Creating Cultural Heritage for a Better Future. The case of the “District of Mutual Respect” in the Polish city of Wrocław

ABSTRACT By applying the sociological concept of ‘emplacement’, this article analyses the creation of the ‘District of Mutual Respect’ in the old, neglected part of Wrocław (former German Breslau), a city which became Polish and lost its German population due to their forced migration after the Second World War. The District has in the last 20 years been transformed from slum to attractive environment and an important symbol of Wrocław’s new identity and image. The District showcases the local authorities’ new politics of cultural heritage and memory that emphasises intercultural dialogue and multiculturalism after decades of nationalist memory narratives and suppression of the German heritage. The authors outline a ‘biography’ of the District and analyse its functions. Furthermore, they apply Knudsen’s and Kølvraa’s concepts of repression, removal, reframing and re-emergence to evaluate to what extent that the District can be seen as a largely successful example of creating cultural heritage for a more cosmopolitan, inclusive future.

The part of the city examined below was left in a state of decline in Communist Poland. However, after the fall of Communism, it has been transformed from a slum into an attractive neighbourhood and a showcase of how the city works with its challenging, dissonant heritage. In this article, we aim to outline a 'biography' of the District and analyse its functions. Furthermore, we argue that the District can be seen as a largely successful example of creating cultural heritage for a more cosmopolitan, inclusive future and we show how this was achieved. Can it inspire heritage activists and practitioners in other cities?

Sources and conceptual frames
The following investigation is based on a content analysis of primary sources, such as strategic documents and promotional materials produced by the city authorities and by local NGOs, surveys of the city's residents, and a number of semi-structured interviews conducted by the authors with the city's former and current mayors, administrators in leading roles in the revitalisation of the District, local religious leaders, the heads of foundations active in the area, a tourist guide, one representative of the businesses in the District and one representative of the District's residents. 1 The present analysis is additionally informed by previous research in Wrocław, conducted both by the authors (Pietraszewski and Törnquist-Plewa 2016a, 2016b and others (e.g. Bierwiaczonek et al. 2017;Cervinkova and Golden 2017;Czajkowski andPabjan 2013, Latusek andRatajczak 2014;Gierat-Bieroń, Kubicki, and Orzechowska-Wacławska 2017;Łaska 2006). At this point, it should be emphasised that although research on the politics of memory and heritage in Wrocław has grown considerably in the last decade, there are only a few scientific publications focused on the District of Mutual Respect (Zabłocka-Kos 2008; Góralewicz Drozdowska and Gruszka 2011; Kowalska 2012, 139-152) and none offers such a close reading of its emergence as this article provides.
In approaching the research questions outlined above, we take inspiration from the 'sociology of place' and its concept of 'emplacement' (Gieryn 2000;Löw 2016). The latter notion denotes a process in which 'a space' turns into 'a place'-a unique spot, thanks to people who give it a name and a particular meaning and invest it with value. Places are doubly constructed since they have physical form, but they are also interpreted, narrated, felt and imagined (Gieryn 2000, 465). The making of a place is a result of many social processes and impacts on social life. Places can produce engagement or estrangement, inclusion or exclusion, spawn or constrain social action, and embody and secure otherwise intangible cultural norms, identities, memories and values (Gieryn 2000, 473;Löw 2016). There is a vast body of literature on place and place-making in several disciplines, 2 but we do not intend in this study to engage in a theoretical discussion on these concepts. Instead, we find it valuable to look at the District through the conceptual lenses of 'emplacement' in order to structure our analysis. Thus, we will first describe the District in terms of the three features that define the place: location, form and attributed meaning. We will then examine how this place has emerged and finally, what it accomplishes.
At the latter step of our analysis, we will employ a typology of heritage practices, proposed by Knudsen and Kølvraa (2020). These are: Repression, Removal, Reframing and Re-emergence. They are called 'modalities' because they should be conceived as a continuum and not as neatly separated typological boxes. A concrete instance of heritage practice might be a mixture of different modalities. Repression means silencing or denying the uncomfortable past. Removal indicates situations in which the presence or absence of the unwanted heritage in public spaces becomes a source of political antagonism. Reframing is about efforts to incorporate this heritage into new consensual frames. Finally, re-emergence denotes such practices that have the potential to transcend the other three modalities, forge new relations and 'open up the social space to new voices, affects and bodies' (Knudsen and Kølvraa 2020, 11). It is our contention that this typology, although formulated in relation to colonial heritage, has an explanatory value in the context of the post-war and post-authoritarian heritage of Wrocław. We will use this both to contextualise our case study and to evaluate the 'District' as a heritage project aimed at creating a more inclusionary urban future.

Contextualizing the case: Heritage practices in Wrocław since 1945
Studies of the politics of memory and cultural heritage in Wrocław during the Communist era in Poland have shown that the German legacy was suppressed and actively forgotten during this time (Pietraszewski and Törnquist-Plewa 2016b;Thum 2009;. Thus, using Knudsen's and Kølvraa's typology, we can refer to the heritage practices of that period as 'repression'.
