Lublin
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Lublin
(lo͞o`blēn), city (1994 est. pop. 352,100), capital of Lubelskie prov., SE Poland. It is a railway junction and industrial center. Manufactures include trucks, agricultural machinery, chemicals, and foodstuffs. One of the oldest Polish towns, Lublin became the capital of a province in 1474 and the seat of a tribunal in 1578. It was the meeting place of several diets (16th–18th cent.), one of which united (1569) Poland with Lithuania. Lublin passed to Austria in 1795 and to Russia in 1815. It was (1918) the seat of a temporary Polish Socialist government. In 1941, Majdanek concentration camp was established by the Nazis in Lublin. In 1944 it was the seat of a provisional government rivaling the Polish government-in-exile in London. At the Yalta Conference (Feb., 1945) it was agreed to broaden the Lublin government by including members of the London cabinet; the Lublin government was recognized as the sole Polish authority at the Potsdam Conference (Aug., 1945). The Catholic Univ. of Lublin (founded 1918) and Maria Curie-Skłodowska Univ. are there. Lublin's most notable buildings are a 14th-century city hall (rebuilt 1787), a 14th-century castle (rebuilt 1826), and a 16th-century cathedral.Lublin
a city in eastern Poland, on the Bystrzyca River (Vistula basin). Administrative center of Lublin Województwo. Population, 249,000 (1972). The city is an important industrial and cultural center and a railroad junction.
The main branches of industry are machine building (motor vehicles, agricultural machinery, and scales), food processing (meat, dairy, confectionery, sugar, beer, and tobacco), and leather footwear. The city also produces building materials and wood products. There are five higher educational institutions in Lublin, including the M. Curie-Sklodowska University, a medical institute, and higher schools of agriculture and engineering.
Evidence of the existence of Lublin dates from the tenth century. In 1569 a joint Polish and Lithuanian Sejm met here, at which the Union of Lublin was concluded. In the course of the revolutionary upsurge that began under the influence of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, the first soviet of workers’ deputies in Poland was established in Lublin on Nov. 5, 1918. During World War II (1939-45), after invading Poland in September 1939, Hitler’s forces established one of their mass extermination camps in Majdanek, a suburb of Lublin. On July 24, 1944, Lublin was liberated by the Soviet Army. Until the liberation of Warsaw on Jan. 17, 1945, Lublin served as the provisional capital of the Polish republic. The Krajowa Rada Narodowa and the Polish Committee of National Liberation, which became the provisional government on Dec. 31, 1944, were based in Lublin.
On the left bank is a castle (13th to 16th centuries, rebuilt in the 19th century), noted for its Gothic chapel (second half of the 14th century) containing murals by Andrzej dating from 1418. The Old Town was built in the 14th and 15th centuries. There are several late Renaissance Roman Catholic churches, including the church of the Dominicans (14th to early 17th centuries) and the church of the Bridgettine Sisters (15th to early 17th centuries). To the south and west of the Old Town are buildings from the 17th to 19th centuries, among them baroque Roman Catholic churches and palaces and a classical cathedral. New sections of the city have been built since 1945, and a university campus, a film theater, and the House of Sports were constructed during the 1950’s and 1960’s. The city has a museum.
REFERENCES
Gawarecki, H., and C. Gawdzik. Lublin. Warsaw, 1959.Lublin, 1317-1916. Lublin, 1967. (Bibliography, pages 289-94.)