White Eagle, Black Eagle: Ethnic Relations in the German-Polish Borderlands 9781805390039

Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Historical Foundations of German–Polish Relations I From the Beginnings to the First World War
Chapter 2 The Historical Foundations of German–Polish Relations II From the First World War to the Present
Chapter 3 National and Regional Identities in Germany and Poland
Chapter 4 Polish Minorities in Germany The ‘120% Deutsche’
Chapter 5 Regions in Poland I Ziemia Lubuska – Forgotten by Germany?
Chapter 6 Administrative Reform, Cross-border Relations and Regional Identity in Western Poland and Eastern Germany
Chapter 7 Regions in Poland II. Silesia – German, Polish, or Wasserpolnisch?
Chapter 8 Updates 2010, 2014
Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

White Eagle, Black Eagle

White Eagle, Black Eagle Ethnic Relations in the German–Polish Borderlands

Robert Parkin

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2023 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2023 Robert Parkin

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Parkin, Robert, 1950- author. Title: White eagle, black eagle : ethnic relations in the German-Polish borderlands /   Robert Parkin. Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references   and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023000735 (print) | LCCN 2023000736 (ebook) | ISBN 9781805390022 (hardback) | ISBN 9781805390039 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Germany--Relations--Poland. | Poland--Relations--Germany | Borderlands--Germany--History. | Borderlands--Poland--History. | Germans--Ethnic identity. | Polish people--Ethnic identity. Classification: LCC DD120.P7 P37 2023 (print) | LCC DD120.P7 (ebook) | DDC 327.430438--dc23/eng/20230222 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023000735 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023000736 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-80539-002-2 hardback ISBN 978-1-80539-003-9 ebook https://doi.org/10.3167/9781805390022

Contents

Introduction 

1

Chapter 1. Th  e Historical Foundations of German–Polish Relations I: From the Beginnings to the First World War 

16

Chapter 2. Th  e Historical Foundations of German–Polish Relations II: From the First World War to the Present 

34

Chapter 3. N  ational and Regional Identities in Germany and Poland 

61

Chapter 4. Polish Minorities in Germany: The ‘120% Deutsche’

82

Chapter 5. R  egions in Poland I: Ziemia Lubuska – Forgotten by Germany?96 Chapter 6. A  dministrative Reform, Cross-border Relations and Regional Identity in Western Poland and Eastern Germany 

116

Chapter 7. R  egions in Poland II: Silesia – German, Polish, or Wasserpolnisch?138 Chapter 8. Updates: 2010, 2014 

160

Conclusion

168

References Index

171 179

Introduction

? Preliminary Remarks This book does not set out to provide a comprehensive history of its subject. Rather, its aim is to delineate certain themes in the history of German–Polish relations to show that, while this history contains a lot of mutual distrust, violence and often one-sided aggression, it also reveals periods of cooperation dating from the Middle Ages to the present day. It therefore aims to act as a certain corrective to the view that German–Polish relations have mainly been characterized by Germany’s historical dominance of Poland through conquest, exploitation, and economic and political inequalities. While this view undeniably has plenty of historical legitimacy and evidence behind it, it does not provide a complete picture. The difficulty in grasping a total view is certainly compounded by the fact that the boundaries between German and Polish identities, like the geographical ones, have not been static, a product of often peaceable German settlement of Polish areas and of the migration of Poles to Germany, as well as of the mixed marriages and other forms of mutual assimilation and identity-switching that have resulted from these currents. In addition, Germans in what is unambiguously Germany have themselves often been ambivalent about their eastern congeners, feeling that, even if they do speak German, they have become Polonized or otherwise Slavicized and have thus left Germandom – or at least are only on the fringes of it. Our topic therefore cannot take identities for granted, nor be dogmatic about who is German and who is Polish, not

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least because many on both sides are in a position to ask themselves these very questions. This topic is, of course, part of the much wider theme of the opposition between ‘Teuton and Slav’, as many older histories describe it. ‘Teuton’ clearly refers to German Germans, but it should also include Austrian Germans, despite their different history and the opposition in which they partake historically between the allegedly ramshackle Habsburg Empire and the similarly extravagant stereotype of the super-efficient German Reich, as much as that between Teuton and Slav. ‘Slav’ covers not just Poles, but Russians, Czechs and many Balkan peoples, competition over whom between Austria–Hungary and Russia led to many nineteenth-century political crises and ultimately to the First World War and the collapse of both empires, as well as the German one.1 This freed their Slav populations, only for them to suffer reconquest by Hitler’s Germany a generation later, and subsequent Russian domination under the guise of communist ‘liberation’ and control in the wake of his defeat. Freedom only finally came with the collapse of communism, though not without violence, especially in Yugoslavia, and division, especially of the Soviet Union itself, as well as Czechoslovakia, while non-Slav Germany was reunited. Maybe it is my imagination, or my greater familiarity with this case, that leads me to see German–Polish relations as somehow archetypal of this wider opposition between Teuton and Slav. However that may be, I have been led to this particular choice largely by personal circumstances, as well as by seven years of residence in Berlin that coincided with the period when the famous wall came down, coupled with residence in and repeated visits to Poland starting shortly after that event and continuing up until the present day. The fall of the Berlin Wall also had the effect of leading me away from my earlier concentration on kinship and marriage practices among Indian tribes, and towards conducting fieldwork and research on this new area of interest. The present volume is the partial fruit of that interest, already foreshadowed by a handful of articles (Parkin 1999, 2002, 2013a, 2013b). This is not primarily a history of state-to-state relations, though these will often have to be referred to. Rather, the emphasis is on othering, the stereotyping but also fluidity of identities, and, in part, on the organization of Poles and Germans as national minorities in each other’s countries. The focus will be partly historical: first, so as to trace changes in identity and help establish the reasons for them, and second, because history is frequently used by informants, politicians and sometimes even academics to validate claims to both identity and territory. It will probably have been noticed that up to now I have avoided using the word ‘ethnic’ to describe German and Polish identities, and only allowed the word ‘national’ once. First, the focus in this book is on ‘local’ or ‘regional’

Introduction • 3

identities within a national identity: in this context that does not necessarily mean ‘ethnic’ identity. There are ethnic minorities in the general area, such as the Ukrainian-speaking Łemkos in south-west Poland (e.g. in Zielona Góra) and the Sorbs around Cottbus and Bautzen in Germany; but, incidental remarks aside, I am not concerned with them here. In general the focus is specifically, and quite deliberately, on the local identities of one or both national majorities. One reason for making the distinction lies in the different relationships between national identities and sub-national identities that are ethnic or regional (or both). Although politically subordinate, strong ethnic identities tend to oppose themselves to the dominant national identity as epistemologically equivalent; there is a clean cut. Non-ethnic regional identities, by contrast, generally see themselves as partaking of the national identity too: the relationship is therefore rather segmented, and also hierarchical, with the national identity outranking the regional one (cf. Parkin 1999). Thus, at least for the self-designated militants, Breton identity is ethnically quite distinct from French national identity and locally opposed to it (McDonald 1987, 1990), whereas Normans generally appear to see themselves as also French. MacClancy (1993) has said the same about Navarran identities in relation to Spanish national identity, at least for some in the region, in contrast with the more radically separate Basque or Catalonian identities.2 That is not to say that use of the terms ‘ethnic’ and ‘national(ist)’ will be avoided here entirely, though the distinction just made between regional identities that are separate (potentially ‘ethnic’) and those that are segmented with the national majority should be kept in mind. As I have provided a personal view of anthropological approaches to ethnicity elsewhere (2001, Ch. 6; also 2022, Ch. 6), I will not reproduce that here. My view of nationalism, however, will be set out below, followed by a consideration of the significance of national, territorial borders in this study.

Nationalism Any study of German–Polish ‘ethnic’ relations must take into account the fact that both Germany and Poland can be seen as ‘nations’. Indeed, modern nationalism is often traced to the German poet Johann Gottfried von Herder, who in the early nineteenth century advocated the independence and statehood of all peoples as a counter to the universal values of the all-conquering French Revolution, and the Napoleonic regime that succeeded it. As already noted, the difference between ethnicity and nationalism seems to me to be relatively easy to define, and it comes down to a single word: statehood. Not all states are nation states, and not all ethnic groups or minorities want their own state, but at least in Europe most majority ethnicities

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probably now have one, which they tend to dominate – potentially to the detriment of the minorities that remain within them; it is these we tend to call nation states. At the same time, the aspiration for a state may be more significant than its actual possession, as with, for example, Catalans in Spain, Basques or Scots. The nation state can therefore be seen as representing the highest degree of Handelman’s notion of ethnic incorporation (1977), while nationalism is its ideological referent. Although many of the same features that apply to definitions and discussions of ethnicity also apply to nationalism, study of the latter has certainly produced some peculiarities of its own, as well as independent theories. In the first place, nationalism was taken up by anthropologists rather later than ethnicity. In the second place – a possibly connected point – while ethnicity might be considered to have become a central anthropological topic, despite anthropology having to share space with, for example, sociology and political science here, nationalism seems to belong more to history and political science, though these disciplinary boundaries have not been sustained in the longer term. Thirdly, while nationalism may be interesting as an academic topic of study, on the whole it has not proved popular with academics, who see in it at best a crude exclusivity potentially denying humanity to others, and at worst the extremism of genocide. Not that there has been any shortage of theories of nationalism. Perhaps the two most often cited in anthropology are by Gellner (especially 1983, but also 1996) and Anderson (1983). For Gellner, nationalism was first and foremost a tool of the rise of the European middle classes to power in the nineteenth century, just as much as capitalism, industry and constitutionalism. Through this movement, coupled with the First World War, outmoded multi-ethnic, dynastic, largely agrarian states like Russia, Austria–Hungary, Turkey and to a lesser extent Germany collapsed into new and often tiny nation states taken from their component ethnic units.3 Although Gellner stressed economic and political factors, he also recognized the importance of culture: high culture already in the long-united states of the far west of Europe (France, Britain, Spain and Portugal), and often deliberately created or modified folk culture being adopted as high culture, and turned into it elsewhere. Although nationalism does not efface class, it glosses over it where it can to produce cultural and ideological unity – gone are the deep cultural differences that gave definition to class in the agrarian dynastic states. For Anderson, the emphasis is on post-colonial states outside Europe, and on cultural metaphors of the fatherland, as well as on the unifying influence of print capitalism, in which everyone reads about the nation’s affairs in the same newspapers at about the same times of day – around the breakfast table or in the evening by the fire. Most famously, nations are ‘imagined communities’: institutions with a community feeling, which has to be imagined

Introduction • 5

because no face-to-face event typical of the national community can bring all the nation’s citizens together.4 A variant theory of nationalism that is not found with ethnicity is the perennialism of Anthony Smith. Keen to eschew a pure primordialism in favour of a creationist view not dissimilar from those of Gellner and Anderson, Smith (e.g. 1986) nonetheless points out that certain ethnies (he routinely uses the French word) have such a long history that they appear to have always been around – like the Chinese, Japanese, Greeks, Jews and Persians. Even in these cases, though, there is enough evidence to indicate that these identities too have specific historical foundations, and have changed through history (e.g. Just 1989 on Greeks; Farrokh 2007 on Persians). A more recent study of Basque nationalism (MacClancy 2007) emphasizes culture over considerations of economics, politics or identity alone, partly in order to make the claim that this is the area in which the anthropologist can most usefully make his or her mark. MacClancy also makes a useful point about the nation and time: while some aspects of Basque identity, which never fails to emphasize its supposed uniqueness, certainly take one back to the Neanderthals of the Palaeolithic by referring to palaeontology and biology, other aspects stress uniqueness within modernity, as with evolving Basque tastes in cooking, football and art. This can be seen in other national identities too.

Borders The big names in the anthropological study of borders in recent times have been Hastings Donnan and Thomas Wilson (especially 1999; also Donnan and Wilson 1994, Wilson and Donnan 1998, both edited volumes), but Liam O’Dowd (2001), a sociologist and long-time researcher of the Republic of Ireland’s border with the north, has also provided some significant insights. As with virtually all commentators on borders, we meet the unexceptional observation that they bring people together as much as divide them, with the qualification in O’Dowd’s case that any attempt to make a border more permeable reduces its significance. Much work, of course, has been directed at activities that are indeed often seen as challenging the integrity and significance of particular borders, such as cross-border trading, especially smuggling, migration and even tourism, as well as how border communities are themselves constituted (see Donnan and Wilson 1999 for a thorough discussion). At the same time, for O’Dowd borders are also fundamentally undemocratic institutions even in an otherwise democratic Europe, as they owe their existence and their exact configurations more to past wars than to democratic approval; yet even liberal democracies need them in order

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to know whom to distribute rights and duties to as national citizens. With their extensive apparatuses of control, they are also, for Donnan and Wilson, symbols of the state’s power, and sites of perhaps the most intense degree of official scrutiny that the law-abiding citizen is ever likely to encounter. Nonetheless, local officials too may aim to reduce the significance of particular national borders, in which case they may come into conflict with border guards and other police officials representing the state as a whole. In Europe, they are doing this particularly through the creation of cross-border regions. This goes way beyond the shortening of border queues or sending rescue services across the border to help with an emergency. O’Dowd neatly sums up their significance: Although most trans-frontier regions are created for pragmatic or instrumental reasons to access EU funding as a means of addressing shared environmental, planning or economic development problems, it may be argued that their real significance lies elsewhere [as] cross-national policy communities, advocacy and discourse coalitions, epistemic communities where the logic of communicative action, discourse and consensus creation may be just as important as the logic of instrumental action. (O’Dowd 2001: 103, after Risse-Kappen, reference removed)

Certainly all cross-border links between Poland and Germany seem to exist at least in part to celebrate themselves as well as to pursue practical concerns in the narrow sense, and they may even have a higher ‘enjoyment’ quotient for the officials involved than any real instrumentality. As O’Dowd also points out, the significance of cross-border regions and other links is frequently exaggerated by their supporters, whose core often consists of a local and rather unrepresentative elite of businessmen and officials, and they are generally woefully under-resourced. In fact, most of the foregoing remarks can apply to the present ethnographic situation, and I will not pursue them further here.

The Polish–German Border: Previous Work The Oder–Neisse line, named after the two rivers that constitute the postSecond World War border between Poland and Germany, was a border between two diplomatic allies in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe, but also a sharp ethnic and linguistic border, official relations between two socialist ‘brothers’ occluding the hostility engendered by the late war, and the largely one-sided killing that had been committed during it. However, initially in 1945, after the Polish authorities had managed to take over their ‘new territories’ from Germany, the respective authorities in

Introduction • 7

the twin towns along the border realized that they needed a modicum of cooperation just for practical reasons, despite the inevitable lingering hostility to one another. This was partly because key infrastructure, especially that controlling the river system, including sewage disposal, was located on both sides of the border. But also, Germany had skills needed on the Polish side, while Poland could reciprocate with its better food provision. This flexibility was ended by the founding of the GDR in 1949, which closed the border more firmly and consistently. Between Gomułka returning to power in Poland in 1956 and 1967, there was another period of greater flexibility; it was repeated from 1970 to 1980, a period of Germans trading their ­textiles and manufactured goods for cheap Polish food. However, in 1980 the GDR government took fright at the legalization of the Solidarity opposition in Poland and firmly closed the border again – and it remained so until ­liberation in 1989/90. In these periods of greater flexibility, Poles ­especially crossed the border to work, and for shopping and tourism, and inter-ethnic marriages were also conducted in some numbers, usually between German men and Polish women. However, there was some resentment on the German side at Poles buying up all the food (as they saw it), and there were reports of German shopkeepers refusing to sell certain items to Poles.5 Although popular with other disciplines, this border has not received much attention from anthropologists thus far, exceptions being Andrew Asher (2011, 2012), who worked in Frankfurt and Słubice, and Małgorzata Irek (2001), who inter alia wrote on the Dreiländereck further south, where Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic meet, and its main city of Görlitz/ Zgorzelec. In this twin city between Germany and Poland, cross-border cooperation seemed both plentiful and effective; on the Polish side, Zgorzelec was capable of significant freedom and agency in dealing with its bigger German twin. Briefly comparing the situation in the cross-border urban area at Frankfurt an der Oder and Słubice, Irek found that cooperation was much less frequent and/or effective, that there was official reluctance to talk about it very much, and that Słubice – much smaller and less powerful compared to its much bigger German neighbour – relied excessively on the cross-border trade and therefore on decisions made in Frankfurt. This difference suggests that local strategies were needed, tailor-made for each case, rather than attempts at blanket solutions to supposedly uniform problems. Irek also gives reasons for the success of such initiatives: The success of those initiatives depends mainly on the urgency of its problems, the degree of economic necessity, the common sense of local authorities, and the goodwill of inhabitants. The initiatives can be facilitated or made more difficult by the international political climate and the degree of understanding

8  •  White Eagle, Black Eagle

between the respective governments responsible for creating a legal framework for bilateral contacts between the local populations.6 (Irek 2001: 218)

However, a later paper on this twin city by Sandberg (2009), reporting research with schoolchildren aged sixteen and seventeen on both sides, indicated that many of them only crossed the border infrequently, and that there were clear barriers between them, not least language: while many of the Polish pupils spoke some English as well as Polish, none of the German pupils spoke either language, making contact difficult. Sandberg’s research was conducted not in the classroom, but during walks through either town; few of these ‘walking interviews’ crossed the border. Asher, who did most of his fieldwork in Frankfurt and Słubice from 2003 to 2006, during the period of Poland’s EU entry, emphasizes both the problems of applying the idea of European citizenship in the face of popular scepticism and outright opposition, and the funding support for border cooperation through the EU’s PHARE and INTERREG programmes. In Frankfurt and Słubice, most cross-border cooperation is official, though there is now much more cross-border shopping, especially by Germans going to Poland to buy more cheaply. These economic disparities also occurred under socialism, when the movement was in the opposite direction: some Poles experiencing shortages were able to work in East Germany, which was relatively well stocked for an East European state under socialism and could therefore support families over the border. Conversely there was still little in the way of cross-border residence when Asher was doing fieldwork because of the excessive rents charged for housing on the German side of the border, despite its greater availability. The same applied to employment, partly because of legal restrictions, which some entrepreneurial Poles ‘got round’ by simply ignoring the applicable laws (Asher 2011). Asher’s other paper (2012) reports on an informal attempt by an enthusiast for Europeanization to get the Frankfurt/Słubice conurbation recognized as a unitary city under the newly coined name of ‘Słubfurt’, as in the days before the Second World War, when Słubice was the Frankfurt suburb of Dammvorstadt over the river Oder/Odra. Although he achieved some modest symbolic success, his initiative was not taken seriously enough to be implemented by the authorities on either side of the border. Serrier (2013: 212) mentions a similar initiative by the writer Andrzej Zawada from Wrocław, Silesia, to combine the present name of the city with Breslau, its name in the German period, producing ‘Bresław’. Much of this work has been produced by disciplines other than anthropology, such as sociology, political science and economics. Stefan Krätke, for example, wrote about the economic prospects opened up by the lifting of border restrictions generally in the context of what was then merely Poland’s planned entry to the EU with a series of papers written in the 1990s (1996,

Introduction • 9

1998, 1999). He tended to be pessimistic about the success of cross-border trade and industry, pointing out that not all such activities benefit border regions; he emphasized that the pull of inland cities like Poznań had been more successful in attracting inward investment than the border towns. Moreover, whereas what the Polish side of the border needed, according to him, were high-grade businesses relying on innovation, what it actually had were a number of so-called ‘bazaar economies’ based on large informal or semi-formal markets attracting Germans over the border for cheap shopping. He also pointed out the tensions and impediments to cooperation between Germans and Poles caused by West German firms coming to Poland to take advantage of cheap labour and by a residual lack of trust and stereotyping on both sides that saw, for example, Germans as arrogant, and Poles as thieves. Hence the perceived need for so-called Euroregions as forums for encouraging cooperation.7 The wider situation in which he wrote was one of massive deindustrialization, farming decline, and population flight on the German side of the border, but not so much in western Poland. However, there was still a severe asymmetry between the two sides in terms of wages and spending power: in the 1990s, the ratio of German to Polish wages was generally in the region of 8 to 1 (Dürreschmidt 2006: 249). Eastern Germany, after all, had rich uncles to support it in the more prosperous west of the country and the EU, which Poland conspicuously lacked until it joined the EU in 2004 and could begin to draw on EU funding for itself. Another text published before Poland’s EU entry is by Ann Kennard (1995), who specifically advocated the formation of a cross-border region between Germany and Poland, and described both attempts to provide quite sophisticated institutions for the new Euroregions and the linking of borders such as these with regions through EU funding (the PHARE and INTERREG programmes). Like some other authors, Jorg Dürreschmidt (2002), who worked in the twin city of Guben/Gubin, drew attention to the scepticism and lack of support for cross-border cooperation and institutions among the ordinary population compared with the often extravagant official enthusiasm for them, due to old suspicions, stereotyping and a lack of trust between ordinary Poles and Germans. In a joint paper between Dürreschmidt and Ulf Matthiesen (2002), the authors remark: ‘[S]o far, there is little evidence of a bottom-up Europeanization of Guben’s everyday culture’, but rather a process of ‘cultural closure’ (ibid.: 20). This is at least partly due to the presence along the border of ‘one of the most pronounced language barriers in Europe’ (ibid.: 19). Later in the paper they again draw attention to the gaps between official and popular perspectives, as the former do not match the latter’s perceptions of reality. Practically all the two sides can agree on is that they live in a dying town that does not even have a proper town centre (ibid.: 35ff.).

10  •  White Eagle, Black Eagle

Similar observations are made in a separate paper Matthiesen wrote with Hans-Joachim Bürkner (2001). They highlight the fear among Poles of Germans being able to buy up Polish land after EU entry and returning Poland’s ‘new territories’, won in 1945, to Germany; nonetheless, in general Poles saw the opening of the border as an opportunity, while Germans saw it as a threat. They also show how German politicians began to be criticized for showing undue consideration to their Polish opposite numbers in negotiations over cross-border cooperation, and for focusing too much on issues of ‘culture’ rather than on encouraging business investment. One mayor was threatened with recall at one point over this issue; and while he survived this, he was defeated at the next election. Despite this latent antagonism, Dürreschmidt (2002) found that there had been a number of Polish–German marriages over the years, some dating back to the time under socialism when some Poles were authorized to commute to Germany to work. This may lead Germans in these marriages to a bifocal vision of the Poles who are their neighbours, accepting those within the wider family into which they have married, but still condemning Poles as a depersonalized category with the aid of the usual stereotypes. In another paper (2006), Dürreschmidt’s criticisms of the administrative failures of cross-border relations in the period between the fall of socialism in 1989/90 and the extension of the EU eastwards in 2004 extend to the Euroregions, set up along the border in the early 1990s (ibid.: 250; see also above, note 7): [M]ore than a decade after their foundation, observers have come to the somewhat sobering assessment that with their emphasis on infrastructural projects, such as water refinement plants, for example, as well as their adherence to national administrative hierarchies, Euroregions have done little for cultural integration on the ground. Thus, a huge gap has developed between the programmatic objectives – which also included the promotion of a sense of European identity and state subsidies aimed at fostering a translocal civil-society infrastructure – and the results so far achieved … The identity-generating power of projects such as the Euroregions, or the declaration of twin cities as ‘Model Eurotowns’, has been grossly overestimated. Instead, they have turned into self-referential political projects without ever gaining the necessary grassroots support from the everyday cultures on both sides of the border. (Dürreschmidt 2006)

While cross-border festivals were popular, they represented only limited and temporary success while they were being put on: not even they led to significant gains in cross-border contact and understanding among individuals (ibid.: 251). Cecilia Chessa (2004) has dealt much more comprehensively with the place of civil-society organizations like Euroregions in respect of the twin

Introduction • 11

city of Frankfurt/Słublice, located north of Guben/Gubin and near the most important motorway border crossing for general traffic (there is also an urban crossing, which links the two towns directly). Most such organizations had funding problems, but on the German side the government stepped in, a benefit the Polish side did not really have, apart from any spillover effects of German cross-border activity. There were therefore more initiatives on the German side, which had the support of a much richer government and EU membership, which until 2004, the date of Chessa’s paper, the Polish side lacked. However, German government funding meant that only semipublic organizations with a clear aim to improve cross-border cooperation were recognized: private foundations of a general sort and individuals could not benefit. As for the local Euroregion, setting one up became a condition of funding under the EU’s INTERREG II programme, which led in turn to many civil-society organizations being created so they could sign the INTERREG II contract. Other organizations included the Bez Granic/ Ohne Grenzen (‘without boundaries’) youth group and a number of women’s groups. Generally, Chessa says, these organizations had some success, if only because their activities lifted the gloom somewhat over the lack of progress in the region, despite all the official promises.

The Remaining Chapters Geographically, the major ethnographic focuses in the book are Silesia and Ziemia Lubuskie (western Poland), both of which can be considered regions of Poland, as well as connections (especially of the former) with the German city of Berlin, the ‘big lights’ city for many in western Poland in particular, and the history of Polish migration to Germany since the nineteenth century. The Silesian case has been covered well enough for the available literature to form the basis of my description of what is going on there. However, in the case of Ziemia Lubuska my own original ethnography will be exploited. Other chapters draw more on published historical sources. In certain cases discussed throughout the book, I have refrained from identifying a particular town or village where I feel there are sensitivities compelling it to be anonymized. The identities of individuals have also been concealed unless their names are already in the public domain for other reasons. Chapters 1 and 2 review the history of German–Polish relations, partly from the point of view of their respective states, but also as a matter of relations between peoples, as well as state policy towards the other nationality as a population. Chapter 1 covers the Middle Ages and the early modern period up to the end of the Second World War. Chapter 2 continues with the interwar period, the war itself, and the experience of German refugees in

12  •  White Eagle, Black Eagle

West Germany since that war, and it ends with a short section on German nostalgia and irredentism for the lost lands in the east. Chapter 3 looks at German and Polish national and regional identities today. While national identities should be readily understood, one can identify strong regional identities in both countries, but especially perhaps Germany, that still partake of the major nationalism: that is, they are not ethnically different from the latter. I therefore see them as segmented with the national identity rather than opposed to it by a clear conceptual barrier (see above). I do not discuss all such possible identities, but select mainly those along the border, namely eastern Germany (formerly a separate state) and Lubuskie in Poland. The final section looks at the circumstances of switching between identities as Pole and German, and vice versa. Chapter 4 considers Polish migration to Germany both historically and in the present day. A major focus is on the city of Berlin, the big-city magnet for Poles, especially those in western Poland, as it is associated with the more prosperous West, and is also nearer than Warsaw. One section looks at German attitudes to Berlin itself; since reunification it has become the national capital again, but it is also considered a bit of a frontier town, with points east progressively becoming more exoticized and orientalized. Chapter 5 considers another region in Poland with strong ties to Germany, namely the western province of Ziemia Lubuska. This province is characterized to an extent by migration and day-to-day cross-border traffic with Germany, but strong views in the latter about it having formerly been a part of Germany generally seem to be lacking. In this sense it forms a contrast with Silesia, which is subject to much stronger German irredentism, or Pomerania or the former East Prussia, neither of which are dealt with in this book (cf. Dönhoff 2010). Another difference is that most of the current population are descended from those who came from elsewhere in Poland or from the territories lost to the Soviet Union after the war, and who replaced the German population, who either fled or were expelled. Chapter 6 links identity issues in western Poland with the reforms of local government introduced in Poland in 1999, asking what impact the latter has had on the former. Some of the consequences of these reforms are described in general terms, but recent cross-border relations between officials especially are also considered against the background of Poland’s entry into the EU and the practical removal of the border by virtue of the Schengen agreement. One example of cross-border cooperation between ordinary citizens of Poland and Germany, and its fate, is also described. Chapter 7 focuses mainly on the question of Silesian identity, both historically and today, asking whether it can be considered Polish, German or something else entirely. There have been shifts in that identity historically, but a specific Silesian identity is certainly being promoted in some quarters

Introduction • 13

today, even if it has to use German or Polish to explain itself. There is also an acknowledged German population in Silesia, in and around the town of Opole (now a separate Polish province). Stray remarks also apply to other areas of Poland subject to German nostalgia or irredentism, but the main focus is on this particular region, which has changed hands several times throughout its history. It forms a comparison with the data on Ziemia Lubuska in the previous two chapters. Chapter 8 briefly brings things up to date following further periods of fieldwork in 2010 and 2014. The main finding of the chapter is that the initial enthusiasm in some quarters for cross-border cooperation seems to have cooled somewhat, as some such activities have died a death, while others have been ‘routinized’. Chapter 9 offers a brief conclusion. Most of the first half of the book is based on historical and anthropological literature published in English, German and Polish. The weight of the sources in the second half is my own intermittent periods of fieldwork, mostly conducted in Poland with Polish-speaking officials, though I did also perform some interviews and attend some meetings on the German side of the border. As my German is better than my Polish, I was able to act alone with German informants but required an interpreter to deal with Polish ones (see Acknowledgements section below). Partly because of the vagaries of library access at the time of the research, especially in obtaining Polish sources, I have cited more texts in German than in Polish, and more in English than in either language. This gap has hopefully been made good by fieldwork. Although parts of this book have previously appeared in print, the papers concerned have been somewhat broken up in the process of their reproduction here, so it has not been possible to associate them as wholes with particular chapters in the book (it is mainly chapters 3, 5 and 6 that are affected); see Parkin 2002,8 2013a9 and 2013b.10 All quotations from German in the text have been translated into English by myself. Most of the names of individuals and many geographical names have been avoided in the text, in line with current standards of anonymization.

The Research and Acknowledgements Lastly, I offer a brief account of how the ethnographic research on which this book is based was conducted, coupled with appropriate acknowledgements. Initial fieldwork was carried out between February and September 2002 – that is, for Poland, pre-EU entry and pre-Schengen – and was funded by the Max Planck Society, through the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany. I am most grateful to Prof. Chris Hann, then

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co-director of this institute, for arranging the funding during this period and for supporting my research generally, as well as to his staff for their unfailing aid. The core of the research consisted of interviews with officials at all levels of administration in Poland, particularly where they were concerned with cross-border relations, as well as many of their opposite numbers in Germany; I am grateful to them all for their time and trouble. I was able to sit in on some meetings and often given copious amounts of publicity material and other literature to take away with me. Other reflections are based on more casual conversations with new and existing acquaintances in Poland, including journalists and local politicians, but also ordinary people. As already noted, further, briefer, privately financed fieldwork was conducted on trips to Poland in 2010 and 2014. A plan to conduct a short period of fieldwork in Silesia in 2019 had to be aborted because of the coronavirus pandemic. I would particularly like to acknowledge the invaluable aid of Maciej Irek, who acted as my field assistant during these periods of fieldwork. As well as getting us into offices for interviews without appointments and interpreting for me, he showed an excellent grasp of the issues involved, as well as of Polish politics generally, and provided me with many useful insights. Małgorzata Irek, whose work is cited above, also furthered my understanding of these issues, helped me with some interviews, and read a complete draft of the book. Special thanks are due to both. In addition to the published papers already cited at the end of the last section of this chapter, other presentations relating to this research were given to the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, on 23 September 2002 (see Parkin 2002), the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, on 8 November 2002, and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, August 2014. I also acknowledge with thanks the suggestions of those who reviewed this book for the press, suggestions I have taken seriously even when deciding not to incorporate them. Responsibility for this text is therefore mine alone.

Notes   1. Certainly all three former empires survived as republics, but under very different nonimperial regimes.   2. I realize that this is to paint the situation with a broad brush. McDonald makes it clear that not all Bretons stress their ethnic identity to that extent, while MacClancy seems to be saying that some Navarrese do see themselves as ethnically different from the Castilian Spanish, while also stressing ambiguity and uncertainty on the part of some of his informants. The same could conceivably be or become true of the Norman identity, perhaps

Introduction • 15

 3.

  4.

 5.   6.

  7.

  8.   9. 10.

on the basis of its ‘Norse’ origins dating back to Count Rollo’s invasion of France in ad 911. This process repeated itself with a vengeance after the collapse of communism in 1989/90, which within a few years had led to the break-up of other multi-ethnic states like the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, though not Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria or Albania. It left Germany and Poland untouched in this sense, and Germany even experienced territorial growth through reunification in 1991. There has been a tendency to extend use of Anderson’s phrase ‘imagined communities’ to other social situations that are quite different from what he intended. Almost any aspect of the social can be considered ‘imagined’ at some level, and it only dilutes the force of the original meaning of the term to extend it to everything. Through no fault of Anderson’s it has, in short, become something of a cliché. This paragraph is based on Dürreschmidt and Matthiessen 2002, Chessa 2004, Ładykowska and Ładykowski 2013, and Szytniewski 2013. Irek has also worked on Polish migration to Western countries generally, including the UK and Germany, and on Poles conducting informal trade across Eastern Europe both before and after the fall of communism (Irek 1998, 2018). She has also criticized what she sees as the existing tendency in migration studies to treat social groups and networks as over-concrete and over-bounded, and to favour a hierarchical, vertical perspective over one characterized by more realistic assumptions and practices of equality and horizontality. Her major work is now 2018, but see also 2009, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016. Euroregions, originally set up in the German–Dutch borderlands, are essentially nonofficial cross-border regions, generally but not always within the EU. The Polish–German border has four of them, including those centred on Guben/Gubin and Frankfurt/ Słubice. While often staffed by local government officers, giving them close links with the formal administration, they are unofficial bodies with rather the status of NGOs. Their basic goal is to improve cross-border relations in their area in anything from education and culture to controlling the rivers Oder and Neisse as an international border. See the section on Euroregions in Ch. 6. Permission received, with thanks, from Prof. Chris Hann, emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany, and formerly editor of the institute’s Working Papers series. Permission received, with thanks, from Berghahn Books. Permission received, with thanks, from Berghahn Journals.

Chapter 1

The Historical Foundations of German–Polish Relations I From the Beginnings to the First World War

? An Overview of German and Polish Origins and Relations We cannot be very certain about the ethnic origins of either the Germans or the Poles. Linguistically their respective languages represent different branches of common Indo-European – but language and ethnicity, though bedfellows, have swapped beds quite frequently in history. To pin down a time and place where we can start talking about either nationality is a matter of myth more than of history. Nonetheless, peoples known as ‘Germans’ certainly emerge in written history (e.g. in Tacitus’s Germania) as ‘barbarians’ beyond the Rhine and Danube, threatening the Roman Empire. They were, as we know, eventually to break through the frontier and bring the Western Empire, based on Rome itself, to an end in ad 472, almost a thousand years before the Turks overwhelmed the eastern or Byzantine Empire and captured Constantinople (formerly Byzantium) in ad 1453. One Germanic group, the Vandals, went on to conquer North Africa, eventually to be vanquished by Eastern Emperor Justinian’s general Belasarius in the sixth century; others, especially the Visigoths, remained in Spain, only to be pushed back by the invading Moors after 711, after which they disappear from history, their descendants re-emerging centuries later, mixed with the earlier Romanized population, as Spaniards and Portuguese. Medieval and modern Germany, however, was and is a central European power. Those Germanic speakers, like the Franks, who settled in Gaul

From the Beginnings to the First World War  •  17

eventually adopted the Latin speech of their subjects, giving rise in the course of time to the French language, culture and state. This did not happen on the other side of the Rhine, where there had been no permanent Roman settlement and therefore no Latin speech. This area thus remained Germanic linguistically. However, political unity between the two sides of the Rhine was eventually established for a short period. United under Charlemagne as a single empire (from Christmas ad 800 as the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted until its abolition by Napoleon in 1806, by then long a mere shadow of its former self ), it began German expansion backwards, as it were, to the east,1 conquering and Christianizing the heathen Saxons. However, the territories on the two sides of the Rhine were divided among Charlemagne’s successors, whose respective lands happened to fall conveniently on either side of the linguistic divide (Previté-Orton 1952). We may date to the late ninth century, therefore, the genesis of the later states of France and Germany, whose troubled relations dominate so much of subsequent European history. The origins of the Poles are perhaps somewhat more obscure, but it is generally agreed that they represent one of a number of Slavonic tribes who had entered the area between the rivers Vistula and Oder by the eighth century, reaching the Elbe a little later. The possibility that they replaced Germanic peoples moving westwards is often glossed over in Polish national history, though these peoples were Goths (long in possession of presentday Pomerania, from about 1000 bc until the time of Christ) rather than Germans as later understood (Dönhoff 2010: 112). A significant date is ad 965, when the first Piast ruler of Poland, Mieszko I, married a Czech princess, and accepted Christianity a year later; we may assume that the kingdom was already in existence at that time. Hannan (1996: 19) argues that Mieszko’s acceptance of Christianity from the Czechs rather than the Germans was intended as a counter to German moves to dominate their eastern Slav neighbours. Otto I of Germany had recently set up the archbishopric of Magdeburg to act as an agency for the conversion of the Slavs and thus for exerting pressure and control over them. This may have a connection with the ‘German law’ of the so-called Magdeburger Recht, under which German settlers were received by Slav rulers in the Middle Ages. The name ‘Poland’ is sometimes derived from pole, ‘field’, while the myth of Lech, Czech and Rus is often invoked as an origin myth – Lech the Pole, Czech the Czech, Rus the Russian.2 The first Polish capital was at either Gniezno or Poznań to its west, and is a matter of dispute between these two cities, but Kraków became the capital later and is still the traditional resting place of the later Polish kings (Poznań has the remains of the earlier ones), as well as of some modern leaders like Piłsudski (ob. 1935). Only much later did Warsaw become the capital of a by now definitive Polish state.

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At its greatest extent in the early seventeenth century, the Polish– Lithuanian Commonwealth stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea and was seen as the main bulwark against the Turks. Eventually, however, not least because of its dysfunctional constitution,3 it fell prey to more powerful neighbours, disappearing in three partitions into Russia, Prussia and Austria in the late eighteenth century.4 It was not revived until 1918, after the collapse and, in Austria’s case, the dissolution of these powers through war and revolution in 1917/18. Although the late eighteenth-century partitions themselves were scarcely resisted by Poles,5 it was in this period of partition that Polish nationalism was crystallized, as the earlier period of independence had been one of a multinational commonwealth, including for a time the Polish–Lithuanian joint monarchy. The nineteenth century, however, was the century of nationalism, and Poland took part in it fully, the nationalism that developed being mixed with religious imagery, with Poland often being compared to the suffering Christ. Influential here were the novels of Henryk Sienkiewicz, for which he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1905 and which ostensibly dealt with the persecution of Christians in ancient Rome, but which were generally seen as an allegory for the experience of Poles under foreign rule.6 This helps to explain the central role the Catholic Church later played as a bulwark of resistance to socialism. The post-war Polish republic was democratic until 1926 and again after 1935, the years between being dominated by Piłsudski’s quasi-dictatorship, directed diplomatically more against Russia than Germany. Throughout, though, Poland was an ethnically mixed and conflicted state, with Germans, Jews, Lithuanians and Ukrainians living alongside Poles, who were still in the majority overall. The Second World War brought about a fourth partition, this time between Germany and the Soviet Union as a consequence of the Nazi–Soviet Pact of 1939, followed by total German conquest as a preparation for Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union, launched in 1941. Restored to nominal independence in 1945, in reality Poland remained confined in the Soviet bloc until 1989, having also lost territory to the Soviet Union and gained a lesser amount from Germany as compensation in the post-war settlement. It also became a much more homogeneous Polish state, its minorities having been reduced in number by boundary revisions, the expulsion and/or dispersal of Germans and Ukrainians, and the Nazi extermination of the Jews. The deal concluded between the regime and Solidarność in 1989 had much to do with starting off the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe in the next year or so. Although burdened by government debt to Western banks and governments, Poland emerged from communism in a better condition than many East European states, due partly to the informal economic activities of many of its citizens under communism. Freer to travel

From the Beginnings to the First World War  •  19

outside the country than citizens of most other states (apart from Yugoslavs), Poles undertook the carrying trade (chiefly through smuggling) across the bloc, gaining experience that many converted into legal trade and other economic activities after 1989, and the introduction of a free-market economy (Irek 1998, 2018). One aspect of the division of Europe by the Iron Curtain after 1945 was the disappearance of the notion of Central Europe and its replacement by a clear distinction between East and West. That has still not entirely disappeared, as Rada (2001) has shown. Nonetheless, the post-1989 picture is very different. Germany’s own reunification exemplifies in itself the restoration of Central Europe, a region to which Poland also feels it belongs, despite being seen as part of the ‘East’ by Germans and other westerners. For many Poles, the East is Russia, with all that implies for notions of superiority and civilization versus inferiority and a semi-Asiatic semi-barbarism, especially following the 2022 war between Russia and its neighbour Ukraine. As of 2022, differences still remained, however – partly because of the current Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice Party) government’s claims against Germany for more compensation for the destruction caused by the Second World War, and partly because the PiS appears to be taking Poland away from broader European values, especially in respect of the administration of justice, but also in its patent homophobic and otherwise illiberal populism and alliance with a very socially conservative Catholic Church.

The Early History of German–Polish Relations and Its Consequences Despite Charlemagne’s conquests and other wars, not all German expansion to the east was violent or contentious. Much settlement, from both Germany proper and the Netherlands, was peaceful and promoted by Polish rulers. In the Middle Ages, the German Drang nach Osten was matched by the desire of Polish princes for the benefits of Westernization, which then principally meant towns, markets and more efficient forms of agriculture, with a legal regime to match (especially the so-called Magdeburger Recht or Magdeburg law, named after the east German city). Many migrants were not conquering soldiers but farmers, merchants and artisans invited by local rulers, both clerical and lay (cf. Knefelkamp 1998). It was through such population movements that ethnic Germans crept eastwards, some German and Polish identities becoming mixed, some Germans becoming Polonized, some Poles Germanized, in later generations and centuries, depending on the area and circumstances of settlement, which must have included many inter-ethnic marriages. Although many Germans and Flemings (from Flanders) had

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migrated as farmers, in time the towns became more thoroughly German than the countryside. Also to be added to the ethnic mix at this time and later were the substantial populations of Jews who sought a refuge in these areas from persecution elsewhere in Europe, and were welcomed by early Polish rulers. Despite their non-Christian religion and Yiddish speech (a creole language based on German), in many ways they formed a cultural bridge between Poles and Germans throughout most of this history. Their disappearance through extermination in the Second World War radically changed these areas thereafter, emphasizing the gap between Slav and Teuton. For writers as varied as Elwert (1991) and Schlögel (2001: 43) they were the most significant carriers of German culture, both throughout history and across Europe. The Germanization of the East was thus the dominant trend in much of this history, though there are clear regional differences between, for example, Silesia, Pomerania, Brandenburg and Prussia, Silesia itself soon being divided. Peuckert traces the division between Upper Silesia in the east (around Katowice) and Lower Silesia in the west (around Wrocław) back to the twelfth century (Peuckert 1950: 316), while Hannan (1996: 26) puts the date at 1201, although the names designating them only originated in 1466. In the fourteenth century, Silesia was a Polish duchy and later a Czech fiefdom, before finally becoming part of the Czech kingdom and, ipso facto, of the Holy Roman Empire. In the sixteenth century, the Czech kingdom, including Lower Silesia, became part of the Austrian Habsburg Empire, Lower Silesia later falling to Brandenburg-Prussia after Frederick the Great acquired it from Austria through conquest in 1742. It remained in German hands as part of the second and third reichs until 1945.7 Upper Silesia, whose eastern section was handed over to Poland by the Allies in 1921,8 had a different history, being Polish from the fifteenth century until the eighteenth-century partitions, when it became part of Austria (Jablonowski 1972: 396–97). Although given up by Poland early, in the fourteenth century (Broszat 1963: 10; Jablonowski 1972: 396), Lower Silesia did not become part of Prussia/Germany until relatively recent times. However, its Germanization dates from the late twelfth century, earlier than any other region of Poland, when local princes and monks encouraged settlement from the west (Jedlicki 1950; Peuckert 1950: 70–71; Broszat 1963: 10). The German historian Jablonowski (1972: 395–96) saw this development as a precondition for its later separation, and Broszat (1963: 10) argued that subsequently the Polish population in this region was reduced to the status of an underclass and/or was Germanized. Since 1989 it has been the area most subject to German irredentism. For the nineteenth century, to be sure, Jablonowski (1972: 267) is able to quote figures showing virtually the entire population of Lower

From the Beginnings to the First World War  •  21

and Middle Silesia to have been German, and close to 50 per cent in Upper Silesia. But in 1945 these regions saw a virtually complete replacement of population, as Poles from the lost eastern territories and an overpopulated and largely destroyed Warsaw replaced the departing Germans. The city of Wrocław (German Breslau), for instance, was almost entirely repopulated by the inhabitants of the then still Polish city of Lwów (Ukrainian Lviv, German Lemberg), now in the western Ukraine (Schlögel 2002: 229), who themselves were replaced by Soviet citizens. Only in and around the town of Opole did substantial populations of Germans survive the 1945 expulsions, and then only by hiding their identities for several years around this period.9 Many more left voluntarily when they could, especially in the 1970s as a result of specific German–Polish accords, but also in and after 1989. Nonetheless, the Germans of the province of Opole remain Poland’s most substantial localized ethnic minority. Further north, Polish control over Pomerania/Pomorze10 was exercised intermittently from the foundation of the kingdom in 990. It was weakened through the activities of the Teutonic Knights in the region, who had originally been called in by the ruler of Masovia/Mazowsze to fight pagan Prussians,11 but eventually obtained control of East Prussia for themselves. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Poland had difficulties in retaining access to the Baltic Sea, which it finally recovered in 1466 by the Second Peace of Thorn/Toruń (Broszat 1963: 11), which also made the Teutonic Knights vassals of the Polish king for the next two hundred years (Dönhoff 2010: 128). Polish recovery of the Lower Vistula region, known as Pommerellen in German, thus split the Order’s statelet in two, but Pommerellen retained its German character (Jablonowski 1972: 403–5). It finally became part of Brandenburg–Prussia by the First Partition of Poland in 1772 (apart from its chief city, Danzig/Gdańsk, added in 1793), thus filling in the gap in Prussian control between East Prussia (based on Königsberg, now the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad) and the rest of Brandenburg (ibid.: 406). Hinterpommern, the coastal area immediately to the east of the river Oder/Odra, became part of the Electorate of Brandenburg in the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and remained in its or its successors’ hands (Prussia, Germany) until 1945.12 This made Polish access to the sea awkward after liberation in 1919, necessitating the establishment of a Polish corridor and of Danzig as a free port to penetrate the otherwise complete German control of the coast. The ‘Danzig Question’ was one of the most contentious issues in German–Polish relations between the world wars, being exploited politically by both sides (Jedlicki 1950; Jablonowski 1972). East Prussia became part of the Hohenzollern Land of Brandenburg through inheritance in 1618, following the secularization of the Teutonic Knights in 1525. Polish claims to it were finally given up in the mid-seventeenth century (Broszat 1963: 11–13;

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Jablonowski 1972: 404). Jablonowski asserts that these claims were hard to sustain anyway, because much of the land here had been taken from powers and peoples other than the Poles.13 Again, the annexation of these lands by Brandenburg was preceded by German settlement, which thoroughly Germanized many of them (Jablonowski 1972: 399–400). Dönhoff claims that there were no Poles in the Corridor or Hinterpommern before 1945 apart from seasonal workers and some border settlements; accordingly, she says, unlike in Silesia and Poznań, there was no history of Poles and Germans living side by side here (Dönhoff 2010: 258). Similarly, Jablonowski (1972: 265–66) quotes figures of 70 per cent German-speaking populations in the nineteenth century in West Prussia and 80–90 per cent in East Prussia, compared with under 50 per cent in Poznań, an area of high Polish activism, especially under Bismarck (like, however, West Prussia). Here, Jablonowski shows an unwillingness to count Masurans, Kashubians or even Poles who opted to join Germany in the post-First World War plebiscites as true Poles, contrary to his Polish colleagues (ibid.: 271–72). The reasons he gives are various, and contradictory. The Masurans/Mazurzy descendants of medieval settlers into East Prussia from Polish Masovia/Mazowsze are to be separated because they opted for German rule in 1920 (ibid.: 269), though originally they were a Polish dialect group (ibid.: 265). Similar is the case of Upper Silesian Poles (plebiscite 1921), though their dialect is even more closely related to High Polish. The Kashubans/Kaszubi, conversely, whose leaning towards Polishness is recognized, are to be separated because of their origins as a ‘small West Slav folk group’ with a distinct, if now heavily Polonized language. Their association with Poles is therefore regarded as ‘uncertain’ (ibid.: 265). In relation to these territories, though, the modern German attitude seems to be one of Nostalgie rather than irredentism, expressed through memoirs and, since recent changes, through accounts of travel back to and through these regions by those, or their descendants, who were forced to leave in 1945 (e.g. von Krokow 1985; Dönhoff 2010; see also references listed by Schlögel 2001: 243–44).

