Deportations from Poland
In the expulsions from Poland, around 35,000 Poles ( Russian and Austrian citizens ) were expelled from the Kingdom of Prussia from 1885 , of which around 10,000 were Polish and Russian Jews . The policy was initiated by Otto von Bismarck and implemented by the Prussian Interior Minister Robert Viktor von Puttkamer . The expulsions, which were mainly anti-Polish, were sharply criticized by the opposition, which led to a conviction in the Reichstag on January 16, 1886 .
context
Location of the Poles
Through the third partition of Poland , about three million Poles had become subjects of Prussia and later indirectly of the German Empire . With extensive freedom of movement , there were also immigrants from the Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary (generally referred to as "defectors" at the time), who had often lived in Prussia for decades, were married to Germans , and even served and arrived in the Prussian army had participated in the wars on the part of Prussia. The reasons for immigration were economic, but also political, which often included the desire to evade the hard and long service in the Imperial Russian Army . Poles of German citizenship basically enjoyed the same rights as other German citizens . However, early on, mostly by administrative means, there were measures aimed at Germanization , such as a severe restriction of Polish as the language of instruction in the eastern provinces .
Anti-Semitic Movement
In the years 1880/81 the so-called anti - Semite petition was distributed in large numbers to collect signatures. Two of the four issues concerned immigration of Jews . On the one hand, official statistics with a distinction between denominations should be introduced. On the other hand, the immigration of Jews should be prevented. The anti-Semites justified the last point with a massive immigration of Jews from Russia and Austria-Hungary. That was not the reality. As the statistician Salomon Neumann showed in his book The Fable of Jewish Mass Immigration in 1880 , there was net emigration of Jews from Germany and immigration was marginal. In the following census, the required breakdown by denomination was actually introduced by the Prussian government, with the immigration of Jews being dramatically emphasized. Instead of listing the small percentage of immigrants in the total population, these were compared to the Jewish population. Salomon Neumann criticized this in his book "On the Statistics of Jews in Prussia from 1816 to 1880" and confirmed his results from 1880 that there was still a net emigration of Jews from Germany.
Results of the Reichstag election of 1884
The Reichstag election in 1884 did not result in a stable majority for Otto von Bismarck's government policy either. Although the Conservatives , Free Conservatives and National Liberals who supported him were able to win mandates, they remained clearly in the minority with only 39.7% of the votes in the first ballot and 39.5% of the mandates. He could not hope for any support on the left from the German Liberals and the German People's Party, allied with them, with 19.3% of the votes in the first ballot and 18.7% of the seats, just as little as with the Social Democrats (9.7 %) % of the votes and 6.0% of the mandates) or the representatives of the minorities ( Danes , Alsace-Lorraine and Poles with 6.8% of the votes and 8.0% of the mandates, about half of them for the Poles). Interesting for Otto von Bismarck was the position of the Catholic Center Party towards his government, which with the allied German-Hanoverians won 24.3% of the votes in the first ballot and 27.0% of the seats. However, for religious reasons, the Center Party was quite close to the Poles and Alsace-Lorraine people.
End of the Kulturkampf
The Center Party viewed Otto von Bismarck with skepticism, who was responsible for the anti-Catholic legislation of the Kulturkampf . For the Chancellor, however, rapprochement was not only interesting in order to obtain a majority. In that case he would also have had the opportunity to play off the center and the national liberals against each other, as he had done before in the 1870s. To this end, it made sense to split the Catholic camp consisting of the Center, German-Hanoverians and the Polish faction along national lines and thus bring the Center Party closer to the government through a polarization between "Reich friends" and "Reich enemies". With this in mind, Otto von Bismarck declared on December 3, 1884 in the Reichstag about the Kulturkampf:
"I was only drawn into the whole fight by the Polish side."
And on April 12, 1886, he criticized the center in the Prussian state parliament :
"I think the Pope is more German-friendly than the center."
