Polonia in Germany

What I meant is that I was bewildered with the fact that some people would seem, even today, to consider it basically a German city.


Opressed by Serbia? Kosovo was an autonomous region - they had their schools, churches/mosques, local autorities, everything. How easily people fall into this "oppressed by Serbia" stereotype and forget the Albanian atrocities against Serbs. :(


I meant your iron principle that "immigrants can't be granted special rights over the areas' original inhabitants". Also, I would oppose the phrase "granted special rights over" - nobody wants any "special rights over" anybody else. Just basic minority rights that most civilised countries grant to their minorities (and I hope we can agree that Poles who have lived in Germany for generations and have German citizenship, their children and grand-children, are something more than temporary guest workers?).


As a matter of fact I do. Our countries share so much history (good and bad) and heritage together, that comparing Poles or Germans, in our respective countries, to Indians or Vietnamese is a rather odd idea (to put it very mildly).

Why don't you end that planning for an anti-german Poland and an union of anti-german countries then?

Start embracing the new Germany! You get a totally new neighbour!!! :)

That still constantly beats us at football. Some thing never change, eh? :)

Both things can be done at the same time. And those are facts not grandiose plans since Polonia did indeed played a great role in the US before NATO accession of Poland. Konfederacja, and people who back them up like Stanislaw Michalkiewicz, can see that vast potential and shared plans on how to unblock it and utilize it.


I know that those are the plans of "progressive" element against Poland but let me make one thing clear: a traditional Catholic Poland is not a secular France with a muslim colonial history. If anything, the young generation of Poles is politically more to the right than past generations.

...only with enough Poles innit! :)

I think the German criteria on recognizing a minority include that they have to live on a contained territory like, for example, the Slavic Lusatians or Sorben (btw, they rather than the Poles represent the Polabian Slavs who lived on the now German lands for ages). But Gypsies are scattered throughout Germany just like Poles are, so I'm surprised they were granted a minority status.


Please, define what year you have in mind talking of the "creation of modern Germany", so we will know precisely to what period you refer by saying "before the creation of modern Germany".

That makes two of us. But this state of being surprised must end, and we must consequently act to demand rights for Polish minority. If a goalkeeper is spread helplessly on the ground and the closest defender is some two metres behind you, what you have to do in such situation is to kick the ball right into the net. Simple as that.


I was referring to the German rule mentioned by Delph that allegedly says...


What our friends and neighbours mean by "creation of the modern nation state" is as foggy to me as it is to you, but whatever definition they might conceivably have in mind when they say "modern nation state", Poles have definitely "been there" before.

But they don't have their independent country. Let's be honest and fair here: if Germany can represent all the Germanic tribes that lived on the aforementioned lands throughout the ages, then Poland can represent all the Slavic tribes, nicht wahr?

They perhaps mean 1870 as the creation of a modern German state? If so, Poles had been there before as the province of Grand Duchy of Posen, among other lands inhabited by Poles were within the boreders of that modern state.


I don't think so. The Slavic tribes once living east of the river Oder and the river Neisse never claimed to be Polish. If Poland may claim to represent them, so may Czechia. The Sorben are distnctively different from the Polish, much more than the Kashubians are. The truth is that if they did not fight so much among themselves and if they were not divided into so many tribes in the early Middle Ages, they would have sooner or later formed an independent state which would have fended off both the Germans and the Polish. It was only the international crusade of 1147 that brutally crushed their resitance, a crusade in which Polish knights fiercely fighted against them along with German knights. You should remember about this, Torq. Poland helped the Germans wipe the pagan Slavic people living east of the Oder out of this planet for ever.

It is not really surprising. Most of those Sinti and Roma have in fact lived in Germany for many generations, often even within a certain region, despite their reputation. Which is why, along with the Sorbs, Friesen and Danes in Slesvig, Germany was obligated due to the EU Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities to recognize them.

Exactly. So there!


You mean the Wendish Crusade? But the Wends were made up of the Slavic tribes of Abrotrites, Rani, Liutizians, Wagarians, and Pomeranians who, as you well know, are a Lechitic tribe (or rather a group of Lechitic tribes), so at least some of those lands can be considered "Polish" (although I know that using modern national adjectives is somewhat dubious here), and for the lack of historical presence of any other independent Slavic country than Poland on most of the aforementioned lands, I think Poland has a good right to consider herself the heir to this heritage.



