Row over status of Poles in Germany sours relations

the new Lithuanian law passed in March requires most of the subjects in all schools to be taught in Lithuanian - this will probably lead to the closure of most Polish schools in Lithuania - in comparison Lithuanian minority in Poland enjoys the right for most subjects in school to be taught in their native Lithuanian tongue (German minority enjoys similar rights but they mostly don't use the right to the utmost) - other than that the new law introduces 'optimization' of school network - Polish minority in Lithuania estimates that up to a half of present 120 Polish schools can vanish as a result of this 'optimization'

Where did you read such propaganda? Before the law, only lithuanian language was taught in lithuanian, all else was in polish. After the law - history, civil politics and lithuanian language. Is it a majority?

EDIT: Some schools were closed because there were very few students (why keep a class when there are 6 students) and merged with others. But the same is with lithuanian schools.

You mean like the right to live with whom one chooses without needing to pay additional tax for the privilege? Or the right to not have to publicly identify oneself as a foreigner every day? Or the right to not have to publicly identify one's property as foreign-owned? Or the right to choose the names of one's children?

All of those are rights denied in Poland to non-Poles.

plus geography - but it is not that bad I'd say eventually

ok you are right about that - one source (polskie radio site) states majority subjects in the first paragraph of their article about the topic - but it is just bad journalism I guess

still the question of the 'optimisation' is valid - minority schools (including Polish) in smaller places will be closed and only Lithuanian language schools will stay - some 60 (half of the present number) of Polish schools are endangered

I wonder if Lithuania would allow to let these schools be run by local communities (perhaps with financial support from Poland - be it state or charity funding)

Hmm, i couldn't find any evidence in Lithuanian media that half polish schools will be closed. It is more likely a rumor spread by Tomaszewski & co

Once again, labelling/classification jeopardises relations. How many more times does it need to be shown before anyone takes heed? They are immigrants with a right to live and work there, provided they meet the conditions of a European Directive (sorry, can't recall the number off the top of my head) which states that if they haven't procured employment, they must be taking active and verifiable steps to do so within a set timeframe. Why complicate things with bickering over precise status? This just goes to show how bureaucratic Poland and Germany have sth stuffed up their jacksies and they need to start working on cordial relations and mutual respect on a diplomatic level. We all know that people will be people, though.

Is that your best argument?

Why not just let the Poles in Gemany have the same minority rights like the Germans got in Poland?


Its the same in Poland. Those families came from Poland/Germany some decades ago and got assimilated in their host countries and simply moved on.

That would be consonant with the spirit (geist) of the EU. It strives for equality but Animal Farm taught us that some are more equal than others. A Pole will never hold equal weight in the eyes of your average German. I remember them criticising me in my own country, telling me that I wasn't fit for an LLM when I had been recommended by all the top lecturers in my first uni. Their literature glorifies them and they suck it all up. Poles will have to work hard to win their respect, trust me.

Poles are not concentrated anywhere in Germany - there is no call for schools with Polish language as far as I know - so perhaps it is not so very wise to raise the issue

Dude, did you read your threat actually?

Germans in Poland (what is left of them after the mass expulsions) are natives, the borders of new Poland were shifted over their heads and against their will. No minority rights for them for most of the last 50 years of course...

Poles in Germany are immigrants...like Turks...


?

:)

???

my youngest daughter was in a Polish school in berlin.

Germans in upper Silesia on the break of centuries were also mostly immigrants - in cities like Gleiwitz - Gliwice, Koenigshuette (now Chorzów), Hindenburg(or whatever it was called before - now Zabrze), Beuthen- Bytom (before Beuthen and now) - it didn't make Germans surrender those cities to Poles in 1921


I guess there is a Polish school there because of the diplomatic corps presence (now and back in the DDR times)

I was not saying there are no Polish schools in Germany at all - I was merely saying I haven't heard voices to establish such

BB, you can't deny that German literature glorifies the German spirit in a big way. I guess Merkel has embraced fairness but are most Germans prepared to accept Poles working alongside them so easily? I have some reservations about that.

The history of Germans in these lands goes back for 2000 years...that's native, Slavs were late comer!

Tell me about the number of Germans immigrating into Poland, ever...now compare that with the masses of Poles wandering west over the centuries!

Says it all, really....


I'm not denying anything but I would like to read such stuff myself... :)
As a german nationalist I can't get enough of it!!! :):):)

Do you have some links please?

there was no German presence there whatsover between about 600 and 1200 AD - and until 1600 Germans never formed even a significant minority in the area we are talking about - serious German immigration started after the start of exploitation of coal deposits in the late 18th century - furthermore German administration pursued active policies of germanization of local inhabitants - and various German immigrants kept flowing into the area all through the 19th century and then untill the Great War (almost 400 000 newcomers to the area between 1985-1918 - one whole big city if not several cities in that time)

btw before 600 there were no Germans as such just some Germanic tribes who probably spoke something very different to contemporary Hochdeutsch

Now this is hillarious. They voted for and further supported a political party that had genocide and imperialistic ambitions in its program, later on they participated in genocide of millions of Jews, Poles, Russians and other nations. The only reason they were not kicked out from their houses was because they claimed not to be Germans, but Poles or Silesians instead. I don't think their will should be mentioned and since they rejected to be Germans back in 1945, they should not have minority rights.

