| Grand Duchy of Posen | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Client state ofPrussia | |||||||||
| 1815–1848 | |||||||||
 Coat of arms | |||||||||
 The Grand Duchy of Posen in 1815 (aqua area in the west markedWielkie Księstwo Poznańskie) | |||||||||
 Map of the Grand Duchy of Posen (place of storage:State Archives in Poznań) | |||||||||
| Capital | Posen (Polish:Poznań) | ||||||||
| Area | |||||||||
| • Coordinates | 52°24′N16°55′E / 52.400°N 16.917°E /52.400; 16.917 | ||||||||
• 1848 | 28,951 km2 (11,178 sq mi) | ||||||||
| Population | |||||||||
• 1848 | 1,350,000 | ||||||||
| Government | |||||||||
| • Type | Absolute monarchy | ||||||||
| Grand Duke | |||||||||
• 1815–1840 | Frederick William III | ||||||||
• 1840–1848 | Frederick William IV | ||||||||
| Governor | |||||||||
• 1815–1830 | Antoni Radziwiłł | ||||||||
• 1830–1841 | Eduard von Flottwell | ||||||||
• 1841–1848 | Adolf von Arnim-Boitzenburg | ||||||||
| Legislature | Sejm | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
| 9 June 1815 | |||||||||
| 19 March 1848 | |||||||||
| 5 December 1848 | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Today part of |  Poland | ||||||||
TheGrand Duchy of Posen (German:Großherzogtum Posen;Polish:Wielkie Księstwo Poznańskie) was part of theKingdom of Prussia, created fromterritories annexed by Prussia after thePartitions of Poland, and formally established following theCongress of Vienna in 1815. On 9 February 1849, the Prussian administration renamed the grand duchy theProvince of Posen. Its former name was unofficially used afterward for denoting the territory, especially byPoles, and today is used by modern historians to refer to different political entities until 1918. Its capital wasPosen (Polish:Poznań). The title of Grand Duke of Posen remained until 1918 to theKing of Prussia.
Originally part of theKingdom of Poland, this area largely coincided withGreater Poland. The eastern portions of the territory were taken by theKingdom of Prussia during thePartitions of Poland; during the first partition (1772), Prussia took just theNetze District, the portion along theNoteć (German:Netze) river. Prussia added the remainder during the second partition in 1793. Prussia briefly lost control during theKościuszko Uprising in 1794.
It was initially administered as the province ofSouth Prussia. The Poles were the primary ally ofNapoleon Bonaparte in Central Europe, participating in theGreater Poland Uprising of 1806 and supplying troops for his campaigns. After the defeat of Prussia byNapoleonic France, theDuchy of Warsaw was created by theTreaty of Tilsit in 1807.
Following theCongress of Vienna, portions of the Prussia's Polish territories were ceded toCongress Poland, a kingdom ruled in personal union by the Russian Czar. From the remainder the Grand Duchy of Posen was created with the city ofPosen as the administrative centre and the seat of theStatthalter PrinceAntoni Henryk Radziwiłł. In reality the governing power over the region lay with the provincialupper-presidentJoseph Zerboni di Sposetti.[1]
At the beginning of the Prussian takeover of Polish territories, the discrimination and repression of Poles consisted of reducing their access[citation needed] to education and the judicial system. Prussian officials identified Germanisation as the progress of higher culture over a lower one. As a result, the local administration discriminated against Poles. After 1824 attempts to Germanise the school system were hastened and the government refused to establish a Polish university in Posen. Polish politicians issued protests against Prussian policies and a secret, patriotic Polish organisation was founded calledTowarzystwo Kosynierów (Society of Scythemen). Resistance activity of Poles resulted in reaction from Berlin, where a trial was held in connection to links between Poles from the Grand Duchy with Poles from Russian-ruledCongress Poland.[2]
The 1830November Uprising withinCongress Poland against theRussian Empire was significantly supported by Poles from the Grand Duchy. Afterward, the Prussian administration underOberpräsidentEduard Flottwell known for hisanti-Polonism[1] introduced a stricter system of repression against the Poles. Prussian authorities attempted to expel Poles from administration to weaken the Polish nobility by buying its lands out, and, after 1832, the role of the Polish language in education was significantly repressed. Local self-government in the landed estates of land-lords, which was dominated by Polish nobility, was abolished, and instead the Prussian state appointed commissioners. Monasteries and their assets were confiscated by Prussia.[1] The office of the governor (Statthalter) was abolished. Germanisation of institutions, education as well throughcolonisation was implemented.[3]