Origins of Lubuskie One has to go much further back in history to discover Polish control over the portion of land immediately east of the Oder from Frankfurt roughly up to just west of the Świebodzin–Międzyrzecz road. Świebodzin itself was once part of Silesia, sometimes as an exclave, while Międzyrzecz belonged to Poznania; the 1937 border was actually further east, near Zbąszynek, owing to continued German control of Silesia. The northern border of this portion

From the Beginnings to the First World War  •  23

of land is the River Warta (German Warthe); the southern border is less clear, though in practice it is defined by whatever happened to be the northern border of Silesia at any particular time. Although the territory of the first Polish kingdom covered Sorb or Wend areas in the former East Germany (in the Lausitz, roughly between Dresden and Cottbus), this was gradually pushed back by German expansion. In the mid-thirteenth century the area immediately east of the Oder was ceded by its Polish Silesian ruler, Bolesław Łysy (Boleslaw the Bald, or in German Boleslaw der Kahle), in two parts, one going to the Archbishop of Magdeburg, the other to the Duke (Markgraf ) of Brandenburg (Jablonowski 1972: 397). German historians like Jablonowski thus often feel able to claim that these areas did not fall to conquest, their acquisition once again being preceded by peaceful German settlement at the invitation of Polish rulers. For Kotlewski, on the other hand, this was indeed a conquest, carried out in 1249–53 by the Ascanian dynasty, which died out in 1319 (Kotlewski 2009: 78). This area has come to be known as Ziemia Lubuska or Lubuskie (the modern province) in Polish, and Lebuser Land or Ost-Brandenberg in German. Ziemia Lubuska, Lubuskie and Lebus all derive from the name given to the area over the Oder/Odra to the east of Frankfurt, presumably as early as the seventh century, when a local Slav ruler established a military outpost at Lebus on the left bank. There is still a village on the Polish side of the border called Nowy (New) Lubusz (north of Słubice), while a village called Lebus lies to the north of Frankfurt, more or less opposite on the left bank of the Oder, an older settlement than Frankfurt itself, of which it is now more or less a suburb. Indeed, Carsten (1954: 21, 29) indicates that lands on both sides of the river were united in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and that, as part of the Archbishopric of Magdeburg, it even included the Fläming (low hills stretching from just south of Brandenburg to just west of Lübben that were named after their twelfth-century Flemish settlers), a name still used for this area. The area was nonetheless disputed and often divided between German and Polish rulers for at least two centuries, before becoming permanently German from 1285 until 1945. The German emperor Henry V granted it to the Magdeburg archbishopric in 1109, even though it was then a Polish possession. Apparently this grant was not made effective, since the Polish duke Bolesław III created a bishopric at Lebus in 1120, which did not prevent the renewal of Henry’s grant in 1207. Thus, although German merchants founded what later became the city of Frankfurt (named after Frankfurt am Main) south of Lebus in 1226, missionization itself preceded German rule, being largely conducted, it would seem, by the Knights Templar, as they are reported as having to cede territory to the Ascanians in the thirteenth century. Sometime later in that century another Polish ruler, Henry I of Wrocław, acquired the territory, which appears to have been

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extended south-eastwards for a time rather than being included in Silesia, since it is reported as including the Cistercian monastery of Leubus (now Lubiąż, east of Legnica) and the nunnery of Trebnitz (now Trzebnica, north of Wrocław) in 1224. However, as we have seen, half of the territory was lost to the Archbishopric of Magdeburg in 1249. This may have precipitated the restriction of the territory called Lebus mostly or entirely to the eastern half of the river. Certainly other parts were already being acquired through conquest by the Ascanian margraves, who by 1285 controlled the whole territory, making it the basis of a zone of intrusion between Pomerania and Silesia, eventually pushing well over the Oder eastwards towards the Vistula (Carsten 1954: 5, 15; Knefelkamp 1998: 82). As a bishopric under Ascanian rule, Lebus was said to have owned two small towns and sixteen villages in the area in 1317, plus three villages in Silesia, thus less than the longer established sees to the west, like Brandenberg (Carsten 1954: 12). Even when under Polish rule, the towns were given German law, presumably Magdeburger Recht (ibid.: 44–45), while occupation by peasant migrants from the west was encouraged by allowing them several years without dues if they took untilled land into cultivation (ibid.: 37). Gradually in later centuries, these privileges of both the towns and the villages were lost to the creeping autocracy of the Brandenberg Electors, which Carsten describes so graphically. Ziemia Lubuska, or the województwo (province) of Lubuskie as it now is, was thus continuously in German hands for over six and a half centuries, though with shifting borders, especially to the east and south. For much of this period it seems to have suffered an identity deficit compared to areas like Silesia, Pomerania and Prussia, and today has less significance than any of these areas for German nostalgia and irredentism, despite having been in German hands longer than any of them, especially Silesia. Nonetheless, as Ost-Brandenberg, sandwiched between the current Polish–German border, Pomerania, Silesia and Greater Poland, it forms a distinct if smaller and less well-known area of key interest to the present volume.

Frederick II, ‘The Great’, and His Successors: The Partitions of Poland The weakness of the Polish kingdom in the late eighteenth century became notorious throughout Europe.14 Polish nobles, comprising 10 per cent of the population, many of whom claimed descent not from the Poles of earlier centuries but from Persian Sarmatian nomads (see Farrokh 2007), were notoriously corrupt and had a reputation for selling their votes in the Sejm or Polish parliament to any bidder for whatever they could get. As they

From the Beginnings to the First World War  •  25

elected the king, and as each of their votes individually constituted a veto on proposals brought to the Sejm – the so-called Liberum Veto, dating from the seventeenth-century Polish–Lithuanian Grand Duchy – they could effectively block decision making in the interests of Poland’s neighbours, especially Prussia and Russia. More importantly, they hampered Poland’s integrity as a state in ways that led to the occupation of the entire country by Prussia, Russia and Austria in three stages – in 1772, 1793 and 1795, the so-called Partitions of Poland – and its eradication from the map of Europe until 1919.15 From the point of view of Frederick the Great, ruler of Brandenburg– Prussia, the initial stimulus was to fill in the gap between East Prussia and Pomerania by acquiring the region of Pomerellen from Poland in 1772. The second partition in 1793 brought Prussia the Grand Duchy of Poznań (German Posen); and the third one, two years later, that of Warsaw. These changes added an estimated 2.6 million Catholic Poles to the 8 million Protestant Germans who were already citizens of the highly militarized state of Prussia. Initially Polish landowners were allowed to retain their land, but Germans were also encouraged to settle in the new lands, especially Poznań. Poles in the acquired areas were never entirely assimilated, though it can be assumed that some were Germanized over the course of time through marriage and resettlement. As a consequence of this land grab, Poles looked to Napoleon, whose armies began conquering eastwards shortly after the third partition, as the representative of French revolutionary principles; but although he revived a client Polish statelet in the form of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, what they got instead was Napoleon the conqueror. The pre-war partitions were restored after Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815, with some adjustments to the boundaries, so that Warsaw now fell in the Russian part, while Poznań remained Prussian, and Kraków went to Austria. In Prussian Poland, the post-Napoleonic king of Prussia, Frederick William III, pursued a relatively liberal policy towards his Polish subjects, with official respect for their culture and identity, as well as for their land rights, building on the prior abolition of serfdom in 1807. As a result, there was relative ethnic peace until the uprising against Russian rule further east in 1830. This created official fears that the unrest might spread to Prussian Poland and produced a harder policy, with Germanization now being encouraged and German made the sole official language. Poles reacted with a policy of passive resistance by promoting education and literary activities in Polish. After the turmoil of 1830 had died down, a new policy of toleration was tried, but this finally ended through an uprising in Prussia itself in 1846, which later merged with the more general European upheavals of 1848 (the ‘Year of Revolutions’). Although Polish prisoners captured in 1847 were released by German revolutionaries the

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following year, the ultimate result of 1848 was the start of cultural, political and national confrontation between German and Pole at a popular level. Both the new national assembly for the newly mooted German Federation and Bismarck – the latter not yet in power – advocated incorporation of the Grand Duchy of Poznań into the federation, and Bismarck went further in calling for its thorough Germanization through assimilation or expulsion of the Polish population. It was as a result of these pressures that Poles turned increasingly to two pillars around which they could unite: nationalism, increasingly a force throughout Europe (including, of course, in Germany, but also in ethnic minority areas in all the continental empires),16 and the Catholic Church. Revolutionary politics did not die out among Poles, but the ideals of the French Revolution were either excised or incorporated into these other currents. Indeed, the new focus on Polish particularism, rather than on the international brotherhood of the French Revolution, points to German precedents going back to the German poet and philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder’s idea that each nation should be free.

Poles, Germans and the Partitions of Poland in the Nineteenth Century The rise of the nation state and of nationalism in the mid-nineteenth century is often thought of as bringing to an end the earlier tolerance exhibited by multi-ethnic and multicultural states (cf. Otto 1990b: 19–20). In Poland this change was perhaps truer of the parts ruled by Germany and Russia than by Austro-Hungary, a much more multi-ethnic empire whose dominant German-speaking ethnic group was never large enough to be able to disdain compromise with other groups (chief of which, after 1867, were the Magyars or Hungarians, with whom the regime made a historic bargain for its own survival). At the official level in Germany, Germanness was for a long time viewed politically – that is, as a matter of who was a citizen of the German state, a view that prevailed with the 1848 revolutionaries, as well as in the Second Reich and the Weimar Republic. But in parallel with this, a cultural Germanness developed out of the German reaction to the universalism propagated in an increasingly aggressive form by the French Revolution and its successor Napoleon. Associated also with the switch away from the Enlightenment and towards Romanticism, this initially proposed the autonomy, uniqueness but also equality of all peoples (or, as we might say today, ethnic groups), as advocated by Herder. In time, however, this developed into an exclusive Germanness, which argued that the area of cultural Germanness should be made to correspond with Germany’s physical command of territory, whether through the expansion of political control or,

From the Beginnings to the First World War  •  27

where this was for the present not possible, through the contraction of the German cultural area by means of resettlement, together with the expulsion of non-assimilable non-Germans (Otto 1990b: 19–24). As we shall see in the next chapter, all three policies reached their culmination under Hitler, who nonetheless viewed retraction and resettlement as provisional until the contingencies of war could catch up with them through conquest. It was here too that cultural Germanness really came to be seen as a matter of race, although in the event not even the Nazis placed exclusive reliance on it: while holding to the principle that ‘a bad German is still a German’, certain Poles, Slovenes, French and others were regarded, even by so qualified a racial expert as Heinrich Himmler, as good racial material and therefore as eindeutschungsfähig or ‘Germanizable’ (cf. Lumans 1993). In part, if less extremely so, these policies were foreshadowed under Bismarck, for whom Poles were the arch Reichsfeinde (enemies of the state). The experience of foreign rule in the three occupied regions of Poland produced by the partitions was different enough to help to shape Polish regionalism, as well as Poles’ attitudes towards their more powerful neighbours. Russian Poland contained, to begin with, the only Polish political unit in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, but it was dissolved after the uprising of 1863, which was brutally suppressed by mass executions and the destruction of many Polish villages. Intermittently tolerant and repressive, Russian rule in the nineteenth century is generally considered by Poles to have been as negative as Soviet dominance in the twentieth. Although both Germany and Russia are regarded with considerable suspicion by many Poles today, the former is commonly seen as advanced and prosperous, the latter as backward, poor, unstable and semi-Asiatic, its only notable exports, apart from primary products such as gas, being mafiosi and political exiles. This attitude has deep historical roots and explains, inter alia, the lukewarmness of Poles to Russianled pan-Slavism in the partition period (cf. Conze 1958: 20). Austrian rule in Galicia, by contrast, was relatively lightly applied. Here, the Austrian government allied itself with over three million local Poles against an almost equivalent number of Ukrainians, whose support of pan-Slavism and generally pro-Russian attitudes were perhaps apt to be exaggerated by the government, but were feared nonetheless. As a result, Galicia enjoyed a considerable measure of autonomy after the 1860s, with local administration largely in Polish hands, though the government in Vienna was careful to retain ultimate control for itself. The problems here were mainly economic, as Galicia suffered from serious rural overpopulation, only slightly eased by emigration, especially to North America (Conze 1958: 10–11, 24–28; Nagengast 1991: 46–48). One unanticipated legacy of this period of Austrian rule was serious ethnic antagonism between Poles and Ukrainians, especially in the Second World

28  •  White Eagle, Black Eagle

War, when elements of the latter joined the Nazis and indulged in ethnic cleansing against Poles as well as Jews, but also afterwards in 1947, when the Polish government dispersed its Ukrainian population by force around the country in Operation Wisła. In the new millennium, however, a shared fear of Russia has led to Polish diplomatic support for Ukraine in its efforts to resist Russian pressure, especially in its 2022 war with Russia. Many Polish families came from western Ukraine (especially around Lvov) in 1945, and thus many now have part-Ukrainian origins and Ukrainian surnames. One subgroup are the Łemkos, Greek Catholics from the western Ukraine and parts of eastern Poland who associate themselves for some purposes with a Rusyn or Ruthenian identity, especially when their separate identity comes under pressure from the Polish state. Some were settled in the west (e.g. in Zielona Góra and Legnica) as part of Operation Wisła, though many have now returned to the area around Przemyśl, whence they came originally (see Hann 2006: 222–25, 236). Conditions in Prussian-ruled Poland were different again. Somewhat hemmed in towards the Baltic, Prussia’s existence depended much more on its Polish possessions than did that of either Austria or Russia, which had both been able to expand southwards and eastwards, incorporating entirely non-Polish territories and peoples (cf. Conze 1958: 29). In the 1850s and 1860s, Prussian policy had again been fairly relaxed, but tinged with the hope that in the course of time Prussia’s Poles would become Germanized. This hope was not shared by the sociologist Max Weber, who regarded Upper Silesian Poles, for example, as loyal to the Prussian state, but not at all as Germans (see Petersen 1975: 179). For Prussia, though, there was always the fear that, if mistreated, the Poles would rebel, perhaps aiding the expansion of Russian influence westwards, which would be equally dangerous for the Prussian state. It was partly due to this problem of assimilation that the distinction between state and nation was maintained for so long in Prussia, and with such emphasis that the idea of the state as an entity in its own right has come to be associated more with Prussia than with almost any other polity (Kleßmann 1971: 20). Under Bismarck, however, who saw Prussia’s Polish territories as vital to Prussia’s existence, policy was tightened again. The Polish question was a leading impulse behind the Kulturkampf or ‘culture war’, which, while ostensibly anti-Catholic, severely restricted the use of the Polish language in public forums, and was aimed especially at secular and later also religious education. Although policy was relaxed under Caprivi, it was tightened still further under Bülow (two of Bismarck’s successors as chancellor). Two laws of 1900 and 1906 made German the sole language in religious education (a change from policy even under Bismarck, who made religious education an exception to the general rule that all education should be conducted in

From the Beginnings to the First World War  •  29

German; see Puhl 2009: 123), but this decree was met with a school strike in Poznań and West Prussia. There were also expulsions, in 1885, of Poles who had entered Prussian Poland from Russian-controlled territory. Another element in this policy was the Ansiedlungsgesetz (settlement law) of 1886, which provided for the sale of land in West Prussia and Poznań to German settlers out of public funds. A further law of 1908, the Enteignung von Grundbesitz Gesetz (expropriation of property law) providing for the expropriation of Polish-owned land in order to round off German settlements, was only applied in four cases in 1912. In the event, more land was bought from existing German than from Polish inhabitants, and the net increase in the German population in both provinces through the twenty-eight years of this policy is estimated at no more than a modest 120,000 (Conze 1958: 37; Kloss 1969: 313; Kleßmann 1971: 20–21; Jablonowski 1972: 278–79).17 Puhl (2009: 123) estimates that the proportion of the population of Poznań that was German reached a maximum of 42 per cent by the time Poland was revived in 1919, whereafter it rapidly fell to 6 per cent – this despite the expenditure of 100 million marks to acquire land in Polish areas for German settlers under Bismarck and his successors. As late as a law of 1904, Poles were legally forbidden to build houses in Poznań and West Prussia, while ten years earlier the Kaiser himself had endorsed the formation of an unofficial pressure group, the Verein zur Förderung des Deutschtums in den Ostmarken (Association to Further Germandom in the East Mark), sometimes called the Hakatisten from the initials of its founders.18 These policies were explicitly intended to strengthen the Germanness of these regions and to counter the claims of Polish nationalism. According to Kleßmann (1971: 20), they were primarily directed against the Polish aristocracy and clergy, who maintained memories of and hopes for an independent Polish state more than the industrial workers and rural labourers, who were felt to be predominantly without national consciousness and thus loyal to the Prussian state. However, the policy of splitting up Poles according to class could not work in the long run. The consolidation of these policies helped to stimulate Polish national self-consciousness in Poznań and West Prussia, perhaps more than anywhere else (Kleßmann 1971: 20–21; Jablonowski 1972: 266). At the same time, Prussian Poles learned to take advantage of the legal apparatus of the state and to turn it to their own advantage. Although there was little if anything in the way of parliamentary rule in Prussia, the arbitrarily applied officialdom of Russian Poland was largely absent. Prussian order and the obedience of officials to official decrees and laws handed down from above were a two-edged sword, exploitable by Poles in their own interests as much as in defence of German interests. Poles reacted to German pressure by using trade unions, credit banks and rural associations as Polish

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cultural and national groupings, while Polish members of the Reichstag acted as the highest tribunal for Poles between roughly 1864 and 1893 (Kloss 1969: 141). Although assimilation in Prussia was more successful overall than in Austria or Russia (Conze 1958: 28), this therefore applied more to the already more Germanized eastern lands than to West Prussia or Poznań (Jablonowski 1972: 265 ff.), where Poles resisted assimilation while taking full advantage of the state’s own provisions to oppose it (Conze 1958: 5–8; Jablonowski 1972: 281–82). Conze (1958: 5–6) and Broszat (1963: 97) even regard Prussian policy as failing to the extent that the gains of earlier in the nineteenth century were wiped out, an argument rejected by Jablonowski (1972: 280). Certainly the German government recognized, even before 1914, that in the event of a war with Russia the resurrection of a Polish state on German soil would be essential for its own survival as a concession to Polish national sentiment (Conze 1958). This was partly because, as Bismarck had recognized decades earlier, the defeat of Russia in war would free Russian Poland, with knock-on effects for Germany’s portion of Poland.19 In the First World War this possibility became reality in the form of the first Generalgouvernement, centred on Warsaw as one of the German conquests of the former Russian part of Poland. It was only in 1919, however, that a new Polish republic was created out of substantial parts of all three pre-war empires, its centre of gravity being much further east than it is today.20 In Poznań and other parts of German Poland, this was secured by an uprising right at the end of 1918, forcing German forces to retreat into Germany proper (Puhl 2009: 124).

Prussian Identity and the Junker Question Prussian identity was always associated with the Junkers as a ruling class supporting the monarchy.21 After German unification that class also became identified with the new empire proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles in 1871.22 The name ‘Junker’ is said to go back to the conquest of pagan Prussia in the Middle Ages by the knights of the German religious orders, most of them being younger sons unlikely to inherit their father’s estates and titles, and called in German Jungherren. Although in practice their power was limited by circumstance and often had to be negotiated locally, formally they had complete control over their peasant serfs,23 including over when and what they should plant, whom they should marry (with preferred endogamy of the Gut or farm estate) and movement out of the Gut (to which peasants were normally tied on pain of draconian penalties), as well as exercising administrative, judicial and police powers in rural areas. Later the Prussian state took over these powers, though serfdom remained until 1807, when all

From the Beginnings to the First World War  •  31

restrictions on movement and marriage were lifted. Many if not most of the serfs involved must have been Polish, though the state’s ordinances increasingly affected the German population too (see Carsten 1954). Ironically the abolition of serfdom initially benefited the Junkers. Their control over their former peasants changed from a system of partly reciprocal feudal rights into a capitalist market for labour and the disappearance of these few rights for the former serfs. A market in land was also introduced, whereby Junker landlords could claim ownership of a lot of land previously farmed by their peasant serfs, or could buy out the latter cheaply. Conversely, many newly freed peasants found themselves heavily in debt in their attempts to acquire land for themselves. Later, with the industrialization of western Germany, competition for labour in eastern Prussia increased, as many Poles as well as Germans from the east sought work in the Ruhr (see Ch. 5), though in the east itself departing German agricultural labourers were often replaced by Polish workers on the declining estates. Another development was the growth of small colonies of smallholders and tenant farmers on the fringes of the great estates. The interwar Weimar republic removed the Junkers’ remaining privileges, and many Junker holdings became bankrupt in the financial crises that repeatedly hit Germany in this period. Junker flirtation with Hitler, whom one of their number, von Papen, thought his class could control, led only to its firm subordination to Hitler and the Nazis, though Junkers remained the backbone of the officer class in the army. After 1945 most Junker lands were lost to the new Polish People’s Republic,24 and the Allies finally abolished what was left of Prussia in the aftermath of the war.25 As a result, a new, largely Catholic, middle-class, west German political elite emerged, represented especially by Konrad Adenauer; this replaced the old Protestant, eastern military aristocracy that had not only dominated but been intimately identified with the Prussian state from its inception.26 As Puhl (2009: 117) argues, Poles tend to blame the very idea of ‘Prussia’ for their own experience of modern history.

Notes   1. The terms ‘backwards migration’ and ‘reverse migration’ may need some explanation here. Although historical evidence is often lacking, it is generally assumed that the various Germanic ‘barbarians’ of concern to the Romans crossed northern Europe in an east–west direction over a period of several centuries, both bc and ad, to be followed into the areas they had evacuated by various Slavonic-speaking peoples. After the fall of Rome and the consolidation of the rule of German-speakers over large parts of northwest Europe, peaceful migration and aggressive conquest began in reverse to the east and south-east, reaching well into the later Russia and the Balkans, as exemplified by the Baltic Germans, the Siebenburger or Carpathian Germans of Romania, the Volga

32  •  White Eagle, Black Eagle

  2.   3.   4.   5.   6.

  7.

 8.   9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

Germans in Russia, and Austria (Österreich, or ‘the eastern kingdom’). The history of the movement of peoples into and out of the central European plain is still a matter of politically charged debate between Polish nationalists and German irredentists. Hannan (1996: 61ff.) also derives ‘Lech’ from ‘field’, but as an alternative word for a fallow or uncultivated field, in contradistinction to pole. In which any member of the Sejm or parliament had a veto, which many members could be bribed to use in the interests of outside powers. Austria did not take part in the Second Partition. The subsequent occupation was another matter, however, with rebellions in, for example, 1830, 1848 and 1863, and parliamentary opposition to Bismarck’s government later in the century. One iconic figure who thought so was Albert, later Wojciech Korfanty, a German-born ‘convert’ to a Polish identity. Originally a Polish MP in the German Reichstag before the First World War, he nonetheless failed to be accepted in any post-war Polish government (Rutsch 2009: 61, 67–68, 87–88). Many German villages were founded in the years after the Frederician conquest, often incorporating ‘Friedrich’ in the title. Examples from around Świebodzin (German Schwiebus), founded after the conclusion of the Seven Years War in 1763, include Friedrichsfelde (now Polesie), Friedrichstabor (Osogóra), Friedrichswerder (Rozłogi) and Friedrichsläsgen (probably Niedźwiedź, literally ‘bear’). Slightly later, in ca. 1770, Friedrichsklippendorf (Przygubia) was founded, and Harthe (Karczyn) in 1777. The intention was to expand German settlement in the conquered areas. See Meißner 1990 (I am grateful to Marek Undro for supplying me with Meißner’s text and other relevant materials). This despite a plebiscite which had indicated 60 per cent support for all of Silesia remaining German; see Rutsch 2009: 86. Some were forced to remain for a time to perform compulsory labour (Endres 2009: 258). The name, Pommern in German, is Polish in origin: Pomorze, from po morze (‘by the sea’). The English term for this region is ‘Pomerania’. The ‘Prussians’ (Prusowie, Prusi), who gave their name to this area, were originally a population speaking a now extinct Baltic language, related to Lithuanian and Latvian, who disappeared as such through conversion and assimilation or extermination in the crusading wars of this period. Hinterpommern is sometimes distinguished from Vorpommern further to the west, on the other side of the Oder/Odra. This therefore reflects the German perspective, as the latter is located nearer the Prussian/German heartland than the former. It is accordingly more Germanized. Dönhoff (2010: 106) remarks that East Prussia’s eastern and south-eastern borders remained remarkably stable from the fourteenth to twentieth centuries, when East Prussia was finally divided between the Soviet Union and Poland just north of the Angerberg–Braunsberg line in 1945. Most of this section relies on Puhl 2009. As already noted, Austria did not take part in the second partition. The division of Poland as a result of the Nazi–Soviet pact of 1940 is often seen as a fourth partition. And also in Britain because of the Irish question. France was less affected by minority questions but was concerned with other nationalisms before 1870 (e.g. Napoleon III’s interest in Italian unification) and with her own internal nation-building thereafter (Weber 1976).

From the Beginnings to the First World War  •  33

17. One example, founded by the Ansiedlungskommission (settlement commission) as late as 1909–11, was Großdorf, just north of the present-day Polish village of Kopanica, to the north-east of Kargowa (powiat Sulechów). It was settled by Germans from all over the Reich, namely Posen, Silesia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, Hanover, Hesse and the Rhineland. From 1919 to 1939 it was on the new Polish–German border, but seems to have disappeared as a result of the Second World War and its aftermath. See Meißner 1990. 18. Whence also ‘Hakatismus’ (hakatism). The founders were Ferdinand von Hansemann, Hermann Kennemann and Heinrich von Tiedemann (Puhl 2009: 123). 19. This was one reason why Bismarck, in his time in power, tried not to be drawn into enmity towards Russia, a policy that had to be reconciled with friendship towards Austria as well. Abandonment of this dual policy by his successors in favour of increasingly exclusive support for Austria helped to shape the background to the First World War. 20. Poland managed to retain both Vilnius (Wilno) and Lvov (Lwów), the former now in Lithuania, the latter in Ukraine (Lviv). 21. I am relying here mainly on Friedmann 2009, but also Carsten 1954. 22. A move that greatly distressed King William of Prussia, as he felt that in becoming emperor of Germany he was saying goodbye to his beloved Prussia and all it stood for. He is said to have snubbed Bismarck on the day of his proclamation for what the latter had brought about in his (William’s) name. See Mann (1958) 1990: 320–21. 23. Serfdom appears to have been introduced quite a bit later than conquest, in the fifteenth century. 24. Symbolically, Bismarck’s own daughter-in-law committed suicide on the Bismarck family’s east Pomeranian estate of Varzin as the Red Army advanced in 1945 (Mann [1958] 1990: 364). Bismarck was, of course, far and away the most famous Junker in history, as well as the most politically able. 25. Prussia had remained in being as a formal entity under both Weimar and Hitler. One of Hermann Goering’s many positions as a Nazi leader was minister of the interior of Prussia. 26. Adenauer himself is said to have called the eastern bank of the River Elbe the start of the ‘Asiatic steppe’ (Friedmann 2009: 239).

Chapter 2

The Historical Foundations of German–Polish Relations II From the First World War to the Present

? Interwar Poland and Hitler’s Conquest The creation of the new Polish state in 1919 turned its German population into a minority overnight (as well as Jews, Ukrainians and Lithuanians), one that quickly began to feel threatened by its new masters, despite the guarantees of the Versailles settlement, which successive Polish governments proved themselves lax at best in observing. As Koehl points out, ‘[t]he German minority lost the backbone provided by the Prussian state’ (1956: 354). Lumans goes so far as to accuse Poland of having the worst minority rights record of any east European country between the wars (1993: 94–95). The remaining German population was subjected to the Polonization of local administrations, the closure of schools, military service, the suppression of all German organizations and, by a law of 1925, the confiscation of land and its redistribution to Poles. Most of these measures went well beyond Prussian policy against the Poles before the First World War. In Koehl’s words: ‘By legal and extralegal pressures, the dominant economic position of the ethnic Germans in the agriculture and commerce of western Poland was destroyed in the 1920s, and German emigration was systematically encouraged’ (1956: 354). Polish anti-Germanism also promoted regionalism in at least one respect: Poznań, which entered the new Polish republic in 1919, was kept well away from state-building to begin with, due to the suspicions of Piłsudski and other easterners that its people were really closet Germans (Conze 1958: 8) – a stereotype that has still not entirely disappeared, and is

From the First World War to the Present  •  35

reflected in Poznanians’ alleged efficiency and businesslike attitudes. This was scant reward for its early resistance to German and Prussian rule dating back to Bismarck’s time. One consequence of the changed situation after 1919 was the emigration of Germans from the new state, in smaller numbers than the mass flight and expulsions a generation later, but still significant. For example, the German population of Graudenz (Grudziądz, north of Toruń) fell from 40,000 to 4,000, and of Pomerellen from 450,000 to 110,000, despite official German discouragement in order to maintain German claims to the area, and despite the Polish government’s safety guarantees. However, it is hard to say how much fear rather than sentiment was a factor in prompting these moves. Generally it was army officers, bureaucrats and teachers who left, not wanting or in some cases not being allowed to serve a foreign state, while many in these categories, as well as ordinary workers, left to retain their German pension rights. Those who opted to stay tended to own land or factories, though they were relatively few, this being one of the least developed regions of Europe at the time. Some previously German land was redistributed to Poles from former Russian Poland in the 1920s, and there was also a brief wave of Polish returnees coming from the Ruhr. The remaining Germans in Graudenz appear to have been transferred to the Altreich by the Nazis, to be replaced by other Germans from the Baltic states or Bessarabia, themselves replaced by Poles in and after 1945. Thus this small town experienced many changes of population in a generation or so (Lachauer 2009: 122–25, 130, 166; also Schlanstein 2009: 16–17). Similarly, Poles from West Prussia, after the First World War part of the ‘Polish corridor’, left for East Prussia or Pomerania, both still almost totally German and in German hands, to be replaced by Poles from the Ruhr or the rest of Poland (Schlanstein ibid.). Altogether the number of Germans in Poland dropped by about a million in these years (Borodziej 2009: 284). Poland’s treatment of the German minority provided fertile ground for the Nazi movement, and the draining away of initial loyalty to Poland was especially acute in the west of the country. But despite Polish claims to the contrary, most historians, and not only German ones, feel that the extent of Nazi sympathy among Polish Volksdeutsche (i.e. Germans living outside the Reich) before 1939 has been exaggerated and that it remained passive until the actual invasion of Poland by Germany in that year (e.g. Kleßmann 1971: 22–23 and, with a slightly different emphasis, Borodziej 2009: 297–302). Nazi sympathy for the Volksdeutsche was similarly fitful, being turned on and off like a tap to suit current diplomatic needs. Hitler’s insistence that seventy thousand Polish Volksdeutsche be transferred to the Reich for their own ‘protection’ (Kleßmann 1971: 23) was clearly a product of such manipulations, part of a propaganda war that continued

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after the invasion of 1939. That there were Polish atrocities against Germans immediately following the invasion (the so-called Blomberger Blutsonntag and the Death March to Brest) is as undeniable as the fact that the Nazis inflated the figures for victims tenfold for propaganda purposes (Koehl 1956: 354; Kleßmann 1971: 23–24; Jacobmeyer in Kleßmann 1989: 18). Later German atrocities, of course, made even their own versions of these events pale into relative insignificance. Nonetheless, restrictions on German organizations were eased under the German–Polish pact of 1934, after which the Deutsche Vereinigung (German Union) and the Rat der Deutschen (German Council) in Polen, the latter officially recognized by both countries, were formed, both being conservative in leadership. They were faced by a more radical movement dating from the 1920s based in Bielsko-Biała – which Lumans (1993: 96) says was ‘considered the most German city in Poland’ at the time – and which after 1931 became the Jungdeutsche Partei (Young German Party, or JDP). Only with difficulty were the conflicts between these groups resolved by the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Ethnic German Liaison Office), the Nazis’ liaison organization with Volksdeutsche abroad. Its efforts were helped by the Polish government’s continuing attempts at Polonization, themselves stimulated further by the open provocations of the JDP. Behind all stood the shadow of Hitler, by now bent on destroying Poland and therefore content to let the JDP have its head, so long as it did not endanger his forward policy elsewhere. The reactions it provoked from the Polish government would be useful in justifying the eventual invasion – which in a few years, however, led to the virtual extinction of German settlement east of the Oder, when the war it precipitated had been lost. Despite the 1934 pact, in the Nazi period Polish–German relations reached their nadir. Historians have debated the origins of Hitler’s final Polish policy, as well as the extent of its continuity with Bismarckian and Wilhelmine policies towards Poland. For Broszat (1961: 10–11), Hitler saw in Poland a possible though very junior ally in his plans for eastern Europe, only determining to destroy Poland when it finally refused to cooperate. That this is not necessarily implausible is indicated by Hitler’s exploitation of ethnic differences by setting some groups (Ukrainians, Slovaks, Croats) against others (respectively Poles and Russians, Czechs, Serbs), not to mention his occasional dreams of the British Empire becoming a junior partner in his plans for world domination. Kleßmann (1971: 27; 1989: 6ff.), however, sees Nazi intentions as more ambiguous. While not rejecting the evidence for a planned junior ally status for Poland, he leaves open the possibility that the non-aggression pact of 1934 and other overtures were merely tactical, a flanking movement during the period of German advances through diplomacy, analogous to the later German–Soviet pact of 1939.1

From the First World War to the Present  •  37

Hitler’s reputation is such that none of his various agreements can simply be taken at face value. Certainly by the outbreak of war, as is clearly seen from his secret speeches of 22 August and 12 September 1939 (Kleßmann 1971: 33ff.), his intentions against Poland had developed into its destruction as an independent state, the removal of the entire Polish population from the western, southern and northern areas he planned to annex to the Reich, and the setting up of a German-controlled territory in the east, the second Generalgouvernement, to accommodate them. This territory eventually extended from Warsaw and Płock to Lublin, Lwów and Kraków, and was intended not only as a dumping ground for Poles and Jews, but also as a source of cheap or slave labour for the Reich. A corollary of this policy was the extermination of the Polish political and intellectual classes, including even ordinary schoolteachers. Although only fitfully successful, its intention was obvious: the remaining Poles should be reduced to Untermensch status, without native leaders or even educators – Himmler did not even regard reading or counting above ten as necessary for Poles – and both totally and willingly dependent on German supervision (Broszat 1961; Kleßmann 1971; Otto 1990b: 30). Nazi policy was most succinctly described by Broszat: ‘One still lived in the hybrid belief that one can successfully enslave a land and simultaneously utilize its people as useful potential’ (1961: 192); and ‘Here war between peoples became, as it were, a technical question of transport’ (ibid.: 85). Nazi policy was therefore one of separation and subordination, not of assimilation, in order to avoid the mixing of blood (Broszat 1961: 21, 23, 85; Kleßmann 1971: 30). This was one break in continuity with the earlier Prussian policy, which was aimed at the Germanization of its Polish subjects as much as it strove for the Germanization of former Polish lands through the settlement of ethnic Germans. Hitler ruled this out through his emphasis on racial purity. The whole history of the relationship between the Volksdeutsche and the Nazi Party, and of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi), the Nazi Party organ that administered it, has been extensively treated by Lumans (1993: 12). VoMi was founded, originally as the Volksdeutsche Parteidienststelle or Ethnic German Party Office, in 1935; the name was changed in January 1937. It was a party organ, not officially part of the SS, though it soon came effectively under its influence and that of its chief, Heinrich Himmler; many VoMi staff were SS career officers. Himmler’s attitude to the Volksdeutsche as ethnic German material is therefore very relevant to both VoMi history and the relationship between German minorities abroad and the Third Reich. For Hitler, the Volksdeutsche were largely an instrument of grander policy, with which their own desires for incorporation into the Reich should not interfere: thus they were treated as Volk but not Reichsbürger – that is, as ethnic Germans but not German citizens. As far as Volksdeutsche in Poland

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were concerned, Hitler explicitly abstained from supporting them in the non-aggression pact he signed with Piłsudski in 1934. This was at a time when he was perhaps still hopeful of using Poland as a junior partner.2 However, this did not mean the loss of all contact with Volksdeutsche representatives. Indeed, the older German parties in Poland, such as the Deutsche Katholische Partei (German Catholic Party) and the Deutsche Volksverband (German People’s Association), rapidly lost support thereafter to the proNazi Jungdeutsche Partei, though the latter were also opposed, equally ineffectively, by the centre-right Rat der Deutschen (Council of Germans) and the left-wing Deutsche Sozialistische Partei (German Socialist Party) (Urban 1994: 41–42). Local German minorities did not always prove amenable to Reich government control but advanced demands for incorporation into the Reich as quickly as possible. Before the war, however, Hitler resisted such demands and generally required VoMi to control rather than stimulate German minorities abroad. To this end, in February 1937, VoMi was given control of pseudo-academic organizations like the Deutsche Auslands-Institut (German Foreign Institute) and the Deutsche Akademie (German Academy), and by Hitler’s decree of 2 July 1938 it received official status, subject to ministerial control. Himmler’s personal control over VoMi, and much else, was increased after Rudolf Hess’s dramatic flight to Scotland in May 1941. Most SS contacts with the minorities before the war had been personal, between members of SS staff and local minority leaders, but now greater control was instituted. VoMi’s party status and remaining independence were also weakened by the course of the war and the increasingly forced resettlement of the Volksdeutsche. Of course, there were exceptions to Hitler’s restraint pre-war. When he desired, as over the occupation of the Sudentenland or the Anschluß (union with Austria), Hitler was quite prepared to use the Volksdeutsche as an instrument of agitation. There were other cases, however, such as Italy, Hungary and the Soviet Union at the time of the Nazi–Soviet pact, where the Volksdeutsche were made to resettle in German-controlled areas or in the old Reich, so as not to upset relations with what were seen, at the time, as strategically important allies. This policy was somewhat less successful in Italy than in the Soviet Union, where the Volhynian Germans were comprehensively resettled through German–Soviet cooperation. In the Baltic region this cooperation was largely absent, due to persistent attempts by Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians to claim German descent and therefore repatriation to the Reich in order to escape creeping Soviet dominance (Lumans 1993: 160, 165). In Hungary, conversely, repatriation largely failed because so many Germans decided to claim Hungarian origins in order to remain in their homes (ibid.: 116, 152–53, 252–53). A few years later, when they

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arrived in post-war West Germany as refugees, they often found themselves rejected as Roma or Zigeuner (see Lehmann 1991: 171). Other Volksdeutsche were left in place because they were considered a link with other peoples, whose usefulness to the Reich was not yet discounted. A key example was the Balkan Germans, considered useful in developing relations with the Slavs in the area, though ‘inferior’ elements in the Volksdeutsche population were resettled to prevent them compromising this policy. Behind this were Himmler’s fantasies about the Eindeutschungsfähigkeit (potential for Germanizing) of certain Slavs, such as the Slovenes, who, however, reacted to his overtures with armed resistance. Numerous Poles and French were also caught up in this policy – we will return to the example of the Poles later. Other ways in which the Volksdeutsche actively served the Reich included working in strategic industries in the old Reich, and service in the Waffen SS, in which they outnumbered Reich Germans by the end of the war. They were not always reliable in this latter role, however, to such an extent that the effectiveness of particular units came to be measured in terms of the size of their Volksdeutsche component. Thus Hitler’s preparedness to use the Volksdeutsche as an instrument of his annexation policies was not as extensive or consistent as is sometimes supposed, despite such claims by his enemies. In a secret speech of 6 October 1939, shortly after the outbreak of the war and the destruction of organized Polish resistance, he decisively changed his policy from annexing the areas in which Volksdeutsche lived to resettling them in the Reich. Emigration had certainly been discouraged earlier because it would have weakened German claims to the areas the Volksdeutsche occupied. Only twenty thousand or so Volksdeutsche refugees actually made it to the Reich before the war. Now, however, certain areas were to be abandoned, at least temporarily, until they could be recovered in future military campaigns, after which Germanization could start anew. Nonetheless, what his enemies eventually achieved after the German defeat in 1945, namely the wholesale removal of Germans from east and south-east Europe to the core German state, was in a sense actually initiated by Hitler himself (cf. Otto 1990b: 34–35). In the later years of the war, from 1943 onwards, this mass movement increasingly took on crisis proportions, with VoMi playing a large part in administering the emergencies created by the progressive collapse of German power all over Europe. Himmler’s attitude was somewhat different from Hitler’s. While he certainly considered the Volksdeutsche to be potential material in the diplomatic game, in his eyes their real and long-term interest was in reinforcing Deutschtum in the areas annexed from Poland in 1939 (i.e. excluding the Generalgouvernement and other eastern areas bordering the Soviet Union). Although the SS are mostly notorious for carrying out Nazi extermination policies, they were also interested in building up the German race through

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selective breeding. The resettlement of the ‘best’ Germans was another part of this overall policy. Nazi propaganda favoured what it regarded as ‘primitive’, simple peasants over the urban sophisticates of the Reich, who, although not necessarily opposed to Nazism, often had their own ends in view and were officially felt to be less reliable. The core of the resettled populations was, of course, to be Volksdeutsche from further afield in Europe. In Poland, where Nazi racial experimentation was most actively pursued, the situation was more complicated. The population of this territory of long-term mixed settlement on the very borders of the Reich, which had once ruled much of it, could not easily be unravelled. The need was great for some form of documentation that would categorize the population in terms of different levels of Germanness. There had also been a partly officially inspired free-for-all in taking over Polish property, indulged in by the Volksdeutsche as an accompaniment to the invasion. The invasion having succeeded with the collapse of organized Polish resistance, peace and order was now to be restored, with orderly confiscations to take the place of random looting. ‘As a result, the ethnic Germans found themselves no longer encouraged to commit wildcat evictions of Poles but were themselves subject to scrutiny and new controls’ (Koehl 1956: 355). However, existing administrative arrangements ‘left the local Germans in charge of their own naturalization’ on the basis of traditional tests for ethnic membership, such as language, education and culture (ibid.: 357). This was entirely inadequate for a regime that increasingly based its discriminations on race; and in the western region of the Warthegau3 especially, which was the area most affected by the influx of Volksdeutsche from the Baltic States and the Soviet Union, the situation was rapidly becoming chaotically out of line with party policy. Thus arose the Deutsche Volkslisten (German People’s Lists, or DVL), secretly prepared from late 1939 by Walter Gross, a protégé of Hess, and initially applied to the Warthegau by its Gauleiter (or head of gau), Arthur Greiser, on his own initiative. Due to an overlap of personnel between the SS and VoMi, which was to administer part of the scheme, and especially after Hess’s flight to Scotland in May 1941, Himmler was able to acquire a dominant influence in its application (Lumans 1993). Following a directive from Himmler of 25 May 1940, in March 1941 it was formally applied by the Ministry of the Interior to all the occupied areas of Poland as the standard means of determining who should qualify as German citizens. The scheme was administered through a special office in Poznań (Posen) (Koehl 1956: 357–58; Broszat 1961: 121–23). In the course of time, similar lists were drawn up for the Ukraine and the Banat area of Serbia (Lumans 1993: 234, 245). In Poland, the DVL consisted of four categories. Categories I and II comprised racially and politically acceptable Germans, who were normally

From the First World War to the Present  •  41

given Reich citizenship and were allowed to remain in their homes in the annexed territories. The main difference was that those in Category I had shown themselves active in the Volkskampf before the war, while those in Category II had not done so or only since the German occupation (Broszat 1961: 125 n. 1). Category III was for Germans with some connections with Poles; in other words, they were racially suspect, but considered both capable of returning to Deutschtum and willing to do so, and were therefore classed as eindeutschungsfähig. Koehl lists them as ‘(1) German partners and children of German–Polish marriages; (2) certain German-speaking Poles; and (3) Polish-speaking Germans’ (1956: 358, 363). Broszat adds the Kaschubans, Masurans, Wasserpolnisch4 (Silesians, Ślązacy) and Upper Silesians (1961: 125 n. 2), though Koehl indicates that these minorities were at least as liable to be placed in Category IV (1956: 363). This last category consisted of thoroughly Polonized and pro-Polish Germans, though Koehl (ibid.) and Otto (1990b: 33) disagree over whether those who had shown themselves to be actively anti-German or anti-Nazi by taking part in anti-German persecutions and such like were also included. Although many in Category IV ended up in concentration camps (Koehl ibid.; Otto ibid.), the remainder in this category, as well as those in Category III, had German citizenship accorded to them provisionally, and were then sent to the Reich for training in becoming better Germans. They became the responsibility of VoMi, who housed them while they underwent Germanization (Broszat 1961: 118–37; Lumans 1993: 198ff.; Urban 1994: 22). All those who were completely unsuitable, whether racially (typically Jews) or politically (typically ‘pure’ Poles) or both, did not receive any categorization in the DVL but were expelled to the Generalgouvernement for resettlement as slave labour or for extermination in a concentration camp (Lumans 1993: 195–96). The different groups in the DVL were also distinguished according to citizenship rights. Categories I and II received both German Staatsangehörigkeit (nationality) and German Reichsbürgerrecht (civic rights), though only members of Category I were ordinarily eligible for state or party office, even for low-level positions such as Burgermeister (mayor). However, both categories were considered impeccably German and loyal, were legally secure in their property – thus being able to stay in their homes in the annexed territories – and were accorded the valued ‘blue card’. Category III received only German Staatsangehörigkeit auf Widerruf (nationality subject to revocation), provided they proved their Germanness, and they were officially deprived of most of their property, though this did not always mean that they lost their homes in practice. As they were eligible for transfer to the Altreich for thorough Germanization, their freedom of movement, including where they could be educated, was restricted. They received the less coveted green card, marking them very definitely as second-class citizens. Like categories I and II,

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however, they were subject to conscription. Some members of Category IV also received Staatsangehörigkeit auf Widerruf (Koehl 1956: 360–61; Broszat 1961: 125; Otto 1990b: 33). While there was thus a desire for racial purity in selecting resettlers, many Poles were nonetheless considered, by Himmler and other top Nazis, to contain sufficient German blood to be acceptable (Koehl 1956: 358–59; Lumans 1993: 185). For example, the population of the Wartheland were considered to be Polonized Germans, and still pro-German (Hansen in Kleßmann 1989: 55). There was an increasing tendency to separate racial purity and political reliability from Volkszugehörigkeit or ethnic belonging (Broszat 1961: 124): a bad German was still a German, while on the other hand some who were strictly non-German could still be useful in building the master race. In terms of later history, it is undoubtedly Category III of the DVL – which was also by far the largest (Otto 1990b: 34) – that is of most interest, because this was used by later West German governments in deciding cases of entitlement to immigration by Germans from eastern Europe (see below). Naturally, during the war there was intense pressure to get accepted as Category I or at least II, while conversely some strove for classification in Category IV in order to avoid conscription. However, Category III was easily the most labile and therefore the one most subject to manipulation by both the individuals being classified and the bureaucrats who did the classifying. As early as 1941, the expanded need for troops and workers for Operation Barbarossa ‘encouraged the local authorities to swell the third category of the DVL with the very opportunists [whom] Himmler, Gross and Greiser sought to eliminate from Germandom’ (Koehl 1956: 359). The category fitted in with Himmler’s determination to extract the last drop of usable German blood from the annexed territories. As Koehl points out, it also symbolized the change in Hitler’s policy from annexation of lands occupied by Volksdeutsche to their actual resettlement in areas already controlled by Germany – a more exacting policy, requiring precise criteria as to who was to qualify as German and who not in order to function. But the pressures of war, combined with its own internal contradictions, made the policy unsustainable. The intention was that, in the course of time, Category III would disappear, as its members were either turned into good Germans or eliminated from the German race altogether in one way or another. Instead, it ‘became a vast catch-all’ (Koehl 1956: 366). Furthermore, ‘it was this category [that] both Poles and Nazis despised because its very existence expressed the realities of co-existence between nationalities and cultures’ (ibid.). The progressive collapse of German power in the closing stages of the war was thus reflected in the different fates of the members of the different categories. While members of the first two categories had no

From the First World War to the Present  •  43

difficulty in getting themselves accepted for repatriation to Germany, and those in Category IV were in no particular danger from Polish or Russian revenge, those in Category III faced real problems of survival. As Schieder remarks, ‘[a]fter the collapse of German rule, it was easy to change the categories of privilege into ones of punishment’ (1960: 15). Local knowledge was such that ‘it was quite impossible to conceal the fact of one’s having had DVL III status in one’s native region’ (Koehl 1956: 365), something many Poles detested. The Category IIIs responded by shedding their privileges as quickly as possible, though making themselves subject in the process to Nazi scrutiny and possible firing squad, or internment in a concentration camp for turning ‘renegade’. The early period in which Koehl was writing is reflected in his statement that ‘the fate of persons in category three remains obscure’ (ibid.), though he offers the opinion that many may have managed to reach the Altreich in Wehrmacht uniform, while others would have been expelled to the displaced persons’ camps in western Germany. Most revealing, however, is his view that ‘the great majority of persons in this category could easily live as Poles in Poland if they were permitted to survive’ (ibid.). It is these very ambiguities that made Category III of the DVL so fruitful as a means of gaining immigration rights into West Germany in the post-war period.

