Poland in Germany

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As Poles in Germany are now in statements that relate to current conditions, especially those people who are permanently in the Federal Republic of Germany to live and to be ethnic Poles understand. According to another definition, this term refers to Polish citizens living in Germany .

When making statements that refer to the past, you should pay attention to what is meant by the term “Germany”: before 1871 mostly Prussia, 1871 to 1918 the German Empire , 1918 to 1933 the Weimar Republic , 1933 to 1945 the German Empire , 1945 to 1949 the occupation zones in Germany and from 1949 the Federal Republic of Germany and 1949 to 1990 the GDR . The geographical reference and / or the intent of the terms in the lemma change accordingly .

The number of Poles currently living in Germany cannot be precisely quantified. One reason for this is that there are different common definitions of who should be classified as a Pole. The various definition criteria (Polish citizenship, Polish mother tongue, corresponding migration background or a “commitment to Polishism”) lead to very divergent results. In general, two million people with a Polish migration background are assumed ( 2011 census in Germany), which includes people with a wholly or partially Polish ethnic, cultural or linguistic identity. The number of exclusively Polish citizens in Germany was 783,085 in 2016. Thus, the Polish citizens are the second largest group of foreigners in Germany after the Turkish citizens. The number of people with both Polish and German citizenship in the world was given in 2005 as 1.2 million, of which around 700,000 lived in Germany in 2011. People of Polish descent live today in particular in the Ruhr area (700,000), in the metropolitan areas of Berlin (180,000), Hamburg (110,000), Munich (60,000), Cologne (50,000), Frankfurt am Main (40,000) and Bremen (30,000) and since then Poland 's accession to the EU also increasingly occurs on the German side of the German-Polish Oder-Neisse border area (where, for example, in Tantow , Grambow , Mescherin , Ramin and Nadrensee, Polish citizens make up 9–28% of the population). Poles are seen in German society as rather "invisible and inconspicuous". What is meant by this is that Poles are generally considered to be so well integrated or assimilated that they do not stand out in terms of integration problems.

history

Since the partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795 and the incorporation of parts of Polish territory into the Prussian state, over three million Polish-speaking people lived within the boundaries of the Prussian state, especially in the new Prussian provinces of Posen and West Prussia , the vast majority of them Prussian Citizens were because there was no Polish citizenship due to the dissolution of the Polish state. The Poles living in the Russian Empire or in Austria-Hungary at that time were considered from the Prussian-German perspective as foreigners who could easily be expelled. In 1885 35,000 Poles without Prussian citizenship and Jews were expelled from the then German part of Poland.

The increased influx of Poles to the Spree , Rhine and Ruhr coincided with the phase of transition from an agricultural to an industrial state and the associated considerable need for labor on the one hand and the high population surplus due to the agricultural reform in the Prussian eastern provinces on the other. In the 1880s and above all 1890s, many Poles began to migrate internally from the eastern provinces and migrated from east to west to Berlin , Central Germany and the Ruhr area . Since the 1870s, there has been an increased demand for workers in the industrial areas on the Rhine and Ruhr, mainly due to the rapid expansion of hard coal mining . Since this could no longer be satisfied from the local area, workers had to be recruited from other regions. However, the majority of the people who came from the Prussian eastern provinces, especially the Ruhr area (" Ruhr Poland"), by no means defined themselves as Poles, primarily the Protestant Masurians, who viewed themselves as Prussians.

By the First World War there was an increase of more than two million people from the east. The proportion of the Polish population called “ Ruhr Poles ” reached remarkable values in some districts, such as in 1900 in Recklinghausen with 13.8% or in the district of Gelsenkirchen with 13.1%.

In 1903 the Polish National Democratic Party was founded, which was replaced in the 1920s by the “Polish People's Party” and in 1932 by the “Poland List”. In the Reichstag of the German Empire there were always representatives of the Polish minority who were elected for the electoral alliance Polish List and who were grouped together in the Polish parliamentary group . The most prominent representative of the Polish Party in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic was the Silesian journalist Wojciech Korfanty .

