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On the Borders of the Nation: Jews and the German–Polish National Conflict in Poznania, 1886–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Elizabeth A. Drummond
Elizabeth A. Drummond*
Affiliation:
University of Southern Mississippi, U.S.A.
*
∗This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the 2000 meeting of the German Studies Association in Houston, TX. It benefited considerably from insightful readings by Nancy Wingfield and an anonymous referee.
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Extract

National identity is everywhere constructed through a process of negotiation with other categories of identity—local, regional, class, confessional, and gender. In borderlands, however, there is another element in this negotiation process—the sharing of public space with another national group, an element that further complicates identity formation. Here categories can change and/or function differently than in the interior of a country. In many respects, the construction of Germanness in the province of Poznania [German: Posen; Polish: Poznań] proceeded along similar lines as in the rest of the German Empire. German nationalists, both in the eastern provinces and in the rest of the Reich, produced publications and organized lectures about and celebrations of German history and German culture in an effort to mobilize national loyalties in support of policies that would consolidate Germandom both within and without. However, the presence of a Polish challenge in Poznania—the defining problem of the province—complicated constructions of German national identity.

Type
Forum: Grenzmarken: Negotiating National Identity on the Borders of Germanness
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , September 2001 , pp. 459 - 475
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

1. There are no English-language equivalents for the cities and province of Poznań/Posen. When discussing German discourse, I employ German place names; similarly, when discussing Polish discourse, I employ Polish place names. When speaking with my own voice, I employ the term “Poznania”—a Latinized form that appears in English-language literature—to refer to the province of Poznań/Posen and both the German and Polish names, giving preference to that name used by the majority of the inhabitants at the time, to refer to Poznania's cities.Google Scholar

2. See Roger Chickering, We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan-German League 1886–1914 (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1984); Sabine Grabowski, Deutscher und polnischer Nationalismus: Der deutsche Ostmarken-Verein und die polnische Straż 1894–1914 (Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut, 1998); Adam Galos, Felix-Heinrich Gentzen, and Witold Jakóbczyk, Die Hakatisten: Der Deutsche Ostmarkenverein (1894–1934). Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Ostpolitik des deutschen Imperialismus (East Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1966); and Geoff Eley, Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991).Google Scholar

3. My argument here is similar to that of Gary Cohen in his studies of German and Jewish life in Prague in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: “As small minorities in Prague, the liberal, middle-class German Christians and German Jews needed each other too much to permit any religious or racial rift. Some Christian members of the liberal community doubtlessly harbored traditional prejudices against Jews, and the German Jews remained highly sensitive to any action or gesture they considered antisemitic. Yet throughout this period, the German liberal leaders in the Bohemian capital refused to tolerate any public expression within the community of either the traditional or new, political antisemitism.” Gary B. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 177. Cf. Gary B. Cohen, “Jews in German Society: Prague, 1860–1914,” Central European History, Vol. X, No. 1, 1977, pp. 28–54.Google Scholar

4. Bundesarchiv Berlin (hereafter BA Berlin), R8048, Alldeutscher Verband, No. 4, Bl. 11–13, Satzungen des Alldeutschen Verbandes. Cf. Chickering, op. cit.Google Scholar

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6. GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 140; and No. 174, Bl. 23 & 32f (M). Cf. BA Berlin, R8048, Alldeutscher Verband, No. 493, Bl. 73, Mitteilungen des Alldeutschen Verbandes 1893: 126.Google Scholar