...


So, the time suddenly matters again?


So have the Poles in Ruhrgebiet, for example.

I really wonder what sort of intellectual gymnastics will Tacitus come up with to answer the above. :)

I think it has to be within the borders of modern Germany, but from before 1870 if that makes sense?

I did some more reading last night before bed, and I've found some references in my books to the aforementioned powerful refugee lobby - it seems that they were desperately unhappy with what had happened, and Adenauer was relying on them to provide the backbone of the new West German economy and CDU-dominated political system. It would have been totally impossible for them to accept the restoration of minority rights for Poles after they were expelled from the "recovered territories", and by the time the political winds changed, the Turkish and Yugoslav gastarbeiter made it impossible to give minority rights to one group and not another.

What I don't know is the current situation - are the descendants of that refugee lobby still as powerful as they were in Adenauer's time?

Not really. Poles had been in Germany much earlier than either Turkish or Yugoslav gastarbeiters, and lived traditionally within certain regions (e.g. Ruhrgebiet). Besides it would be enough to say that Poles' minority rights, taken away from them by the nazis, were simply restored.

It would also reflect very positively on modern Germany, if they restored the rights taken away from Poles by the nazis in 3rd Reich.

Well, according to this article here, Poles only enjoyed minority rights in Upper Silesia, an area that fullfilled the criterias mentioned a few posts before.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Poles_in_Germany

@Tacitus

You still haven't explained...



...the difference between Poles living in Germany for many generations and Roma/Sinti living in Germany for many generations, nor have you pointed out the difference between Roma/Sinti living "often even within a certain region" and Poles living in Ruhrgebiet, for example.

So, what's the story here? Why the double standards?

Yes, that's what I'm thinking - that this is purely about politics, i.e. a fight that politicians don't want to have. The only problem is that the Ruhrpolen appear to have mostly turned after the beginning of the German Reich, but then if they simply migrated from elsewhere in the Reich...

I've just looked at the Bund der Vertriebenen President, and it turns out that it's a CSU politician from Bayern. There also seems to have been strong historical support from the SPD towards those expelled from the East, and they have over 500,000 members.

Tacitus or Ziemowit, could one of you have a look and see what the BdV think about granting Poles minority status in Germany? (Torq too, if you happen to speak German :p)

Not yet, but I'm getting there! Moreover, when I learn German a bit better I am planning to actually start posting on those German forums that I am currently only reading, and believe me - some people there require urgent introducion to reality (Einführung zum Realität?).

Be afraid, German forums... be very afraid. :)

Love it mate.....go give it to them!!!

All of them were Lechitic tribes, but it doesn't make them Polish or entitles Poland to claims for representing them in one way or another. This is only a close language similarity between the Polish and other Lechitic tribes, but there is also one between the Serbs and the Croats and neither of them would like to be represented by the other.


Name a few which are the most interesting in your view.

That's the general plan. ;)


I'm reading mostly these two:

politik-sind-wir.net/ - quite interesting, a wide spectrum of views (including extreme ones)

politik-forum.eu/ - similar, but perhaps with slightly lower number of nutters (but maybe I haven't been there long enough :))

Why prevent germanization?

Well, its like breathing the air. It's like being alive and not being dead. It's like being in plus and avoid minus.


Generally speaking, Poles and Germans are both on their own. But, the difference is that Poles preserved direct continuity with their ancestral culture, language, and genetics, while modern-day Germans inherit only genes of their ancestors. Germans abandoned their ancestral culture and language and in interesting historical processes replaces it with something else, which is result of non-Western cultural and linguistic influence.

In other words, Germans are legitimately on their own land, as much as they are Slavic (read Sarmarian), and only if they don't deny their Slavic (read Sarmarian) roots that gave birth to that what we comprehend as Western civilization.

And yes, Poles were inhabitants of what is now Germany even in time when God didn't even had plans to extract Germans as a unique nation from within the Poles and other Slavs there.

You can be alive and German. Millions are.

Some families will always assimilate, and nationality isn't set in stone.

I try to imagine how it would work out if over 80 Million Germans (including the millions non-native Germans by now) would tomorrow see the error of their ways and declare to be Poles now...

