Author Meeting “Plan of Warsaw 1942–1944”

Author meeting “Plan of Warsaw 1942–1944”

The PLANS OF WARSAW series, created on the basis of the collections of the Museum of Warsaw, allows one to trace the city's spatial development through the most important works of cartography. Each volume is a faithful reprint of a plan in its original scale, supplemented with an in-depth cartographic analysis and a historical sketch that places the map in the realities of its era.

The latest volume is devoted to Stadtplan Warschau (1942–1944), compiled by the German Military Office of Cartography and Surveying. The publication presents the plan not only as a precise administrative tool, but also as a carrier of ideology and a moving record of the city's topography just before its destruction.

During the meeting the authors and editors of the volume will talk about the behind-the-scenes creation of the plan, its sources and its significance for research on the history of Warsaw. We will look at, among other things, the legend, color scheme, street layout and the changes in place names imposed by the occupier. Guests will also show occupied Warsaw as a divided city — seen from the perspectives of Poles, Jews and Germans — based on diaries, testimonies, the press and documents of the era.

This meeting will be an opportunity to talk about the map as a testimony of history, about the paradoxes of occupation cartography and about how to read the plan of a city that existed “just before the end.”

📅
11 February 2026
⏰
18:00
📍
Kino Syrena
🎟️
Free admission

Book available online and at the Museum of Warsaw bookshops

Participants:

• dr Krzysztof Mordyński – historian and art historian, researcher of Warsaw architecture and urban planning, curator at the Museum of Warsaw.
• prof. dr hab. Krzysztof Komorowski – military historian and Varsavianist, researcher of Warsaw’s occupation history.
• prof. dr hab. Jacek Leociak – literary scholar and Holocaust researcher, specialist in the history of the Warsaw Ghetto and Muranów.
• Witold Pietrusiewicz – Varsavianist and popularizer of Warsaw history, city guide.
• dr Paweł E. Weszpiński – cartographer and curator at the Museum of Warsaw, researcher of historical city plans.

The publication was issued with the financial support of the Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation. Herausgegeben mit finanzieller Unterstützung der Stiftung für deutsch-polnische Zusammenarbeit.