Lodz
Lodz (in Polish Łódź) is the second largest city (population 1,055,000 in 2002) of Poland, located in the centre of the country. And also the capital of the Lodz Voivodship
The city, founded in 1423, came under Prussian rule under the name Lodsch in 1793 after the partitions of Poland. In 1806 it joined Duchy of Warsaw and in 1815 belonged to Congress Kingdom.
In the early 1800-ties became the center of industrialisation and the city of 3 cultures: Polish, Jewish and German,
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the city functioned as a major industrial centre. A Polish, Jewish (Poznaski) and German (Scheibler, Grohmann) craftsmen and business owners founded factories and companies in Lodz. The provincial city of Lodz issued dual-language documents, for example, a weaver-craftsmen guild document of 1842 states: Urzad Starszych Zgromadnemia haendor w Miecicie Lodzi... and Das Aeltesten Amt des Webergewerbe in der Provincial Stadt Lodz...
Lodz became a part of the newly independent Polish state in 1918. During World War II, the city was annexed by Germany and renamed \Litzmannstadt. Many Lodz Germans refused to sign Volksliste and become Volksdeutsche. Instead they were deported to General Government. During the Nazi occupation a Jewish ghetto was set up in the city, which was liquidated in 1945.
After World War II, under the Polish Communist regime, many industrialist families lost their fortunes when the authorities nationalised the companies. After the period of economic transition in the coutry during the 1990s most of them were privatised again, but were in such a desolate state that few survived in the new capitalist reality.
The city is home to the University of Lodz
(Uniwersytet Łódzki).History