German minority in Poland

German minority in Poland
The registered German minority in Poland at the Polish census of 2021 were .
The German language is spoken in certain areas in Opole Voivodeship, where most of the minority resides, and in Silesian Voivodeship. German speakers first came to these regions (present-day Opole and Silesian Voivodeships) during the late Middle Ages. However, there are no localities in either Upper Silesia or Poland as a whole where German could be considered a language of everyday communication. The predominant home or family language of Poland's German minority in Upper Silesia used to be the Silesian German language (mainly (Upper Silesian dialect), but also (dialect of the land of Brieg-Grottkau) was used west of Opole), but since 1945 Standard German replaced it as these Silesian German dialects went generally out of use except among the oldest generations which have by now completely died off. The German Minority electoral list currently has one seat in the Sejm of the Republic of Poland (there were four from 1993 to 1997), benefiting from the current provision in Polish election law which exempts national minorities from the 5% national threshold.
In the school year of 2014/15 there were 387 elementary schools in Poland (all in Upper Silesia), with over 37,000 students, in which German was taught as a minority language (that is, at least for three periods of 45 minutes in a week), hence de facto as a subject. There were no minority schools with German as the language of instruction, though there were three asymmetrically bilingual (Polish–German) schools, where most subjects were taught through the medium of Polish. Most members of the German minority are Roman Catholic, while some are Lutheran Protestants (the Evangelical-Augsburg Church).
Germans in Poland today
According to the 2002 census, most of the Germans in Poland (92.9%) live in Silesia: 104,399 in the Opole Voivodeship, i.e. 71.0% of all Germans in Poland and a share of 9.9% of the local population; 30,531 in the Silesian Voivodeship, i.e. 20.8% of all Germans in Poland and 0.6% of the local population; plus 1,792 in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship, i.e. 1.2% of all Germans in Poland, though only 0.06% of the local population. A second region with a notable German minority is Masuria, with 4,311 living in the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, corresponding to 2.9% of all Germans in Poland, and 0.3% of the local population.
Towns with particularly high concentrations of German speakers in Opole Voivodeship include: Strzelce Opolskie; Dobrodzien; Prudnik; Głogówek; and Gogolin.
In the remaining 12 voivodeships of Poland, the percentage of Germans in the population does not exceed 0.09%:
Poland was the third most frequent destination for migrant Germans in 2009, after the United States and Switzerland, dropping to 8th most frequent in 2015.
History of Germans in Poland
German migration into areas that form part of present-day Poland began with the medieval (see also in the Subcarpathian region). Regions which subsequently became part of the Kingdom of Prussia – Lower Silesia, East Brandenburg, Pomerania and East Prussia – were almost completely German by the High Middle Ages. In other areas of modern-day Poland there were substantial German populations, most notably in the historical regions of Pomerelia, Upper Silesia, and Posen or Greater Poland. Lutheran Germans settled numerous villages along the Vistula River and its tributaries during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. In the 19th century, Germans became actively involved in developing the clothmaking industry in what is now central Poland. Over 3,000 villages and towns within Russian Poland are recorded as having German residents. Many of these Germans remained east of the Curzon line after World War I ended in 1918, including a significant number in Volhynia. In the late 19th century, some Germans moved westward during the , while a Prussian Settlement Commission established others in Central Poland.
According to the 1931 census, around 740,000 German speakers lived in Poland (2.3% of the population). Their minority rights were protected by the Little Treaty of Versailles of 1919. The right to appeal to the League of Nations however was renounced by the League of Nations in 1934, officially due to Germany's withdrawal from the League (September 1933) after Adolf Hitler became German Chancellor in January 1933.
WWII
After Nazi Germany's invasion of the Second Polish Republic in September 1939, many members of the German minority (around 25%) joined the ethnic German paramilitary organisation . When the German occupation of Poland began, the took an active part in Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles. Due to their pre-war interactions with the Polish majority, they were able to prepare lists of Polish intellectuals and civil servants whom the Nazis selected for extermination. The organisation actively participated and was responsible for the deaths of about 50,000 Poles.
Following the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the Soviets annexed a massive portion of the eastern part of Poland (November 1939) in the wake of an August 1939 agreement between the Reich and the USSR. During the German occupation of Poland during World War II (1939-1945), the Nazis forcibly resettled ethnic Germans from other areas of Central Europe (such as the Baltic states) in the pre-war territory of Poland. At the same time the Nazi authorities expelled, enslaved and killed Poles and Jews.
