Genealogy / THE MEANING AND RESEARCH OF MY POLISH LAST NAME, SURNAME? [4500]


Doesn't make we wonder since most of the Masurians left or had to leave for Germany in 1945. Probably her original Polish name was Orczikowski then which was Germanized to "Ortzikowsky" since the "cz"-Sound is difficult to reproduce in written German, because you need for letters for it ("tsch") and "Ortschikowski" sounds and looks a bit silly in German.

Thank you very much for your help!

History / Future of Kaliningrad Oblast - is it possible to annex by Poland or will it become an independent country? [137]


Is it in English language? Then I'll give it a try!

Genealogy / THE MEANING AND RESEARCH OF MY POLISH LAST NAME, SURNAME? [4500]

Thank you. As far as I know her ancestors were from Masuria exclusively. Since the German "tz" is the equivalent of the Polish "c" it is problable the original Polish spelling was "Orcikowski".

History / Future of Kaliningrad Oblast - is it possible to annex by Poland or will it become an independent country? [137]

I should also be noted there was a great sense of being treated unfairly by the allies and its Polish and Lithuanian neighbors in East Prussia.

The interbellum Polish-German political relations never were good but they deterioted more and more in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and finanlly to such an extent that an economoc war between both countries started. Therefore East Prussia was practically locked away from the rest of Germany and only to reach unchecked by air and sea! Due to that fact the East Prussian economy almost broke down completely and therefore the standard of life was much lower than in the rest of Germany.

Did you guys know that the German-Polish Vistula border that existed from 1919 to 1939 between Poland, East Prussia and the Free City of Danzig never was in the middle or on the shore of the river but a couple of meters inland on the East Prussian side? Even farmers were no longer allowed to let their cattle drink from Vistula water. At least five or ten meters before the river there was the German-Polish border.

Here a map with the demarcation line:



Don't misunderstand me! This, of course, does not justify the German assault on Poland in September 1939 but helps to explain why so many East Prussian voted for the Nazi party.

Genealogy / THE MEANING AND RESEARCH OF MY POLISH LAST NAME, SURNAME? [4500]

Hello and greetings from Frankfurt/Germany. A good friend of mine with ancestors from Masuria bears the germanized Polish name "Ortzikowsky". Does it have a meaning. She does not know and I would like to tell her.

History / Future of Kaliningrad Oblast - is it possible to annex by Poland or will it become an independent country? [137]

So many things got lost irretrievably in central and eastern Europe. The older I get the more I understand the magnitude of crime and malefaction that was caused by National Socialism (and not to forget Stalinism too, of course).

I once saw a great French-German documentary (filmed in 2004) about the Kaliningrad/Königsberg situation, which I can highly recommend to anyone who is interessted in the topic:

docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Koenigsberg_is_Dead

History / Future of Kaliningrad Oblast - is it possible to annex by Poland or will it become an independent country? [137]


Hey Jon, I never doubted that the destructive politics of the Nazi governement ist responsible for the annihilation of permanent German presence east of the rivers Oder and Neisse! I just wanted to make clear that not every German was a Nazi and some people were Nazis without being German.

It should be noted that the NSDAP had extraordinary high election results in East Prussia, especially in Mazuria, despite the fact hat many people there still spoke their Polish-Mazowian dialect as venacular.


If everyone is guilty who benefits from an injust situation then we all in the first world are doomed, because our way of life and life standard is based on the abuse and looting of third world resources!

There is a German proverb, problably there is a similar Polish phrase too: "Wer den Wind sät, wird den Sturm ernten!" (Those who sow the wind will reap the storm!)

History / Future of Kaliningrad Oblast - is it possible to annex by Poland or will it become an independent country? [137]


I agree on that. I don't see that Russia is going to give up Kaliningrad. Why should they?

Nevertheless if things in Russia should continue to go wrong - what I don't hope - and Russia should destabilize to such an extent that at least parts of it break apart, then we would be stupid if we didn't make any mind games. To me it is pretty clear that Kaliningrad could not become part of another state, neither Poland nor Lithuania nor Germany. It could become an independent state or semi-autonomous territory, embedded in European structures. But the territory surely would remain a Russian speaking territory with Russian traditions. It is not unlikely that many cities in the territory will get their original German names back, eventually. The city with the ridiculous name "Sovetsk" at the Lithuanian border, until 1946 known under the reputable name "Tilsit" is begging for years in Moscow to get its old name back, but Putin refuses.


Nazi Germany wouldn't have been so terrifying successful if it hadn't had millions of supporters among other nations! Also there were millions of Germans either unpolitical or in opposition to the Nazis.

Responsible for the Nazi crimes are those who perpetrated them, either German - which the vast majority of the Nazi apparatus was - or any other nation! And a German child that was so unfortunate to be in East Prussia in January 1945 surely was not responsible for her fate. I hope we can agree on that!

History / Future of Kaliningrad Oblast - is it possible to annex by Poland or will it become an independent country? [137]

So the former inhabitants of East Prussia, the woman and children, are the sole responsible people for the outbreak of WWII?