During this time, the Chancellor aggressively sought a reconciliation with the Pope, whom he called upon as arbitrator in October 1886 in a dispute with Spain over the Caroline Islands . Pope Leo XIII. then in May 1887 declared the "Kulturkampf" to be over.
procedure
prehistory
From October 1883, the Prussian government began a first survey of Polish "defectors" (immigrants). As early as 1884, the policy against Jewish immigrants tightened. In July 1884 a few hundred Russian Jews were expelled from Berlin (from October 1883 to October 1884 a total of 677 people). In September 1884, the influx of rabbis and synagogue officials was restricted by the Prussian Interior Minister Robert Viktor von Puttkamer :
“First of all, it was determined in a circular rescript of September 30, 1884 (M. Bl. P. 236) that the approval to accept foreign Jews as rabbis and synagogue officials would not be given by the district governments without the prior consent of the Minister of the Interior , while until then by Cirk.-Erl. of Jan. 30, 1851, the governments were empowered to give this approval in the place of the Minister without further ado. At the same time, it was stated in the rescript of September 30, 1884 that in general the acceptance of the intended persons as religious officials is not desirable and that, if such an acceptance is approved, the accepted rabbi or synagogue official, if he is annoying, is to be expelled like other foreigners. "
Next, the naturalization of Jewish immigrants was prevented against applicable law:
“Some time later, the Minister of the Interior instructed the governments to obtain his approval for naturalization requests from Jewish foreigners before the naturalization was granted. ... Furthermore, the minister expressed the principle that Jewish immigrants from Russian Poland and Galicia should be denied naturalization in Prussia. This refusal is taken very seriously; the minister, without exception, refused admission to the Prussian State Association in every case submitted to him by the district governments. "
In January 1885, the philosopher Eduard von Hartmann seconded his journalistic article “The decline of Germanism” in the “present”, in which he pleaded for the expulsion of Poles and a Germanization of the eastern provinces. The Polish side particularly criticized the term “exterminate”, which was subsequently also used in Polish-language publications in the German original. On January 24, 1885, the Polish MP Florian von Stablewski turned against the "godless theories" of Eduard von Hartmann. On February 28 and March 17, 1885, the Prussian state parliament debated the school conditions in West Prussia , where allegedly unsustainable conditions arose due to the schooling of "defectors". On March 20, 1885, Germany signed an extradition treaty with Russia.
Beginning of expulsions
The expulsions began on March 26, 1885 with the first deportation decree by Robert Viktor von Puttkamer. The measure was made public the following day in the semi-official Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung . As early as May 6, 1885, there was a major request from the Member of Parliament Borowski in the Prussian state parliament. From June 27 to July 2, 1885, the high presidential authorities in Koenigsberg , Danzig , Posen and Breslau met to discuss the expulsions in order to coordinate their approach. In the course of July, the Polish side formed auxiliary committees for those deported in Krakow , Posen and Lemberg .
Robert Viktor von Puttkamer issued a second deportation decree on July 26, 1885, from which the expulsions reached their peak in the second half of 1885. A total of around 35,000 people were expelled from the country, around 10,000 of them Jews. At first the focus was on immigrants from Russia. However, the Russian authorities disputed Russian citizenship due to the lack of papers, so that some of the IDs were stuck in the border area for a long time. The measures were gradually extended to nationals of Austria-Hungary. Citizens of other countries were only affected in exceptional cases.
The expulsions aroused outrage at home and abroad: on October 17, 1885, Grocholski's major inquiry was made in the Austrian House of Representatives, and on November 10, 1885, Hausner and Czerkawski submitted a major inquiry to the Austrian Imperial Council . The subject was briefly discussed in the Bavarian state parliament on November 12, 1885. Since the measures were enacted and carried out by the Prussian government, they only affected Prussia. Immigrants to other German federal states were initially not affected until the Prussian government put pressure on them.
