Dang, we went to Posen nearly 2 years ago, and didn't visit Goleczewo. Still it's an excuse to go back and visit Pomerania. Sorry for the German spelling but, as an Anglo, when I try and pronounce anything Polish I loose my false teeth ! Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz !
@@jcoker423I consider using Germanic names for ancient Slavic/Polish cities to be one of the greatest possible insults. The Germans (Teutons) "Christianized"/eliminated the Baltic Prussian tribe. Prussia should have been incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland and the Germanic invaders expelled from these lands immediately after the Battle of Grunwald in 1410, when the Polish-Lithuanian army made a pulp out of the Germans and their Western European minions and stopped the Germanic "Drang nach Osten" for several centuries. I suspect that the then Pope saved the Germans from total destruction.
Fun fact that i find kind of ironic, the main building of the Prussian Settlement Commision is not only a university building, but its actually where the department of Polish Linguistics is seated
It actually explains why collegium maius is such a pain to navigate. I got lost more than once. Only an admin building could be this labirinthian. If I remember correctly, the Ancient Greek and Latin department is also there.
The funny thing is if Prussians had just used used all that money to economically develop the area, they likly would have ecnouraged far more internal immigration
If Victoria 3 is to be believed, getting Poles to settle in the Rhineland and integrate there is a much more reliable way to encourage Polish assimilation. Then eventually you build up and develop promising parts like Silesia. Also not fighting the first world war would have been a solid policy position.
Рік тому+20
@@fallingphoenix2341tell that to us Poles. Silesia is a different case than greater Poland. Plus I come from east greater Poland hub of 19th century German craftsmen influx and yet the moment 1914 hit, the region fought for being Polish again (to be frank my region was passed from Prussia to Russia in 1815 renegotiation of partitions)
In Poland there was a saying "if not for that Der Die Das they would have made Germans out of us" (Gdyby nie to Der Die Das już by Niemcy byli z nas) which refers to German grammar rules which are unpalatable to Polish speakers and hard to learn.
As someone who learnt german in school as a second language I also found it unpalatable and hard to learn I still don't know how it works, I just guessed which one it was most of the time but my teachers didn't think my guesses were very good
Fun fact. The symbol of those times is Drzymała's wagon. At some point, Prussia began to prohibit Poles from building new houses in that area. One peasant named Drzymała (don't try to pronounce it 😁) to circumvent this ban, start lived in a wagon like those used in the circus or by gypsies. When the Prussian authorities announced that a wagon parked in one place for a certain period of time would be treated as a house. Drzymała began to regularly move it to other places, without exceeding this time.
Evicted Polish People were allowed back in to work the land - On their land. They were not allowed to stay after harvest or seasonal work. Not during winter. German peasants came and left, not liking the place. Not theirs to toil in, anyway.
A little bit related issue to the Royal Prussian Settlement Commission if the fact that if a Pole bought a land then Prussian authorities often did not give permit to build a house, so if Pole had a land without house he was almost forced to sell it to the Royal Prussian Settlement Commission. And there is a famous case of a Polish peasant name Michał Drzymała, who bought a land, but was not allowed to build a house by Prussian authority. So he bought a circus caravan and started to live in it. There Prussian authorities claim if a object has liveable space and does not move for more than 24 hours, then it is a house. So Drzymała each day had to move his caravan, just not prove it is not a house. Drzymała and Prussians authorities battle for year in courts and in the end Prussian authorities removed his caravan. What Drzymała did? He bind a fricking mud hut. :D Of course Prussian authorities destroyed the mud hut due to... fire safety hazards. Eventually he did sell his land and bought new land with old house in it (so no building permit was needed). But for 5 years Polish peasant was dodging Prussian bureaucratic machine. He became a Polish folk here and the village he had land without a house is now called Drzymałowo in his honour. Dude was stubborn. :D After WWI his new village was on the German side of border. He died 28 year after he lost battle with Prussian government, but even after all these years when he died his family could not buy a coffin for him, so the coffin for Drzymała had to be bought in Poland and moved through customs into Germany. Prussians were petty as f... They refused him even his last home.
@@Hadar1991yes, it is again. Good spot! It was a town for 5 centuries, then demoted to village in 1970s. It has this prussian vibe like in The White Ribbon
Germans still use exact same tactics to dodge German bureaucrats today. Say you want to build a chicken coop but its big so you need a building permit which is hard and bothersome to get. So waddayado.. well you put wheels on it.
Prussia is far too often romanticized for its control over aesthetics and imagery. So much so that Prussia-boos ignore their failures such as the Prussian settlement commission. Great video as always.
@@hanzeuro28 That's a horrible argument and not only that but you admit to supporting colonization and ethnic cleansing. No sane person would want to do better at something as horrible as that.
I agree that Posen should be Polish, however in terms of historical ethnic borders Königsberg should be German. It was a heart of German culture and an important part of Germany in all aspects, and should belong to Germany. Ideally the borders should be the interwar ones. Germany deserves it.
Great video as usual! I heard one of the reasons Commission's campaign had failed was that when some German settlers, seeing that gentry was mostly Polish, went through voluntary Polonization, hoping to achieve quick social advancement in local circles.
Germanization would never fundamentally threaten Poles because Poles had enough of their own "high" culture to fall back on, not to mention strong sense of national identity that was only bolstered by aggressive and overt colonization efforts.
Wojciech Korfanty mentioned that he became interested in Polishness and Polish identity after hearing such negative things about Poles from his Hakatist Prussian schoolteacher, previously he didn’t think of himself either way
I believe if the Germanization was more successful, I could see that Western Polish culture could be more German. But yea, I believe general Polish culture couldn't be threatened.
@@riton349polish people in western Poland mostly are Polish people from what nowadays is western ukraine and belarus. All ethnic Germans were deported so idk if there’s any German culture left
To think that 40 years earlier The British were starving out Irish to just replace them with People from England, Scotland and Wales who had no intention of going there because it would be seen as punishment to be sent there.
@@realkekz Anglos had the benefit of encountering people highly susceptible to diseases they had no natural immunity for, disease was by far the greatest killer of natives in North America and Australia. Anywhere the Anglos encountered population groups with actual resistance to disease (see South Africa) they failed at becoming the majority population.
@@frederickvonabel6349 well that's quite the oversimplification. We certainly benefitted greatly from the spread of disease among the Indians and aborigines but we fought hard to subjugate and conquer their lands by starving them out, stamping out independence movements, resettling them. Same thing in the economic empire, India was a masterclass in colonial development, even if it wasn't a settler colony. Singapore and Hong Kong and plenty others too! Anglo soft power as well as hard power in the form of cultural exchange and settlers cemented Anglo power worldwide
@@realkekzEnglish colonised ireland for over 700 years. Germans were on Polish Land for only 123 and Prusianboos still say cities like Poznań and Gdańsk were always German.
@@realkekzno you dont understand. the british (english, muh celts dindu nuffin) somehow built the biggest empire in history while also somehow being completely incompetent at the same time. its all just cope.
God, i really do appreciate all the sourcing you do for your videos and the fact you make those sources readily available to your audience. Most people talking about history on youtube have never done that. Thank you
Certain practices were used in how the German authorities carried out census' and classifying ethnicity. If the father in a household spoke German even as second language the whole house was recorded as German. This makes maps produced by the German authorities and later used to justify territorial demands are largely false. Life was actively made difficult for Poles and other ethnicity groups to force some people to learn German. Also bilingualism is actually quite common in Central Europe and the Baltics. You have areas of past immigration from the Low Countries, Scandinavia, Scotland as well as Northern Germany bordering Denmark. All of which speak languages related to each other. Low German is almost more related to Dutch than High German and Scots retains strong similarities with Frisian which is close to Dutch. Over hundreds of years a dialect of Low German with strong Dutch and Scandinavian influence became common among this group around Danzig and Northern Poland who largely kept to their religion. A significant number did continue to identify as Polish subjects despite Prussian pressure. Mostly they just rejected the idea they were Germans. Still recorded as Germans.
I read about a family expelled from East Prussia by Poland from a tiny village deep in the forest. Since they didn't speak Polish they were counted as "Germans" by the Germans. But since they didn't speak Polish they were counted as "Germans" by the Poles and expelled. There were probably small remnants of the Baltic languages still surviving in those areas into WWII.
I recently had to transcribe a curriculum written by a professor who grew up in the Prussian partition. It was interesting to transcribe Polish written with German orthography
It's nice to see UA-camrs talk about history of my country that is often ignored even in Poland. I hope at one point you could make a video about the development of Polish autonomy in Galicia and how it came to be, that Poles in the Austrian empire went from being one of the most exploited parts of the empire, to often being put in key position of power such as ministers for example.
What fascinates me about Galicia is how, especially in the east (modern Western Ukraine around Lviv), the relations between Poles and Ruthenians (=Ukrainians) developed.
Funny how Blanke showed, that Polish held land actually grew in Prussia from 1880 to 1910, because the majority of the settlement commission land was taken from wealthy German noble junkers. Who in turn supported Prussia against the industrialized catholic Rhineland, effectively sealing their own faith.
@@MrErdem95 No, it wasn't, major cities like Cologne, Düsseldorf, Essen and Dortmund remained heavily catholic. On top of that, protestant farmers from East Germany immigrated heavily to the industries Rhineland, causing population stagnation in the east.