7. See William W. Hagen, “National Solidarity and Organic Work in Prussian Poland, 1815–1914,” Journal of Modern History, Vol. 44, No. 1, 1972, pp. 38–64; William W. Hagen, Germans, Poles, and Jews: The Nationality Conflict in the Prussian East, 1772–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Witold Jakóbczyk, Studia nad dziejami Wielkopolski w XIX w. (Dzieje pracy organicznej), 3 volumes (Poznań: Nakładem Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przjaciół Nauk, 1951–1967); Witold Jakóbczyk, Karol Marcinkowski 1800–1846 (Warsaw/Poznań: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1981); and the special issue of the Kronika Miasta Poznania entitled “Karol Marcinkowski i jego czasy,” No. 3, 1996. After the failure of the 1863 uprising, the “organic work” movement gained momentum in other parts of partitioned Poland as well, most notably in Congress Poland; see Stanislaus A. Blejwas, “The Origins and Practice of ‘Organic Work’ in Poland, 1795–1863,” Polish Review, Vol. 15, No. 4, 1970, pp. 22–55; Stanislaus A. Blejwas, Realism in Polish Politics: Warsaw Positivism and National Survival in Nineteenth-Century Poland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. See Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu (hereafter APP), Zwia̦ek Sokołów Polskich w Państwie Niemieckim. Cf. A. Ryfowa, Działalność Sokola Polskiego w zaborze pruskim i wsród wychodzstwo w Niemczech (1884–1914) (Warsaw/Poznań, 1976); Diethelm Blecking, Die Geschichte der nationalpolnischen Turnorganisation “Sokół” im deutschen Reich 1884–1939 (Minister: Lit Verlag, 1990); and Przemyslaw Matusik, “Der polnische ‘Sokol’ zur Zeit der Teilungen und in der II. Polnischen Republik,” in Diethelm Blecking, ed., Die slawische Sokolbewegung: Beiträge zur Geschichte von Sport und Nationalismus in Osteuropa (Dortmund: Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, 1991). For the Czech Sokols, see the work of Claire Nolte, for example, “Choosing Czech Identity in Nineteenth-Century Prague: The Case of Jindrc̆ich Fügner,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 24, No. 1, 1996, pp. 51–62 and “‘Every Czech a Sokol!’: Feminism and Nationalism in the Czech Sokol Movement,” Austrian History Yearbook, Vol. XXIV, 1993, pp. 79–100. For an excellent recent treatment of the German Turnvereine, see Svenja Goltermann, Körper der Nation: Habitusformierung und die Politik des Turnens 1860–1890 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998).Google Scholar

9. APP, Towarzystwo Straż, No. 7, s. 1 and s. 3, statutes of the “Guard” Society. Cf. Grabowski, op. cit.Google Scholar

10. For good discussions of demographic trends in Poznania and their interpretation by historians, see Hagen's appendix, “Demographic Movements in the Province of Poznań, 1815–1914,” in Germans, Poles, and Jews, pp. 323–26; and Mieczysław K̦delski, “Stosunki ludnościowe w latach 1815–1918,” in Jerzy Topolski and Lech Trzeciakowski, eds, Dzieje Poznania. Tom II: 1793–1918 (Warsaw/Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1994), pp. 221–70.Google Scholar

11. See Lech Trzeciakowski, The Kulturkampf in Prussian Poland (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

12. See, for example, Lech Trzeciakowski, “The Prussian State and the Catholic Church in Prussian Poland 1871–1914,” Slavic Review, Vol. 26, No. 4, 1967, pp. 618–37; Jakóbczyk, Studia nad dziejami Wielkopolski w XIX w.; and Hagen, “National Solidarity and Organic Work in Prussian Poland, 1815–1914.”CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. See APP, Towarzystwo “Straż,” Nos 27a, 28, 28a, 29, 30, and 31, membership lists. Cf. GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 2, Vol. I, Bl. 30–80, meeting of the general committee in August 1906 (M), and Trzeciakowski, “The Prussian State and the Catholic Church in Prussian Poland 1871–1914.”Google Scholar

14. For the German Eastern Marches Society, see the Satzungen des Vereins zur Förderung des Deutschtums in den Ostmarken (Posen, 1894); and GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 34, Bd. I, Bl. 1–2, Satzungen der Berliner Ortsgruppe des Deutschen Ostmarkenvereins (M). For the Pan-German League, see BA Berlin, R8048, Alldeutscher Verband, No. 1, Bl. 44, Satzungen des Allgemeinen Deutschen Verbandes; and No. 4, Satzungen des Alldeutschen Verbandes (1897–1935).Google Scholar

15. GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 2, Vol. I, Bl. 111ff, Tiedemann's speech at the Gesamtausschuß meeting on 29 October 1905 (M).Google Scholar

16. GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 13, Bl. 217f, Aufruf des Posener Provinzialvorstands (M).Google Scholar

17. BA Berlin, A8048, Alldeutscher Verband, No. 2, Bl. 30, newspaper report entitled “Der Allgemeine Deutsche Verband und der Antisemitismus.”Google Scholar

18. See GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 61, Vol. I, Müller, as quoted in the Königshütte Tageblatt (20 October 1908) article about the Deutscher Abend in Bismarckhütte (M). Such membership requirements—or lack thereof—was also the case for German associations in the Habsburg Empire; see Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival, and Pieter M. Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848–1914 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).Google Scholar

19. GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 4, Bl. 27, Dr Thunert of Lissa at the Gesamtausschuß meeting in Posen in 1918 (M).Google Scholar

