Germanisation
Encyclopedia
Germanisation is both the spread of the German language
, people and culture
either by force or assimilation
, and the adaptation of a foreign word to the German language
in linguistics
, much like the Romanisation
of many languages which do not use the Latin alphabet
. It was a central plank of German liberal thinking in the early nineteenth century, at a period when liberalism
and nationalism
went hand-in-hand.
and elements of German culture
. There are examples of complete assimilation into German culture, as it happened with the pagan Slavs
in the diocese of Bamberg
in the 11th century. A perfect example of eclectic adoption of German culture is the field of law in Imperial and present-day Japan
, which is organised very much to the model of the German Empire
. Germanisation took place by cultural contact, by political decision of the adopting party (e.g. in the case of Japan), or (especially in the case of Imperial
and Nazi Germany
) by force.
In Slavic countries, the term Germanisation is often understood solely as the process of acculturation of Slavic
and Baltic speakers
, after the conquests or by cultural contact in the early Dark Ages, areas of the modern Eastern Germany to the line of the Elbe
. In East Prussia
, forced resettlement of the Prussian people by the Teutonic Order
and the Prussian state, as well as acculturation from immigrants of various European countries (Poles
, French
and Germans) contributed to the eventual extinction of the Prussian language in the 17th century.
Another form of Germanisation is the forceful imposition of German culture, language and people upon non-German people, Slavs in particular.
Early Germanisation went along with the Ostsiedlung
during the Middle Ages
, e.g. in Hanoverian Wendland
, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lusatia
, and other areas, formerly inhabited by Slavic tribes - Polabian Slavs
such as Obotrites
, Veleti
and Sorbs
. Relations of early forms of Germanisation was described by German monks in manuscripts like Chronicon Slavorum
.
Lüchow-Dannenberg
is better known as the Wendland, a designation referring to the Slavic people of the Wends
from the Slavic tribe Drevani
— the Polabian language
survived until the beginning of the 19th century in what is now the German state of Lower Saxony
.
A complex process of Germanisation took place in Bohemia
after the defeat of Bohemian Protestants at the Battle of White Mountain
in 1620. The German prince and Frederick V, Elector Palatine
, elected as king of Bohemia by the Bohemian estates in 1619, was defeated by Catholic forces loyal to the Habsburg
Emperor, Ferdinand II
. Among the Bohemian lords who were punished and had their lands expropriated after Frederick's defeat in 1620 were German- and Czech-speaking landowners.
Thus, this conflict was feudal in nature, not national. Although the Czech language lost its significance as a written language in the aftermath of the events, it is doubtful that this was intended by the Habsburg rulers, whose aims were of a feudal and religious character
In Tyrol there was a germanisation of the ladino-romantsch of the Venosta Valley (now Italy) promoted by the Austria in the XVI century. There was made for avoiding contact with protestants of the Grigioni canton.
, Moravia
, Silesia
, Pomerania
, Lusatia
, and Slovenia
led to an increased sense of "pride" in national cultures during this time. However, centuries of cultural dominance of the Germans left a German mark on those societies; for instance, the first modern grammar of the Czech language
by Josef Dobrovský
(1753–1829) – "Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der böhmischen Sprache" (1809) – was published in German because the Czech language was not used in academic scholarship.
In the German colonies, the policy of having German as an official language
led to the forming of German-based pidgins and German-based creole languages
, such as Unserdeutsch
.
(1780–90), a leader influenced by the Enlightenment, sought to centralise control of the empire and to rule it as an enlightened despot. He decreed that German
replace Latin
as the empire's official language.
Hungarians perceived Joseph's language reform as German cultural hegemony, and they reacted by insisting on the right to use their own tongue. As a result, Hungarian lesser nobles sparked a renaissance of the Hungarian language
and culture. The lesser nobles questioned the loyalty of the magnates, of whom less than half were ethnic Magyars, and even those had become French-
and German-speaking courtiers. The Magyar national revival subsequently triggered similar movements among the Slovak, Romanian, Serbian
, and Croatian minorities within the Kingdom of Hungary
.
In Tyrol there was a second operation of Germanisation (the first was in the 16th century) between the 19th and 20th centuries prohibiting the teaching of the Italian and Ladin languages in the school.
The only language accepted and allowed was German.
Legislation and government policies in the Kingdom of Prussia
sought a degree of linguistic and cultural Germanisation, while in the Imperial Germany
a more intense form of cultural Germanisation was pursued, often with the explicit intention of reducing the influence of other cultures or institutions, such as the Catholic Church. In Nazi Germany
, however, the eradication of non-German cultures and languages was pursued through deportations, resettlement and the physical extermination of non-German populations.
under the kings Frederick I
, Frederick William I.
, and Frederick the Great. The settlements were planned either in sparsely populated areas, in areas which had been reclaimed (e. g. after drying up the Oderbruch
swamp under Frederick the Great), or in areas that had been depopulated by war or plague (e. g. the settlement of the Protestants expelled from the Archbishopric of Salzburg
in East Prussia
1731/32 under king Frederick William I.). Additionally, several 10.000 French Protestant refugees
granted asylum in Prussia after the renouncement of the Edict of Nantes
in 1685. Around 1700 about half of the people of Berlin actually spoke French and the French community in Berlin used the French language in their services until 1807, when they decided to give it up and use German instead to protest against the occupation of Prussia by Napoléon. These settlements were not intended as a means of Germanisation but rather an instrument of bringing the economy of Prussia to a more advanced stage, much in the same way Slavonian rulers invited German settlers into their countries in the Middle Ages. Nationality was not especially important to Frederick the Great. To underline his religious tolerance he once stated that "if Turks want to come and settle here we will build mosques for them". Germanisation was not the primary intention of these settlements, although it may have been a side effect.
Prussia was one of the first countries in Europe to introduce compulsory primary school attendance under Frederick William I. Among the principal motivations was religious education; it was believed that if people were able to read the Bible it would make "good Christians" out of them. Education in primary school was carried out in the prevailing language of the area and thus primary school was not a tool of Germanisation in the 18th century.
Nevertheless, Prussia and Austria actively participated in the partitions of Poland
, a fact that would severely stress German-Polish relations later on, which had been uncomplicated until then.
issued a manifest to the Poles in Posen:
The minister for Education Altenstein stated in 1823:
In the first half of the 19th century, Prussian language policy remained largely tolerant. However, this tolerance gradually changed in the second half of the 19th century after the foundation of the German Emprire in 1871. Successive policies aimed at the elimination of non-German languages from public life and from academic settings, such as schools. Later in the German Empire
, Poles were (together with Danes, Alsatian
s, German Catholics
and Socialist
s) portrayed as "Reichsfeinde" ("foes to the empire"). In addition, in 1885, the Prussian Settlement Commission
financed from the national government's budget was set up to buy land from non-German hands and distribute it among German farmers. From 1908 the committee was entitled to force the landowners to sell the land. Other means included the Prussian deportations
from 1885–1890, in which non-Prussian nationals who had lived in Prussia for substantial time periods (mostly Poles and Jews) were removed and a ban was issued on the building of houses by non-Germans (see Drzymała's van). Germanisation policy in schools also took the form of abuse of Polish children by Prussian officials (see Września
). Germanisation unintentionally stimulated resistance, usually in the form of home schooling and tighter unity in the minority groups.
In 1910, Maria Konopnicka
responded to the increasing persecution of Polish people by Germans by writing her famous song called Rota
that instantly became a national symbol for Poles, with its sentence known to many Poles: The German will not spit in our face, nor will he Germanise our children. Thus, the German efforts to eradicate Polish culture, language, and people met not only with failure, but managed to reinforce the Polish national identity and strengthened efforts of Poles to re-establish a Polish state.
An international meeting of socialists held in Brussels
in 1902 condemned the Germanisation of Poles in Prussia, calling it "barbarous".
living in East Prussia experienced similar policies of Germanisation. Although ethnic Lithuanians had constituted a majority in areas of East Prussia during the 15th and 16th centuries (from the early 16th century it was often referred to as Lithuania Minor
), the Lithuanian population began to shrink in the 18th century. Plague and subsequent immigration from Germany, notably from Salzburg
, were the primary factors in this development. Germanisation policies were tightened during the 19th century, but even into the early 20th century the territories north and south/south-west of the Neman River
contained a Lithuanian majority. Kursenieki
experienced similar developments, but this ethnic group never had a large population.
. Due to migration within the German Empire
, as many as 350,000 Polish nationals made their way to the Ruhr in the late 19th century, where they worked in the coal and iron industries. German authorities viewed them as potential danger and a threat and as a "suspected political and national" element. All Polish workers had special cards and were under constant observation by German authorities. In addition, anti-Polish stereotypes were promoted, such as postcards with jokes about Poles, presenting them as irresponsible people, similar to the treatment of the Irish
in New England
around the same time. Many Polish traditional and religious songs were forbidden by Prussian authorities. Their citizens' rights were also limited by German state.
sports clubs and the workers' union Zjednoczenie Zawodowe Polskie (ZZP), Wiarus Polski (press), and Bank Robotnikow were among the best-known such organisations near the Ruhr. At first the Polish workers, ostracised by their German counterparts, had supported the Catholic centre party. Since the beginning of the 20th century their support more and more shifted towards the social democrats. In 1905, Polish and German workers organised their first common strike. Under the Namensänderungsgesetz (law of changing surnames), a significant number of "Ruhr-Poles" change their surnames and Christian names to "Germanised" forms, in order to evade ethnic discrimination. As the Prussian authorities during the Kulturkampf
suppressed Catholic services in Polish language by Polish priests, the Poles had to rely on German Catholic
priests. Increasing intermarriage between Germans and Poles contributed much to the Germanisation of ethnic Poles in the Ruhr area.
During the Weimar Republic
, Poles first were recognised as minority only in Upper Silesia. The peace treaties after the First World War did contain an obligation for Poland to protect its national minorities (Germans, Ukrainians and other), whereas no such clause was introduced by the victors in the Treaty of Versailles
with Germany. In 1928, the "Minderheitenschulgesetz" (minorities school act) regulated education of minority children in their native tongue. From 1930 on Poland and Germany agreed to treat their minorities fairly.
, the lives of certain minorities in Germany were threatened. Germanisation by Nazi Germany was referred to as "Aryanisation
".