After the Nazis' defeat in 1945, Poland did not regain its Soviet-annexed territory; instead, Polish communists, directed by the Soviets, expelled the remaining Germans who had not been evacuated or fled before from the areas of Lower Silesia, Upper Silesia, Farther Pomerania, East Brandenburg, and East Prussia and made Poles take their place, some of whom were expelled from Soviet-occupied areas that had previously formed part of Poland. About half of East Prussia became the newly created Soviet territory of Kaliningrad Oblast (officially established in 1946), where Soviet citizens replaced the former German residents. Claims to a border along the Oder-Neisse line were presented at the Potsdam Conference of August 1945 by a delegation of Polish politicians. The Potsdam Conference's results eventually specified or endorsed the shifting of borders pending a later peace treaty. In the following years, the communists and activists inspired by the Myśl zachodnia strived to "de-Germanize" and to "re-Polonize" the huge land, propagandistically termed Recovered Territories.
Following the downfall of the Polish Communist regime in 1989, the German minorities' political situation in modern-day Poland has improved, and after Poland joined the European Union in the 2004 enlargement and was incorporated into the Schengen Area, German citizens are now allowed to buy land and property in the areas where they or their ancestors used to live, and can return there if they wish. However, none of their properties have been returned after being confiscated.
A possible demonstration of the ambiguity of the Polish-German minority position can be seen in the life and career of Waldemar Kraft, a minister without portfolio in the West German Bundestag during the 1950s. However, most of the German minority had not been as involved in the Nazi system as Kraft was.
There is no clear-cut division in Poland between the Germans and some other minorities, whose heritage is similar in some respects due to centuries of assimilation, Germanisation and intermarriage, but differs in other respects due to either ancient regional West Slavic roots or Polonisation. Examples of such minorities include the Slovincians, the Masurians and the Silesians of Upper Silesia. While in the past these people have been claimed for both Polish and German ethnicity, it really depends on their self-perception which they choose to belong to.
German Poles
The term "German Poles" may refer to either Poles of German descent or sometimes to Polish citizens whose ancestors held German citizenship before World War II, regardless of their ethnicity.
After the flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland, the largest of a series of flights and expulsions of Germans in Europe during and after World War II, over 1 million former citizens of Germany were naturalized and granted Polish citizenship. Some of them were forced to stay in Poland, while others wanted to stay because these territories were inhabited by their families for hundreds of years. The lowest estimate by West German Schieder commission of 1953, is that 910,000 former German citizens were granted Polish citizenship by 1950. Higher estimates say that 1,043,550 or 1,165,000 were naturalized as Polish citizens by 1950.
Post-WWII
However, the vast majority of those people were the so-called "autochthons" who were allowed to stay in post-war Poland after declaring Polish ethnicity in a special verification process. Therefore, most of them were inhabitants of Polish descent of the pre-war border regions of Upper Silesia and Warmia-Masuria. Sometimes they were called or . Despite their ethnic background, they were allowed to reclaim their former German citizenship on application and under German Basic Law were "considered as not having been deprived of their German citizenship if they have established their domicile in Germany after May 8, 1945, and have not expressed a contrary intention". Because of this fact many of them left the People's Republic of Poland due to its undemocratic political system and economic problems.
It is estimated that, in the Cold War era, hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens decided to emigrate to West Germany and, to a lesser extent, to East Germany. Despite that, hundreds or tens of thousands of former German citizens remained in Poland. Some of them created families with other Poles, who, in the vast majority, were settlers from central Poland or were resettled from the former eastern territories of Poland by the Soviets to the Recovered Territories (Former eastern territories of Germany).
Education
There is one German international school in Poland, Willy-Brandt-Schule in Warsaw.
Notable Poles of German descent
Władysław Anders (1892–1970), general, leader of the Polish 2nd Corps during World War II and prominent member of the Polish government-in-exile in London.
Grzegorz Braun (born 1967), journalist, academic lecturer, movie director, screenwriter and far-right politician.
Izabela Czartoryska (1746–1835), noblewoman, née Flemming, writer, art collector, and founder of the first Polish museum, the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków.
Jan Henryk Dąbrowski (1755–1818), general and Polish national hero.
Stanisław Ernest Denhoff (1673–1728), noble, politician and military leader.
Karol Estreicher (senior) (1827– 1908), father of Polish bibliography and a founder of the Polish Academy of Learning.
Adam Fastnacht (1913-1987), historian and member of Armia Krajowa.
Jan Fethke (1903–1980), film director, author and famous proponent of Esperanto language.
Emil August Fieldorf (1895–1953), Polish general during World War I and World War II.
Franciszek Fiszer (1860–1937), author, bon-vivant and philosopher.
