Warsaw in the Year 2025
How the future of the capital city
was imagined a century ago
The comic series entitled Warsaw in the Year 2025, by Benedykt Hertz (scripter) and Aleksander Świdwiński (illustrator), was published in instalments in the popular satirical weekly magazine called Szczutek. Filled with themes inspired by the capital, the title remained completely forgotten for nearly a century. Warsaw in the Year 2025 was rediscovered as late as in 2013, through the publication of ‘Dawny Komiks Polski’ [Old Polish Comics] series, edited by Professor Adam Rusek.
The content of Warsaw in the Year 2025 clearly reflected the country's political situation. The story begins with a depiction of acute poverty that causes the main character, Piotr, to lose his friends and his lust for life. Chemical substances come to the rescue. Thanks to a revolutionary concoction, Piotr and his wife can sleep through the challenging period of Grabski's economic reforms.
The panels – snapshots of the capital city’s daily life during the interwar era – feature Warsaw's prominent figures as well as places of particular importance for urban middle-class and intellectual circles, such as the Mała Ziemiańska café, Zachęta and the Sielanka restaurant.
The authors of Warsaw in the Year 2025 based their vision of the future on the stereotypes and fears of the time. China controls Warsaw with an iron fist. The problem of the inevitable population growth in the capital is solved by erecting apartment blocks on the Vistula River. The story includes several caricatured social miniatures, such as the tragic relationship between a Chinese man and a Polish woman experiencing acupuncture with unintentional fatal consequences, or the last carriage horse being captured by food-seeking Varsovians. By way of consolation, the capital of the future gains flying trams.
Intrigued by Hertz and Świdwiński's futuristic vision, we decided to open a dialogue between the imagined and the fully tangible present. The exhibition entitled Warsaw in the Year 2025 revisits the 100-year-old comics to reflect on contemporary stories of the capital through their prism.
Warsaw holds a unique place in Polish narratives, often serving not only as the backdrop for a story, but also as its main character. With its rich history, the city is an excellent carrier of tales about memory, identity, and sacrifice.
The drawn flâneur – an easy-going passer-by, born out of the city and immersed in it – is a narrator noticing the details of our everyday reality. Taking his perspective, we can spot even the smallest transformations of the urban fabric. At the intersection of illustration and text, comics make an extremely flexible medium, allowing us to capture and preserve change.
The exhibition Warsaw in the Year 2025 showcases the diversity of narratives and styles in comics: from realistic reports and memoirs, through humorous, social and artistic stories, to fantasy. The display is complemented by a selection of works from the Museum of Caricature’s collection, showing how Warsaw has changed over the past century from the perspective of Polish satirical drawing. There is also a section where you can become authors yourselves, creating your own comic strip about Warsaw 100 years into the future.
The exhibition attempts to trace not only how the vision of Warsaw in contemporary comics differs from that of 100 years ago, but also where the two converge. In 2025, Warsaw trams still run on tracks, and we still have more than enough stereotypes and fears.
You are most welcome to take a stroll through Warsaw in the year 2025, in all its manifestations.