After the expulsion of the German population, the German past of Wrocław, just as the history of the rest of the former German territories that Poland acquired in 1945, became part of the prescribed and solely binding narrative about the 'eternal Polishness' of these lands, called 'the Recovered Territories'. The fact that Wrocław had for some time in the Middle Ages been ruled by the Polish Piast dynasty was used to cast the city as originally Polish, although 'colonised' by the Germans and then 'rightfully' returned to Poland. This official narrative found fertile ground among Polish settlers. It corresponded to their needs to domesticate the alien city and to counteract their fear, fostered by the authorities, that they risked losing their new homes to Germans, who would return. Moreover, the traumatic memories of the German occupation during the Second World War had made many Poles eager to erase all reminders of German existence in Wrocław. The annexation of the German territories could be seen as compensation for German war crimes against the Poles.
Thus, it is evident that in the heritage practices in Wrocław, repression of German cultural heritage assumed a truly hegemonic position for several decades after the war. Changes occurred first after the fall of Communism when a group of liberally minded activists, with roots in the anti-Communist, democratic opposition came to power in Wrocław in 1990 after the first free local elections. The new local ruling elite began to advocate a public acknowledgement of Wrocław's German history and work for the inclusion of the German cultural heritage in the cityscape. As we have shown in our previous studies (Pietraszewski and Törnquist-Plewa 2016a, 2016b, this did not happen without opposition. Fierce debates flared up when the mayor or the city council decided to return to the original German names of certain heritage sites or to honour Germans who had significantly contributed to the development of the city by naming several new streets after them Törnquist-Plewa 2016a, 2022). Thus, the question of absence or presence of the German heritage in the public space has become antagonistically politicised. According to Knudsen and Kølvraa (2020, 12), such situations can be classified as practices of removal that challenge long-established practices of collective repression.
Realizing the contentious nature of their new cultural politics, Wrocław's liberal elites found a way to 'tame' the potential explosiveness of the German legacy (Pietraszewski and Törnquist-Plewa 2022). They placed the German cultural heritage within a new, much larger narrative about the complex, multicultural history of Wrocław as a city that has been formed by many cultures: German in particular, but also Jewish, Czech, Austrian, Polish and Ukrainian. 3 It is undeniable that people from all these nations contributed to the development of the city. Nevertheless, the fact remains that all of Wrocław's old, still-standing historical buildings were constructed in times when German culture absolutely dominated the city. Consequently, the narrative about Wrocław's multicultural past should be seen as 'invented tradition' or myth (Kłopot 2012) aimed at legitimising the new, present politics of memory and cultural heritage as well as visions for the future. In the following, we want to show that the District was created to embody this multicultural, mythical narrative, which on the one hand domesticates the unwanted past but on the other shows a transformative potential. Thus, we will argue that the District represents heritage practices that can be classified as 'reframing' but that it also shows some traces of 're-emergence', that is, a potential to become an 'affective infrastructure' (Knudsen and Kølvraa 2020, 26) used as a resource for struggles for a better, democratic and inclusive future.

"District of mutual respect"-location, material substrate and meaning
The area that will be scrutinised here is a small part of Wrocław's Old Town, located near the Market Square, between the streets of St. Nicholas, St. Anthony, Casimir the Great and Pawel Wlodkowic. It consists mainly of the once-elegant nineteenth-century tenement houses that survived war destruction and have now been renovated after decades of degradation. The area never constituted a district in an administrative sense. However, since the middle of the 1990s it has been called by several names: District of Mutual Respect, District of Tolerance, the Quarter of Four Temples or the Quarter of Four Denominations. All the names of the place refer to its distinctive feature, which is the presence in close proximity to each other of four places of worship for different denominations -the Roman Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, the Orthodox Cathedral and the White Stork Synagogue.
The synagogue, built between 1827 and 1829 in the Neoclassical style, is of particular importance for the memorial landscape of the District. Historically, this was the area where Jews were since the eighteenth century allowed to settle in the city (Łagiewski 1997, 13). Thus, most Jewish institutions in Breslau before World War II were located here. However, it is important to emphasise that it was not an area of segregation, as was the case in many parts of Central and Eastern Europe. Breslau's Jews, a tiny minority (about 23,000 in a city with about half a million inhabitants) were assimilated into German culture. Jews and Christians lived and worked here side by side until the Nazi takeover in 1933. The White Stork Synagogue was the only surviving synagogue left in Breslau after the Kristallnacht pogrom (November 9-10, 1938). In 1941, the remaining Jewish population was deported to extermination camps.
