West Prussia

Royal and Ducal Prussia in 1525

The fortress Ordensburg Marienburg in Malbork, Poland. Founded in 1274 by the Teutonic Order on the river Nogat, it is the world’s largest brick castle. After 1466 it served as one of several royal residences of the Polish kings, fulfilling this function until 1772.

The region of Pomerelia or Gdańsk Pomerania, historically Polish and never inhabited by Old Prussians, was forcibly occupied by the monastic state of the Teutonic Knights in 1308, following an invasion of Poland under the pretext of helping the King Władysław I Łokietek to quell a rebellion, with subsequent Teutonic atrocities against the Polish population, such as the Slaughter of Gdańsk. The possession of Danzig and Pomerelia by the Teutonic Order was questioned consistently by the Polish kings Władysław I and Casimir the Great in legal suits in the papal court in 1320 and 1333.[1] Both times, as well as in 1339, the Teutonic Knights were ordered by the Pope to return Pomerelia and other lands back to Poland, but did not comply.[1] These events resulted in a series of Polish–Teutonic Wars throughout the 14th and 15th centuries. Under the Teutonic rule, an influx of western, mainly German-speaking farmers, traders and craftsmen was encouraged. Subsequent rebellions organized by the local population against the Teutonic state, initially by the Lizard Union and later by the Prussian Confederation, both pledging allegiance to the Polish king, caused the Thirteen Years' War which ultimately led to the Second Peace of Thorn, when most of the region and was reclaimed by Poland and henceforth formed Royal Prussia, consisting of the originally Polish Pomerelia and Chełmno Land, expanded by the addition of parts of the formerly Old Prussian territories of Pomesania, Pogesania and Warmia. The region had initially a degree of autonomy with an own local legislature, the Prussian Estates, and maintaining its own laws, customs and rights, but was ultimately re-absorbed directly into the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, following the Union of Lublin in 1569. The locally spoken language differed among social classes, with the aristocracy and urban burghers initially highly Germanised as a result of earlier Teutonic policies, but gradually shifting towards Polish in the later years, while the peasantry continued as predominantly Kashubian- and Polish-speaking.[2] A small area in the west of Pomerelia, the Lauenburg and Bütow Land, was granted to the rulers of Pomerania as a Polish fief before it was reintegrated with Poland in 1637, and later again transformed into a Polish fief, which it remained until the First Partition of Poland.

East Prussia around Königsberg, on the other hand, remained with the State of the Teutonic Knights, who were reduced to vassals of the Polish kings. Their territory was secularised to become the Lutheran Duchy of Prussia according to the 1525 Treaty of Kraków and the Prussian Homage. The duchy was later ruled in personal union with the Imperial Margraviate of Brandenburg from 1618. The Hohenzollern rulers of Brandenburg-Prussia were able to remove the Polish suzerainty by the 1657 Treaty of Wehlau, taking advantage of the Russo-Swedish Deluge, shortly thereafter transforming their possessions into a kingdom. This development turned out to be fatal to the Polish monarchy, as the two parts of the rising Kingdom of Prussia were separated by Polish land. Subsequently, the newly established kingdom entered into an alliance with Austria and Russia, invading Polish territories.

In the 1772 First Partition of Poland the Prussian king Frederick the Great took the occasion to annex most of Royal Prussia. The addition gave Prussia a land connection between the Province of Pomerania and East Prussia, cutting off the Polish access to the Baltic Sea and rendering East Prussia more readily defensible in the event of war with the Russian Empire. The annexed voivodeships of Pomerania (i.e. Pomerelia) excluding the City of Danzig, Malbork (German: Marienburg) and Chełmno (German: Kulm) excluding the City of Thorn (Polish: Toruń) were incorporated into the Province of West Prussia the following year, along with the formerly East Prussian Marienwerder Kreis. Ermland (Polish: Warmia) became part of East Prussia while the annexed parts of Greater Poland and Kuyavia formed a separate Netze District located to the south. The Partition Sejm ratified the cession on 30 September 1773, complemented by renouncement by the Polish king of his royal title in regard to Prussia. Thereafter, Frederick finally started to style himself "King of Prussia" rather than "King in Prussia." Both abovementioned exempted cities were ultimately captured by the Kingdom of Prussia upon the Second Partition of Poland in 1793.

The Polish administrative and legal code was replaced by the Prussian system, and 750 schools were built from 1772-1775.[3] Both Protestant and Roman Catholic teachers taught in West Prussia, and teachers and administrators were encouraged to be able to speak both German and Polish. Frederick II of Prussia also advised his successors to learn Polish, a policy followed by the Hohenzollern dynasty until Frederick III decided not to let William II learn Polish.[3] Despite this, Frederick II (Frederick the Great) looked askance upon many of his new citizens. In a letter from 1735, he calls them "dirty" and "vile apes".[4] He had nothing but contempt for the szlachta, the numerous Polish nobility, and wrote that Poland had "the worst government in Europe with the exception of Ottoman Empire".[5] He considered West Prussia less civilized than Colonial Canada[6] and compared the Poles to the Iroquois.[5] In a letter to his brother Henry, Frederick wrote about the province that "it is a very good and advantageous acquisition, both from a financial and a political point of view. In order to excite less jealousy I tell everyone that on my travels I have seen just sand, pine trees, heath land and Jews. Despite that there is a lot of work to be done; there is no order, and no planning and the towns are in a lamentable condition."[7] Frederick invited German immigrants to redevelop the province.[3][8] Many German officials also regarded the Poles with contempt.[6] According to the Polish historian Jerzy Surdykowski, Frederick the Great introduced 300,000 German colonists.[9] According to Christopher Clark, 54 percent of the annexed area and 75 percent of the urban population were German-speaking Protestants.[10] Further Polish areas were annexed in the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, now including the cities of Danzig (Gdańsk) and Thorn (Toruń).

