Polabia back to Slavs?

Most people are able to communicate in Irish - not fluently, but the level needed to get into university is quite high.


Gorzów Wlkp. is an interesting example - they were debating using either that or Kobylagóra post-war. Neither name, interestingly, bears any relation to the German name - Landsberg an der Warthe.


Most of them do bear a close relation to the German name, to be fair.

A great example is Bad Kudowa - which became Kudowa-Zdrój. Or what about Nowa Sól - which was "Neusalz an der Oder". Probably the most tenacious one (yet historically justified, just) is Słubice - which was mentioned as "Zliwitz" in the city charter of Frankfurt (Oder) in 12-oatcake. It was known however, as "Damnvorstadt" for most of its existence under Germanic rule.

And how many people are able to communicate in Saxon, Brythonic, Latin or Norman French, to name but four languages that have left placenames within a ten mile radius of where I am now.

you may call me whatever you want but I wouldn't like to live in Poland surrounded by German names (I live in Opole region) and I bet most Poles wouldn't either - btw your Latin, Saxon, Norman and French names are all Anglicized - you don't live in Londinium but London so what you are actually arguing about?


in essence this actually like my English - they learn Gaelic as a foreign language and use it as such (save for people from a couple of more traditional regions)

Not all. Some of the villages around me have names barely changed for 1200 years.

But it isn't just the names. I know at least one place in Poland where the people who moved into the village after the expulsion of the Germans ripped all the gravestones out of the cemetary and built an onion dome on the church.

Poles had perhaps a little more justification in doing that, coming at the end of a bloody war (but only a little - magnanimity in victory didn't surface much in that village) than people who are doing that now. It is also wrong to object (as certain Polish politicians have done) to the expelled Germans commemorating their personal history. It is very wrong - trying to use nomenclature to erase history.

you know what - history is history - what do you want to commemorate - do you want Poles to commemorate Bismarck, Hindenburg and Fritz der Grosse??

I don't need to have so called 'Polish heroes' to be commemorated and I insist 'some other nation's' heroes are not commemorated where I run around

history is a thing we can learn from - but I don't think you can learn anything from history by dwelling on it

ok - lots of Germans used to live where I live - they even built this and that - but it's all gone - I don't give a damn about that past - we live now - and for heaven's sake noone is denying that some places where inhabited by Germans, bore German names - you can find these names in books and in old or special maps - I just can't imagine myself living in Goldmoor neben Tillowitz, Kreis Falkenberg, O.S - the people that came here back in the late 40's have enough to feel themselves not in their own places and you would want them to be reminded of that every single day by foreign sounding names - for the sake of what???

btw communist propaganda used to scare people who lived in the 'recovered territories' by the spectre of imperialists coming back and bringing the Germans back - why do you think these villages were in such neglect which can be seen even now - because these people who came here did not feel 'at home' and were not sure that it was not just a temporary thing (then combine it with communism and consider that such attitudes are inherited from generation to generation

btw I don't often go to central Poland but when I visited I actually sensed that this land was Polish, that there is such confidence in Polishness there which is much weaker in the 'recovered territories'

Off the issue.


Quite mean spirited, really.


And you can learn something quite unpleasant by trying to erase it.


We live as part of a continuum. Past, present and future. If you lose one part of that, it is compromised.


For one thing, for the sake of continuity, for another, for the sake of respect for the past. It is irrelevant what a newcomer to a village might think. It is not irrelevant how they behave towards its former inhabitants.

there was no continuity, man - on the contrary there was straightforward discontinuity - Germans lived here and suddenly they lived here no more - the people who came here felt little or no connection with this German past - and still you can find out about all those German names - there are books, there are maps - I just won't repeat myself that much - but hey - come on now - there have been so many people borne here now that only know Tułowice, Szydłów, Niemodlin - do you still want to change all these names back to German

and guess what - yes Poles are barbaric intolerant people who can hardly tolerate Germans (must be why they pick cucumbers around Hannover and strawberries in Schiefergebirge) - if you have enough of those bloody barbaric Poles and their ways you can choose to move somewhere else - unless you are serving your time in some Polish prison you are free to go :)

And that was the problem. Why not rip up the graveyards as well. Oops. some people did.


Don't change the habit of a lifetime.


The problem here is that the damage has been done. The Poles changed the names. Though Szydlow? - If you mean the historic Szydlow in Swietokrzyskie, as far as I remember that's quite an old name, certainly medieval. Any other language version would be a variant.