After the war, the synagogue served the post-war Jewish community (about 15,000 people) as a place of worship until 1966. This was not a real continuation of the pre-war Jewish community since the Jewish Holocaust survivors in Wrocław were Polish Jews who had moved to the city from Central and Eastern Poland. The vast majority of them then emigrated, not least due to the 1968 anti-Semitic campaign unleashed by Polish Communist authorities. The White Stork Synagogue was closed in 1966 and fell into disrepair. In 1974, it was taken over by the State Treasury, but the degradation of the building just continued (Meng 2011, 237-241). It was not until after the fall of the Communist regime that the state handed it back over to the Jewish community. In 1996, it again became a house of prayer for the Jews in Wrocław and the region of Lower Silesia, a tiny group of about 400 people. In 1998, the restoration of the building began, financed initially by the Foundation for Polish -German Cooperation, the City of Wrocław and the Jewish community. In 2007, the city included it in the revitalisation project funded by the 'Norwegian Funds' (the Norwegian Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area). Consequently, the renovation of the building was completed in 2010 and it quickly became the centre of cultural activities in the District. It is also the centre of Jewish life in Wrocław. Thus, it can be said that the White Stork Synagogue is not only a reminder of Wrocław's Jewish past but also stands for the revival of Jewish cultural heritage in the city.
A visitor can find three churches in close vicinity to the synagogue. Firstly, the Lutheran Church of Divine Providence, built in the middle of the eighteenth century. Although the church now belongs to the Polish Lutheran Church, which has around 90,000 believers in Poland (with about one thousand in Wrocław), it can be seen as a reminder of the once-large German Lutheran community that dominated in the city until the end of the Second World War. However, with the expulsion of Germans, most of the Lutherans disappeared and their churches were either taken over by Polish Catholics or, if derelict, removed from the cityscape.
The second church in the District is the Catholic church of St. Anthony of Padua, a Baroque temple built in 1685-92. In the predominantly Catholic Poland, the presence of this church is not surprising. However, the important fact about this church is that it was constructed for the German Catholic community in Breslau in times when Catholics constituted a minority in the city (around 30% of its inhabitants). It thus evokes the memory of the religious tolerance in the city.
The third church nearby is the Orthodox Cathedral of Our Lady. It has an Orthodox interior, but its architecture discloses that it was originally a Catholic church. It was built as St. Barbara's Church in Gothic style at the turn of the fifteenth century and then taken over by the Lutherans after the Reformation. It was significantly damaged during World War II but was reconstructed and handed over to the Orthodox Church in 1963. Unlike Catholics, Protestants and Jews, whose presence in Wrocław goes back hundreds of years, Orthodox Christians arrived in Wrocław as a result of World War II. This post−1945 Orthodox population consisted primarily of displaced persons from the eastern territories of pre-war Poland, Ukrainians forcefully resettled in 1947 by the Communist regime from the southeastern corner of Poland, and a few other smaller groups, such as Greek and Macedonian refugees from the Greek Civil War 1945-49 (Gerent 2007, 86-88).
In sum, it could be presumed that a knowledgeable visitor to the District would read its material substrate as a palimpsest displaying different layers of the history of Wrocław, including the postwar period. However, the area's value due to its sacral monuments and age is not enough to explain why and how it became a unique place prioritised in revitalisation plans. For that purpose, a new interpretation of the material text of the area was needed. As evidenced by the city's strategic documents (e.g. Strategia Wrocławia w perspektywie 2020 1998) and the resolutions of the city council (quoted in Góralewicz Drozdowska and Gruszka 2011; Zabłocka-Kos 2008), the area has since around 2000 been assigned a particular historical value and made to symbolise the city's multicultural past, its present and its envisioned future (see Spaces for Beauty Revisited 2011). It is used to signal that Wrocław has left behind the post-war hegemonic nationalist narrative of its history promoted by the Communist regime, and wants to foster a new identity of the city as a cosmopolitan, multicultural city, open to the world. A symbol of this interpretation is the new addition to the material text of the District -a statue founded by the city authorities in 2012 and placed at one of the entrances to the area. The statue, Crystal Planet by Ewa Rossano, contains an inscription of all four names used to designate the District and pictures a woman dressed in a globe -a kind of Mother Earth welcoming all its children.

"District of mutual respect"-how did the place come into being?
