Everything about Provinz Posen totally explained
The
Province of Posen () was a province of
Prussia from 1848-1918 and as such part of the
German Empire from 1871 to 1918; the whole area is now part of
Poland. Its capital was
Poznań (German:
Posen). The province replaced the
Grand Duchy of Posen.
Known as the "cradle of the Polish nation", this region was the home to
Poles,
Germans, some
Jews and a smattering of other peoples. Almost all the Poles were
Roman Catholic, and about 90% of the Germans were
Protestant. The small numbers of Jews were primarily to be found in the larger communities, mostly in skilled crafts, local commerce and regional trading. The smaller the community, the more likely it was to be either Polish or German. These "pockets of ethnicity" existed side by side, with German villages being the most dense in the northwestern areas. With
Germanization policies, the population became more German until the end of the 19th century, when the trend reversed (in the
Ostflucht). This was despite efforts of the government in
Berlin, which established the
Settlement Commission to buy land from Poles and make it available only to Germans.
Characteristics
The land is mostly flat, drained by two major
watershed systems; the
Noteć (German:
Netze) in the north and the
Warta (German:
Warthe) in the center.
Ice Age glaciers left
moraine deposits and the land is speckled with hundreds of "finger lakes", streams flowing in and out on their way to one of the two rivers.
Agriculture was the primary industry, as one would expect for the 1800s. The
three-field system was used to grow a variety of crops, primarily
rye,
sugar beets,
potatoes, other
grains, and some
tobacco and
hops. Significant parcels of wooded land provided building materials and
firewood. Small numbers of
livestock existed, including
geese, but a fair amount of
sheep were herded.
When this area came under Prussian control, the
feudal system was still in force. It was officially ended in Prussia (
see Freiherr vom Stein) in 1810 (1864 in
Congress Poland), but lingered in some practices until the late 1800s. The situation was thus that (primarily) Polish serfs lived and worked side by side with (predominantly) free German settlers. Though the settlers were given initial advantages, in time their lots were not much different. Serfs worked for the noble lord, who took care of them. Settlers worked for themselves and took care of themselves, but paid taxes to the lord.
Typically, an estate would have its
manor and farm buildings, and a village nearby for the Polish laborers. Near that village, there might be a German settlement. And in the woods, there would be a forester's dwelling. The estate owners, usually of the nobility, owned the local
grist mill, and often other types of mills or perhaps a
distillery. In many places,
windmills dotted the landscape, reminding one of the earliest settlers, the
Dutch, who began the process of turning unproductive river marshes into fields. This process was finished by the German settlers who were used to reclaim unproductive lands (not only marshland) for the host estate owners.
History
The Kingdom of Prussia had annexed the later territory of the Province of Posen during the 18th century
Partitions of Poland. It was part of the
Duchy of Warsaw during the
Napoleonic Wars, but was restored to Prussia in 1815 as the
Grand Duchy of Posen.
During the
Revolutions of 1848, the
Frankfurt Parliament attempted to divide the duchy into two parts: the Province of Poznań, which would have been given to the Germans and annexed to a newly-created
German Empire, and the Province of
Gniezno, which would have been given to the Poles and held outside Germany. Because of the protest of Polish parliamentarians, these plans failed and the integrity of the duchy was preserved. On
February 9,
1849, after a series of broken assurances, the Prussian administration renamed the duchy to the province of Posen. However, "Grand Duke of Posen" remained a title of the Hohenzollern dynasty and the name remained in official use until 1918.
With the
unification of Germany after the
Franco-Prussian War of 1871, the province of Posen became part of the
German Empire (1871-1918) and the city of Posen was officially named an imperial residence city.
In the 1880s, German Chancellor
Otto von Bismarck started
Germanisation policies, such as an increase of police forces, a colonization commission, the
German Society for the Eastern Borders (Hakata), and the
Kulturkampf. In 1904, special legislation was passed against the Polish population. The legislation of 1908 allowed the confiscation of Polish landed property. The Prussian authorities didn't allow the development of industries, so the duchy's economy was dominated by high-level agriculture.
After
World War I, the fate of the province was undecided. The Poles demanded that the region be included in the newly independent
Second Polish Republic, while the Germans refused any territorial concessions. The
Greater Poland Uprising broke out on
27 December 1918, a day after the speech of
Ignacy Jan Paderewski. The uprising received little support from the Polish government established in
Warsaw at that time. After the success of the uprising the Posen province was briefly (until mid-1919) an independent state with its own government, currency and military force.
