Donnerau, Germany

Donnerau was probably founded at the end of the 13th century and belonged to the Hornschloss castle district.  The population lived mainly from agriculture, house weaving and fruit growing. For the year 1840 there are 668 inhabitants and 46 handlooms, as well as the coal mines “Christian Gottfried” and “Unexpected luck”. As the yield was low, they were soon abandoned. The “Anna-Hütte” iron foundry, founded in 1855, was in operation until 1914. Another economic development followed after the connection to the Dittersbach – Glatz railway . A wooden bobbin factory and a yarn bleaching facility were built. In 1939 there were 947  inhabitants

Disputes regarding the rights to Danzig and German land transit over the Polish Corridor to East Prussia were used as reason for Hitler’s attack on Poland in 1939. The first shots were fired on 1 September at Westerplatte near Danzig by a German warship. By October the Polish Corridor and Danzig were taken by German troops and annexed by Nazi-Germany as the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia. In the following years Hitler’s troops moved eastwards via Poland to Russia. After the German defeat at Stalingrad, the Red Army of the Soviet Union rapidly progressed westwards. Pomerania, which included Donnerau, was conquered in the beginning of 1945, leaving vast devastations in the entire region.

With the advances of the Red Army, many Germans had fled westwards, leaving the region largely depopulated. After the defeat of Nazi-Germany, the borders of Central Europe were redrawn. The western part of the former Pomeranian Province became part of the newly established country East-Germany and was later merged into the State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The remains of Pomerania, including Szczecin, as well as the Province of West Prussia and the city of Gdańsk became part of the Republic of Poland. After the war the Soviet troops remained in Poland, and the country joined the Communist Eastern Bloc. Germans still living in Pomerania were expelled and the region was repopulated mostly with settlers from the southern parts of Poland.

Around 1980, anticommunist movements started in Pomeranian coastal cities, including Gdańsk. The trade union Solidarity (Solidarność), under leadership of the later president Lech Wałęsa, gained popularity and helped trigger the fall of Communism in Poland and Eastern Europe in 1989. In the same year Poland returned to democracy. In 1998, following local government reforms, the Pomeranian region was divided into the voivodships of West Pomerania (Zachodniopomorskie) and Pomerania (Pomorskie), whilst some parts of former West Prussia like Toruń and Bydgoszcz became part of the voivodship Kuyavian-Pomerania (Kujawsko-Pomorskie).

In 2004 Poland joined the European Union and three years later also the Schengen Treaty, allowing now for easy access to Pomerania and an uplift of trade and tourism in the region. The European Championship 2012, which was organized by Poland together with Ukraine, has given another boost to the region.