Great, educational content. I will add a fragment of a popular Polish epigram published in 1886 (my own translation, I was unable to keep the beauty of the original): One hundred million marks - that's not a trinket! Enough to buy a province all; But to fight the Polish spirit is not a trifle, To ruin it, Germany is too small!
@@Oskar59216 Sure: Przemoc i prawo: Sto milionów marek - to nie fraszka! Dość, by wykupić województwo całe; Lecz sprawa z duchem polskim nie igraszka, By go wygubić, i Niemcy za małe! Przemoc dusi prawo, lecz go nie zgniecie, Bo „większy Pan Bóg niż pan Rymsza“ przecie. - ks. Konstanty Damrot
Poland and Ireland are symbols of grit and resistance against the establishment in Europe. I find Polish history very inspiring, they were tossed around by the Russians and Germans, but they didn't give up and kept pushing until the odds turned in their favor.
Great video, btw as an undergrad in history myself I'm very impressed with how you give credit and delineates your sources in the description considering what history UA-cam normally is
This channel is exactly what I cherish... --Non-English European history --Prepared by a non-English person --narrated in English... Oh, it is so rare to catch that combo... It will be nice if there are programs on the rise of the German industry (steel, dyes etc) and/or rise of the German social state...
There is pike and shot battles. It is military-history oriented and it is not active anymore, but is is quite good for learning the chronology of the period.. There is also the schwerpunkt, who has a very good choice of topics but (this is my personal opinion) has some problems in presentation.. in the world of podcasts, I think the "history of germans" shine out. German history by a german.. Everybody is very surprised to learn that germans have a long history apart from hitler... There is also a "history of scandinavia" podcast. If you are interested in cultural history there is "literature and history" podcast, which is of extremely high quality. There is also the history of philosophy without any gaps podcast, which is also very good, except (in my opinion) their africana series, which I believe is politically oriented. There is "history of china" podcast if you are interested in non-european history. There are many more but these are the ones that pop into my mind currently...
there are are many Polish made history channels with subtitles in English. With very different interpretations NOT the standard West, [English], narrow histories as handed down by the ''J '' scribed Frankfurt Schul
@@metanoian965 I am quite a history buff, but I have never encountered these channels.. One must admit that "J"s in eastern europe have a fascinating history. But "J"s themselves are awful history writers, and their histories read like a necklace of tears.. When one looks at the wealth, power and cultural level attained by them in pre-ww1 poland and russia, one immediately feels that their history must contain much more than inequities and suffering, but one does not see that in the books. So a polish view is sorely needed.
This is an amazing video on a long neglected subject. I was travelling Poland this summer and was looking for traces of German and Polish settlements before 1945. I sensed that the Prussians tried to germanize the former Polish areas - but they failed. You explain the economical and demographical reasons for it, and it makes a lot of sense. Thank you very much. Great work!
I'm from Poland, in schools they teach us about this only from Polish perspective, its very refreshing to see how all of this was seen from Prussian one
@@Dmitrisnikioff in schools, it is very simplified: "Bismarck issued the policies of evictions and Kulturkampf in order to forcefully germanize the Poles. The Poles opposed, which is illustrated with two famous stories: Drzymała's wagon (wóz Drzymały, mentioned in details here in the comments) of a man cleverly bypassing the strict Prussian law (so: Slavic disorganized ingenuity vs. German Prussian drill) and the Children of Września (then: Wreschen) who refused to follow the German lesson's routine. So all in all, not the good look for Bismarck in this very simplified narrative.
I studied in Poznań, I live in a town 30 km away. Speaking of Goleczewo, my sister bought a house there and I have always wondered about the architecture there and now I finally understand.
I'm glad UA-cam knew I would be interested in this. A few years ago I read the William Hagen book (in your reference list) hoping it would help me understand some of my own family history, and am glad to see a couple of other English language sources that I didn't know about. One issue that has interested me is the contest over which language should be used in schools, and at what ages and how much. One of my grandmothers came from a German village that was adjacent to a Polish village along the Vistula, in Russian-ruled Poland. She used to talk about going to school with Polish and Russian children (in the first decade of the 20th century) and I wish I had thought to ask about that. I wonder what the language of instruction was, given that the language was usually a contested issue, as Hagen has described in the German-ruled areas with the on-again, off-again campaigns to Germanize the Poles. The Russians were no less concerned about the languages used, as we know from the history of recent events . I'm not aware that my grandmother knew any Polish at all, though we never thought to ask her. So I wonder how that worked in school. I also have other branches of my family, all German-speaking, that came from other parts of what is now Poland, but none from the Poznan area you showed on maps. It's all interesting, though.
@@SirManateee Its interesting that in a Broadcast about Czechs in Vienna brought out the clever rude nature of Austrians in Vienna and the Prussians see them as second class. Interesting if that mindset survives in any way now?
@@SirManateee even Bavarians were not considered "true Germans" because of religion? It seems the 2nd Reich wasn´t nice to you unless you were a German protestant...
Do you ever plan to do a video on Bismarck's Kulturkampf against the Catholic church - which was also often intertwined with anti-Polish policies too. There aren't many great sources about it in English.
i just want to say, that I think, that you would be the best person to show east frisian culture on television. we are a small ethnic group, but we have sticked together for hundreds of years. And i would be especially excited to see, what you would bring up to bring us into the german cultural fold
@user-ky8nh8sd6l BTW, what do you think about the channel 'History with Hilbert' (if you know it)? If I recall correctly, Hilbert himself is Dutch-British, although with Frisian heritage on his Dutch side (I think West Frisian). He made some videos about Frisian history and culture. And also has an interest in Poland, like Sir Manatee.
@@Artur_M. Hello! Yeah i know Hilbert and I do think that he makes good videos, but in my opinion his are a bit boring. He presents history more like a teacher instead of a storyteller like SirManateee (which is simply more atention capturing). And in regards to his Frisian history he only talks about westfrisian history and culture. We Frisians have been seperated into three groups for quite some time, so eventho we are all frisians we have quite some differences between us. Also if you want to learn about frisia you should check out the channel "Background History". He has probably the best videos on frisia although (again) mostly on the western part. And yeah SirManateees videos about Poland have been very nice to see, but I guess I wanted to express that i think the frisians would be a very interessting group for him to cover since he has done videos about other germany-related minorities or regions aswell. Also the contrast to some of his videos, especcialy about the germanization of poland, would fit really well since the prussians basically achieved here in east frisia what they failed to do in poland -> turning us into germans
My Polish Jewish great-grandfather from Cracow enrolled in the Austro-Hungarian army and fought as an officer somewhere in the Balkans or Turkey I recall. Thousands of Jewish men foughti in the Austro-Hungarian Army in WWI and so heartbreaking that being veterans with distinctions did not save the lives from the Holocaust.
Good night my dear Sir Manatee, as a citenzen from southern Brazil where thousands upon thousands of German and Polish settlers arrived here in the late 19th century because of the federal government racist "Whitening of Brazil" policies, I find quite amusing a video like this one about German settlements in polish land. Here in southern Brazil german and polish descendents basically became the same """ethnic""" group, who are simply called colonos (settlers in portuguese) and they speak the exact same dialect which is simply called southern dialect that sounds like portuguese with a heavy german accent, amazing how migration ended all the polish-german rivalry that has been going on for centuries in Europe, anyways danke schön for such an amazing content my man, keep it up.
I remember that there was a player in one of the big local clubs nicknamed "Alemão", meaning german, even though his surname was very obviously polish LMFAO
@@Felipe-yv4bc True, quite a normal occurence here. The first owner of the famous morro do Alemão (german hill) in Rio de Janeiro was not german, but a polish man named Leonard Kaczmarkiewicz. Same thing with german descendants being called polacos here in south Brazil. In Brazil poles and germans are the same people. 😂
I find it funny how forcing German/Russian culture on Poles made them more nationalistic. While at the same time not forcing German/Russian culture made the Poles more nationalistic. It seems like Poland was going to exist anyways just from the sheer will of the people of Poland.
Well part of the problem was that poland was divided between two countries so you can't germanise poland if the russian poland is not russificated so the germans and russians would had much better results if they had collaborated also the best way would had been to move the polish population to the west instead of germans to the east but racism didn't let them see it
@@krainex I mean, though... When you're not fighting for the right of your country to exist, you'd probably take its existence for granted. Don't you think?
Poland has long and proud history. Why would Poles give up on their heritage? China was conguered many times by non-chinese but Chinesee people never, ever, stoped to be nationalistic.
Well, yea of course it is. But not solely because of this policy. But that already was a thing long prior to this whole Prussian policy. I mean the region itself even was inhabited by Germans long before there had been Poles. And add germanized poles to that. I do wonder though why is it that you appreciate this video that much considering that it distorted many facts, left out a lot of important context and thus very much falsifies your own peoples history in the process.
@@Ultima-Signabecause poles like to pretend they are some kind of victim of Germany as infinitum despite them being war monger with intense revanchism
@@peter_g546Roman Magna Germania maps show all the nowadays western slavic land belomged to germanic people prior to the great migration which was forced upon them. If you wanna go back, it belongs to the germans more than the slavs.