The emergence of the District was the outcome of multilevel processes and needs: at the macro level, it was the result of the democratisation and liberalisation taking place in Poland after 1989 that allowed the city to form its own local politics of heritage and memory. At the mezzo level, it was an outcome of the city's new politics of memory, shaped to some extent under the impact of EU cultural politics (Latusek and Ratajczak 2014, 49-66). Finally, at the micro level, it originated in the social conditions in the District and the need to develop this forsaken part of the city centre. In the 1990s, this drastically neglected area was populated by socially disadvantaged people with low incomes. Acts of vandalism, impacting all four temples located in the area, were common. It was in this context that Jerzy Kichler, an activist strongly engaged in the reconstruction of the White Stork Synagogue and the revival of Jewish life in Wrocław, contacted the heads of the three other denominations in the area, suggesting that they should cooperate to stop acts of hooliganism. To begin with, all of them appealed to their respective communities to show respect for each other's religions, but soon they also initiated joint prayers, concerts and charity events. With the aim of fighting mutual prejudice, they started intercultural education classes in 1999 called 'Kids', in which schoolchildren and teenagers learned about different religions and traditions. The need to give a name to the established inter-religious cooperation emerged when its leaders applied for funding for their undertakings. It was in connection with one of these applications that then Mayor of Wrocław, Rafal Dutkiewicz, became aware of the activities going on in this part of the city and realised their potential to support the city's cosmopolitan politics of memory and promote Wrocław's new image (personal interview with Dutkiewicz, May 2016). He encouraged the leaders to establish a foundation in order to expand their endeavours. As stated on the foundation's website: 'At the end of 2004, the scale of integration activities-both educational and religious-within the District prompted efforts to establish a formal structure to give this initiative a broader impetus. The initiative was in response to the authorities of the City of Wrocław, who designed in the Local Development Plan for the District's area the "cultural path", which was to connect the Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church, the Evangelical Augsburg Church and the White Stork Synagogue'. (www.fundacja4wyznan.pl/n/fundacja/ accessed July 14, 2022) The 'cultural path' mentioned in the document was designed partially for educational reasons but also as a tourist trail meant to display Wrocław's multiculturality. The trail became an element in the much larger plan of the revitalisation of the area adopted by the city council in 2008 (Zabłocka-Kos 2008). This plan prioritised the regeneration of the District, legitimated by the symbolic and ideological meaning ascribed to the area, but also by its assumed commercial and touristic potential. While pondering this potential, the mayor of Wrocław as well as some private investors compared this area to Kazimierz, a former Jewish Quarter in Krakow, that after the decades of neglect in Communist Poland had turned into a commercial success in the 1990s (Gryta 2016;Murzyn-Kupisz 2006). The District in Wrocław, with the White Stork Synagogue and original buildings forming a conglomerate of passages and courtyards, had, in their view, some of the atmosphere of Kazimierz and thus, if renovated, could attract people (personal interview with Dutkiewicz and the owner of club-café 'Mleczarnia', May 2016).
In consequence, the city of Wrocław has since 2008 conducted a continuous renovation and revitalisation of the District. This was financed with public funds, resources acquired from the Norwegian Funds and by the privatisation of some parts of real estate. Private investments were encouraged and supported, yet according to Mariola Apanel, the city official overseeing the revitalisation (personal interview, June 2017), private business was never allowed to have the final decision on the urban fabric of the District. This decision belonged to professionals employed by the city. As expressed by Mayor Dutkiewicz (in a personal interview, May 2016), the District 'was a project conceived in a studio', engaging conservators, architects, engineers and artists. However, the development of the District would not have been possible without the presence of local businesses. It is thanks to the commitment of private funds that many clubs, pubs, restaurants and hotels have sprung up in the place of formerly neglected vacant buildings. Some even started to invest before the refurbishment of the area. When asked about the reasons for this, the owner of 'Mleczarnia', the first restaurant-café-club in the district, stated: I used to visit this place as a child, looking at the synagogue, which at that time was either a ruin or such a, well. . . building (. . a meeting place (. . .). It is not a disco polo or a dance club, but it's a meeting place, where culture is also created, a culture of meeting, of drinking coffee, a culture of theater, concert, and so on. (personal interview, May 2016) In addition, the owner of 'Mleczarnia' emphasised that besides the feeling that the District is 'genius loci', she was also attracted to Wrocław by the business-friendly attitude on the part of the municipality.
As the allure of the District grew, with its renovation and cultural events organised in places such as 'Mleczarnia' or the Center for Jewish Culture and Education at the synagogue, more and more private businesses appeared. The place became popular among young people in general and hipsters in particular. From its previous solely residential character, the District transformed into a residential and service area. Thus, it is relevant in this context to ask how the inhabitants reacted to these changes. According to an interview (conducted by the authors in June 2017) with Mariola Apanel, the official overseeing the revitalisation on the part of the city council, consultations and dialogue with the residents took place continuously. The majority of them decided to leave when the municipality offered them apartments in other parts of Wrocław. One of the remaining inhabitants explained (personal interview in June 2017) that people left for different reasons. Some because 'they did not want to live in a district of nightclubs and entertainment', some because the apartments they could move to were more modern than the ones they left behind, and some because they could not afford to pay the rent if they lived in a house that was taken over by a private owner who renovated it lavishly. Thus, the District's residential area underwent some gentrification. 4 However, judging from the interview mentioned above, the former residents do not regret the changes since their living conditions before were truly deplorable. 'Dirt and stench', as the interviewee expressed it. According to Aleksander Gleichgewicht, chair of the Jewish Community in the District, the lack of protests from the residents against relocation can also be explained by their weak emotional attachment to the place. Most of them had been allocated housing by the municipality in this former German-Jewish and for decades neglected area and lived here just for one or at the most two generations (personal interview, June 2017).
As the renovation progressed, the District began to be promoted in tourist brochures, on internet sites and in local media. Beata Maciejewska, a local journalist and mnemonic activist, known for her engagement in the revival of the Jewish and German cultural heritage of Wrocław, wrote together with Tomasz Broda a book called The Secrets of the Four Temples District, which was published in both Polish and English and popularised the cultural heritage of the area. Moreover, a separate guide about the District was published in several languages, and tourist guides included a visit to the District in their walks with visitors. Most importantly, however, groups of artists, musicians and theatre actors took up activities in the District, making it a vibrant and inspirational place.