The East was intended as the Lebensraum
that the Nazis were seeking, to be filled with Germans. Hitler, speaking with generals immediately prior to his chancellorship, declared that people could not be Germanised; only the soil could be. When the program was in progress, Heinrich Himmler
explicitly warned against equating this new Germanisation with that which had occurred earlier:
It should be noted that the policy of Germanisation in the Nazi period carried an explicitly ethno-racial
rather than purely nationalist
meaning by virtue of culture or linguistics, aiming for the spread of a "biologically superior" Aryan race
rather than that of the German nation. Therefore, this did not mean a total extermination of all people there, as Eastern Europe was regarded as having people of Aryan/Nordic descent, particularly among their leaders. Indeed Himmler also declared that no drop of German blood would be lost or left behind for an alien race. In Nazi documents, even reading the term "German" can be problematic, since it could be used to refer to people classifed as "ethnic Germans" who spoke no German.
Inside Germany, propaganda
, such the film Heimkehr
, depicted these ethnic Germans as deeply persecuted—often with recognisable Nazi tactics—and the invasion and Germanisation as necessary to protect them. Forced labor of ethnic Germans and persecution of them were major themes of the anti-Polish propaganda campaign of 1939, prior to the invasion. Bloody Sunday was widely exploited as depicting the Poles as murderous toward Germans.
In a top-secret memorandum, "The Treatment of Racial Aliens in the East", dated May 25, 1940, Himmler wrote "We need to divide Poland's many different ethnic groups up into as many parts and splinter groups as possible". There were two Germanisation actions in occupied Poland realised in this way:
suitable as defined on the Nazi Volksliste
, and treated according to their categorisation. The Germans regarded the holding of active leadership roles as an Aryan trait, whereas a tendency to avoid leadership and a perceived fatalism was associated by many Germans with Slavonic peoples. Adults who were selected for but resisted Germanisation were executed. Such execution was carried out on the grounds that German blood should not support non-German nations, and that killing them would deprive foreign nations of superior leaders. The Intelligenzaktion
was justified, even though these elites were regarded as likely of German blood, because such blood enabled them to provide leadership for the fatalistic Slavs. Germanizing "racially valuable" elements would prevent any increase in the Polish intelligenstia, as the dynamic leadership would have to come from German blood.
Under Generalplan Ost
, a percentage of Slavs in the conquered territories were to be Germanised. Gauleiter
s Albert Forster
and Arthur Greiser
reported to Hitler that 10 percent of the Polish population contained "Germanic blood", and were thus suitable for Germanisation. The Reichskommissar
s in northern and central Russia reported similar figures. Those unfit for Germanisation were to be expelled from the areas marked out for German settlement. In considering the fate of the individual nations, the architects of the Plan decided that it would be possible to Germanise about 50 percent of the Czechs, 35 percent of the Ukrainians
and 25 percent of the Belorussians. The remainder would be deported to western Siberia
and other regions. In 1941 it was decided that the Polish nation
should be completely destroyed; the German leadership decided that in ten to 20 years, the Polish state under German occupation was to be fully cleared of any ethnic Poles and resettled by German colonists.
In the Baltic States, after an agreement with Stalin, who suspected they would be loyal to the Nazis, the Nazis set out to encourage the departure of "ethnic Germans" by the use of propaganda. This included using scare tactics about the Soviet Union, and led to tens of thousands leaving
. Those who left were not referred to as "refugees", but were rather described as "answering the call of the Fuhrer." German propaganda films such as GPU and Friesennot
depicted the Baltic Germans as deeply persecuted in their native lands. Packed into camps for racial evaluation, they were divided into groups: A, Altreich, who were to be settled in Germany and allowed neither farms nor business (to allow for closer watch), S Sonderfall, who were used as forced labor, and O Ost-Falle, the best classification, to be settled in the Eastern Wall—the occupied regions
, to protect German from the East—and allowed independence. This last group was often given Polish homes where the families had been evicted so quickly that half-eaten meals were on tables and small children had clearly been taken from unmade beds. Members of Hitler Youth
and the League of German Girls
were assigned the task of overseeing such evictions to ensure that the Poles left behind most of their belongings for the use of the settlers. The deportation orders required that enough Poles be removed to provide for every settler — that, for instance, if twenty German "master bakers" were sent, twenty Polish bakeries had to have their owners removed.
Nazi authorities had great fears of these settlers being tainted by their Polish neighbors and not only warned them to let their "foreign and alien" surroundings to have no impact on their Germanness, but settled them in compact communities, which could be easily monitored by the police. Only families classified as "highly valuable" were kept together.
For Poles who did not resist and the resettled ethnic Germans, Germanisation began. Militant party members were sent to teach them to be "true Germans". Hitler Youth
and League of German Girls
sent young people for "Eastern Service", which entailed (particularly for the girls) assisting in Germanisation efforts. One member of the League recounted afterward that she at first pitied the starving Polish children, but soon realised this was "politically naive" and to concentrate solely on the Volksdeutsche
; her beliefs in the stupidity of Poles were reinforced by the lack of educated Poles, not knowing they had been jailed or deported. This included instruction in the German language, as many spoke only Polish or Russian. They found the new settlers dispirited and put on various entertainments such as songfests to encourage them and ease their transition. Membership in Hitler Youth
and the League of German Girls
was enforced for the children. Goebbels
and other propagandists worked to establish cultural centers and other means to created Volkstum or racial consciousness in the settlers. This was needed to perpetuate their work; only by effective Germanisation could mothers, in particular, create the German home. Goebbels
also was the official patron of Deutsches Ordensland or Land of Germanic Order, an organisation to promote Germanisation. This efforts were used in propaganda in Germany itself, as when NS-Frauen-Warte
s cover article was on "Germany is building in the East."
Germanisation tended to proceed slowly. Peasants given larger farms and more animals than they had had in the Baltic States could not cope. Younger people spoke German poorly, if at all, and older people were found to become completely denationalised, requiring that they be Germanised in Germany before they could be restored to the East where they would increase the German population. Many resettled Baltic Germans learned Polish quickly and got along better with the locals than with the German authorities. After two years of efforts, the authorities concluded that true Germanisation would have to await the end of the war.
Other efforts in Poland were also regarded as Germanisation, as for instance the setting up of the IG-Farben at Auschwitz-Monowitz.
was set up in the Ukraine as well. Ukrainians were forcibly deported, and ethnic Germans forcibly relocated there. Racial assignment was carried out in a confused manner; the Reich rule was three German grandparents, but some asserted that any person who acted like a German and evinced no "racial concerns" should be eligible.
As the need for workers in Germany grew, the standards for who qualified as Germanisable were lowered. Himmler's declaration that "it is in the nature of German blood to resist" led to the paradoxical conclusion that Balts or Poles who resisted Germanisation measures were regarded as more suitable material than more compliant ones.
Plans to eliminate Slavs from Soviet territory to allow German settlement included starvation; Nazi leaders expected that millions would die after they removed such supplies as they needed
. This was regarded as an actual advantage by Nazi officials. When Hitler received a report of many, well-fed Ukrainian children, he declared the promotion of contraception and abortion was urgently needed, and neither medical care nor education was to be provided. Experiments in mass sterilisation in concentration camps may also have been intended for use on the Slavonic populations.
. The program was praised for not only allowing more women to have children with their new domestic servants to assist in their labours, but for reclaiming the German blood and giving advantages to the women, who would work in Germany, and might marry there.
Children were selected for "racially valuable traits" before being shipped to Germany. Many Nazis were astounded at the number of Polish children found to exhibit "Nordic" traits, but assumed that all such children were genuinely German children, who had been Polonised
; Hans Frank
summoned up such views when he declared, "When we see a blue-eyed child we are surprised that she is speaking Polish." The term used for them was wiedereindeutschungsfahig -- meaning capable of being re-Germanised. These might include the children of people executed for resisting Germanisation. If attempts to Germanise them failed, or they were determined to be unfit, they would be killed to eliminate their value to the opponents of the Reich.
In German-occupied Poland, it is estimated that a number ranging from 50,000 to 200,000 children were removed from their families to be Germanised. The Kinder KZ
was founded specifically to hold such children. It is estimated that at least 10,000 of them were murdered in the process as they were determined unfit and sent to concentration camps and faced brutal treatment or perished in the harsh conditions during their transport in cattle wagons, and only 10-15% returned to their families after the war. Obligatory Hitlerjugend membership made dialogue between old and young next to impossible, as use of languages other than German was discouraged by officials. Members of minority organisations were either sent to concentration camps by German authorities or executed.
Many children, particularly Polish and Yugoslavian who were among the first taken, declared on being found by Allied forces that they were German. Russian and Ukrainian children, while not gotten to this stage, still had been taught to hate their native countries and did not want to return.
, the Dutch
, and the Flemish
, were like the Germans themselves a part of the Aryan
Master Race
, regardless of these peoples' own acknowledgement of their "Aryan" identity.
Germanisation in these conquered countries proceeded more slowly. The Nazis had a need for local cooperation and the local industry with its workers; furthermore, the countries were regarded as more racially acceptable, the assortment of racial categories being boiled down by the average German to mean "East is bad and West is acceptable." The plan was to win the Germanic elements over slowly, through education. Himmler, after a secret tour of Belgium and Holland, happily declared the people would be a racial benefit to Germany. Occupying troops were kept under strict discipline and instructed to be friendly to win the population over, a technique that did not work not only because of their having conquered the countries, but because it was soon clear that being German was far superior to being merely Nordic. Pamphlets, for instance, enjoined all German women to avoid sexual intercourse with all foreign workers brought to Germany as a danger to their blood
.
Various Germanisation plans were implemented. Dutch and Belgian Flemish prisoners of war were sent home quickly
, to increase Germanic population, while Belgian French ones were kept as laborers. Lebensborn
homes were set up in Norway for Norwegian women impregnanted by German soldiers, with adoption by Norwegian parents being forbidden for any child born there. Alsace-Lorraine was annexed; thousands of residents, too loyal to France, Jewish, or North Africa, were deported to Vichy France; French was forbidden in schools; intransigent German speakers were shipped back to Germany for re-Germanisation, just as Poles were. Extensive racial classification was practiced in France, for future uses.
Himmler's original plan for the colony of Hegewald
was to recruit settlers from Scandanvia and the Netherlands; this was unsuccessful.