I'm from Upper Silesia and for me it's really nice to see history of German imperialism being featured on an English language channel. Westerners often have no idea just how awful German Empire was. Some of the stuff Bismarck and other German government officials said were borderline genocidal. We're really lucky that the German Empire no longer exists and that modern German state is nothing like that empire.
Awful for Slavs. Westerners don't care. If anything contemporary Britain, America and France in certain racialistic circles didn't give a fuck or even have contempt for Slavic populations and feared or hated the population expanse of the Slavic population and desired oppression and praised pre-existing oppression of the Slavs.
@@justincris1685 This isn't a competition. And I'm not Polish, I'm Silesian, I'm an ethnic minority in Poland. My family has been victim of Polish bigotry and state discrimination for decades. But as I said, this is NOT a competition. There's time and place for discussing historical tragedies that Poles or the Polish state caused. But THIS is not one of them. Not under a video that's about German imperialism in Poland. Whataboutism is garbage. And it only serves as distraction from important conversations.
20:03 Just one clarification for unaware public. The sentence should read: After the war ended the Greater Poland Uprising (1918-1919) brought Poznań and the rest of east Prussia AGAIN 🎉under Polish state control. Thank you for the content
I recently found out some of my ancestors came from west prussia , near gdansk and i think they could possibly be german settlers who came after 1815 but thats just a guess ;but the family tree goes back to 1830 and even has the villages included so i could look them up , pretty interesting to know exactly were some of my ancestors lived 200 years ago.
Could have been Kashubian too, also Dutch, various Balto-Slavics, Scottish, French, it was a true melting pot back then. Good luck finding out. And whoever they were, they were all beautiful people.
100% Do not know this history. Deliberately. Frankfurt Schul writes germ version of European history for the dullards in the West. ALL history of Poland in the West is Filtered by the Zio little round hats who own Hollywood and West magazines. They write the jokes.
The title card being as it is I thought it might compare why medieval german colonization and germanization worked to later failures. Oh well, maybe a later topic. I like comparisons of failures to successes, as otherwise it seems like we're saying what happened and not explaining. Still very interesting!
There is a fairly simple explanation: because the later attempts ended early due to changes in the local power structure before their natural conclusion. We do not know what would have happened in another two hundred years under the established system but people would never say that European colonialism in general “failed” in a vacuum so as analysts today, we should not isolate Prussia and place its “failure” ( aka the premature conclusion ) as an unavoidable consequence instead of the chance driven determinism that ended before we could actually make a final judgment. We know that WW1 & WW2 changed the geopolitical landscape, that the two states that arguably did the most to end the practice intentionally and not just as a side effect, namely the Soviet Union and the United States of America were and are ironically direct products of colonialism, imo. arguably the most successful examples since both of these entities still exist in borders that are the result of this practice and were able to maintain this control pretty much unopposed to any degree that would seriously threaten their positions.
I am German. My grandfather grew up in German Posen. He spoke Polish in his youth and kept a beautiful watercolor painting by one of his Polish school friends. He spoke glowingly about his hometown and the splendor of the Gewerbeausstellung (commercial exhibition) in 1911. Only in very recent years, I had the opportunity to see Posen and its surroundings with my own eyes. I met with wonderful people, Poles and Germans, who took universal friendship seriously, among people and among peoples, and they had the record to prove it: travel groups, private visits, local festivals, friendship associations, town partnerships. Small scale labor of love, this is what gives us hope. In the past, folks of these lands, East or West, have been screwed over so many times by interests foreign to their own. Including nationalist, church and class interests, not to mention money, military and industrial, and Government in general. There really is no use to pick sides or pass judgments, you only can pick wrong. Yes the Ansiedlungskommission was a failure, but then, quite a few of the political "successes" on any side of the many divides were successful only at huge cost in lives, happiness and fortune. Also, any one-sided account or blame game cannot do justice to all the nuances, like the in-between role of the Kashubians, or the trial-and-error of the Ausgleich (balancing of interests between Germans and Slavs) in Austro-Hungarian lands. Even the Prussian colors were not just black and white, metaphorically speaking. To me, the lessons are obvious: » Leave. people. as. they. are. «
Not only the Kashubians had an in between role, but also the Masurians. The majority of these were actually in favor of the Germans. Also interesting is Silesia, where the majority also voted for Germany. The same applied to all cities in Upper Silesia that were occupied by Poland after the First World War. Today you can see their German roots, as Bielitz had one of the largest Protestant communities in Poland. The Bielsko Zion should be noted.
In this video you are shown the Gerlander Cultural center. That nest from which germs infest the East. That model village was based on Germ fairy tales from Sachsen, Thuringen, Barden, etc.. West of the Elbe River.
Yo Sir Manatee, bin echt happy mit deinen Videos über moderne Deutsche Geschichte. Bei dir werden Themen & Nieschen thematisiert, die im Geschichtsunterricht nicht behandelt werden & deswegen auch die meisten nicht kennen.
Very well made. Thank you. Would you have references about historical categories like "proto nationalist" ? I mean something that would clarify the sociology of the various groups involved in nationalism.
A couple of peripheral points, perhaps of some interest to this group : Before Berlin was Berlin there was Bralin , and Hanow before there was Hannover, Lipsk before Leipzig and so on …. - territories of the Western Slavs reaching as far as today’s southern Denmark. In the 1940’s under Hitler’s democracy a large district of southern Berlin was officially named Nova Wies ( New Village in slavic ). Hitler’s interests in fine art and classic Roman architecture were behind his plans to substancially enlarge and beautify city of Berlin with neo-classical architecture and re-name it Germania, a far better brand name indeed if you plan to go global. The Germania metropolis project was to be completed by 1956. By then the German Empire would indeed be streaching from Lisbon to Vladivostock, yes indeed, some dreams never die. Hitler famously if not prematurely declared : „ Russia is our Africa and Russians are our Negros „ .
Sadly, this had already occurred successfully in Lithuania Minor in the 1700s. The mass colonization of the territory was rather successful due to the depopulation that followed a plague uprising. Unlike the Poles, they didn't seek independence and as such Germanized under their own will. By 1939, only the most eastern parts of East Prussia remained Lithuania, but they were all expelled in 1945 by the Soviets.
spectacular film, meine duden subbed Prussia was always described as "not a country with an army, but an army with a country". this film literally proves this point. no wonder germans emigrated to USA en masse.
Amazing, incredibly detailed research and presentation! Imperial German, the Reich drove nationalism to a pinnacle. Germany's fall was deep and it will never recover the place it had between 1871 and 1914. The German national idea (German speaking and Germwn-feeling people on German ground) is broken. If there's a German ethnicity (well, ethnigraphs found a lot of those groups throughout Africa, Oceania...), we can see it scattered over a couple of European countries. Germany is not even the motherland for those outside of it. Let's ashes rest and admire other nations.
The Prussian Homage (1525) was one of the worst and most painful mistakes made by Polish rulers in all of the Polish history. I know, the King had other serious problems at the time, but he didn't think far-sighted. Paradoxically, it took place at a time when Poland reached its apogee, the peak of its power. One of the worst moments in... the history of Poles. A great and wasted opportunity, missed opportunity. It was a huge mistake... S.
Ironic considering Prussia, the region itself is at minimum, containing large populations of Germanized Slavs(Cousins to or even formerly Polish populations).
If Germans never entered ww1 then, and pressed Austria Hungary to not to enter, then everything would be different. Well, nothing can be done for history
Poles could have started Germanization if the German administration and the emperor had not treated Poles as second-class citizens. It was during this period that Germanic chauvinism and xenophobia towards Poles/Slavics was born. And organizations such as Hakata were at the forefront of the fight against Poland. Despite the declarations made to Poles by Frederick William III, guaranteeing the right to national identity, culture and language. The Prussians, as well as the later Wilhelmine Germans, repeatedly violated these rules. For the above reasons.
It failed, because Poland had had already highly developed culture attractive to many. Polish literal standard of the language comes from some 16th century, so it's about 100 years older than German literal standard. Poles remembered about their recent history of a super power... it was attractive to many. To Frederic Chopin, whose father was French, but he prefered to perceive himself as Polish, to Adam Mickiewicz who despite his Belarusian origin wrote in Polish, to Friedrich Nietzsche, who was ethinc German, but considered himself Polish (he believed his family originates at Polish nobility which surname was Niecki) etc. etc.
The last part about Nietzsche is cap. He never spoke polish and Nietzsche was 5 when Chopin died and 11 when Adam Mickiewicz died! Yes he considered himself polish, but it wasn't proved yet, he himself said, that he came from "polish nobility", which probably is cap too, atleast we can't know. Towards the end of his life he was quite delusional and mentally incompetent. That might explain his secession. He could have been also marked from the Franco Prussian war. As a field deacon (someone who cares for the sick, wounded and dead), he saw the terrible consequences of war for civilians and soldiers. That was his eye-opener, so to speak, he wrote: I don't want to say a word about the German victories: they are fire signs on the wall, understandable to all peoples. He enlisted in this war for the sake of patriotism, but it was precisely because of this war that he lost his patriotism. Ultimately, he didn't like the proclamation of the German Empire.