On September 11, 1840, an audience was held by the Prussian king for deputies coming from the Grand Duchy. CountEdward Raczyński, in the name of all Polish members of theGrand Duchy Sejm (parliament), issued a complaint against the repression and discrimination of the Polish population which went against guarantees made in 1815. He accused the Prussian authorities of removing the Polish language from public institutions, courts and schools, as well as deleting the history of Poland from school teaching and substituting the name "Province of Posen" for the previous "Grand Duchy of Posen". He also blamed the authorities for erasing the Polish Eagle from the Grand Duchy's seals and emblems and for expelling Poles from offices in order to replace them with Prussians or foreign-born persons of German ethnicity.[4] When land owners of Polish ethnicity sold land, it was often bought in order to resell it to colonists of German ethnicity. The Prussian king rejected the complaint; he was fully supportive of the Germanisation of Polish areas. However, he believed it had to be done through different methods, and in May 1841 decided to name Flottwell upper-president of the PrussianProvince of Saxony, which included large territories annexed from theKingdom of Saxony in 1815.
Before 1848, repressions intensified in the Grand Duchy, censorship was strengthened, settlers of German ethnicity were brought in.[5] Large patriotic demonstrations were held in memory of Antoni Babiński, a member of thePolish Democratic Society. He had been wounded by a gunshot, when the Prussian gendarme attempting to arrest him, engaged in a fight with him. Babiński was then captured, sentenced to death and executed in Posen. His public execution in February 1847 was accompanied by public mourning. Cloth soaked in his blood and other remains were distributed as nationalrelics. Large prayers were held in his memory, often against orders of Prussia. Members of such gatherings were persecuted by police.[5] At the same time the national self-awareness grew among the rural population of Polish and German ethnicity alike. Whereas two thirds of the grand ducal population identified as ethnically Polish (mostly in the centre, south and east), one third envisioned themselves as being of German ethnicity. Anti-Prussian sentiment grew as response to policy of Germanisation and repression by Prussian authorities and the conspiracy organisation called Związek Plebejuszy found a potent ground. It was led by bookseller Walenty Stefański, poet Ryszard Berwiński and lawyer Jakub Krauthofer-Krotowski.[5]
During theRevolutions of 1848, theFrankfurt Parliament attempted to divide the grand duchy into two parts: the province of Posen, which would have been annexed into aunited Germany, and the province ofGniezno, which would have remained outside Germany, but because of the protest of Polish parliamentarians these plans failed and the integrity of the grand duchy was preserved. However, on February 9, 1849, after a series of broken assurances, the Prussian administration renamed the grand duchy theProvince of Posen. Nevertheless, the territory remained outside of theGerman Confederation until its dissolution and but was incorporated into theNorth German Confederation upon its foundation. The Prussian kings retained the title ofGrand Duke of Posen until the fall of the monarchy in 1918.
The grand duchy was 28,951 square kilometres (11,178 sq mi) in area and was subdivided into twogovernment districts:Posen andBromberg. The regions were further divided into 26 original districts (German:Kreis(e),Polish:Powiat(y)) headed byLandräte ("district councillors"). Later, these were redivided into 40districts, plus two urban districts. In 1824, the Grand Duchy also received a provincial council (term started in 1827) but with little administrative power, limited to providing advice. In 1817, the Culmerland (Chełmno Land) was moved toWest Prussia. From the 1820s, the grand duchy had a parliament, theSejm of the Grand Duchy of Posen. Today much of the territory lies within theGreater Poland andKuyavian–Pomeranian voivodeships.