Besides that "Königsberg" maybe a historical term now, but I bet it will be the future name of the city in twenty or thirty years because it is very unlikely that the city will be named after mass murderer Kalinin forever! Don't get me wrong! Like the vast majority of Germany I don't want East Prussia back! The root has been torn out in 1945, and Germany, the same as Poland and Lithuania by the way, does not have the demographic power to recolonize it.

Therefore I think it should be the major goal of all Europeans to ensure that the Kaliningrad Oblast does not cause any trouble in the future for its neighbours.

History / Slovakia - Poland's neglected neighbour? [63]

I once read the Slovakian language can function as lingua franca for travelers throughout the Slavic speaking world.

Being a West Slavic language itself (like Polish, Czech, Kashubian and Sorbian) it shares some similarities with South Slavic languages, especially Slovenian, and its clear pronounciation makes it easier for speakers of East Slavic languages (Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians) to understand than Polish and Czech, which both have a lot of peculiarities that result in many difficulties regarding their intelligibility for speakers of other Slavic languages.

History / Slovakia - Poland's neglected neighbour? [63]


As in all online forums worldwide here at PF, too there is a certain amount of trolls as well as an over-representation of extremists. I kept that in mind.


Hey Pawian, hope you are doing fine,

You know Slovaks didn't really had a chance. In Summer 1939 Hitler threatened them he would allow Hungary to annex all of Slovakia and restore "Upper Hungary" if they did not fully co-operate with Nazi Germany.

The Slovak national identity misses the bravery and stubbornness the Polish one has, because Poles always could take strength and morale from their great past. Slovaks for all of their existence were a part of Hungary, fighting against several Magyarisation attempts in order to keep their national identity. After the Austro-Hungarian settlement of 1867 that restored Hungarian statehood and allowed Magyars to shape Hungary after their will, they suppressed Slovaks in almost every aspect of life.

The fear of becoming a part of fascist Hungary and losing their new independence that they gained six months earlier, lead them to the false assumption it would serve their national interests best to become a satellite state of Nazi Germany.

History / Lusatia allied with Poland? [19]

Crow, even the most patriotic Lusatian Sorb does not question the affiliation of Lusatia to Germany.
Did you know that Stanislaw Tillich, the prime minister of Saxony, is a Lusatian Sorb? He even took his oath of office in the Lower Sorbian language, and he takes every chance he can to promote the Sorbian language: Some conservative Germans even say he has a real chance to become the next German chancellor after Angela Merkel.

History / Lusatia allied with Poland? [19]

If you guys want to watch news in Sorbian language go ahead by clicking on this link: mdr.de/mediathek/fernsehen/a-z/wuhladko102_letter-W_zc-59d7 b54a_zs-dea15b49.html

History / What do Poles owe to Czechs? [83]

This wouldn't have slowed down the Manhattan Project (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project). If the Americans had feared to lose the war they probably would have spent even more money and resources for their atom bomb program and it could have been ready earlier.

And with only three or four dropped atom bombs the war would have been over. The impact on moral would have been so devestating even the unscrupulous Nazis leaders couldn't have continued the war for much longer. No Nazi propaganda would have taken away the fear of such a deadly weapon.

It only took two atom bombs until the Japanese government surrended to the USA unconditionally, and there was not one American ground force soldier on Japanese soil.

Of course it would have been a terrible slaughter of German civillians but what is better? Up to 500.000 dead German civillians in a couple of German medium-cized cities? Or millions of tortured, mistreated, raped and starved to death civillians that fell into the hand of the Soviets as happened in the German east in 1945? I know this is a cynical question but I confess I am not sure myself what would have been the better alternative.

Fact is under American patronage West Germany in 1955, only ten years after the war, was a progressing and optimistic country, while in East Germany people still lived on food stamps.

History / What do Poles owe to Czechs? [83]


Are you sure about that?

The Soviets payed the highest death toll in WW2, that's for sure, but don't forget with or without Soviet help the USA would have developed the atom bomb anyway!

The bomb was ready in August 1945 and hadn't the war with Germany be over for three months already, the Americans would have dropped the bomb over Mannheim. And then they could have dropped another bomb over Dresden, then over Wiesbaden and other still undestroyed German cities and the war would have been over soon!

History / What do Poles owe to Germans? [451]


Who the hell are "ethnic Prussians"? The Old Prussian language got extint in the 1600s and was replaced by the German dialects "Low and High Prussian" and all of them - decendants of "Old Prussians", decendants of German and Dutch/Flemish immigrants, Germanized Slavs, Polish speaking Mazurians and the remainder of Lithuanian speaking "Preußisch Litthauer" - got kicked out of their country or got killed in 1945.

It's not that I like that! I am not a friend of ethnic cleansing, and as a German patriot I don't take masochistic pleasure from the fact that so much territory that was German speaking for centuries is lost. But if you look what happened in that area during WWII one has to admit it was the logic ending of Germany's attempt to create a Greater German Empire on the cost of all of its neighbours.