Mark Forster (born 1983), singer, songwriter and TV personality
Anna German (1936–1982), popular singer
Małgorzata Gersdorf (born 1952), lawyer, judge, Head of Supreme Court of Poland
Wanda Gertz (1896–1958), decorated officer in the Polish Army during World War II
Roman Giertych (born 1971), lawyer, advocate, former Deputy Prime Minister
Kamil Glik (born 1988), professional footballer who plays for Serie A club Torino and the Poland national football team
Henryk Grohman (1862–1939), industrialist
Józef Haller (1873–1960), Polish general, political and social activist
Marek Jędraszewski (born 1949), Archbishop of Kraków since 2016 (his mother was connected with Bambers)
Miroslav Klose (born 1978), professional footballer, Germany national football team and FIFA World Cup all-time top goalscorer, and former striker for Italian football club S.S. Lazio
Maximilian Kolbe (1894–1941), Polish Conventual Franciscan friar, murdered in Auschwitz and subsequently canonised.
Henryk Korowicz (1888–1941), professor, economist, and rector of Academy of Foreign Trade in Lwów, murdered by the Gestapo
Sławomir Mentzen (born 1986), Polish right-wing libertarian politician
Janusz Korwin-Mikke (born 1942), controversial politician and writer
Gustaf Kossinna (1858–1931), linguist and archaeologist
Juliusz Karol Kunitzer (1843–1905), industrialist, economic activist and industrial magnate in Congress Poland
Karolina Lanckorońska (1898–2002), like her father (Count Karol Lanckoroński) an art collector and philanthropist
Joachim Lelewel (1786–1861), Polish historian and politician
Samuel Linde (1771–1847), linguist, librarian and lexicographer of the Polish language
Tadeusz Manteuffel (1902–1970), historian
Suzanna von Nathusius (born 2000), child actor
Wilhelm Orlik-Rückemann (1894– 1986), Polish general and military commander
Emilia Plater (1806–1831), noblewoman and revolutionary
Lukas Podolski (born 1985), German professional footballer who plays for Górnik Zabrze
Nelli Rokita (born 1957), politician of Law and Justice party in Poland
Piotr Steinkeller, (1799–1854), early industrialist and banker
Jerzy Stuhr (born 1947), film actor and director
Romuald Traugutt, (1826–1864), "dictator" of the January Uprising
Donald Tusk (born 1957), former Prime Minister of Poland, former President of the European Council
Jozef Unrug (1884–1973), Prussian-born Polish admiral who helped to form the Polish Navy in independent Poland, inmate of Colditz
Karol Ernest Wedel (1813–1902), notable confectioner.
Edward Werner (1878–1945), economist, judge and politician in the Second Polish Republic
German media in Poland
Schlesisches Wochenblatt
Polen-Rundschau
Schlesien Aktuell – a German-language radio station from Opole
Polskie Radio – public-service radio with online German edition (Deutsche Redaktion), as well as broadcasts in German
Polen am Morgen – online newspaper, published daily since 1998
See also
Waldemar Kraft
Bilingual communes in Poland
German Minority (political party)
Germans in the Czech Republic
Polish minority in Germany
Olędrzy
Vistula Germans in Russian Poland
Bambrzy
Volksdeutsche
Notes
References
Dual Citizenship in Opole Silesia in the Context of European Integration, Tomasz Kamusella, Opole University, in Facta Universitatis, series Philosophy, Sociology and Psychology, Vol 2, No 10, 2003, pp. 699–716
Further reading
de Zayas, Alfred M.: Die deutschen Vertriebenen. Graz, 2006. .
de Zayas, Alfred M.: Heimatrecht ist Menschenrecht. München, 2001..
de Zayas, Alfred M.: A terrible Revenge. New York, 1994. .
de Zayas, Alfred M.: Nemesis at Potsdam. London, 1977. .
de Zayas, Alfred M.: 50 Thesen zur Vertreibung. München, 2008. .
Douglas, R.M.: Orderly and Humane. The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War. Yale University Press. .
Kleineberg A., Marx, Ch., Knobloch E., Lelgemann D.: Germania und die Insel Thule. Die Entschlüsselung vo Ptolemaios: "Atlas der Oikumene". Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2010.
Matelski Dariusz, Niemcy w Polsce w XX wieku (Deutschen in Polen im 20. Jahrhundert), Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa-Poznań 1999.
Matelski Dariusz, Niemcy w II Rzeczypospolitej (1918-1939) [Die Deutschen in der Zweiten Republik Polen (1918-1939)], Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, Toruń 2018 cz. 1 [Bd. 1], ss. 611, il., mapy.
Matelski Dariusz, Niemcy w II Rzeczypospolitej (1918-1939[Die Deutschen in der Zweiten Republik Polen (1918-1939)]), Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, Toruń 2018 cz. 2[Bd. 1] , ss. 624, Abstract (s. 264–274), Zusammenfassung (s. 275–400).
Naimark, Norman: Fires of Hatred. Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge Harvard Press, 2001.
Prauser, Steffen and Rees, Arfon: The Expulsion of the "German" Communities from Eastern Europe at the End of the Second World War. Florence, Italy, European University Institute, 2004.
Germany–Poland relations
Poland