I have some links, and some rechts ;) ;)

Come now, BB, you know what books I am referring to.

As for the thread, the impact of swamping needs to be felt. Everyone can brace for impact but only til it manifests do people really grasp the magnitude of it. Working together in harmony is a tough task but one which has to be worked on.

spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/bild-720513-137220.html

Look at that map...around 200 AD....all the little points are populated german towns where now is Poland.
German history in german territory for more than 1800 years! And you Poles want to have minority rights in Germany? Ridiculous...
Change the borders back and we can talk again...

So cut your anti-german crap! Denying the german history in those lands together with ethnical cleansing and razing to the ground any trace of the german heritage cemented polish rule but please stop from repeating that commie/polish nationalist crap.

There is no need for it anymore...


1/3 ever voted for them in the last elections...can't we say also that 99% of the Poles had been firm communists for 40 years?

It's not as if Poles ever cared about Germans killing Jews, isn't it...
Quite to the contrary how many Poles are glad that they are now such a homogenous country, barely any Jews, Germans, Ukrainians and whatever left...no complaints, congratulating themselves is more like it!


Nope...I have no idea!

I think you should seriously cut this crap. Jews lived on Polish territories for hundreds of years and there wer much more Jews in Poland and in Germany. There were tensions between Poles and Jews, sure, but we never, at no point, turn extirminating Jews into a doctrine, never did such doctrine gain much popularity (1/3 support is huge) and we never turned such doctrine into grim reality.

Seriously, you've got some nerve.

More nerve than demanding minority rights for immigrant Poles in Germany??? Hardly!
If you don't like it leave...we won't expell you. You have always the choice!

PS: There is a reason most Jews hate Poland more than the Germans...

what do you mean by towns - and what is left of these towns then btw the time between 200 AD and 600 AD is a long time - how do you now there wasn't some serious internal strife in these lands that left the land much more sparsely populated - I know some (perhaps a great deal of) Polish archeology should be revised - but I haven't actually heard of major Germanic sites in Silesia in general (except the Ślęża mountain - but I don't know the German name of the mountain (big lonely thing south of Wrocław)

So were a lot of German rights...stop fookin whinging!!!

Bet this is something you didnt know?

guardian.co.uk/education/2008/feb/24/schools.uk

Inform yourself...that is off topic anyhow.

Anyhow, if Poles could claim minority rights then the Turks could do too...so forget about it!

sorry what I have written are historical facts - if facts are so distracting to you you should not bother with history at all - what is so antigerman in stating that between 600 and 1764 AD there was hardly any Germanic-speaking population in the lands we are talking about (most Upper Silesia - especially the most industrialised region)

do I deny that there were some Germanic tribes in Silesia (and generally whole Poland before 600 AD) - no - but we know not so much about them - for example you wouldn't call Goths Germans at all - they were much more closely related to Scandinavians - this is where they came from after all) - and still before Germanic tribes settled various regions of the present day Poland it was inhabited by yet different people (who spoke non-Indoeuropean language most-probably) - are we supposed to give the land to the Basques because of that?


as I said - it is most probably not very wise (completely stupid) for the Polish side to raise the question of Polish minority also for the reason you stated (that Germany cannot afford to give minority rights to the Turks - at least the Germans think so and we should take it into consideration

No, you haven't!

Poles like to call these lands "re-gained"...and love it to picture it as Deutsch-rein as the slavic tribes emigrated west.

Sorry, it isn't and it wasn't!

There was a continious strong german presence for 2000 years, till about 1950 as the last German got forcefully expelled.
(Okay, there was yet another wave of refugees in the 80's)


Umm...you know that all German tribes stem from Scandinavia, don't you!

Whatever that reason was (I'd be interested to learn it, so you can write more than suspension points), it doesn't change the fact that we did not commit mass systemic genocide on them. Germans did.


Are you sure that if two million people (who have a job, pay taxes etc) disappearing out of the blue would have a good impact on German economy? Can't they have some rights for their contribution?

and not like 40 per cent? I don't know just ask

There was not a continuous Germanic presence for 2000 years, stop being full of crap. Pretty much everything east of Elbe was Slavic in V-IXth century, it's later on that Germanics started to reappear on those territories.

what unhistorical I have stated - please point out and elaborate if you please (even if just a bit)


where do you see that German presence between 600 - 1200 AD - and how come the German presence in upper Silesia was strong between 1200 - 1600? please explain

They have the same rights as everyone else.