20. The obsession of the Eastern Marches Society with demographic statistics is evident after only a cursory glance in the organization's archive. In addition to the association's own analyses of official census statistics, leading Ostmärker produced their own demographic statistics for individual localities in the eastern provinces. Local activists and Wanderredner of the Eastern Marches Society routinely submitted reports to the national board on the various local chapters. Virtually every report of this kind began with an often extensive summary of the demographics of the locality. In the province of Poznania, these reports consistently, with few exceptions, equated German with Protestant and Jewish and Polish with Catholic.Google Scholar

21. See Chickering, op. cit., pp. 102–21.Google Scholar

22. Many Poznanian Jews had originally migrated to the province from the various German states. Regardless of their origins, however, Poznanian Jews had lived for centuries under Polish rule. Sophia Kemlein describes the transformation of Poznanian Jewry from a Polish Jewry into a German Jewry in Die Posener Juden 1815–1848: Entwicklungsprozesse einer polnischen Judenheit unter preuβischer Herrschaft (Hamburg: Dolling und Galitz Verlag, 1997).Google Scholar

23. See Sophia Kemlein, ed., Postkarten erzählen Geschichte: Die Stadt Posen 1896–1918/Pocztówki opowiadajç histori̦: Miasto Poznań 1896–1918 (Lüneburg: Institut Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 1997).Google Scholar

24. Alphonse Levy, “Die Juden im preußischen Osten,” Im deutschen Reich, 1901, p. 105. Im deutschen Reich was the official organ of the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens. It was published in Berlin.Google Scholar

25. For a (brief) discussion of Zionism in Poznania, see Hagen, Germans, Poles, and Jews. Histories of German Zionism, such as Stephen M. Poppel's Zionism in Germany 1897–1933 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1976) and Jehuda Reinharz's Fatherland or Promised Land: The Dilemma of the German Jew, 1893–1914 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975), have largely ignored the eastern provinces, an indication that Zionism was relatively weak and underdeveloped in Poznania.Google Scholar

26. See Till von Rahden's study of Jews in Breslau, Juden and andere Breslauer: Die Beziehungen zwischen Juden, Protestanten und Katholiken in einer deutschen Großstadt von 1860 bis 1925 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), especially his discussion of David Sorkin's notion of a Jewish “subculture,” p. 19ff. Cf. David Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry 1780–1840 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. See Hagen, Germans, Poles, and Jews, p. 288ff. Cf. Till van Rahden, Juden und andere Breslauer and Jacob Toury, Die politischen Orientierungen der Juden in Deutschland (Tübingen: Mohr, 1966).Google Scholar

28. See Table 3 given later in this paper.Google Scholar

29. See Marjorie Lamberti, Jewish Activism in Imperial Germany: The Struggle for Civic Equality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978); Reinharz, op. cit.; and Ismar Schorsch, Jewish Reactions to German Anti-Semitism, 1870–1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972).Google Scholar

30. Im deutschen Reich, 1908, p. 174.Google Scholar

31. See Im deutschen Reich, 1900, pp. 613–14; 1901, pp. 137, 172; 1906, p. 53; and 1908, p. 174.Google Scholar

32. Levy, “Die Juden im preußischen Osten,” Im deutschen Reich, 1901, pp. 185–91; and Im deutschen Reich, 1908, p. 217.Google Scholar

33. Im deutschen Reich, 1908, pp. 217, 695–96; and “Zur Ostmarken-Politik,” Im deutschen Reich, 1906, pp. 1–6. Cf. Alphonse Levy, “Die Juden im preußischen Osten,” Im deutschen Reich, 1901, pp. 185–91.Google Scholar

34. Im deutschen Reich, 1908, p. 217. Cf. Straż, 1914, pp. 35–38.Google Scholar

35. See Levy, “Die Juden im preußischen Osten,” Im deutschen Reich, 1901, pp. 185–91; and “Polnischer Antisemitismus,” Im deutschen Reich, 1908, pp. 341–45.Google Scholar

