Poland's maritime northwest — the Oder delta city that switched countries in 1945
Szczecin is one of Europe's most historically complex cities — a large Baltic port that was the Prussian and then German city of Stettin for over 700 years before being transferred to Poland after World War II, when its German population (who had called it home for generations) were expelled overnight and replaced by Poles relocated from Ukrainian cities like Lwów (now Lviv). This traumatic population exchange left the city with a layered identity it has spent 80 years negotiating: German architectural heritage (castle, town hall, boulevards designed by Berlin's chief city planner) in a thoro…
The settlement dates to early medieval Slavic tribes, and Szczecin/Stettin became a Hanseatic League city and the capital of the Duchy of Pomerania from the 12th century. It came under Brandenburg-Prussia in 1720 and was substantially expanded and beautified in the 18th and 19th centuries as a major port city. The Nazi regime used it as a major naval and industrial centre; it was heavily bombed in 1944 and the city centre was largely destroyed. The 1945 Potsdam Agreement drew Poland's western border at the Oder-Neisse line, including Stettin in Poland — the entire German population of approxi…