Himmler's masseuse, Felix Kersten
, claimed an even more radical scheme was devised by Himmler which envisioned the near-future resettlement of the entire Dutch nation to agricultural lands in the Vistula
and Bug
valleys of German-occupied Poland in order to facilitate their immediate Germanisation. 8.5 million people were to be relocated in total, after which all Dutch capital and real estate would be confiscated by the Reich and distributed to reliable SS men, and an SS Province of Holland declared in vacated Dutch territory. However this claim was shown to be a myth by Loe de Jong
in his book Two Legends of the Third Reich.
, and Slavic Sorbs
are classified as traditional ethnic minorities and are guaranteed cultural autonomy by both the federal and state governments. Concerning the Danes, there is a treaty between Denmark
and Germany from 1955 regulating the status of the German minority in Denmark and vice versa. Concerning the Frisians
, the northern federal-state of Schleswig-Holstein
passed a special law aimed at preserving the language. The cultural autonomy of the Sorbs is a matter of the constitutions of both Saxony
and Brandenburg
. Nevertheless, almost all of the Sorbs are bilingual and the Lower Sorbian
language is regarded as endangered, as the number of native speakers is dwindling, even though there are programmes funded by the state to sustain the language.
In post-1945 Austria, in the federal-state of Burgenland
, Hungarian
and Croatian
have regional protection by law. In Carinthia
, Slovenian
-speaking Austrians are also protected by the law.
Descendants of Polish migrant workers and miners have intermarried with the local population and are thus culturally mixed. It is different with modern and present-day immigration from Poland to Germany after the fall of the iron curtain
. These immigrants usually are Polish citizens and live as foreigners in Germany. For many immigrant Poles, Polish ethnicity is not the prime category through which they wish to characterise themselves or want to be evaluated by others, as it could impact their lives in a negative way.
in spelling of loanwords to the rules of the German language — for example the change from the imported word bureau to Büro.
, that led to the downfall of the Roman Empire
. In historic times, two major instances of assimilation of Slavic people into the German nation occurred. Around 950 AD, the Eastern Franks(Ottonian dynasty) started to put pressure upon the Slavic peoples inhabiting large areas of what was to become, in the mid of the 20th Century, the German Democratic Republic. By 1100 AD, after more than 100 years of wars and proselytisation, the complete area of contemporary Germany had come under the influence of the German Empire. During the following centuries, most of the non-Germanic tribes (like the Baltic Prussians) completely abandoned their language, and their descendants are today regarded as 'typically German'. Only in a small area, southeast of Berlin, known as the Lausitz, the Slavic-speaking Sorb
people maintained their language and culture, and their descendants today represent the only recognised, non-immigrant minority in East Germany. This is mentioned in more details in the sections above. In any case, the names of many cities, including Berlin
(meaning 'little swamp'), and some surnames, most notably those of 'typically Prussian' nature like 'von Clausewitz' or 'Virchow', still reflect the Slavic roots of this part of Germany. The second major assimilation of people with Slavic ancestry occurred during the Industrial Revolution
in the 19th Century. Thousands of people from Eastern Europe
migrated to the West to work in the surging industrial areas of Germany (Silesia
, Ruhr-Area). Although they brought their surnames with them, they nevertheless became culturally amalgamated quite rapidly by the German majority.
The Halle region is located exactly at the intersection of the Germanic and Slavic spheres of influence of the 10th century, but it is also a traditional mining and chemical industry area (Halle-Leipzig-Bitterfeld) that has attracted Slavic workers during the Industrial Revolution. Both of these factors should have had an impact upon the male-specific genetic structure of the local population where surnames of Germanic and Slavic origin are about equally frequent. In terms of the relative importance of the two historic instances for the observed correlation between Y-STR haplotypes and surname characteristics, it is interesting to note that surnames first occurred in Europe in Venice during the 9th Century. From there, the law of name bearing was adopted in France
and Catalonia
in the 11th, and in England, and Western and Southern Germany in the 12th Century. In the North and East of Germany, the custom was practised no earlier than the 15th Century and, in some rural regions, surnames became fashionable only in the 18th century, nearly 900 years after their first appearance in Europe. Furthermore, surnames frequently changed or became modified until the beginning of the 19th century. Therefore, it appears unlikely that the correlation between surnames and Y-STR haplotypes observed in our study dates back to the Middle Ages, but is more likely to be the result of the immigration of industrial workers in the 19th Century instead. In this respect, Central Europe appears to differ from England
and Ireland
where patrilineally inherited names are presumed to have a much deeper rooting.
"The Halle samples were divided into three subgroups, according to surname. Two larger groups comprised 195 males with surnames that were definitely German ('G') and 185 males with definitely Slavic surnames ('S'). The third group contained 39 males with mixed German-Slavic surnames ('M'). Samples of 29 Sorbs and some 1313 published haplotypes from Polish
males 13 were used for comparison. Surname groups were defined on the basis of spelling, using certain combinations of consonants and surname suffixes to categorise the origin of the name in question. Suffixes '-er', '-mann' and '-burg', for example, are typically German whereas '-ke', '-ka', '-ow' and '-ski' are typically Slavic. In addition, the root morphemes of surnames were also examined. Examples for a Slavic root comprise 'Lessing', which sounds German but was derived from the Slavic expression for "forest settler", and "Kafka", which in Czech
means "jackdaw". Mixed surnames include both German and Slavic elements, that is, a German basis and a Slavic ending, or vice versa (Wudtke or Kuppke). These surnames are the result of a long parallel usage of both German and Slavic languages in the eastern part of Germany."
A similar characterisation of the present samples in terms of the relative proportion of the fringe haplotypes resulted in highly significant differences between the two surname-defined German subgroups, G+M and S (chi2=13.094, 2 df, P=0.001). While 88 of the 234 haplotypes (38%) in the combined G+M group were classified as 'Western', this was the case for only 42 of the 185 haplotypes (23%) in group S. In contrast, 80 G+M haplotypes (34%) were of 'Eastern' type compared to 91 S haplotypes (49%). The portion of unclassifiable haplotypes was 28% in both groups (66 in G+M, 52 in S).
Professor Jürgen Udolph, of the University of Leipzig Institute for Slavic Studies, contends that 15 million people in modern Germany
have Slavic or specifically Polish surnames. He believes the concentration of Slavic names in East Germany is even higher than the national average, accounting for 30% of all surnames in the region.
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, people and culture
Culture of Germany
German culture began long before the rise of Germany as a nation-state and spanned the entire German-speaking world. From its roots, culture in Germany has been shaped by major intellectual and popular currents in Europe, both religious and secular...
either by force or assimilation
Cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. The term assimilation is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. New...
, and the adaptation of a foreign word to the German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
in linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, much like the Romanisation
Romanization
In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
of many languages which do not use the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
. It was a central plank of German liberal thinking in the early nineteenth century, at a period when liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
and nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
went hand-in-hand.
Forms of Germanisation
Historically, there are very different forms and degrees of expansion of German languageGerman language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and elements of German culture
Culture of Germany
German culture began long before the rise of Germany as a nation-state and spanned the entire German-speaking world. From its roots, culture in Germany has been shaped by major intellectual and popular currents in Europe, both religious and secular...
. There are examples of complete assimilation into German culture, as it happened with the pagan Slavs
Slavic peoples
The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...
in the diocese of Bamberg
Bamberg
Bamberg is a city in Bavaria, Germany. It is located in Upper Franconia on the river Regnitz, close to its confluence with the river Main. Bamberg is one of the few cities in Germany that was not destroyed by World War II bombings because of a nearby Artillery Factory that prevented planes from...
in the 11th century. A perfect example of eclectic adoption of German culture is the field of law in Imperial and present-day Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, which is organised very much to the model of the German Empire
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
. Germanisation took place by cultural contact, by political decision of the adopting party (e.g. in the case of Japan), or (especially in the case of Imperial
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
and Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
) by force.
In Slavic countries, the term Germanisation is often understood solely as the process of acculturation of Slavic
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
and Baltic speakers
Baltic languages
The Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
, after the conquests or by cultural contact in the early Dark Ages, areas of the modern Eastern Germany to the line of the Elbe
Elbe
The Elbe is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Krkonoše Mountains of the northwestern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia , then Germany and flowing into the North Sea at Cuxhaven, 110 km northwest of Hamburg...
. In East Prussia
East Prussia
East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...
, forced resettlement of the Prussian people by the Teutonic Order
Teutonic Knights
The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem , commonly the Teutonic Order , is a German medieval military order, in modern times a purely religious Catholic order...
and the Prussian state, as well as acculturation from immigrants of various European countries (Poles
Poles
thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...
, French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
and Germans) contributed to the eventual extinction of the Prussian language in the 17th century.
Another form of Germanisation is the forceful imposition of German culture, language and people upon non-German people, Slavs in particular.
Early
Ostsiedlung
Ostsiedlung , also called German eastward expansion, was the medieval eastward migration and settlement of Germans from modern day western and central Germany into less-populated regions and countries of eastern Central Europe and Eastern Europe. The affected area roughly stretched from Slovenia...
during the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, e.g. in Hanoverian Wendland
Lüchow-Dannenberg
Lüchow-Dannenberg is a district in Lower Saxony, Germany which is usually referred to as Hannoversches Wendland or Wendland. It is bounded by the districts of Uelzen and Lüneburg and the states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt Lüchow-Dannenberg is a district in...
, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lusatia
Lusatia
Lusatia is a historical region in Central Europe. It stretches from the Bóbr and Kwisa rivers in the east to the Elbe valley in the west, today located within the German states of Saxony and Brandenburg as well as in the Lower Silesian and Lubusz voivodeships of western Poland...
, and other areas, formerly inhabited by Slavic tribes - Polabian Slavs
Polabian Slavs
Polabian Slavs - is a collective term applied to a number of Lechites tribes who lived along the Elbe river, between the Baltic Sea to the north, the Saale and the Limes Saxoniae to the west, the Ore Mountains and the Western Sudetes to the south, and Poland to the east. They have also been known...
such as Obotrites
Obotrites
The Obotrites , also commonly known as the Obodrites, Abotrites, or Abodrites, were a confederation of medieval West Slavic tribes within the territory of modern Mecklenburg and Holstein in northern Germany . For decades they were allies of Charlemagne in his wars against Germanic Saxons and Slavic...
, Veleti
Veleti
The Veleti or Wilzi were a group of medieval Lechites tribes within the territory of modern northeastern Germany; see Polabian Slavs. In common with other Slavic groups between the Elbe and Oder Rivers, they were often described by Germanic sources as Wends. In the late 10th century, they were...
and Sorbs
Sorbs
Sorbs are a Western Slavic people of Central Europe living predominantly in Lusatia, a region on the territory of Germany and Poland. In Germany they live in the states of Brandenburg and Saxony. They speak the Sorbian languages - closely related to Polish and Czech - officially recognized and...
