Cracow and its Golden Age (12/39)

Cracow and its Golden Age (12/39)

When revolutionary spirits studied at the university - such as Nicolaus Copernicus, who was to shake the foundations of existing, outdated doctrines - when the first mail coaches set off from Rynek and the heretical ideas of the Reformation and of humanism were discussed in public, then Cracow was regarded as "Poland's most splendid city". Under the Jagiello kings Sigmund I and II the city on the River Vistula enjoyed a "Golden Age". It was an enlightened age, in which Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Muslims lived peacefully with one another, at a time when, in the rest of Europe, they were involved in bitter and bloody disputes. Numerous traces of these fertile decades are still to be found, evoking a portrait of an urban centre of European rank.

Als in der Universität revolutionäre Geister wie Nikolaus Kopernikus studierten, der das überkommene Weltbild ins Wanken bringen sollte, als die ersten Postkutschen vom Rynek abfuhren und öffentlich das ketzerische Gedankengut der Reformation und des Humanismus diskutiert wurde, galt Krakau als "herrlichste Stadt ganz Polens". Unter den beiden Jagiellonenkönigen Sigmund I. und II. war in der Wawelstadt ein "Goldenes Zeitalter" angebrochen. Es war eine "aufgeklärte" Zeit, in der Katholiken und Protestanten, Juden und Muslime friedlich miteinander lebten, während sie sich überall sonst in Europa die Köpfe blutig schlugen. Immer noch trifft man auf zahlreiche Spuren dieser fruchtbaren Jahrzehnte, die das Bild eines städtischen Zentrums von europäischem Rang heraufbeschwören.

This series portrays landscapes, metropoles, sacred sites and monuments, all of which have made a unique contribution to the cultural heritage of mankind. Each episode breathes life into civilizations which thrived in the past ten thousand years, some of them then vanishing without a trace into the shadows of history. The films describe epochs whose legacy lingers in the perceptions and ideas of our own age, and cult sites which have managed to preserve their religious and cultural power up to the present day.