Reichstag resolution of January 16, 1886
On December 1, 1885, the interpellation of the Polish MP Jazdzewski came up for negotiation in the Reichstag. Otto von Bismarck tried to prevent a debate with an "Imperial Message" he had written and denied that the Reichstag was competent because it was the responsibility of a single state. Surprised by this, the leader of the Center Party, Ludwig Windthorst, called for the debate to be postponed. The leader of the German Liberals , Eugen Richter, contradicted him without success :
“I would like to think it would be more correct if one did not allow the statements, the reading that took place here today to go out into the country without being illuminated. Afterwards it will be at liberty to postpone the continuation of the debate until tomorrow or another day at any stage. I would therefore like to speak out in favor of us entering into the proper negotiation on the interpellation immediately. (Very correct! Left.) "
On the same day, however, the conflict broke out again over another item on the agenda, in which representatives of the parties argued over the question of whether the Reichstag was responsible for the question of deportations.
After Kaiser Wilhelm I had announced measures “to protect Germanness” in the eastern provinces in his throne speech in the Prussian state parliament on January 14, 1886, the adjourned debate took place on January 15 and 16, 1886. In addition to the Poles, the Center, the German Liberals and the Social Democrats brought in their own resolutions in which the expulsions were disapproved. In the vote, the moderate resolution of the center was able to prevail with the approval of the Poles, German-Liberals, the German People's Party and the Social Democrats. On the part of the government and the semi-official press, this was criticized as a victory for the “enemies of the Reich”.
On January 23, 1886, the Federal Council refused to deliberate on the Reichstag resolution. In the following week Otto von Bismarck took the floor in the Prussian state parliament and justified the expulsions. On January 30, 1886, with the votes of the Conservatives and National Liberals, Achenbach's motion to promote Germanism in Posen and West Prussia was accepted in the Prussian state parliament and the Reichstag resolution of January 16, 1886 was disapproved. On February 9, 1886, another debate about expulsions followed in the Prussian state parliament.
Effects
At home and abroad there was resentment about the deportations. Even if Russia itself tightened its Russification policy towards the Poles around the time and paid little attention to the deportees, there were anti-German statements in the press and also harassment against the Germans living in Russia . In Austria-Hungary the protests were stronger. The government felt compelled to stand up for its expelled citizens in Prussia, but did not want to endanger the good relations. For the Poles, the expulsions heralded further measures aimed at the Germanization of the eastern provinces of Prussia, such as the “Settlement Act” enacted in April 1886, which aimed to systematically buy up Polish goods, or in the same month a ban on Polish student associations at German universities.
literature
- Salomon Neumann: The fable of the Jewish mass immigration. A chapter from Prussian statistics. Berlin 1880.
- Salomon Neumann: On the statistics of the Jews in Prussia from 1816 to 1880: Second contribution from d. official publications. Gerschel, Berlin 1884, ub.uni-frankfurt.de
- Heinrich Rickert (without naming): Anti-Semite mirror. Publishing and printing by AW Kafemann, Danzig 1890, ub.uni-frankfurt.de
- Leopold Auerbach: Judaism and its confessors. Publishing house by Sigmar Mehring, Berlin 1890, ub.uni-frankfurt.de
- Polish laws . In: Eugen Richter: Political ABC book . 9th edition. Verlag "Progress, Aktiengesellschaft", Berlin 1898, p. 278 ff.
- Helmut Neubach : The expulsions of Poles and Jews from Prussia 1885/86. Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1967.
- Helmut Neubach: Review of: Arno Herzig: Geschichte Schlesiens. From the Middle Ages to the present. CH Beck, Munich 2015. ISBN 978-3-406-67665-9 . In: Medical historical messages. Journal for the history of science and specialist prose research. Volume 34, 2015, pp. 300–306, here: p. 303.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Helmut Neubach: The expulsions of Poles and Jews from Prussia 1885/86. P. 21.
- ↑ Leopold Auerbach: Judaism and its confessors. Pages 117–118.
- ↑ Leopold Auerbach: Judaism and its confessors. Page 118.
- ^ Stenographic reports of the Reichstag, 6th legislative period, 1885/1886, 1st, 8th session, pages 132-133