The Border Issue and Land Transfers After the war, border changes deprived Poland of the eastern territories which were taken over by the Soviet Union in 1940, while she acquired a smaller amount of territory from Germany in the west and south as compensation. These included the southern part of East Prussia. The northern part, including Königsberg (now the Russian city of Kaliningrad), also went to the Soviet Union, as part of the Russian Federation. As a result of the changes of 1989/90 it is now a Russian exclave on the Baltic coast, separated from Russia proper by the Baltic republics, and thus in a sense repeating the old regional problem of an exclave controlled by a great power and surrounded by lesser states (cf. German-controlled interwar Danzig). The other territories acquired by Poland in 1945 were the whole of Silesia, West Prussia and Hinterpommern (Pomerania east of the Oder), and the western part of socalled Lebuser Land (Polish Lubuskie), between Frankfurt and Zbąszynek. Poland’s western boundary, the Oder–Neiße/Odra–Nysa line, is popularly associated with the communist regime that secured its de facto acceptance. As far as Britain was concerned, the changes were designed not only to compensate Poland for Germany’s destruction of much of the country, but also to settle the tricky boundary issue once and for all. However, at Potsdam the allies agreed that the border would only be temporary. The Polish government

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assumed control of the transferred areas, which they called the ‘recovered territories’, in March 1945, and immediately began resettling Poles in them (Persson 1999: 69, 77, 79). Given German nostalgia and irredentism for the lost territories in general, it is interesting to consider briefly the justifications used by Polish apologists for Poland’s takeover of German lands in 1945. One early example of the Polish case for the acquisition of the new territories is a pamphlet by Winiewicz, published towards the end of the war (1944), in which everything is done to play down the Germanness of these areas, even before they were taken over by Poland. For Winiewicz, the problem is a Polish–Prussian not a Polish–German one. Even Germans called this area the ‘Prussian East’, a relatively poor and underpopulated area subsidized by the German government. At first sight, this underpopulation seems to be at variance with the fact that this area also had the highest birth rate in Germany, but there had already been large-scale emigration to western Germany, to the tune of three and a quarter million in the previous century. The first argument for Winiewicz is the naturalness of the Oder/Odra as a national frontier. Secondly, although the east has been important to Germany in terms of both military recruitment and agriculture, the hinterlands of East Prussia and Silesia are in Poland. Thirdly, according to Winiewicz, even Germans agree that the population of these areas are largely Germanized rather than German, the Polishness of East Prussia still being evident, as is that of East Brandenburg (now roughly Ziemia Lubuska) and Pomerania in place names and family names, old churches, parish registers, and so on: ‘In point of fact, between the western frontier of Poland and the middle and lower Oder, the veneer of Germanization had a very strong hold. Nonetheless, the living traces of Polish existence and culture remained in a broad zone all along the Polish–German border’ (Winiewicz 1944: 31). As regards Silesia specifically, German oppression and pressure is said to have prevented Poles from expressing their true preferences in the 1921 referendum (see further below; cf. Hannan 1996). Winiewicz can also point to the fact that ‘the legal aspect of the occupation of Silesia by the Prussians was called by Bismarck “a theft”’ (ibid.: 28). Other claims are that Breslau (Wrocław) was still a Polish city in 1790, and that Silesia was only partly Germanized after its occupation in the 1740s, remaining Polish in speech throughout the subsequent Prussian and German occupations. A fourth reason adduced by Winiewicz is that Poland scored better in the balance of human rights in the interwar period, being more generous to Danzig Germans than her treaty obligations required. Fifthly, ‘Poland requires territories in which to settle her surplus population from the overpopulated agricultural parts of the country. She wants to obtain part of these territories from Germany’s Prussian east, where normal economic life

From the First World War to the Present  •  45

was impossible without the influx of Polish seasonal workers’ (Winiewicz 1944: 37) – the ‘hinterland’ argument again. The new territories are to be settled from five different categories of land: (a) eastern territories lost to the Soviet Union; (b) rural areas with a surplus of population; (c/d) those who lost their livelihoods/homes during the German occupation; and (e) those coming from Germany as refugees (q.v. see Łuczak 1993). ‘Poland therefore has the means to colonize her new territories’ (Winiewicz 1944: 45) – that is, they will not be wasted on her. Indeed, it is a good thing that Poles are moving in to fill the gap left by Germans who have already fled, otherwise there will be no one to get this year’s harvest in. The transfer of territory will also contribute to peace by dealing a final blow to the Junkers, whose aggressions have contributed to two world wars. Finally, Germans are to be expelled because they are not the original population of these areas, coming first as fifth columnists, and later as oppressors. Like the Greek–Turkish population exchange in 1923, these expulsions will lead to peace. Peuckert (1950: 359), himself a Silesian, disputes at least one of these points by saying that the Poles desired Silesia not because of land hunger – Poland too being relatively sparsely populated – but because of the support that acquisition of its industry would give to state power. This is one element in the toing and froing between Germany and Poland that he calls ‘der Pulsschlag Schlesiens’ (the pulse of Silesia) (ibid.: 384). Poland also tried to have a still more westerly border agreed by the Allies in 1945, especially in the north beyond Szczecin towards Rügen, partly to avoid dividing certain cities along the border, especially Gubin/Guben, Frankfurt/Słubice and Görlitz/Zgorzelec (Szczecin avoided this fate and remained entirely Polish), and partly to avoid territorial disputes in the future (Ładykowska and Ładykowski 2013: 170–71). In fact, however, Terry (1983) has shown that the idea was already present in the Polish government in exile in London during the war. Prominent here was Sikorski, the leading figure in that government until his death in the Gibraltar plane crash in 1943. His suggestion was linked to his plan for a post-war Central European Federation, which would be both more stable than previous arrangements in the region and more independent of the German–Soviet nutcracker. Terry argues forcefully that Sikorski’s plan was anti-German rather than anti-Soviet, though it ultimately aimed at making Poland the key element in a federation strong enough to maintain its independence from both powers. Moreover, Sikorski’s demands for the acquisition of the new western territories from Germany were occasioned by more than the desire for compensation for the loss of the eastern territories, which he only belatedly realized he had no choice but to accept. Acquisition of these western territories greatly improved the security of both Poland and Czechoslovakia from any renewal of German aggression. In relation to Poland

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in particular, the former boundary on three sides was replaced with a more easily defensible boundary on one side5 that had been pushed westwards, therefore simultaneously weakening Germany through both loss of territory and its need to absorb German populations from the east. Sikorski came to realize that losing the eastern territories also meant losing a large non-Polish population (Ukrainians, Lithuanians, etc.), which would make Poland an ethnically much more homogeneous state (Terry 1983: 128). This is still felt to be an advantage (in view of events following the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, for instance; field notes), considerably moderating both Polish irredentism and internal ethnic conflict. Things were not to go entirely Sikorski’s way, however. In the event, Europe was divided down the middle, and politically the notion of Central Europe, on which his model of a Polishdominated alliance was based, lost its meaning for nearly half a century.

Poland and Germany in the European Union (EU) As for Poland today, her joining the EU in 2004 has meant effectively neutralizing Germany, one of the original members of the former EEC, as a threat to its own existence for the foreseeable future, though popular suspicions remain over Germans’ intentions regarding acquiring Polish land, especially because EU entry means that Poland must now allow this. This improved relationship owes a lot to Germany’s formal acceptance of the post-1945 territorial changes. Poland’s relations with Russia in the new millennium continue to be difficult, especially because of Russia’s hostility to Georgia in recent years, her forced annexation of Crimea in 2014, her launch of an unprovoked war against Ukraine in 2022, and the loss of Polish president Kaczyński in a plane crash in Russia in 2010, blamed by his supporters on Russian machinations, and turning Kaczyński into something of a cult figure.

German Expellees in West Germany The problems of German refugees in being recognized as Germans in West Germany have already been mentioned. It is clear that they bore the full brunt of Polish and Soviet revenge after the war, more so in some ways than the inhabitants of the Altreich (cf. Schieder 1960: 15–16). An estimated seven million Germans were expelled from eastern Europe in and after 1945, and in 1946–47 five to ten thousand a day were entering Germany. Most of the expellees from areas taken over by Poland were old and sick, and most were women, partly because the Polish authorities had kept back large numbers of able-bodied men to help to rebuild the country as forced labour. Like other

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German citizens, many were to die in the harsh winter of 1946/47. For a long time they were confined to Germany’s Russian zone, as the British had closed off their zone to the migrants, but later this restriction was ended, and Schleswig-Holstein, in the British zone, became a major reception area for the refugees. Later, after the Federal Republic was founded with Adenauer as chancellor, restrictions were reimposed. Most Sudeten Germans, who were expelled by the Czech authorities, were sent to the American zone. Few Polish displaced persons went in the other direction after the war, from Germany to Poland: only about 120,000 out of around half a million (Persson 1999: 69, 80, 83–84, 86, 88, 89). De Zayas (1993) explicitly seeks to establish the credentials of the German expellees as victims of the war, going so far as to envisage, quite unrealistically, an agreed return of some lost territory sometime in the future. More straightforwardly anthropological is Lehmann’s study (1991), his personal opinions, when they do make themselves felt (e.g. ibid.: 76), leaning towards what he identifies as a common West German feeling – namely that, although the expulsions were unjust, they were the result of German crimes against Poland. Whatever happened in the past, the cycle of revenge must be broken by accepting the present situation. At several points in his book, Lehmann discusses previous academic studies of the expellees (1991: 16–17, 66ff., 188ff., 240), frequently coming to the conclusion that such studies are themselves part of the problem and therefore part of the ethnography. This is largely because they are a part of the society they are studying (ibid.: 157). One problem was that the expellees did not often like what was being written about their experiences by contemporary historians and other academics, the latter being accused of being political opportunists, communist propagandists, and such like. Schieder (1960) goes into this problem at length, arguing that academics should not adjust their writings to satisfy popular prejudice. Although there is a clear commitment to be as factual as possible and scrupulously honest intellectually, there is an ulterior motive, namely to establish ‘what we can describe as the collective responsibility of the entire German people for its past, and what we must accept as a consequence of the emphasis on national solidarity’ (ibid.: 15). Also, much of the earliest literature was concerned with the social problems of the expellees, particularly those relating to their integration in and psychological adjustment to West German society. But Lehmann also mentions historians and theologians who go no further than seeing fate or the workings of the great powers behind the expulsions. In this way, the Nazi state is reduced to the Stalinist, both being manifestations of twentieth-century evil and dictatorship. This demonization both shifts guilt and allows the old Slav enemy to remain in place in the modified guise of communism (see also Rada 2001: 59–60).

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Such studies soon fell away, but anthropology has persistently taken an interest in these matters, ‘partly discipline-specific and dilettantish, with romantic ideas of being saved, and partly reflected academically in the methods of empirical cultural research’ (Lehmann 1991: 16). Among the latter can be counted Bausinger’s work from the 1950s (especially 1952) on representations of the expulsions among expellees then living in villages in Swabia. Only his fear that the revenge and hatred expressed in their stories might be handed down to later generations, thus among other things compromising their full integration into West German society, seems not to have been fulfilled (Lehmann 1991: 190–91). At one point, Lehmann asks whether such stories have not in fact become myths or legends, which influence representations of what informants consider reality: that is, events enter their personal accounts without their ever having witnessed them personally (Lehmann 1991: 240). It is therefore with the representations of events rather than with what actually happened that he is chiefly concerned. He identifies different strands of opinion, both between and within different generations, and especially between the generation of the expellees, who still remember the lost lands, and their children and grandchildren, who were mostly born and brought up in West Germany. The expellees soon organized themselves politically, even before the Allied authorities relaxed their restrictions on freedom of association. In 1949 two organizations identified by de Zayas only by their English titles, the United Eastern German Association and the Central Union of Expelled Germans, were founded (de Zayas 1993: 128ff.). Another association was the Bund der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten (literally, ‘the union of those expelled from their homeland and dispossessed of their rights’), founded in 1950, which won a quarter of the votes in the Schleswig–Holstein Land elections in that year (Lehmann 1991: 16, 29). The Bund der Vertriebenen (Association of Expellees), apparently a different group, had strong links with the church and drew together pro- and anti-Nazis in its support (Urban 1994: 136). Expellees also had newspapers dedicated to them, such as the Osteroder Zeitung (Lehmann 1991: 77). Some of these associations were very local, such as that founded in Ostfriesland by former pupils of the Goethe school in Graudenz (Lachauer 2009: 180).6 These associations represented the interests of the expellees in Germany, while at the same time maintaining the idea of a possible future return in the minds of their supporters. Among those mentioned, the rejection of violence in reaching their goal, and of revenge in respect of those who had taken their land and homes, is standard (Schieder 1960: 15; de Zayas 1993; Urban 1994: 136–38). A somewhat more modern variant of this is the idea that the lost territories should be internationalized in the context of European unity (Lehmann 1991: 98–99; cf. Urban 1994: 145).

From the First World War to the Present  •  49

These are clearly official positions, however. Lehmann shows the feelings of individual members of these organizations to have been considerably more complicated. In the first place, the class divisions experienced in the lost territories transferred themselves to some extent westwards and into the various associations in that the BHE, at least, was regarded by some as controlled by the former Adelsschicht or elite of nobility and gentry (Lehmann 1991: 30). Others expressed the desire for revenge or a general hopelessness at their situation, the former quite contrary to official association policy (ibid.: 18, 77ff., 230ff.). Another group anticipated eventual success in their new home. While all retained clear memories of their actual experiences in fleeing or in being expelled, and expressed a desire to return, the successful were keener to forget their experiences as refugees in West Germany itself, in camps and other substandard accommodation, perhaps to begin with living a semi-legal life by pilfering or through the black market. It was those who failed to get out of the camps and into normal life quickly (and the last camps were only closed in 1963) who tended to turn to the associations set up in their favour (ibid.: 47–48). Integration and success went together for most. In Lehmann’s own words, ‘Whoever was not “integrated” by 1955 only had themselves to blame’ (ibid.: 152). On the whole, the children and grandchildren of expellees have tended not to join such associations (Urban 1994: 138). In fact, membership in refugee organizations could slow down assimilation, especially if one lived in a village or small town. The way to enter normal life here was through sports and other clubs, and to lose one’s status as a refugee as quickly as possible: to remain a member of a dedicated refugee organization obviously perpetuated popular local associations with that status (Lehmann 1991: 51–54). As it was, in such small settlements, tacit knowledge of a family’s origins would remain long after superficial assimilation had been achieved, though this did not necessarily mean that it led to gossip or other discrimination. Nonetheless, assimilation and acceptance cannot have been helped by, for example, the practice of some Silesian expellees wearing ‘traditional’ Silesian dress after arrival in West Germany, done to express claims to the lost lands, but seen as an excessive devotion to tradition by the West German majority (Rutsch 2009: 91). People from Breslau/Wrocław especially were considered the most extreme irredentists, and Rutsch reported the continuing existence of a Breslauer Stammtisch7 in an East Berlin bar near the suburb of Treptow (ibid.: 34–36). Other markers of Silesian identity that were retained included a particular kind of glazed pottery and certain dishes (e.g. Streuselkuchen) (ibid.: 44, 48). There was thus a potential for conflict between the incomers and the settled population. The latter often saw the former as Poles, Russians, Romanians or Roma, depending on area of origin, as superstitious and

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backward, and generally cast doubts and aspersions on their claims to be proper Germans (Schmalstieg 1990: 156–57; Lehmann 1991: 49, 170ff., 235). This attitude was even represented in psychology and pedagogy, where it tended to be taken for granted that the children of refugees must be less gifted than those of the indigenous West German population. Lehmann (ibid.: 66–67) reports that the few attempts to study the educational abilities of refugee children immediately after the war tended to be regarded as superfluous. More generally, the term Volksdeutscher came to be associated, and then replaced in popular discourse, with the derogatory Beutedeutscher (from Beute, ‘booty’) or Auch-Deutscher (‘would-be Germans’). Here, as Lehmann makes clear, a popular racism survived the discrediting of Naziism, leading at least to the depreciation of the refugees as being of mixed origins. Things went no better when one of the refugees married a local person, for this very reason. In the 1960s, the arrival of Gastarbeiter or guestworkers, mostly from Southern Europe, the Balkans and Turkey, improved things somewhat for the refugees, in that popular dislike was redirected away from them and towards the newcomers, who occupied a lower position in the hierarchy – broadly speaking, the position they themselves had occupied previously. As a consequence, the refugees lost some of the feeling that they were foreigners in what had become their own land (Lehmann 1991: 68, 175). This is one way in which the categories applied to the refugees by others came to be transferred by them onto yet other categories of people who arrived later (cf. Lehmann 1991: 178–79). On the one hand, their new home in Germany was presented in a good light (ibid.: 33) in order to increase their identification with it. Another part of this process, however, was to adopt the same attitudes to Gastarbeiter (guestworkers), Spätaussiedler (late migrants), black labour from Poland, and so on, as the indigenous population (ibid.: 32–33, 176ff.). Expellees compare the willingness to accept these categories with their own difficulties with elements of the indigenous population after the war. The involuntary removal of the expellees and their generally recognized contribution to the Wirtschaftswunder or economic miracle of the 1950s are also compared favourably with the voluntary and supposedly largely economically driven motivations of the other categories wishing to seek settlement in Germany. Spätaussiedler from Poland are viewed especially with some disgust, as they tend to be regarded as having turned Polish in order to be able to avoid expulsion from what in 1945 had seemed more favourable economic conditions. When the Polish economy collapsed, it is said, the very same people came over to Germany to improve their economic conditions once again. Here, one’s own consistency and loyalty to Deutschtum or Germandom is compared with the fickleness and opportunism of the newcomers. Language is another sore point: true

From the First World War to the Present  •  51

Germans should speak German, something many of the Spätaussiedler can hardly do, so that the German government has to spend public money providing German courses for them (ibid.: 182; also Otto 1990b: 52–53). Lehmann identifies a generational difference, not in the basic attitude to these Spätaussiedler but in the sort of arguments being used against them (Lehmann 1991: 183–84). For what he calls the Erlebnisgeneration, those who experienced the expulsions, the question is, are they really German? Their children and grandchildren, however, prefer to stress instead their supposedly purely economic motives for coming to Germany, thus implicitly denying their Germanness at the outset. These feelings towards Poland and the Poles are by no means standard. Since the easing of international relations in the 1970s, return visits have been possible, and many undertaking them have struck up friendships with the Poles who have settled in their old villages or even homes (Lehmann 1991: 127ff.; personal fieldwork).8 There is a general recognition too that these Poles are in many cases themselves expellees from the eastern territories taken over by the Soviet Union, not in 1945 but in 1940, as part of the Hitler–Stalin pact, this common experience providing a basis for such friendships. Conversely, many German expellees or their descendants who went back for a visit in the communist period expressed shock at the dirt, decayed buildings, bad food, drunkenness in the streets, and such like that they reported encountering. This tended to restore the distance between the expellees and the Poles who had expelled them or taken over their homes. There was even a view that Poles and Czechs were paying for having expelled the Germans in 1945 through their poverty, just as the Germans paid for their crimes through these very expulsions (ibid.: 131–35). As Lehmann points out (ibid.: 134), this argument leaves out of account the experience of East Germany, poor in relation to the West, though culturally German. There is also a sense that since the war Poland has received enough help, both in the form of compensation, and from having taken German land (ibid.: 180). Generally it is the younger generation who are most conscious of German war guilt, with a concomitant refusal to see the Germans as victims of war, as their parents tend to (ibid.: 84, 135). Later generations are much less prone to bitterness or the desire for revenge than the Erlebnisgeneration (those who experienced the expulsions), though the latter too are by no means uniformly affected by such emotions (ibid.: 109).9 Lehmann also identifies a class aspect in the desire to make return visits, in that former property owners are among those who are most keen to do so (Lehmann 1991: 114). This does not necessarily mean the old Adelsschicht or nobility, but also those who had a farm or smallholding. Phials of earth from the old property, stoneware or metalware garden decorations, even gravestones, are all reported as having been taken from the old territories back to

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new homes and properties in West Germany on these journeys of nostalgia, a practice that often involved smuggling them out of Poland and across East Germany. This affection for Heimaterde or the soil of one’s homeland is by no means new or confined to this context. Many expellees took some with them on fleeing, which ended up in graves, on mantelpieces, or built into the walls of new houses in West Germany. Soldiers going off to previous wars had also taken some with them. Other expellees, for example from Bessarabia, are reported as having brought local flower seeds with them (ibid.: 102ff., 108, 138ff.). Earth could also be used malevolently. Many expellees threw earth from their family graves into their houses before leaving in order to throw a curse on them and on whoever took them over (ibid.: 238). Others simply left their houses in their usual neat condition, thus presenting the new occupiers with a sense of normality which they would be violating by entering uninvited. Similar symbolic and ritual attitudes are also to be found in the prophesying and visions reported from among the refugee population in parts of West Germany immediately after the war, which only confirmed the suspicions of superstition held by a predominantly Protestant population about these ‘semi-Polonized’ incomers (ibid.: 229ff.). Although much has been done to paper over the cracks in German civil society since 1945, Schlögel is surely right to note the continuing gap between the refugees and those who remained in the Altreich, plus their respective descendants (Schlögel 2002: 240). As he also notes (ibid.: 244), many West Germans especially have turned their backs on the east, which most of them have never visited, which cannot be recovered, and which in any case is now associated with the worst crimes of the Nazis. Quite simply, they now know Mallorca or Miami better than any East European capital. However, while that remark also applies to many of the descendants of expellees, some are seeking to restore links with lost lands where they can, especially in Silesia (Rutsch 2009: 48). Often these are descendants of former German owners of properties who are looking to restore them, perhaps using Polish relatives or others as front men or women to get round ownership problems. One example is a palace at Jędrzychowice near Szlichtingowa, being restored by a scion of the Szlichting family, who originally came from Latvia to Silesia in German times (field notes).10 Also well known is the interest, though not the practical involvement, of the von Arnim family in the restoration of the Muskauer Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site straggling the German–Polish border in the area of Bad Muskau and Łęknica, which was formerly in their possession.11 Finally, the von Bruhl family appear to have taken some interest in the restoration of their own former family castle at Brody (German Pförtner, between Forst and Lubsko), though the work done has been carried out by others, and the estate is now in other hands (field notes).12

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Official Policy towards Volksdeutsche, Spätaussiedler A whole official terminology has developed in Germany over the years to deal with various categories of people arriving as immigrants from the communist bloc and a later market-oriented Eastern Europe (Bornemann 1992: 33). The East and West German authorities, what is more, had different terms. The western term Flüchtling or ‘refugee’ was matched in the east by Umsiedler or ‘resettler’, designed to mask the truth about the expulsions. An alternative West German expression was Aussiedler, ‘emigrant’ or ‘evacuee’, applied explicitly to Volksdeutsche from east of the Oder–Neisse line, with those arriving after the Helsinki accords of 1975 being referred to as Spätaussiedler, or ‘late migrants’. None of these terms, strictly speaking, was applied to those who resettled from East to West Germany, successively Übersiedler (roughly, ‘person who moves’) and, after the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, Verräter (‘traitor’) in the east, Zuwanderer or ‘immigrant’ in the west. In popular discourse, the term Flüchtling merged easily with Vertriebene (‘expellee’), the latter taking over as the former became somewhat pejorative: it already, according to Lehmann (1991: 14ff.), sounded somewhat unsavoury because of the final syllable -ling, which had Nazi and/or humorous associations. Although ‘expellee’ came to be preferred to ‘refugee’ for those affected, official discourse and the expellees’ own parties were less inclined to make a clear distinction between them. According to the Bundesvertriebenengesetz (federal law on expellees), the children of all German Vertriebenen born in West Germany, including cases where only one of their parents was a refugee, qualify for a Flüchtlingsausweis (refugee pass), allowing the holder inter alia certain tax privileges (Lehmann 1991: 75). Lehmann estimates that through this law close to 50 per cent of the contemporary German population could claim the status of Vertriebene. However, the question that chiefly arises in this context is who exactly qualifies as German. West and East German officialdom answered this question quite differently too (see Bornemann 1992: 81). Bornemann points out (ibid.: 57) that demography was a key concern of both states, given the twentieth century’s wars and dislocations. Theoretically, anyone who accepted the socialist message could become a citizen of East Germany, but for West Germany ‘Germanness’ (Deutschtum) was above all important, as enshrined in Article 116 Paragraph 1 of the West German constitution. This defined a German initially through citizenship and then through Volkszugehörigkeit (ethnic belonging) in the case of refugees from the east (see Otto 1990b: 55; Urban 1994: 18–19). This vague definition led to a practical reliance on descent, to which were attached notions of blood. One result of both definitions was to make the marriage of Germans to foreigners problematic in both states, if for different reasons: for West Germany it threatened the integrity

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of Deutschtum, while for East Germany it threatened the very integrity of the state, given that most East Germans marrying foreigners elected to leave the country if they could (Bornemann 1992: 295–99). The West German reliance on blood as a determinant of Deutschtum had obvious continuities with the recent Nazi past. In the first place, there was the very desire to make German settlement coordinate with German political rule, though this could now only be achieved by bringing Germans abroad back to the homeland. Aussiedler and Übersiedler are not immigrants in the official view because they are ethnically the same as the home population. In both cases too, a strictly ethnic classification was rejected in principle – in West Germany, Volkszugehörigkeit (ethnic belonging) was not to be confused with Deutschstämmigkeit (of German descent; Otto 1990c: 180), but was implemented in practice; also, German communists were discriminated against in both cases (Otto 1990b: 46–48). Moreover, even acknowledging one’s Germanness in official documents was seen as inheritable in that the children and grandchildren of those registered in them were eligible for entry into West Germany (ibid.: 49). Although this reliance on blood was widely rejected by a younger generation from the 1960s onwards, most vocally but not entirely by those on the radical left (Bornemann 1992: 282–83), in general it has remained the most common folk model (Forsythe 1989). One result of this official position is that Volksdeutsche from the eastern bloc have enjoyed a much more secure and privileged status in the Federal Republic than foreigners (e.g. Turks) who have been settled and even born in the country, let alone asylum-seekers (cf. Bornemann 1993: 307; Diedrich 1993: 38). In August 1991 this principle was invoked to deny German citizenship to a Jewish couple from Riga in Latvia (Diedrich 1993: 44). Bornemann calls the official categories of potential immigrants – which he numbers at between eleven and sixteen ‘according to context’ – ‘Jesuitical’, and he makes no attempt to reproduce, let alone discuss them. As regards Poland in particular, Nazi documentation in the form of the DVL was used for many decades by the West German immigration authorities in deciding who should be accepted as a German and therefore ultimately a Bundesbürger (federal citizen) and who not. Enrolment on one of the first three lists – i.e. including Category III, those who were considered Polonized but eindeutschungsfähig (capable of being made German) by the SS – was long accepted as proof of Germanness by the authorities of the Federal Republic (Otto 1990b: 33; Otto 1990c: 187; Lehmann 1991: 179; Bornemann 1992: 308). In practice, Category III, the most ambiguous one, is the most relevant in this context. Members of categories I and II must be assumed to have been able to find refuge in Germany with the collapse of German power, provided they survived.

From the First World War to the Present  •  55

The next most common ground of application has been descent from a bureaucrat or officer who had served the Third Reich (Bornemann 1992). Other Nazi documentation used includes ‘Ahnenpässe, Wehrmachtspässe, SS-Ausweise, Kennkarten’ (ancestor passes, army passes, SS ID, ordinary ID cards; Tagezeitung, 17 January 1989). The numbers of those applying on any of these grounds were modest up to 1988, after which the progressive falling away of travel restrictions in Eastern Europe led to a flood of applicants – 370,000 in 1988–89 (ibid.). The authorities would also accept people on the basis of their having German forebears, or at least a grandfather from before 1914, whom Polish commentators called, in ironic reference to the Nazi period, the ‘Aryan grandfather’. Although proving one’s Germanness was formally required, language and other tests were often applied perfunctorily, if at all, and there are stories of acceptance on the basis of verbal statements alone, and even of officials’ connivance, at least in the more tolerant period before 1990 (field notes). Acceptance as an Aussiedler automatically brought acceptance of close family members too, even if not of German descent, in the interests of keeping families together (Urban 1994: 20). Although the German authorities justified this as an obligation under international law, emigration could actually represent a splitting up of families, in the sense that some relatives would almost inevitably be left behind in Poland, something Western authorities were generally unconscious of or simply ignored (cf. Kurcz 1991; Bornemann 1992: 181). Not unexpectedly, the desire to leave Poland for Germany was strong enough to stimulate a black market in both genuine and forged personal documents. Those who needed recourse to such methods were called in Polish slang ‘Helmut’, after Helmut Schmidt, whose 1975 agreement with Poland led to the exit of another 125,000 individuals from Poland to Germany. Another tactic, especially for women, was simply marriage to a ‘German’, which often meant someone who had been accepted as being of German descent by the German authorities. In this way, many individuals acquired both Polish and German papers, and in effect dual citizenship, something they took advantage of to peddle trade back and forth over the border as part of the growing shadow economy. According to German figures, anything between 300,000 and 700,000 people may have had both sets of papers in the 1990s, which was contrary to German though no longer Polish law (Urban 1994: 20–21, 23–24; on the shadow economy, see Irek 1998, 2018). In this context, Kurcz’s categorization of Silesian Germans (ms.) is potent: ‘real Germans; Germans with good papers; Germans with poor papers; Poles of German origin; candidate Germans’. According to him, 300,000 ‘genuine Poles who had nothing to do with German culture [or] language’ managed to obtain settlement rights in West Germany in the 1980s. Many entered on short-term visas obtained at the German embassy

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in Warsaw, which they later converted into long-term or permanent resident rights (Schmalstieg 1990: 152). The popular suspicion that the main motives for moving to Germany were economic is not borne out by surveys of the intentions of Aussiedler – which may merely show how unreliable such surveys are. Rather, the desire to live as a German among Germans and the existence of family ties predominate, although economic reasons figured increasingly between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s (cf. Otto 1990b: 43). The receiving population, however, were much surer that economic motives were the real reason (ibid.: 52–53). Certainly the economic and social help that the migrants were entitled to was considerable (ibid.: 58–59). The liberality of the authorities in accepting individuals as Germans was ended by the revised Aussiedleraufnahmegesetz (law on the acceptance of refugees) of July 1990, passed in an atmosphere of growing public concern over the numbers of immigrants entering the country generally, with the authorities in cities like Lübeck complaining of being stuffed to capacity. From then on, applicants had to satisfy the authorities of their knowledge of German and that they had suffered discrimination because of their Germanness in their home country. In addition, they had to await the outcome of their application in the home country and not in Germany. Above all, it became much more difficult to gain acceptance through enrolment or the enrolment of one’s forebears in Category III of the DVL. As a result of these changes, the numbers arriving went down from 250,000 in 1989 to 40,000 in 1991. Other reasons given for this reduction were the easing of travel restrictions between the two countries, the recognition of the German minority by the Polish government, and the pensions agreement between the two states, whereby Polish citizens who came to live in Germany no longer received German pensions but Polish ones, which were lower (Urban 1994: 22–23). The easing of political conditions generally in East European countries, including Poland, anyway led to a growing sense of contradiction between the privileges accorded to supposedly German Aussiedler and the limited rights obtained, if at all, by acknowledged foreigners in Germany, whether Gastarbeiter and their families and descendants, or those seeking political asylum under Germany’s formerly liberal asylum laws, which were tightened up in 1987 and again in 1990 (cf. Otto 1990a, 1990b; also Feldhoff 1990: 93–94). For Otto, the exit of Aussiedler following the conclusion of the post-war verification process in Poland was due not so much to renewed ­expulsions – the Polish government’s human rights record in the narrow sense was passable – but to West Germany’s expellee-related policies, which in turn were a factor in the Cold War. In other words, West Germany encouraged the exit of people of German descent on the basis of their alleged persecution in Poland, which basically took the form of restrictions on their ability to

From the First World War to the Present  •  57

build an effective minority community. A chief aim of this policy was the weakening of eastern bloc communist states through this exit, a policy that had its most dramatic impact in relation to the former East Germany. That this policy was directed mainly against communist regimes is indicated by the fact that political refugees of German descent from Pinochet’s Chile had much greater difficulties in being accepted. Another contradiction is that West Germany’s official policy saw entry in the DVL as acceptable because it was voluntary. In fact, as Otto points out, anything from unfavourable treatment in the distribution of food to concentration camps awaited those who refused to be or could not be inscribed. Conversely, opting for Poland in the post-1945 verification process (i.e. the verification of suspect individuals as Poles) was seen as having been done largely under compulsion, whereas it was often voluntary, and those who refused to go were not necessarily expelled, even at the height of the Stalinist repression (see Urban 1994). Thus for Otto, the term Aussiedler, suggesting compulsory exit, is unsuitable. Those seeking entry are really Einwanderer (immigrants) into a country not their own, and whose language they scarcely speak. Being citizens of other countries, they do not really come under Article 116 of the German constitution, which defines Deutschtum (Germandom) as a matter partly of citizenship and partly of Volkszugehörigkeit (ethnic belonging). As a result, the authorities are almost compelled to fall back on descent. This also means that, in being accepted, Aussiedler have to be made German first. Because the Aussiedlerrecht (immigrant law) is a matter of the ordinary law, not the constitution, acceptance is administratively rather than legally defined, being effected through the actual allocation of the applicant to a Bundesland. Only then can Germanization, through language training and so forth, really begin. Otto sums the matter up as follows: ‘“A German in the sense of the Basic Law” is whoever wants to be such, assuming that he lives in an East Block state and had, despite adversities, identified himself with German national traditions (especially during the war and the Cold War)’ (Otto 1990b: 57; original emphasis). The upshot is to question whether the privileges enjoyed by Aussiedler relative to other foreigners in Germany should be allowed to continue. For Otto (1990a: 7; 1990b: 44–45; also Feldhoff 1990: 94), asylum policy should concentrate on actual political oppression, not on the German descent, going back generations, of people who are in most respects assimilated to other cultures. The Aussiedlerrecht should therefore be reduced to the general laws for immigrants and asylum-seekers. Even the new right in Germany, unlike earlier conservatives, tend to reject Volksdeutsche rights to settle in Germany, especially if from Poland, on grounds of the pressure on the country’s resources (Radtke 1990: 85). This reflects a popular conception that Aussiedler are not really Germans but Poles, Russians, Romanians, or such like (Schmalstieg 1990: 156–57).13

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Whatever one’s feelings about the tightening up of German law in general as regards refugees and immigrants, few will regret the reduced importance given to the DVL under the new arrangements. Its origins in a disgraced past and its status as the opposite side of the coin from the Nazi policy of genocide have ensured that. Another, more recent example of official ethnic categorizations, and which attracted an only slightly lesser degree of notoriety, was the administration of apartheid in South Africa. One degree down the scale is the British practice of using criteria of descent to control immigration. Yet not all such lists or official criteria for determining ethnic group membership are objectionable. Other liberal democracies, such as Norway (in respect of the Sami) and Canada (in respect of various Native Indian populations, and despite recent scandals), have long used such criteria in implementing general policies designed to improve conditions for minorities without threatening them culturally (Eriksen 1993: 64–65). One major difference, of course, is that these minorities represent the oldest population groups in these states, ones that have suffered disadvantage through the in-migration of other ethnicities who have taken over much of their land; they are not themselves the immigrants. In India, the special schedules of disadvantaged castes and tribes attached to the Indian constitution are intended to work in similar ways. While here they have stimulated communal conflict, originating partly from resentment by more privileged groups, in general they may be said to have made violent conflict less likely by providing a legal forum through which discrimination can be fought peacefully. As Glazer and Moynihan argue (1975: 10–11), ethnic categorization can discourage discrimination as well as institute it. Similarly, although the continuation of descent as a determinant of Germanness from the Nazi past is deplored by many, it does not of itself mean a continuance of the racist ideologies that underpinned it. In the United States, the principle of the ‘one drop of Negro blood’ (cf. Isaacs 1975: 41; also Horowitz 1975: 119) in defining Blacks has survived from slavery days to the present official and also publicly approved disappearance of discrimination: now as then, the fact that there is no intermediate category results in the categorization of anyone who has any obviously ‘black’ physical characteristics, however fair-skinned, as ‘Black’, thus ignoring a possibly considerable element of white descent (cf. Parsons 1975: 75–76).14

The Revival of Nostalgia in Germany In the years since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it has become both easier and more justifiable for Germans to indulge in the nostalgia many of them still have – increasingly vicariously, as the generation that was actually

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forced to move progressively dies out – for the pre-1945 German presence in eastern Europe. This nostalgia represents an alternative to resentment and anger at the expulsions of Germans from these areas in 1945 and afterwards, and is reflected in a plethora of (auto)biographies, travelogues, photographic essays15 and similar writings about these areas and the former lives that Germans lived there. Some of this is written by academics, though sometimes tending towards journalism or travel writing in style. Examples include Schlögel (2001, 2002), whose focus in a series of studies is on formerly majority German cities in Eastern Europe; and Rada (2001), on post-1989 East European migration to Berlin. Some of this work is also political, such as Schroedter’s (2003) account of her travels as a German Green Euro MP to the former Bukovina. One interesting study is that by a Harvard-based expert in Black American literature, who reports on his family origins in a recent visit to what was formerly Breslau (today Wrocław) (Sollors 2006).16 It is in this curiosity and nostalgia for the east, as much as in violent antagonism, that German–Polish relations are currently being shaped.

Notes   1. Piłsudski is also said to have contemplated a preventive war against Germany after Hitler came to power there, together with his main western ally France, which balked at the idea. This led Piłsudski to make his own non-aggression pact with Hitler in 1934 (Urban 1994: 41).   2. Presumably against the Soviet Union, which was also Piłsudski’s nemesis. Hitler appeared to have regarded the Soviet Union, not Poland, as the main area of future expansion for Germany, the notorious Lebensraum.   3. From ‘Warthe’, the name of a river, and Gau, a unit of military administration in the occupied territories.   4. This term is derogatory, and suggests low social status; it was originally a designation for river boatmen. See especially Ch. 7 below.   5. Supplemented by extensive planting of forests in the new territories as a defence against German, and later NATO tanks.   6. Lachauer suggests that the members were united by a common sense of loss, not their common experience and memories of the school they had been forced to leave behind (2009: 179).   7. A table that bars keep for regular clients.   8. Some of these visits are more furtive. Twice in relation to the same formerly German house in a town in western Poland, it has been reported that a German-registered car drew up outside, its occupants quickly emerging to have a look and take photographs before the car sped away again (field notes). Endres noted the same phenomenon in Pomerania (2009: 265).   9. Younger Germans may deny personal blame for the actions of their parents’ or grandparents’ generation in the war, though they may recognize sharing the collective shame of the German nation for the crimes of the past.

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10. The family are also said to have owned the village of Rzerzyca (German Rietschütz), near Świebodzin, in around 1620 (Meißner 1990). 11. Field notes. It seems the family are reluctant to claim the park back for themselves – as they might do on the German side, at least – because of the costs involved in restoration and maintenance. Rutsch mentions that in Wrocław the city authorities have erected a memorial to the previous, mostly German and Jewish, inhabitants of the city (2009: 35–36), perhaps to satisfy demand stemming from the new wave of heritage tourism to these areas. Nonetheless, this does seem to represent an attempted rapprochement between two formerly opposed views of history from the Polish side. 12. As of 2010, one wing had been fully restored as a hotel and restaurant, the opposite wing had had an external facelift to match, though was still apparently gutted inside, and the main wing was still a ruin. As in the case of many such palaces in this part of Poland, it was reduced to ruin at least as much by neglect, misuse and deliberate damage in the socialist period (by Soviet armies, Polish officials and other incomers) as by fighting at the end of the Second World War. (I am not able to provide a more up to date account of the situation since 2010.) 13. EU entry for Poland in 2004 changed things somewhat, in that there is now freedom for Polish citizens of whatever ethnicity to travel and work across the whole EU without claiming refugee or similar status (employment rights remained restricted until 2012, even in the UK, which permitted entry under a registration scheme for individuals seeking work, though those who had set up their own businesses were exempt). Indeed, since Poland joined the Schengen agreement, the borders between Germany and Poland are now effectively open. For a general account of German migration policy roughly a decade earlier, see Angenendt 1997, though he says little about Poland specifically apart from a paragraph on the state of its post-socialist economy (ibid.: 44). 14. Ethnic categories in Brazil, by contrast, do recognize a whole raft of intermediate categories; see Sanjek 1971. 15. For example, two books respectively on the west Polish town of Świebodzin (German Schwiebus) (Nowacki 2000) and the border town of Gubin (German Guben) (Pantowski n.d.), produced in landscape rather than the more usual portrait orientation, assembling old, mostly pre-war and, in the case of Gubin, late war photographs with (again in the case of Gubin only) modern ones. The book on Gubin was produced with EU money under the PHARE Programme. Being produced in Poland, however, both books appeal to Polish interest in these two towns, as well as German nostalgia. Gancewski (2011, 2013) looks at the modern history of Świebodzin from a purer Polish angle. 16. Schlögel, by contrast, says explicitly that neither he nor any of his family were refugees from the east (2002: 239).

Chapter 3

National and Regional Identities in Germany and Poland

? German Identity Today, East and West: An Overview In this chapter, I start looking at German and Polish national identities at the present day, partly in the context of regional structures and cross-border relations, though these will also be topics for succeeding chapters. The account is rather broad-brush, acknowledging rather than demonstrating the interpersonal variants in sentiments of identity that might be expected to emerge in such situations. As regards German identity generally, one study published just before the collapse of communism (Forsythe 1989) shows that, while it is often considered dominant by its neighbours, it is by no means unproblematic to define. One German scholar considered it one of the clearer examples in Europe of ethnicity being created, for which process ample historical references are available (cf. Elwert 1991: 320–21). Forsythe discusses some typical contemporary German attitudes to Germany’s neighbours in the late 1980s, seen (or at least reported) largely in terms of relative closeness to and distance from themselves. However, while attitudes to Jews, Turks and ‘Blacks’ were covered, the author unaccountably left attitudes to Poles and other East Europeans out of the picture. As we saw in the previous chapter, Lehmann (1991) partly fills this gap with respect to Germans of Silesian and Prussian origin in the former West Germany, but as regards the present-day interactions of Poles and Germans along their now liberated common border, little work has as yet been published (see Introduction).

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Forsythe’s study is worth discussing further, as it is one of the few modern attempts by a non-German anthropologist to get to grips with the nature of present-day German identity. Her article was written before the political changes that led up to reunification, but it has not lost its salience as regards West Germans. She begins with the point that Germany is a mass society, with the largest population in Europe even before reunification. It is therefore frequently represented as threatening by smaller scale ethnicities. This is a product of large–small contrasts in general, and applies equally to Irish, Welsh and Scottish identities in relation to the dominant English. But she glosses over the specific historical reasons in the German case. However, her article does make it possible to examine what Germanness means to Germans in the round. This is more fragile and ambiguous than it may seem. This is partly because of the difficulties of referring German ethnicity to the history of the German state, which, firstly, is recent, and secondly, is dominated historically by Naziism and by the forward policies of the preceding Bismarckian and Wilhelmine eras. For later generations, the period of greatest German expansionism coincides with the period of greatest German disgrace. Since Germany’s defeat in the Second World War there have been attempts to denationalize Germanness, one result of which has been to seek a new identity through a united Europe; another has been to emphasize regional identities, which the post-war federal structure, insisted upon by the Allies, was partly designed to accommodate. However, the question of Germanness is not confined to history or to the nature of the constitution: it may also be approached geographically (the question, where is Germany?) or nationally (the question, who is German?). As to the first, there was agreement among Forsythe’s informants on West Germany being properly German, but not on East Germany, let alone Silesia or East Prussia. It was also recognized that the rest of Europe has Germanspeaking areas that are not part of Germany, for example, Austria, most of Switzerland and small areas of France, Belgium and Italy. This makes it difficult to link Germanness with a well-defined territory of the sort one finds in Britain, France or Spain, even though, in practice, this is often done in a vague way. As to who is German, this is also ambiguous, though perhaps not quite in the way Forsythe believes. Language counts to some extent, but it is not enough in itself, nor is it necessary: the children of Turkish immigrants who have been born in the Federal Republic and therefore speak perfect German are not considered German, whereas those who were born of German parents or grandparents but who speak another language, such as Russian, might well be. In fact, as we saw in the last chapter, Deutschstämmigkeit, or being of German stock, even if through only one parent or grandparent, is of primary importance at both the official and popular levels. At the latter level, not

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even officially recognized changes of citizenship are sufficient to make one a German. In this view, which is dominant, Germanness cannot be created or acquired: one either has it or one doesn’t. For Forsythe’s informants, it is physical appearance, not linguistic fluency, that is most often used to judge whether someone is German or not. In this respect, German identity is at variance with French, in which language and culture are more important than physical appearance (North Africans have become something of an exception, though this may be partly because many are bilingual rather than only French-speaking – if they speak French at all). This is because French culture is largely identified with ‘culture’ in a general sense and it potentially applies to all humanity; it is not bound up with ethnicity, as is the case in Germany (cf. Dumont 1991). The ambiguity, if such it is, comes from the rejection of this widespread popular and also officially sanctioned position by younger generations, particularly on the far left of the political spectrum. This challenge is based on the discredit this attitude brought on Germany through Naziism, and it forces those who maintain it onto the defensive. The dominant discourse is therefore severely challenged from within Germany itself. Germanness has also come to entail being Christian, at least nominally – a criterion that today is applied against Turks and was formerly used against Jews. Certain values also come into play, such as orderliness, punctuality and being law-abiding. These values seem to be regularly violated by radical left-wing politics, which is probably why the latter received such close attention from the state in the past: its threat to order challenged one part of being German. Forsythe also found that German attitudes towards foreigners varied, in the sense that some were considered less foreign than others, in a fairly predictable sequence from Austrians, through Swiss Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians, British, French, Mediterranean peoples, Turks and Jews, to Blacks. As already noted, the absence of Slavs from this list is curious, but we can be sure that they would come pretty low down the list, perhaps between Mediterranean peoples (possibly excluding Greeks) and Turks. One might also hazard a guess that Slavic Czechs and non-Slavic Hungarians would be considered closer than Poles or Russians, and these as closer than Romanians, Bulgarians, Albanians or Roma, with peoples of the former Yugoslavia coming somewhere in the middle. For Forsythe, the ambiguity about what Germanness is has two principal results. One is a high degree of distancing from foreigners, especially those at the lower end of her spectrum, whose presence is often regarded as polluting (e.g. Turks). This may have something to do, says Forsythe, with Germans’ own insecurities about who they are, a once proud but now denationalized nation whose principal criterion of ethnicity – descent from Germans, or ‘blood’ – has been called into question. The other response, as already

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noted, has been to replace nationalism with some sort of alternative identity, either regional within Germany (see next section) or European (through Germany’s membership in the European Union and its predecessors). The latter, Forsythe found, provoked a degree of resistance to the idea of other Europeans as foreigners.

German Regionalism and the East German Question To fully understand regionalism in Germany, we need to consider the German federal system of government. This was created at Allied insistence after the defeat of Naziism in 1945 in an attempt to decentralize power and prevent any such movement from taking over the state in the future. This decentralization was largely successful in that state governments received enough constitutionally guaranteed and independent power to hold their own in their relations with a centre that is relatively constrained when compared with, for example, the British political system. This weakness may seem deceptive, given what is generally perceived as the high visibility of German officialdom in all spheres of life, and certainly the regions are still responsible for the implementation of policy decided centrally (Tindale 1995: 11; Stammern 1999). Conversely, they also play a role at the centre, through their representation in the Bundesrat, the upper chamber of the German Parliament, and some of them have their own foreign diplomatic representation. In relations between the centre and the periphery, therefore, the federal government has to share power to an extent that goes far beyond what occurs in most European states. The relative weakness of the federal government in Germany stems not only from the federal system itself, but also from its historically provisional nature, symbolized by being tucked away in the very provincial town of Bonn until such time as reunification could allow the transfer of the federal government back to Berlin, the nation’s ‘natural’ capital. However, regionalism in Germany has other strengths than these. One is the historical fragmentation of the country, which dates back to the Middle Ages and reached its apogee in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries before being cut back drastically in successive stages by Napoleon and Bismarck. Even under the latter, however, states like Bavaria and cities like Hamburg retained strong regional identities within an ostensibly united but in reality only Prussianized Germany. Such identities were suppressed but not eradicated by Hitler’s centralizing efforts, and many have survived with most of their deep historical roots intact, whereas others, like Baden-Württemburg and RhinelandWestphalia, are essentially post-war official creations born of combinations of older territories.

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A second reason for the maintenance of a strong regionalism in Germany after the Second World War was the country’s problems in finding a new identity for itself as a quasi-sovereign state.1 Reference to the past, normally a vital part of national identity, was hardly possible for a country that had so disgraced itself in the eyes of the world community and, as time went on, of its own posterity. Indeed, the very notion of nationalism was to be avoided at all costs, given that it had brought such a crushing defeat on the country. Of course, the federal democracy itself could be considered a national asset on which a new liberal Germany could be built. But there was a stronger tendency for identity to move completely away from nationalism, in two different directions, according to scale. One was a focus on the new trend towards European cooperation and unity, which the rest of Europe is especially keen on. The other was the strong, centrifugal regionalism that went along with the federal system the Allies had insisted on. For those advocating a Europe of regions, Germany was a pioneer in this sort of decentralization. The relative weakening of central governments that all West European nation states tended to experience due to greater European integration had already been a feature of German political life for several decades because of its peculiar position as a defeated but still powerful and therefore potentially problematic nation state dominating the heart of Europe.2 Thanks to its federalism, Germany is also more comfortable than many states with the idea of a federal Europe: the central government has little or nothing to lose by such a move. This can be contrasted with Britain, which, despite devolution, remains a very centralized state that has tended to view the idea of a federal Europe as something diluting its own power and identity – one reason for Brexit in 2020. There is one exception to this otherwise rosy picture in Germany. The experience of decentralization has not been so successful in incorporating the former German Democratic Republic (GDR; in German, Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR) into the federal state in and after 1989/90. In general, this has been due not to malice or deliberate repressiveness on the part of federal politicians and officials, but to haste in taking advantage of the Soviet Union’s confusion, weakness, and eventual collapse – which at the time might have seemed only temporary – as well as a justifiable feeling that the West had won the Cold War and should cash in its chips in straightaway (cf. Diedrich 1993: 39). At all events, the takeover of the GDR, validated in elections, was swift and thorough, aided perhaps consciously by removing overnight all symbols of the distinctive way of life that had grown up during forty years of separation. Although the repressive aspects of the old regime were not regretted, as in other post-communist states a certain nostalgia soon arose for its more social aspects, including its cradle-to-grave welfare and organized facilities for youth entertainment, the removal of which was

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quickly blamed for the xenophobic hooliganism that followed. At the same time, there was a rapid introduction of West German standards, officials and even carpet-bagging politicians, while those parts of the internal economy that had not been taken over by westerners mostly collapsed, taking with them hundreds of thousands of jobs. Although the federal government recognized the problems and rapidly produced policies designed to deal with them, East Germany’s own experience of reunification eventually came to entail a considerable crisis of identity. Its own discourse was pushed aside by one infinitely more in tune with worldwide political and commercial interests, which it came to represent locally. Officially approved substitutes left no place for the experience of having lived in a unique shared community, but instead denigrated and delegitimized it. In other words, although on the surface eastern Germany has received plenty of attention because of its alleged problems, and also because it was a relatively little-known part of Germany that has now become easy to visit and travel around, politically and economically it felt it was being marginalized in much the same way as many British regions. Identity in the area was only gradually transferred onto the five new Länder into which it has been divided following the abolition of socialist-era administrative units, reflecting the situation in the rest of Germany. An article by Bornemann (1993; see also Diedrich 1993) highlights this process in some detail, at the same time pointing to some contradictions in West Germany’s own immediate past. One aspect is federal politicians’ denial of legitimacy to the GDR’s own history. The GDR located its own historical roots as a state in the pre-war Communist Party and in past revolutionary struggles for socialism. It rejected Naziism as any part of its own past, while regarding the existence of West Germany as the continuation of Naziism in another form, both in this view being products of the capitalism of the Weimar Republic and the Wilhelmine Second Reich. West Germany, on the other hand, recognized its own historical roots in the Nazi period, and even a degree of legal and administrative continuity, though not of course any ideological continuity. Although many judges and bureaucrats from the Nazi period continued in office after 1945, both the constitutional basis of the state and the practices of its politicians changed. This difference is exemplified by the respective attitudes of the two states towards Israel, the Jewish state that owed its existence largely to it being a refuge from persecutions in Europe, especially but not only in Germany. While West Germany sought good relations with Israel as a means of coming to terms with its own past – which it acknowledged – the GDR opposed Israel as the Zionist, capitalist and Western-backed enemy of the displaced and oppressed Palestinians, a position its own dissociation from the Nazi period allowed it to take.