@Gumishu, Where in any post, did I say I wanted to change the names for a second time?????? LOL


Meaningless, and normal when you start an argument and then lose it.

Pretty much, although Hiberno-English (the name for their version of English :P) is heavily influenced by Irish - although to what extent they're aware of this is debatable ;)

Still, the political leaders are all able to speak in Irish, as can the President - and most people, even if they don't speak as such, are perfectly able to follow Irish news or to watch something on the national Irish-language TV channel. Quite a lot of them will use Irish names too - I have a friend who switched from her "English" name to her Irish name.

do you know what Jesus said - let the dead bury their dead - I'm not a fan of graveyards at all - cremation is such a nice hygenic thing and you can throw the ashes back to the earth or you can choose to scatter them on some water - such a practical thing


no, I mean that - we are a barbaric nation - I am very much barbaric myself - I do not condemn those who removed gravestones from old German cemeteries in fact I know plenty of such examples - many such cemeteries have even never been used ever since - I wouldn't do that myself now in my state of mind but I don't condemn these people - I just don't care much about German past of the land I live about


Szydłów was the original Slavic name of the place - it was then germanized to Schidloff - the name was changed sometime in the 20th century to Goldmoor (moor stands for well moor as in Dartmoor because hmm there is a moor in the area? )

Niemodlin is also the original Slavic name - it was renamed to Falkenberg sometime in the middle ages when German settlers arrived in Silesia (and as Silesian Piasts germanized) - it was even once a seat of a small Piast duchy

I don't know about Tułowice (if it is the original name) but there is another Tułowice that is not far from Warsaw so the name is an actual Polish name (even if not the original early medieaval Polish name - I know of examples of names that are loosely based on German and old Slavic name and have no counterparts in present day Poland - I lived in such a place) - the German name was Tillowitz and it's pretty obvious it is a germanized version of a former Slavic name

Very sad. As Santayana said, "those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it".


You are talking about a different Szydlow. The one I know is not far from Busko. There are several lesser ones.


On this I agree - but old graves should remain undisturbed unless there are very good reasons.

It's a big problem right now with the teaching of modern history in Polish schools - the PRL is almost totally ignored, due to the idiotic way that history is taught. Yay for obscure 11th century kings, boo to something that the kids can relate to!

tell it to the archeologists

Early twentieth century vilalge graves aren't very interesting to archaeologists - nor are they likely to be. Stop trolling!

And that's the problem of these regions. No one cares. And that's how these regions look today. Silesia for instance could be a top tourist destination in Europe, but no one cares. Bad luck for the people outside of the economic centres, but as long as they don't care for their home anyway...?!

And some people want Polabia "back"? Seriously? How would a Polish Wittenberg, the centre of the Protestant reformation, look today? Or Sanssouci, Prussias heart? I suppose the "Fuerstenzug" in Drezno wouldn't exist anymore... at least the names of the Saxon rulers would have been removed or changed to something like "Jan Jerzy Wettyn". Would Berlins graveyards, with people like Scharnhorst, Hegel, Schinkel or Fichte, still exist? Experience says no.

some delusional, misguided, megalomaniac do - however no reasonable people do


hardly - it is true that the lack of the connection between the populace and the reamining material culture left by German inhabitants plays a role here (among many other things) - but you are much overestimating the atractiveness of the area now - maybe the Sudetes can attract more tourists but not much else in Silesia


it is a conscious policy by those who were not playing really clean - like a president who emptied his remaining IPN archive - like the editor of the main oppinion-making Polish daily who actually misapriopriated the paper from Solidarity and its Polonia benefactors

do you still have questions??

Silesia was the most popular tourist destination in German times, before Bavaria and the sea. Hardly no one knows this anymore. The region has the biggest number of castles and stately homes in Europe, and Jelenia Gora valley with its huge number of (royal) castles and parks was once compared to the landscape around Potsdam (Sanssouci), a world heritage site. Along the Sudetes you can find lots of spa towns and preserved villages (but for how long?). Almost every village and town had a Catholic and a Protestant town, something very unique in Europe.

Tourism could be big there, but castles must be reconstructed, parks must be restored, trails in the mountains must be rebuild, a spa culture must be reestablished... this needs many active people who identify with the region.

It's not a conscious policy - it's just that teachers are unable to follow the programme correctly, simple as that.

As for the IPN archive - isn't it almost customary for politicians with power to interfere with the archive? For me, it's one of the worst things about Poland - that the archive has been so heavily meddled with. I dare say when the dinosaurs finally die and we can move away from post-PZPR/post-Solidarity labels, there'll be some very big fingers pointed at them.