. Relations of early forms of Germanisation was described by German monks in manuscripts like Chronicon Slavorum
Chronicon Slavorum
Chronica Slavorum is a historical record attributed to Helmold. It is a continuation of Deeds of bishops of the Hamburg Church by Adam von Bremen. Chronica describes events related to North-West Slavic tribes known as the Wends up to 1171. Chronica is a very significant historic record of...
.
Lüchow-Dannenberg
Lüchow-Dannenberg
Lüchow-Dannenberg is a district in Lower Saxony, Germany which is usually referred to as Hannoversches Wendland or Wendland. It is bounded by the districts of Uelzen and Lüneburg and the states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt Lüchow-Dannenberg is a district in...
is better known as the Wendland, a designation referring to the Slavic people of the Wends
Wends
Wends is a historic name for West Slavs living near Germanic settlement areas. It does not refer to a homogeneous people, but to various peoples, tribes or groups depending on where and when it is used...
from the Slavic tribe Drevani
Drevani
The Drevani were a tribe of Polabian Slavs settling on the Elbe river in the area of the present-day Lüchow-Dannenberg district of Lower Saxony, Germany....
— the Polabian language
Polabian language
The Polabian language is an extinct West Slavic language that was spoken by the Polabian Slavs in present-day North-Eastern Germany around the Elbe river, from which derives its name...
survived until the beginning of the 19th century in what is now the German state of Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony is a German state situated in north-western Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the sixteen states of Germany...
.
A complex process of Germanisation took place in Bohemia
Bohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
after the defeat of Bohemian Protestants at the Battle of White Mountain
Battle of White Mountain
The Battle of White Mountain, 8 November 1620 was an early battle in the Thirty Years' War in which an army of 30,000 Bohemians and mercenaries under Christian of Anhalt were routed by 27,000 men of the combined armies of Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor under Charles Bonaventure de Longueval,...
in 1620. The German prince and Frederick V, Elector Palatine
Frederick V, Elector Palatine
Frederick V was Elector Palatine , and, as Frederick I , King of Bohemia ....
, elected as king of Bohemia by the Bohemian estates in 1619, was defeated by Catholic forces loyal to the Habsburg
Habsburg
The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...
Emperor, Ferdinand II
Ferdinand II
Ferdinand II is the name of:* Ferdinand II of León , king from 1157* Fernando II, Duke of Braganza, also known as Ferdinand II...
. Among the Bohemian lords who were punished and had their lands expropriated after Frederick's defeat in 1620 were German- and Czech-speaking landowners.
Thus, this conflict was feudal in nature, not national. Although the Czech language lost its significance as a written language in the aftermath of the events, it is doubtful that this was intended by the Habsburg rulers, whose aims were of a feudal and religious character
In Tyrol there was a germanisation of the ladino-romantsch of the Venosta Valley (now Italy) promoted by the Austria in the XVI century. There was made for avoiding contact with protestants of the Grigioni canton.
Linguistic influences
The rise of nationalism that occurred in the late 18th and 19th centuries in BohemiaBohemia
Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...
, Moravia
Moravia
Moravia is a historical region in Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, and one of the former Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Silesia. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region...
, Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
, Pomerania
Pomerania
Pomerania is a historical region on the south shore of the Baltic Sea. Divided between Germany and Poland, it stretches roughly from the Recknitz River near Stralsund in the West, via the Oder River delta near Szczecin, to the mouth of the Vistula River near Gdańsk in the East...
, Lusatia
Lusatia
Lusatia is a historical region in Central Europe. It stretches from the Bóbr and Kwisa rivers in the east to the Elbe valley in the west, today located within the German states of Saxony and Brandenburg as well as in the Lower Silesian and Lubusz voivodeships of western Poland...
, and Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
led to an increased sense of "pride" in national cultures during this time. However, centuries of cultural dominance of the Germans left a German mark on those societies; for instance, the first modern grammar of the Czech language
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
by Josef Dobrovský
Josef Dobrovský
Josef Dobrovský was a Bohemian philologist and historian, one of the most important figures of the Czech national revival.- Life & Work :...
(1753–1829) – "Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der böhmischen Sprache" (1809) – was published in German because the Czech language was not used in academic scholarship.
In the German colonies, the policy of having German as an official language
Official language
An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
led to the forming of German-based pidgins and German-based creole languages
German-based creole languages
A German creole, more properly a German-based creole language, is a creole language with a significant influence from the German language....
, such as Unserdeutsch
Unserdeutsch language
Unserdeutsch , or Rabaul Creole German, is a German-based creole language spoken primarily in Papua New Guinea. It was formed among the New Guinean children residing in a German-run orphanage...
.
In the Austrian Empire
Joseph IIJoseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
Joseph II was Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790 and ruler of the Habsburg lands from 1780 to 1790. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I...
(1780–90), a leader influenced by the Enlightenment, sought to centralise control of the empire and to rule it as an enlightened despot. He decreed that German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
replace Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
as the empire's official language.
Hungarians perceived Joseph's language reform as German cultural hegemony, and they reacted by insisting on the right to use their own tongue. As a result, Hungarian lesser nobles sparked a renaissance of the Hungarian language
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
and culture. The lesser nobles questioned the loyalty of the magnates, of whom less than half were ethnic Magyars, and even those had become French-
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and German-speaking courtiers. The Magyar national revival subsequently triggered similar movements among the Slovak, Romanian, Serbian
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
, and Croatian minorities within the Kingdom of Hungary
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
.
In Tyrol there was a second operation of Germanisation (the first was in the 16th century) between the 19th and 20th centuries prohibiting the teaching of the Italian and Ladin languages in the school.
The only language accepted and allowed was German.
In Prussia
Germanisation in Prussia occurred in several stages:- Germanisation attemptsGermanisation of Poles during PartitionsAfter partitioning Poland in the end of 18th century, the Kingdom of Prussia and later German Empire imposed a number of Germanisation policies and measures in the newly gained territories, aimed at limiting the Polish ethnic presence in these areas...
pursued by Frederick the GreatFrederick II of PrussiaFrederick II was a King in Prussia and a King of Prussia from the Hohenzollern dynasty. In his role as a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was also Elector of Brandenburg. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel...
in territories of Partitioned PolandPartitions of PolandThe Partitions of Poland or Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in the second half of the 18th century and ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland for 123 years... - Easing of Germanisation policy in the period 1815–30
- Intensification of Germanisation and persecution of Poles in the Grand Duchy of Posen by E.Flotwell in 1830–41
- The process of Germanisation ceases during the period of 1841–49
- Restarted during years of 1849–70
- Intensified by BismarckOtto von BismarckOtto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg , simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a Prussian-German statesman whose actions unified Germany, made it a major player in world affairs, and created a balance of power that kept Europe at peace after 1871.As Minister President of...
during his KulturkampfKulturkampfThe German term refers to German policies in relation to secularity and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, enacted from 1871 to 1878 by the Prime Minister of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck. The Kulturkampf did not extend to the other German states such as Bavaria...
against Catholicism and Polish people - Slight easing of the persecution of Poles during 1890–94
- Continuation and intensification of activity restarted in 1894 and pursued till the end of World War IWorld War IWorld War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
Legislation and government policies in the Kingdom of Prussia
Kingdom of Prussia
The Kingdom of Prussia was a German kingdom from 1701 to 1918. Until the defeat of Germany in World War I, it comprised almost two-thirds of the area of the German Empire...
sought a degree of linguistic and cultural Germanisation, while in the Imperial Germany
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
a more intense form of cultural Germanisation was pursued, often with the explicit intention of reducing the influence of other cultures or institutions, such as the Catholic Church. In Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, however, the eradication of non-German cultures and languages was pursued through deportations, resettlement and the physical extermination of non-German populations.
Situation in the 18th century
When judging Germanisation, one has to decide whether this was seen as an act of ameliorating the economy of the country or the aim of repressing or eliminating the local language and culture. Settlers from all over Europe were invited to settle PrussiaPrussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
under the kings Frederick I
Frederick I of Prussia
Frederick I , of the Hohenzollern dynasty, was Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia in personal union . The latter function he upgraded to royalty, becoming the first King in Prussia . From 1707 he was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel...
, Frederick William I.
Frederick William I of Prussia
Frederick William I of the House of Hohenzollern, was the King in Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg from 1713 until his death...
, and Frederick the Great. The settlements were planned either in sparsely populated areas, in areas which had been reclaimed (e. g. after drying up the Oderbruch
Oderbruch
The Oderbruch is a region along the river Oder between the towns Oderberg and Bad Freienwalde in the north and Lebus in the south...
swamp under Frederick the Great), or in areas that had been depopulated by war or plague (e. g. the settlement of the Protestants expelled from the Archbishopric of Salzburg
Archbishopric of Salzburg
The Archbishopric of Salzburg was an ecclesiastical State of the Holy Roman Empire, its territory roughly congruent with the present-day Austrian state of Salzburg....
in East Prussia
East Prussia
East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...
1731/32 under king Frederick William I.). Additionally, several 10.000 French Protestant refugees
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...
granted asylum in Prussia after the renouncement of the Edict of Nantes
Edict of Nantes
The Edict of Nantes, issued on 13 April 1598, by Henry IV of France, granted the Calvinist Protestants of France substantial rights in a nation still considered essentially Catholic. In the Edict, Henry aimed primarily to promote civil unity...
in 1685. Around 1700 about half of the people of Berlin actually spoke French and the French community in Berlin used the French language in their services until 1807, when they decided to give it up and use German instead to protest against the occupation of Prussia by Napoléon. These settlements were not intended as a means of Germanisation but rather an instrument of bringing the economy of Prussia to a more advanced stage, much in the same way Slavonian rulers invited German settlers into their countries in the Middle Ages. Nationality was not especially important to Frederick the Great. To underline his religious tolerance he once stated that "if Turks want to come and settle here we will build mosques for them". Germanisation was not the primary intention of these settlements, although it may have been a side effect.
Prussia was one of the first countries in Europe to introduce compulsory primary school attendance under Frederick William I. Among the principal motivations was religious education; it was believed that if people were able to read the Bible it would make "good Christians" out of them. Education in primary school was carried out in the prevailing language of the area and thus primary school was not a tool of Germanisation in the 18th century.