My own family was originally from Saxony (Chemnitz, I think) near Dresden and migrated to Province of Posen and settled in or near the town of Klecko or Kletzko and I am certain they were induced to go there by some type of subsidy offered by the Prussian government. They gradually all moved to Chicago, IL starting in the early 1880s.
important to note allmost every european state that had linguistic divisions or colonies did this in one way or another and in my oppinion the French and Belgians were worse than the Prussians in that the French introduced these practices first during their revolution attemptting to restore "the natural borders of france" but also believing that only one language and culture was acceptable, that which was to be found in northern france, specifically ile de france hence why non french speaking subjects generally supported the royalist side, and the french did in fact wipe out much of their regional diversity. the Belgians managed to carry on "francification" policies in Belgium upon independence, the dutch had caused resentment among all southern low countries people including dutch speakers but most flemings had simply refused to support either side except for those in the militairy which mutinied over the direct abuses and discrimination suffered at the hands of protestant dutch officers. they however never consented to becoming a francophone unitary state by brittish and french hand, my people were the majority population but had to suffer a francophone rule, francification was effectively combatted however any flemish minorities in frenchspeaking belgium are gone and Brussel (Broekzele-bruxelles-brussels-brussel) was majority french speaking by 1930 (took over 115 years at least, as the capital) and despite lackluster concessions francification has only picked up in speed in the city. just saying
Let's not forget that Poland robbed 12 million Germans of their land and acts as if it had always been Polish. This was the largest ethnic cleansing in world history. In contrast, this little Prussian settlement program seems like a bad joke, especially since the Poles in West Prussia were only immigrants. Truths that the Polish side likes to keep quiet.
All people here saying that it would be easier just to develop the region. You forget that Polish nationalism was very hard at the time. Also religion was massive part of it. No amount of economic concessions would satisfy Poles enough to drop their independence aspirations.
There were, of course, many other villages that did not cost so much and where the settlers built their own houses and barns over the period of many years.. I knew someone here in Canada who had originally come from Kaltwasser near Lvov (now Lviv, Ukraine). She told me that the settlement had been founded sometime during the 19th century. Within a few generations (sometimes as little as 3) the German Catholics were completely Polonized whereas the German Lutherans stayed German. The Catholics had their own church whereas the Lutherans only had a Gemeindehaus which doubled as a school somewhat or exactly like the one in Golęczewo/Golenhofen. She told me that usually the teacher would read a sermon and once a month a pastor would come from Lviv or Lemberg and administer Holy Communion or baptize any children born. She said that the Germans got along with the local Poles and Ukrainians, but there was a big rivalry between the German Lutherans and the Polonized Roman Catholics, former Germans from the same village. The kids were always getting into fights or taunting one another. In one incident. the Polanized kids made fun of the German kids because of the fact that they would carry a large and supposedly heavy hymnal to the service in the Gemeindehaus / Betsaal. The Polanized kids said something that if they became Polish and Roman Catholic, they would only have to care a little prayer booklet - See how much better it was to be Polish? By that point the priest in the Roman Catholic church was Polish and only spoke Polish. In many ways, the clergy were the local agent in Polonization. In the case of the village of Kaltwasser, all the German were moved out with the Heim ins Reich program, some taking up farms taken from Poles in the former West Prussian regions. Of course, these people were the first to flee in 1945 as they knew that they were living on stolen property. The Polonized German Catholic back in Kaltwasser did not fare any better. They were driven out of the settlement once the region was made part of the USSR for the second time in 1944/45. All of them handed up in present-day Poland, some ironically in the area described in this video, but now as landless Poles. Life is not always just to say the least. I would be curious to find out more about the fate of the Polonized Roman Catholics as their story is not well-known.
What an interesting insight! People are so similar almost everywhere, when it comes to tensions between different groups and parties. I recorded some memories of old people from Golęczewo/Golenhofen and their stories about friendship and quarrels between Polish and German children are similar...
Very interesting historical video. Was aware of the demographic mixture of these particular Prussian provinces. Never heard of this policy. Anyhow, on the emigration subject. At the same time those German migrants emigrate to the USA and other parts of the world, there’s also a stream of Polish emigrants following the very same routes. Plus, ever since the industrial emergence of the Rheinland and Thüringen, a great number of Polish workers relocated to these areas inside Germany and over time almost fully assimilated. Just as a footnote the presence of Polish surnames in these Länder.
It should be pointed out that after the defeat of Russia, the Reich government planned to expel all Poles from Germany's enlarged eastern provinces to the rump Polish kingdom planned to be created out of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian partitions in 1918. Large parts of what became Generalplan Ost in WWII grew out of what can only be called Germany's 19th century colonial policies in its eastern provinces.
fun fact: Goleczewo saw 67% vote for the progressive Tusk-led government, as opposed to 52% nationwide. This is often the case in former Prussian Poland.
What a wonderful time to be alive this must have been. Both Germans and Poles both have strong cultures and the interaction of the two would have been I think overall positive. A fantastic window into a sadly bygone era.
This was a part and a continuation of German forceful expansion (drank nach Osten) which started about year 1000 by suppression and assimilation of Eastern Slavs north of river Elbe (todays East Germany). The results of WWII corrected this historic situation by returning a substantial land to its original owners, Poland and also Czechoslovakia.
@@wsffff You obviously have not learn much from history. As an example, German citizens in the democratic Czechoslovakia could not bear that they were not a privileged, ruling class like in A-H empire, just equal citizens, and joined the Nazi movement, perpetrated terrorist acts against the state and wanted to join the Reich. After the war, with full approval from the winning powers, they were for their treason rewarded and removed where they wanted, into the Reich. Nazis murdered almost all German hard working and law abiding Jews (about half a million), but now Germany is flooded with incompatible, destructive intruders in millions. The society culture and order are in real danger, with the economy stagnating. Your dreams of the one-thousand-Reich will not materialize.
Well done, such a valuable content about German-Polish relations! Thank you for the cooperation - and greetings from Golęczewo/Golenhofen!
Thank you so much for your help and for making this possible!
thanks for keeping local history alive
Dang, we went to Posen nearly 2 years ago, and didn't visit Goleczewo. Still it's an excuse to go back and visit Pomerania. Sorry for the German spelling but, as an Anglo, when I try and pronounce anything Polish I loose my false teeth !
Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz !
Does Germans search for slavic roots on their todays land, mostly post DDR territory..?
@@jcoker423I consider using Germanic names for ancient Slavic/Polish cities to be one of the greatest possible insults.
The Germans (Teutons) "Christianized"/eliminated the Baltic Prussian tribe.
Prussia should have been incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland and the Germanic invaders expelled from these lands immediately after the Battle of Grunwald in 1410, when the Polish-Lithuanian army made a pulp out of the Germans and their Western European minions and stopped the Germanic "Drang nach Osten" for several centuries.
I suspect that the then Pope saved the Germans from total destruction.
Fun fact that i find kind of ironic, the main building of the Prussian Settlement Commision is not only a university building, but its actually where the department of Polish Linguistics is seated
Uno reverse card, Bismarck and NLP
lol
Why?
Imagine Palatine saying "ironic"
It actually explains why collegium maius is such a pain to navigate. I got lost more than once. Only an admin building could be this labirinthian. If I remember correctly, the Ancient Greek and Latin department is also there.
The funny thing is if Prussians had just used used all that money to economically develop the area, they likly would have ecnouraged far more internal immigration
If Victoria 3 is to be believed, getting Poles to settle in the Rhineland and integrate there is a much more reliable way to encourage Polish assimilation. Then eventually you build up and develop promising parts like Silesia. Also not fighting the first world war would have been a solid policy position.
@@fallingphoenix2341tell that to us Poles. Silesia is a different case than greater Poland. Plus I come from east greater Poland hub of 19th century German craftsmen influx and yet the moment 1914 hit, the region fought for being Polish again (to be frank my region was passed from Prussia to Russia in 1815 renegotiation of partitions)
Maybe
@@fallingphoenix2341’Ruhrpolen’
@@fallingphoenix2341in general tho borderline and mixed areas ar easier to assimilate, it is a tougher take otherwise 😊
In Poland there was a saying "if not for that Der Die Das they would have made Germans out of us" (Gdyby nie to Der Die Das już by Niemcy byli z nas) which refers to German grammar rules which are unpalatable to Polish speakers and hard to learn.
As someone who learnt german in school as a second language I also found it unpalatable and hard to learn
I still don't know how it works, I just guessed which one it was most of the time but my teachers didn't think my guesses were very good
Fun fact. The symbol of those times is Drzymała's wagon. At some point, Prussia began to prohibit Poles from building new houses in that area. One peasant named Drzymała (don't try to pronounce it 😁) to circumvent this ban, start lived in a wagon like those used in the circus or by gypsies. When the Prussian authorities announced that a wagon parked in one place for a certain period of time would be treated as a house. Drzymała began to regularly move it to other places, without exceeding this time.
"This is my private domicicle and I will not be harassed... bitch!"
Evicted Polish People were allowed back in to work the land - On their land. They were not allowed to stay after harvest or seasonal work. Not during winter.
German peasants came and left, not liking the place. Not theirs to toil in, anyway.
I also have to re-park my car every couple of days or i'll get a ticket, im so like him, wow
Is Drzymała pronounced like "Jeumawa"? J being the French pronunciation version.
