Language / New Dialects in Western and Northern Poland [24]


A couple of years ago on one of the fleemarkets of my hometown of Frankfurt I saw a late 19th century Mazurian prayer book.

The prayers were all in Polish (probably it was Mazurian but I really can't tell the difference) but as lettering they did use the Old German Fraktur:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur

It was funny to see that old German lettering but with all the Polish aditional characters: Ą ą Ć ć Ę ę £ ł Ń ń Ó ó Ś ś - ź Ż ż.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]


My formulation surely is a bit graphic, but I can't see why you think there is no truth in it. Well, sometimes you just have to exaggerate things in order that people understand what you mean. Reading your posts here I figured you are a friend of the open word and you like playing hardball, so I am sure you can cope with it.


Not at all, Nazi Germany and Poland in collaboration derailed the work of the League of Nation institutions in the Free City of Danzig. And these institituions still guaranteed the democratic structure of politics in Danzig and equal rights for Jews, although Nazis had the absolute majority of votes.


Why is that? Danzig always had a broad majority of German speaking inhabitants from the Middle Ages until 1945. This is a fact! You won't find very much Danzigers with Polish ethnicity before 1945.

The only justification for such a claim could be that Danzig/Gdansk belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for centuries. This, of course, is true, but old Poland was a supranational realm, therefore the allegiance of the inhabitants of Gdansk/Danzig went to a state in which they could maintain their German language and culture unaffected from Warsaw.

The second Polish republic from 1919 to 1939 was something completly different, because it was designed to be a nation state reserved for the Polish nation alone. Other nations were suppressed there. Polish officials for instance boasted about the de-Germanization of cities in Pomorze (Westpreussen) and Greater Poland (Provinz Posen) after 1919, as you can see looking at this Polish propaganda poster: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Nalot_niemczyzny_1910_1931.jpg/220px-Nalot_niemczyzny_1910_1931.jpg

And this was not about driving Prussian administration officials and soldiery out of the country, which would be understandable, but ordinary Germans that lived in the country for centuries had to leave, often by force. This probably would have been the faith of the German Danzigers, too, if the Allies hadn't created the Free City of Danzig.

Language / New Dialects in Western and Northern Poland [24]


Good article! Thank you!

This reminds me of the Alemannic speaking Alsatians in Eastern France. For those who don't know: Alemannic is the one of the main German dialects spoken in South-West Germany, Western Austria, Liechtenstein, the German speaking part of Switzerland and Eastern France.

After the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/1871 the area was annexed by the new founded German Empire, but the majority of Alsatians still emphazised their French nationality although many of them didn't even speak French fluently. Prussian officials, many of them with Slavic or Polish family names by the way, were not able to understand that and reacted frustrated.

Many of you problably know the Mazurian ethnographer Krzysztof Celestyn Mrongowiusz (German: Christoph Cölestin Mrongovius). The Mazurian city Mrągowo (German: Sensburg; Old Polish name: Ządźbork) was named after him after 1945. He spent years of his life to cherish and archive this Polish dialect in order to keep and safe it for the Polish nation. He problably would be pleased to see that Mazuria is now a part of Poland but probably would be puzzled about the fact that practically everybody of his countrymen now lives west of the Rivers Oder and Neisse and therefore the old Polish dialect he loved so much is close before extinction.

The same is true for Slovincian or Leba Kashubian. Due to the oppression of all Slavic languages within Germany from 1871 to 1945, only very few people around present day Slupsk and Leba were able to speak it. But when the Red Army arrived in Slupsk and Leba in 1945 many Germans there tried to communicate with the Russians with the last words of Slowincian they knew, trying to prove to the Russians they were true Slavs in order not to get their women and daughters raped. After 1945 Polish officials tried to keep the Slowincians in the country - because they were the only remnant of the old Slavic Pomeranian native population that proved that all of the area was Slavic speaking before they gradually all got Germanized from the 1200 until 1945. But all of them chose to leave for Germany and their language got extinct in the 1970s or 1980s.

Language / New Dialects in Western and Northern Poland [24]

You mean the Polish Warmian dialect I guess, which is pretty close to almost extinct Polish Masurian, and not the German "Ermländisch", also called High Prussian?