With the signing of the
Treaty of Versailles at the end of
World War I, most of the province, primarily the areas with a Polish majority, was returned to Poland and reformed as the
Poznań Voivodship. The remaining German part of the province was reformed as
Posen-West Prussia with
Schneidemühl (
Piła) as its capital, until 1938, when it was divided between
Silesia,
Pomerania and
Brandenburg.
Ethnic conflict
Due to the large number of resident Germans (the first Germans coming as
settlers) and the presence of powerful, warring nations on all sides and the internal strife between three major religious faiths, the area was often a battleground of
ethnic conflicts.
The 1700s saw the
Jesuit-led
Counter-Reformation enact severe restrictions on the remaining German
Protestants. The end of the century turned the tables as Prussia seized the area during the
Partitions of Poland.
During the first half of the 1800s, the German population grew due to state sponsored
colonisation. In the second half, the Polish population grew gradually due to the
Ostflucht and a higher birth-rate among the Poles. The clash peaked during the
Kulturkampf, when many Catholics Germans in Posen joined with ethnic Poles in opposition to the Protestant Prussian government.
The
Polish language was eventually banned from schools and government offices as part of the
Germanisation policies.
In
World War II, part of the German minority living in the territory of the former Posen province formed
Selbstschutz units, which assisted in the
Nazi assault on
Poland and the subsequent atrocities against Poles and Jews.
Statistics
Area: 28,970 km²
1816: 820,176
1868: 1,537,300 (Bromberg 550,900 - Posen 986,400)
1871: 1,583,843
- Religion: 1871
- Catholics 1,009,885
- Protestants 511,429
- Jews 61,982
- others 547
- 1875: 1,606,084
- 1880: 1,703,397
- 1900: 1,887,275
- 1905: 1,986,267
- 1910: 2,099,831 (Bromberg 763,900 - Posen 1,335,900)
Divisions
Note: Prussian provinces were subdivided into government regions (Regierungsbezirke), which were subdivided into districts called Kreise. Cities would have their own "Stadtkreis" (urban district) and the surrounding rural area would be named for the city, but referred to as a "Landkreis" (rural district). In the case of Posen, the Landkreis was split into two: Landkreis Posen West, and Landkreis Posen East.
Data is from Prussian censuses, during a period of state-sponsored Germanization, and includes military garrisons. It is commonly criticized for being falsified.
1 includes bilingual speakers
2 only religious Jews, without regard of their native language
Presidents
The province was headed by presidents .
| Time in Office |
Name |
| 1815 - 1824 |
Joseph Zerboni de Sposetti 1760 - 1831 |
| 1825 - 1830 |
Johann Friedrich Theodor von Baumann 1768 - 1830 |
| 1830 - 1840 |
Eduard Heinrich Flottwell 1786 - 1865 |
| 1840 - 1842 |
Adolf Heinrich Graf von Arnim-Boitzenburg 1803 - 1868 |
| 1843 - 1850 |
Carl Moritz von Beurmann 1802 - 1870 |
| 1850 - 1851 |
Gustav Carl Gisbert Heinrich Wilhelm Gebhard von Bonin (1.time in office) 1797 - 1878 |
| 1851 - 1860 |
Eugen von Puttkamer 1800 - 1874 |
| 1860 - 1862 |
Gustav Carl Gisbert Heinrich Wilhelm Gebhard von Bonin (2.time in office) 1797 - 1878 |
| 1862 - 1869 |
Carl Wilhelm Heinrich Georg von Horn 1807 - 1889 |
| 1869 - 1873 |
Otto Graf von Königsmarck 1815 - 1889 |
| 1873 - 1886 |
William Barstow von Guenther 1815 - 1892 |
| 1886 - 1890 |
Robert Graf von Zedtlitz-Trützschler 1837 - 1914 |
| 1890 - 1899 |
Hugo Freiherr von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1840-1905 |
| 1899 - 1903 |
Karl Julius Rudolf von Bitter 1846 - 1914 |
| 1903 - 1911 |
Wilhelm August Hans von Waldow-Reitzenstein 1856 - 1937 |
| 1911 - 1914 |
Philipp Schwartzkopf ? |
| 1914 - 1918 |
Joh. Karl Friedr. Moritz Ferd. v. Eisenhart-Rothe 1862-1942 |
Further Information
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