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Conversely, in its refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the GDR, West Germany treated it as a Soviet puppet even after formal diplomatic relations had been established between the two Germanies in the 1970s, and despite the fact that the GDR was eventually recognized as a sovereign state by most countries in the world and by the United Nations. Thus, the GDR’s actions could claim legitimacy in international law, however unjust they may perhaps have seemed at the time. This made many actions by the federal German authorities after unification seem questionable, including the trials of former East German leaders, most of which collapsed for lack of any evidence that any East German law – under which prosecutions have to be held according to the unification treaty – had been broken.3 As Bornemann points out, the very basis of reunification was also legally problematic. The West German Basic Law (Grundgesetz) was created in 1949 as a provisional constitution only, in order not to discourage eventual reunification. According to Article 146, reunification should have been the result of detailed negotiations between the two states of East and West Germany over a period of time, each of which would dissolve itself prior to unification. However, the inner circle around Chancellor Kohl thought this would be unworkable, especially given the imminent collapse of the GDR and the intense and growing pressure from within it for reunification (Noack and Bickerich 2010). Instead, another Article, no. 23, was invoked, under which West Germany effectively took over the GDR from one day to the next, formally through the accession of the eastern Länder (ibid.), and on the basis of a simple parliamentary vote in favour in the two states. This meant that the GDR’s sovereignty suddenly came to an end, all dreams of a separate, reformed socialist state, as articulated by many of the demonstrators in Berlin and Leipzig who brought the old regime to its knees, being thrown onto the scrap heap with it. Conversely, the Federal Republic continued in existence as before, with the originally provisional Grundgesetz now elevated to the status of constitution of the newly united Germany. Thus while the Federal Republic enlarged itself and continued, the Democratic Republic was incorporated administratively, legally, politically and economically into it, losing its identity and all its established traditions practically overnight – a unique experience among the former communist states in Eastern Europe. Because of its uniqueness, this takeover is often represented as an advantage denied to other former Soviet bloc states in that eastern Germany had immediate access to the resources of one of the wealthiest states in the world, as well as the EU, which would make the transition to a capitalist democracy relatively easy and painless. However justified this may be, Bornemann prefers to stress the symbolic aspects and effects of the transition. The West German state has not only swallowed its rival and abolished its entire legal structure, it has also eradicated its history. The only legitimate history within Germany

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is the West German one: rivals that were also illegitimate states, whether Nazi or communist, lack history as a charter for legitimation. In other words, the history that East Germany claimed for itself becomes propaganda or myth when its own legitimacy as a state is called into question. What Bornemann does not mention is that the GDR’s most basic claim to existence was its creation and maintenance of a separate communist alternative on German soil, and that the very disappearance of communism as a viable alternative, at least within Europe, also deprived it of legitimacy. In reality, the reformist socialism of the intellectuals among the revolutionaries of 1989, many of whom wanted a separate but more democratic socialist state to continue, was faced not only with the politicians’ desire for unity with the West as a capitalist state, but also with a decisive popular will for the same end. What Bornemann does bring out is that since unification the loss of legal and political identity has transformed itself into a loss of cultural identity, based on a certain nostalgia for the more positive aspects of the regime, such as comprehensive social security and the guarantee of a job, which the unification process has also reduced or removed entirely. Indeed, apart from Berlin, eastern Germany remains the most depressed part of Germany economically, as it is an area that has lost a large part of its population to West Germany to search for jobs and a better lifestyle. Thus, for example, the border town of Guben, with a population of 35,000 at reunification, was at one stage assuming a future population of half that for planning purposes (field notes; in actual fact the population dropped by a third in the years after reunification). This sense of crisis conceals the fact that, for most of its history, many parts of eastern Germany – the Prussian heartland, after all – were never as prosperous or as free as those in the west or south of the country, even before socialism. Nonetheless, the immediacy of these conditions in the years after reunification, as much as the attempted return to a Nazi past, is seen by many as lying behind much of the xenophobia in eastern Germany in the 1990s (cf. Diedrich 1993). This affected more of the population than just the violent and generally young activists, though at the same time this is itself in some danger of becoming a stereotype: plenty of eastern Germans have proved themselves open to the world beyond their old borders. Nonetheless, the process of unification has left the region’s identity in a vacuum – or rather, officially approved substitutes leave no place for the experience of having lived in a unique shared community, but instead denigrate and delegitimize it. As a result, the region appears to many to be busy providing one for itself based on xenophobia, which, while it may make extensive reference to the past – a disgraced past in the eyes of liberal and left-wing West Germans – it also arises fundamentally out of present conditions. As elsewhere in Eastern Europe, ethnic exclusiveness appears to have been more attractive than democracy as a replacement for a former communist regime.

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But is this actually a new development, or simply an efflorescence of former attitudes in an environment that has removed most of the old restraints on self-expression? In talking of former attitudes, I am not referring to the Third Reich but to the communist state that replaced it in eastern Germany. Despite the use of Nazi or Nazi-like iconography by neo-Nazis, the most immediate continuity is paradoxically with skinhead activities in the former GDR, which had its share of immigrant workers from thirdworld countries, and its own problems of racist violence (cf. McElvoy 1993: 235–36). Given the illegitimacy of the regime to most of its own population, this can perhaps be seen as an undercurrent of popular protest, one that took a xenophobic turn as a reaction to official approval of the internationalist socialist brotherhood and its solidarity. The powerless foreign workers, like the all-powerful Russian occupiers, lived apart from the ordinary population, in separate, purpose-built barracks – which were therefore often newer, though not necessarily better, than a lot of residential housing. Added to the resulting resentments, contact with either group by the ordinary population was officially discouraged, thus undermining cross-cultural understanding too (cf. Diedrich 1993: 42–43). This was also a state that, before unification, had known no democracy for nearly sixty years, the combined length of the reigns of Hitler, Ulbricht and Honecker. It was also a frontier region, bordering what officially was a fellow socialist state but which, in stark nationalist terms, represented both the old Slav enemy, resurgent as never before, and the destruction of German power, graphically illustrated by that enemy’s ability to take away German land east of the river Oder and expel its German population.4 At the same time, the GDR constituted part of the old heartland of German power, as embodied in the Prussian state, much of which the socialist state incorporated. Indeed, continuities are sometimes discerned between the two entities in the form of the values of discipline, hard work and respect for age. For many Germans in other parts of the country, who have both a strong regional identity and a tradition of foreign influence (e.g. the Francophilia of the Rhineland or the Anglophilia of Hamburg), East Germans are the ‘true’ Germans by virtue of this perceived Prussianness (cf. McElvoy 1993: 241–42). However, the GDR was a puny state when compared with the former Prussia, weakened by territorial losses and foreign hegemony, and with a regime totally out of tune with its own population, on whom it had to concentrate many of its own meagre resources to control. In sum, the removal of that repression, together with the ready target provided by the introduction of yet more foreigners in the shape of asylumseekers (who had mostly passed through the former GDR only, on their way to the West), made racism seem more prominent in eastern Germany for many years. However, as already suggested briefly, taking the view that this is simply a revival of Naziism forty-five years after its supposedly final defeat in

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the ruins of Berlin would be to ignore the existence of latent and occasionally manifest racism within the East German successor state itself. In this view, post-unification xenophobia represented a certain continuity of attitudes rather than their resuscitation from a more distant past, a continuity that is also partly geographical. The only shift is in the nature of the a­ uthority – from socialist internationalism to democratic liberalism – which this xenophobia was challenging in expressing itself. This suggests in turn that those now federal and partly western social workers who seek to discourage racism by working with those who promote it, especially among the young, were really part of the problem rather than its solution, due to their close identification with a despised authority. At the same time, that this racism cannot be reduced to a simple problem of juvenile delinquency is shown by the widespread adult support given to young hooligans attacking foreigners in Rostock and Hoyeswerda. Here is one of the rawer examples of the power of ethnicity and nationalism in mobilizing a population, a power that international socialism progressively lost after reaching the height of its influence. To say that this is because ethnic groups have displaced class all over Europe is simply to rephrase the question in other terms. Class has become less relevant because enough of the old class struggles have been won and enough compromises reached by the relative success of both communist and capitalist Europe in redistributing wealth and in creating more of it to begin with to draw the teeth of old class antagonisms. Among other things, this has created a tremendous increase in upward social mobility, the children of older working-class and peasant strata frequently being able to enter administrative, managerial or professional positions. Collectivism is no longer seen as a particularly promising road to economic self-improvement, not even for insecure, poorly paid, marginal workers in the gig economy of the new millennium. This trend away from the left, of course, has affected virtually the whole of Europe since the 1980s, apart from faltering exceptions, and has been as comprehensive as the swing towards it in 1945 and after. It has also led to a harder form of right-wing politics, currently widely called ‘populist’, for whom xenophobia, extreme nationalism and anti-migrant sentiment are less and less positions to fight shy of. In the new millennium, this combination of sentiments is precisely what has allowed the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party to become the largest far-right movement in the Bundesrepublik since its foundation. As Verdery notes (1992: 10), the sudden non-availability of communists as enemies in East European societies generally may have led to other ethnic groups, especially minorities, replacing them as significant ‘others’. This is not necessarily the contradiction it may seem in light of the xenophobia that other communist states, like the GDR, often experienced. Given the illegitimacy that communist governments almost invariably came to have in

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the eyes of their own populations, xenophobia emerged as an expression of opposition to the state just as often as the demands for democracy and civil rights. To the West the latter seemed more salient at the time, ethnic conflicts usually being dismissed as the self-serving manipulations of unpopular regimes. While this was not necessarily wrong (for example, anti-Hungarian sentiments in Romania, anti-Turkish in Bulgaria, anti-Jewish in the Soviet Union), it is ultimately just one of a number of former journalistic stereotypes about eastern Europe that we should now be critically re-examining. Indeed, whatever may have been the case in other parts of eastern Europe, East Germany did not correspond entirely to the stereotype of what we might call ‘state-sponsored xenophobia’. The GDR took its internationalist obligations seriously enough to deny any manifestation of racism within its borders. This was actually vital to its identity, given its own identification of its most significant ‘other’, West Germany, with Naziism. Due to its fragility as a state, the GDR drew its legitimacy ultimately from what the other Germany was not. It therefore liked to represent itself as a state in which all discriminations – those produced by racism, as well as the workings of the capitalist economy, and also gender – had been abolished. One way of expressing dissent in this situation was to express discrimination, and because of the predominance of the anti-class agenda this was easier to do on ethnic than on class grounds. What does the East German experience tell us about xenophobia in West Germany? One question it prompts us to ask is the extent to which manifestations of anti-communism concealed xenophobia there too in the Iron Curtain period. While the East German state attempted to smother the xenophobia of its population by a combination of physical separation, police measures and official emphasis on international cooperation in the name of socialism and working-class solidarity, West Germans were to some extent able to subsume lingering anti-Slav sentiment within a position of anticommunism, hostility on ideological rather than on ethnic or racial grounds being more acceptable. The two were elided especially among those who had actually been expelled from territories lost in the east to people who were both Slavs and communists (cf. Lehmann 1991). Whatever other motives might also be discerned for the spread of xenophobia in West Germany in the 1990s and after, the collapse of communism certainly removed this fig leaf. However, in the new millennium, the former East Germany has ceased to seem such an exception. This is partly because of its increasing economic and political integration into the rest of the country, and partly because of the spread to not only the rest of Germany but to the rest of Europe, as well as a more xenophobic politics following the migrant crisis of 2015. While the rise of the AfD in Germany is an obvious manifestation of this, attention now tends to be redirected to other examples of right-wing exclusionary politics,

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from Trumpism in the USA and Brexit in Britain to the awkward squad that has emerged within the EU in the shape of ‘illiberal democracies’ in ‘brotherly’ Poland and Hungary. While there is reason to believe that some of those currents have peaked and been put on the defensive by electoral defeat and judicial action, they, including the AfD, have not gone away.

Polish National and Regional Identities Poland has relatively few minorities, especially ethnic ones. Apart from its seventeen thousand Roma, practically the only minority whose identity is definable solely in ethnic terms are the remaining Germans, many of whom consider themselves Silesians rather than either Germans or Poles. Other minorities, such as the few Jews, Muslim Tatars and Orthodox Lemkos (Łemkowie) in the country, though the latter have links with the Ukraine, are confessional as much as ethnic. The remaining Greek leftists who lived mainly in Zgorzelec – refugees from the civil war of the late 1940s in Greece and the later 1960s regime of the colonels – have now mostly left for Greece. The presence of all these minorities is played down as much as possible by the majority Poles, who take a pride in their country’s ethnic homogeneity. This was seen as especially desirable in the 1990s, as it meant that Poland had not been troubled by an ethnic war, as in the former Yugoslavia, by the break-up of the state, as with Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, nor by ethnic conflicts generally, as in Romania and parts of the former Soviet Union. Most are even prepared to forego the lands in the east that were taken by the Soviet Union in 1945 in the interests of this homogeneity, though a minority of Polish nationalists maintain an irredentist claim to them. This homogeneity is seen primarily as the outcome of the changes to borders and populations that followed the Second World War: another important factor, the destruction of Polish Jewry in that war, even though attributable to the German occupiers, tends to be mentioned less. As a result, although regional identities are marked in Poland, the situation is generally not like that in Spain, France or Italy, where a number of regionalisms are autonomist or separatist in nature (e.g. Tyrol, Aosta, Catalonia, Corsica, Brittany). The one exception – and it is a partial one – is Silesia (see Ch. 7). Until recently, the situation has also differed from that in Germany, where, as we have just seen, regionalisms are incorporated into the political system and are not seen as threatening the state’s integrity, existing instead in a symbiotic relationship with the federal government. However, since 1999 Poland has had a new, though still non-federal, local and regional structure, with sixteen large provinces now divided into counties as well as communes (see below).

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This new structure largely reflects old identities (e.g. Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Masovia, Upper and Lower Silesia, Pomerania), though Upper Silesia is now separated from the new, partly German province of Opolskie, and Galicia is not represented as such – half of it is anyway now in the Ukraine. There is nonetheless some mutual stereotyping of areas based on major cities, such as Cracovia, Masovia (the Warsaw region) and Poznania. Thus, Cracovians are used to considering themselves the intellectual and cultural elite of the country, as they have the oldest university and the tombs of some Polish kings. Indeed, Kraków vies with Vienna and Prague as one of the major cities of central European culture. The links with Vienna are certainly felt to be stronger than those with Prague, where the population is regarded as too German (as distinct from Austrian). Cracovians often make reference to the fact that Galicia, including Kraków, was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire following the partition of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century. Although an occupation, the experience compared favourably with those parts of the country that fell under Prussian or Russian rule, where use of the Polish language and other manifestations of Polishness were legally discouraged or suppressed (by contrast, under Franz Josef, Polish schools were allowed in Galicia). As a result, there is in Kraków a certain nostalgia for this period, which is not present in areas occupied by Prussia or Russia, Poland’s traditional enemies. This difference in treatment presumably had something to do with the fact that Austro-Hungary was a dynastic state whose policy was basically one of playing off the different ethnic groups within its borders against each other. Prussia and Russia, by contrast, tried to suppress Polish culture, perceiving it as a threat. Indeed, before the ­nineteenth-century unification of Germany, which it subsequently dominated, Prussia depended on the prevention of Poland’s resurgence much more than the other two states, given the huge percentage of its territory that its part of Poland constituted. In Kraków too, there is a certain pride at the city’s ability to survive all political upsets, which in the more recent past have included the German occupation and the planting of a huge industrial suburb, Nowa Huta, on its doorstep in the Stalinist period as a way of proletarianizing this elite (this is often expressed as an attempt to pollute both the city with industry and the city’s elite with an industrial working class). Kraków was not much damaged in the war because the Nazis planned to use it as a regional capital, and the speed of the Russian advance gave them no opportunity to destroy it when they finally left. Also, unlike Warsaw, Poznań, Wrocław and other cities in Poland, which experienced vast population changes during and after the war through evacuations and resettlements, Kraków’s population remained relatively stable, adding to its sense of continuity. Although some refugees from the eastern territories settled there after the war, the city had

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nothing like the experience of Wrocław, which was evacuated by the retreating Germans and repopulated largely by people who left Lvov (Lwów, now Lviv in western Ukraine; German Lemberg) in order to avoid Soviet rule. For Cracovians, therefore, the populations of Silesia and the new territories in western Poland basically consist of Ukrainian and Lithuanian refugees, plus those few Germans who did not leave but managed to pass as Poles. In a sense, Poland’s cultural geography has become mixed up, its west becoming its ‘east’ as result of these changes. Other cities therefore saw greater population changes than Kraków, which also adds to the latter’s sense of uniqueness. Poznanians tend to be regarded by Cracovians and other Poles as somewhat brusque, or at least direct, and as rather Germanized in manners. This is ironic, given the importance of the city for the Polish resistance to Bismarck and his successors as imperial chancellors. The reverse idea of Poznań as primarily ‘German’ seems to have originated with Piłsudski’s suspicions of the city in the interwar period along precisely those lines. Poznanians in their turn consider themselves more Polish than the populations to their west and south because of the latter’s origins in the border territories to the east. Furthermore, Poznań was the capital of the first Polish rulers of the Piast dynasty, who are buried it its cathedral, and Poland’s legendary first capital was not far from Poznań, at Gniezno to the east, though this is disputed by Poznanians in favour of their own city. For Poznanians, moreover, Cracovians are too infected with Austrian ways to qualify fully as Poles. Warsaw’s status as capital for the longest and most recent period forms the basis of its own claims to be considered the Polish heartland. There is also a question as to what a specifically Polish identity consists of. One reference point here is history, which refers to two periods above all: the Golden Age, when the Polish-dominated Polish–Lithuanian Grand Duchy was at its greatest territorial extent and at the height of its power; and the nineteenth century, when Poland did not exist as a nation, but the light of Polish nationalism was kept alive, if not actually lit for the first time, by poets such as Adam Mickiewicz, who nonetheless famously honoured the Lithuania of his birth in his verse. Thus the two most important periods of Polish history are respectively the best and one of the worst. Polishness is also shaped by certain oppositions, in which it itself stands at one pole. Oppositions with Germany and Russia are easy to understand, but there is also a certain opposition to Czechs, who are seen either as pseudoGermans, or as the Good Soldier Schweik personified, and as faint-hearted in their resistance to oppression and foreign interference. There is, on the other hand, a sense of closeness to Hungarians, whom Poles often talk of as brothers. This is despite the radical difference in language and the fact that Hungarian nationalism often makes reference to Asian (i.e. eastern) origins,

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although normally to Poles the east is equated with backwardness (it is primarily the alleged backwardness of Russians that is being referred to here).5 As a result, Poles do not so much consider themselves part of eastern Europe but of central Europe, a notion that has seen a certain revival since the lifting of the Iron Curtain. There has also been a tendency in Poland to dismiss Ukrainian identity as a recent creation, a position that underwent some revision as a result of the Russo-Ukraine war of 2022. Lithuania, however, receives greater recognition, due to its past links with Poland in the form of a local, jointly ruled regional power, the Grand Duchy. This sort of stereotyping was also known in German times, Silesia being considered ‘Austrian’ by the inhabitants of Niederlausitz, to the west, which the Silesians in their turn considered more ‘sober’ and therefore ‘Prussian’ (Peuckert 1950: 9, 12).

Administrative Reform and Identity in Poland Also potentially significant for local and regional identity formation in Poland is the post-communist reform of local government.6 This section will merely set out what the reform consists of. In Chapter 5 especially, its impact on the politics of local and regional identities in one of the new provinces it has set up, Ziemia Lubuska, will be discussed in some detail. Since 1 January 1999, Poland has had a new administrative structure for local government, which has two main aspects. One is the establishment of an intermediate tier of administration, the powiat, usually translated as ‘county’ in English.7 This comes between the województwa or provinces – which have themselves been made larger but reduced in number – and the communes (gminy) and towns (miasta). The latter two should be treated as one level for most purposes, whose units have basically remained the same as before, though they have lost some powers to the powiaty. The other aspect is a measure of decentralization, with each województwo being given its own sejmik or provincial parliament under a speaker or marszałek, who is effectively also the political head of the provincial administration. It is precisely this creation of new provinces, with their varying degrees of historical precedent and popular legitimacy, that is of interest to the anthropologist in terms of the development and possible creation of new identities for them, both officially and unofficially. Decentralization was a long-standing policy of the anti-communist Solidarity movement, which after 1989 saw it as a way of countering the lingering power of the communist nomenklatura and of destroying the excessive centralization exercised by socialist governments as a means of political control. From 1945 to 1975, Poland had a similar three-level system of administration to today. The removal of the powiaty in 1972–75, combined

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with a reduction in size but a tripling in number of the województwa – which thus lost a lot of the historical legitimacy they had retained as corresponding to former regions – was seen as a way of strengthening central control.8 It certainly cramped the style of local authorities, among other things undermining earlier attempts to develop cross-border relations with the GDR. Another aspect of this more recent policy of decentralization was that it suited Poland’s project of EU membership. In the face of scepticism, even foot-dragging, from some member governments, including especially the UK under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, Brussels has managed to insist on the introduction of regional units in all member states, both as a vehicle for providing funding to the regions, and as a way of making government more responsive to the people and of strengthening regional and local democracy generally.9 Through its administrative reform, Poland sought to ensure that, as with other legislation, her institutions and laws are EU-compatible – another long-standing policy designed to facilitate EU entry, which finally took place on 1 May 2004. However, although the reform was generally acknowledged to be necessary by most of the major political parties, its actual implementation was highly controversial. Early attempts by the Mazowiecki government to transfer functions to the gminy met resistance from embryonic unions and professional associations, as well as the entrenched interests of the existing bureaucracy. They therefore had only limited success, though local authorities were generally thought to have become a little more responsive to local demands. But proposals made in 1993 to reinstall the powiaty and drastically alter the size of the województwa, though widely accepted in principle, met strong resistance in practice from many quarters. This was now less a matter of pressure from different interest groups than of perceived damage to local interests and identities, coupled with the opposition, amounting to intransigence, of the PSL, the Polish Peasants’ Party, which was strong in the localities, especially in rural areas. In office in coalition with the SLD (Democratic Left Alliance) or reconstructed socialists from November 1993 to March 1995, the PSL leader and prime minister at that time, Waldemar Pawlak, slowed down or stopped the reform process in many areas. In particular, he made extensive use of his patronage to appoint PSL members to positions of influence in the local administration, including the wojewoda, the central government’s representatives in the provinces (similar to the French prefect). This led to internal government conflicts, as the SLD were committed to this and other reforms, as well as to external criticism that the bad old days of excessive government centralization were coming back. Even after the SLD took over the premiership in March 1995, the PSL was able to continue blocking local government reform, which the SLD eventually dropped altogether in order to hold its coalition together.

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The elections of October 1997 ended the PSL’s participation in government and brought a new right-of-centre coalition to power, consisting of the AWS (Solidarity Election Action) and UW (Freedom Union – the closest successors to the intellectual wing of the pre-1989 Solidarity coalition) under the former’s leader, Jerzy Buzek, as prime minister.10 Yet problems continued over administrative reform of the regions. The government’s replacement of local PSL officials by AWS ones did not help matters. Its initial proposal for only twelve new provinces created a storm of protest over the new boundaries, as many of the old provinces would be divided between the new ones or entirely swallowed up by them. Some areas, like Opole, the triple alliance between Bydgoszcz, Toruń and Włocławek, and what later became Lubuskie (see below), managed to get their demands for provinces of their own accepted. In the cases of this triple alliance and of Lubuskie, internal inter-city rivalries meant that two provincial capitals had to be provided. In Lubuskie’s case, one accommodates the administration (Gorzów Wielkopolski), the other the local sejmik or parliament (Zielona Góra). The proposals for powiaty also created problems over their boundaries and over which towns would be their capitals. In Warsaw, serious opposition arose from nationalist and clerical elements within the AWS itself, which opposed decentralization as weakening national unity and as introducing ‘German’ ideas of federalism into Poland. Faced with losing its majority, the government was forced to negotiate with the SLD, now in parliamentary opposition, but still occupying the presidency in the person of Aleksander Kwaśniewski (also SLD), who became heavily involved and even vetoed one particular parliamentary proposal for compromise. However, it was partly due to his mediation that these negotiations produced eventual agreement on sixteen new provinces – closer to the SLD’s proposal of seventeen than the government’s original figure of twelve. Administrative reform thus came about, but not without a series of crippling political crises and extensive local protests, including street blockades. Nonetheless, these protests were ultimately less against the policy itself or the number of administrative tiers than the number and boundaries of actual units. Once these problems had been resolved, the key administrative changes that took effect on 1 January 1999 were essentially those originally envisaged, namely the introduction of the powiaty and the reduction in number but increase in size of the województwa. Local officials are now mostly elected for four years. In the województwa, alongside the retained government representative or wojewoda11 is the provincial sejmik, under its marszałek or speaker (as in the national parliament). The powiat comes under the starosta, who is not elected directly but chosen by the powiat council. The powiat has new powers concerning roads (including the issuing of driving licences and vehicle registration, for which it, no longer the gminy, receives the fees), health, education, police and the fire

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service (though the gminy also have a role here), and is mostly financed by central government, whose policies it implements locally; for instance, it coordinated the government’s campaign for a ‘yes’ vote in the EU referendum, which was widely supported in Lubuskie. The more or less unchanged lower level of gminy and miasta continues to provide some funding for health and the police, but in general these units do not run these sectors. They have some management functions in other areas for which they do provide funding, such as education (for primary schools and gymnasia). In these units, the elected officials are the wójt and burmistrz respectively (the latter clearly from German Burgmeister or ‘mayor’), and there are also councils. Also unchanged are the powers of the sołtys or village mayor. All these officials are elected for four years. In many cases, in fact, the same individuals have served for many years, even back into the socialist period, and have thus survived the wholesale interference in the localities of prime ministers such as Pawlak and Buzek. This reflects the fact that politics works quite differently at the most local levels than at the provincial or national levels, which are the levels of party politics, and even here some provinces are exceptions. The new provincial structure is also of interest to the anthropologist in terms of local and regional identities. Some old regional identities have been retained. Pomerania survives in the names of three provinces: Pomorskie, centred on Gdańsk; Zachodniopomorskie (western Pomerania), centred on Szczecin; and Kujawsko-Pomorskie, centred on Bydgoszcz–Toruń (the first and last formed roughly one province in the past).12 The old division between Lower and Upper Silesia also survives, though both have been reduced in ­territory – in particular, Upper Silesia, now just ‘Silesia’, has lost its western half to the new, partly German-speaking province of Opolskie, with its capital at Opole (on Lower Silesia, see further below). Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) and Lesser Poland (Małopolska), centred respectively on Poznań and Kraków, also receive recognition, as does Masowia (Mazowsze), the region around Warsaw. Galicia, however, whose eastern half is anyway now in the Ukraine, does not, its Polish part now mostly falling under the new province of Sub-Carpathia, with its capital at Rzeszów. In the case of the other provinces, while there may be historical precedents in some cases, the links with the past are generally weaker.

German–Polish Ethnic Relations and Changes The history of living together in the same areas, whether in the German– Polish borderlands or further west in Germany through Polish labour migration (e.g. to the Ruhr), has given rise to a situation in which many

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individuals can claim either German or Polish identity. This history of partial antagonism, and of German conquests of Poles and Poland, has not prevented mixed marriages or the attribution of the children of such marriages to one or other ethnicity. Thus in eastern Germany, including Berlin, live many cultural Germans with Germanized Polish surnames,13 while in parts of western Poland and Silesia one sometimes but less frequently comes across cultural Poles with obviously German surnames like Schultz, but spelt ‘Szulc’ in accordance with Polish orthography. Ethnic switching between German and Polish identities is discussed in more detail in chapters 5 and 7 in relation to two areas in particular, Ziemia Lubuska and Silesia (Śląsk). Here some general comments will be made. In the past, the circumstances in which an individual may choose one identity rather than another has been linked to survival, whether economic or existential. We have already seen this of those included in the DVL (Ch. 2). After the end of the war, under the weryfikacja process, concealing German roots was essential to being permitted to stay in Poland, for at the time this seemed clearly preferable to life in a largely destroyed Germany. However, the Wirtschaftswunder or economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s in Germany overturned this perspective, and for many who could make good the necessary claim to be German, Germany beckoned, supported by both the West German government and at times (e.g. under Gierek) the Polish government too, anxious to rid itself of its remaining minorities. In Silesia, as we shall see (Ch. 7), some families have changed identity with almost every generation. Migration often provided another context for repeated changes of identity. Rada (2001) mentions the case, historically, of Polish migrants and their descendants in the industrial centre of the Ruhr assuming a German identity while there, only to return to Poland for holidays or on retirement and resume their Polishness. Some changes, however, are, or seem, permanent. Sometimes the change is recognized by both the individual and the latter’s acquaintances, but justified as right and proper in the circumstances. Thus many Germans with Polish or other Slavonic surnames do not doubt their Germanness, while recognizing that their family histories and own descent must have been mixed somewhere along the way. Typically they say they feel German, whatever the nature of these circumstances. The same sort of recognition may be made by their unambiguously German friends and acquaintances. Thus, I recall a bar conversation in the border city of Frankfurt an der Oder involving myself, a German male customer and the female bar­person, who was part-Polish, part-German, but had been able and indeed had opted to ‘go German’ in identity terms. No one present tried to gloss over the reality of her family history, but the really important point for the male customer – which he stressed with some pride – was that she had

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done the right and sensible thing by leaving Poland behind and opting for Germanness; after all, Poland was run down, dirty, poor, criminal – all the usual stereotypes. Dürrschmidt (2002: 70ff.) has a similar story to tell of a German in advanced middle age who had married a Pole and was frequently involved in visits to, and therefore friendly interactions with, her family. At the same time, he viewed Poles in general as a depersonalized category much more negatively, in line with the above stereotypes as well. While the author does not say as much, one suspects that his Polish family of marriage, while making an exception for him, felt much the same about Germans, as they declined to pay visits to Germany in return for his frequent weekend visits to them with his wife. Such stereotypes are themselves of interest because, although German ones of Poles, they are actually reciprocated by Poles to a large degree. Dirtiness and stupidity feature mutually. On the other hand, Poles are lazy, Germans ploddingly officious rather than efficient, though sometimes acknowledged to be hard-working. And if Poles are criminals, Germans are excessively orderly and law-abiding. Depreciatory names for the ethnic other pits ‘Polack’ against ‘Szwab’ (Schwabian), Fryc or even ‘Gestapo’. Attitudes to rules, and to the state, also differ. Whereas Germans are seen as obedient to every last regulation, however minor, Poles seek what they interpret as a way round regulations (rather than ‘breaking’ them), often signalled by the word kombinować, meaning ‘to manage something’, or załatwić, ‘to arrange’ (cf. Wedel 1987). As for the state, Prussian history has given it a special meaning for Germans in the sense of it being a focus for loyalty, duty and obedience, something still found in the often derogatory phrase Verfassungspatriotismus, or ‘constitutional patriotism’ – that is, worship of the modern federal and democratic constitution from which modern Germany takes much of its identity. In Poland, conversely, the state has for centuries been seen as a foreign imposition, not only in the partition period and under the German occupation and Soviet tutelage, but also to some extent today, when the ostensibly free and independent Polish state is often seen as in hock to American capitalism or to Germany again, as the most powerful state in the EU, which Poland nonetheless had a keen interest in joining. Naturally these are mutual stereotypes that many Germans and Poles would deny, looking forward instead to a new era of cooperation through shared EU and NATO membership, but they can still be identified in others of both nationalities. In the 2020s, however, that enthusiasm has turned into a degree of hostility towards the European Commission. Poland has arguments with it, not at the popular level, but within the current PiS government, over where exactly the constitutional boundary lies between European and national powers. In this dispute, the Polish government hopes it can rely on its alliance with the like-minded Hungarian government, s­ imilarly embroiled with the Commission over its illiberal policies.

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Notes Parts of this chapter previously appeared in the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 22(/1) (2013): 115–37 (see Parkin 2013b). Reproduced with permission of the publisher, Berghahn Journals.   1. Quasi-sovereign because the Allies retained some powers over Germany until reunification in 1990.   2. Indeed, the whole project of European integration, dating right back to the Coal and Steel Community, can be said to be directed at solving the ‘German problem’.   3. This policy was generally followed in Eastern Europe, which explains why, until very recently, leaders like Jaruzelski, the former Polish leader under martial law, have been left untouched. The same principle applied to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa after apartheid. In this way, it is hoped, such transitions will be eased more than if vengeance is directed against functionaries of the old regime who claim that they were only doing their duty under that regime’s laws. In effect in such cases, while an older, oppressive regime is denied political legitimacy, the legitimacy of its legal decisions is recognized. This principle goes back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which closed the Thirty Years’ War by abandoning the universal values of the Holy Roman Empire and recognizing differences between sovereign states – for Anderson (1983) a necessary but not sufficient precondition for the emergence of the nation state, as mediated historically by the royal absolutism of the seventeenth century.   4. Despite the friendship treaty of 1950 and the recognition by the GDR of the Oder– Neisse frontier with Poland, Ulbricht had to beat down opposition to this recognition within the ruling SED (Rutsch 2009: 38). German resentment was not only western, therefore.   5. Historically one exception was the Polish nobility, who liked to claim Sarmatian Persian and therefore eastern (oriental) origins for itself. The long-standing affections for Hungarians may make it easier to understand Poland’s current alliance with Hungary in respect of the two states’ revisionist policies, opposed by the EU, especially by the European Parliament and European Commission.   6. The historical description in this section is based largely on Millard 1999: 53–55 and Bingen 1999: 95–98.  7. These are nonetheless small counties by English standards, Berkshires rather than Yorkshires. The usual German translation is Kreis (circle).   8. The change from five quasi-historical Länder to twenty-two historically more neutral Bezirke (districts) by the socialist regime in East Germany in 1952 can be interpreted in the same light.   9. These policies are thus linked to the EU doctrines of ‘additionality’ (that funding coming from Brussels should be additional to, not replace, the member state’s core funding) and ‘subsidiarity’ (that public services should be provided at the lowest level of administration that can deliver them efficiently). 10. Buzek came from the minority Protestant community. 11. This post was originally of a military nature (under early feudalism). 12. There is even a new proposal for a fresh province of Western Pomerania, centred on Koszalin. This shows the limited extent to which the new structure is considered a done thing in some quarters. 13. In some cases, such names are in origin those of Polish lands held by German aristocrats, rather than those of Germanized Poles.

Chapter 4

Polish Minorities in Germany The ‘120% Deutsche’

? Poles in Germany before the First World War This chapter discusses the modalities of Polish identity in Germany through labour migration dating back to the nineteenth century.1 In particular the differences between Polish migration to the Ruhr and to Berlin will be noted. The period from about 1880 to the 1920s was one of considerable migration of ethnic Poles to and within Germany, as well as tensions and controversy over it. The distinction between ‘to’ and ‘within’ is an important one, as Poles who had been born in the German part of Poland were German citizens, whereas those who migrated into the German part from the Austrian or Russian parts were not. That meant that there were certain restrictions on the authorities’ ability to control migration within Germany as opposed to migration into it from outside. Moreover, as German-born Poles tended to migrate, if at all, from German Poland to the Ruhr, landowners in the former were deprived of cheap labour, which was largely made up by Polish immigrants from Austrian or Russian Poland. This was seen to conflict with official and unofficial fears among Germans that efforts to Germanize German Poland in a bid to hold on to it were being undermined by the influx of Poles who had not been born in Germany. One famous figure who shared the fears that cheap Polish labour was pushing out German labour, especially in German Poland, was the sociologist Max Weber, who made a specific study of the problem in the 1890s.2 This fear was mostly associated with the political right in Germany, especially the phenomenon

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of Hakatismus (see Ch. 1), but periodically left-wing parties also associated themselves with these views. This issue led to periodic expulsions of immigrant Poles back to Russian or Austrian Poland, for example, in 1884 and 1886, though they ended after Bismarck’s fall (Rhoades 1978: 556). This was in addition to the regular practice of sending Russian and Austrian Poles back home from the farms3 in the winter, a policy not followed in relation to any other foreign workers. In the 1890s, it proved impossible to control immigration, especially from Russian Poland, the part of Poland with the fewest rights, the most oppressive government and the worst social and economic conditions. Many migrants simply took out a second set of identity papers or failed to go back home when they should have done so (ibid.). As well as the push factor, this was partly because of the demand for cheap agricultural labour in German Poland and partly because many immigrants were proactive in getting around the official restrictions and regulations. Even cheaper labour was often available from Polish immigrant women and children, though official policy was to restrict family migration. Poles were routinely paid less than German workers on these farms and estates. Another problem for the landowners in German Poland was that, however badly treated they were, Polish workers were notionally free agents who could move around to find better pay and conditions (e.g. to the Ruhr), though in doing so they often broke contracts or other agreements they had entered into with their existing employers. This led to employers keeping back some of their wages until the contract formally ended, and retaining their documents. In some cases, Polish workers were cheated of their wages and/or made to work more than specified in the agreement, dubious deductions from their pay might be made, and physical beatings were not unheard of. As well as their weak position in the local economy, Polish workers were hampered in protesting by their lack of knowledge of the German language. They were also routinely given farm buildings for their accommodation, which they often shared with livestock, and there was little if any provision for separating the men from the women (Herbert 1986: 15–45). Another difference was that a lot of the labour on lands and farms in German Poland was seasonal, whereas in the Ruhr it was year-round. Industry and mining in the Ruhr also paid better, and as German citizens the Polish migrants could agitate for better pay and conditions alongside their German fellow workers, extending even to striking. In the Ruhr, therefore, conditions were somewhat different because the Poles who migrated there from German Poland (Austrian and Russian Poles were prohibited from going to the Ruhr) shared German citizenship with German workers. Many such workers left for the Ruhr in the 1890s especially, eventually adding up to over 300,000, or 20 per cent of the local

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labour force.4 Those of different origins in German Poland tended to go to different Ruhr towns: thus Upper Silesians tended to settle in Bottrop, and Poznanians in Essen and Bochum, each group mainly keeping themselves to themselves, focusing on the nearly nine hundred Polish associations with over eighty thousand members they founded rather than having much to do with their fellow German workers outside work. Generally these associations were suspect to the authorities, above all the Polish gymnastic clubs, called ‘Sokół ’ (falcon), which were ultimately banned out of official fears that they were really a cover for military-style training. Polish newspapers were also published in some abundance, and the ZPP (Zjednoczenie Zawodowe Polskie or Polish Trade Union) was formed (Herbert 1986: 71–81). By 1913 the number of Polish associations in the Ruhr had topped a thousand, and one town had ‘a Polish political party, newspaper, bank, and church’ (Rhoades 1978: 557). In 1908, official disquiet, fuelled by right-wing politicians, banned speaking Polish in public in the Ruhr, leading to ‘dumb assemblies’ at which Poles ‘did not speak to each other but communally read Polish leaflets out loud’ (ibid.: 557–58). German workers in the Ruhr were also originally suspicious of Poles, whom they saw as competition for work and as driving down wages. Over time, however, there was some accommodation to the migrants, who, in later generations, would also tend to assimilate more. Moreover, the economic crisis that hit Germany after the First World War and the revival of Poland as an independent state led many Poles in the Ruhr to return home, leading to a significant drop in their numbers. In these circumstances the Polish associations became increasingly ineffective in supporting the migrants, as they too lost members. Some migrants migrated further into France, where they established a new presence in cities such as Lille (Herbert 1986: 71–81).

After the First World War In the 1930s, after Hitler came to power, there were annual intergovernmental agreements allowing Polish labour into the Reich. However, after the defeat of Poland in 1939, when it became clear that normal modes of recruitment would not fulfil Germany’s need for labour, slave labour replaced them. This ironically revived the fears of such labour threatening German identity, so to increase control, Polish workers were obliged to wear a ‘P’ on their clothing (Herbert 1986: 120–48). After the division of Europe in 1945 official Polish migration to West Germany practically ceased, though not to East Germany, and even in West Germany there grew up a tradition of black Polish labour, described in the next section.

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Landau adds further information for the 1870s to 1930s period, shortly after which he was writing. He estimates that just before the First World War, 10 per cent of the Polish population, or about six hundred thousand individuals in the Russian and Austrian zones, went for seasonal migration to German Poland in an average year, coming not from all areas but from, for example, the provinces of Łódź, Kielce and Kraków (Landau 1939: 198–99). After the war this seasonal migration did not resume until an intergovernmental agreement was concluded between Poland and Germany in 1926, but numbers were lower than before the war, roughly ninety thousand a year, later falling to thirty thousand and then to near zero after the financial crash of 1929–31. This was followed by a resumption, with quotas, in 1937 (ibid.: 199). The existence of an intergovernmental agreement meant that bureaucracy rather than the labour market controlled the flow of migrants, who were directed to jobs by the authorities and had little choice in where they went (ibid.: 200). Some attempt was made to select the poorest families for inclusion in the quotas (ibid.: 202). In this period, too, the main seasonal demand was for female workers, who therefore made up two-thirds of these seasonal migrants in 1937 (ibid.: 204). Wage rates tended to be better in this period as well, officially the same or similar to those for German workers, though there was some variation, especially for workers recruited above the official quota, according to supply and demand (ibid.: 206).

Poles in Berlin: The ‘120% Deutsche’ In modern history, the presence of Poles in Berlin goes back to at least the industrialization of the last century, which progressively saw official attempts to bring about their assimilation.5 The twentieth century, on the other hand, thrust Poles and Germans more and more apart, both physically and politically. This resulted in a situation following the Second World War in which the only recognized Poles in West Berlin were diplomats and other officials (a consulate was maintained in West Berlin) and political refugees. However, for those who could claim it, a German origin was often exploited in order to obtain residence in the city. This had the effect of making ‘Poles’ scarcely visible there compared to Polish communities elsewhere in West Germany or abroad, in that before the political changes of 1989 there were no Polish newspapers, churches, associations, or even restaurants or bars, in the city (Miera 2008: 758–60). In addition, Poles were spread residentially throughout the city and not concentrated in certain quarters like other ethnic minorities. Nor did they follow ethnically specific economic activities but entered especially construction (men) and cleaning (women and men) – that is, sectors in the mainstream German economy, as well as the import–export

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trade between Berlin and Poland. No doubt their whiteness, which they shared with most Germans, also contributed to their invisibility by allowing them to ‘pass’. This situation reflects the circumstances of Polish migration to Berlin, especially during the Cold War. In the communist period, many who could claim German descent through one (grand-)parent or another made their way to West Berlin and settled there, passing as Germans for the most part, while claiming Polishness in conducting informal trade or employing illegal labour from beyond the Oder. Informal Polish male building workers and female cleaners have long been a feature of the twilight world of Berlin, and indeed the stereotypes that these activities gave rise to could be exploited in obtaining such work: briefly, to be a Polish man in Berlin was to be a labourer, to be a Polish woman a cleaner. But as with smuggling, these activities can also be explained in terms of the tactics that individual Poles resorted to in order to circumvent the often chronic shortages in their own country. Even East Germany ordinarily had dramatic advantages over Poland in terms of wage levels and the availability of food and other goods. As far as informal trading across borders (‘smuggling’) was concerned, this was facilitated for Poles in comparison to other East Europeans by the relative ease with which they could travel in most periods, an ease that was exceeded only for Yugoslavs, and then only marginally. As a result, these two groups competed for the control of informal trade within Eastern Europe, individuals sometimes travelling as far as China on the Trans-Siberian Railway to pick up cheap goods, which would then be sold in markets across Eastern Europe (see e.g. Irek 1998, 2018). But in recent years too, the even greater ease of travel has encouraged many of these so-called ‘120% Germans’ to resume a Polish identity in order to be able to acquire property or set up a business in Poland. On the face of it, this supports Abner Cohen’s argument (1974: xv) that choices concerning ethnicity are partly functional. This is a reminder that, however much academic functionalism may still be out of favour, our informants’ explanations are often functionalist or at least teleological in nature. In the present case, however, there is the experience of communist rule to be taken into account. Varying one’s ethnicity for financial gain or the right to travel is often represented as just one example of a way of life where everything had to be negotiated or manipulated, thus putting it into the same bracket as obtaining meat in a shop or getting a workman to mend the plumbing. It is important to realize that those who have exploited German ethnicity in order to leave must be distinguished from others with whom they might be confused: Germans who fled or were expelled from East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia for West Germany after the war; long-standing Polish communities in West Germany, England, North America, Canada, etc.

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(i.e. the Polish diaspora); and the relatively small number of Polish refugees from communism as such (from the 1950s through to the 1980s). The first group have been permanently settled in West Germany, and although some may return briefly for reasons of nostalgia, they mostly recognize that there is little point, or indeed possibility, of them attempting to return to lands that are now thoroughly Polonized. Their problem has been obtaining acceptance in Germany among the ordinary population: while in the east they were uniformly regarded as Germans, in the west they are frequently dismissed as ‘Poles’ (cf. Lehmann 1991; de Zayas 1993). The second group generally have no conflict of identity between their Polishness and belonging to other north-east European ethnic or national groups, many adopting a second identity from the land of settlement and/or birth (e.g. British or American as well as Polish). The third group were abroad for a particular political reason, retained their identity as Poles, and returned as soon as they could. The proximity of the Polish–German border and of Berlin as the largest German city is the key factor in distinguishing the ‘120% Germans’ from the above groups. It means that identity is more fluid, more readily negotiable and negotiated. One can be a German in some contexts, a Pole in others, in the same day or even hour if necessary. One can live in both Poland and Berlin, and have economic interests in both. Most of all, one can easily hide one’s alternative identity. Berlin is a typically impersonal big city with a large number of otherwise German inhabitants with Polish surnames, whose German identities are ordinarily not questioned, despite the indication in their names of a partly Polish or other Slavonic background. Under these circumstances, the appearance there of a few more names from western Poland goes largely unnoticed. Similarly, Ziemia Lubuska is not specifically subject to German irredentism, which is directed more at Silesia than at any other area, even East Prussia or Pomerania. This is probably because Silesia has a more vocal German-speaking minority, especially in Wrocław and around Opole (see Ch. 7). Silesian ‘Germans’, however, tend to be economically disadvantaged in their own area. The ‘120% Germans’, by contrast, put their dual identity to good use in business. More particularly, they are in little danger of being compelled to acknowledge their Germanness in Ziemia Lubuska or their Polishness in Berlin in ways that are detrimental to their interests. They are similar to Miera’s category of Pendler (German for ‘commuter’), and indeed may be broadly identical with it, which she defines as Poles with German passports and/or Silesians with joint citizenship, though her Pendler seem to be more involved in the cross-border import–export trade (Miera 2008: 763). There was and still is, however, a considerable non-official element, coming to Berlin to work in the shadow economy as cleaners, building workers, small traders, and such like. This further distinguishes Poles from Turks,

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former Yugoslavs, and various other nationalities, many of whom have been allowed to live and work in the city not as semi-legal migrants but under intergovernment agreements. The Berlin stereotype of those Poles who find their way to the city places them immediately in the category of potential informal workers who can be employed at low wage levels and given inferior accommodation. This was one motivation for switching identities: as there was no formal agreement allowing Poles as workers into Germany, one had to become German in order to work legally in the country. In this situation, the potential for manipulating ethnicity is considerable. It is the fact that established ‘Poles’ in Berlin city normally represent themselves as Germans in order to avoid this negative image that has caused them to be described as ‘120% Germans’ by other Poles. Some have given up their Polish identity out of fear of attacks by skinheads (Smalcerz 1991). However, in their dealings with Poles who have come here in connection with the shadow economy, the ‘120% Germans’ may well reveal a Polish identity in order to establish connections and gain some additional advantage, possibly exploiting the situation in order to obtain cheap labour at home or in their businesses, but also helping their employees to obtain apartments or at least beds, and even bus tickets; their employees may not, for example, speak German. Conversely, the latter value the situation as a means of obtaining jobs and other income that might not otherwise be made available, and they realize that the money they earn in Germany continues to have more purchasing power in Poland. A further stereotype is that of the cleaning woman working in Berlin who earns enough to be able to employ her own cleaning woman to look after the smart house she has been able to afford back in Poland. Shifts in ethnicity do not, however, run simply in the one direction. Since the fall of communism, a number of Berlin residents have reverted to claiming a Polish identity in order to be able to buy property or set up businesses in Poland, and they have begun teaching their children Polish (Smalcerz 1991; foreigners wanting to buy property had previously had to obtain special government permission, a time-consuming process). Other reasons include the democratization of Poland, the upswing in its economy and the resurgence of xenophobia in Germany, of which Poles are a traditional target. In western Poland itself, this identity is not always recognized by the local population, however successful it may have been officially. In fact, especially given the population shifts of the period immediately following the Second World War, the area has hardly had the opportunity to establish its Polishness in a nationalist (as opposed to communist-oriented) manner. There is some tendency by Poles in the east and centre of the country to regard the population of the west as either closet Germans, if they managed to avoid the deportations, or as Ukrainians, if they came from the east of the country, from areas

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taken over by the Soviet Union. As far as the first group are concerned, the popular denial to them of Polishness reverses the situation in West Germany, where many Silesian expellees and other migrants experienced difficulties in having their Germanness accepted (Lehmann 1991). Another significant aspect is that Ziemia Lubuska, from where many migrants to Berlin come, is very much an area of status equality and, more recently, of the self-made person. This can be compared to the status differences in Berlin between the established ‘120% Germans’ and the informal Polish migrants they employ: asserting these status differences in Ziemia Lubuska would hardly be feasible. Here there remains a certain frontier quality, due to the proximity of a busy border and the immigrant origins of most of the inhabitants. In addition, there is a residuum of the egalitarianism encouraged by socialism. The result is a certain reluctance to work for others, at least in the immediate area. A woman may look after another woman’s children during their mother’s absence on business, but not agree to go on helping her when she returns: every woman should be able to look after her own family. Working as a cleaning woman or nursemaid for Germans is a different matter. It is regarded as a legitimate economic activity to take money from those who have more of it than either time, common sense, or the ability to look after their own children and homes properly. The secret here is partly the difference in spending power of the German and Polish currencies when compared to their respective economies. What for a German represents obtaining domestic help on the cheap has been for Poles a way of earning hard currency which is worth much more back home than it is in Germany, or than the złoty is in Poland.6 Since the changes of 1989, this invisibility of Poles in the city has been slowly if fitfully changing (Smalcerz 1991; Miera 2008). In 1991, figures I was given during an interview at the Polish consulate in West Berlin showed 100,000 Poles living legally in the city, 20,000 with Polish passports, 40–45,000 with German passports, and 35,000 with consular passports (these figures were produced immediately by the interviewee, without reference to files). Thirteen different ethnic Polish organizations also existed, with two thousand members between them. This was still only 2 per cent of the Polish population resident in Berlin. The only reason for their existence was to get a visa for Poland at a low price and to avoid the obligatory daily currency exchange then in force in East Germany (these were presumably holders of German passports only). With the recent changes in visa and currency regulations, they were rapidly losing members. An indication of the sensitiveness of the Polish question in Berlin is that these associations are said to have used blank envelopes in corresponding with their members, so as not to disgrace them in front of their German neighbours. A similar reason was advanced for why there were few Polish newspapers in Berlin: they were

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only available at one of the Polish churches, and were usually two weeks old. In fact, there are (or were) also Polish newsletters and magazines in Berlin, such as the Gazetka Polskiego Związku Kulturalnego w Berlinie (magazine of the Polish cultural community in Berlin), possibly now defunct; Miera (2008) mentions an advertising organ called Kontakty. At that time there were also two churches – one Uniate or Greek Catholic,7 with a married priest, the other Roman Catholic, with a similar number of members. Two Polish restaurants, however, both failed for a lack of clientele. A third, La Polonaise near Kranoldplatz, advertised in Yellow Pages as a Schlesische Kneipe (‘Silesian bar’, a German phrase, NB) and described as good but expensive, is said to attract Americans and Silesian Germans more than Poles. Two Polish schools have also started, one free (sponsored by a Polish society in Berlin), the other costing DM 20 a month, although the teachers work for nothing. Since 1991, the Polish consulate has been located in east Berlin.