Nevertheless, Prussia and Austria actively participated in the partitions of Poland
Partitions of Poland
The Partitions of Poland or Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in the second half of the 18th century and ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland for 123 years...
, a fact that would severely stress German-Polish relations later on, which had been uncomplicated until then.
Situation in the 19th century
After the Napoleonic Wars, Prussia obtained the Grand Duchy of Posen and Austria remained in possession of Galicia. In May 1815 king Frederick William III.Frederick William III of Prussia
Frederick William III was king of Prussia from 1797 to 1840. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel .-Early life:...
issued a manifest to the Poles in Posen:
You also have a Fatherland. [...] You will be incorporated into my monarchy without having to renounce your nationality. [...] You will receive a constitution like the other provinces of my kingdom. Your religion will be upheld. [...] Your language shall be used like the German language in all public affairs and everyone of you with suitable capabilities shall get the opportunity to get an appointment to a public office. [...]
The minister for Education Altenstein stated in 1823:
Concerning the spread of the German language it is most important to get a clear understanding of the aims, whether it should be the aim to promote the understanding of German among Polish-speaking subjects or whether it should be the aim to gradually and slowly Germanise the Poles. According to the judgement of the minister only the first is necessary, advisable and possible, the second is not advisable and not accomplishable. To be good subjects it is desirable for the Poles to understand the language of government. However, it is not necessary for them to give up or postpone their mother language. The possession of two languages shall not be seen as a disadvantage but as a benefit instead because it is usually associated with a higher flexibility of the mind. [..] Religion and language are the highest sanctuaries of a nation and all attitudes and perceptions are founded on them. A government that [...] is indifferent or even hostile against them creates bitterness, debases the nation and generates disloyal subjects.
In the first half of the 19th century, Prussian language policy remained largely tolerant. However, this tolerance gradually changed in the second half of the 19th century after the foundation of the German Emprire in 1871. Successive policies aimed at the elimination of non-German languages from public life and from academic settings, such as schools. Later in the German Empire
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
, Poles were (together with Danes, Alsatian
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
s, German Catholics
Roman Catholicism in Germany
The German Catholic Church, part of the worldwide Catholic Church, is under the leadership of the Pope, curia in Rome, and the German bishops. The current president of the conference is Robert Zollitsch, the archbishop to Freiburg, the country's second largest diocese with 2.07 million Catholics...
and Socialist
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
s) portrayed as "Reichsfeinde" ("foes to the empire"). In addition, in 1885, the Prussian Settlement Commission
Settlement Commission
The Prussian Settlement Commission was a Prussian government commission that operated between 1886 and 1924, but actively only until 1918. It was set up by Otto von Bismarck to increase land ownership by Germans at the expense of Poles, by economic and political means, in the German Empire's...
financed from the national government's budget was set up to buy land from non-German hands and distribute it among German farmers. From 1908 the committee was entitled to force the landowners to sell the land. Other means included the Prussian deportations
Prussian deportations
The Prussian deportations were mass expulsions of ethnic Poles from Prussia in between 1885–1890. More than 30,000 Poles with Austrian or Russian citizenship were deported from the Prussian part of divided Poland to the respective Austrian and Russian occupation zones...
from 1885–1890, in which non-Prussian nationals who had lived in Prussia for substantial time periods (mostly Poles and Jews) were removed and a ban was issued on the building of houses by non-Germans (see Drzymała's van). Germanisation policy in schools also took the form of abuse of Polish children by Prussian officials (see Września
Wrzesnia
Września is a town in central Poland with 28,600 inhabitants . It is situated in the Września County, Greater Poland Voivodeship , previously in Poznań Voivodeship , on the Wrzesnica River.- History :...
). Germanisation unintentionally stimulated resistance, usually in the form of home schooling and tighter unity in the minority groups.
In 1910, Maria Konopnicka
Maria Konopnicka
Maria Konopnicka nee Wasiłowska , was a Polish poet, novelist, writer for children and youth, a translator, journalist and critic, as well as an activist for women's rights and Polish independence.Maria Konopnicka also composed a poem about the execution of the Irish patriot, Robert...
responded to the increasing persecution of Polish people by Germans by writing her famous song called Rota
Rota (poem)
Rota is an early 20th-century Polish poem and anthem, once proposed to be the Polish national anthem.-History:Rotas lyrics were written in 1908 by Maria Konopnicka...
that instantly became a national symbol for Poles, with its sentence known to many Poles: The German will not spit in our face, nor will he Germanise our children. Thus, the German efforts to eradicate Polish culture, language, and people met not only with failure, but managed to reinforce the Polish national identity and strengthened efforts of Poles to re-establish a Polish state.
An international meeting of socialists held in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
in 1902 condemned the Germanisation of Poles in Prussia, calling it "barbarous".
Prussian Lithuanians
Prussian LithuaniansPrussian Lithuanians
The term Prussian Lithuanians or Lietuvininkai refers to a Western Lithuanian ethnic group, which did not form a nation and inhabited a territory in East Prussia called Prussian Lithuania or Lithuania Minor in contrast to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later the Republic of Lithuania .Unlike most...
living in East Prussia experienced similar policies of Germanisation. Although ethnic Lithuanians had constituted a majority in areas of East Prussia during the 15th and 16th centuries (from the early 16th century it was often referred to as Lithuania Minor
Lithuania Minor
Lithuania Minor or Prussian Lithuania is a historical ethnographic region of Prussia, later East Prussia in Germany, where Prussian Lithuanians or Lietuvininkai lived. Lithuania Minor enclosed the northern part of this province and got its name due to the territory's substantial...
), the Lithuanian population began to shrink in the 18th century. Plague and subsequent immigration from Germany, notably from Salzburg
Salzburg
-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...
, were the primary factors in this development. Germanisation policies were tightened during the 19th century, but even into the early 20th century the territories north and south/south-west of the Neman River
Neman River
Neman or Niemen or Nemunas, is a major Eastern European river rising in Belarus and flowing through Lithuania before draining into the Curonian Lagoon and then into the Baltic Sea at Klaipėda. It is the northern border between Lithuania and Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast in its lower reaches...
contained a Lithuanian majority. Kursenieki
Kursenieki
The Kuršininkai are a nearly extinct Baltic ethnic group living along the Curonian Spit. "Kuršininkai" refers only to inhabitants of Lithuania and former East Prussia that speak a Lithuanian language dialect....
experienced similar developments, but this ethnic group never had a large population.
Polish Coal Miners in the Ruhr Valley
Another form of Germanisation was the relation between the German state and Polish coal miners in the Ruhr areaRuhr Area
The Ruhr, by German-speaking geographers and historians more accurately called Ruhr district or Ruhr region , is an urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With 4435 km² and a population of some 5.2 million , it is the largest urban agglomeration in Germany...
. Due to migration within the German Empire
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
, as many as 350,000 Polish nationals made their way to the Ruhr in the late 19th century, where they worked in the coal and iron industries. German authorities viewed them as potential danger and a threat and as a "suspected political and national" element. All Polish workers had special cards and were under constant observation by German authorities. In addition, anti-Polish stereotypes were promoted, such as postcards with jokes about Poles, presenting them as irresponsible people, similar to the treatment of the Irish
Irish American
Irish Americans are citizens of the United States who can trace their ancestry to Ireland. A total of 36,278,332 Americans—estimated at 11.9% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2008 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau...
in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
around the same time. Many Polish traditional and religious songs were forbidden by Prussian authorities. Their citizens' rights were also limited by German state.
Polish response
In response to these policies, the Polish formed their own organisations to maintain their interests and ethnic identity. The SokolSokol
The Sokol movement is a youth sport movement and gymnastics organization first founded in Czech region of Austria-Hungary, Prague, in 1862 by Miroslav Tyrš and Jindřich Fügner...
sports clubs and the workers' union Zjednoczenie Zawodowe Polskie (ZZP), Wiarus Polski (press), and Bank Robotnikow were among the best-known such organisations near the Ruhr. At first the Polish workers, ostracised by their German counterparts, had supported the Catholic centre party. Since the beginning of the 20th century their support more and more shifted towards the social democrats. In 1905, Polish and German workers organised their first common strike. Under the Namensänderungsgesetz (law of changing surnames), a significant number of "Ruhr-Poles" change their surnames and Christian names to "Germanised" forms, in order to evade ethnic discrimination. As the Prussian authorities during the Kulturkampf
Kulturkampf
The German term refers to German policies in relation to secularity and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, enacted from 1871 to 1878 by the Prime Minister of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck. The Kulturkampf did not extend to the other German states such as Bavaria...
suppressed Catholic services in Polish language by Polish priests, the Poles had to rely on German Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
priests. Increasing intermarriage between Germans and Poles contributed much to the Germanisation of ethnic Poles in the Ruhr area.
During the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
, Poles first were recognised as minority only in Upper Silesia. The peace treaties after the First World War did contain an obligation for Poland to protect its national minorities (Germans, Ukrainians and other), whereas no such clause was introduced by the victors in the Treaty of Versailles
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
with Germany. In 1928, the "Minderheitenschulgesetz" (minorities school act) regulated education of minority children in their native tongue. From 1930 on Poland and Germany agreed to treat their minorities fairly.
Germanisation under the Third Reich
During the Nazi periodNazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, the lives of certain minorities in Germany were threatened. Germanisation by Nazi Germany was referred to as "Aryanisation
Aryanization
Aryanization is a term coined during Nazism referring to the forced expulsion of so-called "non-Aryans", mainly Jews, from business life in Nazi Germany and the territories it controlled....
".
Plans
Lebensraum
was one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population, for a Greater Germany...
that the Nazis were seeking, to be filled with Germans. Hitler, speaking with generals immediately prior to his chancellorship, declared that people could not be Germanised; only the soil could be. When the program was in progress, Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
explicitly warned against equating this new Germanisation with that which had occurred earlier:
It is not our task to Germanise the East in the old sense, that is, to teach the people there the German language and German law, but to see to it that only people of purely German, Germanic blood live in the East. (Himmler)
It should be noted that the policy of Germanisation in the Nazi period carried an explicitly ethno-racial
Nazism and race
Nazism developed several theories concerning races. The Nazis claimed to scientifically measure a strict hierarchy of human race; at the top was the master race, the "Aryan race", narrowly defined by the Nazis as being identical with the Nordic race, followed by lesser races.At the bottom of this...
rather than purely nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
meaning by virtue of culture or linguistics, aiming for the spread of a "biologically superior" Aryan race
Aryan race
The Aryan race is a concept historically influential in Western culture in the period of the late 19th century and early 20th century. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race or...
rather than that of the German nation. Therefore, this did not mean a total extermination of all people there, as Eastern Europe was regarded as having people of Aryan/Nordic descent, particularly among their leaders. Indeed Himmler also declared that no drop of German blood would be lost or left behind for an alien race. In Nazi documents, even reading the term "German" can be problematic, since it could be used to refer to people classifed as "ethnic Germans" who spoke no German.