In sum, in the process of emplacement of the District, the space designed to be this unique place became an arena for activities of a number of actors: local churches, NGOs, political and administrative representatives of the city council, professionals dealing with cultural heritage, local businessmen, journalists and artists. The District became a place through their concerted efforts.

What does this place accomplish? Reframing and re-emergence
An analysis of 'emplacement' needs to include a discussion about social achievements or consequences of the construction of a place. It is especially important in a case such as the 'District'-a politically oriented heritage project aimed at supporting a certain vision of the past, the present and the future.
Our interviews with the representatives of the municipal authorities of Wrocław (Mayor Dutkiewicz and Mayor Sutryk) revealed that the District aroused their enthusiasm since it could contribute to the concurrent realisation of several goals for the development of the city. The local government needed good ideas for prioritising the revitalisation in its plans for the cultural heritage. What should be selected as both sellable for tourists and at the same time as valuable in other respects in the eyes of both the city residents and the outside world? The District's closeness to the centre, its Jewish past and the already existing bottom-up activities focusing on the inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue represented the qualities Wrocław's decision-makers were searching for. The place had, in their eyes, both symbolic and commercial potential.
Our interviews with local government representatives indicated that their expectations had been fulfilled. The investments in the revitalisation of the area paid off in terms of the increased attractiveness of Wrocław as a tourist destination. 5 The beautifully renovated White Stork Synagogue in particular became a tourist magnet, as did the many cafés, restaurants and bars situated in cozy backstreets in the area. The number of tourist businesses is steadily growing and the District is called Wrocław's jewel (Kowalska 2012, 152).
However, the District's symbolic value seems to be most important. The city has used it actively in branding Wrocław as an open and multicultural city in order to attract investments, access EU funds and increase its international prestige (Latusek and Ratajczak 2014). This is particularly revealed in Wrocław's application for the title of European Capital of Culture 2016. In this successful bid, the city used the District as one of its trump cards. It is mentioned as much as 10 times as a prominent example of how the city works with its difficult past and its cultural heritage to create a better future. For instance, in the explicit reference to the District, the application reads: Ethnic and religious exclusivism is much weaker in Wrocław than in other parts of Poland, or even in Europe. The ability of the various social groups to live in harmony and mutual respect is the only possible attitude in the face of the historical experience, which has been particularly ruthless to the residents of Wrocław and to its urban fabric. This is undoubtedly evidence that the present-day people of Wrocław know how to learn from the painful lessons taught by the history of their city (Spaces for Beauty Revisited 2011).
This quotation, which emphasises 'harmony' and 'mutual respect' as well as our above description of the District, indicates that the heritage practices employed in its creation seek to accommodate the unwanted heritage by putting it into consensual frames. Hence, they display 'reframing' features. Reframing involves the production of narratives that move beyond the silence of repression and the public confrontation of removal. The meaning of the difficult heritage is changed, and it undergoes commodification (Knudsen and Kølvraa 2020, 12). This is what happened in the District. It has been created as an arena where the cultural heritage of several religious communities is displayed, followed by a narrative about Wrocław's multicultural past, present and a projected future. Thanks to the renovation of the White Stork Synagogue and the activities of the Center for Jewish Culture and Education, the previously neglected Jewish heritage is now clearly visible and plays a central role in the quarter. The German heritage, on the other hand, wholly succumbs to the domestication of reframing. The German past, encoded in the material substrate of the District, is not hidden, but not accentuated either. The Lutheran church may be interpreted as a representation of the German past, but the church does not conduct any services in German, nor does it in any way commemorate the German members of the pre-war parish. The church contains a plaque from the time of the Napoleonic Wars with representations of the Iron Cross -the German military medal. For many Poles belonging to older generations, it is a ghost of the past since they associate it with the Second World War. However, according to a guide (personal conversation, June 2020), it is shown nowadays to tourists as a curiosity. Thus, it can be stated that the German heritage in the District is neutralised by being locked into the frames of the multicultural narrative and turned into a product for tourists. However, it is not the authenticity of the presented historical multicultural character of the District that has been at stake in its creation. As has been emphasised above, it is a project oriented towards the present and the future and this brings us to consider whether the creation of the District in Wrocław can also be seen as a move towards re-emergence, the fourth modality of heritage practices identified by Knudsen and Kølvraa (2020, 13). Reemergence facilitates the acknowledgement of the difficult and conflictual past and at the same time points out opportunities and directions of change for the sake of a better, inclusionary future. Such practices come into play when thinking in terms of repression is no longer valid and steps are made to go beyond the narrative domestication of reframing. Practices of re-emergence make use of affects, moods and atmospheres to give rise to activism and responsibility. They allow several subjectivities to gain visibility and voice while at the same time overcoming antagonistic identity politics (Knudsen and Kølvraa 2020, 13-14) As an important element of practices of re-emergence, Knudsen and Kølvraa foreground the ability to engage people at affective level, awake social energy and forge new alliances and relations across and beyond the divisions inscribed in the past (23). The sources we have collected for this study do not provide enough material for a detailed reading of the affective impact of the District. However, they do allow identifying activities provoking emotional responses and social energy as well as evidence for formations of new relations and identities. We believe this should be sufficient for examining the District from the re-emergence perspective. After all, as pointed out by Knudsen and Kølvraa, re-emergence should not be thought of simply as an existing empirical category, but first and foremost as a potential for heritage practice and a normative horizon towards which we should advance. Thus, 'the analytical gesture becomes less to critically evaluate what qualified, and more to seek out the potentials and promises of that which seem to move in the right direction' (Knudsen and Kølvraa 2020, 21).