Population:
Since in the first half of the 19th century there was no census or other statistics also recording the ethnic identities of the inhabitants of the grand duchy[6] its ethnic composition can only be derived fromits religious makeup then recorded in the census. By 1815 in the grand duchy Catholics were by majority Polish-speaking, most Protestants were native speakers of German and many Jews then spoke Yiddish. Based on the religious data it was estimated that in 1815ethnic Poles made up about 657,000 persons (or 73% of the overall population), whileethnic Germans were 225,000 (25%) and 18,000 (or 2%) were of the Yiddish culture.[7] In 1819, according to Georg Hassel ethnic Poles were 77% of the population, ethnic Germans 17.5% andJews 5.5%.[8]
Whereas in 1812 Jews in then Prussia proper had been emancipated and naturalised, the Jews of the grand duchy were excluded from citizens franchise, but like women and non-propertied classes mere subjects of the grand duke. Only Christian men, if owning land, were enfranchised as citizens. Whereas Christians had freedom of moving from the grand duchy to Prussia proper, the grand duchy's Jews were forbidden to immigrate into Prussia.[9] Prussian policy, however, opened an exception, Germanized Jews were enfranchised as citizens and granted freedom of movement. So most adherents of the Yiddish culture Germanized themselves within a short period.[citation needed] Many traditional or newly established German language educational institutions were attended by local Jews who, equipped with Prussian education and German language skills, often emigrated to Prussia proper with some making their careers.[10] Despite Germanization efforts, the Polish speaking population more than doubled to 1,344,000 and remained the majority, however, its percentage decreased to 64% of the population by 1910.[1] However, there were regional differences, with Polish being the prevalent language in central, eastern and southern Posen, and German speakers constituted majorities in the north and west.
According to contemporary statistics of 1825 the population consisted of the 65.6% Catholics, 28.1% Protestants and 6.3% Jews.[11] The Catholic congregations formed part of theEcclesiastical Province of Gnesen-Posen led bythe Primate of Poland, a jurisdiction formed in 1821 by merging theArchdiocese of Gniezno andPoznań. The bulk of the Lutheran and Reformed (Calvinist) congregations became part of theEcclesiastical Province of Posen within theEvangelical Church in Prussia after 1817, with the congregations usually retaining their previous separate confessions. With the persisting resistance of some Lutherans against the administrativePrussian Union of churches, theEvangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia emerged in 1841. It was recognized by the government in 1845, with about 3,000Old Lutherans in several congregations spread across the area of the grand duchy.[12] Jewish religious life was organised in about 130 congregations spread all over the grand duchy.[13] Since the government tolerated Judaism, but did not recognise it,[citation needed] no Jewish umbrella organisation, comparable to those of the Christian denominations or the formerCouncil of Four Lands, forbidden in 1764, did emerge in the grand duchy.[13] The migration of Posen Jews to Prussia was mostly blocked until 1850, when they were finally naturalised.[9]
The monarch of the grand duchy, with title of Grand Duke of Posen, was theHohenzollern king of Prussia and his representative was the Duke-Governor (Statthalter): the first was PrinceAntoni Radziwiłł (1815–1831), who was married toPrincess Louise of Prussia, the king's cousin. The governor was assigned to give advice in matters of Polish nationality, and had the right to veto the administration decisions; in reality, however, all administrative power was in the hands of the Prussianupper-president of the province.
Organizations for items of general interest or province-wide purposes:
Organisations aiming at promoting German-speaking culture, settlements, or expressively addressing German-speaking audiences:
Media related toGrand Duchy of Posen at Wikimedia CommonsAuthority control databases: National |
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