Sztutowo

Village

Church

Coat of arms

Sztutowo

Coordinates: 54°19′N 19°11′E / 54.317°N 19.183°E

Nowy Dwór Gdański County

Gmina

Sztutowo

Government

• Mayor

Janusz Charliński

Population (2006)

2,988

Time zone

CET (UTC+1)

• Summer (DST)

CEST (UTC+2)

Postal code

82-110

+48 55

GND

Sztutowo pronounced [ʂtuˈtɔvɔ] (German: Stutthof) is a village in Nowy Dwór Gdański County, part of the Pomeranian Voivodeship of Poland. It is located about 38 km (24 mi) east of Gdańsk on the northeastern edge of the Vistula Delta, at the base of the Vistula Spit on the Baltic coast.

At the beginning of World War II, the Nazi Germans established the Stutthof concentration camp in the town, which soon developed into a huge complex of 40 subcamps across numerous locations, with as many as 100,000 people incarcerated there from all of Europe, and more than 85,000 victims.

Sztutowo has been known since the beginning of the 13th century as a fishing settlement in the Pomerelian region. A day's journey from Gdańsk (Danzig) on the Hanseatic post road to Königsberg, it was conquered by the Teutonic Knights in 1308. It eventually came under the control of the Dukes of Eastern Pomerania. A coaching inn and stud farm were founded in 1432 to provide refreshment and fresh horses for the coaches, and the settlement developed into a village.

After the Thirteen Years' War ended in 1466, the village became part of the autonomous Polish province of Royal Prussia. At that time an estate and manor were founded in Sztutowo, and an agrarian settlement developed nearby. It is recorded that Tsar Peter the Great of Russia stayed in Sztutowo in 1716. The village was annexed by King Frederick the Great of Prussia in 1772 during the First Partition of Poland. A later lessee of the manor was the father of the German pessimist philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, who spent the first five years of his life there (born 1788 in Danzig).

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Wikipedia