It is evident from our sources that the District spawns affects and collective action. For the Jewish community, it is a place for the commemoration of Wrocław's vanished Jews and a symbol of the continuity of Jewish life in Poland (personal interview with Bente Kahan, June 2016). Moreover, the Center for Jewish Culture and Education at the White Stork Synagogue is one of the most vital cultural centres in the city and works actively to make Jewish culture visible and known in Wrocław. The Center is involved in organising 'Simcha', an annual festival of Jewish culture. Its aim is not only to get the Polish public acquainted with Jewish culture by offering lectures and lessons in Hebrew, but also to engage them affectively and bodily by organising Jewish dance workshops, film screenings and concerts. Bente Kahan, the director of the Center as well as of the cultural foundation named after her, is particularly keen to approach the District as a place of memory of the difficult past, not only of multicultural coexistence. Her plays, such as Voices from Theresienstadt or Wallstrasse 13, 6 are included in the permanent repertoire of the theatre group operating at the synagogue and they deal with the memory of Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Kahan transforms the memories of violence into stories that she shares with the Polish public to evoke empathy and self-reflection as well as recognition of the Jewish heritage. The work of Kahan and her associates at the Center shows that Wrocław's Jewish community has an emotional attachment to the District. Although there is no historic continuity between the pre-war German Jews of Breslau and the few hundred Jews (mostly born in Poland) who live in the city today, the White Stork Synagogue stands for this imagined continuity and community.
The representatives of the other three denominations have also clearly shown their care for the District. They want to protect its material heritage against vandalism, but they also make efforts to promote the idea of inter-religious dialogue and respect for religious and cultural differences, primarily but not only among the inhabitants of the area where their churches are situated. This is an important endeavour considering that it challenges the historically embedded, exclusionary Polish identity defined by ethnicity and Catholicism (Porter-Szȕcs 2011) that is still supported by the nationalist parties on the right of the political spectrum (Kotwas and Kubik 2019).
The religious leaders behind the Foundation for Mutual Respect of the Four Denominations saw the creation of the District as a chance to get access to more resources and thus intensify their ecumenical actions. The reports of the activities of the Foundation show that they have utilised this opportunity. For several years now, they have conducted a number of educational projects involving children, youth and adults from different cultures and religions. Their program 'Children of One God' became one of the few Polish projects that competed successfully for co-financing from the European Commission during the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue in 2008. Moreover, thanks to this Foundation as well as to the other NGOs, the District regularly hosts cultural events that promote cultural diversity as a value and teach the public about different religions and cultures. Music seen as an important medium to affectively attune the audience is used particularly for that purpose. Cyclical meetings called 'Music and Bible' are another good example. They are devoted to the Book of Psalms, which is a common source of prayer for the four denominations. Each meeting includes a concert followed by a joint discussion of individual passages of the Old Testament (Góralewicz Drozdowska and Gruszka 2011, 149).
Last but not least, the area of the District has inspired Wrocław's liberal political, intellectual, artistic and business elites. In several interviews we conducted with the members of these groups, they spoke about it with enthusiasm as 'a magical place', 'a totally unique place', 'a place full of secrets', and 'a place to discover'. They claimed to be influenced by the special atmosphere of the place and, as we have shown, it was much due to their commitment and activities that the District came into being. In this context, the engagement of the artists deserves a special mention, since they produce aesthetics and performances that can affectively impact the public and disturb the domesticating practices of reframing. Every year, Wrocław organises one of the largest reviews of art in the public space in Poland, called the SURVIVAL Art Review. It is an artistic endeavour realised in public spaces outside exhibition institutions and aims to maximise the confrontation with the audience and provoke lively reactions. The sixth edition of SURVIVAL was located in the District and focused on engaging the audience in the German and Jewish heritage at a bodily and affective level (Góralewicz Drozdowska and Gruszka 2011, 149). But even beyond these kinds of events, the District attracts artists who choose it as a place for exhibitions and performances.
Cultural practices in the District showcase Wrocław's tolerance and openness and, as mentioned above, are used for branding the city. However, it would be wrong to see the city authorities' promotion of the District as acts of sheer calculation and opportune adjustment to EU models of working with cultural heritage as a tool to promote peaceful multicultural coexistence and values such as tolerance and democracy (Gierat-Bieroń 2018; Kowalski and Törnquist-Plewa 2016;Macdonald 2013;Sassatelli 2009;Shore 2006). Our interviews with a number of representatives of the liberal elites in Wrocław indicated that they believe that by foregrounding a multicultural heritage of Wrocław, they can not only advance the city's reconciliation with its difficult past but also open the inhabitants to otherness and thus build a strong local cosmopolitan identity. This in turn would help to develop the city into an important European centre in which people of various cultures feel equally at home (personal interviews conducted in June 2020 with: Rafał Dutkiewicz, mayor of Wrocław 2002Wrocław -2018; Beata Maciejewska, journalist with the liberal newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and a well-known local memory activist; Ewa Skrzywanek, historian and methodological advisor to the Wrocław Teacher Training Center).
