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Abstract
Discussions about ethnic mobilization in eastern Europe have emphasized efforts of nationalist leaders to demarcate their community from their neighbors in mixed areas where ethnic boundaries and identities were blurred. Demarcation became a common means of defining the community both geographically and culturally, a process which later facilitated the community's mobilization. In the German Empire, however, the Polish–German demarcation was already stark, since it mostly coincided with Catholic–Protestant demarcations. But while the Polish community mobilized quickly and showed great solidarity, the German community did not. Using the Bromberg/Bydgoszcz administrative district as a model, the article argues that the local German community's internal divisions limited its ability to mobilize. Germans agreed on the need for greater German community solidarity, but differed on conceptualizations of its ideal structure and form. Liberal nationalists, envisioning a more egalitarian community defined by a common ethnicity, fought with local conservatives, who were as intent on preserving their prominence within the community as they were on struggling with the Poles. Such divisions crippled local German mobilization on any scale comparable to their Polish neighbors, suggesting that an ethnic community's self-demarcation is necessary but not sufficient to ensure its mobilization.
Notes
Essential background to any study of central European nationalism is Miroslav Hroch (60–78).
On the Habsburg Monarchy, one may also point to Jeremy King.
James Bjork's Neither German nor Pole is a study of Silesian ethnic identity. Til von Rahden focuses on the question of Jewish integration into larger German society. Of interest is also Torsten Lorenz's Von Birnbam nach Miedzychod, which documents one town across two regimes and two centuries. Elizabeth Morrow Clark is conducting research on similar themes in Danzig/Gdańsk in the twentieth century.
This by no means meant that each population was evenly distributed throughout the Regierungsbezirk. One might divide Bromberg/Bydgoszcz into three bands: one overwhelmingly German zone along the border with West Prussia, another overwhelmingly Polish (with the Germans mainly in the towns) along the border with the Posen/Poznan administrative district, and finally a more mixed zone intermediary area, with a decidedly more mixed population. Gnesen/Gniezno was the most prominent city in this mixed zone.
The Ostmarkenverein was also commonly referred to as HKT, for the initials of its founders Hansemann, Kennemann, and Tiedemann. The Polish press often referred to members as Hakatists.
Hans-Ulrich Wehler and others portrayed radical nationalist movements as an entrenched elite's means of resistance to the new parameters of mass politics inherent in industrialization. They promoted mass participation, but preserved elite control of that participation, resulting in “pseudo-democratization.” Geoff Eley and others portrayed radical nationalism as the political expression of a new generation of nationalists, who found no room for themselves in the older, informal and exclusive political structures of urban liberal and rural conservative political elites, and who made room for themselves through these organizations, to which the older elites then had to accommodate themselves. (See, in this regard, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, The German Empire 1871–1918, 83–90. This foreshadows the renderings in his more comprehensive work, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte. For the work of Geoff Eley, see especially Reshaping the German Right, and “German Politics and Polish Nationality” 200–230. See also the work of David Blackbourn, especially “The Politics of Demagogy in Imperial Germany.”) However, while the Sonderweg debate produced rich insights on German political development, and used the HKT's existence and activism as evidence, it said little specifically about local nationalist activism on the ethnic frontier itself, a curious omission.
See, among others, Richard Blanke, Werner Conze, and William Hagen (which nonetheless concentrates specifically on the Posen/Poznan Regierungsbezirk rather than on Bromberg). See also the pioneering work on German policy in Martin Broszat. More recently, see Peter Thaler and Robert Traba.
In addition to the above, see John J. Kulczycki; Marjorie Lamberti (especially chapter 4 on nationality policies); Harry Kenneth Rosenthal; Lech Trzeciakowski; and Zygmunt Zielinski 447–61.
By definition, of course, this meant that Polish women had broken ranks to marry German men, too. (Interestingly, German Catholic women marrying Polish men was never an issue, perhaps because it occurred so rarely.) German officials and nationalists assumed (mostly correctly) that the children would fall under the sway of the Polish mother, speak Polish, and be “lost” to the German community.
GStA PK, Landrat Inowrazlaw to Regierungspräsident. These included the “Lodge of Mirth in the East” (Loge zum Lust im Osten, of no recorded purpose or political belief), the Hunter's Guild, the Territorial Guard Association, the local branch of the Eastern Marches Association, the Public Officials' Association, the Railroad Officials' Association, the German-Protestant Masonic Association, the Teachers' Association, the Protestant Youth Association, the German-Catholic People's Association, and the Astrana Lodge of the “Odd Fellow” Brothers, “in which are represented mainly the well-to-do Progressive Jewish population.”