Inside Germany, propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
, such the film Heimkehr
Heimkehr
Heimkehr is a 1941 German anti-Polish propaganda film directed by Gustav Ucicky.It received the rare honor "Film of the Nation," bestowed on films considered to have made an outstanding contribution to the national cause...
, depicted these ethnic Germans as deeply persecuted—often with recognisable Nazi tactics—and the invasion and Germanisation as necessary to protect them. Forced labor of ethnic Germans and persecution of them were major themes of the anti-Polish propaganda campaign of 1939, prior to the invasion. Bloody Sunday was widely exploited as depicting the Poles as murderous toward Germans.
In a top-secret memorandum, "The Treatment of Racial Aliens in the East", dated May 25, 1940, Himmler wrote "We need to divide Poland's many different ethnic groups up into as many parts and splinter groups as possible". There were two Germanisation actions in occupied Poland realised in this way:
- The grouping of Polish GoralsGoralsThe Gorale are a group of indigenous people found along southern Poland, northern Slovakia, and in the region of Cieszyn Silesia in the Czech Republic...
("Highlanders") into the hypothetical GoralenvolkGoralenvolkGoralenvolk was the name given by the German Nazis in World War II during their occupation of Poland to the population of Podhale in the south near the Slovakian border. They postulated a different ethnicity for that population, in an effort to divide the Polish people. The word was derived from...
, a project which was ultimately abandoned due to lack of support among the Goral population; - The assignment of Pomerelian KashubiansKashubiansKashubians/Kaszubians , also called Kashubs, Kashubes, Kaszubians, Kassubians or Cassubians, are a West Slavic ethnic group in Pomerelia, north-central Poland. Their settlement area is referred to as Kashubia ....
onto the Deutsche Volksliste, as they were considered capable of assimilation into the German population (several high-ranking Nazis deemed them to be descended from ancient GothicGothsThe Goths were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe....
peoples).
Selection and Expulsion
Germanisation began with the classification of peopleRacial policy of Nazi Germany
The racial policy of Nazi Germany was a set of policies and laws implemented by Nazi Germany, asserting the superiority of the "Aryan race", and based on a specific racist doctrine which claimed scientific legitimacy...
suitable as defined on the Nazi Volksliste
Volksliste
The Deutsche Volksliste was a Nazi institution whose purpose was the classification of inhabitants of German occupied territories into categories of desirability according to criteria systematized by Heinrich Himmler. The institution was first established in occupied western Poland...
, and treated according to their categorisation. The Germans regarded the holding of active leadership roles as an Aryan trait, whereas a tendency to avoid leadership and a perceived fatalism was associated by many Germans with Slavonic peoples. Adults who were selected for but resisted Germanisation were executed. Such execution was carried out on the grounds that German blood should not support non-German nations, and that killing them would deprive foreign nations of superior leaders. The Intelligenzaktion
Intelligenzaktion
Intelligenzaktion was a genocidal action of Nazi Germany targeting Polish elites as part of elimination of potentially dangerous elements. It was an early measure of the Generalplan Ost. About 60,000 people were killed as the result of this operation...
was justified, even though these elites were regarded as likely of German blood, because such blood enabled them to provide leadership for the fatalistic Slavs. Germanizing "racially valuable" elements would prevent any increase in the Polish intelligenstia, as the dynamic leadership would have to come from German blood.
Under Generalplan Ost
Generalplan Ost
Generalplan Ost was a secret Nazi German plan for the colonization of Eastern Europe. Implementing it would have necessitated genocide and ethnic cleansing to be undertaken in the Eastern European territories occupied by Germany during World War II...
, a percentage of Slavs in the conquered territories were to be Germanised. Gauleiter
Gauleiter
A Gauleiter was the party leader of a regional branch of the NSDAP or the head of a Gau or of a Reichsgau.-Creation and Early Usage:...
s Albert Forster
Albert Forster
Albert Maria Forster was a Nazi German politician. Under his administration as the Gauleiter of Danzig-West Prussia during the Second World War, the local non-German population suffered ethnic cleansing, mass murder, and forceful Germanisation...
and Arthur Greiser
Arthur Greiser
Arthur Greiser was a Nazi German politician and SS Obergruppenfuhrer. He was one of the persons primarily responsible for organizing the Holocaust in Poland and numerous other war crimes and crimes against humanity, for which he was tried, convicted and executed by hanging after World War...
reported to Hitler that 10 percent of the Polish population contained "Germanic blood", and were thus suitable for Germanisation. The Reichskommissar
Reichskommissar
Reichskommissar , in German history, was an official gubernatorial title used for various public offices during the period of the German Empire and the Nazi Third Reich....
s in northern and central Russia reported similar figures. Those unfit for Germanisation were to be expelled from the areas marked out for German settlement. In considering the fate of the individual nations, the architects of the Plan decided that it would be possible to Germanise about 50 percent of the Czechs, 35 percent of the Ukrainians
Ukrainians
Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...
and 25 percent of the Belorussians. The remainder would be deported to western Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
and other regions. In 1941 it was decided that the Polish nation
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
should be completely destroyed; the German leadership decided that in ten to 20 years, the Polish state under German occupation was to be fully cleared of any ethnic Poles and resettled by German colonists.
Nazi-Soviet population transfers
The Nazi–Soviet population transfers were a series of population transfers between 1939 and 1941 of tens of thousands of ethnic Germans and ethnic Russians in an agreement according to the German–Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Demarcation between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.-...
. Those who left were not referred to as "refugees", but were rather described as "answering the call of the Fuhrer." German propaganda films such as GPU and Friesennot
Friesennot
Friesennot is a 1935 German film directed by Peter Hagen.The film is also known as Dorf im roten Sturm and Frisions in Distress .- Plot :...
depicted the Baltic Germans as deeply persecuted in their native lands. Packed into camps for racial evaluation, they were divided into groups: A, Altreich, who were to be settled in Germany and allowed neither farms nor business (to allow for closer watch), S Sonderfall, who were used as forced labor, and O Ost-Falle, the best classification, to be settled in the Eastern Wall—the occupied regions
Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany
At the beginning of World War II, nearly a quarter of the pre-war Polish areas were annexed by Nazi Germany and placed directly under German civil administration, while the rest of Nazi occupied Poland was named as General Government...
, to protect German from the East—and allowed independence. This last group was often given Polish homes where the families had been evicted so quickly that half-eaten meals were on tables and small children had clearly been taken from unmade beds. Members of Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
and the League of German Girls
League of German Girls
The League of German Girls or League of German Maidens , was the girl's wing of the overall Nazi party youth movement, the Hitler Youth. It was the only female youth organization in Nazi Germany....
were assigned the task of overseeing such evictions to ensure that the Poles left behind most of their belongings for the use of the settlers. The deportation orders required that enough Poles be removed to provide for every settler — that, for instance, if twenty German "master bakers" were sent, twenty Polish bakeries had to have their owners removed.
Settlement and Germanisation
This colonisation incorporated 350,000 such Baltic Germans and 1.7 million Poles deemed Germanisable, including between one and two hundred thousand children who had been taken from their parents (plus about 400,000 German settlers from the "Old Reich").Nazi authorities had great fears of these settlers being tainted by their Polish neighbors and not only warned them to let their "foreign and alien" surroundings to have no impact on their Germanness, but settled them in compact communities, which could be easily monitored by the police. Only families classified as "highly valuable" were kept together.
For Poles who did not resist and the resettled ethnic Germans, Germanisation began. Militant party members were sent to teach them to be "true Germans". Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
and League of German Girls
League of German Girls
The League of German Girls or League of German Maidens , was the girl's wing of the overall Nazi party youth movement, the Hitler Youth. It was the only female youth organization in Nazi Germany....
sent young people for "Eastern Service", which entailed (particularly for the girls) assisting in Germanisation efforts. One member of the League recounted afterward that she at first pitied the starving Polish children, but soon realised this was "politically naive" and to concentrate solely on the Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
; her beliefs in the stupidity of Poles were reinforced by the lack of educated Poles, not knowing they had been jailed or deported. This included instruction in the German language, as many spoke only Polish or Russian. They found the new settlers dispirited and put on various entertainments such as songfests to encourage them and ease their transition. Membership in Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
and the League of German Girls
League of German Girls
The League of German Girls or League of German Maidens , was the girl's wing of the overall Nazi party youth movement, the Hitler Youth. It was the only female youth organization in Nazi Germany....
was enforced for the children. Goebbels
Goebbels
Goebbels, alternatively Göbbels, is a common surname in the western areas of Germany. It is probably derived from the Old Low German word gibbler, meaning brewer...
and other propagandists worked to establish cultural centers and other means to created Volkstum or racial consciousness in the settlers. This was needed to perpetuate their work; only by effective Germanisation could mothers, in particular, create the German home. Goebbels
Goebbels
Goebbels, alternatively Göbbels, is a common surname in the western areas of Germany. It is probably derived from the Old Low German word gibbler, meaning brewer...
also was the official patron of Deutsches Ordensland or Land of Germanic Order, an organisation to promote Germanisation. This efforts were used in propaganda in Germany itself, as when NS-Frauen-Warte
NS-Frauen-Warte
NS-Frauen-Warte was the Nazi magazine for women. Put out by the NS-Frauenschaft, it had the status of the only party approved magazine for women and served propaganda purposes, particularly supporting the role of housewife and mother as exemplary....
s cover article was on "Germany is building in the East."
Germanisation tended to proceed slowly. Peasants given larger farms and more animals than they had had in the Baltic States could not cope. Younger people spoke German poorly, if at all, and older people were found to become completely denationalised, requiring that they be Germanised in Germany before they could be restored to the East where they would increase the German population. Many resettled Baltic Germans learned Polish quickly and got along better with the locals than with the German authorities. After two years of efforts, the authorities concluded that true Germanisation would have to await the end of the war.
Other efforts in Poland were also regarded as Germanisation, as for instance the setting up of the IG-Farben at Auschwitz-Monowitz.