@@TheIndogamer dzhimawa
A little bit related issue to the Royal Prussian Settlement Commission if the fact that if a Pole bought a land then Prussian authorities often did not give permit to build a house, so if Pole had a land without house he was almost forced to sell it to the Royal Prussian Settlement Commission. And there is a famous case of a Polish peasant name Michał Drzymała, who bought a land, but was not allowed to build a house by Prussian authority. So he bought a circus caravan and started to live in it. There Prussian authorities claim if a object has liveable space and does not move for more than 24 hours, then it is a house. So Drzymała each day had to move his caravan, just not prove it is not a house. Drzymała and Prussians authorities battle for year in courts and in the end Prussian authorities removed his caravan. What Drzymała did? He bind a fricking mud hut. :D Of course Prussian authorities destroyed the mud hut due to... fire safety hazards. Eventually he did sell his land and bought new land with old house in it (so no building permit was needed). But for 5 years Polish peasant was dodging Prussian bureaucratic machine. He became a Polish folk here and the village he had land without a house is now called Drzymałowo in his honour.
Dude was stubborn. :D
After WWI his new village was on the German side of border. He died 28 year after he lost battle with Prussian government, but even after all these years when he died his family could not buy a coffin for him, so the coffin for Drzymała had to be bought in Poland and moved through customs into Germany.
Prussians were petty as f... They refused him even his last home.
I was born in the village where his grave is now.
@@piotrkoper9266 Isn't Miasto Krajańskie now a town? :P
There is a photo of the wagon at 1:54
@@Hadar1991yes, it is again. Good spot! It was a town for 5 centuries, then demoted to village in 1970s. It has this prussian vibe like in The White Ribbon
Germans still use exact same tactics to dodge German bureaucrats today. Say you want to build a chicken coop but its big so you need a building permit which is hard and bothersome to get. So waddayado.. well you put wheels on it.
Prussia is far too often romanticized for its control over aesthetics and imagery. So much so that Prussia-boos ignore their failures such as the Prussian settlement commission. Great video as always.
I mean thank god they failed though
That's pretty much the order of the day back in the 19th century. Prussia is by no means special.
@@hanzeuro28 That's a horrible argument and not only that but you admit to supporting colonization and ethnic cleansing. No sane person would want to do better at something as horrible as that.
I agree that Posen should be Polish, however in terms of historical ethnic borders Königsberg should be German. It was a heart of German culture and an important part of Germany in all aspects, and should belong to Germany. Ideally the borders should be the interwar ones. Germany deserves it.
@@hedgehog3180oh come on shut it antifa scum you’re no better than the Nazis
Great video as usual!
I heard one of the reasons Commission's campaign had failed was that when some German settlers, seeing that gentry was mostly Polish, went through voluntary Polonization, hoping to achieve quick social advancement in local circles.
In particular, Catholic German immigrants had polonized significantly quickly.
It was due to their Catholicism.
That is, as German says, selbstverständlich, they were on the same side in the 30 Years War.
Germanization would never fundamentally threaten Poles because Poles had enough of their own "high" culture to fall back on, not to mention strong sense of national identity that was only bolstered by aggressive and overt colonization efforts.
Wojciech Korfanty mentioned that he became interested in Polishness and Polish identity after hearing such negative things about Poles from his Hakatist Prussian schoolteacher, previously he didn’t think of himself either way
I believe if the Germanization was more successful, I could see that Western Polish culture could be more German.
But yea, I believe general Polish culture couldn't be threatened.
@@riton349polish people in western Poland mostly are Polish people from what nowadays is western ukraine and belarus. All ethnic Germans were deported so idk if there’s any German culture left
@@caspian4234they're mostly confined to Opole I think.
To think that 40 years earlier The British were starving out Irish to just replace them with People from England, Scotland and Wales who had no intention of going there because it would be seen as punishment to be sent there.
Lol Anglos are so much better at colonialism than Germans XD
@@realkekz Anglos had the benefit of encountering people highly susceptible to diseases they had no natural immunity for, disease was by far the greatest killer of natives in North America and Australia. Anywhere the Anglos encountered population groups with actual resistance to disease (see South Africa) they failed at becoming the majority population.
@@frederickvonabel6349 well that's quite the oversimplification. We certainly benefitted greatly from the spread of disease among the Indians and aborigines but we fought hard to subjugate and conquer their lands by starving them out, stamping out independence movements, resettling them. Same thing in the economic empire, India was a masterclass in colonial development, even if it wasn't a settler colony. Singapore and Hong Kong and plenty others too! Anglo soft power as well as hard power in the form of cultural exchange and settlers cemented Anglo power worldwide
@@realkekzEnglish colonised ireland for over 700 years. Germans were on Polish Land for only 123 and Prusianboos still say cities like Poznań and Gdańsk were always German.
@@realkekzno you dont understand. the british (english, muh celts dindu nuffin) somehow built the biggest empire in history while also somehow being completely incompetent at the same time.
its all just cope.
God, i really do appreciate all the sourcing you do for your videos and the fact you make those sources readily available to your audience. Most people talking about history on youtube have never done that. Thank you
Certain practices were used in how the German authorities carried out census' and classifying ethnicity. If the father in a household spoke German even as second language the whole house was recorded as German. This makes maps produced by the German authorities and later used to justify territorial demands are largely false. Life was actively made difficult for Poles and other ethnicity groups to force some people to learn German. Also bilingualism is actually quite common in Central Europe and the Baltics. You have areas of past immigration from the Low Countries, Scandinavia, Scotland as well as Northern Germany bordering Denmark. All of which speak languages related to each other. Low German is almost more related to Dutch than High German and Scots retains strong similarities with Frisian which is close to Dutch. Over hundreds of years a dialect of Low German with strong Dutch and Scandinavian influence became common among this group around Danzig and Northern Poland who largely kept to their religion. A significant number did continue to identify as Polish subjects despite Prussian pressure. Mostly they just rejected the idea they were Germans. Still recorded as Germans.
I read about a family expelled from East Prussia by Poland from a tiny village deep in the forest. Since they didn't speak Polish they were counted as "Germans" by the Germans. But since they didn't speak Polish they were counted as "Germans" by the Poles and expelled. There were probably small remnants of the Baltic languages still surviving in those areas into WWII.
Isn't Low German the second closest relative to English after Frisian?
I recently had to transcribe a curriculum written by a professor who grew up in the Prussian partition. It was interesting to transcribe Polish written with German orthography
It’s so strange to hear about this when you grew up in this area. Like I remember being drunk and having after parties in the places he describes
It's nice to see UA-camrs talk about history of my country that is often ignored even in Poland. I hope at one point you could make a video about the development of Polish autonomy in Galicia and how it came to be, that Poles in the Austrian empire went from being one of the most exploited parts of the empire, to often being put in key position of power such as ministers for example.
It would make for some fascinating content
What fascinates me about Galicia is how, especially in the east (modern Western Ukraine around Lviv), the relations between Poles and Ruthenians (=Ukrainians) developed.
@@SirManateeeAre you also able to do a video talking about Poland under Russian occupation? For some reason it seems to rarely be talked about.
Funny how Blanke showed, that Polish held land actually grew in Prussia from 1880 to 1910, because the majority of the settlement commission land was taken from wealthy German noble junkers. Who in turn supported Prussia against the industrialized catholic Rhineland, effectively sealing their own faith.
Wasn't Rhineland protestant?
@@MrErdem95 No, it wasn't, major cities like Cologne, Düsseldorf, Essen and Dortmund remained heavily catholic. On top of that, protestant farmers from East Germany immigrated heavily to the industries Rhineland, causing population stagnation in the east.
@@heartsofiron4ever thanks for info
Great, educational content.
I will add a fragment of a popular Polish epigram published in 1886 (my own translation, I was unable to keep the beauty of the original):
One hundred million marks - that's not a trinket!
Enough to buy a province all;
But to fight the Polish spirit is not a trifle,
To ruin it, Germany is too small!
Thanks for sharing :)
Can you write the original polish version? I could swear I read it somewhere, but can't for the life of me remember how it goes.
@@Oskar59216 Sure:
Przemoc i prawo:
Sto milionów marek - to nie fraszka!
Dość, by wykupić województwo całe;
Lecz sprawa z duchem polskim nie igraszka,
By go wygubić, i Niemcy za małe!
Przemoc dusi prawo, lecz go nie zgniecie,
Bo „większy Pan Bóg niż pan Rymsza“ przecie. -
ks. Konstanty Damrot
@@piop dzięki ;)
@@piop incredibly powerful
Poland and Ireland are symbols of grit and resistance against the establishment in Europe. I find Polish history very inspiring, they were tossed around by the Russians and Germans, but they didn't give up and kept pushing until the odds turned in their favor.
don't forget the austrians
Wow those 25 minutes went by rather fast lmao, this was very interesting, kudos to you chief!
You deserve more subs for sure.
Great video, btw as an undergrad in history myself I'm very impressed with how you give credit and delineates your sources in the description considering what history UA-cam normally is
This channel is exactly what I cherish...
--Non-English European history
--Prepared by a non-English person
--narrated in English...
Oh, it is so rare to catch that combo...
It will be nice if there are programs on the rise of the German industry (steel, dyes etc) and/or rise of the German social state...
There is pike and shot battles. It is military-history oriented and it is not active anymore, but is is quite good for learning the chronology of the period..