The District was constructed to support this vision of the city's new identity and image. In fact, there is some evidence that the residents of Wrocław have embraced the idea of multiculturality. The extensive quantitative sociological research on Wrocław's population, used in the preparation of the city's latest development strategy (Wrocław Strategy 2030), showed that a majority of the inhabitants (about 61%) believe that Wrocław has always been a multicultural city (Kajdanek and Pluta 2017, 145-146). The same study also revealed the existence of a strong selfstereotype of the inhabitants as tolerant and open towards others. As many as 90% of the respondents expressed this conviction in 2017, while in 2006 only about 30% had shared this view (Kajdanek and Pluta 2017, 150). Moreover, the sociological surveys conducted both in 2011 and 2017 have shown that the majority of Wrocławians persistently positively assess the consequences of the presence of ethnic others in the city (Dolińska and Makaro 2019, 113-116). These results can be seen as indicators that the work on Wrocław's new identity and image, embodied by the District, had at least to some extent a transformative impact.
This does not mean, of course, that Wrocław is free from any ethnic conflicts and nationalism. Since the conservative-nationalist party Law and Justice (PiS) came to power in Poland in 2015, an increase in these negative phenomena has been observed (Dolińska and Makaro 2019, 120). The party has made itself known for ethnic nationalism tainted with resentments, especially against Germans and Jews, as well as for its resistance to LGBTQ rights, abortion rights and liberal migration policies (Gwiazda 2020;Kotwas and Kubik 2019). Moreover, the PiS government supports the 'renationalisation' of the politics of memory and heritage (Harper 2018), which in Wrocław has emboldened those who criticise the municipality for 're-Germanising' the city. However, as we have shown in our recently published study 'Cosmopolitan Memories under Pressure. The Case of Post-Communist Wrocław' (Pietraszewski and Törnquist-Plewa 2022), the liberal and democratic forces in the city have managed to oppose the PiS 're-nationalising' politics at the local level. The political pressure to tune down the cosmopolitan politics of heritage and memory has been effectively resisted. The local authorities have also been able to curb nationalist excesses of radical-right activists who became empowered by the nationalist turn in Polish politics at the national level. Their demonstrations (mostly in connection with Poland's Independence Day) deemed to be inciting national and religious hatred are dispersed. The widely condemned manifestation in 2015, when a representative of the far right burned a puppet mockingly representing a Jew, ended with a prison sentence for the perpetrator and discouraged others from such actions. The local authorities try to promote tolerance by, for example, allowing Marches of Equality and engaging in the EU-supported social programs advancing social integration of the Roma people (numbering about 2000 people in the city and surroundings). The city also continues to support intercultural educational activities in the District, although it can no longer count on co-financing from state institutions (personal interview with Ewa Skrzywanek, historian and methodological advisor to the Wrocław Teacher Training Center, June 2020). Wrocław was also the first Polish city that joined the European Coalition of Cities against Racism, which obliges members to actively work with this issue (https://www.eccar.info/en/10-point-action-plan). In 2018, the City Council adopted a special document Wrocławska strategia dialogu międzykulturowego [Wrocław's strategy for intercultural dialogue] focusing on social inclusion and integration, especially of immigrants.
In fact, the best evidence of the openness and tolerance of Wrocław may be its attractiveness for immigrants. Wrocław's demography has changed radically since the fall of the Communist regime in 1989. In the 2002 National Census, only 0.45% of the city residents declared a non-Polish nationality (Kajdanek 2012, 130). However, already in 2018 Wrocław stood out among other cities in Poland by including around 100,000 people from other countries, mostly from Ukraine, in a total population of about 650,000. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the number of immigrants doubled. In 2022, Ukrainians constituted 23% of the city inhabitants, one of the highest rates among Polish cities (Wojdat and Cywiński 2022, 40).
