Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement

Correct. Turks in Germany aren`t from German ex-colonies. :):):)


Yes, it will, but immigrants will adopt the Polish life style, customs and traditions because they are more appealing than dull German ones. :):):):) Culturally, Germans didn`t offer anything attractive to Turks to make their next generations German. Polish offer is better. :):):)


Turks and Muslims won`t come to Poland in massive numbers. We will host Belarussians and Ukrainians, nations who share a lot of similar cultural traits with Poles.


And this immigration is very high quality, as you can see in the PF. Those people are the salt of the earth.

I can only be glad. And believe it will remain so for a long time.

and you my friend have done a quite reasonable job of presenting an argument based on the broken window fallacy...

God, help Poland... :)


Poland should ask Germany if it would be willing to transfer all the Turks. I'm sure the Germans would be more than happy to send them across the border - together with the Nigerians, Afghans, Lebanese and all the others that don't give a sh*t about European culture.

Are you really sure about that? Don't forget, Poland was a multiethnic country before 1939 and the Polonization attempts didn't even work well with culturally close Belarusians and Ukrainians.

Why do you think it would work better with migrants from Muslim countries? Now I am curious... what in your eyes is the specific Polish element that would attract or appeal immigrants from Turkey or Arab countries and would make them Poles after two or three generations, in spite of the fact that it did not work too well in countries like Spain, Italy, France, UK, the Skandinavic states and the German speaking countries?

The answer is simple: TRADITION!




Except that they weren`t immigrants. :):):):) They were seperate nations, eager to create their own independent states.


Poland is God`s most favourite playground.

It's great to have somebody as educated as yourself on this forum. Though I would be fascinated to hear how this 'advanced culture' moved to Poland from its western neighbor (Germany -I use the word as a shorthand for a bunch of states because no such country existed at the time of course), especially in regards to religious toleration and the movement away from despotism to the democratic form of governance, in which the king was no longer seen as having a divine mandate to rule?

And then you could tell as about how the enlightenment in Germany made its way east to Poland, I am sure it will make fascinating reading.

Good point! Didn't really think about that. I learned that the assimilation of Ukrainians and Belarusians worked pretty well after Operation Wisla: ;-)

But I don't see how Polish traditions should attract foreigners to give up their own culture. Beware that some groups of migrants tend to stick to one another and to their traditions more than others. Some of them even get more traditional when they live abroad. In the end this means you have your traditions and they have theirs.

I know a lot of Muslims that have integrated well, but a significant percentage of them seems to reject all integration offers. Some of them even become hostile towards natives and many of them hardly know 20 words of German after twenty or thirty years in the country. It is striking that you hardly find these problems with people from India or East Asia, even most Africans speak a good German and accept the European way of behaviour after short time, and I never met a second generation migrant from a European country that wasn't able to speak German with the local dialect of the region they were living in.

Nope, it is true. We didn`t exterminate millions of people like other nations. Come on Harry, you should know history better than that.

Perhaps you just didn't do it because you did not have the chance. ;-) Poland did not exist as a country during the age of imperialism, therefore it could do no any harm to anybody. The Second Polish Republic however was far away from being a pacific peaceloving democratic state but it was on an autoritarian and expansionistic trail. Of course not comparable to the Nazis and the Stalinists, but the fact that the two big Polish neighbor states were the most brutal terror regimes of the 20th century does not mean the Polish state was good force in Europe.

Your history education is a bit insufficient.

Simply speaking, it sucks. :):):):)

Exterminating nations started long before the age of imperialism.

religioustolerance.org/genocide5.htm

And yes, Poles could do a lot of harm to somebody. They didn`t or they did a little, compared to what was done to Poles.

Why? It is the Polish feucking peaceful character. It is one of the main traits of our culture. That is why it so so appealing.

Again: Poland did not have any colonies on other "non christian" continents in the 1600s and 1700s. I never heard of the Spaniards or Portuguese trying to oppress another Christian European culture. What makes you believe Poland wouldn't have taken colonies in the Americas and would have exploited them if they had the chance to do so? Because of your higher moral standards in the 1500s? This is ridiculous!