There is also the schwerpunkt, who has a very good choice of topics but (this is my personal opinion) has some problems in presentation..
in the world of podcasts, I think the "history of germans" shine out. German history by a german.. Everybody is very surprised to learn that germans have a long history apart from hitler... There is also a "history of scandinavia" podcast.
If you are interested in cultural history there is "literature and history" podcast, which is of extremely high quality. There is also the history of philosophy without any gaps podcast, which is also very good, except (in my opinion) their africana series, which I believe is politically oriented.
There is "history of china" podcast if you are interested in non-european history. There are many more but these are the ones that pop into my mind currently...
there are are many Polish made history channels with subtitles in English.
With very different interpretations
NOT the standard West, [English], narrow histories as handed down by the ''J '' scribed Frankfurt Schul
@@metanoian965 I am quite a history buff, but I have never encountered these channels..
One must admit that "J"s in eastern europe have a fascinating history. But "J"s themselves are awful history writers, and their histories read like a necklace of tears.. When one looks at the wealth, power and cultural level attained by them in pre-ww1 poland and russia, one immediately feels that their history must contain much more than inequities and suffering, but one does not see that in the books. So a polish view is sorely needed.
@pretenddiscipline5553
There’s always Lavader
This is an amazing video on a long neglected subject. I was travelling Poland this summer and was looking for traces of German and Polish settlements before 1945. I sensed that the Prussians tried to germanize the former Polish areas - but they failed. You explain the economical and demographical reasons for it, and it makes a lot of sense. Thank you very much. Great work!
I'm from Poland, in schools they teach us about this only from Polish perspective, its very refreshing to see how all of this was seen from Prussian one
Can you go more into that?
@@Dmitrisnikioff in schools, it is very simplified: "Bismarck issued the policies of evictions and Kulturkampf in order to forcefully germanize the Poles. The Poles opposed, which is illustrated with two famous stories: Drzymała's wagon (wóz Drzymały, mentioned in details here in the comments) of a man cleverly bypassing the strict Prussian law (so: Slavic disorganized ingenuity vs. German Prussian drill) and the Children of Września (then: Wreschen) who refused to follow the German lesson's routine. So all in all, not the good look for Bismarck in this very simplified narrative.
I studied in Poznań, I live in a town 30 km away. Speaking of Goleczewo, my sister bought a house there and I have always wondered about the architecture there and now I finally understand.
I wrote my master thesis about Posen (1815-1871). Very nice video
Love Polish history. Love from Portugal
You can definitely see how the idea of Lebensraum developed out of this.
It didn't come out of nowhere, yes
You can also see, that multiculturalism was failing already in the 19th century ;)
@OkurkaBinLadin it was failing because some politicians wanted to make a career by making it fail
@@PobortzaPlit fails today still
It began with the Drang nach Osten and the northern crusades if they’re emtiie
as a citizen of poznan I really enjoy watching your videos, amazing picturesu show us
I'm glad UA-cam knew I would be interested in this. A few years ago I read the William Hagen book (in your reference list) hoping it would help me understand some of my own family history, and am glad to see a couple of other English language sources that I didn't know about. One issue that has interested me is the contest over which language should be used in schools, and at what ages and how much. One of my grandmothers came from a German village that was adjacent to a Polish village along the Vistula, in Russian-ruled Poland. She used to talk about going to school with Polish and Russian children (in the first decade of the 20th century) and I wish I had thought to ask about that. I wonder what the language of instruction was, given that the language was usually a contested issue, as Hagen has described in the German-ruled areas with the on-again, off-again campaigns to Germanize the Poles. The Russians were no less concerned about the languages used, as we know from the history of recent events . I'm not aware that my grandmother knew any Polish at all, though we never thought to ask her. So I wonder how that worked in school. I also have other branches of my family, all German-speaking, that came from other parts of what is now Poland, but none from the Poznan area you showed on maps. It's all interesting, though.
Interesting that no dots were in Bavaria. Interesting that Austro Hungarians weren't invited or Baltic Germans
They were indeed invited, but were considered as second-class Germans if that makes sense
@@SirManateee Its interesting that in a Broadcast about Czechs in Vienna brought out the clever rude nature of Austrians in Vienna and the Prussians see them as second class. Interesting if that mindset survives in any way now?
@@SirManateee even Bavarians were not considered "true Germans" because of religion? It seems the 2nd Reich wasn´t nice to you unless you were a German protestant...
@@adelinod.5568nah that's bullshit, everyone was true German
Catholicism was not preferred first of all
Great video! I'm always waiting for new video from you.
Sir Manatee strikes again with an excellent video!
Cheers, mate :)
Very good video. This is academic level presentation. Well done!
Do you ever plan to do a video on Bismarck's Kulturkampf against the Catholic church - which was also often intertwined with anti-Polish policies too. There aren't many great sources about it in English.
Against the Catholic Church and against poles both
i just want to say, that I think, that you would be the best person to show east frisian culture on television. we are a small ethnic group, but we have sticked together for hundreds of years. And i would be especially excited to see, what you would bring up to bring us into the german cultural fold
I wouldn't mind making a video about one of my favourite areas in the whole country ;)
@@SirManateee that is very lovely to hear! I'm also sorry if I formulated that a bit weird, I was perhaps a bit drunk :D
@user-ky8nh8sd6l BTW, what do you think about the channel 'History with Hilbert' (if you know it)? If I recall correctly, Hilbert himself is Dutch-British, although with Frisian heritage on his Dutch side (I think West Frisian). He made some videos about Frisian history and culture. And also has an interest in Poland, like Sir Manatee.
@@Artur_M. Hello! Yeah i know Hilbert and I do think that he makes good videos, but in my opinion his are a bit boring. He presents history more like a teacher instead of a storyteller like SirManateee (which is simply more atention capturing). And in regards to his Frisian history he only talks about westfrisian history and culture. We Frisians have been seperated into three groups for quite some time, so eventho we are all frisians we have quite some differences between us. Also if you want to learn about frisia you should check out the channel "Background History". He has probably the best videos on frisia although (again) mostly on the western part. And yeah SirManateees videos about Poland have been very nice to see, but I guess I wanted to express that i think the frisians would be a very interessting group for him to cover since he has done videos about other germany-related minorities or regions aswell. Also the contrast to some of his videos, especcialy about the germanization of poland, would fit really well since the prussians basically achieved here in east frisia what they failed to do in poland -> turning us into germans
These topics are incredibly interesting. 19th century central European history is so compelling and underrated, thanks for these great videos.
My Polish Jewish great-grandfather from Cracow enrolled in the Austro-Hungarian army and fought as an officer somewhere in the Balkans or Turkey I recall. Thousands of Jewish men foughti in the Austro-Hungarian Army in WWI and so heartbreaking that being veterans with distinctions did not save the lives from the Holocaust.
Definitely a video for people already in that informational sphere, which is to be very respected in modern day sensational youtube
Good night my dear Sir Manatee, as a citenzen from southern Brazil where thousands upon thousands of German and Polish settlers arrived here in the late 19th century because of the federal government racist "Whitening of Brazil" policies, I find quite amusing a video like this one about German settlements in polish land.
Here in southern Brazil german and polish descendents basically became the same """ethnic""" group, who are simply called colonos (settlers in portuguese) and they speak the exact same dialect which is simply called southern dialect that sounds like portuguese with a heavy german accent, amazing how migration ended all the polish-german rivalry that has been going on for centuries in Europe, anyways danke schön for such an amazing content my man, keep it up.
Very refreshing comment in-between all these staunch super Poles.
I remember that there was a player in one of the big local clubs nicknamed "Alemão", meaning german, even though his surname was very obviously polish LMFAO
@@Felipe-yv4bc True, quite a normal occurence here. The first owner of the famous morro do Alemão (german hill) in Rio de Janeiro was not german, but a polish man named Leonard Kaczmarkiewicz. Same thing with german descendants being called polacos here in south Brazil. In Brazil poles and germans are the same people. 😂
I find it funny how forcing German/Russian culture on Poles made them more nationalistic. While at the same time not forcing German/Russian culture made the Poles more nationalistic.
It seems like Poland was going to exist anyways just from the sheer will of the people of Poland.
Well part of the problem was that poland was divided between two countries so you can't germanise poland if the russian poland is not russificated so the germans and russians would had much better results if they had collaborated also the best way would had been to move the polish population to the west instead of germans to the east but racism didn't let them see it
Well true. There is a reason Poland that emerged after WW1 has become nationalistic despite that fact that I RP was a multicultural haven.
Well the poles right now are less nationalistic than ever before becouse of 30years of social democracy
@@krainex I mean, though... When you're not fighting for the right of your country to exist, you'd probably take its existence for granted. Don't you think?
Poland has long and proud history. Why would Poles give up on their heritage? China was conguered many times by non-chinese but Chinesee people never, ever, stoped to be nationalistic.
This channel is a treasure
It's very good to hear about my region (I live in Szamotuły/Samter, but was born in Poznań) in such a high quality video.
Just discovered your channel! Its great!!
As a Poznań Citizen i very much appreciate the video. Till this day German cultural influence is visible in the region.
The video is about Germans trying to erase Polish culture. Luckily they were not successful.
Well, yea of course it is. But not solely because of this policy. But that already was a thing long prior to this whole Prussian policy. I mean the region itself even was inhabited by Germans long before there had been Poles. And add germanized poles to that. I do wonder though why is it that you appreciate this video that much considering that it distorted many facts, left out a lot of important context and thus very much falsifies your own peoples history in the process.