Germany and Central Europe: Berlin and the East The German historian Karl Schlögel (especially 2002: 14–64) and writer Uwe Rada (2001) are two authors who have written on the transition from communism in Eastern Europe – respectively on the place of Germany in a revived Central Europe, and on Berlin as a ‘provisional’ frontier town and gateway to the east, a direction that in some contexts can be seen as stretching well into Russia. For Schlögel, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the division of Europe under communism in 1989–90 is symbolic of the attempted revival of the pre-division notion of Central Europe, which had German language and culture as its dominant though not exclusive force, as well as the presence in all states of the region of significant Jewish communities: in Schlögel’s words, ‘with the destruction of Middle European Jewry – with Germandom, the integrator of this space – the old Middle Europe declined’ (Schlögel 2002: 43). That is, antisemitism was also a pan-Central European phenomenon. In being the core ideology of Naziism, therefore, antisemitism contributed to the destruction not only of the Jews, but also of the very notion of Central Europe (ibid.: 49). Yet in its current revival, the other of Schlögel’s pillars, the German language (if not culture, unless it be the culture of modern materialism), is also significant; as Schlögel points out, it is still a lingua franca of the area (ibid.: 42), though increasingly finding competition from the expanding use of English. There are other markers too. One is the survival of many physical reminders of the German past throughout the region, such as buildings, cemeteries and memorials (ibid.: 245–46). Another is the very experience of the forced movements of population in and after the

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Second World War, though the importance of this is reduced by their being seen as particular to each nation itself (ibid.: 241). Rada’s main theme (2001) is Berlin, and how it has come to be seen as a border city with a changing and therefore provisional character, even though it is also now the reunited capital of a reunited Germany in the heart of Europe. Essentially, for easterners, Berlin is the first ‘bright lights’ city in the west, the first bit of El Dorado, where anything goes and anything is possible, even if you do eventually want to go even further west, to London, Paris or New York. For Berliners, their city has come to seem vulnerable to the hordes of desperate eastern barbarians thronging their restored capital city. Rada shows that there is actually nothing new in this. While the eastern railway station of Lichtenberg may now seem to be where ‘Asia’ begins, or possibly Alexanderplatz, between the wars it was another station in eastern Berlin, Schlesischer Bahnhof, now Ostbahnhof. And while Marzahn is the current heart of the one hundred thousand Russian Germans presently resident in Berlin – who are nonetheless seen as Russians by Berliners – in the 1920s the area around Wittenbergplatz was dominated by Russian refugees and artists. For us, however, Rada is most interesting on the recent history of Poles in Berlin, and to some extent the rest of Germany too. For this, he draws, among other work, on the fieldwork-based writings of authorities such as Małgorzata Irek (1998, 2018) and Norbert Cyrus (e.g. 1998), as well as his own impressions. As such, he replicates some of the insights of these authors, as well as offering some of his own. First, the figures Rada produces are striking (2001: 20, 29, 31, 159–60). At the time he was writing there were over 130,000 Polish-speakers in Berlin, 100,000 being German Poles from Silesia. A further 30,000 were refugees from the 1980s state of emergency in Poland out of nearly 122,000 applications at that time, still being permitted to stay under Duldung (tolerance) provisions, though few of them could any longer be considered political refugees. In Germany as a whole, including the Ruhr and other areas, there were 600,000 Poles and Germans of Polish descent, many of whom returned to Poland, permanently or temporarily, after 1989. Clearly there are many waves of migration represented here, though probably not the last, given the 250,000 Poles registered as entering Berlin in 1989, a flow continuing in subsequent years. Among the chief characteristics of Polish migration to Berlin, addressed by all three writers (i.e. Rada, Irek and Cyrus), are first the strong tendencies to assimilate rather than create a minority community, and secondly the commuting nature of much migration, with individuals making frequent trips to and from Poland for reasons of business, vacation, health or family (see also Miera 2008 on these characteristics).

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Poles living in Berlin who acknowledge their identity are, on the whole, likely to be, for example, former political refugees and their families, or professionals on temporary secondment to the city. Otherwise, as we saw in the previous section, there is no strong sense of a Polish minority in the city in terms of ethnic cultural expressions. While there is some use of Polish churches in Berlin by Poles, generally for networking purposes (e.g. finding jobs and accommodation) and the Lubars spring festival called Marzanna, which attracts just a few hundred Poles each year to chase away the winter by burning straw dolls representing it,8 what Polish restaurants there are tend to be practically invisible and to do badly commercially. Indeed, there are no national dishes to speak of that are commercially available, no open manifestations of Polish culture, and no tendency to become involved in ethnic minority politics in Berlin in the manner of, for example, Turks (Rada 2001: 59, after Norbert Cyrus). In Rada’s own words (2001: 31), ‘[i]ntegration was more important to them that the emotional support of a community’. One exception to this is the Poles who have come to the city since 1989, principally for financial reasons, to find work or trade, usually on the black market, but not necessarily to settle permanently. For many, being seen as Polish is the right way to get work or make a trade. Thus Rada describes how Kantstraße, which leads directly west out of the city centre created by the former West Berlin, around the ‘Zoo’ station, and Savignyplatz, in the middle of Kantstraße, formerly an artists’ hangout, suddenly became the preferred shopping areas for Polish traders and ordinary clients. Kantstraße therefore came to be called ‘Warschauer Allee’ by its usual upmarket German clientele, who felt the incomers had made the area go downhill. The basic reasons for its popularity to Poles were the cheap shops that opened along it in response to their coming, and the area’s proximity to major local and international railway stations (Rada 2001: 157ff.). Another major site of Polish–German trade was the Treptower Hallen in the eastern suburb of Treptow, where this time Poles competed with other minority nationalities to sell goods to Germans (ibid.: 80–81). There were also, for a time, specific bazaars for Germans in all Polish border towns, selling cheap meat, cigarettes, clothing and other consumer goods: Kostrzyń opposite Kostrin, Słubice opposite Frankfurt, Gubin opposite Guben, Łęknica opposite Bad Moskau, and Zgorzelec opposite Görlitz (Rada 2001: 14–15). These have mostly disappeared with changing market conditions: in particular, the price differentials between Poland and Germany have evened out in recent years, making Poland less cheap than formerly, and leading German consumers to go back to German and other Western products in search of what they see as better quality (ibid.: 82). But they were an alternative to smuggling goods into Germany – or rather, they transferred the risks of smuggling on to their German customers. Both smuggling and

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the bazaars were finally rendered redundant by the removal of restrictions on the border when Poland joined the EU in 2004 and the Schengen agreement in 2003. Trade still goes on, but ‘normally’, along with regular cross-border shopping. It also flows both ways: two good examples of shopping areas in Germany with plenty of Polish customers are Frankfurt (especially the Oderturm shopping centre) and Görlitz, linked with its Polish twin Zgorzelec by a through bus service. In both German cities, many signs are in Polish as well as German, and some shop assistants speak Polish (Rada 2001: 83). Other Poles came after 1989 to work rather than trade. Rada mentions in particular young Poles seeking small earnings as windscreen cleaners at traffic lights (Rada 2001: 37–38). Other Poles (if male) work on building sites or as small craftsmen (e.g. painters, decorators), or (if female) as cleaning ladies. Many of these eventually earned enough money to go back to Poland and set up legitimate small businesses. However, contacts with earlier groups of settled Polish immigrants were complicated. Their arrival often prompted these groups, like the ‘120% Germans’, who did not wish to be mistaken for them, to stress a German identity more particularly and to avoid speaking Polish in public. However, some also interacted with the newcomers in ways that would not threaten their chosen identity as German by employing them, or at least helping them to find work or contacts; in these interactions, at least in private, Polish might be spoken, and indeed might well have to be, as not all the newcomers knew German.9 In general, however, the more established Germanized Poles acted and reacted to the newcomers much as ‘proper’ Germans did – that is, with distance and indifference, though not always with hostility. In short, neither integration with previous arrivals as Polish nor the establishment of a clearly identifiable Polish community in the city were encouraged, unlike the case for other minorities in the city – Turkish, Arab, southern European, even Jewish (Rada 2001: 32–36, 43ff., after Irek 1998). To some extent, this process was aided by the proximity of the city to Poland, a mere eighty kilometres or so away. Choosing to come to Berlin was not a particularly big deal for Poles, especially those from the west or centre of the country, some of whom lived close enough to make day trips. Unlike migrants coming from halfway round the world, there was no particular necessity to feel that one had come to stay, regardless of the consequences. Cyrus (1998) uses the term Pendler (commuter) for this situation, which Rada sums up by saying that ‘although the emphasis on work is in Berlin, the emphasis on life is in Poland’ (2001: 97). However, even the more established ‘German Poles’ move back and forth, not to trade or work in their cases, but for private, domestic reasons. Rada mentions the six hundred thousand such individuals resident in Germany, in both Berlin and elsewhere, like the Ruhr, who holiday on Poland’s Baltic coast and retain property, family and networks in Poland. This may be partly

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a matter of generation. Rada gives the example of ‘the German Pole, whose parents have lived in Berlin for decades, but who sees his own future not only in Berlin, but also in Poland, works in Berlin and spends his free time in Jelenia Góra, where he runs a small guesthouse at the foot of the Riesengebirge [mountains]’ (Rada 2001: 29). The influx of Poles and other easterners – though perhaps the Poles were stereotypical in this regard – was treated as an unwelcome invasion by Berliners in particular, though with a distinction between West Berliners and East Berliners: for the former, the latter represented the east as much as Poles and Russians (Rada 2002: 163). The influx was even opposed by the Alternativliste and Red-Green Alliance in the city’s politics, a change from their earlier policy of toleration (ibid.: 159ff.). Yet significant numbers have also gone in the other direction, over six hundred thousand Poles and Germans of Polish descent having returned to Poland since 1989 according to Rada (ibid.: 92), thus belying German fears of being swamped by Poles after 2005. In 2004, Poland became a member of the EU and in 2003 of the Schengen agreement, whose signatory states have open common borders between themselves, while maintaining supposedly firm, fortress-like borders with non-EU member states (in Poland’s case, this means Ukraine, Belorussia and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad). Although Poles can therefore travel freely to other EU member states, and although smuggling has become redundant due to the openness of borders and the growing evening out of prices between Poland and Germany, Poles were still not free to work in Germany until 2012.10

Notes   1. In writing this section, I am relying greatly on Herbert 1986. For a more recent study of Polish migration to and settlement in Berlin, see Praszałowicz 2010, which also has many useful references.   2. Discussed critically by Herbert (1986: 28–29), who also gives the references (ibid.: 238 note 18).   3. These were mainly state-subsidized sugar-beet farms.   4. With Masurans, who were not counted as Poles, the total was some half a million.   5. This section relies greatly on the work and advice of Małgorzata Irek (especially Irek 1998).   6. Actually the złoty has become a strong currency internationally since its reform in the 1990s, while by 2002 the cost of living had gradually crept up to something like West European standards.   7. This church follows the Orthodox rite but is in communication with the Papacy.   8. Rada 2001: 30–31. Lubars is an old village on the northern outskirts of Berlin, very near the former wall, and also near the large post-war housing estate of Märkisches Viertel.

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 9. According to Irek (1998: 62ff.), however, many of the earliest cleaning women of this wave were educated, specifically in German studies. Polish newcomers were often charged for beds, unlike among the Turkish milieu (Rada 2001: 33). 10. Britain allowed Poles in to work after Poland’s EU entry in 2004, only to have to introduce a registration system subsequently to cope with the unexpectedly high influx. Ireland, Sweden and subsequently Spain also permitted Poles to work in their countries on a more or less free basis. Ireland and Britain in particular were greatly affected by Polish immigration after 2005, though since the recession of 2008/09 many Poles have returned home, with a further large exit as a result of Brexit and the COVID-19 crisis in and around 2020. However, like other citizens of eastern EU states, Poles can now work anywhere in the EU.

Chapter 5

Regions in Poland I Ziemia Lubuska – Forgotten by Germany?

? A Brief History of Modern Lubuskie Lubuskie was not one of the originally planned twelve provinces in the 1999 reform of local government described in Chapter 3, but local people and officials exerted themselves to achieve separate recognition through newspaper campaigns and petitions to parliament in Warsaw. Even local Social Democrats were involved here, as well as the two cities of Zielona Góra and Gorzów Wielkopolski, so often considered rivals. This was less because of a strong identification with any idea of Lubuskie as due to a general disinclination to identify with any of the surrounding provinces with which the area was otherwise threatened with merger, namely Pomerania, Greater Poland or Lower Silesia. Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) in particular had its eyes on the Warta valley in the north, in the hope of providing itself with a border with Germany. It failed to get it, with the result that Lubuskie has managed to take over territory in the north that traditionally belongs to another region. Nonetheless the idea of Lubuskie is not in fact a new one, as the new province is in part a revival of an earlier province that had existed in this area from 1945 to 1975. The name had been chosen after the Second World War to link the area with an old Polish name and with Polish rule over it in the early Middle Ages. Indeed, the name and the area have a long, if rather low-profile history.1 Earthen ramparts near the modern border hamlet of Nowy Lubusz, just north of Słubice, indicate the existence of a Slavonic

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fortress here perhaps as early as the seventh century. Over the river, just north of Frankfurt an der Oder, there is still a village called Lebus, the equivalent German toponym, which predates the city. All of this was part of Slavonic territory in the seventh century, which stretched up to and beyond the Elbe in some places, some two hundred years before a Polish identity as such is recognizable. In the twelfth century and the first half of the thirteenth, what had now become the terra and bishopric of Lebus on both sides of the Oder in the area of Frankfurt changed hands repeatedly between Polish and German rulers, the latter including the Archbishopric of Magdeburg. In 1249 it came back into the archbishopric’s possession, then into that of the Ascanian margraves, who advanced German settlement here over the following century. By around 1300, the whole of Lebus had become part of Brandenburg, and the name ‘Lebus’ appears to have lapsed. In 1945 the former territory was divided by the new border. As a result, the Polish part now has two names in German: Lebuser Land and Ost-Brandenburg.2 The western, German part remains submerged in Brandenburg, now one of the post-reunification neue Bundesländer. The low profile of the name and of the territory it refers to appears to be reflected on the German side of the border too. This is remarkable, given that historically the whole of Lebuser Land, including its eastern part, was in German hands for a long time, from at least 1249 to 1945, a period of some seven centuries. This is longer than much of Pomerania or any of East Prussia, where German settlement mostly dates from about 1350 to 1400, and much longer than Silesia, which, although it only became politically Prussian upon its conquest by Frederick the Great in 1742, was Germanized much earlier. Yet it is precisely these latter regions that attract most German interest today, whether mostly in the form of nostalgia as in the case of Pomerania and East Prussia, or outright irredentism as frequently in the case of Silesia. Since Germany retained most of Brandenburg proper, Lebuser Land, as a truncated segment over the border with few major towns or other resources, seems to have been largely forgotten by those Germans who do not themselves have roots there. Accordingly, as I have argued previously (2013b: 135–37), Lubuskie appears to have a weak identity as a Polish province, defined by what it lacks rather than what it has, as well as by a shallow local memory due to most of the current population having been displaced from elsewhere or being descended from ancestors who were displaced. The latter point may find resonance with David Berliner’s scepticism over the use of memory in anthropology to support identity-related arguments (2005). In the same pages, I also argued that studying regions with weak identities can still provide insights into identity formation and historical development, not least to reveal just why they are so weak.

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Nonetheless, it is possible to treat Lubuskie as a region of some uniqueness. This is principally due to the transfer of populations in 1945, with Germans exiting the area and Poles entering it to settle over a longish period. In effect, this broke up a degree of cultural continuity between eastern Germany and western Poland (specifically Wielkopolska, centred around the city of Poznań), which had grown up over the centuries of contact and been maintained even into the post-First World War period of Poland’s revival as an independent nation state. Although Poznań had been a centre of antiGerman resistance under Bismarck, it has long had a reputation elsewhere in Poland for being quite ‘German’ in manners, with an emphasis on efficiency, punctuality, thrift, reliability, seriousness and straight talking, all of which are allegedly alien to other Poles.3 One result of this was Piłsudski’s doubts as to its loyalty to the new Polish state (in which it was a border area), despite its earlier anti-German stance under Bismarck. With Germany’s loss of these territories to Poland in 1945 and the influx of a supposedly more ‘easy-going’ eastern population, many of whom could claim to be or were seen as nonPolish (e.g. Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Belorussian), this continuity was broken. Thus the old international border to the east of Lubuskie is still felt by some to be a border culturally. For example, in an interview with me, the marszałek at the time, who was born in Zielona Góra, referred to the mixed population of Lubuskie compared to Wielkopolska, and the fact that while Lubuskians are more interested in people as individuals than in where they come from, with Wielkopolskans it is the opposite (so, even if implicitly, Wielkopolskans are more inclined to assess people in terms of their supposed degree of Polishness). It is precisely this ‘multi-ethnic’ mix in Lubuskie that led it to resist incorporation into surrounding regions, namely Wielopolska, Lower Silesia and Pomerania, and to campaign for its own province. While Lubuskians were certainly Poles, he joked, they should require passports from Poznanians, such was the difference in attitude, as if they were two different nationalities (or alternatively cuisines). For example, Poznanians maintained a strong lobby for themselves in Warsaw and stuck to their own commercial networks, even where this was not to their economic advantage. Lubuskie was therefore a popular idea, despite the high levels of unemployment in the region (at the time of fieldwork), which made Poznań falsely attractive to some, ‘like a witchdoctor’; but leaving Lubuskie for Poznań was a sort of betrayal (a common feeling about expatriate Poles in other regions), unlike leaving Lubuskie for West Germany. In Gubin on another occasion, I was also told that the idea of cross-border cooperation was much less popular in Poznań, as in other parts of Poland further east, to the extent that one risked being ‘lynched’ for suggesting it. This suggests that, however much Poznanians may be regarded as, or regard themselves as, ‘like’ Germans, they are emphatically not Germans but Poles

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who are able to play the same game, and even outdo the Germans at it. The area is, after all, full of a history that can be claimed as Polish: Poland’s first capital was in the area, though whether it was Poznań itself or Gniezno, a city not far to the east, is contested by both cities.

Administration and the Management of Identity As just noted, like other new territories in the south and west of Poland, Lubuskie experienced a large-scale replacement of its population after 1945.4 From being a German-dominated area, it was comprehensively Polonized after 1945, the German population either fleeing or being expelled, and the remaining population being subjected to weryfikacja as Polish. To fill up the area, people were encouraged to settle from other parts of Poland and from the kresy, the territories lost to the Soviet Union in the east. Not all of this movement took place in the immediate post-war period, when it actually turned out to be dominated by people from central Poland; a further attempt to encourage settlement into these areas was made under Gomułka after 1956, with the result that some families moved more than once. This period also saw the start of the building of new apartment blocks for the incomers, which were located in certain villages (e.g. where there was a state farm), as well as in the towns. The image of an area taken over by Poles living in houses deserted by or expropriated from their previous German owners is therefore only partly appropriate today, and it is clear that a significant proportion, perhaps even a majority in some towns, of at least the urban population of the area now live in post-war housing, an increasing amount of which is now privately owned and constructed. The symbolic takeover was equally complete. One tactic was to change place names. In some cases old Slavonic names were known and reapplied, or (re)created from Latin documents. In others, German names were translated literally (thus Grüneberg became Zielona Góra; Neusalz, Nowa Sól) or were Polonized. However, especially in villages, incoming officials – perhaps in ignorance of the true names of now deserted villages – simply made up names on the spot, using local features (forests, oak trees, lakes, even bears) or their own imagination. German-language inscriptions and other signs were removed and/or replaced by Polish ones. German graveyards were not always grubbed up, but they were generally neglected, although some First World War memorials survive. Jewish ones, however, were comprehensively removed, and few survive in this part of Poland, although in other areas, such as Galicia, some have survived and been preserved.5 Polonization was also practised directly on the new population. As in the other new territories, the Catholic Church cooperated with the new

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government by encouraging German Protestant pastors to leave, taking over the latter’s churches and converting them for Catholic use, and generally introducing Catholicism throughout these areas. This in itself was seen as a means of Polonizing them, through the equation ‘Pole = Catholic’. The church was also active socially in promoting a Polish identity through its public statements and by holding public meetings. Only later did the Catholic Church become a serious focus of opposition, even resistance, to the communist system. Schooling was another factor exploited to promote Polish culture, though the first schools were actually often set up by the incomers themselves. In general, however, there was less resistance to these moves in Lubuskie than in Silesia, for example, where a substantial population remained who were at least partly Germanized and who tended to think of themselves in terms of a specifically Silesian identity that was neither fully German nor Polish (see Ch. 7). An example of what happened in these days is Osiek, near Lubsko, a village with its own published history (Żyburt 2009: 60–65, 152–54). A German village in Lower Silesia until 1945, it was only in February of that year that the war’s frontline reached it. Defeat of the Germans soon followed, succeeded by the shifting of the border westwards, Osiek falling on the Polish side. After a period in which the Soviet Union’s Red Army was in charge of the village, the revived Polish administration took it over in October 1945. Between May and June 1946, Polish settlers moved in, mostly hailing from across the River Bug in what had been eastern Poland but was now in the Soviet Union, travelling via Krosno and then further south through Lubsko. As the German population had long since fled or been expelled, the village had sufficient empty houses to offer most people a choice of which to occupy. A school was quickly established and was renovated in late 1948, and the fire station restored. In 1949 the main street was asphalted, in 1951 a nursery school was restored, and in 1952 an agricultural cooperative was established for both arable farming and stock-raising. Later in the same decade the local manor house in Osiek, which had survived the war largely intact but would suffer deterioration in the 1960s, was converted into a sanitorium for sick girls from the surrounding area. By 1958 the original population had doubled, partly due to new settlers arriving, and by 1963 there were thirty-seven households in the village. However, due to official indifference to religion, Osiek had to wait till 1993, after the fall of socialism, to acquire a functioning church of its own, a small converted cabin about the size of an English village cricket pavilion. Although there is a small shop in the village, of a sort often encountered in Polish villages, in the 1940s and 1950s the former German shop remained closed, and villages had to go elsewhere for purchases. Despite its takeover of other territory, Lubuskie is one of the smaller of the new provinces, relatively weak politically and economically, with official

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unemployment rates of up to 40 per cent in some areas at the time of research, a low density of population (and therefore a low revenue base) and about 50 per cent of its area forested.6 Officially, agriculture in the area is in a good state, with Zielona Góra reportedly having the fourth largest agricultural market in the country. However, there are problems here too. As in the other territories taken over from Germany in 1945, it was here that state farms tended to be set up (more than in pre-war Poland, where collectivization was largely abandoned by Gomułka before it ever really got going). Since 1989, while some of these old state farms have acquired new owners (often Germans acting behind Polish partners, in order to get around restrictions on foreigners owning property), most have collapsed, though associated apartment blocks survive and are still often occupied by their existing residents, who now work elsewhere or are retired. This collapse has given rise to a policy vacuum. The fact that the former owners were mostly Germans rules out a policy of either restoration or compensation, and the occasional noises made by former szlachta (Polish gentry; see Jakubowska 2000) have had no political impact on the issue of land restoration. The latter issue, unlike in Hungary or Bulgaria, is anyway of very little public concern in Poland due the relative lack of collectivization in the socialist period, when most land was left in the hands of its pre-socialist owners.7 At the same time, Polish farmers are often too short of capital to be able to invest in such land, and relations with the post-communist administration of agriculture have not been easy. A member of one gmina council said that the attitude of local branches of the land agency that is responsible for this land is also unhelpful, in that they are reluctant to rent land, let alone sell it, allegedly because it would do them out of a job. As a result, only four farmers in the village had enough land to make a commercial living. Otherwise, tourism is the great hope, as with many other communities round the world over the past fifty years or so. However, this sector too is undercapitalized, with very few highly developed resorts in the area and frequently a total lack of facilities, even for sites like surviving German military fortifications that could be turned into an attraction (see further below). This weakness has contributed to an impression that the new administrative boundaries are themselves far from fixed. This applies especially at the level of the new powiaty. These, it is generally agreed, still have to carve out a convincing position for themselves, though they have already caused resentment downstream of them by increasing the amount of allegedly useless form-filling required, and closing much-needed hospitals on financial grounds. Already three gminy have broken away from the powiat of Nowa Sól to form a new powiat to the east, based on the town of Wschowa. There have also been attempts, so far unsuccessful, to unite Gubin and Lubsko as a powiat in their own right (separate from the powiaty of Krosno

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and Żary respectively). Not even the boundaries of the województwo itself are considered entirely sacrosanct. In order to illustrate issues of local identity within Lubuskie itself, in the following section, I shall describe some of the political conflicts over boundaries and membership of the new local government units in various parts of Lubuskie (for which, see Ch. 3), as well as illustrate some of the problems that local officials perceive with the new structure of local government. As new provinces like Lubuskie owe their existence to these reforms, it can be expected that the latter may have some bearing on the question of a future identity for the province as a whole.

The 1999 Reforms and Local Identities While officials at the levels of the województwo and powiaty might justify their new positions and activities, those at the lower level of the gminy/miasta often evince greater scepticism, if not hostility, towards them. In general, there is a feeling at this level that the powiaty have not yet justified their existence and that they still have to find a proper role. A council member on the oversight commission in the gmina of Bobrowice, who remembered the period before the 1970s when there were also powiaty, considered that in those days at least you felt that they were doing something – you felt you were being governed. Today, although the new units were certainly pushing a lot of paper around, especially downwards, involving people like himself in more and more form-filling, they had little else to show for their existence. In fact, the powiaty have considerable powers in health and education, including the ability to close local hospitals and schools on financial grounds – itself a source of grievance for the localities. For this councillor, however, it was better in the days when there were just the smaller województwa and the gminy (he also felt that some autocracy was needed alongside the democracy, otherwise nothing would get done). For him, the gmina and the Euroregion (see below) were more important. Similar sentiments were expressed, even more forcibly, by the wójt of one of the more impoverished communes in the province, Maszewo. Again the powiaty were seen as already being redundant, because the communes could do more with less effort and money, and they were also a drain on the commune’s finances through the removal from the latter of the issuing of driving licences. Also repeated was the view that the communes and provinces could do everything themselves, without the powiat being required. In addition, the powiat was seen as interfering in relations between gmina and województwo. Yet although the wójt stigmatized the new reforms as just a matter of ‘jobs for the boys’, he also felt they were more democratic, as the key officials were now

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elected. For example, five people had stood for his post in 2002. In Lubsko too, in 2002, there were tensions between miasto and powiat over the latter’s closure of one of the town’s three hospitals, which was covered on national television as an example of problems with the new reforms. These sentiments were also found among far-right politicians such as the Self-Defence Party of Andrzej Lepper, for whom regionalization was simply a device derived from Germany and designed to produce German hegemony over Poland: it was not, therefore, democratic.8 One of the party’s supporters told me that there were now too many bureaucrats working simply for money and too many levels of administration, one of which should go, whether powiat or gmina. Nor was there any sense to the new province: things were better under the communists, as although he had been an anti-communist under Gierek, at least they cared more (a not uncommon view). Also, different public services now had different headquarters, producing a lack of coordination.9 In general, then, officials and councillors at this level experience the powiaty as just another tier of government over them, one that is intrusive and interfering rather than beneficial. This in itself is a common and rather predictable reaction: local government officials in England have also generally been some of the greatest sceptics concerning proposals for regional government there. But it also signals a dissatisfaction in Poland itself with reforms that had been intended to improve both democracy and the responsiveness of local government to public opinion, and thus the quality of local government generally. However, there are exceptions. In the commune of Brody I was told that, because the powiat and gmina had different powers, the former was scarcely a visible presence in the commune, and that as far as they were concerned there was scarcely any difference between the new and old systems. In Dąbie near Krosno too, cooperation on joint committees at powiat level, acting for cross-commune matters such as roads, building development and the environment, was highlighted. Even here, though, the powiat was considered to be more remote from the people than the gminy, which could exert more influence locally, and there was the familiar complaint that the commune now had more to do but less money to do it with.10 Again, party organization locally was very low. The wójt in this commune saw his role more in terms of management, the starosta being allegedly more of a politician (see below for reasons for this). Perhaps coincidentally, this last remark is reflected in the career of the vice-starosta of Krosno, the powiat in which Dąbie lies. A citizen of Gubin and formerly vice-mayor there, he had deliberately set out to get himself appointed as Gubin’s man in Krosno as part of a conscious political strategy. The argument was that, although Krosno became the capital of the powiat because of its central location, Gubin was more advanced politically, culturally and economically, and therefore deserved more than an ordinary level

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of representation in Krosno. There were allegedly tensions between the two towns because of this. Gubin originally tried to link up with Lubsko, to the south-east, but this failed because it was felt that taking Lubsko away from Krosno would have left the Krosno powiat too small. Both the vice-starosta and mayor of Krosno emphasized that the gminy and powiaty had separate functions. Both felt that there were no problems between the two levels of administration in Krosno, though the former said he could understand the resentment of the gminy at having an extra tier of administration placed over them. At the same time, unlike the numerous wójts or mayors I interviewed, he felt that most funding went ‘naturally’ to the gminy (which could borrow up to 60 per cent of their annual budget), even though their powers were limited. Because of the difference in function, the councils at the two levels did not need to cooperate, though the mayor and starosta certainly did. In his words, all problems could be solved by getting round the regulations – a not untypical Polish attitude to such things. Even in this town, party organization was virtually non-existent, with only the EU referendum, not the local elections, being contested by the different parties. For the mayor in particular this was a good thing, as people should vote for individuals, not parties; there was simply no place for national political parties in such a small town. However, this did not mean less democracy: consultation processes had been introduced, and local referendums could be, and had been, carried out, though there was no obligation on the part of local officials to take the results into account.

The Example of Wschowa However, the strongest support for the existence of a powiat I encountered locally was in Wschowa, in the south-east of Lubuskie, bordering on Lower Silesia. This is linked closely to local identity, with people feeling that they did not belong to any of the surrounding regions, and that their existing links with Nowa Sól, to the west, had proved unsatisfactory. The Wschowa area had originally formed a powiat of its own until the reforms of 1972–75. The 1999 reform had ignored this, and placed the gminy of Wschowa, Sława and Szlichtingowa in the powiat of Nowa Sól on the grounds that they were too few to form a powiat in their own right (four gminy being a notional minimum). This situation arose because of the sudden defection of a fourth gmina, Wijewo, to the neighbouring province of Wielkopolska, its traditional affiliation, supported by Wielkopolska politicians who did not wish to see the province broken up. But relations with Nowa Sól soon became difficult. The town is remote from Wschowa, and one has to drive through a Lower Silesian salient to reach it. In addition, there

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are no historical links with it. The people of Wschowa and Szlichtingowa, and to a lesser extent Sława too, therefore campaigned for their separation as a powiat, a move allegedly supported by the former foreign minister and one-time adviser to Wałęsa, Bronisław Geremek, a native of Sława, and other leading local politicians. The campaign extended to street blockades in the local towns, as well as demonstrations in Warsaw. Essentially, the problem came down to identity. Wschowa powiat is a border area lying between Lower Silesia, Wielkopolska and Lubuskie, though not belonging unambiguously to any of them. Certainly, perceived neglect by Nowa Sól only followed similar neglect by Leszno, capital of the area and a town traditionally associated with Wielkopolska. Now that Wschowa and Leszno are on the same administrative level, relations are better. Relations with Lower Silesia were always good, and the official name for the railway station in Sława still refers to the area’s one-time incorporation into the region. Today, however, the main link is the employment opportunities provided by the copper mine in Głogów. Later, the Wschowa powiat became part of the ­pre-1999 województwo of Zielona Góra, now Lubuskie’s joint capital. Despite Nowa Sól now also being in Lubuskie, the link with Zielona Góra led to the ultimate decision to join this province, though as a separate powiat. Here, therefore, the powiat is a significant expression of local identity, in a way that is generally not true elsewhere in Lubuskie. Indeed, in the absence of central government funding to set up the new unit, Wschowa financed the move out of its own local funds. I received repeated assurances that the powiat is viable, despite its size. Nonetheless, one official felt that the main issue was the quality of life and fighting corruption – without success in these things, identity could be compromised. What is striking, however, is that this popular support for the powiat goes along with disputes between the commune of Szlichtingowa and the powiat headquarters in Wschowa that go way beyond anything I encountered elsewhere. These conflicts were political rather than administrative, unlike elsewhere. Before the 2002 elections, the new powiat was placed under a central governmentappointed commissioner. In a local political deal, it was agreed that, in return for Wschowa becoming the capital of the powiat, the latter’s first starosta after the elections should come from Sława and the first council leader from Szlichtingowa. In the event, this plan was scuppered by Jerzy Buzek, who as prime minister refused to confirm the choice of someone from Sława as commissioner, and chose instead someone from Wschowa, who later became starosta, despite the agreement; in addition, Szlichtingowa was left out in the cold when someone else from Sława became council leader. Another dispute arose over the nomination of the vice-mayor of Szlichtingowa to sit on a committee for policy on the disabled. The starosta asked for the former’s qualifications for the role, wrongly as far as the

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vice-mayor (a lawyer by profession) was concerned, but evidently justifiably to the starosta (a businessman allegedly more concerned with efficiency than strict legality). Ultimately, however, the latter was faced down and the vicemayor appointed. These disputes may be related to the fact that, while the leftist SLD was then strong in the gminy of Wschowa and Sława, the rightwing PiS was stronger in Szlichtingowa. Nonetheless, officials in Wschowa especially were concerned to stress what they felt to be the non-party aspects of local politics generally; despite the presence of some party organization, it was personal networks and local cross-party deals that were really important, a view also encountered in Szlichtingowa. For example, the previous mayor was said to have been a charismatic figure, though alternating between right and left as far as policies were concerned. This is not to say that this powiat avoided administrative problems. The main one at this time concerned the local hospital in Wschowa, administratively a responsibility of the powiat, not the miasto or gmina. However, because Nowa Sól had originally been the powiat responsible, a conflict arose over the debts incurred under its administration, which it refused to settle; accordingly, the starosta of the newly created powiat of Wschowa refused to take the hospital over. Then Nowa Sól changed its mind and settled the debts, but retained the hospital and the right to nominate the director. As neither powiat has an interest in running the hospital in present circumstances, it is falling into severe neglect and temporarily had its accounts frozen by the courts. The starosta of Wschowa claims that there is no legal basis for his takeover of the hospital, a claim rejected by his opponents in Szlichtingowa: for them, improving control over local hospitals was a key reason for separating from Nowa Sól in the first place. In other respects, however, relations between the gminy and powiat were said to be sustainable, with the two levels allocating tasks cooperatively where they could. In Wschowa, officials were less concerned to highlight conflicts than the benefits and potential of the powiat: for example, investing in education by renovating schools and providing them with new computers and buildings, or setting up a new trading estate outside the town. In this case, therefore, it was felt that internal political conflicts should not be allowed to do anything to undermine support for this powiat as an idea linked to local identity. Clearly, powiat officials more generally tend to take a different view, either underlining cooperation between levels, or else stressing that the different levels actually have different powers. Thus the functions of the powiaty have been taken over at least as much from the old województwo as the gminy (e.g. roads, social security, health care, education above gymnasium level, and channelling government information downwards). Moreover, they have a coordinating role between communes in matters that are too detailed for the

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province, such as financial rationalization, and are in a better position to help weaker and poorer gminy.

The Województwo As far as the województwo is concerned, this seemed remote to officials in the south-west, where my enquiries came to be concentrated. Certainly it is physically distant, Gorzów being about a hundred kilometres or sixty miles away in the north of the province. There were also perhaps predictable suspicions that it was feathering its own nest and leaving the localities short of funds. At the same time, as administrations, the latter had more to do with Gorzów than with the other capital, Zielona Góra, which houses the provincial sejmik or provincial parliament. Nonetheless the marszałek supported the division of powers as it prevented too much concentration of power in one city, and even recommended it elsewhere. For example, in Pomerania all power had gone to Szczecin, and Koszalin was declining, while the marszałek of Wielkopolska should really have been based in Kalisz, to prevent all the power going to Poznań. One town mayor complained about the lack of coordination provided by the województwo in such matters as the provision of through cycle paths across gmina boundaries for tourist purposes, and joint refuse disposal. Neighbouring gminy, he felt, were not always interested in cooperating. In Lubsko, council employees were not paid for months because the województwo had not reimbursed the miasto for money the latter had had to pay to the electricity company for street lighting (although the miasto controlled the lighting, the województwo was responsible for the streets). Here too, the closure of a hospital, against the desire of the town, was featured on television as an example of the folly of the new reforms, as it created a situation in which the town would have to pay to get back its ‘own’ building. This became a conflict between the town council and the starosta, who also used his powers to take over an old tower in the town, linked to its historical identity, and a minor attraction for tourists. There was also some ambivalence about relations with the central government. A frequent complaint about the reforms in general was that they had given the lower authorities more duties but less money with which to carry them out. The same town mayor felt that Warsaw was developing a tendency to push problematic policy areas onto local authorities. Funding was also flowing upwards more than downwards, and one had to be really persistent to get any special funding out of Warsaw. At the same time, there had been some improvements in local infrastructure and local autonomy. Another official elsewhere felt that a readiness to criticize the government and a sceptical

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stance towards it was typically Polish, and less likely to be encountered in Germany, the Czech Republic or Hungary. One aspect of this is relations between the marszałek, head of the sejmik or provincial parliament, and the wojewoda, the central government’s representative in the provinces. In Lubuskie, as we have seen, the former sits in Zielona Góra, the latter in Gorzów. The former fully capitalized on his elected position to claim a greater degree of democratic authority, and he tended to dismiss the latter’s powers as irrelevant. Those powers appear to be restricted, essentially, to questioning provincial legislation on points of law (not on grounds of either policy or content), and even then the wojewoda’s decisions can be overturned by the administrative court. One bone of contention was the creation of a coat of arms for Lubuskie, on which the wojewoda, a member of Jerzy Buzek’s AWS party, wanted a saint to be represented. This was successfully rejected by the SLD sejmik and marszałek. Nonetheless, Warsaw has been transferring functions to the wojewoda, including finance, which, it is alleged, he retains in order to earn interest (a possible reason for local government workers going unpaid for months). There is also general agreement at the lower levels that the reforms have not done a great deal for democracy, party-based or otherwise, despite the plethora of new elections that have been introduced (e.g. town mayors are now elected directly, not by the local council). Even at provincial level, party politics exists only patchily. At the lower levels it is not evident most of the time, and even at election time it is the exception. Many officials and councillors claim to have no party affiliations at all. Some are known to have particular sympathies, but this need not extend to them joining local branches of the national parties, and it does not necessarily prevent cooperation over local issues. In one commune, the wójt is a notorious right-winger who should in theory be opposed to, and by, PSL and SLD sympathizers on the council; but he has repeatedly been elected, and his contacts in Warsaw are seen as having been good for the commune in terms of getting it finance and so on. In general, officials claimed to be noticing a good deal of apathy among locals about themselves and their activities. This was partly put down to a fatalistic acceptance of poverty and high unemployment, but in one town it was also associated with local businessmen, who had failed to attend an official seminar of potential interest to them in anything like the numbers expected. In another town political meetings were ill-attended, and not even the local newspapers were particularly interested in stimulating debate. Here a few local politicians were in the SLD, but that was not felt to be very significant. Grassroots movements tend to be few, apart from a few environmentalists, and even then environmental policy was described as very much a top-down process that had to be imposed from above. For example, there was

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said to be some resistance from local villagers to the introduction of modern sewerage systems – a big infrastructural project in rural areas in Lubuskie currently, financed partly by German or EU money.11 Three general points can be made in concluding this section. One is that, while attitudes to the 1999 reform differ predictably with level of administration to some extent, with the same arguments for or against the powiaty being repeated from case to case, there are exceptions, most strikingly Wschowa. Secondly, in interviewing officials in different places and different capacities, it was evident that the most outspoken and unequivocal were, on the whole, those at the lower levels of the administration. A number of reasons suggest themselves for this. One is that, at these levels, officials are left to their own devices more and run their own show, without having to make immediate reference upwards within their own domain. Another possible reason is that, at these levels, one is more likely to find people holding office who see themselves as doing something for the community rather than building political careers, who are impatient with party politics and emphasize instead individual talents and worth, and who are less constrained by the need to make anodyne statements that are designed to unite different strands of opinion than others who have risen in the political hierarchy. Thirdly, political party organization becomes rarer the further down the administrative ladder one goes. Even in towns and communes, such organization is often non-existent, or only emerges at election or referendum time. At the same time, formerly there was a general awareness of the strength of SLD support in the province, though other parties, perhaps especially the right-of-centre PiS in 2003 (following the collapse of the ex-Solidarity UW), also had support. The dislike of party politics expressed by officials appears to be replicated generally in the population, and may be stronger than in ‘old’ EU countries with a longer tradition of multi-party democracy.

Identity Formation in Lubuskie Popular attitudes tend to confirm this lack of party political activity locally. In general, both officials and academic commentators have routinely stressed the ‘passivity’ of the population in Lubuskie, from their arrival after 1945 right up to the present day. As regards the socialist period, this is attributed to fear of an authoritarian government that was concerned to absorb the new areas as fast as possible, coupled with the difficulties of adjusting to a new region under circumstances of a serious shortage of both public facilities and private resources. In addition, as a border area, parts of it were conspicuously dominated by the military.12 Since 1989 this attitude is said to have been replaced by widespread apathy and resignation over both

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unemployment and poverty, which in their turn have allegedly produced a disenchantment with democracy and a disinclination to get involved in it. This undoubtedly reflects a high degree of bureaucratic stereotyping. More realistically, there is less apathy than a general sense of powerlessness in the face of a series of elite agendas, which, despite their claims, are not capable of significantly improving the lives of many ordinary citizens. And of course, politicians’ alleged corruption, however much reports of it are anecdotal, is another concern-cum-stereotype that can badly affect support for the political process as a whole. There also tends to be a generational difference. The older generation who actually moved to Lubuskie from the lost eastern territories, the socalled kresy, are now mostly elderly if they are still alive at all, and to some extent their own children, some twenty to thirty years younger, still tend to identify with the kresy, regarding Lubuskie as their physical but not spiritual home. As for younger generations, many think in terms of a purely national identity, whether militant or liberal. Even after over seventy years of occupation of this part of the new territories, therefore, regional identity still seemed weak or non-existent early in this millennium, except in the negative sense mentioned earlier. Other aspects of this that are sometimes alluded to include the absence in the province of any large cities with a nationally significant history (like Warsaw, Kraków, Poznań or Gdańsk), of important industry, famous historical figures, or special foods.13 Even the characteristic landscape of the area, namely its extensive forests, was being lost, it was felt, to commercial exploitation. My more recent research in 2010 modified this view to some extent, with a slightly greater feeling now evident that Lubuskie is beginning to mean something to those who were born and brought up there. This is by no means universal, however, and one is just as likely to be told that this is rubbish: people may identify with their own localities, but any strong feeling for Lubuskie as a whole lies in a dim and distant future. To some extent the former is an official position, the latter that of ordinary people. Elsewhere (Parkin 2013b), I have stressed the overall weakness of a specifically Lubuskian identity, while also arguing that, while it may be tempting for scholars to ignore or downplay such cases as providing little of either interest or solid ethnographic material, they should not be neglected, especially when such identities form part of a regional system. In other words, the key question to ask here is why Lubuskie should have a weaker identity than certain other provinces in Poland’s current system of local government, such as Wielkopolska or Silesia. One reason is undoubtedly the greater salience of certain alternatives in the region, especially the identification with the former eastern homeland of many just mentioned, the kresy, and, quite simply, mainstream Polish national identity. A similar situation is reported

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by Meinhof and Galasiński (2002: 70ff., 74ff.), who worked in the border town of Gubin. There they found that Polish national identity was almost the only choice for Poles in the town, which similarly lacked a regional identity or even an identity of its own as an urban space. This contrasted with the situation in the German twin city of Guben, where identities were more varied, ranging from local to regional, national and international. This presumably reflects the greater layering of identities in Germany, with its heavily devolved politics and administration, and its official avoidance of nationalism as a possible alternative identity, as already mentioned (especially Ch. 3). Attempts are nonetheless being made at a number of official levels to develop a sense of local identity in Lubuskie’s case. This relates first to the media. Lubuskie has its own regional television news programme. While one of the local newspapers already referred to ‘Ziemia Lubuska’ before the reforms, others have been launched with the same focus or have shifted towards it; there are now also newspapers for many of the new powiaty too. One glossy magazine promoting Lubuskie is Kochaj Lubuskie (literally ‘love Lubuskie’). Started in around 2008, it is a notionally free quarterly that is still being published though new issues seem somewhat irregular and intermittent. It is financially supported by the EU’s European Social Fund. Another source of identity creation is local festivals. In themselves they are not new, and most towns celebrate their existence and history at some point in the summer. Typically these days, they consist of a mixture of sport, music, the provision of food and drink, and other marketing and selling opportunities for local businesses, and there may be a special focus on activities for, and by, children. The music may be religious or secular folklore, sometimes common to all Poland, sometimes connected with the east. Partner towns abroad may be represented, and these days the European flag of twelve golden stars on a blue ‘field’ or background is sure to feature somewhere. But other celebrations may now refer to the powiat and/or województwo, at least in part, as at one ceremony I witnessed in Świebodzin, obviously an official one, to hand out medals to fire service personnel. At other times, local identity is not expressed, or only historically. In 2002 Świebodzin celebrated seven hundred years of its incorporation as a town. The celebrations went on intermittently throughout the year, but two consecutive days in May stand out in particular as illustrating this tendency. The first day was very much a celebration of the history of the town, which stressed its foundation, architectural heritage and economic history – a largely German history, in fact, though this was not emphasized. The second day was devoted to a celebration of the kresy from which a large part of the population derives, with traditional songs being sung and traditional food being offered for sale. Of the two days of

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celebration mentioned above, the second, devoted to the kresy, seemed to me to have the most significance to those attending. But on neither day were issues of ethnicity or nationality stressed: in other words, the fact that this had been a largely German town within living memory, and that it was now virtually wholly Polish, was glossed over. This is typical, by and large, of how the history of the area is dealt with in, for example, the tourist literature that many towns issue.14 Despite the war and the neglect of the socialist period, the province has a valuable architectural heritage, though less striking than in some other parts of Poland. Laws now exist to preserve the old and therefore partly German character of town centres from being undermined by new building.15 Attempts are made to use this heritage as a basis for attracting tourists to the area. Again, however, its specifically German history, while not denied, is certainly not stressed, despite the fact that the urban population had always been largely German, and that even Polish rulers in the Middle Ages often granted settlements the status of towns under German law (e.g. Magdeburger Recht). Nor is the ethnic takeover of 1945 and after given much attention, let alone its often violent circumstances. If it is mentioned, it is normally in terms of the ­‘liberation’ of a particular town, and even then there tends to be some vagueness as to who the liberators actually were: Poles, Russians, antiNazis? It is rare to mention specifically the expulsion of the former German population.16 In effect, what I have just described amounts to the adoption, even appropriation, of the historical legacy of an entirely different ethnic group.17 Officially, a value is sought in that legacy, even though the present-day population of the area finds it difficult, if not impossible, to identify with it directly. The attempt to match a history without a people to a people without a history is therefore incomplete at best. On the other hand, this might also be interpreted as a conscious attempt to re-establish a continuity with a history long past, and to forget the break in that history that occurred in 1945. In the late 1940s, this could be connected with the claims frequently made by Polish historians and other apologists that Poland was merely returning to territory she had previously ruled about a thousand years earlier.18 In the twenty-first century, it has at least as much to do with attempts to ignore the border that runs along the Oder/Odra and upper Neisse/Nysa rivers, and to recreate the territory on both sides of it as a single entity. This is especially visible in tourist literature, which often sets out to attract Germans specifically, thus recreating a past when this whole area was not only German, but a playground for Berliners in particular. This itself practically demands a certain lack of clarity regarding the different ethnic and national histories of the area.