Poles very well tried to crush the pagan old Prussians, only after they failed in doing so the asked for the help of the Teutonic Order: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_Crusade

They were various massacres on Jews over the centuries, for instance in Jedwabne: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighbors:_The_Destruction_of_the_Jewish_ Community_in_Jedwabne,_Poland and surely Poland's government tried to erect an Polish empire after 1919 in which all other nations were suppressed.

Again: I know other European nations like we Germans committed much, much worse crimes against other people - I am the first one to admit that - but I don't like your pharisaic, self-righteous phrases of an Polish nation that is morally on a higher standard that others.

I also think the history education of Funky Solomon is a little bit nooby.

But i dont think that polish people have such a peaceful character if i look at our cleaning man at work.

Thank you very much.

It would also be interesting to analyse what was transferred from the Polish to the German cultural sphere.

Since 1945 Poles and Germans coexist with the smallest possible border - about 400 kilometers - from Liberec in the Czech Republic up to the Szczecin Lagoon. We must not forget that before 1919/1939 Poles and Germans occupied a vast territory over thousands of square kilometers of scattered settlement that spreaded from Upper Silesia, Little Poland, over Greater Poland up to Pomerania and Prussia. Both cultures penetrated each other there. So there was a huge room of interaction that functioned like a hinge between Poland and Germany. Information and culture could be transported there very easily.

Does anybody know if there are any documents left from the time of First Rzeczpospolita in the city of Gdansk that outlived the almost total distruction of Danzig in 1944 and 1945? Gdansk/Danzig as a German speaking city of the Polish realm was a perfect hinge, because it was well integrated in the Polish state and had very good contacts to the rest of the German speaking world. If parts of Polish culture went to the west it surely found its way over Gdansk/Danzig. It would be a good job for a historian to carry on research on this topic.

What that excuse given by her neighbors?

Please list the European pre-WW2 countries and sort them into those being good force in Europe and those not being good force in Europe. Thank you in advance.

This question is relatively complicated, because it would need a whole book to treat every European country fairly, but I would say "good forces" were the following states because they were democracies:

Switzerland
Czechoslovakia
Luxembourg
Ireland
Norway
Sweden
Denmark
Finland

Good forces to a lesser extent were the folling states that were democracies in their motherlands but suppressed other people in their colonies:

UK
France
Belgium
The Netherlands

All other countries were already dictatorships after WWII or gradually turned into one in the 1920 and 1930s.

hague1cmaeron:
And then you could tell as about how the enlightenment in Germany made its way east to Poland, I am sure it will make fascinating reading.


Not at all. The comment was a bit tongue in cheek though, because nothing like that actually happened, since Prussia together with its other neighbors prevented the only real force for enlightenment in the region from coming to fruition. Namely the 3 May Constitution and the reforms that proceeded it, same goes for religious toleration and early forms of democratic governance,

The please excuse because I did not understand this part of your post properly.
But I hope I made myself clear in that point: I was refferring to a cultural transfer that happened in the Middle Ages. With the rise of Brandenburg-Prussia and the age of nationalism it was the goal of Prussia and later Germany - that inherited the "Polish problem" from Prussia - to suppress the Poles, at least in the western half of their settlement area, in order not to lose territory to a potential new Polish state. Surely after the partitions the Polish nation was severely inhibited in its right of self-development and self-determination. And you are right if you mean it would be very narrow-minded to say the autoritarian, militaristic Prussia was culturally more developed as the multicultural, tolerant and enlightened Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, just because Prussia could defeat it militarily. It was never my intention to evoke that a connotation.

I understand you now, I thought you were referring to the whole historical period. Yes in the early middle ages Poland definitely absorbed a lot of German cultural influences. People (farmers, artisans, artists, tradesman etc.), and some cities subscribed to Magdenburg Law, and become members of the Hanseatic league. At one stage Krakow was a German speaking town, so it does illustrate the depth and strength of German influence on Polish culture at the time.