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]


This reads a little bit like: I found a raped woman on the street, no police was around, so I raped her, too. She was raped already so it didn't matter anyway.

Besides that your story is incorrect, because the Polish state pressurized Czechoslowakia alongside the Nazis in Summer 1938 already. The Brits were pretty upset about this fact. Churchill said in the House of Commons in October 1938 that this nearsided behaviour of the Polish government is going to have consequences.

Also Polish foreign minister Beck, alongside the Nazis, sabotaged the role of the League of Nations Representative Sean Lester in the Free City of Danzig. The Nazis had the absolute majority of votes in Danzig from 1934 on, but the demoratic constitution of the Free City could not be changed. So there were still democratic parties in Danzig that could operate freely. The Polish state did not care a thing about democrats fighting for their survival in the Free City of Danzig.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]

So anyone who critisizes actions of your country in the past is Anti-Polish? Silly comment! Poor Lad!

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]


I wrote about Polish lobbyist groups, Ironside! Plenty of Poles were abroad in 1945 and some of them surely had influence.

1945 was a year in which history could be written and developments, that occured over 700 years, could be reversed. If the allies would have decided to make Rügen, Stralsund, Anklam and Frankfurt/Oder Polish territories then now it would true Polish territory, if they would have said Szczecin remains German then it would be a German city now.

As I said I read about Polish territorital claims to territories west of Oder-Neisse a couple of years ago and I really don't know how trustworthy the source was, therefore I was asking this question.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]

I found an interesting map the Western allies presented Stalin at the Potsdam conference, with different proposals regarding the new Polish-German border, because they feared neither Germany nor Poland could cope with such a radical border shift to the rivers Oder/Odra and Neiße/Nysa:

de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Vertreibungsgebiet.jpg&filetimestamp=20080525171255

I once read when Stalin rejected all proposals and insisted on the Oder-Neisse border plus Stettin/Szczecin and Swinemünde/Świnoujście becoming cities withing the Polish borders, Churchill tried in a final step to place the German-Polish border not at the Lusatian Neisse but on the Rivers Bober/Bobr and Queiss/Kwisa which would have left Lauban/Luban and Sagan/Zagan as German cities.

Is it true that Poland had additional territorial claims towards Germany? I read once or twice that Polish lobbyists stipulated for all of the island Usedom/Uznam for instance, even claims for all of Hither Pomerania including the island of Rügen/Rugia were made. The Polish city name Słubice was reserved for all of Frankfurt/Oder and not only for the "Dammvorstadt", the Frankfurt quarter on the eastern bank of the Oder river. Also Poles made claims for the city of Lebus/Lubusz which was an important city of the First Polish kingdom in the Middle Ages. Anybody knows if there is some truth in this or is it just rumours?

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]

Your way of comparing historical events with old soccer matches is very juicy. I see it's gonna become a very interesting European championship this summer. History will be written!

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]

Then why bother creating new boundaries instead of dissolving them all?

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]


But Poles would be a minority is this state then.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]

I agree this was a selfish behavior of Germany. I did not know until now Russia uses the Northstream pipeline to blackmail its western neighbors. I am hearing this for the first time.


You should add Poland to the list of bigger EU members because it has as many inhabitants as Spain, and soon Poland's economy will be as strong as the Spanish one or even stronger. I don't say the organisation of the EU is perfect. A lot of things have to become improved, but of course bigger nations want to have more influence than smaller ones. I am sure no Pole would accept Lithuania or Slovakia gaining more influence on the cost of Poland's. It will need a lot of discussions in the future the find a model suitable for all of us.

In the end we have no other alternative as co-operation, since Europe's influence in the world is declining.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]


Yes, I did, and did I miss something? As far as I know a German vote counts viewest in the European Parliament. What is it with the square root model?

Northstream is that Russian-German gas pipeline through the Baltic ocean, isn't it? After the historic experiences Poland made with Russian-German special agreements I can understand this troubles you, but I wouldn't put this out of proportion.


Of course not! I would rather say what is good for Europe is good for Germany.