Germanisation Outside Poland
Later, Ukraine was also targeted for Germanisation. Thirty special SS squads took over villages where ethnic Germans predominated, and expelled or shot any Jews or Slavs living in them, in a policy of concentration. The colony HegewaldHegewald (colony)
Hegewald was a short-lived German colony in Reichskommissariat Ukraine near Zhitomir during World War II. Its purpose was to hold Poles and Ukrainian settlers who had been classified as Volksdeutsche for Germanization...
was set up in the Ukraine as well. Ukrainians were forcibly deported, and ethnic Germans forcibly relocated there. Racial assignment was carried out in a confused manner; the Reich rule was three German grandparents, but some asserted that any person who acted like a German and evinced no "racial concerns" should be eligible.
As the need for workers in Germany grew, the standards for who qualified as Germanisable were lowered. Himmler's declaration that "it is in the nature of German blood to resist" led to the paradoxical conclusion that Balts or Poles who resisted Germanisation measures were regarded as more suitable material than more compliant ones.
Plans to eliminate Slavs from Soviet territory to allow German settlement included starvation; Nazi leaders expected that millions would die after they removed such supplies as they needed
Hunger Plan
The Hunger Plan was an economic management scheme that was put in place to ensure that Germans were given priority over food supplies, at the expense of everyone else. This plan was featured as part of the planning phase of the Wehrmacht invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941...
. This was regarded as an actual advantage by Nazi officials. When Hitler received a report of many, well-fed Ukrainian children, he declared the promotion of contraception and abortion was urgently needed, and neither medical care nor education was to be provided. Experiments in mass sterilisation in concentration camps may also have been intended for use on the Slavonic populations.
Eastern Workers
When young women from the East were recruited to work as nannies in Germany, they were required to be suitable for Germanisation, both because they would work with German children, and because they might be sexually exploitedRassenschande
Rassenschande or Blutschande was the Nazi term for sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans, which was punishable by law...
. The program was praised for not only allowing more women to have children with their new domestic servants to assist in their labours, but for reclaiming the German blood and giving advantages to the women, who would work in Germany, and might marry there.
Children
"Racially acceptable" children were taken from their families in order to be brought up as Germans.Children were selected for "racially valuable traits" before being shipped to Germany. Many Nazis were astounded at the number of Polish children found to exhibit "Nordic" traits, but assumed that all such children were genuinely German children, who had been Polonised
Polonization
Polonization was the acquisition or imposition of elements of Polish culture, in particular, Polish language, as experienced in some historic periods by non-Polish populations of territories controlled or substantially influenced by Poland...
; Hans Frank
Hans Frank
Hans Michael Frank was a German lawyer who worked for the Nazi party during the 1920s and 1930s and later became a high-ranking official in Nazi Germany...
summoned up such views when he declared, "When we see a blue-eyed child we are surprised that she is speaking Polish." The term used for them was wiedereindeutschungsfahig -- meaning capable of being re-Germanised. These might include the children of people executed for resisting Germanisation. If attempts to Germanise them failed, or they were determined to be unfit, they would be killed to eliminate their value to the opponents of the Reich.
In German-occupied Poland, it is estimated that a number ranging from 50,000 to 200,000 children were removed from their families to be Germanised. The Kinder KZ
Kinder KZ
Kinder KZ was a German concentration camp for Polish children in occupied Łodź .-History:...
was founded specifically to hold such children. It is estimated that at least 10,000 of them were murdered in the process as they were determined unfit and sent to concentration camps and faced brutal treatment or perished in the harsh conditions during their transport in cattle wagons, and only 10-15% returned to their families after the war. Obligatory Hitlerjugend membership made dialogue between old and young next to impossible, as use of languages other than German was discouraged by officials. Members of minority organisations were either sent to concentration camps by German authorities or executed.
Many children, particularly Polish and Yugoslavian who were among the first taken, declared on being found by Allied forces that they were German. Russian and Ukrainian children, while not gotten to this stage, still had been taught to hate their native countries and did not want to return.
Western Germanisation
In contemporary German usage the process of Germanisation was referred to as Germanisierung (Germanicisation, i.e. to make something Germanic) rather than Eindeutschung (Germanisation, i.e. to make something German). According to Nazi racial theories, the Germanic peoples of Europe such as the ScandinaviansScandinavians
Scandinavians are a group of Germanic peoples, inhabiting Scandinavia and to a lesser extent countries associated with Scandinavia, and speaking Scandinavian languages. The group includes Danes, Norwegians and Swedes, and additionally the descendants of Scandinavian settlers such as the Icelandic...
, the Dutch
Dutch people
The Dutch people are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United...
, and the Flemish
Flemish people
The Flemings or Flemish are the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Belgium, where they are mostly found in the northern region of Flanders. They are one of two principal cultural-linguistic groups in Belgium, the other being the French-speaking Walloons...
, were like the Germans themselves a part of the Aryan
Aryan race
The Aryan race is a concept historically influential in Western culture in the period of the late 19th century and early 20th century. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race or...
Master Race
Master race
Master race was a phrase and concept originating in the slave-holding Southern US. The later phrase Herrenvolk , interpreted as 'master race', was a concept in Nazi ideology in which the Nordic peoples, one of the branches of what in the late-19th and early-20th century was called the Aryan race,...
, regardless of these peoples' own acknowledgement of their "Aryan" identity.
Germanisation in these conquered countries proceeded more slowly. The Nazis had a need for local cooperation and the local industry with its workers; furthermore, the countries were regarded as more racially acceptable, the assortment of racial categories being boiled down by the average German to mean "East is bad and West is acceptable." The plan was to win the Germanic elements over slowly, through education. Himmler, after a secret tour of Belgium and Holland, happily declared the people would be a racial benefit to Germany. Occupying troops were kept under strict discipline and instructed to be friendly to win the population over, a technique that did not work not only because of their having conquered the countries, but because it was soon clear that being German was far superior to being merely Nordic. Pamphlets, for instance, enjoined all German women to avoid sexual intercourse with all foreign workers brought to Germany as a danger to their blood
Rassenschande
Rassenschande or Blutschande was the Nazi term for sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans, which was punishable by law...
.
Various Germanisation plans were implemented. Dutch and Belgian Flemish prisoners of war were sent home quickly
Flamenpolitik
Flamenpolitik is the name for certain policies pursued by German authorities occupying Belgium during World War I and World War II...
, to increase Germanic population, while Belgian French ones were kept as laborers. Lebensborn
Lebensborn
Lebensborn was a Nazi programme set up by SS leader Heinrich Himmler that provided maternity homes and financial assistance to the wives of SS members and to unmarried mothers, and also ran orphanages and relocation programmes for children.Initially set up in Germany in 1935, Lebensborn expanded...
homes were set up in Norway for Norwegian women impregnanted by German soldiers, with adoption by Norwegian parents being forbidden for any child born there. Alsace-Lorraine was annexed; thousands of residents, too loyal to France, Jewish, or North Africa, were deported to Vichy France; French was forbidden in schools; intransigent German speakers were shipped back to Germany for re-Germanisation, just as Poles were. Extensive racial classification was practiced in France, for future uses.
Himmler's original plan for the colony of Hegewald
Hegewald (colony)
Hegewald was a short-lived German colony in Reichskommissariat Ukraine near Zhitomir during World War II. Its purpose was to hold Poles and Ukrainian settlers who had been classified as Volksdeutsche for Germanization...
was to recruit settlers from Scandanvia and the Netherlands; this was unsuccessful.
Himmler's masseuse, Felix Kersten
Felix Kersten
Felix Kersten was before and during World War II the personal masseur of Heinrich Himmler...
, claimed an even more radical scheme was devised by Himmler which envisioned the near-future resettlement of the entire Dutch nation to agricultural lands in the Vistula
Vistula
The Vistula is the longest and the most important river in Poland, at 1,047 km in length. The watershed area of the Vistula is , of which lies within Poland ....
and Bug
Bug River
The Bug River is a left tributary of the Narew river flows from central Ukraine to the west, passing along the Ukraine-Polish and Polish-Belarusian border and into Poland, where it empties into the Narew river near Serock. The part between the lake and the Vistula River is sometimes referred to as...
valleys of German-occupied Poland in order to facilitate their immediate Germanisation. 8.5 million people were to be relocated in total, after which all Dutch capital and real estate would be confiscated by the Reich and distributed to reliable SS men, and an SS Province of Holland declared in vacated Dutch territory. However this claim was shown to be a myth by Loe de Jong
Loe de Jong
Louis de Jong was a Dutch journalist and historian specialising in the history of the Netherlands in World War II and the Dutch resistance....
in his book Two Legends of the Third Reich.
After World War II
In post-1945 Germany and post-1945 Austria, the concept of Germanisation is no longer considered relevant. Danes, FrisiansFrisians
The Frisians are a Germanic ethnic group native to the coastal parts of the Netherlands and Germany. They are concentrated in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen and, in Germany, East Frisia and North Frisia, that was a part of Denmark until 1864. They inhabit an area known as Frisia...
, and Slavic Sorbs
Sorbs
Sorbs are a Western Slavic people of Central Europe living predominantly in Lusatia, a region on the territory of Germany and Poland. In Germany they live in the states of Brandenburg and Saxony. They speak the Sorbian languages - closely related to Polish and Czech - officially recognized and...
are classified as traditional ethnic minorities and are guaranteed cultural autonomy by both the federal and state governments. Concerning the Danes, there is a treaty between Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
and Germany from 1955 regulating the status of the German minority in Denmark and vice versa. Concerning the Frisians
Frisians
The Frisians are a Germanic ethnic group native to the coastal parts of the Netherlands and Germany. They are concentrated in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Groningen and, in Germany, East Frisia and North Frisia, that was a part of Denmark until 1864. They inhabit an area known as Frisia...
, the northern federal-state of Schleswig-Holstein
Schleswig-Holstein
Schleswig-Holstein is the northernmost of the sixteen states of Germany, comprising most of the historical duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Schleswig...
passed a special law aimed at preserving the language. The cultural autonomy of the Sorbs is a matter of the constitutions of both Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
and Brandenburg
Brandenburg
Brandenburg is one of the sixteen federal-states of Germany. It lies in the east of the country and is one of the new federal states that were re-created in 1990 upon the reunification of the former West Germany and East Germany. The capital is Potsdam...