There was an exhibition about this not too long ago titled "Next Door. Poland – Germany. One Thousand Years of History."

1. Well, the Oliwa's Chronicle (Chronica Olivensis, Kronika Oliwska) is just one such document, existing in many manuscripts from XV and XVII centuries, located in Poland, Germany, Austria, Vatican, Ukraine and Russia - either in full or in partial editions. Many XIX c. and XX c. Prussian, Polish and Austrian investigators tried to combine and verify the versions, remove errors and misrepresentations of ancient copyists. As a result several monographs were prepared - both in German and in Polish.

One of the newest translations of the Chronicle - from Latin to Polish - is this one: Kronika oliwska. -ródło do dziejów Pomorza Wschodniego z połowy XIV wieku, tłum. Dominika Pietkiewicz, komentarz Błażej Śliwiński, Malbork 2008, s. 160, ISBN 978-83-60518-18-2

There are other versions of the Chronicle floating around the internet, such as this Latin version with some fragments translated into Polish:
historia-oliwy.trojmiasto.pl/o_chronica01.html

Based on this "The History of Oliwa's Abbey" has been prepared here, historia-oliwy.trojmiasto.pl/o_hist1.html

There is some additional confusion here, since many monographs combine several documents under the one "Oliwa's Chronicle" title:
+ Oliwa's Chronicle (the proper chronicle)
+ The table of the Founders (copied from wooden tablets in the abbey's church)
+ The table of the Benefactors (as above)
+ List of the abbots
+ Oliwa's annals (1356-1545)

The following study (181 pages), in Polish, is highly recommended: Studia Gdańskie, Tom VII, Seria: Studia Olivensia, Tom I
Jarosław Wenta, Dziejopisarstwo w Klasztorze Cysterskim w Oliwie na tle porównawczym, Gdańsk-Oliwa 1990, studiagdanskie.diecezja.gda.pl/pdf/sg_vii.pdf

2. There must be many other original documents to be found in Gdańsk. Think about 15 or so museums in Tricity. Some of them have separate unique branches. There are also several libraries in Gdańsk and its neighbourhood.

The Museum of History of City of Gdańsk (MHMG) has several interesting branches and several departments. Its History Department collects objects and documents relating to Gdańsk from the beginning of recorded history to modern times.

The staff of the Department developed also a calendar of events in Gdańsk, consisting of about 17 thousand facts. On their basis, they prepared two volumes of "Gdańsk Chronicle". The Volume 1, covering the years 997-1945, was published in 1998. The Volume 2, covering the events from March 30, 1945 to December 31, 2000, was prepared for print in 2002 but has not been released so far, due to lack of funds.

I'm not sure they have anything particularly significant as the centre of Gdańsk was burnt out by the conquering Soviets (already after they have seized the city)

Yes, I am aware of it. But the Museum of History of City of Gdańsk claims, for example, that they collect various documents via purchases, and sometimes via donations.

In addition, some documents in Gdańsk Archives actually survived the fires.


gdansk.ap.gov.pl/o-archiwum

Just in relation to Oliwa's Chronicle the National Archive in Gdańsk contains these:
+ Manuscript of Oliwa's Abbey, sign. 940/420, paper, 54 leaves in quarto
+ Manuscript of Oliwa's Abbey, sign. 940/421, paper, 53 leaves in quarto, previously archived in Königsberg
+ Manuscript of Oliwa's Abbey, sign. 940/422, paper, 88 leaves in quarto. Includes "Annales" 1170-1629, previously in Königsberg
+ Copy in Bibliotheca Archivi, 300, R, LI, q. 55-56, poz. 1. Copy of the Petersburg edition, original in Rumiancew Museum