As for the newspaper - surely it's just a legacy of bitter infighting within Solidarity? All the accusations of the paper being "stolen" - but for me, it was just another pawn in the collapse of Solidarity. Don't forget - that same editor did far more for his country than most people.

precisely what?


you are mixing things pal - Silesia loses just as much of its appeal to German tourists by the sheer fact it is not German anymore and Poles live there - I am not against the concept that some areas could try to rehash the German culture so that they can attract German tourists (I wouldn't count on tourist from other countries that much in this endavour) but I doubt it can be achieved on larger scale for many reasons - one is the lack of balance in the Poles, the balance and confidence the Czechs have when they attract German tourist even to the areas formerly inhabited largely by Sudeten Germans - the Poles would either be very defensive or servilistic - as for the Sudetic spas - I feel perfectly all right with the current state - were there more German 'baders' there wouldn't enough space for Poles there (not that financial scope) - you can't expand the Kurorten indefinitely - I seriously doubt there is much space for their expansion actually - it is quite another story with just mountain hiking - there is not much in the sense of touristic infrastracture in the Polish Sudetes and there is room for great expansion in case German tourists could be attracted - but it requires a lot of people to change their attitudes (even those most simple people who live there) - I can't imagine German tourists wanting to see shabby, neglected towns and villages with a good deal of inhabitanst acting like louts - there is a big difference between Tatra mountains and their inhabitants and those of Sudety - still it won't be easy to attract massive German tourism to Śląsk and Sudety in any case

Given that the archives apparently contain not a single word about DuckBoy's sexual preferences, it's obvious that the archives have been more than meddled with.

Actually I was talking about tourist from everywhere, not only Germany. Have you ever looked into a book about prewar Silesia? Jelenia Gora valley could be a world heritage site and attract people from all over the world! It once looked like a second version of Sanssouci... 40 castles, several large, connected parks, a spa town and a medieval town (sadly destroyed), lots of villages with a very distinctive architecture (even from Tyrol!), the Sudetes in the background... it must have been amazing.

What if the present-day Austrians wanted back Suedtirol? How would contemporary Romanians react if Hungary suddenly insisted that the Trianon Treaty of 1918 were a sham and demanded half their former country back??

Folks wouldn't be too happy now, would they-:)

A lot of the German-speaking majority in Sudtirol would prefer to be part of Austria rather than Italy. EU membership and increased language rights have diffused any potential conflict.

Somehow, I scarcely feel the racist Right would risk losing this region to Austria and therefore think it had to make Albania another Italian "state", as the already long-established Sicily, a region the Northern League's Messrs. Bossi and Fini have been trying to shed for decades-:)

They don't want to - they see it as the spoils of war. Nevertheless there is a lot of resentment there to Italian rule.

Well now, the region is practically completely bilingual, come on!

Merano - Meran
Bolzano - Bozen
etc....

I'm told even street signs are in both languages.

That's what the Italians say! Right up in the north there are quite a few communities without a single Italian. If it wasn't for the bilingual roadsigns etc, trouble would foment.

True, yet native Italians, and conversely Austrian tourists, have all told me in Suedtirol EVERYBODY actually speaks as well as understands fluent Italian, switching then to excellent German, almost as though it were their Austrian-German mother tongue, the intonation, slang etc... This would NEVER happen in almost any formerly "occupied", so-called "bilingual" area I can think of, except perhaps in Kosovo, where many claim absolute bilingualism in Croation and Albanian, that is, the Tosk dialect.

Actually only the German speaking population of Suedtirol speaks German and Italian, while the local Italian population, which mainly lives in the few big cities, only speaks Italian.

A Polabian People's Republic? It's surprising Uncle Joe didn't create a Polabian People's Republic between Poland and West Germany in place of the DDR. He wanted to emasculate the German nation and make it incapable of ever re-achieving major power status, so that would have surely done the trick. He could have easily justified it with his propaganda which could explain away anything. With Poland he used historical arguments in the west (the return of historic, age-old Piastian lands to Poland) but in the east employed ethnographic criteria - whatever served his purposes.

The question is who would he have populated Polabia with?
Slavicised Volksdeutsche, Wends of course, but there wasn't enough of them, some Czechs, Poles, Kashubians? A German minority would probably have remained, but they should have been allowed to live only near the Polish and Czech border, so as to preclude any future German designs to annex them. The language could have been an updated, expanded and reconstructed form of unified and standardised Wendish (no more upper and lower Lusatian).... And then the alarm clock went off and it was business as usual...