Unemployment and Homelessness in the City of Poznań in 1929-1939

Graban Marcin
Additional contact information
Graban Marcin: Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań

Studia Historiae Oeconomicae, 2014, vol. 32, issue 1, 77-108

Abstract: The Polish National General Exhibition (PWK, also known as “Pewuka”) was held in Poznań in 1929. It was meant to be and it did become a showcase of the economic, industrial, social and cultural achievements of the Polish State, newly reborn in 1918, in the aftermath of the Great War. Staging of the Exhibition coincided with the advent of the economic crisis. Preparations for the Exhibition required an enormous amount of work, and considerable investments were needed to build a suitable infrastructure. Poznań became a huge building site, with many labourers coming to the city in search of employment. After 1929 those labourers added to the large group of the unemployed in the aftermath of the great economic crisis. During the 1930s the unemployment and the related problems aggravated the housing crisis in Poznań. The city authorities attempted to resolve this problem by putting the homeless up in the former exhibition grounds recently vacated following the closure of the Polish National General Exhibition. It was only an interim measure. In search of a more permanent solution, the city started to redevelop allotments or community gardens by building purpose-built residential garden huts or sheds.

Keywords: The Polish National General Exhibition; PWK; Pewuka; the post-exhibition grounds; the homeless; the unemployed; social care; allotments; community garden estates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/sho-2014-0005 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:sthioe:v:32:y:2014:i:1:p:77-108:n:5

DOI: 10.2478/sho-2014-0005

Access Statistics for this article

Studia Historiae Oeconomicae is currently edited by Roman Macyra

More articles in Studia Historiae Oeconomicae from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().