@@Ultima-Signabecause poles like to pretend they are some kind of victim of Germany as infinitum despite them being war monger with intense revanchism
@@Ultima-SignaWhich facts were distorted? According to science, this area was Slavic since the 6th century AD.
@@peter_g546Roman Magna Germania maps show all the nowadays western slavic land belomged to germanic people prior to the great migration which was forced upon them. If you wanna go back, it belongs to the germans more than the slavs.
What an incredible well covered and interesting video
Great video my man!
Great video! Waiting for one about Silesian Uprisings
I'm from Upper Silesia and for me it's really nice to see history of German imperialism being featured on an English language channel. Westerners often have no idea just how awful German Empire was. Some of the stuff Bismarck and other German government officials said were borderline genocidal. We're really lucky that the German Empire no longer exists and that modern German state is nothing like that empire.
Awful for Slavs.
Westerners don't care.
If anything contemporary Britain, America and France in certain racialistic circles didn't give a fuck or even have contempt for Slavic populations and feared or hated the population expanse of the Slavic population and desired oppression and praised pre-existing oppression of the Slavs.
the westerners from Alsace-Lorraine share your view point
Dont act like polish hands are clean
@@justincris1685 This isn't a competition. And I'm not Polish, I'm Silesian, I'm an ethnic minority in Poland. My family has been victim of Polish bigotry and state discrimination for decades. But as I said, this is NOT a competition. There's time and place for discussing historical tragedies that Poles or the Polish state caused. But THIS is not one of them. Not under a video that's about German imperialism in Poland. Whataboutism is garbage. And it only serves as distraction from important conversations.
@@justincris1685 They are certainly cleaner than German.
I still have a prussian birth certificate from my great grandmother, its interesting to see the history from another perspective
Fantastic work! Thank you.
Interesting and well done report, thank you for sharing!
20:03 Just one clarification for unaware public. The sentence should read: After the war ended the Greater Poland Uprising (1918-1919) brought Poznań and the rest of east Prussia AGAIN 🎉under Polish state control.
Thank you for the content
It is a joy to see your diligence with regards to citing your sources.
I recently found out some of my ancestors came from west prussia , near gdansk and i think they could possibly be german settlers who came after 1815 but thats just a guess ;but the family tree goes back to 1830 and even has the villages included so i could look them up , pretty interesting to know exactly were some of my ancestors lived 200 years ago.
Could have been Kashubian too, also Dutch, various Balto-Slavics, Scottish, French, it was a true melting pot back then. Good luck finding out. And whoever they were, they were all beautiful people.
Everyone forgets about German European colonialism. Good video brother
100% Do not know this history. Deliberately. Frankfurt Schul writes germ version of European history for the dullards in the West. ALL history of Poland in the West is Filtered by the Zio little round hats who own Hollywood and West magazines. They write the jokes.
Another amazing video!
A great video and a great channel! Thank you!
Thank you for this! My grandfather's family was from West Prussia and it's hard to find information about it.
The title card being as it is I thought it might compare why medieval german colonization and germanization worked to later failures. Oh well, maybe a later topic. I like comparisons of failures to successes, as otherwise it seems like we're saying what happened and not explaining. Still very interesting!
There is a fairly simple explanation: because the later attempts ended early due to changes in the local power structure before their natural conclusion.
We do not know what would have happened in another two hundred years under the established system but people would never say that European colonialism in general “failed” in a vacuum so as analysts today, we should not isolate Prussia and place its “failure” ( aka the premature conclusion ) as an unavoidable consequence instead of the chance driven determinism that ended before we could actually make a final judgment.
We know that WW1 & WW2 changed the geopolitical landscape, that the two states that arguably did the most to end the practice intentionally and not just as a side effect, namely the Soviet Union and the United States of America were and are ironically direct products of colonialism, imo. arguably the most successful examples since both of these entities still exist in borders that are the result of this practice and were able to maintain this control pretty much unopposed to any degree that would seriously threaten their positions.
I am German. My grandfather grew up in German Posen. He spoke Polish in his youth and kept a beautiful watercolor painting by one of his Polish school friends. He spoke glowingly about his hometown and the splendor of the Gewerbeausstellung (commercial exhibition) in 1911. Only in very recent years, I had the opportunity to see Posen and its surroundings with my own eyes. I met with wonderful people, Poles and Germans, who took universal friendship seriously, among people and among peoples, and they had the record to prove it: travel groups, private visits, local festivals, friendship associations, town partnerships. Small scale labor of love, this is what gives us hope.
In the past, folks of these lands, East or West, have been screwed over so many times by interests foreign to their own. Including nationalist, church and class interests, not to mention money, military and industrial, and Government in general. There really is no use to pick sides or pass judgments, you only can pick wrong. Yes the Ansiedlungskommission was a failure, but then, quite a few of the political "successes" on any side of the many divides were successful only at huge cost in lives, happiness and fortune. Also, any one-sided account or blame game cannot do justice to all the nuances, like the in-between role of the Kashubians, or the trial-and-error of the Ausgleich (balancing of interests between Germans and Slavs) in Austro-Hungarian lands. Even the Prussian colors were not just black and white, metaphorically speaking.
To me, the lessons are obvious: » Leave. people. as. they. are. «
Not only the Kashubians had an in between role, but also the Masurians. The majority of these were actually in favor of the Germans.
Also interesting is Silesia, where the majority also voted for Germany. The same applied to all cities in Upper Silesia that were occupied by Poland after the First World War. Today you can see their German roots, as Bielitz had one of the largest Protestant communities in Poland. The Bielsko Zion should be noted.
In this video you are shown the Gerlander Cultural center. That nest from which germs infest the East.
That model village was based on Germ fairy tales from Sachsen, Thuringen, Barden, etc.. West of the Elbe River.
@@metanoian965 You're talking in fascist terms.
@@Ghreinos how is it 'fascist terms' ?
@@metanoian965 Talking about nests, germs and infestations is pretty much dehumanizing.
Yo Sir Manatee, bin echt happy mit deinen Videos über moderne Deutsche Geschichte.
Bei dir werden Themen & Nieschen thematisiert, die im Geschichtsunterricht nicht behandelt werden & deswegen auch die meisten nicht kennen.
Very interesting. Thanks for the effort💪🏻
Very well made. Thank you. Would you have references about historical categories like "proto nationalist" ? I mean something that would clarify the sociology of the various groups involved in nationalism.
Such a well researched video! Many thanks for making from a fellow history student from Poland (Wrocław)!
A couple of peripheral points, perhaps of some interest to this group :
Before Berlin was Berlin there was Bralin , and Hanow before there was Hannover, Lipsk before Leipzig and so on …. - territories of the Western Slavs reaching as far as today’s southern Denmark.
In the 1940’s under Hitler’s democracy a large district of southern Berlin was officially named Nova Wies ( New Village in slavic ).
Hitler’s interests in fine art and classic Roman architecture were behind his plans to substancially enlarge and beautify city of Berlin with neo-classical architecture and
re-name it Germania, a far better brand name indeed if you plan to go global.
The Germania metropolis project was to be completed by 1956.
By then the German Empire would indeed be streaching from Lisbon to Vladivostock, yes indeed, some dreams never die.
Hitler famously if not prematurely declared : „ Russia is our Africa and Russians are our Negros „ .
Sadly, this had already occurred successfully in Lithuania Minor in the 1700s. The mass colonization of the territory was rather successful due to the depopulation that followed a plague uprising. Unlike the Poles, they didn't seek independence and as such Germanized under their own will. By 1939, only the most eastern parts of East Prussia remained Lithuania, but they were all expelled in 1945 by the Soviets.
spectacular film, meine duden
subbed
Prussia was always described as "not a country with an army, but an army with a country". this film literally proves this point. no wonder germans emigrated to USA en masse.
Amazing, incredibly detailed research and presentation! Imperial German, the Reich drove nationalism to a pinnacle. Germany's fall was deep and it will never recover the place it had between 1871 and 1914. The German national idea (German speaking and Germwn-feeling people on German ground) is broken. If there's a German ethnicity (well, ethnigraphs found a lot of those groups throughout Africa, Oceania...), we can see it scattered over a couple of European countries. Germany is not even the motherland for those outside of it. Let's ashes rest and admire other nations.
Do you per chance know in what specific regions of Lower Saxony the Golenhofen settlers came from? Such as Oldenburg, Osnabrück, Hanover stadt etc.?
Another day, anther Sir Manatee banger
Thanks a lot for your vídeo. Its a matter unknowledge for a lot of people. Well analized in details.
Outstanding video. 🙂
It certainly has many limitations, arguably related to the fact he was made by a german
Sehr angenehmes Video, alles sauber hinterlegt und angenehm vorgetragen. Danke meister!
Great video as always!
Zrobiles bardzo dobra robote. Za to szacunek dobry obywatelu.
@SirManateee what painting is that at 7:15?
This is some excellent stuff. Subscribed.
The Prussian Homage (1525) was one of the worst and most painful mistakes made by Polish rulers in all of the Polish history. I know, the King had other serious problems at the time, but he didn't think far-sighted. Paradoxically, it took place at a time when Poland reached its apogee, the peak of its power. One of the worst moments in... the history of Poles. A great and wasted opportunity, missed opportunity. It was a huge mistake... S.