If you really are an Englishman, which I doubt because your English reads like you never spoke to a native speaker before, I appreciate your feelings for our countrymen that lived East of Oder-Neisse before 1945. They had to pay the price for Nazi Germany's crimes which is sad and unfair, but most of them are dead now. And most of their decendants adopted the local culture and styles of their new homes, therefore they are no longer existent.

If a decendant of a German Silesian, Pomeranian or Prussian should feel homesick he or she can move to Poland. I really mean it! Many people still haven't understood that the border is open now. All he/she needs to do is looking for a home and a job, learning Polish probably would help, and then he can move to Gdansk or Wroclaw.

Or do you honestly mean that the Poles that live in the former German territories for over 67 years now would leave their homes in order to move the Kresy territories? This is so far from reality that I don't want to get into that discussion.

History / What do Poles owe to Germans? [451]


And who should live there?

Life / West-East life in Poland? [45]


Thanks for uploding this interesting article. Seems to make perfect sense.

Life / West-East life in Poland? [45]

Great picture, Palivec, Haven't seen the borders of Germany from a hundred years ago for quite a while. ;-) .

Language / Polish language would look better written in Cyrillic Script? [212]


Actually old Anglo Saxons used the "Futhork" or Runic Alphabet before they got christianized in the 8th century, like all other Germanic tribes also did.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dalrunor.svg
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runes

Surely before the got baptized all West Germanic people didn't have much to write, therefore the old runic alphabet did not make much impact of the culture of present nations that speak a Germanic language.

The Latin based Antiqua script for me is the joining element of the Occident or Western World and I am happy to use it.

Imagine what huge problems we all had if every nation had its own script. I once got lost in a big city in Northern Thailand,nobody spoke English there and I wasn't even able to write down the name of my place to stay because I couldn't decipher Thai letters and they couldn't read Latin script.

Language / Polish language would look better written in Cyrillic Script? [212]


But this is an important point! In 1912, a hundred years ago, all written german looked like that:

Ironically it was the Nazis that promoted Latin letters during WWII because they ridiculously found the "gebrochene Schrift" Jewish by origin. Nevertheless I think it was to the advantage that German speakers adopted the Latin Antiqua letters that most of the other European languages have, too. Admittedly Gothic or Fraktur letters are much closer to the Latin alphabet - actually it's just a side alphabet of Antiqua - than cyrillic letters are to Latin.

It' a nice pastime to look what Polish would look like written in Cyrillic letters. Even German would fit perfectly into the Cyrillic alphabet. Just a few extra letters needed to be found and everything would work well.

But which government would spend billions of Euros or Zlotys to change the alphabet? It would also deprive future generations from their past. Modern Turks need to learn the Arab script first - which takes a couple of months to be fluent - until they are able to read Turkish texts written before 1924.

History / What do Poles think about Turks? [761]

Do you have an idea how many Serbs live in Germany? It's almost 500.000 - more than 6% of all your countrymen chose to live their lives in an "Non-Slavic" country - and it's getting even more day by day.

Crow, you really need to arrive in the 21st century! This means Kosovo is lost for Serbia. The only way to get it back would be war and ethnic cleansing. And don't forget: Serbia is just like a Nokia mobile phone. It is getting smaller after every war it was fighting recently!


You are getting it wrong, too. It wasn't the Serbs themselves that gained independence from the Ottoman Empire but a Congress in Berlin where all European major powers of that time bargained about the future of the Balkan: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Berlin

News / Does Poland support the idea of Slavic unity? [142]

You can't possibly know where your ancestors came from, maybe they came from the Pripjet swamps maybe from somewhere else. How can you know? Proven is only one thing: about 30,000 years before now the homo sapiens that came from Africa arrived in Europe and superseded the indigenous Neanderthals. So in the end we all are Africans. ;-) Your Slavic Comonwealth is only a myth!

News / Does Poland support the idea of Slavic unity? [142]

The idea of panslavism is from the penultimate century, where people and nations where categorized by language. There may be a close relationship between the slavonic languages, but culturally the Poles, Czechs and Slovaks are definitely closer to Hungarians, Austrians and Germans than to Russians or Bulgarians for instance.

And regarding origin I would claim that the modern Polish people are at least as related to Western European people as to Russians. Just imagine how many German settlers came to Poland in the Middle Ages. Most of them became part of the Polish nation very soon just like many people from Eastern Germany (Brandenburg, Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania and Saxony) have Slavonic ancestors.

So why shoud Poles aspire a Union with Russia just because the Polish and Russian language are related? There is not very much Russia can offer to be honest.

And my advice to you is you should update your way of looking at people. It may be good to categorize languages by origin and similarities but this does not necessarily mean that the people are genetically related or even if they are that nations feel affinity because of that fact. Or do you think that Dutchs, Luxembourgers, Swiss and the Skandinavian people want to live in a Union with Germany alone?

And let's be honest: Almost every slavic speaking nation was part of the Russian dominated Eastern Bloc from 1945 to 1990 and every nation exept Russia was glad to leave it in 1990.