======

BTW, in addition to these four documents in Gdańsk, there are altogether 12 various sources of the Chronicle archived elsewhere:
1. Bibl. Ap. Vatic, Bibl. Chig., Ms Q II 516 3 ;
2. Niedersach. Bibl. Gottingen, Cod. Ms. Theol. 207;
3. Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich we Wrocławiu Rękopis Pawli­kowskiego, nr 123.;
4. Universitatsbibliothek Greifswald, Acc. 22156;
5. Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Nachlass Oelrichs, Nr 466;
6. Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego w Krakowie, zbiór rę­kopisów, sygn. przyb. 57/52;
7. Biblioteka P A N w Kórniku, rękopis nr 65;
8. Lwowskaja Naucznaja Biblioteka im. W. Stefanika, Acta privata d. referendarius Lucas, 1820, sygn. 0 4, on. I , N° 636;
9. Linkópings - Stifts - och Landsbiblioteket, sygn. H 3 a;
10. Archiwum Państwowe w Toruniu, Katalog II,sygn. XIII-55;
11. Staatsatsarchiv Greifswald, Rep. 38, f. Hs, Adelung Nr 15;
12. Kunglinga Biblioteket Stockholm, D 1360.

I'm not trolling, I'm simply asking why did you write that strange post... You mean right now in 2012 Poles preffer Wrocław staying Polish over Lwów becoming Polish again ?


Interesting. So countries opressing and exploiting countless millions of ******* around the world, were good forces, unlike Poland which was not a good force ? Please explain.

Anyone with half a brain would agree, given the somewhat lack of industrial base in Lwów versus the heavily commercialised/industrialised Wrocław.

Even places like Walbrych are doing better than Lwów economically these days.

The only people who want Lwów and other areas back are the ones with no grasp of economics. Germany is still struggling to pay for East Germany, 22 years on - what hope would Poland have of integrating a region that is even poorer than East Germany was?

I know. That's why I am asking why did he write that strange post.

Yes. Nothing strange about that.

Yes... but isn't it obvious that people are not willing to go on for another border shift after the recent 3 generations already established themselves on the new lands after they had to rebuilt it from WW2 destruction ?

The last border shift was a painful one. But even if it could be done any other way, I still think people are happy with the status quo.

Actually this has nothing to do with anything. Given another geopolitical system things could have turned differently. For example, the Tri-city of Galicia: Borysław, Drohobycz and Truskawiec was the area where big money was made on crude oil (Borysław, Drohobycz) and spent (Truskawiec). Sure, Borysław was ugly and muddy and the area's economy was predatory, but:



Stanisław Nicieja, "Kresowe trójmiasto. Truskawiec - Drohobycz - Borysław"


And again, this has nothing to do with economics. Most of the people from Kresy I know - bar some strange characters, gave up their dreams of going back to Ukraine many years ago. Many recognize the current geopolitical reality and do not care for any revision of borders, many accepted the rights of Ukrainians to their own state. Some still dream of the land of their childhood and youth, collect memoirs, books and songs - but that's only normal for any human being.

Well, I said it would take a whole book to treat every country fairly.

In the interbellum period the vast majority of the public opinion in all European societies and the USA still believed that white Europeans were superior to Non-Europeans, and therefore whites have a "God given" natural right to take colonies. Poland just did not expoit "Negroes" because it did not have the chance to obtain colonies! Or would you say Poland wouldn't have taken one of the German colonies in 1918, lets say Cameroon, Namibia or Tanzania, if the allies would have awarded the new Polish state with one of the former German colonies? Also, correct me if I am wrong, I never heard of that the human rights of Blacks in Africa plaid a role at all in interbellum Polish public discussions.

Important for me in classifying European interbellum states in countries with a good or bad influence only was which state tried to stop the expansion of totalitarianism in Europe. And therefore in my opinion the Polish state, that had unresolved border disputes with all of its neighbor countries, that had an autoritarian government that was hostile towards all minorities, that threatened several of its neighbors with war and helped to destroy democratic Czechoslovakia alongside the Nazis, was not a good force. I know that Poland was in a very difficult stratetical situation at that time but so was Czechoslovakia, too.

Now please you explain something. Why do you think the second Polish republic was a state that had a good influence in the network of state relationships between WWI and WWII?


I heard about this exhibition when it was in Berlin last year. Unfortunately I missed it. I hove it will come to Frankfurt in the near future. I would be happy to pay a visit.