page_title: Warmia
section_title: Prussia
hierarchical_section_title: Warmia / History / Prussia
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Dom Gazety Olsztyńskiej w Olsztynie
context_page_description: Warmia is a historical region in northern and northeastern Poland. Its historic seat and capital was Lidzbark and the largest city is Olsztyn.
  Warmia is currently the core of the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship. The region covers an area of around 4,500 km² and has approximately 350,000 inhabitants. Important landmarks include the Cathedral Hill in Frombork, where Nicolaus Copernicus elaborated the heliocentric theory, the bishops' castles at Olsztyn and Lidzbark, the medieval town of Reszel and the sanctuary in Gietrzwałd, a site of Marian apparitions. Geographically, it is an area of many lakes and lies at the upper Łyna river and on the right bank of Pasłęka, stretching in the northwest to the Vistula Bay. Warmia has a number of architectural monuments ranging from Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque to Classicism, Historicism and Art Nouveau.
  Warmia is part of a larger historical region called Prussia, which was inhabited by the Old Prussians and later on was populated mainly by Germans and Poles.
context_section_description: By the First Partition of Poland in 1772, Warmia was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia; the properties of the Archbishopric of Warmia were secularized by the Prussian state. In 1773 Warmia was merged with the surrounding areas into the newly established province of East Prussia. Ignacy Krasicki, the last prince-bishop of Warmia as well as Enlightenment Polish poet, friend of Frederick the Great (whom he did not give homage as his new king), was nominated to the Archbishopric of Gnesen (Gniezno) in 1795. After the last partition of Poland and during his tenure as Archbishop of Poland and Prussian subject he was ordered by Pope Pius VI to teach his Catholic Poles to 'stay obedient, faithful, and loving to their new kings', Papal brief of 1795. The Prussian census in 1772 showed a total population of 96,547, including an urban population of 24,612 in 12 towns. 17,749 houses were listed and the biggest city was Braunsberg (Braniewo).
  Between 1773 and 1945 Warmia was part of the predominantly Lutheran province of East Prussia, with the exception that the people of Warmia remained largely Catholic. Most of the population of Warmia spoke High Prussian German , while a small area in the north spoke Low Prussian German; southern Warmia was mostly populated by Polish-speaking Warmiaks Warmia became part of the German Empire in 1871.
  In 1873 according to a regulation of the Imperial German government, school lessons at public schools inside Germany had to be held in German, as a result the Polish language was forbidden in all schools in Warmia, including Polish schools already founded in the sixteenth century. In 1900 Warmia's population was 240,000. In the jingoistic climate after World War I, Warmian Poles were subject to persecution by the German government. Polish children speaking their language were punished in schools and often had to wear signs with insulting names, such as "Pollack".
  After the First World War in the aftermath of the East Prussian plebiscite, carried when Red Army was marching on Warsaw - Polish–Soviet War in 1920, the region remained in Germany, as in the Warmian district of Allenstein (Olsztyn) 86,53% and in the district of Rössel (Reszel) 97,9% voted for Germany. The persecutions of the German governments and militias worsened in the late 1930s when Hitler was in power, and the Poles in Warmia were subject to harsh persecution by German authorities and militias, such as attacks on schools and centers. During World War II Germany sought to suppress all elements of social and political life of the Polish minority in Germany by interning and murdering Polish activists and leaders, including the ones in Warmia. Unlike the rest of Protestant East Prussia, Warmia retained its Catholicism and Catholic-related folk customs, all the way through 1945.
caption: Former headquarters of the pre-war Polish newspaper Gazeta Olsztyńska in Olsztyn, destroyed by the Germans in 1939,[7] rebuilt in 1989, now a museum
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot S1 IS", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2008:05:15 17:31:59", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "196", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "5108", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5489", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/250", "EXIF FNumber": "9/2", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:05:15 17:31:59", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:05:15 17:31:59", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "5", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "255/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "139/32", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "29/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2048", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1536", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "2048", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "1536", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "2036", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "128000/13", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "128000/13", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}