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Łużyce and the Sorbs However, this is not simply a matter of boosting tourism. In the south-west of Lubuskie, especially in the area between Trzebiel, Żary and Żagan, attempts are being made to revive the older regional identity of Łużyce (the Lausitz in German), with or without its Sorb population. Łużyce, part in Brandenburg, part in Saxony, extended from around Lübben in Germany to the borders of Silesia. Although containing a large German or Germanized population, it has always been associated with the Sorbs (often ‘Serbs’ in non-English literature, also the Sorb self-designation) or Wends, a population speaking a distinct Slavonic language. Although they were mostly expelled from present-day western Poland along with the Germans in 1945, current attempts to revive a Łużyce identity often specifically refer to their earlier presence in the area.19 Many of these attempts are being supported by local amateur historians and enthusiasts, but there are also official initiatives, such as a plan to open a Sorb museum in Żary. There is already an open-air museum showing recreations of historical Sorb and other local buildings at Buczyny, south of Trzebiel; a private museum, it is funded by donations and run by a local enthusiast.20 Local historians (e.g. Piwoński 2000; Malinowski 2002) also claim that, despite official and unofficial pressures to Germanize them, Sorbs and Sorb culture and language existed here up to 1945, and that, until the Prussians came in 1815, Germans and Sorbs lived together peacefully – a rather typical mythologization of history, which conveniently forgets that Prussians also counted as Germans. It is clear from Piwoński’s historical account in particular that, as with other incipient nationalisms, Sorb ethnic identity was greatly developed (‘revived’), if not entirely created, in the mid-nineteenth century. Its role today seems to be to emphasize the unified history of what is now southern Lubuskie but was formerly Łużyce (German Lausitz). Using the term ‘Łużyce’ means emphasizing the common Slavonic and therefore non-German history of the area. Sorbs may not be Poles, and indeed no one claims that they are, but they are speakers of a Slavonic language, and their history of settlement in this part of present-day Poland can therefore be used as one further justification for the takeover of this territory by Poland in 1945. In this discourse, Prussians in particular tend to appear as intruders with no historical rights to what had been common Slav territory. In justifying the post-1945 takeover, Sorb culture is therefore appropriated in the name of a common Slavonic, non-German past and identity. This in its turn supports the contention – as yet embryonic, but capable of further development in the future – that the far south of Lubuskie is really Łużyce, and not Lubuskie at all. It also involves forgetting the fact that the Polish authorities expelled the Sorbs from the new territories in 1945 along with ethnic Germans, as, like the latter, they had been citizens of the Reich.

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Notes Parts of this chapter formerly appeared in Working Paper 47 of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany (Parkin 2002) and the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 22(1) (2013): 115–37 (Parkin 2013b). Reproduced with permission of the respective publishers, the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, and Berghahn Journals.   1. My account of this history is largely based on Carsten 1954 and Knefelkamp 1998: 82.   2. Lebus/Lubusz/Lubuskie should not be confused with the village of Leubus/Lubiąż, further south-east in Lower Silesia, the site of a Cistercian monastery in the Middle Ages owned by the bishopric of Lebus. Although the smallest of the local bishoprics, in 1317 Lebus also possessed two small towns and sixteen villages in Lebus itself, and it had the power to endow the Templars with lands in the Neumark, to the north-east. The fact that at this time the territory also included the area known today as the Fläming indicates a Flemish origin for some the settlers who were drawn here from the west by easy feudal conditions. As elsewhere in the region, these conditions were progressively abolished or made heavier in the course of the coming centuries (see Carsten 1954). OstBrandenburg is sometimes now used in German for the territory immediately over the border from the contemporary German Land.   3. These are, of course, stereotypes, though I must admit that they match my own experience to a large degree.   4. Much of this account is based on Osękowski 1994; also Urban 1994. A more recent account of this history, not seen by me, is Materka 2017.   5. In one town in Lubuskie, one former Jewish graveyard is now just a field, though an information board has been put up explaining its history, and some of the gravestones have been preserved in an adjacent house. Other stones were reportedly used in building the town’s monument to its Second World War heroes, though as the monument is faced with black marble this is now hard to verify. The only Jewish cemetery I know of in Lubuskie is at Zasieki, on the border near Forst, which has about twenty graves left, only a handful with legible inscriptions. Nonetheless there are signs that the graves are cared for by local Poles and Germans, as well as Israeli visitors.  6. Forests were formerly replanted as a defensive measure against the possibility of a German and later a NATO invasion.   7. Nonetheless the PiS (Law and Justice) Party sought to derive political capital out of its warnings against the gentry returning to steal Polish land.   8. The party has since fallen apart and hardly exists any longer, due not least to a series of scandals leading to the imprisonment of many of Lepper’s lieutenants, though not he himself. Lepper nonetheless subsequently committed suicide.   9. This is similar to the UK, where the boundaries of the administrative units of different public services also fail to coincide in large measure. 10. In Bobrowice, the stress was more on the existence of competition between communes for funding. 11. The other main infrastructural project partly funded by the EU appears to be road improvements. 12. Słubice, for example, over the river Oder/Odra from Frankfurt and therefore right on the new border, was basically a closed military town until the 1960s (Hartwich 2003: 78–79). 13. I am grateful to Maciej Irek for this observation.

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14. Another context in which this is important is obviously education, especially at school level. This is a large issue in its own right, one that would require specific research. 15. This is a contrast to the communist period, when the authorities could show a quite cavalier attitude to the preservation of even architecturally significant German-era buildings. In Krosno, for example, they demolished a seventeenth-century townhouse in good condition in order to extend a local market. 16. Since much of this publicity material is bilingual, it is often interesting to compare the two versions. Given that Germany is a major source of the hoped-for tourism, the German version is often even more sanitized than the Polish one. 17. There are, of course, other cases in which an earlier architectural heritage has been appropriated, if only for tourist purposes, by a successor population or regime: e.g. Greek sites in Turkey, and Roman sites in North Africa and Britain. 18. Nor is this fantasy, as at least one neutral observer, the American historian Terry, has observed (1983: 13). 19. Not that there is always much clarity over this. One official in Żary was very uncertain when asked whether there had actually been any Sorbs in this part of Poland before 1945, though he was definite that there had been ‘Sorb culture’ there. His acknowledgement of the possibility that there may be some people claiming to be Sorbs there today may be more ethnographically accurate than he realized. This whole question would benefit from further investigation. 20. There are contacts with the Sorb museum in Cottbus, eastern Germany, and a number of Sorb visitors from the area, as well as Germans, Dutch, and others.

Chapter 6

Administrative Reform, Cross-border Relations and Regional Identity in Western Poland and Eastern Germany

? Cross-border Cooperation In recent history, cross-border cooperation between regional and local government bodies has been a big issue in the context of European integration, at least among officials, if not always for those they administer. These remarks apply equally to Poland, where they had an added interest when the country was still a candidate for membership of the EU. Cooperation also had narrower, more practical incentives for border communities in Poland: under certain conditions, it allowed access to some EU funding before entry, and local authorities on both sides of the EU border needed international partners to qualify for it. Thus, for example, the construction of sewerage systems in Polish villages could be funded with EU money, so long as there was a cross-border dimension to them – not difficult to argue in this case, given that the border is a river system. These contacts have continued in a general way since Poland entered both the EU and the Schengen agreement, which together aim at establishing a Europe with free movement across internal state borders.1 However, not all cross-border links involve towns that are actually located right on the border, nor are local authorities themselves necessarily involved. One instructive example is the town of Lubsko, in Żary powiat and therefore some twenty kilometres from the border, still known to Germans by its old name of Sommerfeld. Its oldest cross-border link is with the German town of Vlotho, which is not on the border, but right in the middle of

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Germany, near Minden and the E34 autobahn. In 1945, many Germans who were expelled from Sommerfeld ended up here, including the last mayor of Sommerfeld, who before long was elected mayor of Vlotho. Desiring to retain links with what was now Lubsko, despite its takeover by Poles, he proclaimed that Vlotho would henceforth be Lubsko’s Paten. This German word literally means ‘godfather’ and is significant in this context because it suggests a relationship of adoption rather than a true partnership. For example, during the Cold War, Vlotho periodically sent material but not monetary help to Lubsko, especially during the martial law period.2 Since the collapse of socialism it has become more of a true partnership, with mutual visits twice a year: in 2002, for example, there was an exchange of popular music groups, each bravely trying to announce their music in the host language; and some individual families in the two towns have also struck up friendships. It is also marked by street names, such as Sommerfelderplatz and Lubskostrasse in Vlotho. In general, this relationship now appears to exist in, of and for itself, a matter of sentiment with an emphasis on ‘culture’, with few if any management or commercial aspects; there is even speculation that it may disappear in time, though genuine friendships have evolved between officials of the two towns. Vlotho also has a separate twinning arrangement with Aubigny in central France, which one minor official in Vlotho described to me as being based on nothing more concrete than Lust, or ‘desire’ (or perhaps, in the somewhat convivial atmosphere of the conversation, ‘just for the hell of it’). This illustrates the way in which many such arrangements seem to exist to celebrate themselves and little else. Lubsko has a more practical agreement with Forst, the nearest town over the border in Germany, an association that also includes the commune of Brody, the main Polish village and commune between the two towns. This is actually the second such attempt to create a partnership, the first having been made in the 1970s. However, this fell foul of the abolition of the powiaty in Poland in 1975, and in any case never involved ordinary people, only party and other officials. The stress in the current initiative is on involving ordinary citizens, though the whole thing is still being driven by officials in practice.3 In general, Lubsko seems to engage more with Forst than with Brody, as there is no tendency for the Polish side to gang up against the German one. The main focus of the present agreement with Forst is the construction of a bridge across the Neisse/Nysa river (and therefore the border) just north of Forst, which was opened in autumn 2002, and which, it was hoped, would stimulate both trade and tourism in the area,4 although it produced some controversy over alleged delays on the German side. A major part of the funding came from the EU, as local signs tell the visitor, and it was planned to call the bridge the ‘Bridge of the European Union’. Other aspects of the relationship include school exchanges, some for disabled children, who

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celebrated the tenth annual festival of their cooperation in 2002, exchanges that are seen as being relatively easy to arrange; exchanges of information involving social workers; and mutual language-learning, which is seen as filling an important gap, given the few Poles who can speak German and the even fewer Germans who can speak Polish.5 As far as Brody is concerned, Euroregion links (see below) have so far proved more significant than the link with Forst, because the former has secured PHARE funding to restore the tower in the town (a Euroregion opinion was required), despite things moving slowly through the Euroregion system. Another local example of cross-border cooperation is the twin town of Guben–Gubin. This is actually one of a number of divided towns along the border; they were single units within Germany before 1945, and are sometimes compared with divided cities such as ‘Mostar [in Bosnia], Jerusalem [and] Berlin’ (Jahnke 2001: 18), as well as Nicosia. They are thus not like ‘Eurode’ (discussed below), in which once separate cities are linking up for purposes of greater cooperation, but are formerly united towns and cities that have become divided through conflict. In the 1990s there were a number of attempts, with varying degrees of success, to reunite these towns, regardless of the border. Thus in Zgorzelec/Görlitz there are now cross-border bus services and special quick queues for taxis, while in Frankfurt/Słubice there is still a lot of antagonism over border crossings and smuggling – the two most used crossings are here – despite the presence in both towns of the cross-border Viadrina University, a self-designated ‘European University’.6 Gubin and its German twin Guben lie somewhere in between these examples along a scale of cooperation. Cooperation is helped to some extent by the fact that the two towns are more or less equal in size, unlike the other cases, and therefore, people say, taken as a whole, they only need one theatre, one technical school, and so on. A proposal to open a Polish island in the middle of the river at Gubin – the so-called ‘Theatre Island’, named after a former theatre on the island – to direct access to the German side and to landscape it as an international zone or ‘European zone’ was completed in 2010, and one can walk between the two countries courtesy of a new bridge connecting the island to Germany. In one German publication reporting on a conference on cooperation held in 2000, the landscaping itself was seen as a symbol of cooperation not only for the two towns, but also for the whole of the Lausitz/Łużyce region. It needed ‘concrete structural schemes which have a symbolic meaning’ and ‘a symbolic development policy containing a message for the population’ (Jahnke 2001: 69; also 59). One result of this was to commission a German artist, Eberhard Krüger, to produce a suitable work of art. What he came up with was a sculpture called ‘Bridge Balance’, which consisted of a parabolic steel rod balanced on a wire suspended from two poles on either side of the border river, apparently in Guben/Gubin.

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This was supposed to be a symbol of friendship and cooperation, but it was also an allusion to fragility, and to the efforts required to bridge the gap between the two countries. It was later dismantled and presented to the mayors of the two towns (ibid.: 74–75). Another plan put into practice was to close the central border crossing between Guben and Gubin to vehicles, which are now sent south of the joint town to a new crossing at Gubinek (Jahnke 2001: 59). The greatest achievement produced by this cooperation to date is the construction of a new sewerage plant to serve both towns – not, perhaps, the most romantic symbol of cross-border relations, but the publicity given to it was a condition of European Union funding.7 Yet the national dimension is never very far away. Located on the Polish side, the plant has to be a Polish company for legal reasons – it is not a joint venture – and it employs mainly Polish staff, apart from some German technicians who cross the border to work there every day. Indeed, it is recognized that the two towns will retain their national identities for the foreseeable future and that one should think rather in terms of a ‘German–Polish city’ or a ‘European site’ (ibid.: 61).8 Guben is obviously the most important partner for Gubin, given the possibilities for infrastructural cooperation, but the latter does have other partners. One is the small town of Laatzen near Hanover, a recipient of refugees from Gubin in 1945; this link only dated back some ten years or so in 2010, and it is cultural rather than managerial or commercial in nature. Another partner is Páks in Hungary, a link that is currently dormant, but it could be revived at any time if, for example, a partner is needed for a future application for EU funds. A third partnership is with another Polish town, Kwidzyń, near Gdańsk. This highly unusual arrangement, as it is within the same country, is reported to have started at the whim of the respective mayors about ten years ago, when there was a boom in such cooperative arrangements; this indicates the fashionable element in some of these activities. Generally, about 15–20 per cent of the mayor of Guben’s time was going on cross-border activities in 2002. Another ‘double city’ is Frankfurt an der Oder/Słubice (formerly OstFrankfurt), which, despite the relative inactivity of the Euroregion that is also based around it (see below), is trying to develop cooperation directly across what is the busiest crossing area along the border. This dates back to 1993, when the declared goals were to improve cooperation regarding the economy, society and culture, and to remove mutual prejudices between Poles and Germans. As just noted, another aspect of this cooperation has been the creation of a cross-border university, the European University Viadrina, between Frankfurt University and the Collegium Polonicum in Słubice, which is actually part of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Though an international university, teaching is mostly in German, not Polish. One result of this,

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allegedly, is that while high-quality German-speaking students come from all over Poland, the German students are basically local and less well qualified, as the abler ones go elsewhere in Germany.9 Another aspect of cooperation was the restructuring of the motorway border crossing south of the city, at Świecko, a plan dating from 1994 and representing the first venture in crossborder planning between the two countries. More symbolic was the ‘Europa Garden’ project, launched to coincide with Frankfurt’s 700th anniversary as a city in 2003, in which gardens were created on both sides of the border river (Jahnke 2001: 34–35). The budget for such cooperation from 1999 to 2003 was DM 670.3 million. The initiative of a single individual to have the joint city renamed ‘Słubfurt’ as a gesture towards its Europeanization (Asher 2012) has already been described briefly in the Introduction. Another example of cooperation is Krosno, where the town has a link with Schwarzheide in eastern Germany (neither town is actually on the border) and the powiat has a tie with the Spree-Neisse Landrat (a German equivalent to the powiat). The former was clearly more active in 2003, with school and sports exchanges. New negotiations were in progress with Hof in Bavaria, where the wife of the local CDU leader was a cousin of the mayor of Krosno, but by 2010 these had come to nothing. Partners abroad were needed to obtain Euroregion and NGO funding (see below). In 1999 the town received 5.5 million euros for waste management, sewerage and building a marina on the Oder. At powiat level here, the vice-starosta felt that cultural cooperation was easier to get going than economic cooperation, and denied what is often mentioned elsewhere, namely that language was a problem. The commune of Maszewo in Krosno powiat also has a link with Welzow, near Senftenberg in Germany, for a similar reason, though an attempt to obtain funds through the Euroregion was prevented by Maszewo’s inability to raise matching funds. In Dąbie, also in Krosno powiat, the main tie is with Goyatz, a village near Lieberose, eastern Germany, which started in 2000 when the mayor of Goyatz, who had left Dąbie as a refugee in 1945, returned to pay a visit and met the latter’s wójt. Again, the partnership was needed to obtain funding, and cooperation extended to business exhibitions as well as the usual sport and cultural exchanges. There have also been exchange visits between local families and their children – who, someone remarked, do not generally have as many problems with language as adults. German visitors, mainly from the east, also come for tourism, such as cycling and horse riding. Nowogród Bobrzański has had a link with Lübbenau in Spreewald since the 1980s, whose up-and-down existence reflects the state of relations between the two countries, with the relative openness of borders; this seems typical. This link originated through building firms, and now includes reciprocal concerts. Another link was between Żary and Hamm in the old West Germany, set up in 1992 because many Germans who had lived in Żary (German

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Sorau) ended up in Hamm in 1945. There were one or two visits to the town and local cemeteries by Germans each year, with Hamm providing help for orphans in Żary. In Bobrowice in 2002 there were plans to set up contacts with Eisenhüttenstadt, near Guben, for school exchanges, and with Bruck, near Regensburg in Bavaria, an idea that started with a local Polish company selling mushrooms to Bruck. Funding for such visits was provided by the gmina. Language was seen as a problem, and to that end six houses had been set aside in the village of Dychów for teachers of German and English. Although language is an obvious topic to suggest for cooperation, especially given the hope that learning each other’s language will remove misconceptions and prejudices about the other side, those attempts that are made tend to be one-sided; that is, there is a greater tendency for Poles to learn German than vice versa, partly because Poles find the German language easier than Germans find Polish. But also, while English might be offered in Polish schools, German pupils might already be learning English and French, preventing them from properly learning a fourth language that they find more difficult.10 As for school exchanges, these were often used by Polish parents as a cheap or free opportunity to get their children to learn some German.

Problems and Tensions in Cross-border Cooperation Some of the inner-Polish tensions that can arise from such agreements are illustrated by recent events in Brody. This village is dominated by a small castle, or what in England would probably count as a modest stately home, originally built and owned in the German period by the von Bruhl family, whose head, the current count, lives in Nordrhein-Westfalen (Kotlewski 2009: 66). The castle, restored after being sacked by Frederick the Great’s troops in 1758, fell into disrepair again as a result of the Second World War and neglect during the socialist period (ibid.: 96–97), though it was used intermittently as a store and hostel. In the 1990s, two expatriate Poles were involved in attempts to restore it. The first one, involving a South African Pole, never got off the ground at all, as he quickly went bankrupt. A second attempt was made by a Canadian Pole, who managed to restore one wing of the building, start on another, and shore up the main part of the palace before also getting into difficulties. The German–Polish friendship association he founded during the restoration work became defunct also, the notices on the castle gates proclaiming European cooperation having now been replaced with simple advertisements for the restaurant there. At one point the question arose as to whether the von Bruhl family themselves might become involved in completing the restoration work of their old castle, though they declined because of the work and money involved. Although this never

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came to anything, it raised in a very high-profile fashion the possibility of a German takeover of what had become Polish property.11 This is perhaps the most sensitive issue of all in this part of Poland, and it is aggravated by the realization that, because of EU entry, Poland is having to allow foreigners to acquire land in the country on a free-market basis. But much depends on one’s attitude to Polishness. In Jędrzychowice, near Szlichtingowa, another palace is being restored by a member of the German branch of the original owning family, the Szlichtings, founders of Szlichtingowa itself about 350 years ago, who originally came from Latvia, then lived for a while in Lower Silesia.12 She had acquired the old palace through Polish front men as usual, but then married a Pole and was currently applying for Polish citizenship. This ‘opting for Poland’ is considered more acceptable.13 Another issue that has arisen in Brody relates to the renaming of the local gymnasium or high school. A list of six suggested names, five of them Polish but the sixth being Alois von Bruhl, the German who actually built the castle and developed the village in the eighteenth century, was presented to the pupils themselves as part of the process of arriving at a decision. Perversely, from one point of view, they opted for Alois von Bruhl because they knew their local history and were impressed by his significance to it. They were supported in this by the governors of the school, though not by the director, who disallowed it on a technicality, nor by the commune council. Their counterargument was basically that this was a school in Poland and that there were plenty of perfectly respectable Poles after whom it might be named, so why on earth chose a German? In fact, despite his German name and descent, Alois von Bruhl played an important part in the history of Poland as starosta or mayor of Warsaw under King Stanisław Augustus Poniatowski in the eighteenth century (Kotlewski 2009: 66, 103).14 In 2002 the matter fell into abeyance, pending the first local elections under the new system that autumn. Ultimately these changed nothing on the council, and after a further vote from a more restricted list, the school was finally named after the Polish national poet, Adam Mickiewicz (supported even by a majority of pupils). Both issues are seen by some as reflecting a creeping Germanization that was only bound to increase further on EU entry, despite official denials that Germans were unwelcome. In 2010 the mayor of Brody told me that, while he had been opposed to the school being named after von Bruhl at the time, he had since felt that that had been a mistake, but information on von Bruhl’s importance was then lacking locally. Instead, a small seating area has now been created on the edge of Brody and named after him. A similar event, causing similar surprise, has been reported from Szczecin (Rada 2001: 72ff.), now Polish but for centuries the German city of Stettin, where a poll was held to choose the most significant citizen of the city in the twentieth century. Although the first post-war socialist mayor, a Pole,

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came top, in second and third places came two German mayors from the 1878–1931 period. Poles may have taken over previously German cities and claimed them as Polish on historical grounds dating back to the Middle Ages or earlier, but they do not reject the German part of that history when it is relevant, and in some cases appear to know it quite intimately. Indeed, Szczecin is currently trying to reinvent itself as Berlin’s natural port, so far with scant success. One other downside of cross-border cooperation is the occasional tensions that arise within particular bureaucracies themselves. Thus in one town, I came across some resentment among older officials of the bright young bilingual things who had been brought in to run cross-border cooperation and were able to go on expenses-paid junkets to visit partner towns in Germany. This was aggravated by the fact that some of the older staff, but not their younger colleagues, had been left unpaid for months (not uncommon in itself ), due to a delay in the town being reimbursed for some public expenditure by the provincial authorities in Gorzów. Although the two budgets are ring-fenced from one another and cannot be vired, it still exacerbated the bad feeling. Problems also sometimes arise between groups of officials on each side of the border. Just before Poland joined the EU, I was able to attend one of a series of meetings to discuss cross-border cooperation in one twin town, up to 2030. These were being arranged by the German side and were being funded with EU money from a budget that could only be used within the EU. This meant that the Polish officials, who were expected to take part in these meetings, were not benefiting from it financially, unlike their German partners. Officials in Poland frequently feel that they are the junior partners in any cross-border cooperation, with German partners sometimes pursuing quite different agendas, not to say being lukewarm to Polish concerns and unresponsive to requests for formal cooperation. From the German point of view this can actually represent a seller’s market: within the SNB Euroregion, for example, there are fewer German members, so they can therefore pick and choose from a range of potential partners on the Polish side. Often in these meetings the German side appears to be more concerned with issues of identity and what it often calls ‘mentality’ in trying to decide how to overcome the negatively perceived past of stereotypes, prejudices and the lack of trust. The Polish side at such meetings, however, is typically more concerned with bread-and-butter issues like unemployment, tourism, educational exchanges and cross-border traffic. Thus, while the German view might be that a solid, local, cross-border identity is needed to keep people in the area looking for jobs, for the Polish side only jobs would keep people in the area, specific national identities being the only feasible option. The extent to which personalities are involved in these links is shown by the case of Szlichtingowa, in Wschowa powiat. It had previously developed

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ties with Heel, in the Netherlands, but these fell into abeyance because one of the major supporters of the link died, and another became pregnant. Despite the distance, which was not seen as an obstacle here, it was hoped to revive it more formally for sporting and cultural exchanges with EU funding that had already been obtained, though it was unclear whether this would continue. In 2002, one German official in Forst was proposing to continue his activities with Lubsko and Brody across the border after his imminent retirement precisely because of his perception that Poles in particular saw the relationships involved not just as professional but also as personal, and therefore preferred to be dealing with the same opposite numbers all the time. As may be expected, cross-border ties also exist at the provincial level, which in the case of Lubuskie principally means ties with the German Land of Brandenburg. This originally owed much to the then marszałek’s relationship with the German politician Manfred Stolpe, and it continued even though the latter had lost the recent elections. One outcome of this, apart from the bridge at Forst, was advice from Brandenburg with regard to applying for EU funds. A key part of policy was to make sure that cross-border projects truly fitted in with each side’s needs. In general the marszałek is free to make agreements with other regions abroad, provided the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw agrees. About 20–25 per cent of the marszałek’s time was going on cross-border cooperation in 2002, including matters related to EU entry. In general, despite the enthusiasm of some of the individuals involved, cooperation is expected to develop gradually rather than all at once. In one case I was explicitly warned against expecting lots of cross-border projects to be up and running only a year or two after such ties had been instituted.

Euroregions Guben and Gubin are also the joint headquarters of one of the four Euroregions into which the German–Polish border is now divided, namely Spree-Neisse-Bober/Sprewa-Nysa-Bóbr (henceforward SNB; named after local rivers), which covers most of the pre-reform province of Zielona Góra in Poland and the Landkreis of Spree-Neisse (Guben, Cottbus and Forst) in Germany, as well as Głogów in Lower Silesia.15 The other Euroregions along the border are focused on Szczecin (which includes certain districts in southern Sweden), Frankfurt an der Oder/Słubice, and Görlitz/Zgorzelec (see Irek 2001). Here I am mainly concerned with the first, SNB. Euroregions are basically unofficial associations of local authorities across borders. They are found across Europe, and not just between Poland and Germany. Nonetheless the whole of the Polish border now partakes in Euroregions together with the border districts of neighbouring states, and

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there is an annual conference of those involved on the Polish side of these organizations (held in 2002 in the resort village of Łagów, near Świebodzin). A key inspiration for them was the cross-border arrangements across the Rhine border between Germany and the Netherlands, especially between the small towns of Herzogenrath and Kerkade, where a ‘binational’ unit has been created with the name ‘Eurode’. Although this latter venture is basically forward-looking, it also looks back to a pre-nationalist time before the Vienna Congress of 1815 when, it is claimed, the region had considerable cultural and linguistic unity based on a common Franconian dialect. The hope is that, in the course of time, and through day-to-day interaction, something of this sense of unity will be revived, and the inhabitants of the two towns will come to see themselves as citizens of ‘Eurode’ (Jahnke 2001: 47). Another cross-border region between these two countries has been formed comprising Arnhem and Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and Kleve and Emmerich in Germany, to which the name ‘Anke’ has been given (formed from the initial letters of each town), its main practical goals being to increase cooperation, to shorten reaction times to problems, and then to assist with any conflict resolution. The area is also seen as a corridor connecting the Randstad with the Ruhr. A third example is the link between more regional authorities based in Düsseldorf and Limberg (Netherlands), involving over thirty local authorities on either side (ibid.: 30, 33). Similarly, the town of Haparanda in Sweden has joined with Tornio in Finland to form a cross-border city with a common court building and city centre (ibid.: 34). In the case of Germany and Poland, Euroregion members generally consist of communes on the Polish side and Landkreise on the German side, together with sundry firms and other private organizations. On the Polish side, powiaty and województwa are not involved at this level. However, the new Polish województwa or provinces are creating links of their own with German Länder: in Lubuskie’s case, this means Brandenburg. Euroregions frequently describe themselves as NGOs, and from the German point of view they are often seen as being based on cross-border ‘agreements’ (Verabredungen), not ‘contracts’ (Verträge). From Poland’s point of view, they were originally created in the early to mid-1990s to compensate for the continued centralization of administration in Poland in the years after the collapse of socialism, but before the devolution of power after 1999; from the German point of view in particular they were also seen as a way of combating unemployment by boosting cross-border trade. Once devolution arrived, however, some local politicians – especially the former marszałek of the provincial sejm or parliament, who combines the post of speaker with that of head of policy for the province, and is effectively the head of its devolved government – argued that the Euroregions were now redundant, especially given their lack of formal power. For example, the new

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bridge at Forst, mentioned earlier, was an official project of the marszałek, one that had little to do with the Euroregion. Indeed, a lot of Euroregion activities seem to consist of meetings containing little but exhortations to better cooperation, overcoming the legacy of the past and overcoming mutual stereotypes (Poles as smugglers, Germans as land-grabbers, etc.). Nonetheless, Euroregions have promoted cross-border cooperation in everything from trade to culture, tourism to school links, infrastructure to the easing of border restrictions. A more widespread view is that they will continue to have a role, despite their limitations. Although there are plenty of precedents for them in Western Europe, especially along the Rhine, the term ‘Euroregion’ itself appears to be particularly popular in Eastern Europe as a way of affirming the European identity of the newer member states like Poland. Euroregion logos are prominently displayed, especially when entering major towns in the area, but also on tourist and other publicity material. Being NGOs, Euroregions can only implement decisions that have been passed by their member local authorities separately as part of routine local decision-making in their respective nation states. Thus, despite all the rhetoric of cross-border cooperation overcoming national tensions, there is necessarily a national dimension to their work, as in the EU itself. For example, one of the major achievements of the SNB Euroregion was that in the period immediately before accession to the EU and Schengen its residents could cross the border using identity cards only, without having to show passports: yet this decision depended on the prior agreement of the respective national governments in Berlin and Warsaw. Euroregion officials are rarely if ever salaried as such, and many of them have other duties as local government officers, though they have their own offices and even buildings in some cases, as in Gubin. Dating from 1993, the SNB Euroregion originally consisted of just six communes on the Polish side plus Forst and Cottbus in Germany, though it soon expanded to its current limits. In Poland it is largely associated with the enthusiasm of one particular individual, a local civil servant in Zielona Góra and a former MP, but a native of Gubin. Nonetheless some of his German colleagues claimed that the initiative in setting up the Euroregion actually came from their side – a not untypical conflict of claims. A more open conflict concerned a German plan, never implemented, to shift the German headquarters of the Euroregion from Guben to Forst, capital of the Spree-Neisse Landkreis, which excited protests from precisely the same native of Gubin just mentioned, for whom this represented a challenge to the unity of the Euroregion. This could be interpreted as a local example of what seems to be a quite common aspect of processes of devolution generally, namely that their advocates frequently want to halt the process once it reaches them.16

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Occasionally a commune or powiat will be a member of more than one Euroregion. Thus, in the powiat of Żary, the communes of Łęknica and Przewóz are in both SNB and Nysa Euroregions, other communes only in the former. The powiat also made an application to join Nysa in 2000 and has been a member of SNB since December of that year. In general, the impression given in Żary itself is that the Nysa Euroregion is not only older but more active and enjoys better cross-border cooperation, though less so since a particular mayor of Niesky in eastern Germany lost the elections a few years ago – another indication of the importance of particular individuals here. Mostly this cooperation is commercial, aided by the promotion of the airport in Rothenburg in Germany. To this may be added plans for a joint school in Bad Muskau, just over the border from Łęknica and the site of a UNESCO World Heritage park, which will specialize in forestry and horticulture.

Aims and Outcomes In this area, at least, money, especially the possibility of obtaining EU money, is popularly seen as a main reason for entering into cross-border relations of the sort I have described. This is only partly true in practice. For one thing, and very obviously, money is typically not sought for itself, but for what it makes possible in terms of improving infrastructure and services, especially education, and thus the quality of life for local residents (cf. Irek 2001). This may also apply to what we might loosely call ‘cultural’ or ‘symbolic’ artefacts that support the idea of a particular cross-border region having a common identity. Secondly, money is not always emphasized by officials themselves. Both the leading Polish and German figures in the SNB Euroregion, despite their enthusiasm for cross-border cooperation, felt that this was more a matter of management than finance. In general, both thought the significance of the EU link exaggerated, applications being more trouble than they were worth – an accusation frequently also directed at the Euroregion itself by communes in the area trying to raise money through it. The Polish representative in particular had no interest in developing contracts with Brussels directly (e.g. through the Committee of Regions), and did not even favour Poland joining the EU. Nonetheless, money is a factor for other officials, though they are not always in a position to take advantage of it. Applications may be difficult, requiring matching funds, a computer disc, a version in English, and so on – all difficult for impoverished communes to provide, and hardly worth it for an application that might only produce a thousand euros. In addition, funding through the PHARE programme, in which the Euroregions are frequently involved in making applications or validating ones from member communes or powiaty, require 25 per cent matching funds from applicants

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(mostly local administrations and NGOs) for projects costing between 100,000 and 300,000 euros: even the 25,000 minimum needed is clearly beyond many if not most local authorities in Poland for what are classed as small projects. However, Euroregion publicity stresses other advantages of membership, such as the systematic upgrading of administrative skills that involvement in its activities allegedly provides; and, in the immediate preentry period, the fact (already noted) that citizens of both countries in border areas could now cross the border using just identity cards, provided they stay in the border area on the other side. Other advantages include: cooperation in providing emergency services (e.g. an agreement between Żary, Krosno and SNB); tourist facilities (especially through cycle tracks and bridleways) and encouraging tourism more generally; and keeping a watching brief over the border policies of the two national governments in respect of visa and customs regulations and queuing at borders. For example, the village of Bronków near Bobrowice received PHARE funds to develop agrotourism through the Euroregion, though facilities appear modest at best (‘agrotourism’ or ‘ecotourism’ is often promoted in tourist literature on the area where it hardly seems to qualify in West European terms). Bobrowice itself secured PHARE funding to install sewerage systems. Other difficulties that officials reported in applying for funds through the Euroregion included problems in obtaining basic information on what was on offer, and how to go about applying for it. Seminars to explain this may be missed because they themselves were inadequately advertised. Applications might be rejected just because some minor part of the application had been missed or done wrongly. The Frankfurt/Słubice Euroregion was considered especially difficult to work with, being generally uncooperative and inactive. Finding partners in Germany could also be difficult: they were often passive or unenthusiastic, such as accepting invitations to come to Poland but then not reciprocating. One official told me that it was often easier to cooperate with Germans away from the border, where there was less to ‘cooperate’ over. Outcomes, in the areas of trade links and tourism in particular, have mostly proved disappointing up to now. Businessmen recoil from their lack of knowledge of legal regimes in the other country, as well as what are perceived to be the enhanced risks to investments and so on. One Polish businessman said that he had indeed obtained fresh contacts and business from his membership of the Euroregion – but only on the Polish side of the border.17 Tourism is held back by a lack of facilities, even at potentially major sites, and planned cycle routes and horse trails do not always join up because some communes are less enthusiastic about creating them than others. Cultural projects are often only short term, even when they are talked up tremendously, often because the money runs out. Thus a cultural Eurocentre set up in Łagów, a resort village in Poland about thirty miles from the border, in the

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mid-1990s – widely trumpeted at the time as a great advance in cross-border cooperation and cultural understanding – is now completely forgotten in the village itself, even in the administration and the converted castle, now a hotel and restaurant, which had accommodated it. Compared to Germany, tourist facilities and information are still quite basic. Thus in Świebodzin, the tourist information office, though quite well stocked with information brochures of a quality one would hope to find anywhere, is some way from the town centre and not easy for the visitor to find. In Guben, both tourist information and attempts to stress a local identity are much more evident than in Gubin over the border. For example, Gubin has nothing like the shop in Guben, right next to the border, selling local wines and beers, mostly produced at the local monastery of Neuzelle. This is all the more remarkable as Gubin actually has the original city centre, though it is under-marketed and therefore hardly a hive of tourist activity. Another major attraction with real potential is the system of bunkers constructed and left behind by the retreating German armies near Międzyrzecz. Official tourist facilities have scarcely existed for it until quite recently, though one could always pay local guides to be shown round the site informally. As much of it is underground, guides are needed to find a way in. It is now also the protected site of a bat colony. Nonetheless, cooperation in sporting and school exchanges, and in mutual support in emergencies, is valued in many cases, even if applications for funding have not so far been successful (e.g. Maszewo). In Dąbie it was pointed out that, while the powiat is a source of policy initiatives but a drain on the funds of the gmina, the Euroregion can accept projects directly from the gmina and fund them. In Dąbie this proved especially fruitful as regards waste treatment and the environmental protection of local rivers. In effect, therefore, the powiat and the Euroregion represented parallel but different supra-commune bodies performing different roles. Elsewhere, however, as in Wschowa and Szlichtingowa, the emphasis was rather on the fact that the Euroregion was not a source of major funding, but only for minor projects, if that. Remote from the SNB’s headquarters in Gubin, its impact was scarcely felt at all here: all funding came from elsewhere. One positive role for the Euroregion was described as being a dry run for larger-scale cooperation once Poland joined the EU, a sort of predictor, through its own experiences, of the advantages and difficulties of cooperation (Jahnke 2001: 31). In other cases too there is often a publicity deficit about cross-border ties. Indeed, one enthusiast for the idea even suggested that this in itself was not a bad thing, though public awareness was increasing year by year. Other officials pointed to specific attempts to publicize the Euroregion activities they were involved in, not least by displaying the Euroregion and EU logos on notices and publicity material, as well as at cultural and sporting events involving cross-border ties. On the other hand, although the various

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Euroregions have their newsletters, which are made available free to the general public, town-twinning arrangements are often scarcely publicized at all. In one town in Poland there is a placard with a photograph of the treeplanting ceremony celebrating the town’s twinning with a town in Germany, but no information is provided concerning where the partner town is (not even the country), let alone that the ceremony had actually been held there.18 One official’s response to this lacuna was that it was such a small town that everyone knew what was going on there anyway. There is also frequently uncertainty about where partner towns actually are. In one case, a partner town that I was told was in Holland turned out to be in Denmark, and I had to tell the same deputy mayor that another of his partner towns, this time in Germany, was not actually a member of the same, or indeed any other Euroregion. In general, the hope of developing a specific Euroregion identity beyond official circles seems wishful thinking at the moment, even among many in such circles. By the time of my later research in 2010, SNB logos were no longer appearing so frequently on boards acknowledging the support of European funding for particular projects. This may in part be because, with EU entry, European funds can be obtained more directly from Brussels or through national capitals (e.g. the LEADER programme in support of rural areas). Nonetheless, individual officials often felt that the Euroregion was still important to belong to: in one gmina away from the border I was told that it was important to belong to show an interest in cross-border cooperation, even though this particular gmina had never been able to find German partners itself. Those who felt the Euroregion to be a waste of time had probably always thought so.

The German Perspective As already noted, in 2003/4 German officials claimed the credit for setting up the SNB Euroregion, though they admitted that they found a ready response in Poland. One of the original reasons, I was told in Forst, was to try to do something about unemployment in the region. The models were other Euroregions in other parts of Europe, especially across the Dutch– German border, and one already existing on the German–Polish border, centred on Görlitz/Zgorzelec. Another early idea to link Frankfurt an der Oder and Poznań failed because it was not felt to be a good idea to limit it to cities. Thus the SNB Euroregion came into existence, originally consisting of Cottbus, Guben and six units on the Polish side. At least on the German side, membership may allow voting rights, or only speaking rights in the case of firms (which tend to be sceptical of the venture

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anyway). In 2002 members were paying 255.64 euros for membership. At that point there was existing funding until 2006, which would then have to be renewed if the venture were to keep going. This informant confirmed what I had been told in Gubin (Poland) or Guben (Germany), namely that the link with Brussels was difficult and insignificant, though the Brandenburg office in Brussels did provide room for a Euroregion display on one occasion. He also repeated that money was less important than human contact – central government anyway had the last word over money – and he saw the links as a Verabredung (‘agreement’) rather than a Vertrag (‘contract’) (see above). Although 25–30 per cent of his work was on cross-border relations, he was not paid as a Euroregion official. This official felt that generally the media and public were negative about cross-border ties in his own town of Forst. The Euroregion took upon itself the task of countering negative reporting by the media. Opposition had also arisen in Guben at one point because cross-border shopping was causing local bankruptcies, but this was less an issue by the time I interviewed him. As far as Forst was concerned, however, most Poles just passed through to somewhere else, and the newly introduced rail service from Żagań was little used as yet. However, he also felt that there might well be more economic cooperation and trade than the authorities realized. Also, the recent floods had encouraged partnership and practical cooperation. Fire brigades and all schools now had their contacts across the border, and the plant in Gubin had promoted personal friendships. At least this was better than Forst’s other link, with Jurbarko, which, as already noted, had ended because of a fraud.

Unofficial Links However, this uncertainty and lack of publicity should not lead one to overlook certain popular initiatives in creating cross-border links. To return to Brody, a local businessman there set up an association of his own, called the Association for the Development of the Commune of Brody, which was mainly concerned to encourage school links, especially for purposes of language learning (German and English), rather than business, in which he found it difficult to get people interested (cf. the experience of Żary on this point). This concentration on the younger generation is significant as it was felt that they should be freer from the prejudices of the past. While the association still existed in 2010, the mayor who set it up had long since left office. A more recently formed village association, in Osiek, effectively an unofficial NGO, has made contacts with families in and around Cottbus, some of whose members fled there from Osiek immediately after the war. Contact was made through a friend of the shopkeeper in Osiek living in Cottbus,

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and together they put an announcement in the local Cottbus newspaper. Although the arrangement is hampered by a lack of funding, the German side want it to continue, and some Germans pay visits to the village, often two or three cars together. Most unusual in this respect is the story of Wellmitz, a village just north of Guben in Germany, and its relationship with Wełmice, a Polish village near Bobrowice. Both sides being struck by the similarity of names,19 they decided to investigate further as soon as the border opened up and to develop the contacts thus made into a regular partnership. Key here was the partnership between a Polish woman (discussed more below) in Wełmice and a local historian in Wellmitz, but the latter died suddenly in 2001 at the age of thirty-one. Nonetheless the relationship continued, characterized by regular mutual visits for local festivals, sports events (especially football)20 and so on, as well as the German village collecting and sending clothing and toys to the Polish village, which is visibly poorer. These contacts have been pursued thus far by local people in each village with little or no input from local officials, though the latter often turn up at festivals; indeed, those who have set up this relationship like to see themselves as cultivating ‘human’ contacts and not just promoting an image, as official ties so often seem to. However, this informality may change. The mainstay of the arrangement in the Polish village was aiming to get herself elected as the next sołtys in the 2002 elections so as to be able to take things further. This plan failed because she was not registered as resident in the village but in Berlin, where she had been a long-term resident. Although she herself had been born near Szczecin, her father and other relatives came from the village (one is on the gmina council), and after retiring from her job in Berlin she decided to return there to buy a ‘good old German house’ and do it up. Certainly her house, on one edge of the village, is conspicuous for its good condition in what is otherwise an obviously very poor village. In many ways she is a typical incomer, wishing to ‘do things’ in and for the village, but faced with increasing hostility from the other inhabitants, not least because of her association with Germany and with the considerable numbers of German visitors – many with pre-1945 links to the village – whom she invited on a regular basis.21 By the summer of 2003, therefore, she had become somewhat isolated from the rest of the village and was cooperating instead with her cousin on the Bobrowice gmina council and the wójt of Bobrowice (a right-winger from Warsaw who had held the post for eleven years, was politically well connected [mocny, or ‘strong’] and knew how to get things done), as well as with her German friends in Wellmitz, whom she frequently visited. The former sołtys of Wełmice had been re-elected against a single weak opponent, allegedly by plying male electors with alcohol during the week before the election. He was proving as uncooperative as ever and encouraging villagers

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to boycott the woman’s efforts to develop links with Wellmitz further.22 As a result, she now felt disillusioned and closer to Germans than to her own countrymen, who were polite to her face, but accused her behind her back of pursuing cross-border ties for her own financial benefit through applications for funding. She had therefore largely withdrawn from contact with them and was now placing her faith in her own allies to take things further, which in effect meant bringing in officialdom.23 In any case, given the disparity in population between Wellmitz (nearly a thousand people) and Wełmice (over three hundred), and the fact that Wellmitz itself was the centre of a commune of two thousand people, cooperation was now better pursued at an inter-commune level (Wellmitz–Bobrowice) – that is, officially.24 One project here involved Hertha BSC, the famous football club in Berlin, which was interested in renovating the football ground in Wełmice as part of its long-term search for new talent: this would go through the wójt, not the sołtys. Thus in the course of a single year, the cross-border relationship between these two villages had failed to bring the villagers together on their own terms and had become more of a vehicle for Germans to visit ‘their’ old village, without having to take much notice of the Poles who had replaced them. It was also in the process of being taken out of the hands of even the willing villagers by local officialdom. In another example of individual initiative, one elderly German I met – who had been born in Lubsko, was now a frequent visitor to what he still called ‘Sommerfeld’, and was well known in the local administration – had plans to publish a book of old postcards of the town, which was a common publishing project in the area generally at that time.25 He was particularly anxious to demonstrate his goodwill towards Poland and towards the Poles who had taken over his birthplace, and to overcome the past, being concerned to distance himself from those Germans who turn their backs on cross-border links of this sort. Such demonstrations of goodwill are frequent (especially, perhaps, on the German side; Poles tend to refer to them only when things go wrong) and may seem heartening, but the very stress on them indicates an underlying tension in these relationships that is absent from other examples elsewhere in Europe; quite simply, they are not yet taken for granted. In Poland too there is a similar spread of attitudes to cross-border ties. For many, reconciliation with Germany is what is important (and not just for narrow economic reasons), while for others, cross-border links – and even regionalization itself, which is exceptionally strong and well developed in Germany – are simply devices to extend German hegemony into Eastern Europe, where Germany has already been the chief trading partner for a number of years. This is especially the line of the nationalist far right, as enshrined in the Self-Defence Party of Andrzej Lepper and the current (2022) PiS government. Stories of scams surrounding German companies

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abound in these circles, concerning their alleged corruption, their use of Polish frontmen, or their moving from town to town to renew expired tax concessions, leaving a swathe of unemployment in their wake, as do complaints about the Polish government’s sycophancy to Germany (the failure at the time to celebrate the German invasion of September 1939, for example, though this has been corrected since) – but one is assured, of course, that there is nothing wrong with Germans as such. One supporter of Lepper, who stood unsuccessfully for mayor of one town in 2002, compared the area to Alsace, with French officials but a ‘German’ population, and he talked of Europeanization being effectively Balkanization. He also talked freely of German domination and colonialism in the area, that most of the land was already owned by Germans through Polish frontmen, that 150,000 hectares in Lubuskie was deliberately being left uncultivated so that Germans could buy it cheaply, that Poland had become a banana republic, that the euro would succeed where the Wehrmacht had failed, that all the so-called regional plans were really the same, that corruption was rife in the area, and so on. Also partially unofficial is a cooperation arrangement between the House of Culture in the Polish town of Świebodzin and an association for the retired in the commune of Neuhagen, just east of Berlin. Cooperation here dates back to 1995 and has mainly to do with sports, hobbies, and culture more generally. Despite the focus on the elderly, these activities are also open to other age categories, especially children and young people, and personal contacts are stressed as important in maintaining these cross-border ties However, this cooperation builds on earlier initiatives dating back to the communist period. In particular, while the idea of a University for the Third Age is stressed, the first such organization was founded in Toulouse in 1973, being copied in Poland for the first time in Warsaw in 1975. As a product of the communist era, it must therefore have had official backing or at least toleration. In Świebodzin it dates back to 1998 and now has about 200 members divided into a number of clubs. The equivalent association in Neuhagen has about 140 members, each paying four euros a month as a membership fee.26

Cross-border Meetings Attending cross-border meetings brings out the similarities and, more noticeably on the whole, differences between the two sides. Generally, there seems to be a slight tendency for Germans to dominate the discussion, which the Polish representatives are wont to regard as over-rhetorical. One concern is certainly cross-border prejudices and how to remove them, as well as how to

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create a sense of identity that will straddle the border. Often the word ‘mentality’ is used here, especially by Germans, who tend to be more concerned with overcoming the prejudices and hostilities of the past, and see this as a psychological problem, though also one that can be overcome through education and the goodwill of the individual. In one planning meeting between the two sides I attended, identity and mentality were discussed at the same level of importance as the development of tourism, education or transport links. Not that there was much agreement. While the German moderator stressed the ‘identity of the double city’, at least some Polish officials stressed national identity as the only meaningful option in the area. For the Germans again, a strong local identity was seen as a way of keeping people in the area to seek work – a particular problem in many towns in eastern Germany, given the torrent of people going westwards in search of work. For the Polish officials, on the other hand, only jobs would keep people in the area: without them, there would be no identity anyway. The question of identity is therefore being discussed at an official level, but with varying views as to its significance, if any. The loss of population to the area after the fall of communism is striking. In Guben, for example, officials were planning for a population half the size of that in 1991, when it was around 36,000, though this in itself represented a large increase from 8,000 after new housing was built at Sprucke, to the west of the town, in the 1970s and 1980s; this also contributed to the neglect of the old town centre (Jahnke 2001: 59). The population of Görlitz has also declined since the fall of communism (Irek 2001). Such losses of population are seen as representing a loss of human capital and of knowledge on the German side of the border, something that needs addressing through the education of those who remain (Jahnke 2001: 42). An earlier conference also placed the emphasis not on economic integration but on other aspects of cooperation, as mutual understanding had to be created first (ibid.: 66–67). My sense is that this essentially German attitude would be considered pie in the sky by many Poles, without them denying the need for mutual understanding as such. Another meeting I was able to attend was more general and brought together representatives of the Euroregion, local authorities and the German but not Polish police. For the main Polish representative of the Euroregion, who seemed to regard the meeting as largely a waste of time, the main problems were a lack of coordination between planners on either side of the border, suggesting that a joint planning committee was needed, and a tendency for projects to be put forward that were on the border, but did not actually cross it. He also noted that Poland was ceasing to be attractive to German investment because wage rates were rising. His German opposite number bemoaned instead the lack of bilingual menus on the border, and

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reckoned that the main problems were economic, otherwise everything was fine. This was backed up by other German officials, who highlighted the problems of Polish firms operating in Germany, including costs, restrictions on employment (circumvented by using German frontmen), language, differences in wages, laws and tax regimes, and transport systems. In addition, German businessmen were made uneasy by their ignorance of Polish law and fears over whether their investments would be safe in Poland. By contrast, Polish firms generally showed flexibility in getting round such problems. Psychological barriers needed to be removed to facilitate such cooperation (much applause at this), and both sides’ interests and requirements needed to be taken into account in planning any aspect of cooperation. However, crossborder cooperation also raised unresolved constitutional issues for Germany, given that the semi-autonomous Länder are also involved. In conversation with me afterwards, one German journalist dismissed the whole meeting as little more than hot air.

