Polonization
As Polonization ( Polish polonizacja ) which is acculturation of minorities in Poland to the majority population and the displacement of their languages (eg. As German , Lithuanian , Ukrainian , Belarusian , Kashubian ) by the Polish language referred. An older term used synonymously for this was polarity reversal .
Polonization in Poland
Historically significant was the Polonization u. a. during the period of the Polish-Lithuanian Real Union (1569 to 1795). In the east of what was then Poland-Lithuania , large parts of the population, especially the upper class, assimilated into Polish culture . This mainly affected areas in today's states of Lithuania , Ukraine and Belarus , into which the Polish-speaking area continued to expand. To this day there are larger Polish-speaking minorities there.
The Second Polish Republic (1918–1939) strived for an ethnically homogeneous Polish state and enforced Polish as the only official language , but faced the problem that a third of the population was not Polish-speaking. Several hundred thousand people from the German minority emigrated to Germany at this time.
After the Second World War , the expulsion or forced resettlement of large sections of the population who were not ready to assimilate went hand in hand with a rigorous forced polonization of the remaining members of the minorities. The use of all non-Polish languages was banned by the communists , as was the use of non-Polish place names and personal names. Most of the people affected were given a new Polish first and last name by the state. All non-Polish cultural institutions (newspapers, churches, theaters, schools and other institutions) were also closed. The forced colonization, which was sometimes understood as a retaliatory reaction to the previous Germanization and Russification from before 1918 and after 1939, was directed against the Germans , Silesians , Kashubians , Ukrainians , Belarusians and Jews . With it an ethnically largely homogeneous Polish state was achieved for the first time in the history of Poland .
Polonization of names
The term Polonization also describes the adaptation of loan words or place names to the Polish pronunciation and spelling or their translation into Polish, as well as the reintroduction of historical Polish place names.
"Polonization" of the German Empire
In another meaning, the expression in the German Empire (1871–1918), as a political battle term, denoted a feared “foreign infiltration” by Polish immigrants. ( See also Ruhr Poland )
See also
literature
- Magdalena Helmich: “De-Germanisation” and Polonization. The transformation of Wroclaw into a Polish city . In: Philipp Ther, Tomasz Królik, Lutz Henke: Polish Breslau as a European metropolis. Memory and history politics from the perspective of oral history = Polski Wrocław jako metropolia europejska. Pamięć i polityka historyczna z Punktu widzenia oral history . Oficyna Wydawnicza Atut - Wrocławskie Wydawnictwo Oświatowe, Wrocław 2005. 251 pp., 63–84. ISBN 83-7432-051-6 .
- Hans Joachim Beyer : Umvolkung . Studies on the question of assimilation and amalgamation in East Central Europe and overseas. Rohrer, Brünn 1945 (= Prague studies and documents on the intellectual and ethical history of East Central Europe 2), pp. 159–267 are headed: Poland between the Congress of Vienna and the World War.
- Jan Herman Brinks: Between Anti-Slavism and Polonization. The long journey of the German minority in Poland (PDF; 130 kB). In: Blätter for German and international politics, vol. 44, August, 8/1999, pp. 975–83.
- Mateusz J. Hartwich: The Silesian Giant Mountains: the Polonization of a landscape after 1945 . New research on Silesian history; 23 Vienna [u. a.]: Böhlau 2012 ISBN 978-3-412-20753-3 .
- Georg Jaeckel: The Polonization efforts in Upper Silesia from the middle of the 19th century to the 1st World War and the Poznan Catholicism. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 13, 1995, pp. 473-513.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ German occupation of Poland and small Rotreusens in the 15th century
- ↑ Reinhold Schmitt: Poles and Germans in Conversation. Gunter Narr Verlag, 1997, ISBN 978-3-823-35138-2 , p. 325 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
- ^ National struggle in the history of the Wartheland
- ^ Posen, the Warthegau and the Germanness in Poland
- ↑ German Scientific Journal for Poland by Alfred Lattermann (Ed.) (PDF file)
- ^ Franz-Josef Sehr : Professor from Poland in Beselich annually for decades . In: Yearbook for the Limburg-Weilburg district 2020 . The district committee of the district of Limburg-Weilburg, Limburg 2019, ISBN 3-927006-57-2 , p. 223-228 .