36. See the calls for a boycott of German (and Jewish) businesses—the swój do swego (each to his own) campaign—scattered throughout the documents of the “Guard” Society (APP, Towarzystwo “Straż”) and its periodical Straż. Economic nationalism played an increasingly important role in the German–Polish national conflict as the “organic work” movement took hold in the province; see Rudolf Jaworski, Handel und Gewerbe im Nationalitäten-Kampf: Studien zur Wirtschaftsgesinnung der Polen in der Provinz Posen, 1871–1914 (Göttingen, 1986); and Jakóbczyk, Studia nad dziejami Wielkopolski w XIX w. The Czechs also used the economic boycott—“svůj k svému (each to his own)”—as a nationalist weapon; see Catherine Albrecht, “Pride in Production: The Jubilee Exhibition of 1891 and Economic Competition between Czechs and Germans in Bohemia,” Austrian History Yearbook, Vol. XXIV, 1993, pp. 101–18; and “Economic Nationalism Among German Bohemians,” Nationalities Papers, Vol. 24, No. 1, 1996, pp. 17–30.Google Scholar

37. “Polnischer Antisemitismus,” Im deutschen Reich, 1908, pp. 341—45.Google Scholar

38. See the discussions of Polish antisemitism in Im deutschen Reich, for example, 1901, pp. 185–91; 1906, pp. 42–43; and 1908, pp. 341–45.Google Scholar

39. Levy, “Die Juden im preußischen Osten,” Im deutschen Reich, 1901, pp. 186–91.Google Scholar

40. Im deutschen Reich, 1900, pp. 601–602.Google Scholar

41. GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 9b, Wegener at the Gesamtausschuß meeting in Danzig on 13 September 1902 (M).Google Scholar

42. GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 146, Der Anteil der Konfessionen (M).Google Scholar

43. See the above discussion of demographic statistics and the intersections of confession and nationality.Google Scholar

44. GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 140, “Die deutsche Ostmarkenfrage in kurzer Beleuchtung” von Albert Kreßmann, December 1908 (M).Google Scholar

45. See GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, Anh. No. 102, Reisebericht (fall 1899) and No. 34, Bd. I, speech by Dr Heinz Brunner at the founding of the Berlin chapter and the Berlin Women's Group on 20 April 1895 (M).Google Scholar

46. GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 82, Bl. 16, Bovenschen at the meeting of the Waltershausen chapter on 22 February 1902 (M).Google Scholar

47. GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 146, Vosberg to the Hauptvorstand (12 December 1910) about the 1910 census (M). As Käthe Schirmacher noted, Polonization occurred in mixed marriages regardless of the gender composition of the marriage; see GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 140, “Unsere Pflicht in den Ostmarken: Rede auf dem II. Ostdeutschen Frauentage in Elbing von Dr. Käthe Schirmacher” (M). Most cases of mixed marriage in the province involved a German man and a Polish woman, and demographic statistics and church records indicated that the children of such marriages primarily spoke Polish and participated in Polish organizations.Google Scholar

48. GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 146, Der Anteil der Konfessionen (M). See also Hagen, Germans, Poles, and Jews, especially the appendix, “Demographic Movements in the Province of Poznań,” pp. 323–26.Google Scholar

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50. Im deutschen Reich, 1903, pp. 577–78.Google Scholar

51. Hagen, Germans, Poles, and Jews, p. 217.Google Scholar

52. See Grabowski, op. cit.; Galos et al., op. cit.Google Scholar

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58. See the reports about local populations statistics in the archives of the Eastern Marches Society, GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, Nos 31–86 (M). Cf. GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 146, Volkszahlung 1910; and No. 162, Statistiken über die Berufszahlung in Posen (1907–1910) (M).Google Scholar

59. Ibid, especially GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 63, Bl. 290–95, letter to the Zentral-Vorstand der Fortschrittlichen Vereinigung from the Eastern Marches Society's local chapters in the Wahlkreis Lissa-Fraustadt (Dr Schober–OG Lissa, Hermann–OG Reisen, Dr Burandt–OG Fraustadt, and Weiss–OG Lache; 21 October 1911); No. 76, Bl. 3–5, report about Rogowo (Kr. Znin) (9 November 1913); No. 81, Bl. 106–107, report about Unruhstadt (Kr. Bomst) (9 March 1914); and No. 115, Voßberg report about Exin (19 March 1907).Google Scholar

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64. See GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 162, Zusammensetzung der Stadtverordneten-Versammlung am 31 December 1908 (M).Google Scholar

65. Im deutschen Reich, 1904, p. 663.Google Scholar

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67. See Im deutschen Reich, 1902, pp. 97–100 and 1908, pp. 341–45: and GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, No. 76, Bl. 3–5, report about Rogowo (Kr. Znin) (9 November 1913).Google Scholar

68. Albert Bovenschen, as quoted in Im deutschen Reich, 1900, pp. 601–602.Google Scholar

69. Im deutschen Reich, 1908, pp. 30–31.Google Scholar