Baltic seaside resort’s appeal – unique in the region – as an exclusive holiday and leisure centre (casino, racecourse, the Crown Prince’s summer residence), as well as its good transport links.

Sopot Pier (postcard: before 1930) [Herder-
Institute, Marburg, image archive. Inv. No. 146305].

The expansion of the port at Gdynia, driven by the Polish state, put the port of Gdańsk under competitive pressure. The Great Depression of 1929 and the resulting high unemployment exacerbated the economic situation, leading to a political shift to the right. The German National People’s Party (DNVP) won the 1930 general election, and the NSDAP, led by Albert Forster (1902–1952), became the second-strongest force in the Danzig People’s Assembly. Three years later, the NSDAP secured an absolute majority, and Sopot, along with Danzig, became a stronghold of the National Socialists. Discrimination against Jews and Poles initially culminated in the arson attack on the synagogue in 1938. Following the invasion of Poland and the annexation of the Free City of Danzig to the Third Reich (Reichsgau West Prussia, later Danzig-West Prussia), the situation deteriorated further. Members of the Jewish and Polish intelligentsia, in particular, were arrested and murdered in concentration camps. The town was not directly affected by the hostilities until 1945. Following brief but fierce fighting, Sopot was captured by the Red Army on 23 March. Many buildings, including the Kurhaus, were destroyed; however, the damage was relatively limited compared with the ruins of Danzig; numerous Art Nouveau villas and the spa architecture survived. The German inhabitants of Sopot who had not been evacuated or had not fled were resettled by November 1946.

In 1945, Sopot became part of the People’s Republic of Poland. The vacated flats and houses were occupied by the resettled Polish population. In the early post-war years, Sopot’s population grew rapidly and by 1950, at 36,000, it was already higher than in 1939. The communist government successfully promoted the development of Sopot as a resort for mass tourism. At the same time, numerous cultural events were organised, such as the annual ‘Sopot Jazz Festival’. Although Sopot was intended to become a holiday destination for everyone in a classless society, it lost little of its exclusive character even during the communist era, as evidenced by visits from leading figures in the worlds of culture (Zbigniew Cybulski [1927–1967], Andrzej Wajda [1926–2016]) and politics (Bolesław Bierut [1892–1956], Władysław Gomułka [1905–1982], Wojciech Jaruzelski [1923–2014]) attest. Even in the 21st century, tourism remains the city’s most important source of income.

• Małgorzata Buchholz-Todoroska: Sopot as a summer resort for the people of Gdańsk from the 17th to the late 19th century. In: Małgorzata Omilanowska, Beate Störtkuhl (eds.): Escapes from the City – Ucieczki z miasta. Warsaw 2011 (Shared Cultural Heritage/Wspólne Dziedzictwo 7), pp. 77–86.
• Ansgar Haller: The Formation of Public Life in Danzig from the 18th Century until the Second Partition of Poland in 1793. Hamburg 2005 (Studies in Modern Historical Research 42), p. 327.
• Hans-Jürgen Kämpfert: Sopot in Retrospect. In: Gilbert H. Gornig (ed.): German–Polish Symposium. The City of Sopot: A Retrospective and the Present Day after 100 Years. Lübeck 2004 (Publications of the Danzig Society of Naturalists 7), pp.41–53.
• Małgorzata Omilanowska: Poland on the Baltic Sea. The Construction of a Visual National Identity in the Baltic Region (1918–1939). In: Beate Störtkuhl, Jens Stüben, Tobias Weger (eds.): New Beginnings and Crisis. Eastern Europe and the Germans after the First World War. Munich 2010 (Publications of the Federal Institute for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe 41), pp.35–53.
• Jerzy Stankiewicz, Bohdan Szemer: Gdańsk. Krajobraz i architektura zespołu miejskiego [Danzig. Landscape and Architecture of the Urban Complex]. Warsaw 1971, pp.20–23.

• www.sopot.pl (Town website)
• www.muzeumsopotu.pl/pl (Sopot Museum)
• http://histmag.org/?id=2528 Piotr Pelczar: Historia Sopotu. Część I: od średniowiecza do wybuchu I wojny światowej [History of Sopot. Part I: from the Middle Ages to the outbreak of the First World War]
• www.herder-institut.de/bildkatalog/wikidata/Q92689 (Images of Zoppot/Sopot in the image archive of the Herder Institute, Marburg)

[1] See: stat.gov.pl/obszary-tematyczne/roczniki-statystyczne/roczniki-statystyczne/rocznik-demograficzny-2011,3,5.html# (p. 49).

Paweł Mehring: Zoppot/Sopot. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2012. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32525 (as at 30 July 2021).