Ibid. Given the county's political sensitivity, and the fact that a new club might threaten the economic security of existing German-owned taverns, the Landrat concluded that it might be better to do nothing at all.
GStA PK, Erster Bürgermeister Bromberg/Bydgoszcz to Regierungspräsident, 1 December 1900.
GStA PK, Bürgermeister Czarnikau/Czarnków to Regierungspräsident, 19 June 1900.
GStA PK, Bromberger Tageblatt, 24 October 1903.
GStA PK, Croner Wochenblatt, 31 December 1902. The traditional theme at the Evening also was quite evident. At one point, the local rector “gave expression to the hope that the Evening had served its actual purpose, and that it had contributed to bringing the different classes closer to one another. The speaker referred to the fact that if humanity was to endure, then there had to be different classes, rich and poor, servants and served…. Only if quiet, order and peace reign in the land can the artisanry bloom as the others do. Against those unpatriotic journeymen [vaterlandslosen Gesellen – a reference to Social Democrats] who wish to overturn the whole order of our divinely ordained [hochgefügt] state, everyone must unite as one man, and to arm themselves with right and genuine patriotism.”
Even the mayor had demurred, claiming that he simply could not find the time to organize the Evenings (GStA PK, Oberbürgermeister Bromberg/Bydgoszcz to Regierungspräsident).
GStA PK, Letter from Westphal to Regierungspräsident. According to the Bromberger Tageblatt of 24 October 1903 (in the same folio), Westphal had been the driving force for organizing such Evenings in the previous winter.
Ibid.
GStA PK, Königliche Kreisschulinspektion Czarnikau/Czarnków to Regierungspräsident. The presence of two groups normally considered peripheral to the German community – Jews and German Catholics – leads one to speculate whether these groups saw the hosting of Evenings as a means of “joining the mainstream”.
See for example GStA PK, Königliche Kreisschulinspektor Bromberg/Bydgoszcz II to Regierungspräsident.
GStA PK, Königliche Kreisschulinpektion III (Süd) Bromberg/Bydgoszcz to Regierungspräsident and Kreisschulinspektor Bromberg/Bydgoszcz Ost to Regierungspräsident.
On the Ostmarkenverein, see Note 3 above.
Preussische Statistik 234 (1913): 315–23.
GStA PK, Landrat Czarnikau/Czarnków to Regierungspräsident, 12 October 1895. The membership included three estate-owners, one industrialist, 35 merchants, 51 tradesmen, 238 small-property-owners (divided roughly equally between farmers and townspeople), 73 officials, doctors, ministers and teachers, and 57 of other, unlisted professions.
Even the upper classes here joined enthusiastically. The Landrat noted that nearly all of the members of these (nonetheless hazily defined) classes had joined.
GStA PK, Landrat Czarnikau/Czarnków to Regierungspräsident, 12 December 1895.
Adam Galos notes (54) that the central office actually forbade branch activities which it had not authorized, even when such were salubrious for the German community. Branches were simply to provide information to the central office.
In this regard, see especially Galos, 114–15. In its initial year, the Schneidemühl branch even loaned 1,900 marks at 4.5% to a Protestant businessman threatened by a Jewish competitor. How this helped against the Poles is unmentioned. See GStA PK, Landrat Kolmar/Chodziez to Regierungspräsident.
An example of how lethargic a chapter could be can be seen in an article from the Bromberger Tageblatt of 13 March 1909 (GStA PK, “Rogowo”): “Rogowo, 11 March. The Eastern Marches Association in Storken recently held a general meeting. The meeting was so poorly attended that no elections were held. Even the chairman, Herr Lehr, was missing. The Association now counts only seven members, compared to the nearly fifty it counted three years ago under the chairmanship of the estate-owner Kühlwein. This national tepidness is deeply regrettable.”
Germans and Poles even occasionally joined each others' credit cooperatives. Local officials also had begun tracking how many Poles were apprenticed with German artisans. See, for example, GStA, “Statistik über den Fort- und Rückschritt” and “Förderung des deutschen Handwerkerstandes.”
In Filehne, where the size of the Polish population was small, there were only a few members from the countryside, and none in the cities. Even the Landrat was unenthusiastic, because he found it useless against Polish villagers, and he feared that it “could only bring tensions within the population into the open, which at present are completely quiet in the city and almost wholly so in the countryside” (GStA PK, Landrat Filehne/Wielen to Regierungspräsident).
GStA PK, “Die Förderung des Deutschthums in den Ostmarken.”