. Nevertheless, almost all of the Sorbs are bilingual and the Lower Sorbian
Lower Sorbian
Lower Sorbian is a Slavic minority language spoken in eastern Germany in the historical province of Lower Lusatia, today part of Brandenburg. It is one of the two literary Sorbian languages, the other being Upper Sorbian....
language is regarded as endangered, as the number of native speakers is dwindling, even though there are programmes funded by the state to sustain the language.
In post-1945 Austria, in the federal-state of Burgenland
Burgenland
Burgenland is the easternmost and least populous state or Land of Austria. It consists of two Statutarstädte and seven districts with in total 171 municipalities. It is 166 km long from north to south but much narrower from west to east...
, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
and Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
have regional protection by law. In Carinthia
Carinthia (state)
Carinthia is the southernmost Austrian state or Land. Situated within the Eastern Alps it is chiefly noted for its mountains and lakes.The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Austro-Bavarian group...
, Slovenian
Slovenian language
Slovene or Slovenian is a South Slavic language spoken by approximately 2.5 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia. It is the first language of about 1.85 million people and is one of the 23 official and working languages of the European Union...
-speaking Austrians are also protected by the law.
Descendants of Polish migrant workers and miners have intermarried with the local population and are thus culturally mixed. It is different with modern and present-day immigration from Poland to Germany after the fall of the iron curtain
Iron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
. These immigrants usually are Polish citizens and live as foreigners in Germany. For many immigrant Poles, Polish ethnicity is not the prime category through which they wish to characterise themselves or want to be evaluated by others, as it could impact their lives in a negative way.
Linguistic Germanisation
In linguistics, Germanisation usually means the changeLanguage change
Language change is the phenomenon whereby phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of language vary over time. The effect on language over time is known as diachronic change. Two linguistic disciplines in particular concern themselves with studying language change:...
in spelling of loanwords to the rules of the German language — for example the change from the imported word bureau to Büro.
Surname and Genetic Evidence of Historic Germanisation of Slavs
Immel, Uta-Dorothee et al. (2006) found a profound stratification observed among East-German male lineages and their correlation with surnames. The best documented wave of migration was that of Eastern Germanic tribes and Slavs, driven by the HunsHuns
The Huns were a group of nomadic people who, appearing from east of the Volga River, migrated into Europe c. AD 370 and established the vast Hunnic Empire there. Since de Guignes linked them with the Xiongnu, who had been northern neighbours of China 300 years prior to the emergence of the Huns,...
, that led to the downfall of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
. In historic times, two major instances of assimilation of Slavic people into the German nation occurred. Around 950 AD, the Eastern Franks(Ottonian dynasty) started to put pressure upon the Slavic peoples inhabiting large areas of what was to become, in the mid of the 20th Century, the German Democratic Republic. By 1100 AD, after more than 100 years of wars and proselytisation, the complete area of contemporary Germany had come under the influence of the German Empire. During the following centuries, most of the non-Germanic tribes (like the Baltic Prussians) completely abandoned their language, and their descendants are today regarded as 'typically German'. Only in a small area, southeast of Berlin, known as the Lausitz, the Slavic-speaking Sorb
Sorb
Sorb may refer to:*Sorbs, a Slavic ethnic group*Sorbus, a genus of trees*Sorbus domestica, a species belonging to the Sorbus genus*Sorbus aucuparia, a species belonging to the Sorbus genus*Sorbus torminalis, a species belonging to the Sorbus genus...
people maintained their language and culture, and their descendants today represent the only recognised, non-immigrant minority in East Germany. This is mentioned in more details in the sections above. In any case, the names of many cities, including Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
(meaning 'little swamp'), and some surnames, most notably those of 'typically Prussian' nature like 'von Clausewitz' or 'Virchow', still reflect the Slavic roots of this part of Germany. The second major assimilation of people with Slavic ancestry occurred during the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
in the 19th Century. Thousands of people from Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
migrated to the West to work in the surging industrial areas of Germany (Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
, Ruhr-Area). Although they brought their surnames with them, they nevertheless became culturally amalgamated quite rapidly by the German majority.
The Halle region is located exactly at the intersection of the Germanic and Slavic spheres of influence of the 10th century, but it is also a traditional mining and chemical industry area (Halle-Leipzig-Bitterfeld) that has attracted Slavic workers during the Industrial Revolution. Both of these factors should have had an impact upon the male-specific genetic structure of the local population where surnames of Germanic and Slavic origin are about equally frequent. In terms of the relative importance of the two historic instances for the observed correlation between Y-STR haplotypes and surname characteristics, it is interesting to note that surnames first occurred in Europe in Venice during the 9th Century. From there, the law of name bearing was adopted in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
in the 11th, and in England, and Western and Southern Germany in the 12th Century. In the North and East of Germany, the custom was practised no earlier than the 15th Century and, in some rural regions, surnames became fashionable only in the 18th century, nearly 900 years after their first appearance in Europe. Furthermore, surnames frequently changed or became modified until the beginning of the 19th century. Therefore, it appears unlikely that the correlation between surnames and Y-STR haplotypes observed in our study dates back to the Middle Ages, but is more likely to be the result of the immigration of industrial workers in the 19th Century instead. In this respect, Central Europe appears to differ from England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
where patrilineally inherited names are presumed to have a much deeper rooting.
"The Halle samples were divided into three subgroups, according to surname. Two larger groups comprised 195 males with surnames that were definitely German ('G') and 185 males with definitely Slavic surnames ('S'). The third group contained 39 males with mixed German-Slavic surnames ('M'). Samples of 29 Sorbs and some 1313 published haplotypes from Polish
Poles
thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...
males 13 were used for comparison. Surname groups were defined on the basis of spelling, using certain combinations of consonants and surname suffixes to categorise the origin of the name in question. Suffixes '-er', '-mann' and '-burg', for example, are typically German whereas '-ke', '-ka', '-ow' and '-ski' are typically Slavic. In addition, the root morphemes of surnames were also examined. Examples for a Slavic root comprise 'Lessing', which sounds German but was derived from the Slavic expression for "forest settler", and "Kafka", which in Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
means "jackdaw". Mixed surnames include both German and Slavic elements, that is, a German basis and a Slavic ending, or vice versa (Wudtke or Kuppke). These surnames are the result of a long parallel usage of both German and Slavic languages in the eastern part of Germany."
A similar characterisation of the present samples in terms of the relative proportion of the fringe haplotypes resulted in highly significant differences between the two surname-defined German subgroups, G+M and S (chi2=13.094, 2 df, P=0.001). While 88 of the 234 haplotypes (38%) in the combined G+M group were classified as 'Western', this was the case for only 42 of the 185 haplotypes (23%) in group S. In contrast, 80 G+M haplotypes (34%) were of 'Eastern' type compared to 91 S haplotypes (49%). The portion of unclassifiable haplotypes was 28% in both groups (66 in G+M, 52 in S).
Professor Jürgen Udolph, of the University of Leipzig Institute for Slavic Studies, contends that 15 million people in modern Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
have Slavic or specifically Polish surnames. He believes the concentration of Slavic names in East Germany is even higher than the national average, accounting for 30% of all surnames in the region.
See also
- Cultural imperialismCultural imperialismCultural imperialism is the domination of one culture over another. Cultural imperialism can take the form of a general attitude or an active, formal and deliberate policy, including military action. Economic or technological factors may also play a role...
- GermanismGermanismGermanism can mean or be confused with any of the following:* German loan words and expressions in English* Pan-Germanism* Germanisation* Germanism...
- Germanistics
- German Eastern Marches SocietyGerman Eastern Marches SocietyGerman Eastern Marches Society was a German radical, extremely nationalist xenophobic organization founded in 1894. Mainly among Poles, it was sometimes known acronymically as Hakata or H-K-T after its founders von Hansemann, Kennemann and von Tiedemann...
- KulturkampfKulturkampfThe German term refers to German policies in relation to secularity and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, enacted from 1871 to 1878 by the Prime Minister of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck. The Kulturkampf did not extend to the other German states such as Bavaria...
- Drang nach OstenDrang nach OstenDrang nach Osten was a term coined in the 19th century to designate German expansion into Slavic lands. The term became a motto of the German nationalist movement in the late nineteenth century...
- Masurians
- OstsiedlungOstsiedlungOstsiedlung , also called German eastward expansion, was the medieval eastward migration and settlement of Germans from modern day western and central Germany into less-populated regions and countries of eastern Central Europe and Eastern Europe. The affected area roughly stretched from Slovenia...
- Carinthian SlovenesCarinthian SlovenesCarinthian Slovenes are the Slovene-speaking population group in the Austrian State of Carinthia. The Carinthian Slovenes send representatives to the National Ethnic Groups Advisory Council...
- Pan-GermanismPan-GermanismPan-Germanism is a pan-nationalist political idea. Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify the German-speaking populations of Europe in a single nation-state known as Großdeutschland , where "German-speaking" was taken to include the Low German, Frisian and Dutch-speaking populations of the Low...
- PolonophobiaPolonophobiaThe terms Polonophobia, anti-Polonism, antipolonism and anti-Polish sentiment refer to a spectrum of hostile attitudes toward Polish people and culture. These terms apply to racial prejudice against Poles and people of Polish descent, including ethnicity-based discrimination and state-sponsored...
- Potulice concentration campPotulice concentration campThe Potulice concentration camp was established during World War II by German state authorities in occupied Poland in Potulice near Nakło. It is notable as a detention centre for Polish children that underwent the Nazi experiment in forced Germanisation....
- RuhrpolenRuhrpolenRuhrpolen is a German umbrella term for a mixture of people from the former kingdom of Poland , also from Silesians, Masurians, Kashubians), who migrated to the rapidly-industrializing areas of the Ruhr Valley.-Origins:The immigrants, many who had left under the harsher czarish rule and failed...
- Settlement CommissionSettlement CommissionThe Prussian Settlement Commission was a Prussian government commission that operated between 1886 and 1924, but actively only until 1918. It was set up by Otto von Bismarck to increase land ownership by Germans at the expense of Poles, by economic and political means, in the German Empire's...
- Ulrich von Wilamowitz-MoellendorffUlrich von Wilamowitz-MoellendorffEnno Friedrich Wichard Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff was a German Classical Philologist. Wilamowitz, as he is known in scholarly circles, was a renowned authority on Ancient Greece and its literature.- Youth :...
- HegewaldHegewald (colony)Hegewald was a short-lived German colony in Reichskommissariat Ukraine near Zhitomir during World War II. Its purpose was to hold Poles and Ukrainian settlers who had been classified as Volksdeutsche for Germanization...