Notes Parts of this chapter previously appeared as Ch. 2 of Jutta Lauth Bacas and William Kavanagh (eds), Border Encounters: Asymmetry and Proximity at Europe’s Frontiers (see Parkin 2013a). Reproduced with permission of the publisher, Berghahn Books.   1. Though not totally uncontrolled: border guards still man most border crossings on both the German and Polish sides, mostly without stopping people; and in Poland they also patrol inland, making random checks on passing foreign-registered ­vehicles.   2. Wschowa had a similar relationship with the town of Enschede in the Netherlands, but this slackened off under the previous mayor. Hopes of reviving it are felt to be hampered by the distance involved.   3. Lubsko also has a formal link with Helsinge in Denmark, though this is dormant at present for unclear reasons. As for Forst, it also has ties with two Canadian counties, East Lothian in Scotland, and formerly with Jurbarko in Lithuania, though the latter arrangement collapsed over an alleged fraud case.   4. In 2010 the mayor of Brody estimated that there are about a thousand crossings a day, mainly for shopping, but also some agrotourism from the German side.   5. Indeed, this area has been described as having ‘one of the sharpest linguistic boundaries in Europe’ (Jahnke 2001: 42).   6. See Irek 2001. Viadrina is derived from Viadrus, the Latin for the Oder/Odra, and therefore neutral as between German and Polish, as well as suggesting the universal values associated with medieval Latin. The Polish partner is actually the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.   7. Even quite small and inconspicuous projects in this area that have been funded by the EU are marked by quite large and conspicuous placards announcing the fact.   8. The legal basis for cross-border cooperation between the two countries is a 1991 agreement that stresses economic development, so that the border region can reach the

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  9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

e­ conomic standard of the rest of the two countries, and the importance of spatial planning across the border (Jahnke 2001: 31). Private information. Although there has been extensive building work in the past few years, in general the Viadrina University suffers from serious financial problems, being largely dependent on the financially straitened Land of Brandenburg, which allegedly prefers to support the University of Potsdam. Interview with former owner of a school teaching Polish as a foreign language. The park surrounding the palace is owned by the gmina and is progressively being restored with the help of German volunteers. In 2010 the palace itself was in the hands of a young Pole from Gorzów. In the early seventeenth century the family also owned the village of Rzeczyca, near Świebodzin (Meißner 1990). Others of mixed descent who have opted to become German citizens are equally feted on the other side of the border. ‘Pure’ descent does not seem to be a requirement for either German or Polish identity to be recognized. He is also remembered as particularly ruthless and grasping (Kotlewski ibid.). The latter joined because of its existing links with Eisenhüttenstadt, a town in Germany that is a member of this Euroregion. For example, Scotland remains quite a centralized political entity, despite its own achievement of devolution within the United Kingdom. Trade may precede, and lead to, such links, as well as following them. Thus the twinning arrangement between Nowogród Bobrzański and Lubbenau started through commercial cooperation between building firms; and that between Bobrowice and Bruck in Bavaria started through a Polish firm marketing local mushrooms there. In another case, when Bytom, in south-east Lubuskie, made an agreement with Pössnack in Germany, the German partners brought a tree with them to be planted in the Polish town. The first root in each name probably means ‘brook, stream’ in Old Polish and/or Slavonic. The suggestion of one official in Bobrowice, that Germans had gone from the Polish to the German village in 1945, was not substantiated in either village. Wełmice won all the early matches. A local paper celebrated one such win with the headline ‘Zwycięstwo integracji’ (integration victory). She has even built a separate dwelling for such villagers next to her own house. Many of these visitors now live in Guben, but others come from all over Germany to visit the village. His own predecessor had proved more sympathetic to the link with Wellmitz, but he had died in 2001. An attempt to visit her again in 2010 failed, as her house looked as if it had been locked up. An earlier attempt to set up such a relationship failed because of a lack of money. Bobrowice was already involved because it had been funding buses to transport people to Wellmitz. For example, with respect to Guben/Gubin, and also Schwiebus/Świebodzin. A semipublic photographic exhibition of Lubsko, today and yesterday, housed in a cellar underneath the town hall and available to view in 2002–3, has since been removed. Data from a brochure, Zusammen können wir mehr schaffen/Razem możemy więcej, ­published by the University of the Third Age in Świebodzin, 2013.

Chapter 7

Regions in Poland II Silesia – German, Polish, or Wasserpolnisch?

? National Discourses over the Former German Territories This chapter is based on the previous literature rather than fieldwork, apart from a handful of opportunistic interviews, but it has been included as it provides some comparative material for the preceding two chapters on Ziemia Lubuska. Along the way it also reviews the whole question of the status of Germans and Germanness in Poland. A major question, however, is the extent to which the inhabitants of Silesia form a separate (i.e. non-German, non-Polish) ethnic group. Connected with this is the question of which nation has the best historical claim to the territories annexed by Poland in 1945. As Urban, a German journalist, points out (1994: 9), between 1945 and 1989 West German historians were freer agents than their Polish and East German counterparts, who had to follow the party line in their writings. As far as the German side is concerned, this was at least an improvement on their predecessors of the interwar period, though differences in perspective still remained. Thus what German historians and German officialdom for long called the ‘Polish-administered territories’ represented for Poland the restored Slavonic territories that had been lost to Poland in the Middle Ages in the Drang nach Osten of German colonization and conquest.

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Silesia’s Early History Of all the parts of Germany taken over by Poland in 1945, it is undoubtedly Silesia (or in Polish ‘Śląsk’) that has been most subject to German irredentism since.1 This has prompted claims and counterclaims about not only what country it belongs to, but also its identity in terms of it being German or Polish, or possibly Silesian – often described by Germans as the Wasserpolnisch2 of the title of this chapter. Here I review some of these positions, but first I return to discussing the history of this area, introduced in chapters 2 and 3. Unless otherwise stated, my main authority here is Hannan (1996), who himself has consulted a wide range of works in English, German, Polish and Czech. According to Hannan, the earliest known inhabitants of Silesia were Celts, in the third century bc. From the second to fifth centuries ad, Germanic speakers were in the area, two groups in particular. One was the Vandals, who eventually migrated through Gaul and Spain to North Africa, where they formed a kingdom around Carthage; this was finally conquered by Belisarius, the Byzantine general, in the sixth century. The other group was the Silingians, even more obscure, who were allegedly eliminated by the Visigoths after both had migrated to Spain in the fifth century. Most Germanic speakers had thus migrated westwards out of Silesia by the sixth century, with any remaining presumably being absorbed by incoming Slavs. The first Slav state we hear about in this area was Moravia in the ninth and tenth centuries, while Poland’s rise is dated to the latter century. The name ‘Silesia’ or its equivalent can be traced back to the eleventh or twelfth century. After going back and forth through conquest between Poland and the Czech lands, the area was finally ceded to the latter by Poland in 1335, whereafter it was divided into several more or less autonomous duchies. According to Hannan, the more basic division into Lower and Upper Silesia (broadly the north-west around Wrocław, and the south-east between Opole and Teschen/ Cieszyn respectively) came into effect in 1201, though the modern terms date from much later, from 1466 (Hannan 1996: 26). In 1527, the Czech lands, including Silesia, received a Habsburg ruler, and they remained in the dynasty’s hands until Maria Theresa lost most of Silesia to the Prussian Frederick the Great in 1742. Apart from eastern Upper Silesia, ceded to Poland in 1922 at Allied insistence and under the pressure of local uprisings, Silesia remained part of the Prussian and later German state until 1945, when it was incorporated into Poland in its entirety. Although only in Prussian or German hands for some two hundred years, Silesia had become culturally and linguistically largely German much earlier. Probably by the twelfth century at the latest, German knights and clergy were penetrating the area through contact with the minor ducal courts, followed

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by Flemish and later German settlers from the west, who were allowed to occupy unused land and thus boost the incomes of local rulers, many of them Polish. This land was given to the new settlers under the ius Theutonicum or German law (presumably the Magdeburger Recht), which was less onerous than Polish law in terms of duties and imposts, and which steadily replaced Polish law for many Polish peasants too. Many local towns also received charters under German law. By the fourteenth century, Silesia may have had a population of half a million. This mixing of populations produced assimilation in both directions, but even though Silesia was subject to Germanization, especially after Habsburg administration was introduced, and even more so after its conquest by Frederick the Great, it remained a mixed society, unlike, for example, Pomerania, which was to become almost totally German. Frederick’s efforts to convert local Catholics to Protestantism and to found German villages had only mixed success in advancing a German identity in the region.3 Two-thirds of the population may have been German by 1800, with about 0.5 per cent Jewish. Industry, based on iron and coal, mostly dates from the nineteenth century (especially in Upper Silesia), and encouraged more immigration of Poles and Jews into the region. Yet Hannan cautions against assuming that German and Polish identities meant much very early in history. The importance of the state, he suggests, meant that being Austrian or Prussian was still more significant at the start of the nineteenth century, and it was only later in that century that Silesians began to think of themselves as German, Polish or specifically Silesian.4 The government of the People’s Republic of Poland was one of the few bodies not to acknowledge that not all who might be considered to be German had left the country in 1945. Some refugees attempted to return to their homes in 1945–46, many of whom were expelled subsequently. But others never left, or managed to remain behind, largely because they succeeded in passing as Poles, though some Germans were retained by the state as forced labour to help to rebuild Poland after the war. Present in all the former German parts of the country, they are most numerous in Upper Silesia, especially in villages around and to the east of Opole town, but less so in the town itself. Their history and present condition have been much discussed by both German and Polish commentators, such as Urban (1994) on the one hand, and Kurcz (1991, 1993, 1994) and Mach (1998) on the other. Also useful again is Hannan (1996), although his main focus is language and identity in the Cieszyn region. This is a border area disputed with Czechoslovakia in the interwar period and taken over completely by Poland after Germany’s annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, but now again divided between the two states.

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Silesia’s History within Independent Modern Poland The dispute over the existence of a separate minority in Upper Silesia is perhaps the most complicated. This area was divided between German and Polish rule in 1921, after a referendum showing 60 per cent of the population opting for Germany, concentrated especially in the Opole region. The holding of the referendum was accompanied by much fighting between Polish irregulars, the German Freikorps and a French-led international force, and each side accused the others of manipulating the elections (Urban 1994: 31–37; Hannan 1996: 47). Moreover, in essence the result was ignored in that the eastern part of Upper Silesia was transferred to Poland regardless at Allied insistence (Rutsch 2009: 86). As a result, an estimated 1.1 million Germans remained in Poland after 1921. Although accorded minority status in the Polish constitution, they and other minorities (Ukrainian, Lithuanian, etc.) were subjected to an official policy of Polonization, including the closure of minority-language schools and restrictions on minority ownership of property. As a result of these policies, some eight hundred thousand Germans left Poland in the early 1920s. Many had little choice, since those who had resettled in what was to become the territory of the new republic after 1918 were refused citizenship, as were those known to have campaigned for a vote for Germany in the referendum of 1921 (Urban 1994: 38–40). However, some German landowners opted for Poland after 1919 (Rutsch 2009: 81).5 These figures pale in comparison with the numbers of Germans who fled or were expelled from Poland after the Second World War. Urban’s estimate (1994: 56–57) is about 7 million from the annexed territories, plus a further 1.3 million from within the pre-war Polish borders. Of these, some 1.2 million lost their lives. Despite this tremendous upheaval, 1.1 million are estimated to have stayed behind who could have qualified for German citizenship. In order to weed out as many Germans as possible, the Polish authorities instituted a verification process (weryfikacja), in which doubtful individuals had to prove their Polishness to the authorities by, for example, demonstrating their fluency in the Polish language. Anyone who had belonged to the Nazi Party was automatically expelled (ibid.: 68–69). As Schieder points out (1960: 9), Volksdeutsche in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere, unlike Germans from the Altreich, could be charged with treason to the Polish and other states of which they were citizens. To begin with, although there were differences between regional authorities, the process was strictly, even vengefully carried out, with no distinction of class or political opinion being taken into consideration: even Germans who had belonged to the resistance to Hitler, and many of the few remaining Jews in Poland, were expelled (ibid.: 7, 15), as were many Slavonic-speaking Sorbs or Wends who were seen as being too Germanized (field notes).

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However, by the late 1940s the authorities were encouraging as many people as possible to apply for Polish citizenship in order to boost the population of the newly annexed areas (Urban 1994: 17). Urban quotes figures of over one million verified in these years, the vast majority (over 860,000) in Upper Silesia (ibid.: 78–79). Even then there was a refusal rate of 10 per cent, and the readiness to declare oneself German never disappeared entirely. Even at the height of the Stalinist repression, in 1952, 130,000 made such a declaration, over half of them living in Upper Silesia (ibid.: 83). Like the indigenous Silesians (Wasserpolnisch/Ślązacy; see below), they were granted Polish citizenship in 1951, but most left in the slight thaw of the later 1950s (ibid.: 17, 19). Yet others were allowed to remain because illness made it difficult for them to travel. Moreover, the verification process was not carried out as thoroughly in some areas as in others. Finally, because of her defeat and heavy destruction, it took a long time for Germany to be seen as a viable option for resettlement, and really not until the Wirtschaftswunder of the 1950s got going. For all these reasons, not all who could qualify as Germans left in this period (Otto 1990b: 36). The release from prison of Władysław Gomułka in 1956 and his coming to power signalled a slight thaw in Polish political life. German Vereine were founded, though the government would not recognize them; only the official so-called German Sociocultural Associations (Niemieckie Stowarzyszenia Społeczno – Kulturalne; NSSK) were formally allowed (Urban 1994: 88). Before the re-tightening of controls in 1959, 250,000 people resettled from Poland to Germany, though a further 150,000 were still able to make the move in the 1960s. Poland finally recognized the existence of a specifically German minority in the 1970 Treaty of Warsaw, and under Gomułka’s successor Edward Gierek a further 190,000 left in the ensuing decade. This was part of the regime’s policy to solve the minority problem by allowing the free exit of its members, a reversal of policy from the late 1940s.6 By the end of the 1970s the government was representing the minority problem as solved, a position not shared by the Solidarity movement, which included minority protection within its programme. Other reasons for allowing freer movement out of the country were the need for West German credit and the recognition that many who left to work abroad brought back or remitted much needed foreign exchange, which could be spent on Western imports in special PEWEX7 shops (ibid.: 19–20). Even under martial law the outflow did not cease, though now it took the form rather of Polish citizens from Upper Silesia being accepted as Germans by West Germany on the basis of some provable German descent. In the 1980s some 600,000 left in this way, leaving some Upper Silesian villages practically depopulated (ibid.: 91–96).8

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The Debate over a Silesian Identity Not even this outflow, however, has denuded Poland of those whose own view of their ethnic identity was that it was not Polish. The question is to what extent was it German or actually Silesian? The numbers involved are the first problem. Figures for remaining Germans as of 1989 ranged from 1.1 million (Bund der Vertriebenen or Association of Expellees) to 200,000 (German Red Cross) to 2,500 or zero, depending in the latter two cases on which official Polish figures one consults. The newly founded Deutsche Freundschaftskreise (German friendship circles) could boast a total of 300,000 members in the early 1990s (Urban 1994: 12). Polish commentators have had persistent difficulties with themselves in accepting these people as Germans. Rather, they prefer to write about them as Ślązacy (Polish for ‘Silesian’) or as Germanized Poles or to give them a separate identity embodied in the Slavonic dialect group known to Germans by the derogatory terms ‘Wasserpolnisch’ or ‘Wasserpolacken’ (Hannan 1996: 173–75; see also above).9 Because this minority lives mainly in Upper Silesia, some Polish commentators tend to recognize only these areas as Silesia, not Lower Silesia to the west, though for Germans Silesia can be thought of as a region that stretches as far west as Hoyeswerda, in south-eastern Germany. The bases of claims to a specific Silesian identity are partly linguistic in that the Silesian language is said to derive from a hybrid of Old Polish and Czech, subsequently enriched with German borrowings (Kamusella 1998; Tambor 2019), but for Urban they also lie in the fact that many if not most of the minority have distinctly Slavonic surnames (Urban 1994: 12–13; also Peuckert 1950: 352). Less controversial are the claims that Silesian Polish contributed considerably to the national variant of the Polish language and that the oldest known Polish text dates back to thirteenth-century Silesia (Hannan 1996: 139). Most but not all commentators derive the term ‘Wasserpolnisch’ (literally ‘Water Polish’) from rafters working and trading along the Oder/Odra and other rivers in Silesia, people referred to as poor and uncivilized. One general connotation of the term, really a play on words, is that the language represents a ‘diluted’ or ‘watered down’ form of Polish. The whole issue is discussed by Hannan (1996, especially pp. 173–75), whose own view is that the language or dialect is an unformalized pidgin based grammatically on Polish but with much German lexis, and originating in code-switching between German and Polish in Silesia.10 He also claims that its use increased considerably among urban migrants and industrial workers in Silesia in the nineteenth century, and more among men than women (a pidgin of the pub and workplace). Of low status like its speakers, Hannan sees its mixed character being fed into identity politics in the area and elsewhere,

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becoming the basis of German claims that speakers of this pidgin were Germans, and Polish claims that they were not, as well as every possibility in between. This again is not in line with the views of certain nationalist Polish and indigenous Silesian scholars, who stress the Czech components of what Urban and Miodek call a gwara (dialect) (Urban 1994: 14; Miodek 1995), and do not see it as a workplace pidgin but as an ‘ethnolect’ (Tambor 2019) or treat it explicitly as a language in its own right with an identity to match (Jerczyński 2003). Although Miodek is opposed to the idea of separation, while Tambor and Jerczyński support it, all three of them are in opposition to German scholarship on this point, stressing its Czech components instead or in addition. At all events, the Silesian identity, or śląska tożsamość, emerged with other nationalisms, large and small, in the second half of the nineteenth century (see Hannan 1996: 47ff.). With an identity based partly on a Slavonic creole or dialect, in general Silesian ethnic politics seems to have been anti-Polish rather than anti-German, giving rise to accusations by Polish writers that the Silesian identity owes its existence to what Hannan calls ‘German intrigue’ (ibid.: 47). Certainly Nazi propagandists and other German apologists invoked it in an attempt to deny the historical Polishness of both Silesia and its population, a game they played with Kashubian, Masovian and Górale identities too, denying that any of them were even Slavs of any description (Hannan 1996: 51). The Górale are highlanders, chiefly in the Tatra mountains, where they traditionally herd sheep, selling woollen products in markets such as Kraków. Their most important contemporary ethnographer, Frances Pine, tends to treat them as a separate ethnic group (e.g. Pine 2001: 214), though they speak a Polish dialect. The Masurans (Mazurowie) or Masovians (Mazurzy) of north-central Poland speak a supposedly archaic Slavonic dialect related directly to High Polish, but are claimed to be Germans on the basis of their Protestantism. One German study (Rogall 1992) sees them as a fusion of the descendants of the original, non-German-speaking Prussians, Poles from Masovia, and German, Dutch and Swiss settlers, their claims to Germanness arising because this is connected with good conditions and progress. The Masurans mostly left Poland in the late 1950s and settled in West Germany, including many who had been accepted as Poles by the post-war verification commissions (Urban 1994: 81). The Kashubans (Kaszubi) of Pomerania are also said to be a separate but Slavonic dialect group. Another group are the Sorbs or Wends (Serbowie), a Slavonic-speaking group of Lausitz, the area between Berlin and Cottbus in eastern Germany, and extending historically into south-west Poland. All these groups and the areas they live in, including the last, have been the basis of Polish claims to sovereignty, while to German commentators, whatever their origins, what is important is that they can claim to be Germanized (Urban 1994: 12–14).11

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To return to the Silesian identity, its cultivation by the Nazis led to it falling out of favour after 1945. Nonetheless, both its presence in Silesia and the existence of generational differences in claiming German, Polish and Silesian as separate identities over time have been well established by recent commentators like Urban, Kurcz and Mach. Many of the children and grandchildren of those who campaigned earlier in the century for Polish identity against the Germans supported a German identity against Poland in the 1990s (Urban 1994: 16; Kurcz 1991: 75). This reflects the wider circumstance that those who regarded themselves as a Polish minority earlier in this century may now see themselves as a German one. Some families have shifted identity several times (Kurcz 1991). In some cases the reasons are clearly economic, a circumstance that has given rise to the expression ‘Volkswagen Deutsche’ for those using claims to Germanness to move to Germany. For Urban (1994: 16–17) this only affected a minority, while Kurcz (1991) remarks that Poles are inclined to see in these shifts of identity a betrayal of the anti-German struggles of previous generations carried out by these very same families. For Urban, most feel German and want recognition of their past discrimination, though nonetheless, he says, they speak Wasserpolnisch at home and pray in Polish in church (Urban 1994: 17). Mach (1998) sees the reason for present resentments as largely social, not ethnic. Despite the ethnic dilemmas that the area represented for successive socialist governments, Silesians, as largely industrial workers in the most important industrial region in Poland, were regarded as part of the socialist avant garde, with better wages and more privileges. Since the fall of communism the area has been suffering recession, the loss of privileges and relative neglect by the central government, with a consequent loss of prestige for industrial workers in particular. Other commentators, conversely, like Kurcz, Urban and Hannan, tend to focus on the ethnic dimension to these conflicts and resentments. Urban (1994: 18) sums up the situation as follows. Many of the older generation especially feel themselves to be culturally German, while others would describe themselves as Upper Silesians, and yet others as either German Silesians or Polish Silesians. Identity has been made difficult by past intermarriages and resettlements. The greatest conundrum is that, while almost all Upper Silesians today are Polish-speaking Catholics with Slavonic surnames, about three hundred thousand of them joined German Vereine (associations). This is especially true of the Opole region, precisely the area that opted for Germany in the 1921 referendum (ibid.: 11–12). Urban questions the existence of a Silesian identity on the grounds that no specifically Silesian (as opposed to German) Vereine have been successfully founded. However, this is not true of Poland, where typically Silesian organizations have existed since 1918.12 Presently, in the Katowice area alone, there are nine Silesian organizations, founded after the fall of socialism and appealing mostly to middle-aged

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and older members. These are: Stowarzyszenie Osób Narodowości Śląskiej (Association of Silesian Nationals); DURŚ (Democratic Union of Silesian Regionalists); Związek Aktywistów Śląskich (Association of Silesian Activists); Pro Loquella Silesiana (Towarzystwo Kultywowania i Promowania Śląskiej Mowy), a society for the promotion of the Silesian language, understandably directed at the youngest generation of Silesians; Śląska Partia Regionalna (Silesian Regional Party); Uotwarty Śląsk (UOpen Silesia); Ślonsko Ferajna (Silesian Guys); as well as RAŚ (Movement for the Autonomy of Silesia) and ZG (Association of Upper Silesians). Recently the last two have been combined into one organization for electoral purposes. For Kurcz, however, a specifically Silesian identity is preferred by the young (1991: 76). A number of German Vereine were founded in 1989, especially after the agreement between Germany and Poland signed in November of that year, which explicitly recognized the existence of a German minority in Poland and a Polish minority in Germany, and allowed free access to their respective motherlands. A number of German- or dual-language newspapers were also launched (Urban 1994: 116, 121–22, 134–35; see also below). Local Deutsche Freundschaftskreise (DFK or German Friendship Circles) had already been founded in 1984, at which time their goal had been the resettlement of their members in West Germany. With the political changes of 1989, and their original leaders long since in West Germany, they have turned into pressure groups for German minority rights in Poland (Kurcz 1991: 84). The Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Menschenrechte in Ostdeutschland (Association for Human Rights in East Germany, by which the annexed territories in western Poland, not the German Democratic Republic, was meant), a subgroup of the Bund der Vertriebenen (BdV or Association of Expellees) financed out of federal German funds, was also active already (Urban 1994: 96). In September 1990, the Zentralrat der deutschen Gesellschaften in Polen (Central Council of German Associations in Poland) was founded as an umbrella organization, soon to be challenged by others, some only on a regional basis (Kurcz 1991, ms.). Another organization, founded somewhat later, was the Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft ‘Versöhnung und Zukünft’ (German Association [for] ‘Reconciliation and the Future’), a leftward- or at least liberal-leaning group based in Katowice, and open to Poles as well as Germans, in contrast to the right-of-centre DFK, which had about three hundred thousand members and regarded itself as a more exclusive and nationalist pressure group. A web search in 2022 revealed no trace of these organizations. Meanwhile, the minority’s supporters in Germany saw themselves as undergoing some change of direction. The BdV became more assertive, arguing among other things that, in light of the reunion of East and West Germany, a referendum should be held over the future of the Oder–Neisse territories (Urban 1994: 100, 108, 118, 138–39, 142–43). The activities of

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some of these groups and their supporters led to significant local successes in local, senatorial and national elections (ibid.: 110–15, 123). At least one group also emerged on the far right, called the Nationale Offensive (BBC World Service, 18/11/92), which lasted for about two years until it was banned by the German government as a neo-Nazi organization. One reason given for joining such Vereine was to reinforce supporting evidence provided in applications for resettlement as a German in Germany (Kurcz 1991). Forming associations with the sole purpose of obtaining residence rights in West Germany is a long-standing post-war Polish tradition (M. Irek, p.c.). Conversely, other associations see themselves as discouraging emigration through their very activities in supporting German minority rights and culture in situ. Negotiating with the authorities is another reason given for the existence of such associations, together with material support, provision of sport and other entertainments, upkeep of German memorials, and so on. Many individuals, however, remain aloof from such organizations out of a fear of opening old wounds or of exposing themselves to revenge should the political winds change back again in the future (Kurcz 1991). Kurcz shows that these organizations have been founded in many parts of Poland and that they are very changeable: for example, an association for the whole of Pomerania dissolved itself when individual towns in the region acquired German organizations. Many of these local organizations see themselves as at least partly involved in the preservation of folklore. Other associations, founded as long ago as the 1950s, have folded simply because their entire membership has emigrated to Germany. The recognition by Germany in 1990 of the Oder–Neisse line as the German–Polish border – called by Chancellor Helmut Kohl in a televised address ‘a bitter but necessary decision’ – caused shockwaves throughout minority German circles, with accusations that German land had been given away (Urban 1994: 117). In Upper Silesia, flags were hung at half-mast to coincide with the 8 November 1990 signing ceremony (ibid.: 119). For the German minority this led to a loss of credit, not only for the German government but also for the BdV, which was felt to be implicated in the decision. The stock of the rival DFK or German Friendship Circles rose accordingly (ibid.: 145). A further disappointment was the absence of minority guarantees in the Nachbarschaftsvertrag (roughly, Treaty of Neighbourliness) of June 1991 (ibid.: 141–42). Local German organizations continue to campaign for such rights and for the granting of dual citizenship to those who desire it (ibid.: 118). Out of the window as options, however, have gone suggestions for internationalizing or Europeanizing Silesia (ibid.: 145). One positive event, occurring around the time of the signing, though not connected with it, was the approval of German-language programmes on local television (ibid.: 134).

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In the Polish government’s view, no special minority law is necessary, due to Poland’s international commitments – which do not, Urban notes, bind local or regional governments (ibid.: 126–27). Popular Polish suspicion of the German minority extends to a general unwillingness to entrust Germans with state jobs, and many Poles see them as the spearhead of the German secret service, or of commercial interests wanting to ‘buy up’ Silesia. Polish skinheads have also been active in attacking the offices of German minority organizations, causing damage and disrupting their meetings, acts that they justify with reference to east German skinheads’ attacks on Polish travellers to Germany (ibid.: 127–28). Urban mentions two particular controversies concerning the German minority. One is the controversy over the maintenance of First World War German war memorials in the area, which German-controlled councils have had restored, sometimes adding the names of German war dead from the Second World War (ibid.: 125, 130, 146). The other controversy concerns attempts to introduce dual-language place and street names (ibid.: 152). This is a sensitive issue, as both the Nazis and the Polish communist government changed such signs on annexing territory formerly held by the other side (ibid.: 86). The question of the teaching of German, a language once banned in public in Poland, was seeing movement at the time Urban wrote (ibid.: 148ff.; but see below).

Recent Works on Silesian Identity We no longer have to rely on German commentators to give us a picture of what is happening in Silesia. Polish work is already appearing which, although not exactly written in a vacuum, avoids the obvious political prejudice of writings from before 1989. Two authorities in particular will be discussed here, whom I have cited already – Zbigniew Kurcz (1991), a sociologist, and Zdzisław Mach (1998), an anthropologist – before turning to a couple of more recent works in this area, including the voice of the Silesians, the ‘people themselves’, as represented by Dariusz Jerczyński, journalist and historian. Kurcz identifies five possible descriptions for the inhabitants of Silesia: (a) Poles who have always lived there; (b) the descendants of medieval German settlers; (c) Germanized Poles who have always lived there; (d) Polonized German settlers; and (e) Polish and German settlers, whose long cohabitation, over several centuries, has led to the shaping of a separate culture and the creation of a new community. Kurcz clearly prefers the last of these definitions, not least because the inhabitants of the area all tend to see themselves as indigenous to it. He also regards Silesia as a marginal area, of little strategic interest to either Germany or Poland until recent times. As a result,

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he argues, there was no ethnic privilege or domination, and so a common identity and culture grew up in the region, aided by the German settlers gradually becoming Polonized. For Kurcz, it was the rise of Prussia under Bismarck and the introduction of modern Prussian forms of administration into the area that created the minority problem in Silesia. Of course, this reflects a Europe-wide trend, bound up with the development of the modern nation and of national feeling. The post-war experience of Silesians has already been discussed above. Kurcz draws attention to the fact that after the war all Silesians became subject to the verification process, having to declare themselves, and prove themselves to be, Poles. Those considered German were first forced to leave, though after 1945 some were prevented from leaving in order to exploit their often specialist labour to rebuild a shattered Poland. Nonetheless Kurcz represents this as a policy of assimilation through the adoption of Polish names, the refusal to allow people to learn German and the restriction of contacts with Germany. No minorities were recognized by the Polish government, despite constitutional guarantees. Thus a Polish identity was adopted initially because of the German defeat in the war, although 10–30 per cent of those claiming to be Polish in 1945 were actually German. In the late 1980s, people began to identify themselves as Germans in large numbers. For Kurcz, this identification is questionable objectively speaking, given their Polish speech and the fact that even they see a German as someone from Germany, but he acknowledges that ethnic definitions are also a matter of self-ascription. Economic motivations are one element in this shift, the German standard of living having been much better than that of the Polish since the 1950s. Those with relatives in Germany have a material advantage, as well as the ability to claim their Germanness. But there has also grown up a distinct anti-Polish and anti-communist feeling, based on the post-war expulsions, the verification process and general discrimination. Poles are also regarded as people who live in east and central Poland, not Silesia, and who have, as well as encourage, a uniformity of culture. This has tended to produce a German identity as a reaction, because to be German is to be non-Polish. Good attitudes to work and cleanliness are also significant, being considered the mark of Germanness, as opposed to alleged Polish dirtiness and laziness. The shift this represents from former times, when Silesians assumed a Polish identity against German rule, reflects their permanent underdog status. Among other things, this perpetuates itself by blocking upward mobility, because the common Silesian tendency to adopt the disfavoured identity as an expression of difference works contrary to the assimilation that upward mobility would require. This may now encourage emigration to Germany, it being the only real option available for those declining a Polish identity and seeking personal advancement.

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In an unpublished paper (ms.), Kurcz discusses the Silesian case with reference to the attitudes of other regions. He cites one informant from Bielsko-Biała, claiming it to be a culturally German region (cf. Lumans 1993: 96, who says it had been ‘considered the most German city in Poland’ between the wars). Another of Kurcz’s informants, from Katowice, similarly claimed that Germans lived in her city, but not in the rest of Silesia, as the people there knew no German. Mach’s overall posture (1998) is similar to that of Kurcz, especially in seeing the minority as at least partly Silesian. Instead of the figure of 1.1 million Germans in pre-war Poland usually given, he sets their numbers at seven hundred thousand, plus several of indeterminate national identity but strong regional identity. In his view, into the latter category fall not only Silesians but also, for example, the thirty thousand ‘Germans’ of Łódź. The ‘Germans’ of what he calls Middle Silesia – that is, the Opole region – really had and have a Silesian identity, as is shown by their speaking a Polish dialect (presumably the ‘Wasserpolnisch’ or Śląski of Urban and Hannan). But their territory was, for two hundred years, part of Prussia and then Germany, being steadily Germanized under Bismarck through education (there were no Polish schools in Silesia after 1874), industrialization and upward mobility. Even in this period, the generational difference mentioned above was evident. While the younger generations tended to become Germanized, older generations were more resistant. There was also a clear class difference. The wealthier peasants remained more conservative, continued to speak Polish, remained Roman Catholic, and were generally resistant to both Germanization and the coming of industry. Poorer peasants and industrial workers were more prone to Germanization and/or migration to Germany, retaining family ties with Silesia but cutting other ties with the region. This gives Polish nationalism a middle- and upper-class flavour, in broad agreement with more general studies of nationalism like Gellner’s that see it primarily as a middle-class project (Gellner 1983; see also Introduction). This structure did not change notably with the post-war revival of the Polish state. In the 1921 referendum, the wealthy voted for Poland, while the poorer mass of the population opted for Germany, which offered more opportunities economically. Mach deals with the accusation that Germans were imported for the referendum by remarking that they were actually returnees with roots in the area who feared being cut off from their family ties (such returns were allowed by the Treaty of Versailles; cf. Urban 1994: 35). The Nazi occupation increased the German pressure on Silesia, but industry and therefore employment expanded there, due to the war effort. Although conscription was applied, the war itself remained remote until the coming of the Soviet Union’s Red Army, and there was little destruction. According to Kurcz (1991), the fact that the war in this

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region was identified with the Red Army, not the Nazis, contributed to its later pro-Germanness. With the German retreat, however, Silesia was evacuated by the Nazis, along with other parts of Germanized Europe (Breslau/ Wrocław, for example, in January 1945). According to Mach’s figures, before 1945 some five million Germans left Polish territory in the face of the advancing Red Army, while about four million stayed behind, together with a further million whose identities were uncertain. Only with the start of the verification process, the post-war Potsdam conference (the verification process was already under way when this was held, for it was based on the Yalta agreements of 1943 on border changes; Urban 1994) and the conclusion of a British–Soviet agreement on 14 February 1946 were the final expulsions set in train. Ultimately, about two million were expelled to the Soviet zone of Germany (the later GDR) and 1.5 million to the British zone. Only if one could prove one’s Polishness could one remain. Again, we meet the possibility of split families, this time through forced migration, especially along generational lines: as we have seen, at this time the younger generation often felt itself to be German, and the older ones Polish. In western Lower Silesia, in an area extending up to Jelenia Góra, virtually the entire population fled. In the Opole region, however, as we have seen, much of the pre-war population remained. Those who remained were faced not only with a massive influx of new migrants from the east, taking over abandoned homes and farms, but with social revolution. Mach is especially good on how this affected the Silesians. This revolution was run by Poles with Soviet backing, and it was especially deleterious for the wealthier peasants (Russian kulaki) on grounds of class, though in ethnic terms it was precisely they who had been most loyally Polish. In other words, far from being rewarded for their loyalty, they were punished for being wealthy: here, class assumed more importance than nationhood. Also, Polish migrants were poorer, and both culturally and dialectally significantly different from Silesians, who regarded them as dirty, immoral and backward. For their part, the migrants, like the Polish government, tended to regard the Silesians as Germans and therefore of suspect loyalty. This experience unified the Silesians, primarily against incoming Poles (also Kurcz 1991, 1994). According to Mach’s figures, one hundred thousand left under Gierek in the 1970s to join their families in West Germany. Today, as noted already, the Polish government accepts the existence of a German minority. Formerly, however, the official view was that these were simply Germanized Poles, a view the Germans countered by saying that they were Polonized Germans. In Mach’s view, they are really locals, a separate people, always under pressure from one side or the other, although their present-day inclination is to claim themselves to be German, at the same time

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demanding autonomy for their region, whether as a German or a Silesian political unit. Mach also refers to the option of a regional identity becoming more possible through EU membership, recalling older ideas that the region should be internationalized (cf. Lehmann 1991: 98–99). In support of his thesis, Mach also identifies a difference between the Germans and the Silesians in the area, the former distancing themselves from the latter by, for example, insisting on learning German properly, with teachers from Germany. As we have seen, the German minority is also well organized, with representatives in Parliament and local government, often as town mayors.13 While the Silesians share the desire for local autonomy, they lack this German cultural dimension. Kurcz (1991, ms.), however, indicates another possible reason in the new lack of visa requirements to travel, and conversely the new German restrictions on resettlement (see above). As a result, since 1990 migration to Germany has come to seem both less necessary and more problematic, leading to a certain contraction of the circle of those claiming German identity in the region. This has been especially the case since Poland’s accession to the EU in 2004 and to the Schengen agreement allowing freedom of movement within the EU. John J. Kulczycki (2001) provides a more recent interpretation of the identity history of Poland’s ‘new territories’, with a particular focus on Silesia as having the largest German population in these territories. He starts by pointing out that around 1.5 to 2.3 million Poles were already resident in the new territories when Poland took them over, as a result of which they were seen as resisters to the Germans and national heroes. However, this realization also led to pressures to assimilate so-called ‘Germanized Poles’ and to brief but fitful attempts to relocate or, failing that, manufacture an older Polish folk culture in these areas to form the basis of a Polish national culture and identity. One background to this was stories, and fears, of a Nazi underground having been left behind by the retreating German army, and of unspecified would-be German infiltrators ready to take over Polish institutions. Kulczycki quotes Edward Ochab, a member of the Polish government and Communist Party at this period, on official policy regarding the Germans, and fears of what they might be up to: Today we have a wave of returning Germans. Thousands of Germans are returning from across the Odra river to build a nest for themselves in the lands wrenched from us by the Teutonic Knights [Krzyżaków]. But our state will not let this happen, and our Second Army has occupied the banks of [the] Odra and Nysa rivers and will not allow a single Kraut [szwab] to return. But we have to think about how to throw out 2–2.5 million Germans, who are still in the recovered lands. We divide this population into three groups. One group we will, using our technical possibilities, immediately throw out, or as the governor of Silesia says, ship beyond the Odra and Nysa. The second group of

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Germans, who are working in industry where we lack specialists, will remain for some time until we ensure we have the necessary technical skills. The third group, not needed in the cities, [who] we will not be able to remove because of a lack of transport, we will move to the provinces to work there until circumstances are ripe for moving them beyond Odra.

Regarding Upper Silesia more specifically, Kulczycki mentions the work of Stanisław Ossowski (1984, originally earlier) on manifestations of local identity that were conducted very soon after the end of the war, when extensive population movements, especially of Poles into the new territories, must have been at their height. Ossowski concentrated especially on the Opole area, today the most heavily German-populated province in Poland. Ossowski found flexible identity formation, very much subject to generational change, with those claiming a Polish national identity being very much in the minority. There could be extensive language-mixing (code-switching) by the same person in the course of a single conversation, though what counted as Silesian was clearly closer to Polish than to German. Generally too there was a more tolerant view of Germans, while Poland itself was treated somewhat as a foreign country, defined by its 1937 borders, which excluded Silesia, and not by its current borders. Kulczycki also tells how Silesians were especially targeted by both the Soviet Red Army and the Polish security forces for their suspect status as closet Germans, suffering massacres, internment and slave labour (the Polish government did eventually, and successfully, complain about this treatment to their Soviet ally). There were also disputes over farms, as Poles tried to take over Silesian farms that had not yet been abandoned, so that they might be shared for a time by a native Silesian and an incoming Pole. Silesians were also more likely to be subject to the government’s verification procedures than incoming Poles from Warsaw or the east, despite many of the latter having Ukrainian roots. Verification was never completed and was finally given up in 1949, at a time when at least eighty thousand were still claiming to be German, a figure estimated to reach two hundred thousand nationwide. In Kulczycki’s view, ‘At least a third of the verified were Germans or possessed a German national consciousness and had undergone the process solely to avoid expulsion from their homeland. The remaining two-thirds had primarily a regional identity, and treated the question of nationality opportunistically’ (2001: 215–16). Similarly, Patricia Davis (1994: 28) states, ‘nearly 200,000 ethnic German Silesians … traded national identities for socioeconomic purposes … mainly to avoid being expelled’. By 1946, approximately a million residents of Upper Silesia had received Polish citizenship or were being considered for it. However, in the 1970s, when emigration from Poland to Germany was eased under Gierek, and again following the lifting

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of martial law in 1983, Silesians began passing as Germans in order to be able to move to Germany. This gave rise to the moniker ‘Volkswagen Deutsche’ for them, and also, as we have seen, to the foundation of numerous ‘German friendship circles’ to help the process along. A much more recent paper by Jolanta Tambor (2019) looks at the language issue. She is quite adamant that what she calls the Silesian ‘ethnolect’ is Slavonic and that it should be considered either a Polish dialect or a Slavonic language in its own right (ibid.: 135). She is equally insistent that, in opposition to both Hannan (1996) and Kamusella (1998), it is not a creole of any sort, whether German or Polish. Poles tend to see the Silesian ethnolect as Germanized, but they are wrong: she considers the influence of German on Silesian to be not very marked, and also says it is declining, as the younger generation are no longer prepared to use German words except to make fun of them (Tambor 2019: 143–44, 147). Nonetheless the language still contains some words of German origin and has been influenced by loan translations and German grammar. Other vocabulary is Polish in origin, and yet another lexical category consists of survivals of Old Polish that have fallen out of use in present-day Polish (ibid.: 144). This leaves open the possibility that the Silesian lexis is sufficiently different from Polish to constitute a separate language, rather than merely being a dialect.14 In terms of ethnicity too she provides percentages for self-declared identities of this sort that are not wholly reliant on language, collected in the Opole area in 1996 (ibid.: 142–43, after Wanatowicz): Poles 7.3, Polish Silesians 11.9, Silesian Poles 14.2, Silesians 31.1, Silesian Germans 13.3, German Silesians 9.2 and Germans 11.9 per cent. Very roughly, therefore, we can say that one-third acknowledged some Polish roots and another third some German roots, while the remaining third saw themselves as Silesian and nothing else. Finally, here, the journalist and historian Dariusz Jerczyński, a Silesian nationalist and author of the ‘History of the Silesian Nation’ (Historia narodu śląskiego 2003), is concerned to establish the separate existence of a Silesian language and identity, in opposition to those of other national identities, German or Polish, who doubt that either really exist. He traces the existence of a separate Silesian language back to the independence of Silesian duchies from Poland in the thirteenth century. After a long period of foreign conquest and rule by the Habsburg Empire and Prussia in particular, a specifically Silesian nationalist movement in the nineteenth century, which Jerczyński treats as a revival from the Middle Ages, played a part in the freedom of Poland from foreign rule, and partition in 1919. Jerczyński nonetheless calls Silesians ‘Slavic Germans’, and calls their language a Slavic creole. In this sense he sees them as comparable to speakers of Franco-German Swiss and Luxemburgish dialects further west. In separating the Silesians and their

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language from both German and Polish roots, he is opposed by Jan Miodek, the mainstream linguist of Polish studies and himself a Silesian, for whom this identification of a separate Silesian language and nation has no meaning at all (Miodek 1995).

German-Language Media in Silesia A number of German-language media outlets have been launched in Silesia since 1989, many not lasting very long. The most successful seems to have been the Schlesiches Wochenblatt (‘Silesian Weekly’), founded on 20 April 1990 and still with an active website in December 2022, though it had dropped the word ‘Schlesisches’ from its title. Another is Polen Rundschau, a monthly owned by someone living in Germany that went electronic in 2008. There is also Polen am Morgen (‘Poland in the Morning’), a daily launched in 1998, and Schlesisches Aktuell (‘Silesia Today’), a radio station broadcasting from Opole. However, many Silesian Polish media, like Radio Opole and public TV’s weekly Schlesischen Journal, provide slots for German-medium programmes, while Nowa Trybuna Opolska (‘New Opole Tribune’), a Polish weekly serving Opole, includes a German-language supplement called Heimat (‘Homeland’). A large number of other media outlets, some specialist in form, are listed on the VdG website.15 Wochenblatt, which is supported financially by both the German and Polish governments, has a print run of about sixteen thousand. It reports mainly on local events and initiatives of interest to the German minority in Opole, and occasionally in other areas, such as Ermland-Masurien. This includes articles on the German history of Silesia, such as folklore, and on remaining German architecture and monuments of significance; articles explaining, justifying and defending the German presence; and articles advocating greater German–Polish cooperation and documenting initiatives to that end, in all of which respects it can readily go into campaigning mode. For example, in late March 2020 the paper reported on a plan to establish a Dokumentation- und Ausstellungszentrum der Deutsche Minderheit (‘Documentation and Exhibition Centre of the German Minority’) in ul. Szpitalna, Opole, with 800,000 euros from the German government, an initiative that would also have to involve the marszałek of Opole. This was seen as filling a gap in documenting the history of Germans in Silesia. In April, however, one of its articles complained about the exclusion of important German Silesians, including a Nobel Prize winner, from a proposal to install a historical memorial to significant Silesians in Katowice cathedral because it allegedly celebrated only Silesian Poles. The foundation of the paper in 1990 exposed its first chief editor, Engelbert Miś, to threats of violence and

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repeated damage to his car, presumably from Polish activists, though he does not say so as such.16 A web search showed that it was still active in 2022. Organizations now active include the Deutsch-Polnisch Gesellschaft Verband (‘German–Polish Society/Association’), based in Berlin, and the Verband der deutschen Gesellschaften in Polen (‘Union of German Associations in Poland’), or VdG. The former is an umbrella organization for over fifty German and German–Polish associations. It issues a quarterly magazine, and awards a prize for promoting inter-ethnic relations, both called Dialog, but neither are restricted to German–Polish relations alone. The origins of the magazine, which is supported by the German Foreign Ministry, go back to Germany in 1987. The VdG describes itself as follows:17 The Germans in Poland are united in various organizations. Practically all organizations are linked in a common representation, coming together under the Union of German Social-Cultural Associations (VdG) in Poland, based in Opole. The VdG is a representation of Germans in Poland with political contacts, is the first discussion partner for the German and Polish governments, and pursues intensive work on culture, the media and education.

Recently, for example, in January 2020, its chairman, Bernard Gaida, expressed concerns in a letter he sent to the Council of Europe about the PiS government’s alleged attempts to put restrictions on teaching of and in German in Poland. The council drew the PiS government’s attention to the matter but did not propose to take it any further as things stood. This followed Gaida’s exchanges directly with the German government in 2019.18 Another organization is the Stiftung für Deutsch-Polnischen Zusammenarbeit (Fundacja Współpracy Polsko-Niemieckiej) [‘Foundation for German–Polish Cooperation’], based in Warsaw, concerned with supporting projects to preserve historical heritage with relevance to German–Polish relations. Yet another such organization is the Haus der Deutsch-Polnischen Zusammenarbeit (Dom Współpracy Polsko-Niemeckiej, or ‘House of German– Polish Cooperation’),19 dating back to the 1990s, and with offices in Gliwice and Opole. This appears to be at least partly more academic in tone, given its rich publishing activity, especially issuing works on the history of present and past German areas of Poland and German–Polish relations, including diplomatically (i.e. inter-state). It also runs projects, including periodic conferences bringing together academia and officialdom, and stages exhibitions on these and similar themes. A prominent theme is Poland’s integration into Europe, an issue that goes back to its foundation. As with most of these organizations, it is keen to avoid any suspicion of association with or support for the Nazi period. Thus one exhibition praises the life of Eduard Pant, an anti-Nazi German politician in Poland in the interwar period.