The municipal authorities are seeking ways to deal with this new ethnic diversity and prevent the risk of anti-immigrant activism. In the context of this study, it is important to point out that there is evidence showing that they look for inspiration in the established narrative of Wrocław's multicultural past embodied by the District. The place is used by the city's ruling elites as a symbolic asset in opposing nationalism and racism. For example, it is explicitly referred to in Wrocław Strategy 2030 adopted by the city council in 2018. This important document, aimed at increasing social participation and preparing the local community to handle negative trends such as increased nationalism at the national and global levels, includes the following passage: "We cherish our image of an open city, for example, by supporting the famous Four Temples District [authors' emphasis]. We are happy to welcome new residents who have come to us in recent years, mainly from Ukraine. . . . Civic society as well as grassroot activities have been revived (. . .) Yet the city is threatened by an escalation of political conflicts. We should also prevent acts of racism". (17) The local leaders also use the District as an arena for political performances aimed at fighting nationalist excesses. Every year, the mayor of Wrocław participates in the commemoration of Kristallnacht that takes place at the White Stork Synagogue and he uses these occasions to make emotional appeals to the public condemning nationalism. In 2019, for example, then Mayor Jacek Sutryk said: Today, at the location of events from over 80 years ago, in the heart of the District of Mutual Respect, [authors' emphasis] I promise you, as Mayor of Wrocław, that Wrocław will react to denigrating words and disrupt disgraceful demonstrations. The city will stand up for the offended and persecuted . . . " (quoted on Polish TV news, TVPINFO November 12, 2019), available at https://www.tvp.info/45291261/prezydent-Wrocławiaprzyznaje-racje-tym-ktorzy-mowia-ze-polacy-maja-krew-na-rekach) As can be seen from the above, Wrocław's liberal political elite uses the District as a symbolic infrastructure in their contemporary struggles for a better, non-nationalist, cosmopolitan future. How, then, is the District perceived outside the circles of the liberal mnemonic activists?
To get clues on this issue, we included a few questions about the quarter's visibility and significance in a survey carried out among the residents of Wrocław by BEELINE in 2022 (see the Appendix).
The survey confirmed our assumption that people with higher education, higher income (more than 5,000 PLN) and over 45 years of age were more likely to be acquainted with the District. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that familiarity with the District among Wrocław residents is generally high. Clearly more than half of the respondents (57.3%) know it at least by name. This is considerably more than in the case of other Wrocław sites that were included in the survey, familiarity of which ranges between 30% and 40%. Moreover, the knowledge of where the District is located also turned out to be very high. The correct location was spontaneously indicated by 86.5% of those who know the District at least by name. When asked about the District's significance, about 86% responded that it has primarily a religious and historical importance but 73.4% also ascribed it a symbolic meaning and 72.5% an educational one. Older people are convinced of its religious and historic significance while among the youngest people, under the age of 25, the importance of tourism and entertainment comes to the fore, in addition to religious relevance. Interestingly, relatively few believe that the place is of economic importance (35.8%).
In sum, although the District has been conceived by Wrocław's liberal elites, it seems that the ideas behind the project have resonated with the city's residents. Taking into account our analysis above, as well as the fact that the incumbent liberal elite has won all local elections since 1989, it can be said that the politics of memories and heritage embodied in the District are supported by the majority of city residents.

Conclusions
The District of Mutual Respect in Wrocław provides a good example of a successful 'emplacement', that is, of transforming a part of a largely unspecified space of urban landscape into a unique place by giving it a name, attributing it meanings and filling it with people, practices and representations. The creation of the District had its origins in a bottom-up educational initiative by a few religious leaders but soon exceeded these frames, becoming a large project of revitalisation of the area and of accompanying heritage practices. The District has been transformed from a 'non-place' in a state of material and social decline to a lively and appealing place, known to the majority of Wrocław residents and to its visitors. Most importantly, however, the District has not become just a place for consumers. It is also a place for learning, prayers and cultural encounters. Moreover, it functions as a symbol of the city's multiculturalism and contributes in this way to creating the self-image of its inhabitants as open and tolerant. The heritage practices employed in the District can first and foremost be described as reframing. This is particularly visible in relation to the German heritage that still has a dislocating affective potential. However, our analysis demonstrates at the same time that the heritage practices in the District show signs of moving in the direction of re-emergence. The place brings forth engagement and care and simultaneously spawns social energy and collective action aimed at creating new relations and more inclusive identities. Accordingly, it is saturated with a transformative potential that points to possibilities for a democratic and less nationalistic future. This indicates, in our view, that the District can serve as a largely successful example of using cultural heritage in imagining an alternative to a nationalist past and forging a better, inclusive future.
By describing the heritage creation in the district, our study points to the factors that have contributed to the project's achievements. Thus, the project could be realised due to the alignment of political and economic interests, aesthetic judgements and social and ideological imperatives primarily, but not only, on the part of Wrocław's liberally minded elites. This made concerted action possible. Moreover, the fact that they shared a vision to build a new identity and a new image of Wrocław, one in line with the cosmopolitan values of an integrating Europe, played an important role in their endeavour. To turn this idea into reality, they counteracted the old myth of Wrocław as an 'ever Polish city' with a new myth of Wrocław as ever multicultural and cosmopolitan -in the past, present and future. The District as a heritage project was created to epitomise this idea and supports not only the new branding of the city but also the formation of cosmopolitan identities among the city dwellers. Thus, our case indicates that the use of place myths may be significantly potent in heritage work oriented progressively towards building a more inclusive and democratic future. As inspirational as it may be for heritage practitioners, we do not want to jump to conclusions and present the District as an example to emulate. The undertaking of heritage-and place-making is namely never the same, but instead depends on the specific political and social context, which must always be taken into consideration. Nevertheless, it is our contention that the impact of progressive myths in heritage-making deserves to be investigated closer, not least in a comparative perspective.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.