How would Poland react? What would PiS do? We are Poles now, we can vote and work and live everywhere in Poland now....right? Okay....with the language it will take awhile but we could do it....the next generation will totally be polonized....will we all be happy then?

@Bratwurst Boy

I also have very developed imagination but its not a realistic scenario. On the other side, I am all for parts of Germany within the Central-European Union. See, Turko-Arabic parts of Germany would like to stay in western Europe.


From Serbian movie > Mi nismo andjeli - We are not angels > youtube.com/watch?v=8VbdG3PoSvE
/``Bakice, ja nisam lopov, ja sam jebac`` > translation > Granny, I am no thief, I am f****r/

But you must have an idea how the Germans could rectify their wrong ways, otherwise it's quite useless always to lament the history....what would be your most realistic scenario?

European Union have no energy resources to sustain itself while Balkan and rest of Eastern Europe became forbiden to it to exploit. So Germany ruin EU soon and turn to us. In turn, France, Britain and USA tear Germany apart with consent of Russia. As result, only parts of Germany fled to Central-European conglomerate. There, those who save themslevs, correct their error. Those who remain in western Europe merge with Northern Africa.

I hope you are in a more lucky part of Germany.

Hmmm....that doesn't sound like a future to look forward to!

There is no reason at all to correct our ways if that's what we get from it....

It would be psychologically smarter to give Germans an incentive, a reward for correcting our ways, otherwise they might cling to their wrong identity even stronger!

(The Kulturkampf reverse)


I live in Berlin as you very well know...so.... :)

I found an interesting scientific study (in German unfortunately, but written by a famous Polish-German scholar Dr. Andrzej Kaluza) on this issue:

bpb.de/internationales/europa/polen/40858/analyse

It makes a lot of interesting claims that I could partially validate.

One of them concerns the often repeated claim that Poles enjoyed "minority rights in Weimar. This is in fact not really true, at no point does the Weimar constitution state that. Article 13 merely states that no minority should be surpressed in their cultural identity, but that does not imply minority rights as we would understand them, which means the active support via the state (e.g. financing the teaching of their language). It was forbidden in Weimar to e.g. force a child to abandon its' Polish native language, but the state was not required to provide it with opportunities to nurture it. And there is no other legal document that could be interpreted as granting the Poles minority rights. (The analysis mentions two other documents that have been brought up but thoroughly debunks them, if necessary I can come back to them later but as of right now I am too lazy to translate the complicated terms). So saying that giving Poles minority rights would restore them rights which they lost under Nazi Germany is de factor false. Mind you that was something Polish Germans criticized from the very beginning, and which is why those Polish minority rights groups formed in the 1920s.

There is also an important legal argument which I shall quote here in case I mistranslate it:

Es handelt sich dabei um Gruppen von Menschen, die eine eigene nicht-deutsche Identität besitzen, gleichzeitig aber das Gebiet des deutschen Staates seit Generationen bewohnen. So haben z. B. die Dänen Minderheitenrechte, die ihnen ein deutsch-dänisches Abkommen von 1955 gewährt, die aber zumeist nur auf wenige Landkreise in Schleswig-Holstein beschränkt sind; ein aus Flensburg stammender Deutscher dänischer Herkunft kann dort einen dänischsprachigen Kindergarten für seine Nachkommen verlangen, nicht aber in Berlin.

Basically only groups which are acknowledged by international law, and who still identify as such and who lived in Germany for generations can enjoy special privileges tied to the area they live in. Which is why Danes have privileges in certain parts of in Slesvig Holstein, but not e.g. Berlin.

Since "Ruhrpoles" were never a specific minority group recognized by international law, and by 1945 can hardly be said to still have formed a distinctive group, this no longer applies. All Poles arriving in Germany after 1945 are thus treated as any other migrants.

It is also worth noting that (at least until 2011 when this was written) the only group who consistently used the legal term "minority" were Polish lobby groups, even Polish politicians have not used it with its legal implications. The German interpretation has apparantly been upheld by several courts. The reason why this was never brought before an European court is that most Western European countries do not recognize minority rights to begin with (hence why other countries with many Polish migrants do not even contemplate this).

This is only up to page 2 out of page 4, I'll translate the other parts at a later time.


I really would not recommend this one. This site is dominated by right-wing radicals,