In the Weimar Republic , the Poles, who lived in the German Reich, which was reduced in size by the Treaty of Versailles, were recognized as a national minority . The total number of Poles at the time of the Weimar Republic was about two million according to the Polish and unverified census, including Masurians and Upper Silesians. The official German statistics from the mid-1920s showed around 200,000 people with Polish as their mother tongue. The votes for Polish parties in the Reichstag elections during the Weimar Republic 1919–1932 were between 33,000 and 101,000. In August 1939, shortly before the start of the Second World War , the leadership of the Polish minority was arrested and then interned in the Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald concentration camps. On September 7, 1939, immediately after the attack on Poland began , recognition as a national minority was revoked by a decree by the National Socialist dictatorship of Adolf Hitler and the Union of Poles was banned in Germany . On June 3, 1940, the real estate, banks and other assets of the Polish minority organizations in the German Reich were confiscated.

When Poland moved west to the Oder-Neisse line in 1945, the areas in which an autochthonous Polish minority was resident (especially the border regions of the Prussian provinces Grenzmark Posen , West Prussia , Upper Silesia and East Prussia ) became part of the People's Republic of Poland, which was now dominated by communism .

Since the 1950s, a total of around 2.5 million people from Poland have come to the Federal Republic of Germany, mostly repatriates , but also political emigrants from the Solidarność era.

Current situation

numbers

The Poles living in the Federal Republic of Germany are ethnic groups of Polish origin, both with and without German citizenship. These make up around 1.9% ( 2009 microcensus ) to 2.5% (Polish sources) of the population. Specifying an exact number is made more difficult by the fact that the majority are German citizens and are considered Germans within the meaning of Article 116, Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law . A total of 1,444,847 people came from Poland between 1950 and 2005, including around 800,000 in the 1980s and 1990s. You now have either only German or German and Polish citizenship.

People who have migrated from Poland to the GDR are difficult to categorize, as the GDR authorities did not use the category of resettlers . It is therefore difficult to exclude those who would have been recognized as repatriates in the Federal Republic of Germany before 1990 and also registered as such from the number of those who migrated from Poland to the GDR.

Identity and commitment to Poland are different due to historical developments in the Polish and Polish-speaking population. This results in the existence of a large number of terms, such as “Polish speakers”, “persons of Polish origin” and “people of Polish origin”, which describe this population group. This large group includes people with diverse ties to Polish culture who also refer to themselves as “ Germans ”, “ Masurians ”, “ Kashubians ” or “ Silesians ” and use the terms “Aussiedler” or “ Spätaussiedler ” become.

In 2011, 690,000 people had both German and Polish citizenship. In 2016 there were 783,085 people living permanently in Germany with only Polish citizenship . This corresponds to about 0.95% of the total population of the Federal Republic and 7.8% of the population without German citizenship.

The following table is based on the migration background of people in Germany according to the 2011 census. According to the official definition, people with a migration background (in the broader sense) included all those who immigrated to what is now the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany after 1955 and all foreigners born in Germany and all those born in Germany as Germans with at least one parent who immigrated [after 1955] or was born as a foreigner in Germany .

state People with a Polish migration background
North Rhine-Westphalia 786.480
Bavaria 202.220
Baden-Württemberg 202.210
Lower Saxony 201,620
Hesse 163,200
Berlin 101.080
Rhineland-Palatinate 88,860
Hamburg 71,260
Schleswig-Holstein 55,510
Brandenburg 27,940
Bremen 26,270
Saxony 25,700
Saarland 19,870
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 13,250
Saxony-Anhalt 10,790
Thuringia 10.140
All in all 2,006,410

Legal status

In Articles 20 and 21 of the German-Polish Neighborhood Treaty of June 17, 1991, both countries undertake to respect the rights of people of the other origin residing in their national territories:

"Art. 20th

(1) Members of the German minority in the Republic of Poland, i.e. persons of Polish nationality who are of German descent or who profess the German language, culture or tradition, as well as persons of German nationality in the Federal Republic of Germany who are or who are of Polish descent Professing to the Polish language, culture or tradition have the right, individually or in community with other members of their group, to express, preserve and develop their ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity, free from any attempt against their will to be assimilated. They have the right to fully and effectively exercise their human rights and fundamental freedoms without any discrimination and in full equality before the law.
(2) The Contracting Parties shall implement the rights and obligations of the international standard for minorities [...]