Ironic considering Prussia, the region itself is at minimum, containing large populations of Germanized Slavs(Cousins to or even formerly Polish populations).
Prussians were a Baltic people, not Slavic.
@@baneofbanes I think he means "Prussia" as used by Germans, so including Pomerania, Brandenburg, Silesia and Greater Poland.
@@stachwel5547 hats fair
If Germans never entered ww1 then, and pressed Austria Hungary to not to enter, then everything would be different. Well, nothing can be done for history
Poles could have started Germanization if the German administration and the emperor had not treated Poles as second-class citizens. It was during this period that Germanic chauvinism and xenophobia towards Poles/Slavics was born. And organizations such as Hakata were at the forefront of the fight against Poland. Despite the declarations made to Poles by Frederick William III, guaranteeing the right to national identity, culture and language. The Prussians, as well as the later Wilhelmine Germans, repeatedly violated these rules. For the above reasons.
good stuff
It failed, because Poland had had already highly developed culture attractive to many. Polish literal standard of the language comes from some 16th century, so it's about 100 years older than German literal standard. Poles remembered about their recent history of a super power... it was attractive to many. To Frederic Chopin, whose father was French, but he prefered to perceive himself as Polish, to Adam Mickiewicz who despite his Belarusian origin wrote in Polish, to Friedrich Nietzsche, who was ethinc German, but considered himself Polish (he believed his family originates at Polish nobility which surname was Niecki) etc. etc.
The last part about Nietzsche is cap. He never spoke polish and Nietzsche was 5 when Chopin died and 11 when Adam Mickiewicz died!
Yes he considered himself polish, but it wasn't proved yet, he himself said, that he came from "polish nobility", which probably is cap too, atleast we can't know. Towards the end of his life he was quite delusional and mentally incompetent. That might explain his secession.
He could have been also marked from the Franco Prussian war.
As a field deacon (someone who cares for the sick, wounded and dead), he saw the terrible consequences of war for civilians and soldiers. That was his eye-opener, so to speak, he wrote: I don't want to say a word about the German victories: they are fire signs on the wall, understandable to all peoples. He enlisted in this war for the sake of patriotism, but it was precisely because of this war that he lost his patriotism. Ultimately, he didn't like the proclamation of the German Empire.
@@Ghreinos Best he was Germy, cos he was a nut. Best Kopernik is germy too as he was a jesuit pushing nut job solar globe earth
Its very nice to see the history of the German Empire, outside of Unification and WW1.
Could you please make a Video about the Russification of Poland (Vistula Land) until the outbreak of WW1 ???
23:51 wspelled also means where
My own family was originally from Saxony (Chemnitz, I think) near Dresden and migrated to Province of Posen and settled in or near the town of Klecko or Kletzko and I am certain they were induced to go there by some type of subsidy offered by the Prussian government. They gradually all moved to Chicago, IL starting in the early 1880s.
Thank you for this video
important to note allmost every european state that had linguistic divisions or colonies did this in one way or another and in my oppinion the French and Belgians were worse than the Prussians in that the French introduced these practices first during their revolution attemptting to restore "the natural borders of france" but also believing that only one language and culture was acceptable, that which was to be found in northern france, specifically ile de france
hence why non french speaking subjects generally supported the royalist side, and the french did in fact wipe out much of their regional diversity.
the Belgians managed to carry on "francification" policies in Belgium upon independence, the dutch had caused resentment among all southern low countries people including dutch speakers but most flemings had simply refused to support either side except for those in the militairy which mutinied over the direct abuses and discrimination suffered at the hands of protestant dutch officers.
they however never consented to becoming a francophone unitary state by brittish and french hand, my people were the majority population but had to suffer a francophone rule, francification was effectively combatted however any flemish minorities in frenchspeaking belgium are gone and Brussel (Broekzele-bruxelles-brussels-brussel) was majority french speaking by 1930 (took over 115 years at least, as the capital) and despite lackluster concessions francification has only picked up in speed in the city.
just saying
Let's not forget that Poland robbed 12 million Germans of their land and acts as if it had always been Polish. This was the largest ethnic cleansing in world history. In contrast, this little Prussian settlement program seems like a bad joke, especially since the Poles in West Prussia were only immigrants. Truths that the Polish side likes to keep quiet.
@@Honecker89 forgetting cause and effect here...do we?
@@Honecker89Did that just for fun right?
All people here saying that it would be easier just to develop the region. You forget that Polish nationalism was very hard at the time. Also religion was massive part of it. No amount of economic concessions would satisfy Poles enough to drop their independence aspirations.
There were, of course, many other villages that did not cost so much and where the settlers built their own houses and barns over the period of many years.. I knew someone here in Canada who had originally come from Kaltwasser near Lvov (now Lviv, Ukraine). She told me that the settlement had been founded sometime during the 19th century. Within a few generations (sometimes as little as 3) the German Catholics were completely Polonized whereas the German Lutherans stayed German. The Catholics had their own church whereas the Lutherans only had a Gemeindehaus which doubled as a school somewhat or exactly like the one in Golęczewo/Golenhofen. She told me that usually the teacher would read a sermon and once a month a pastor would come from Lviv or Lemberg and administer Holy Communion or baptize any children born. She said that the Germans got along with the local Poles and Ukrainians, but there was a big rivalry between the German Lutherans and the Polonized Roman Catholics, former Germans from the same village. The kids were always getting into fights or taunting one another. In one incident. the Polanized kids made fun of the German kids because of the fact that they would carry a large and supposedly heavy hymnal to the service in the Gemeindehaus / Betsaal. The Polanized kids said something that if they became Polish and Roman Catholic, they would only have to care a little prayer booklet - See how much better it was to be Polish? By that point the priest in the Roman Catholic church was Polish and only spoke Polish. In many ways, the clergy were the local agent in Polonization. In the case of the village of Kaltwasser, all the German were moved out with the Heim ins Reich program, some taking up farms taken from Poles in the former West Prussian regions. Of course, these people were the first to flee in 1945 as they knew that they were living on stolen property. The Polonized German Catholic back in Kaltwasser did not fare any better. They were driven out of the settlement once the region was made part of the USSR for the second time in 1944/45. All of them handed up in present-day Poland, some ironically in the area described in this video, but now as landless Poles. Life is not always just to say the least. I would be curious to find out more about the fate of the Polonized Roman Catholics as their story is not well-known.
What an interesting insight! People are so similar almost everywhere, when it comes to tensions between different groups and parties. I recorded some memories of old people from Golęczewo/Golenhofen and their stories about friendship and quarrels between Polish and German children are similar...
Very interesting historical video. Was aware of the demographic mixture of these particular Prussian provinces. Never heard of this policy. Anyhow, on the emigration subject. At the same time those German migrants emigrate to the USA and other parts of the world, there’s also a stream of Polish emigrants following the very same routes. Plus, ever since the industrial emergence of the Rheinland and Thüringen, a great number of Polish workers relocated to these areas inside Germany and over time almost fully assimilated. Just as a footnote the presence of Polish surnames in these Länder.
Wow what a gold 😲 I was born in Gdansk but moved to UK early on
It's so nice to get some Polish history lessons in English
It should be pointed out that after the defeat of Russia, the Reich government planned to expel all Poles from Germany's enlarged eastern provinces to the rump Polish kingdom planned to be created out of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian partitions in 1918. Large parts of what became Generalplan Ost in WWII grew out of what can only be called Germany's 19th century colonial policies in its eastern provinces.
fun fact: Goleczewo saw 67% vote for the progressive Tusk-led government, as opposed to 52% nationwide. This is often the case in former Prussian Poland.
how many Ukrainian economic migrants there ?
@@metanoian965 "economic migrants"🤡🤡
Sir manatee, I love these videos!!
Didnt they try to do this in Belgium during WWI as well?
What a wonderful time to be alive this must have been. Both Germans and Poles both have strong cultures and the interaction of the two would have been I think overall positive. A fantastic window into a sadly bygone era.
Nah, germany at that time was imperialistic as all the european nations...and poles suffered becasue of that
This was a part and a continuation of German forceful expansion (drank nach Osten) which started about year 1000 by suppression and assimilation of Eastern Slavs north of river Elbe (todays East Germany). The results of WWII corrected this historic situation by returning a substantial land to its original owners, Poland and also Czechoslovakia.
@@wsffff I doubt that you are laughing much now.
@@wsffff You obviously have not learn much from history. As an example, German citizens in the democratic Czechoslovakia could not bear that they were not a privileged, ruling class like in A-H empire, just equal citizens, and joined the Nazi movement, perpetrated terrorist acts against the state and wanted to join the Reich. After the war, with full approval from the winning powers, they were for their treason rewarded and removed where they wanted, into the Reich.
Nazis murdered almost all German hard working and law abiding Jews (about half a million), but now Germany is flooded with incompatible, destructive intruders in millions. The society culture and order are in real danger, with the economy stagnating. Your dreams of the one-thousand-Reich will not materialize.
@@wsffff Keep on dreaming.
@@wsffff Did you read this from Goebels' propaganda notes?
@@wsffff The more you say something, the more hopeless you look.
simple answer once you polish you never stop being polish source im polish
Russification was more ffevthve