The Notables also could ensure (through indirect pressure) that others less desirable would not join the organization. The pattern of recruiting among Notable friends and acquaintances was not confined to the Eastern Marches Association. Roger Chickering (198) notes that other radical-nationalist organizations recruited in the same fashion.
Conversely, however, if Notables had little interest in the Association, then the chances of others founding a branch would be minimal.
The Association even made a point of using different overtures to recruit primarily urban or rural circles. The Association tried to recruit estate-owners in the region, relying on their personal relationships with Hansemann, Kennemann and Tiedemann: “characteristic in this regard was the application of arguments specially designed for the receivers.” But he does not specify how the Association did this. He notes only that Tiedemann at one point said that “we have to approach the agrarians differently than we would the townsmen.” See Galos, 61. In general, however, the Association fared poorly with estate-owners, in part because estate-owners needed Polish migrant labor, to whose use the Association continually objected, in part because Tiedemann and Major Endell, the provincial head of the Agrarian League, were arch-rivals. See Galos, 48.
GStA PK, Landrat Wirsitz to Regierungspräsident. The Landrat also noted that the shrill reaction of the local Polish press also inhibited activity.
GStA PK, Landrat Bromberg/Bydgoszcz to Regierungspräsident.
On Usch/Uszie, see Die Ostmark 1906, p. 95. On Wongrowitz/Wongrowieć, see Die Ostmark 1909, p. 121, and confirming complaints in the Ostdeutsche Presse (Bromberg/Bydgoszcz) 9 November 1909 and a confirming letter from the Landrat to the Regierungspräsident, dated 25 November 1909. The latter two can be found in GStA PK XVI Rep. 30, Nr. 680, v. 5.
GStA PK, XVI Rep.30, Nr.679. “Zur Schaffung eines deutschen Nationalschatzes für die Ostmark.” The cause and instigators of this sudden outburst unfortunately are not given in the available documentation.
GStA PK, “Deutscher Nationalschatz für die Ostmarken.”
The main committee for the Lissa (Posen/Poznan administrative district) branch, for example, called in vain for a more democratically run organization, criticizing the “caste-mentality.” The chair of the Birnbaum branch was expelled simply for violating a rule of unanimity on Association issues.
GStA PK, “Deutschen Nationalschatzes für die Ostmark.”
GStA PK, Bromberger Tageblatt, 1 November 1905: “Deutscher Ostmarkenverein.” The Tageblatt was skeptical of the project from the first for logistical reasons, but criticized the Association's opposition to what it nonetheless considered a worthy project, “for what we most need is money, money, and more money for the support and safeguarding of the German ‘Mittelstand’ in the Ostmark in town and country.” Needless to say, however, the National Fund was stillborn.
GStA PK, Bromberger Tageblatt, 2 November 1905: “Die Ortsgruppe Bromberg/Bydgoszcz des Ostmarken-Vereins.”
Die Ostmark, 1896, p. 123. The Strelno branch was the first to hold a German Day, in 1896, but the German Days were not common until after the turn of the century.
GStA PK, Bromberger Tageblatt, 20 June 1907: “Vorbereitungen zum ‘Deutschen Tage’”. Tims, in Germanizing Prussian Poland (246–250), describes the German Days briefly, without emphasis on how they affected the local German community.
Among others: “To be German means to be loyal, loyal to self and to one's people.” “Every German man should be called friend and brother.” “German in thinking, German in speech, German in trade, in every village.” See GStA PK Nr. 686 (“Die Deutschen Tage. 1905–1911”): Ostdeutsche Presse (Bromberg), 20 August 1907.
Sadly, archival files give us no information on “Brombergia.” Such would have given us great insight into the Germans' self-conception.
One may note two exceptions: the small group of German Catholics, and the even smaller group of Polish Protestants (who in fact lived in the southern part of the province, and not in the Bromberg/Bydgoszcz administrative district). The latter played no role in Bromberg/Bydgoszcz politics, while the former found themselves largely excluded from the predominantly Polish Catholic community. Rather than functioning as a bridge, they were suspected as covert agents of Germanization (Spickermann). A longer-term perspective may be found in Robert Alvis, who focuses on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and describes a transition from a Protestant-Catholic religious demarcation to a German-Polish ethnic demarcation. This, indeed, would have made for a much starker ethnic divide than in, say, Bohemia, where Germans and Czechs would have at least shared a confession. Alvis argues that this new demarcation made it easy for local Germans to identify with Prussia and later with Germany, in contrast to their Polish neighbors.