We Germans are now in an uncomfortable situation. If we do nothing preventing the collapse of the Euro then everybody says we just want to make money and then hide behind the back of the Americans, and if we try to make decisions for Europe and the Euro, then some other Europeans see German imperialism being back on the agenda.


I know Wikipedia is not God Almighty, but according to the English Wikipedia Poles only made up about 35 % of the population. It was the biggest ethnic group but without an absolute majority. There was also a sizeble German and Jewish minority: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaolzie#Census_data

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]

Do you think this is the case? There is no doubt that Germany profited a lot from the European Union. Actually we are giving a lot of money to the Mediterranean countries, of course the German government wants to know where the money is going to.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]


Listen, what I write now is completely hypothetical, but as you said: We are just writing here. The vast majority of Germans made their peace with the Oder-Neisse-Border and there is no demographical basis in Germany to repopulate lost territories in the East. Our population is shrinking as is the Polish one, too, by the way.

But let's play an intellectual game: The EU collapses and national egoism returns into the European political agenda. Every man for himself, is the new motto! A new nationalistic government in Poland starts to make territorital claims to Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and the Czech Republic. Germans get exacerbated about that fact and also vote a nationalistic leader, who reminds them at the glorious past of their nation in the territories East of Odra-Nysa, and then the German-Polish relations deteriote again. Then Germany finds an agreement with Russia and the Polish neighbor states, and then you would have a problem, because the Polish geo-strategical situation hasn't changed at all. Poland is a big, important nation, but Germany and Russia are bigger and more important!

And as far as the mass expulsion of Germans after 1945 is concerned: Morale is not an amplitude in cross-national jurisprudence. You will not find an international law that allows the disappropriation and mass expulsion of 8 millionen German civilians from the German eastern provinces. Therefore if the zeitgeist changes you never know what could be possible.

It would be better just to leave anything how it is, and the more Germany and Poland co-operate the less is the probability that there ever will be a war again between our nations. If you deny the right of Ukraine, Belarus and Luthuania to govern former Polish territories you corrupt the right of Poles to govern your western and northern provinces. Also, Poland would not find any allies in Europe that would support her territorital claims.


I won't argue that, as most of my countrymen wouldn't.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]


The so-called Sudetenland was annexed in October 1938, alongside with the Hungarian annexion of parts of Slovakia and the Carpatho-Ukraine as well as the Polish annexion of the Olsa Territory. The so-called "Rest-Tschechei" was annexed by Germany half a year later in March 1939. The Western Allies just protested against this clear break of the Munich Agreement because they feared to go to war.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]


I would leave the Polish borders were they are. Don't open Pandora's box again! Because I agree, that "Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement".


This is what the English Wikipedia says "Lviv was founded in 1256 in Red Ruthenia by King Danylo Halytskyi of the Ruthenian principality of Halych-Volhynia, and named in honour of his son, Lev. Together with the rest of Red Ruthenia, Lviv was captured by the Kingdom of Poland in 1349 during the reign of Polish king Casimir III the Great. Lviv belonged to the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland 1349–1772, the Austrian Empire 1772–1918 and the Second Polish Republic 1918-1939."

Even if it's true that Lviv never was Ukrainian, it is Ukrainian since 1945. If you don't acknowledge that fact it would bring the Polish presence in that what some of you call "Recovered territories" in a dangerous position. Again: Don't open Pandora's box and leave the borders where they are!

Otherwise you would lose one of Poland's greatest assets: Having no border disputes with your neighbor countries!

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]

You are always smarter afterwards, and I think now it's pretty obvious that the Munich Agreement was a big mistake. The western allies should have never allowed Germany, Hungary and also Poland to carve up Czechoslovakia, which was the only democratic state that was left in the area. If all democratic states would have cooperated there might have been a chance to isolate Nazi Germany and to prevent the Second World War.

Although I agree with "hague1cmaeron" that the problem of the Czechoslovak state was a very complex one, because there is no doubt that the inhabitants of the Olsa territory would have voted for unification with Poland, as well as the Sudeten Germans would have joined the German state and the Hungarian minority in Slovakia was yearning for re-unification with Hungary.