Art. 21

1. The Contracting Parties shall protect the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity of the groups referred to in Article 20, paragraph 1, on their territory and create conditions for the promotion of that identity. [...]
(2) The contracting parties shall in particular
- within the framework of the applicable laws, enable and facilitate mutually beneficial measures for the benefit of the members of the groups referred to in Article 20 paragraph 1 or their organizations. "

The German constitutional law derived from the Basic Law is also of importance for the situation of Poles in Germany . According to Art. 116 GG, anyone “who has German citizenship or who has found admission as a refugee or expellee of German ethnicity or as his spouse or descendant in the area of ​​the German Reich as of December 31, 1937” is still a German today . It follows that the former German citizens living in the Oder-Neisse areas and their descendants continue to have German citizenship. Since only citizenship and not ethnic criteria were used, the more than one million Poles who lived in the German Reich within the borders of 1937 as a recognized minority and their descendants are Germans within the meaning of the Basic Law. Since they are Polish citizens under Polish law and this citizenship has never been lost, most German citizens of the Polish minority are dual citizens.

Position of the German Federal Government

In the opinion of the Federal Government, Poles living in Germany with German citizenship as an immigrant group - in contrast to the long-established autochthonous German minority in Poland - cannot be granted the status of a national minority under German law and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of the Council of Europe of February 1, 1995 become. The Federal Government points out that the Poles living in Germany are not designated as a national minority in the German-Polish Neighborhood Treaty either. The main problem in this context is that almost all Poles or their ancestors have migrated to the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany. In addition, German citizens of Polish descent are entitled to all civil and political rights and thus the possibility of maintaining their own culture and mother tongue.

Position of the Polish politicians and ethnic groups

For a long time, representatives of the Polish ethnic group demanded the recognition of Poles in Germany as a national minority and the granting of the rights resulting therefrom, as well as the removal of what they believed to be an asymmetry (Germans are considered a national minority in Poland). Through this measure, the activists hoped that cases would no longer be possible in which Poles would be discriminated against on the basis of their ethnic origin despite Article 3 of the Basic Law and the Anti-Discrimination Act in Germany . So had z. B. After divorce of binational marriages, German youth welfare offices allow Polish parents who are not custodial to deal with their child only in German. Due to similar cases, the Federal Republic of Germany has already been convicted several times by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for violating human rights .

In 2011 a new contract was drawn up at a round table between representatives of the German and Polish governments, as well as representatives of the German minority in Poland and the Polish ethnic group in Germany ( called Polonia according to the Polish name ). It stated that Polonia will have an office in Berlin, its own museum and a website financed by the Federal Republic of Germany. Furthermore, learning the Polish language in Germany should be made easier. What is absolutely new is that the federal government is providing an authorized representative for Polonia's concerns .

Clubs and organizations

Until October 1, 1939, the German Reich included the Union of Poles in Germany and the Association of National Minorities in Germany .

The most important associations currently active at the federal level include the Union of Poles in Germany and the Polish Congress in Germany , as well as the German-Polish Society of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German-Polish Society Federal Association .

The Polish Catholic Mission has a special role to play. In addition to its pastoral work, it also offers lessons in Polish for children.

At the instigation of the Federation of Poles in Germany and the representatives of the Konwent of Polish Organizations in Germany, the Standing Conference of Polish Umbrella Associations in Germany was set up on August 20, 2010 in Dortmund , and since May 1945 it has united all Polish umbrella associations in Germany for the first time. The task of the Standing Conference is to develop and represent common positions and postulates vis-à-vis the German, Polish and European organs and authorities.