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Opolskie and Other Silesian Localities As already noted, Opolskie, a province formed from the western portion of upper Silesia, has the largest concentration of Germans in Poland today. Only about 3 per cent, or under four thousand, of the population of the city are German, but 25 per cent in Dobrodzień to the east are German, as are significant minorities in Strzelce Opolskie, Prudnik, Głogówek and Gogolin, all villages around Opole town. Opole’s coat of arms features yet another eagle, this one in yellow on a blue field, in fact the Silesian coat of arms. The Catholic Church in Opole also recognizes the German minority by maintaining a Minderheitsseelsorger (minority pastor). One other Polish city worth mentioning in this context is Zabrze, German ‘Hindenburg’, as, unlike so many other towns and cities that became part of Poland in 1945, it retained something of its German character right through the socialist period. Even in 1988, there were still elderly women in the town who could not speak sufficient Polish to be able to fill in the forms for the census held in that year (the last of the socialist period), while other residents preferably spoke Silesian. This ended after the fall of communism, as many German-identity residents migrated to Germany.20 Gliwice is also apt to be considered symbolically German to Polish residents of towns in the Zagłębie area, west of Katowice (while the indigenous inhabitants of Katowice used to say that Gliwice is a Polish area, inhabited by ‘Tajojki’,21 or post-Second World War Polish resettlers from Ukraine). One edition of Schlesisches Wochenblatt, dated 19 April 2020, has a useful history of a small village in Lower Silesia.22 Rösenitz is first mentioned as Resenitz in 1335. It was probably founded by Franconians from the centre of what is now Germany. By 1526 it had become a Protestant village, a Protestant church being built there in 1580. In 1742, during the War of Austrian Succession, it fell to Prussia, becoming German in 1871. In the 1880s it is said to have had a distillery and mills powered by wind, water and oil. After the German defeat in the Second World War, the Germans in the village were expelled to Germany, and Poles moved in. Being Catholics, they had no wish to maintain a Protestant church, which therefore fell into decay, with only two walls left standing, its surviving bells being accommodated in another church. In 1980 a proper Catholic church was built for the current inhabitants. To go any further into the particular case of Silesia would mean going beyond the confines of this book. Suffice it to say here that the Silesian case differs from many others in this part of Europe in having a clear third option in terms of identities between German and Polish, at least in the claims of those who consider themselves Silesian and who have defended their right to this identity as distinct and separate. This tends to be underplayed by authors

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writing on Silesian affairs, especially where their own backgrounds and identities lead them to think in terms of either German or Polish national identity alone, not allowing this third option any serious recognition.23

Notes   1. By no means all Germans think this way. I vividly remember, many years ago, being on the top deck of a bus in Berlin that had the slogan ‘Schlesien ist Deutsch’ scrawled above one of the windows. It was promptly scrubbed out by a fellow passenger, probably associated with the alternativ scene in the suburb of Kreuzberg.  2. The terms Wasserpolnisch, Wasserpolen and Wasserpolacken are actually derogatory, with connotations of low social status, but as Hannan and other writers have used them, I follow them where necessary.   3. See Rutsch 2009: 46. Villages bearing the name ‘Friedrich’ in German reflect this process. Ironically, although Frederick is regarded as the archetypical ruler of the Prussian state, he rather despised the German language, interlarding his speech with many French words and expressions, a language in which he was far more comfortable.   4. As already noted, Hannan mentions a third possible identity, even early in the century, namely Wasserpolnish, Śląska or ‘Silesian’; see further below.   5. While Poles in the new Poland were generally suspicious of German Silesians in the interwar period, they treated even the Poles in the area as country bumpkins, according to Rutsch (2009: 88).   6. Thus there is a crude cycle: removal of Germans through expulsion in 1945, retention at the end of that decade, and then removal through ‘free’ exit in the 1970s.   7. Przedsiębiorstwo Exportu Wewnętrznego or Internal Export Company (see Kochanowski 2010).   8. For a Polish account of out-migration from Poland from 1949 to 1989, see Stola 2010.   9. Urban (1994: 14) mentions the word gwara as another Polish term for Wasserpolnisch, though it really means ‘slang’ (i.e. of language). In fact, the Silesian language is often referred to as gwara śląska, while the local people are described as Silesians, nicknamed ‘Hanysy’. 10. Two reported differences between this alleged creole and standard Polish: (1) the lack of the nasalized vowels represented in Polish by ą and ę; and (2) the use of personal pronouns as standard, rather than merely for emphasis, as in Polish (Viktor Kaluza, unpublished paper cited in Biskup 2016: 94). Both this text and Hannan’s study, cited above, have good examples of the Silesian dialect or creole. 11. It is notable that claims of Germanization tend to contradict the more usual theory that one cannot become a German, only be born one, under the doctrine of jus sanguinis. 12. However, it was Germany that promised Silesia relative autonomy in 1920, which was soon exceeded by the extensive autonomy granted to this region by Poland in 1922 (Ćwienk 2014). 13. In 2008 there was only one German MP in the Sejm, down from three or four previously. 14. There is an analogy here with Sorb, which is usually regarded as a separate Slavonic language, though much of its vocabulary has clear Polish etc. cognates. 15. Association of German Social-Cultural Societies in Poland: https://www.fuen.org/de/ members/Association-of-German-Social-Cultural-Societies-in-Poland. Accessed in 2020. No trace of this website could found as of 12 December 2022.

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16. Wochenblatt 20 April 2020, ‘Eine schmerzhafte, aber erfolgreiche Geburt’ [‘A painful but successful birth’]: http://wochenblatt.pl/eine-schmerzhafte-aber-erfolgreichegeburt/. Accessed 12 December 2022. 17. Verband der deutsche Gesellschaften in Polen: http://www.vdg.pl/de/ueber-uns/ver​ band/vdg, replaced 2022 by Verband der Deutschen Sozial-Kulturellen Gesellschaften in Polen (vdg.pl). The VdG publishes the Wochenblatt, which it took over from Pro-Futura in January 2018. 18. On the teaching of German in Poland: http://www.vdg.pl/de/portal/aktuelles/bil​ dung/item/5184-antwort-der-ausserministerin-des-europarates-mit-dem-thema-deutsc​ hunterricht-in-polen. Accessed 2020. No trace of this website could be found as of 12 December 2022. The coming and going of some of these websites is itself an indication of the fluidity of these events and circumstances on the ground. 19. House of Polish–German Cooperation: https://www.haus.pl/. Accessed 12 December 2022. 20. Wochenblatt, 26 April 2020: ‘Die deutscheste Stadt in Polen’ [‘The most German town in Poland’]: http://wochenblatt.pl/die-deutscheste-stadt-in-polen/. Accessed 12 December 2022. 21. A mocking reference to the Polish dialect of Lvov, where many of these Poles came from and where the words ta joj are used in phatic communication. 22. Wochenblatt, 20 April 2020: ‘Nur die Glocke erklingt weiterhin’ [‘Only the bells still sound’]: http://wochenblatt.pl/nur-die-glocke-erklingt-weiterhin/. Accessed 12 December 2022. 23. For a few other major works in the vast literature on the themes of this chapter, see Kamusella 1998, 2007, 2011, 2019; Jerczyński 2003; Bahlke, Gawrecki and Kaczmarek 2015.

Chapter 8

Updates 2010, 2014

? In 2010 and again in 2014 I returned to Lubuskie to continue research there and catch up with events since Poland had joined the EU and the Schengen area, both of which had made the border with Germany all but redundant. In 2010 I found that, in a number of towns like Krosno,1 Lubsko and Nowogród Bobrzański, the same mayors were still in charge, while in Brody the mayor who had served the town for many years but had lost office in the first free elections had swiftly returned to carry on as before. I was especially interested in how cross-border relations had developed with the opening of the border and Poland’s EU entry, and in how the administrative arrangements introduced some eleven years previously (in 1999) had fared. Some of these changes have already been mentioned in the previous chapter.

Administration I could detect no critical problems with the structure of local government beyond what one might expect of any such system. That said, the gminy and miasta seemed no more friendly now than before towards the powiaty that had been introduced in 1999 as a layer of administration between themselves and the województwa or provinces. One mayor, though originally welcoming them as potentially having more expertise available to them (which has not happened), now wanted to abolish them entirely as useless. The only contact he had with the powiat to which he belonged was the road

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system, responsibility for which was shared between it and his city. As the city authorities were closer to the people than those of the powiat, that meant he received a lot of complaints about the state of the roads that he could not deal with. This mayor would like larger gminy to take the place of the powiaty, but he recognized that any new reform was most unlikely, not least because of the vested interests involved in preserving the existing system (see further below). As an alternative, he supported more powers being given to the marszałek in Zielona Góra. Generally it is unclear whether the gmina and miasta are really under the powiat, or just grouped geographically together within it. Some mayors say the two bodies have separate powers and minimal contact. The powiaty themselves are more inclined to stress their wider planning powers, and they are responsible for some roads, middle schools and health, whereas the rural gmina, at least, have responsibility for the lower schools and gymnasiums, so they clearly have different responsibilities. However, I was told in one commune that local council meetings have to be announced to the powiat, which normally sends a representative to sit in on the meeting, which may indicate a greater level of control by the latter. Nonetheless many gminy prefer to enter into direct contact with the marszałek in Zielona Góra, the chief political and administrative figure in the province, with greater powers than even the wojewoda in Gorzów, the central government’s representative. The fact that they can do this suggests that in practice they have considerable autonomy from the powiat, and do not have to go through them for much, if anything at all. There was a general feeling that local populations had grown more used to democracy and to the idea of controlling officials through elections, and so were more prepared to take complaints directly to officials and to use elections to replace them, even though civil-society organization was still patchy. Some, especially environmentalists, were seen as creating specific problems for local administrations trying to improve infrastructure, though in at least one case they had been comprehensively outmanoeuvred by the city referring to Brussels for an opinion, which supported the city. Party politics had still not penetrated to the towns or gmina very much, let alone ordinary villages, apart from electoral committees set up at elections times: this lack of party politics was seen as a good thing by mayors, who felt that without them cooperation was easier.2 That was also true between gminy: for example, a cycle path that had formerly only been laid down within the gmina had now been completed so it linked up several, and it was clearly being used. The absence of parties at this level – really they only become significant at the provincial and national levels, with some impact on the powiaty – forms a striking contrast to most countries in Western Europe, where one frequently has to go right down to village level to leave the party system behind. On the

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other hand, even ordinary workers could be strict in observing the responsibilities of the different units within the local government system. In the village of Osiek, between Lubsko and Bobrowice, we were told that the driver of a snow-clearing lorry working for the powiat, which had responsibility for roads outside local communes but not within them, would lift his plough on going through the village, as it was not his but the village’s responsibility to clear the roads within it. Another feeling sometimes expressed was that the powiaty were really only important in terms of political patronage at the centre in Warsaw – that is, powiat appointments could be used to reward party workers, and indeed political contacts were needed to obtain such appointments at all. One new aspect to administration in Poland, as elsewhere in Europe, is the EU’s LEADER programme for rural development. This involves setting up ‘working groups’ of several rural gminy to apply for this funding. The borders of these groups rarely seem to coincide with those of Poland’s local government: for example, they do not correspond very much, if at all, to powiat boundaries, though generally they appear to remain within provincial ones. As applications go through the marszałek’s office, the latter comes in for a lot of stick for delays, unexplained rejections, a lack of understanding of the aims of LEADER and general inefficiency. However, one city mayor, who as such has no interest in LEADER and is therefore more neutral in this issue, felt that the problems lay in Warsaw, where lower-level bureaucrats were afraid to take any decisions, and that the marszałek’s staff were in fact meticulous in checking applications before sending them off. One other outcome of this is the formation of village associations, which are really NGOs, though often involving the village mayor or sołtys. Their basic rationale is to apply for funding to and through LEADER, though they also represent a significant expansion of civil-society organizations at the village level in Poland.3 One problem frequently mentioned is the new refunding system within Poland itself, whereby only a small amount of money is provided up front for a project, the rest having to be claimed back subsequently (probably as an anti-corruption measure) – and that can take months, even years, to obtain. It was often remarked how quick and efficient German procedures are by contrast.

Cross-border Links Since 2002/3, some cross-border links have lapsed, while others have been formed. Some of the lapsing has been due to those who had originally set up the arrangements leaving office, while Lubsko’s link with Helsinge, already dormant, collapsed entirely due to a reform of local government in

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Denmark. In its place was a new link with Kamenz in the German Lausitz, still to be signed, but whose rationale was to recreate ties throughout the Lausitz and the former Sorb culture area. Another town felt that its one existing link with a border town in Germany was quite enough, and still had a lot of potential. One interesting and apparently new development is to make links with towns in countries to the east of the new EU borders, for example, in Ukraine or Moldova, as part of a specific bid to help them just as Polish towns were helped by existing EU members before Poland itself joined the EU. Thus Nowogród Bobrzański has set up a link with Cimişlia in the south of Moldova through a special programme of the Polish foreign ministry and an association of mayors to which the mayor of Nowogród, a particularly go-ahead individual, himself belonged. There is a particular focus on introducing the authorities in Cimişlia to best administrative practice, but also on showing how things can be organized as part of civil society, without the state being involved. There is also a focus on creating agribusinesses and on exploring the potential for organic farming in the region, with its fertile black earth and its lack, traditionally, of artificial fertilizers. Some business had already started with the importation of Moldovan wines, and cognac could be another possibility. A similar rationale lies behind Lubsko’s new links with the cities of Pavolgrad and Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine, based on general regional cooperation, which would also improve Poland’s standing in the world, given Ukraine’s potential. Obviously this is likely to have changed dramatically due to the Russo-Ukraine war of 2022. Youth exchange is clearly one mainstay of these cross-border arrangements, which in some cases are arranged by schools directly, without other levels of administration necessarily being involved. Also important, still, is the need for partners to apply for funding. As already noted in Chapter 6, since EU entry more funding has become available, whether from Brussels or nationally, which makes the need for partners less urgent. In addition, it is now easier to enter into an ad hoc arrangement with a partner in another member state, without permanent ties, and to apply for funding for a particular project of interest to both parties. The jargon of cooperation and integration must still be flagged up in the application, which leads to some curious outcomes; for example, one village hall that has recently been renovated carries the title, somewhat grandiose under the circumstances, of the ‘XYZ Cultural Integration Centre’ – but as it is well away from the international border, the word ‘integration’ is hard to fathom. Whereas culture was originally where a lot of this funding went, now there seems to be a clearer imperative to improve infrastructure such as roads, sewerage systems and public buildings like the one above; for some officials, indeed, ‘culture’ was a waste of time and scarce resources.4 This change in attitude may have something to do with the effective abolition of the border under the Schengen arrangements.

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When this was still a barrier, much time, energy and rhetoric was spent in trying to eliminate its impact by arguing for the creation, even existence, of cross-border communities and identities. Now these arguments are needed less, at least for this purpose. Indeed, ironically there now even seems to be some denial of any cross-border identity: in the view of one mayor, Germans and Poles can and should cooperate across their common border and live as one now that the ‘border crossing’ has become a ‘transnational connection’. The border itself no longer makes much sense, but they remain Germans and Poles nonetheless, and there is no joint identity as such. The Spree-Neisse-Bober Euroregion remains significant, except, perhaps, for those who never had any time for it anyway. Funding for small projects, such as youth and cultural exchange, can still be obtained through it, though money for larger projects tends to come from the marszałek in Zielona Góra, either directly or through him from Warsaw. One problem frequently mentioned is that, as there are fewer members on the German side, Polish members can find it hard to obtain partners even for limited projects; indeed, for one of its detractors, this was the key reason for what he saw as its relative demise. This problem applied even to one of the original six Polish members of the Euroregion. As a result, it appears from a current map that some Polish members, especially those away from the border, have left the Euroregion since 2003, though others who were not then members have since joined.5 Indeed, many officials still felt it important to belong in order to demonstrate an interest in international cooperation.

Identity In general, there was a feeling that local identity at some level was replacing identification with the east, as younger generations were coming to maturity for whom the east had less significance. Local Lemkos (Łemkowie), identified with Ukraine, were seen as slowly becoming Polonized as a younger generation born in Lubuskie grow up. In one village I was told that knowledge of people’s origins, whether they had come from the east or not, was less important now than it had been twenty or thirty years ago. Nevertheless there was less agreement concerning whether that identity was Lubuskan or simply very local, village or urban. Generally within the bureaucracy, the lower one goes down the structure, the less relevance Lubuskie seems to have. One wójt, like councillors in his gmina, thought a Lubuskan identity was purely artificial, a matter of good management, of brain not heart, and he was more concerned with the high ranking his rural gmina achieved within Poland in terms of living standards and satisfaction. Nonetheless he felt that the growth in private property in the area may have an impact

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because it meant more and more people putting down roots there. In many areas, this includes Germans and other west Europeans, who are often married to Polish women. Elsewhere, however, it was noted that people were actually leaving the area, either for the west or for big cities elsewhere in Poland (which Lubuskie lacks), and this in itself was making the creation of a strong Lubuskan identity more difficult. While many villages, especially those within commuting distance of local towns, are obviously benefiting from private investments in home improvements and public investment in local infrastructure, others further away, especially near the German border but away from border crossings, hardly seem to have been touched since the war. It is these villages that are most likely to suffer a desertion of their younger populations, and thus decline, in the future. Farming has collapsed in many areas, with many old state farms lying redundant, though a few have been taken over by private businesses for either small-scale industry or farming. There are lots of folklore events in the region, but still they were either eastern in content or national Polish. The village association at Osiek was deliberately trying to avoid stressing eastern connections in such festivals in order to be different, but it had decided to adopt a ‘Gypsy’ (Roma) theme instead, not one that could be connected to Lubuskie specifically. The actual content of such festivals was usually decided by those who put them on, and specific references to Lubuskie seemed virtually entirely absent. Yet some, often more practical factors are sometimes mentioned that are leading to the creation of a local identity, such as the presence of forests, improvements in infrastructure, new companies springing up and the new marszałek’s6 slogan for the province, ‘Lubuskie: warte zachodu’, a play on words indicating that Lubuskie is in the west, but also worthwhile (visiting, doing business with, etc.). Many tourist brochures stress Lubuskie as a unit. Also, Lubuskie was said to be taking the lead currently in successfully applying for European funds. Another possible factor is wine production, but really this is restricted to Zielona Góra, around which local vineyards are concentrated and which has a week-long festival of wine in September. However, while parts of Lubuskie successfully grow grapes, they might actually be processed into wine over the border in Germany – despite which they are still marketed as Polish!

Revisit in 2014 By 2014 Ziemia Lubuska had its own toll motorway, part of a system that will eventually link the German autobahn system with eastern Poland and presumably the Bielorussian border at Terespol. Crossing it in the region

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of Jordanowo, between Świebodzin and Międzyrzecz, is an equally new dual carriageway running from Zielona Góra to Szczecin. In the village of Jordanowo, on 4 June 2014, supposedly at the precise geographical centre of the province, the new marszałek of the province, Elżbieta Polak, together with the wojewoda, Edward Fedko, planted the first ‘freedom oak’ (dąb wolności) in Lubuskie as a symbol of the province’s openness and exceptional tolerance, as she saw it, as well as of twenty-five years of post-communist freedom.7 This recalled a similar scheme of 4 June 1989, when plantings were held in celebration of Poland’s new democracy, and even further back, to the interwar period of 1918–28, when this became a way of celebrating Polish independence. For Polak, however, the planting in 2014 also celebrated the importance and potential of the local forests to Lubuskie, which, with 49 per cent of its land area forested, has proportionally the most forest of any province in Poland. Accordingly, representatives of the forest administration were also present at the planting. However, while access as such is not a problem, finding the tree certainly is, as no direction-finders have been made available, at least not at the time of my visit. I only found it because I know a local forest warden, and even so it was his wife, not himself, who gave me just enough information to find it, after a bit of trial and error. The tree proved to be located near the intersection of the east–west motorway (itself called the autostrada wolności or ‘freedom motorway’) and the north–south dual carriageway just mentioned. Access to it ultimately proved to be via a rough road from the nearby village of Jordanowo, which then becomes a sort of service road for the motorway, restricted to service vehicles. However, one can walk along it to the tree, which stands on its own, overlooked by the motorway, but otherwise is completely deserted and apparently unvisited apart from the odd passing anthropologist or road worker. The year 2014 was also when Sylwester Zawadzki, the ‘Builder Priest’ of Świebodzin, died at the age of eighty-one (on 14 April). Building on a career not only of pastoral care but also of building, rebuilding and renovating local churches and other church buildings damaged or neglected since the Second World War, in 2010 he completed his most astonishing project, the construction of a huge statue of Jesus on the outskirts of the town that rivals in size the better-known statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I have dealt with the background and circumstances of this project in some detail elsewhere (Parkin 2018, 2019a, 2019b). Suffice it to say here that it has put Świebodzin, a somewhat sleepy town between Frankfurt and Poznań, firmly on the map, though probably more with tourists than with pilgrims. But in identity terms, it is what Świebodzin and the surrounding province of Ziemia Lubuska are now known for – something that may well have an impact, temporary or permanent, on how the future identities of both are viewed.

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Notes 1. Krosno had just celebrated ‘twenty years of self-government’ with a special meeting of the town council. 2. One exception is Krosno, where Civic Platform (PO or Platforma Obywatelska) had supplanted the former SLD dominance, and gone from three to eight members on the council; the current MP also represented PO. 3. The LEADER working groups, by contrast, have a more official status, sometimes with their own offices, though in one case they are accommodated in the local tourist office. 4. A secondary priority is support for new businesses. In one town, however, little was applied for, and 75 per cent of the funding was left unused. Again the problem appeared to be one of finding partners in Germany, as well as the fact that businesses tend to compete, not cooperate. 5. This is a provisional assessment that still needs checking properly. It is already clear that one member gmina is wrongly shown as a non-member on the map. Certainly the map shows far more new members than former members. 6. A member of PO, he has replaced the former marszałek, whom I interviewed in 2002. In 2014 yet another marszałek, a woman, Elżbieta Polak, was in office (see text below). 7. Dzień za Dniem, 4 June 2014, p. 3. The initiative actually came from the then president of Poland, Bronisław Komorowski, and other such plantings were planned for elsewhere in Poland.

Conclusion

? To end with, I would like to sum up what I see as the current state of German–Polish relations, not people to people this time, which to an extent is predictable, but between local officials on both sides of the border, who feature somewhat less in work on this issue. To do so, I return to the theme of cross-border cooperation described in detail in Chapter 6. First, we have seen that officials often see themselves as cultivating an identity for the province or for the whole cross-border area – provided, of course, that they recognize the word ‘identity’ to begin with, which is not always the case. Secondly, national politics may also have an impact on these activities. While national centres, in this case Berlin and Warsaw, want to keep key decisions in their hands – especially over funding, which, whatever its source or destination, still goes through them – they are not above exploiting local cross-border ties for their own ends. In the forums of the Euroregions especially, local officials and politicians are able to say things that Berlin or Warsaw might like to say but cannot for either domestic or diplomatic reasons. The principal such reason is probably that the respective national populations as wholes are more sceptical of cooperation with the other state than those along the border – according to opinion polls, for example, there was more support for EU entry in western Poland than in the centre or east of the country. At the same time, complaints about the nature of cross-border cooperation that might create a diplomatic incident at the international level can be made more innocuous locally. National governments frequently need

Conclusion • 169

a way of sending both positive and negative messages about cooperation to one another without doing so themselves; local contacts can provide this. Another aspect of relationships between national capitals and border areas is the potential for the polarity of centre–periphery relations to become reversed with the development of not just cross-border cooperation, but strong and fairly autonomous cross-border regions. For example, both Guben and Gubin complain of neglect by their respective national governments, both being located on fairly remote parts of the border. By combining their hinterlands as a Euroregion and placing its headquarters in the double town, they have themselves become centres, though not particularly powerful ones. A similar example from within the EU is the Atlantic Arc planning region, which unites the entire Atlantic coast of Europe into one region with common interests and problems in tourism, fishing and oil spills, and with a common if, from some points of view, exaggerated Celtic ‘culture’. This coast is, of course, by and large a region of peripheries within their respective nation states, such as Brittany within France. Now, however, by accommodating the headquarters of the Atlantic Arc at Rennes, it has itself become a centre.1 Thirdly, at the risk of romanticizing the situation somewhat, it is worth stressing the large amount of goodwill that exists behind these activities. There is still no shortage of either Poles or Germans who have little time for, and even continue to hate, one another. The activities even of those who advocate increasing cross-border cooperation do not always run smoothly, sometimes creating resentment on the other side, though rarely threatening a complete breakdown. This reflects an inevitable combination of differences in perspectives and perceived interests, different national pressures, and the influence and reactions of particular political egos, of a sort that is entirely typical of politics generally. Nonetheless this is one part of eastern Europe where international cooperation has so far run relatively smoothly and produced real gains in reducing potential conflict. I would argue that this is typical of this half of the continent rather than otherwise, despite the tragedy of the Balkans in the 1990s. Lastly, both official and unofficial challenges to the integrity and permanence of the German–Polish border gradually produced a new situation that was to reduce the border’s significance considerably, even before EU entry. These cross-border activities reflect, but also contribute to, the idea of a ‘Europe of regions’, which is supposed to prevent a return of either nationalist competition between states in Europe or authoritarianism within them. At the same time, while this will be an expanded Europe, it will also be an incomplete one. On its now more heavily controlled eastern border, Poland is also contributing to an alternative idea, that of Fortress Europe, while ensuring that it will itself be within the laager. It is through the tensions between

170  •  White Eagle, Black Eagle

these two ideas that regional, national and international identities will be worked out in Europe in the future.

Note 1. Other examples of such multinational regions are the Alpine Arc and the so-called ‘Centre Capitals’ region, which stretches from Banbury in Oxfordshire to the Ruhr, and from the Loire to the Randstad. Originally just planning regions drawn up by Brussels, some enthusiasts for the European idea have advocated replacing the nation state with these units, which are of comparable size to the nation state but multinational as well as cross-border, as a way of finally ditching the nationalism underlying what are sometimes referred to as ‘Europe’s civil wars’. This would mean declining political significance for existing national capitals. This is very much a minority view even among officials involved in cross-border relations, though they are well aware of its ultimate implications. In the present political environment in Europe, however, with advancing rightist nationalism becoming more prominent, realization of such ideas has become even more remote.

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Index

additionality, 81n9 Adenauer, K., 31, 33n26, 47 Africa, South, 58, 81n3 agriculture, 101, 165 Albania, 15n3 Alexanderplatz, 91 Alliance, Red-Green, 94 Allies (Second World War), 62, 81n1 Alsace, 134 Alternative für Deutschland, 70–72 Alternative Liste, 94 America, 27, 58 Anderson, B., 4–5, 15n4, 81n3 Anke, 125 Anschluß, 38 Aosta, 72 apartheid, 81n3 Arnhem, 125 Arnim, von (family), 51 Ascanian dynasty, 23, 24, 97 Asher, A. 7, 8 Atlantic Arc, 169 Aubigny, 117 Austria, 2, 18, 31n1, 32n4, 25, 27, 30, 32n15; 33n19; 62, 82, 83 Austria-Hungary, 2, 4, 26, 73 Austrian Succession, War of, 157 Banbury, 170n1 Ban Muskau, 92, 127 Baden-Württemberg, 64 Balkans, 50 Baltic Germans, 39 Baltic Sea, 18, 21 Baltic States, 35. See also Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania

Banat, 40 Barbarossa, Operation, 18, 41 Basques, 3–5 Bautzen, 3 Bavaria, 64, 120 Belgium, 62 Belisarius, General, 16, 139 Belorussia(n), 94, 98, 165 Berlin, 2, 11, 12, 64, 67–68, 70, 79, 85ff., 126, 132, 134, 144, 156, 168 Wall, 2, 53, 58 Berliner, D. (author), 97 Bessarabia, 35, 51 Bielsko-Biała, 36, 150 biology, 5 Bismarck, O. von, 26–28, 30, 32n5, 33nn19, 22, 24; 35, 44, 64, 74, 83, 98, 148, 150 Blacks, 58, 61, 63 Black Sea, 18 blockades, 105 blood, 53–54, 58 Bobrowice, 102, 114n10, 121, 128, 132, 137nn17, 19, 24; 162 Bolesław the Bald, 23 Bolesław III, 23 Bonn, 64 borders, 5ff. Bornemann, J., 53–54, 66 Bottrop, 84 Brandenburg, 21, 23, 97, 113, 124, 125, 131 Ost, 23–24, 97, 114n2 Brazil, 60n14 Breslau, 8, 21, 44, 49, 59, 151. See also Wrocław

180 • Index

Bresław, 8 Brexit, 65, 72, 95n10 Bretons, Brittany, 3, 72, 169n1 Bridge Balance, 118–19 Britain, British, 4, 32n16, 43, 47, 58, 62, 65, 95n10, 115n17 Empire, British, 36 Brody, 51, 103, 117–18, 121, 124, 131, 136n4, 160 Bronków, 128 Broszat, M., 20, 30, 36 Bruck, 120, 137n17 Bruhl, von A. (family), 51, 121–22 Brussels, 170n1 Buczyny, 113 Bukovina, 59 Bulgaria, 15n3, 101 Bülow, B. von, 28 Bund der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten, 48 Bund der Vertriebenen, 48, 143, 146 Bürkner, H-J., 10 Buzek, J., 77, 81n10, 105, 108 Byzantine Empire, 16 Canada, 58 Caprivi, Graf von, 28 Carsten, F., 23 Carthage, 139 Catalonia, Catalans, 3, 4, 72 Celts, 139 Centre Capitals, 170n1 Central Union of Expelled Germans, 48 Charlemagne, Emperor, 17, 19 Chessa, C. 10–11 Chile, 57 China, Chinese, 5, 86 Christianity, 17, 18, 63 Church, Catholic, 18, 19, 25, 31, 100 Cieszyn (Teschen), 139, 140. Cimişlia, 163 class, 4, 70–71, 150–51 Cold War, 65 Commission, Truth and Reconciliation, 81n3 communism, communists, 2, 18–19, 43, 47, 53, 57, 66, 68ff., 85, 87, 88, 90, 100, 103 communities, imagined, 4, 15n4

Community, Coal and Steel, 81n2 Conze, W., 30 cooperation, cross-border, Ch, 6 passim, 162 ff., Conclusion, passim Corsica, 72 Cottbus, 3, 23, 115n20, 124, 126, 131–32, 144 Covid-19, 95n10 Crimea, 46 Croats, 36 culture, 10, 40, 63, 68, 90, 127, 163 folk, 4 high, 4 Cyrus, N., 91, 93 Czech lands, 139 Czech language, 143 Czech Republic, 7, 108 Czechoslovakia, 2, 15n3, 46, 72, 140 Czechs, 2, 17, 36, 51, 74 Dąbie, 103, 120, 129 Dammvorstadt, 8 Danube, 16 Danzig, 21, 43, 44. See also Gdańsk democracy, 68, 69, 102–3, 108, 110 Deutsche, 120%, 85ff. Deutsche Akademie, 38 Deutsche Arbeitergemeinschaft, 146 Deutsche Freundschaftskreise, 143, 146 Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), 7, 65ff. See also German Democratic Republic Deutsche Katholische Partei, 38 Deutsche Sozialistische Partei, 38 Deutsche Stammigkeit, 54, 62 Deutsche Vereinigung, 36 Deutsche Volksliste, 40ff., 54, 56–58, 79 Deutscher Volksverband, 38 Deutsches Auslandsinstitut, 38 de Zayas, A.M., 47 Dnipropatrovsk, 163 Dönhoff, Marion, 22, 31n13 Donnan, Hastings, 5–6 Drang nach Osten, 19, 138 Dresden, 23 Dreiländereck, 7 Dürrenschmidt, J., 9, 10, 80 Düsseldorf, 125 Dychów, 120

Index • 181

economics, 8 education, 25, 28–29, 40, 102, 115n14, 150, 117–18, 121–23, 126, 127, 129, 131, 135 Eisenhüttenstadt, 121, 137n15 Elbe, 17, 33n26, 97 Elwert, G., 20, 61 Emmerich, 125 England, 103 Enlightenment, 26 Enschede, 136n2 environmentalism, environmentalists, 108, 161 Essen, 84 Estonia, Estonians, 38 ethnicity, 2ff., 16, 63, 68, 70 Europa Garden, 120 European Union, 10, 46, 60n13, 64–67, 76–80, 94, 95n10, 104, 114n11, 116–19, 123–29, 160–63, 169 Eurode, 118, 125 Euroregions, 9, 10, 15n7, 102, 118–20, 124ff., 168–69 Fedko, E., 166 festivals, 111–12, 132, 165 Finland, 125 Fläming, 23, 114n2 Flanders, 19, 23 Forst, 51, 114n2, 117–18, 124, 126, 130–31, 136n3 Fortress Europe, 169n1 Forsythe, D., 61ff. France, French, 4, 27, 32n16, 39, 59n1, 62, 72, 84 Frankfurt an der Oder, 7, 8, 11, 15n7, 22, 23, 43, 45, 79, 92, 93, 97, 114n12, 118, 119, 124, 128, 130 Franks, 16 Frederick the Great, 20, 24ff., 32n7, 97, 121, 139, 140, 158n3 Frederick William III, 25 Freedom Oak, 166 Freedom Union, 77 Freikorps, 141 French Revolution, 3, 25, 26

Gastarbeiter, 50 Gaul, 139 Gazetka Polskiego Związku Kulturalnego w Berlinie, 90 Gellner, E., 4, 150 gender, 71 Generalgouvernement, 30, 37, 39, 41 genocide, 4 Georgia, 46 Gdańsk, 110. See also Danzig Geremek, B., 105 German Democratic Republic, 7, 65ff., 76, 81n4, 151. See also Deutsche Demokratische Republik German associations, Ch. 7 passim Germanization, 29, 30, 37, 39, 40, 57, 82, 113, 122, 140, 144, Ch. 7 passim German migrants, names for, 50ff. Gibraltar, 45 Gierek, E., 79, 103, 142, 153 Gliwice, 157 Głogów, 105, 124 Gniezno, 17, 74, 99 Goering, H., 33n25 Gomułka, W., 7, 99, 101, 142 Good Soldier Schweik, 74 Górale, 144 Görlitz, 7, 45, 93, 118, 124, 130, 135 Gorzów Wielkopolska, 77, 96, 107, 123, 161 Goths, 17 Goyatz, 120 grandfather, Aryan, 55 Graudenz, 35 Greater Poland, 73, 78, 96. See also Wielkopolskie Greece, Greeks, 5, 72 Greiser, A., 40, 42 Gross, W., 40, 42 Grudziądz. See Graudenz Grundgesetz, 67 Guben, Gubin, 9, 11, 15n7, 45, 60n15, 68, 92, 98, 101–4, 111–12, 118–20, 124, 126, 129–31, 135, 137n21, 169 Gubinek, 119 gwara, 144, 158n9

Gaida, B., 156 Galicia, 27, 73, 99

Habsburgs, Habsburg Empire, 2, 20, 139, 140

182 • Index

Hakatismus, Hakatisten, 29, 33n18, 83 Hamburg, 64, 69 Hamm, 120–21 Handelman, J., 4 Hannan, K., 20, 31n2, Ch. 7, passim Hanover, 119 Hanysy, 158n9 Haparanda, 125 Heel, 124 Helsinge, 136n3, 162–63 Helsinki Accords, 53 Henry I of Wrocław, 23 Henry V (of Germany), 23 Herder, J.G. von, 3, 25 Herta BSC, 133 Herzogenrath, 125 Hess, R., 38, 40 Himmler, H., 27, 37, 39, 40, 42 Hindenburg. See Zabrze Hinterpommern, 21, 22, 31n12, 43 Hitler, A., 2, 18, 27, 31, 34–39, 42, 59n1, 64, 69, 84, 141 Hof, 120 Holy Roman Empire, 17, 20, 81n3 Honecker, E., 69 Hoyeswerda, 70, 143 Hungary, 15n3, 38, 72, 74–75, 80, 81n5, 101, 108, 119 identities, segmented, 3, 12 incorporation, ethnic, 4 India, 58 Indo-European, 16 INTERREG, 8, 9 11 Irek, M., 7–8, 91, 94nn5, 9 Ireland, 5, 95n10 irredentism, 12, 20, 22, 24, 44, 46, 49, 87, 97, 139 Irish, 32n16 Iron Curtain, 75 Israel, 66 Italy, 38, 62, 72 Jablonowski, H., 20–23, 30 Japanese, 5 Jaruzelski, W., 81n3 Jelenia Góra, 94, 151 Jerczyński, D., 154 Jerusalem, 118

Jews, 5, 18, 20, 28, 34, 37, 61, 63, 72, 90, 93, 99, 114n5, 140–41 Jordanowo, 166 Jungdeutsche Partei, 36, 38 Junkers, 30ff., 45 Jurbarko, 131, 136n3 Justinian, 16 Kaczyński, L., 46 Kaliningrad. See Königsberg Kalisz, 107 Kamenz, 163 Kantstraße, 92 Kashubian, 22, 41, 144 Kaszubi. See Kashubian Katowice, 20, 145, 146, 150, 155, 159 Kennard, A., 9 Kerkade, 125 Kleßmann, C., 9, 36 Kleve, 125 Klumans, O., 34, 35, 37ff. Knights Templar, 23 Kochaj Lubuskia, 111 Koehl, R., 34 Kohl, H., 67 Königsberg, 21, 43, 94 Konkorowsky, B., 167n7 Kontakty, 90 Korfanty, A./W., 32n6 Kostrin, Kostrzyń, 92 Koszalin, 107 Kotlewski, P., 23 Kraków, 17, 73, 110, 144 Krätke, S., 8–9 kresy, 99, 110 Krosno, 101, 103–4, 115n15, 120, 128, 160, 167nn1, 2 Krüger, E., 118 Kujawsko Pomorskie, 78 Kulturkampf, 28 Kulczycki, J., 152ff. Kurcz, Z., 55, 140, 145, 148ff. Kwaśniewski, A., 77 Kwidzyń, 119 Laatzen, 119 labour, slave, 37, 84, 153 Łagów, 125, 128–29 Łęknica, 127

Index • 183

Landau, L., 85 language, 16 La Polonaise, 90 Latvia, Latvians, 31n11, 38, 51, 54, 122 Lausitz, 23, 113, 118, 144, 163 LEADER, 130, 162, 167n3 Lebus, 23, 94, 114n2 Lebuser Land, 43, 97 Lech, Czech and Rus, 17 Legnica, 28, 92 Lehmann, A., 47ff. Leipzig, 57 Lemberg. See Lviv Łemkowie (also Lemkos), 3, 28, 72, 164 Lepper, A., 103, 114n8, 133–34 Lesser Poland, 73, 78 Leszno, 105 Leubus, 24, 114n2 Liberum Veto, 25 Lichtenberg, 91 Lieberose, 120 Lille, 84 Limberg (NL), 125 Lithuania, Lithuanians, 18, 31n11, 33n20, 34, 38, 46, 74, 75, 98, 136n3, 141 local government, reform of, 75ff. Łódź, 150 Loire, 170n1 Lubars, 92 Lübben, 113 Lübbenau, 120, 137n17 Lübeck, 56 Lubiąż. See Leubus Lubsko, 51, 100, 101, 103, 107, 116–17, 124, 133, 136n3, 137n25, 160, 162–63 Lubuskie, Ziemia Lubuska, 11, 12, 22ff., 43, 44, 75, 77, 79, 87, 89, Ch. 5 passim, 138 passim Luxembourgish, 154 Łużyce, 113, 118 Lviv (also Lvov, Lwów), 21, 28, 74, 159n21 MacClancy, J., 5 Mach, Zdziesław, 140, 145, 148ff. Magdeburg, 17, 23, 24, 97, 112 Magdeburger Recht, 17, 19, 140 Magyars, 26 Major, J., 76

Mallorca, 51 Maria Theresa, 139 Märkisches Viertel, 99n8 Marzahn, 91 Marzanna, 92 Masovia, Masovians (also Masurans), 21, 22, 41, 73, 78, 94n4, 144 Maszewo, 102, 120, 129 Maszowsze. See Masovia Matthiesen, U., 9, 10 Mazowiecki, T., 76 mentality, 123, 135 Miami, 51 Middle Ages, 11, 30, 64, 96, 112, 123, 154 Międzyrzecz, 22, 129 Mieszko I, 17 Mickiewicz, A., 74, 122 migration, 5, 12, 19ff., 31n1, 35, 41, 44, 46ff., Ch. 4 passim, Ch. 7 passim mining, 105 Moldova, 163 Moravia, 139 Mostar, 118 Muskauer Park, 51 Napoleon (Bonaparte), 3, 17, 25, 26, 64 Napoleon III, 32n16 nationalism, 3–5, 18, 25, 65, 70, 74, 170n1 National Offensive, 147 NATO, 59n5, 80, 114n6 Navarrese, 3 Nazism, Nazis, 18, 28, 31, 32n15, 35–37, 40, 47, 50, 54, 58, 62–70, 73, 90, 141, 145, 148, 150–51, 156 Nazi-Soviet Pact, 18, 38 Neanderthals, 5 Neisse, 117. See also Nysa Netherlands, 19, 124–25 Neuhagen, 134 Neumark, 114n2 Neuzelle, 129 Nicosia, 118 Niederlausitz, 75 Niesky, 127 Nijmegen, 125 Normans, 3 Norway, 58 nostalgia, 58–59

184 • Index

Nowogród Bobrzański, 120; 137n17; 160, 163 Nowa Huta, 73 Nowy Lubusz, 23, 96, 114n2 Nowy Sól, 101, 104–6 Nysa, 127. See also Neisse Ochab, E., 152ff. Oder/Odra, 8, 17, 21–23, 31n12, 36, 69, 97, 114n12, 120, 143 Oder-Neisse line, 6, 15n7, 43, 44, 53, 81n4, 112, 147 O’Dowd, L., 5–6 Opole, 13, 21, 77, 87, 139, 140, 145, 150–51, 154, 155, 157ff. Opolskie, 73, 78 villages in, 157 Osiek, 100, 131–32, 162, 165 Ossowski, S., 153 Ostbahnof, 91 Osterode Zeitung, 48 Otto, K., 57 Otto I, 17 Páks, 119 Paleolithic, 5 Palestinians, 66 Pan-Slavism, 27 Pant, E., 156 Papen, F. von, 31 Pavolgrad, 163 Pawlek, W., 76 Persians, 5 Peuckert, W.-E., 20 PEWEX, 142, 158n7 PHARE, 8, 9, 118, 127–28 Piłsudski, J., 17, 18, 34, 38; 59nn1, 2; 74, 98 placenames, 99 Platforma Obywatelska (PO), 167nn2, 6 Polak, E., 166, 167n6 Poland-Lithuania, Grand Duchy of, 25, 74, 75 Polish People’s Party (PSL), 76–77 political science, 4, 8 Polonization, 99–100, 141 Pomerania, 12, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 32n10, 35, 59n8, 73, 78, 96–98, 140, 144, 147

Pomeranians, 84, 86, 87 Pommerellen, 21, 25, 35 Pommern, 32n10 Pomorskie, 78 Pomorze, 21, 32n10 populism, 70 Portugal, 4, 16 Pössnack, 137n18 Potsdam, 43 Poznań, 9, 17, 22, 29, 30, 34–35, 40, 73, 98–99, 106, 110, 119, 130 Grand Duchy of, 25, 26 Poznania, 22 Prague, 73 Prawa i Sprawiedliwości (Law and Justice Party), 19, 80, 106, 109, 114n7, 133–34, 156 Prussia, 18, 20, 22, 24, 25, 27, 30; 33nn22, 25; 69, 73 East, 12, 21, 22, 25, 31n13, 35, 43, 44, 86, 97 West, 29, 30, 43 Prussians (pagan), 21, 31n11 Przemyśl, 28 Przewóz, 127 Puhl, J., 29, 31 Race, racism, 27, 40, 42, 69, 60 Rada, U., 91, 93–94 Randstad, 125, 170n1 Rat der Deutschen, 36, 38 redistribution, land, 34 Regensburg, 120 regionalism, 3, 34, 62, 64ff., 75ff., Ch. 5 passim, 133, 152 Regions, Europe of, 169n1 Reich, Second, 26 Third, 69 Rennes, 169n1 Republic or Ireland. See Ireland Resenitz. See Rösenitz reunification, German, 15n3, 62, 66ff. Rhine, 16, 17, 126 Rhineland-Westphalia, 64, 69 Rollo, Count, 15n2 Roma, 39, 49 Romania, Romanians, 15n3, 49, 57, 72 Romanticism, 26 Rome, 16ff, 18, 31n1, 72, 165

Index • 185

Rostok, 70 Rothenburg, 127 Rösenitz, 157 Rügen, 45 Ruhr, 31, 35, 78, 79, 82–84, 91, 125, 170n1 Russia, Russians, 2, 4, 18, 19, 25, 27, 30; 33nn9, 22, 24; 36, 43, 46, 62, 73, 82–83 Rusyn, 28 Ruthenians, 28 Rzeczyca, 137n12 Sami, 58 Sandberg, M., 8 Sarmatians, 24, 81n5 Savigny Platz, 92 Saxons, 17 Saxony, 113 Schengen Agreement, 12, 60n13, 94, 116, 126 Schlesicher Bahnhof, 91 Schleswig-Holstein, 47 Schlögel, K., 20, 51, 90 Schmidt, Helmut, 55 Schwarzheide, 120 Scotland, Scots, 4, 137n16 Self-Defence Party, 103, 114n8, 133–34 Senftenburg, 120 Serbs (of Serbia), 36 Serbs (of E. Germany). See Sorbs serfdom, 30–31, 33n23 Seven Years War, 32n7 sewerage, 109, 116, 119–20, 128 Sikorski, W., 45–46 Silesia, Silesians, 11–13, 20–24, 32n8, 43, 44, 47, 52, 62, 72–75, 78–79, 84, 86–87, 96–98, 100, 104–5, 110, 113, 122, 124, Ch. 7 passim media in, 155ff. Silingians, 139 Sinkeiwicz, H., 18 Sława, 104ff. Śląsk. See Silesia Slovaks, 36 SLD (Democratic Left Alliance), 76, 96, 106, 108–9, 167n2 Slovenes, 27, 39 Słubfert, 8, 120

Słubice, 7, 8, 11, 15n7, 23, 45, 92, 96, 114n12, 118–19, 124, 128 Smith, A., 5 smuggling, 5, 19, 86, 92, 94, 118 SNB Euroregion, 123–24, 128–30, 164 sociology, 4, 8 Sokół, 84 Solidarity, Solidarność, 7, 18, 77, 142 Action Union, 77 Sommerfeld, 116–17, 133 Sorbs, 3, 23, 113, 115n19, 141, 144, 158n14, 163. See also Wends Soviet Union, 12, 15n3, 18, 27, 31n13, 40, 43, 45, 51, 59n2, 72, 89, 99, 100 Spain, 4, 16, 62, 72, 95n10, 139 Spreewald, 120 Sprucke, 135 SS (Schützstaffel), 37, 39, 40, 54 Stanisław Augustus Poniatowski, King, 122 statehood, 3 Stettin. See Szczecin Stolpe, M., 124 subsidiarity, 81n9 Sudentenland, 38, 47 Sweden, 95n10, 125 Świebodzin, 60n15, 62, 111–12, 125, 129, 134; 137nn12, 25; 166 Swiecko, 120 Szczecin, 45, 78, 107, 122–24, 132 szlachta, 101 Szlichtingowa, 51, 104ff., 122–24, 129 Tacitus, 16 Tajojki, 157 Tambor, J., 154 Tatars, 72 Terespol, 165 Terry, S.M., 45–46 Teschen. See Cieszyn Teutonic Knights, 21, 152 Teutons, 2, 20 Thatcher, M., 76 Theatre Island, 118 Thirty Years War, 81n3 Thorn, Second Peace of, 21 Tornio, 125 Toruń. See Thorn Toulouse, 134

186 • Index

tourism, 5, 7, 101, 112, 120, 123, 126, 128–29, 135, 166 Trans-Siberian Railway, 86 Trebnitz, 24 Treptow, 92 Trzebiel, 113 Turkey, Turks, 4, 6, 18, 50, 54, 61ff., 87, 91, 93, 115n17 Tyrol, 72 Ukraine, Ukrainians, 3, 18, 19, 21, 27–28, 33n20, 34, 36, 46, 72–75, 78, 88, 94, 98, 141, 153, 163, 164 Ulbricht, W., 69, 81n4 UNESCO, 127 Unia Wolności (UW), 109 United East German Association, 48 University of the Third Age, 134, 137n26 Urban, T., Ch. 7 passim USA. See America Vandals, 16, 139 Varzin, 33n24, 139 Verfassungspatriotismus, 79 verification (weryfikacja), 57, 79, 99, 141, 148, 151, 153. See also Wisła, Operacja Versailles, 34 Viadrina University, 118–19, 136n6, 137n9 Vienna, 73 Vilnius, Vilno, 33n20 Visigoths, 16 Vistula, 17, 21, 24 Vlotho, 116–17 Volksdeutsche, 36–40, 53–55 Mittelstelle, 36, 37, 39 Parteidienststelle, 37 Volkswagen Deutsche, 145, 154 Volkszugehörigkeit, 53–54, 57 Vorpommern, 31n12 Warsaw, 12, 17, 21, 25, 30, 73, 74, 77, 78, 96, 98, 105, 107–8, 110, 122, 124, 126, 132, 134, 162, 164, 168 Grand Duchy of, 25, 27 Warschauerallee, 92

Warta, Warthe, 23, 96 Warthegau, 40, 59n3 Wasserpolnisch, 41, Ch. 7 passim Weber, Max, 28, 82 Wehrmacht, 134 Weimar Republic, 26, 33n25, 66 Wellmitz, Welmice, 132ff. Welzow, 120 Wends, 23, 113, 141, 144. See also Sorbs weryfikacja. See verification Westphalia, Peace of, 21, 81n3 Wielkopolska, 96, 98, 104–5, 110. See also Greater Poland Wijewo, 104 Wilson, T., 5–6 Winiewicz, J.M., 44–45 Wirtschaftswunder, 50, 79, 142 Wisła, Operacja, 28. See also verification Wittenbergplatz, 91 World War, First, 2, 4, 32n6, 34 Second, 6, 11, 18, 19, 32n17, 62, 65, 72, 85, 91, 96, 121, 148 Wrocław, 8, 20–21, 44, 49, 59, 73, 74, 87, 139, 151. See also Breslau Wschowa, 101, 104ff., 109, 123, 129, 136n2 Yalta Agreement, 151 Yiddish, 20 Yugoslavia, Yugoslavs, 2, 15n3, 19, 46, 72, 86, 88 Zabrze, 157 Żagan, 113, 131 Żary, 102, 113, 115n19, 116, 120–21, 127–28, 131 Zasieki, 114n5 Zawadzki, S., 166 Zbąszynek, 22, 43 Zentralrat der Deutschen, 146 Zgorzelec, 7, 45, 72, 93, 118, 124, 130 Zielona Góra, 3, 28, 77, 96, 98, 101, 105, 107, 124, 126, 161, 164–65 Ziemia Lubuska. See Lubuskie ZPP, 84