Nevertheless Poland alienated the only true allies it had: France and the UK. After the Munich agreement Poland was completely isolated. Hitler said afterwards: "Now there is Poland in the role I want to have it - completely isolated" and sentences like "My enemies are small worms. I saw them in Munich!".

Since I am a German referring about the time close before WWII in a Polish forum I want to make clear one thing: Please understand I do not point my finger at Poland, nore I intend to diminish the German primary debt regarding the beginning of WWII. It just attracted my attention that some posters in this forum postulated that Poles and Poland have higher ethical standards than others, which is not the case in my point of view. From a country with "higher moral values" I would have expected not to help to destroy a democratic neighbor state, even in tough times like in 1938.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]

hague1cmaeron


This may be correct, but the same can be said for the so-called "Sudetenland". The vast German majority is these lands - more that 3 million Germans - never wanted to be a part of the pan-Slavic Czechoslovakian state in which they were forced to live after 1918.

For Poland must be said that this annexion of territory was a kick in the teeth for the Western democracies like UK and France. In November 1938 Poland was completely isolated with regards to foreign affairs. The Brits said openly they are not willing to support a country any longer that helps to destroy neighbor states.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]


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.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]

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.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]

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.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]


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.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]


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.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]


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.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]


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.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]


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?

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]


A certain amount of suspiciousness and vigilance should always have its place, as long as it does not cloud your judgement when there is an opportunity to take. Now is the time that the German Polish relations finally overcome the antagonism, because in the end you will hardly find to people in Europe that have intermingeled so much. I know what I'm talking about because my nephews family name is Polensky, my cousin's Polonski, my brother is related by marriage to Skodnicki's and my brother in Berlin is married to a Ortzikowski. In my circle of friends there is a Sitarski, a Sabrowski and a Nowak.


You said it yourself. During the imperialistic times, I mean the time from 1850 until 1918, Poland did not exist as an independent nation and the Poles were forced to live as minorities in "foreign" states. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, that was one of the major European Powers until the partitions, was as selfish and aggressiv as any other European state was. Surely it was not more peaceful as the Holy Roman Empire, the progenitor state of modern Germany, that existed from 867 to 1806.

The Second Polish Republic was a state that was aggressive towards all its ethnic minorities, not being able to bridge the antipodes of the nationalistic idea of creating a state reserved for the Polish nation alone and the claim to recreate the boundaries of the old multiethnic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Poland did also participate in the Destruction of the Czechoslovak state by annexing the Olsa territory. Of course this all does not justify all the terrible things that happened during the "4th Polish particition", but it certainly does not make Poland a better country.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]


If we lived in 1946 or 1951 I would deeply understand your suspicion. Now, in the year 2012, almost 70 years and three generations after WWII I find it a little bit odd.

Of course I cannot force you to trust or like the Germans, but I would appreciate if you acknowledged that Germans and Poles, during the more 1.000 years of neighborship, were on good terms with one another.

In those posts of yours I read I had the impression that you try to create a dichotomy between "nasty genocidal Germans" (in the form of the Teutonic Order, Frederick the Great, Bismarck and Hitler) that always and ever tried to subdue or destroy the Polish culture and the good Poles on the other side, that only tried to live a peaceful life. This is a little bit too black and white.


Among all major cities of Nazi Germany, Danzig had the most rapes of women. Literally every woman between 8 and 80 was raped several times by Red Army soldiers. Many of them died in the process.

After four years of war and a 3.500 km footwalk from Stalingrad and Moscow to the German border, the Russians took a terrible revenche in the cities of former Eastern Germany. Even cities that surrendered before the Red Army arrived were plundered and then burned down to the core.

History / Poland did reasonably well in land terms out of the postwar settlement [270]

Dear Ironside,

Gdansk finally belongs to Poland since 1945, period! The German Danzig ceased to exist because all its inhabitants left for Germany or were killed during or shortly after the war.

You will hardly find two people in Europe that are historically so intertwined as Germany and Poland. Therefore Danzig "belongs" to the historical German cultural sphere, as well as Gdansk belongs to the Polish one. This rather links thank separate our two nations

I just had the impression that you wanted to keep the history of Gdansk/Danzig for the Polish nation alone and in my point of view this is not true.