After the defeat of Prussia by the Napoleonic French Empire at the 1806 Battle of Jena-Auerstedt followed by the Treaties of Tilsit, West Prussia lost its southern territory in the vicinity of Thorn and Kulm (Chełmno) to the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw; it also lost Danzig, which was a Free City from 1807 until 1814. After the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Danzig, Kulm, and Thorn were returned to West Prussia by resolution of the Vienna Congress. Some of the areas of Greater Poland annexed in 1772 that had formed the Netze District were added to West Prussia as well (the remainder became part of the Grand Duchy of Posen).

Administrative divisions and languages in West Prussia according to the German census 1910. The numbers include German military stationed in the region, as well as civil clerks and officials, were settled as part of German state's official policy of Germanization of Polish areas[11][12]
Legend for the districts:

  German language

  Polish language

  Kashubian language

  others or bilingual

The Congress of Vienna established the German Confederation (German: Deutscher Bund), an association of 39 German-speaking states in Central Europe under the nominal leadership of Austrian Empire, as a replacement for the dissolved Holy Roman Empire. Its boundaries largely followed those of its predecessor, the Holy Roman Empire, defining the territory of Germany for much of the 19th century.

Except for the Lauenburg and Bütow Land and the former Starostwo of Draheim, the Prussian lands which had been outside the Empire remained outside the Confederation, namely the former Ducal Prussia and those territories gained during the partitions of Poland. This included both predominantly Polish- or Kashubian-speaking areas (former Greater Poland and Pomerelia within West Prussia and the Grand Duchy of Posen) and German-speaking areas (Malbork Land within West Prussia and most of East Prussia). A failed attempt to include these lands in the German Empire (1848–49) was undertaken by the Frankfurt Parliament.

In 1815, the province was administratively subdivided into the Regierungsbezirke Danzig and Marienwerder. From 1829 to 1878, West Prussia was combined with East Prussia to form the Province of Prussia, after which they were re-established as separate provinces. In 1840, King Frederick William IV of Prussia sought to reconcile the state with the Catholic Church and the kingdom's Polish subjects by granting amnesty to imprisoned Polish bishops and by re-establishing Polish instruction in schools in districts having Polish majorities.

With rise of nationalism, the Hohenzollern-ruled territory increasingly became a target of aggressive Germanisation efforts, German settlement, anti-Catholic campaigns (Kulturkampf), as well as disfranchisement and expropriations of Poles, and was finally annexed into Germany following the North German Confederation Treaty (1866). The Polish historian Andrzej Chwalba cites Germanization measures that included:

• Ethnic Germans were favoured in government contracts, and only they won them over Poles.[11]
• Ethnic Germans were also promoted in investment plans and supply contracts.[11]
• German craftsmen in Polish territories received the best locations in cities from authorities so that they could start their own business and prosper.[11]
• Soldiers received orders that banned them from buying in Polish shops and from Poles under the threat of arrest.[11]
• German merchantmen were encouraged to settle in Polish territories.[11]
• Tax incentives and beneficial financial arrangements were proposed to German officials and clerks if they would settle in Polish-inhabited provinces.[11]

At the time of German Unification in 1871, the Kingdom of Prussia was the largest and dominant part of the North German Confederation, the predecessor of the newly-formed German Empire.

In the German census of 1910, the population of West Prussia was put at 1,703,474, of whom around 64 percent listed their first language as German, 28 percent Polish and 7 percent Kashubian. According to Polish authors the real share of Poles and Kashubians was 43% (rather than 35.5% as in official figures), but many of them were counted as Catholic Germans by Prussian census clerks.[13]

In 1910, ethnic Poles were between 36% and 43% of West Prussia's populace.[13] After the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, most of pre-war West Prussia's territory (62%) and population (57%, the majority of whom were Polish) was granted to the Second Polish Republic or the Free City of Danzig (8% of territory, 19% of population), while parts in the west (18% of territory, 9% of population) and east (12% of territory, 15% of population) of the former province remained in Weimar Germany.[14] The western remainder formed Grenzmark Posen-West Prussia in 1922, while the eastern remainder became part of Regierungsbezirk West Prussia within East Prussia.

The 1920 East Prussian plebiscite was also held in the eastern part of West Prussia, which was known as the Marienwerder Plebiscite Area, and included partially or fully, the districts of Marienwerder, Stuhm, Rosenberg and Marienburg. The residents of this region voted by a majority of 92.4% to remain with Germany.[15]

In 1939, the region was invaded, then included in the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia within Nazi Germany during World War II and settled with 130,000 German colonists,[19] while between 120,000 and 170,000 Poles and Jews were removed by the Germans through expulsion, massacres, enslavement or killed in extermination camps.[20] As in all other areas, Poles and Jews were classified as "Untermenschen" by the German state, with their fate being slavery and extermination, the latter in particular during Intelligenzaktion Pommern, as well as in the Stutthof concentration camp. Later in the war, many West Prussian Germans fled westward as the Red Army advanced on the Eastern Front. All of the areas occupied by Nazis were restored to Poland according to the post-war Potsdam Agreement in 1945, along with further neighbouring areas of former Nazi Germany and areas that had been part of Germany before. The vast majority of the remaining German population of the region that had not fled was subsequently expelled westward. Many German civilians were deported to labor camps like Vorkuta in the Soviet Union, where a large number of them perished or were later reported missing. In 1949, the refugees established the non-profit Landsmannschaft Westpreußen to represent West Prussians in the Federal Republic of Germany.