See also

literature

Web links

The migration process and its effects
Organizations and groups

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Census database - results of the 2011 census . Retrieved April 25, 2015.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Polonia w liczbach. ( Memento of December 21, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Estimates of the Wspólnota Polska Foundation , 2007.
  3. ↑ Report o sytuacji Polonii i Polaków za granicą 2012. Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, ISBN 978-83-63743-17-8 , p. 177.
  4. ↑ Sebastian Nagel: Between two worlds. Cultural Structures of the Polish-Speaking Population in Germany - Analysis and Recommendations ( Memento of July 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.2 MB), Institute for Foreign Relations, Stuttgart 2009, p. 9. Accessed on March 18, 2014.
  5. ↑ a b Foreign population - 2008-2016 (destatis)
  6. ↑ Die Zeit - Census: Four million Germans have two passports
  7. ↑ The Poles living in these places are predominantly commuters who are gainfully employed in the agglomeration of Stettin .
  8. ↑ Sebastian Nagel: Between two worlds. Cultural Structures of the Polish-Speaking Population in Germany - Analysis and Recommendations ( Memento of July 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.2 MB), Institute for Foreign Relations, Stuttgart 2009, p. 9. Accessed on March 18, 2014.
  9. ↑ Report o sytuacji Polonii i Polaków za granicą 2012. Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, p. 179.
  10. ↑ Agnieszka Debska: Poles in Germany: The second largest minority . Media service integration January 10, 2014
  11. ↑ a b c d The Poles in Germany ( Memento from November 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), website of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Berlin . Retrieved March 25, 2011.
  12. ^ Radio Berlin Brandenburg (RBB): Event 1864: Germanization of Poland
  13. ↑ Polish immigrants in the Ruhr area between the founding of the empire and the Second World War. Edited by Dieter Dahlmann, Albert S. Kotowski, Zbigniew Karpas. Essen 2005, p. 165.
  14. ^ Michael Rademacher: German administrative history from the unification of the empire in 1871 to the reunification in 1990. fremdspr_krei.html # polish. (List of foreign-language minorities in the German Reich according to the census of December 1, 1900; online material for the dissertation, Osnabrück 2006).
  15. ↑ Thomas Urban : The loss: the expulsion of the Germans and Poles in the 20th century. Chapter: Saber rattle on both sides. ISBN 3-406-52172-X .
  16. ^ Andreas Gonschior: Elections in the Weimar Republic , section Reichstag elections
  17. ↑ The term “Poland” is used here not in the sense of ethnic origin, but of today's national borders. This also includes people who migrated to the GDR up to 1990.
  18. ↑ Sebastian Nagel: Between two worlds. Cultural Structures of the Polish-Speaking Population in Germany - Analysis and Recommendations ( Memento from July 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.2 MB), Institute for Foreign Relations, Stuttgart 2009, p. 21. Accessed on March 18, 2014.
  19. ↑ Sebastian Nagel: Between two worlds. Cultural structures of the Polish-speaking population in Germany - analysis and recommendations ( Memento from July 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.2 MB), Institute for Foreign Relations, Stuttgart 2009, p. 14. Accessed on March 18, 2014.
  20. ^ German Turks: Debate about the double pass - these are the facts Der Spiegel August 5, 2016
  21. ↑ Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF): Migration background (definition)
  22. ^ Klaus Ziemer: The German minority in Poland after 1945. Berlin 1990, conference in the Evangelical Academy
  23. ↑ We want a symmetrical fulfillment of the neighborhood contract. Die Welt, January 12, 2010
  24. ↑ Poles demand more rights in Germany. Die Welt, December 21, 2009
  25. ↑ Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of February 1, 1995
  26. ↑ Sigrid Averesch: "Most of the resettlers have integrated well". In: Berliner Zeitung . January 21, 2010, accessed June 16, 2015 .
  27. ↑ Answer of the Federal Government to the minor question from the MP Ulla Jelpke and the parliamentary group of the PDS for the promotion of German minorities in Eastern Europe since 1991/1992 (PDF; 71 kB) of 6 September 2000
  28. ↑ Quo vadis Polonia? Deutsche Welle, January 19, 2010
  29. ^ Letter from the "Convention of Polish Organizations in Germany" to the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media Affairs Michael Naumann dated November 27, 2000
  30. ↑ Stress test for German-Polish relationship. Handelsblatt, January 14, 2010
  31. ↑ Report o sytuacji Polonii i Polaków za granicą 2012. Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, p. 186.
  32. ↑ EU Petitions Commission in Brussels decides on an initiative report on the German Youth Welfare Office. ( Memento from March 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) In: Onlinemagazin Umweltjournal.de from July 11, 2007
  33. ^ Brigitte Jaeger-Dabek: Poland in Germany: Minority-like rights agreed . The Poland magazine . June 14, 2011
  34. ↑ Polacy w Niemczech mówią jednym Glosem. Stowarzyszenie Wspólnota Polska
  35. ↑ Powołanie Stałej Konferencji Dachowych Organizacji Polonii i Polaków w Niemczech . Polonii Niemieckiej Congress. Archived from the original on September 19, 2010. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved February 24, 2012. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kongres.de