History
The canal, approximately 12 km long and ten metres deep, was dug by the German Empire between 1874 and 1880, during the reign of the first Kaiser Wilhelm (1797-1888). Thus it was not named after his grandson Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859-1941) who was famous for his interest in seafaring and battleships. Baptized as Kaiserfahrt (German: Emperor Way), the canal allows ships from the Baltic Sea to reach the industrial city of Szczecin more easily.
The canal circumvented the eastern branch of the Swine river which was very difficult to navigate. The resulting benefit to shipping between the Baltic Sea and Stettin (Szczecin) saw the ascendancy of the port of Stettin and a decline in the port of Swinemünde, because now ocean-going ships could sail as far as Stettin. Another side effect was that the eastern part of the island Usedom was out off, creating an island that was name after its largest village, Kaseburg (Karsibor). On the other hand the railway line, opened in 1875, from Berlin to Swinemünde over the bridge near Karnin (blown up in 1945), helped to promote Swinemünde and its neighbouring villages as seaside resorts.
After 1945, the area was put under Polish administration and became part of Poland. The canal was named after the Piast dynasty - the first historical Polish royal dynasty.
Read more about this topic: Piast Canal
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“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“They are a sort of post-house,where the Fates
Change horses, making history change its tune,
Then spur away o’er empires and o’er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
Excepting the post-obits of theology.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)