Unwanted capital. Architecture and urban planning in Krakow during the German occupation of 1939–1945

Kraków: MCK, 2022 2 volumes 4to (28 cm), 366 pp; 63 pp. Publisher's boards; printed wrappers, in paper slip-case. The catalogue in Polish with an accompanied booklet in English. "This exceptional book contains over 300 illustrations, working also as a corpus of existing knowledge about the heritage of the Third Reich in Krakow. It addresses a little-known and intentionally overlooked episode from the city’s history. The catalogue features photographs of Krakow’s landmarks transformed through the presence of the scenography of the Nazi ideology -- the flags of the Third Reich at the Wawel Royal Castle, the demolished statue of Mickiewicz, the Krakow Market Square, renamed Adolf Hitler Platz, almost invisible from under the swastika flags. The courtyard of the Wawel Royal Castle during the celebrations of Adolf Hitler’s birthday, the National Museum serving as a German house and casino, the Collegium Maius renamed the Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit. In addition to the photographs, the album features architectural and urban plans which were meant to transform Krakow into a model city of the Third Reich, comfortable for German residents and adapted to the needs of the German administration. Numerous blueprints and architectural sketches of unrealised designs constitute today not only a document of the German idea of colonisation, but also a memento from the war, illustrating terrifying plans for the destruction and complete transformation of the city to be implemented by sacrificing many lives of camp prisoners." (from the publisher's synopsis)