The Treaty of Versailles signed on 28th June 1919 confirmed Poland’s rights to Greater Poland and also sanctioned the return of the seashore region of Gdańsk Pomerania that had been taken by Prussia in the partitions. The operation of reclaiming access to the Baltic coast started in January 1920, led by General Józef Haller, a former brigadier of the Polish Legions. Thanks to his skills and determination, it progressed smoothly – the remaining German forces seldom violated the treaty by resisting.
By 10th February, Gdańsk Pomerania was a region of Poland again. A special ceremony was held to mark that fact, known as Poland’s Wedding to the Sea. On that day, the general, who had earlier received two platinum rings from the citizens of Gdańsk, threw one of them into the Baltic symbolically wedding the sea to Poland. The other ring Haller kept for himself. The 1930 piece Zaślubiny Polski z Morzem (Poland's Wedding to the Sea) by the noted historical painter Wojciech Kossak is a stylised depiction of that ceremony.
Reclaiming Gdańsk Pomerania wasn’t the last accord of reinstating Poland. In the upcoming years, its borders were also shaped, for example, by the Polish-Bolshevik War and the Silesian Uprisings. Eventually however, a Poland was created whose shape strongly resembled that of the country partitioned back in the 18th century.
This amazing development was and still is considered nothing short of a miracle by some. In the 1924 novel The Spring to Come by the noted writer Stefan Żeromski, a character called Szymon Gajowiec, an important official of the newly reborn state, is described as follows:
He believed in miracles. He believed in some mysterious care about this country. In his conversations with Cezary he pointed to a few ‘miracles’. Mr. Gajowiec’s first ‘miracle’ was, naturally, the resurrection of the Polish state.
Cezary Baryka, the young hero of the story who keenly analyses the complex situation of 1920s Poland asks Gajowiec in one of their dialogues:
What vision of Poland do you have in this modern, extraordinarily new world? What vision?
A timeless question.
Author: Marek Kępa, Jan 2018