Death of a Nation

by Stephen R A'Barrow

  The bastion of ‘Prussian militarism’ and home to the Prussian royal court, Potsdam (just west of Berlin), for some reason survived the bombing until the very end of the war. The RAF hit the city on 14th April 1945 in a twenty-minute raid, which destroyed 40 per cent of the town, including Frederick the Great’s Winter Palace and the Garrison Church in which he had been buried. Today the bulldozers are clearing the concrete monstrosities built over the ruins of the palace and the church during the Communist era so that the heart of Frederick’s old Potsdam can come alive again.(11)

  cccv The movement of German settlers east into Silesia reached its high point from 1250 to the late 1300s. They founded towns and cities in a chain virtually every 15 kilometres from Goldberg, Jauer, Schweidnitz, Reichenbach, Lowenstein and Münsterberg and another row from Görlitz, Bunzlau, Liegnitz, Neumarkt, Breslau, Ohlau, Brieg, Oppeln and Ratibor. By 1400 German migration had established 120 new towns and over 1200 villages in Silesia.(2)

  cccvi In January 1945, a great Soviet offensive for the Oder and Silesia was hard fought. The river is said to have run red with the blood of Soviet soldiers at the place where their memorial stands at Mikoline (Mikolin), where they finally achieved their breakthrough.

  cccvii That meant that anyone with a Slavic-sounding name, or who could speak the upper Silesian dialect was given the option to ‘opt for Poland’. All in all up to 1.2 million ‘Autochthones’ were allowed to remain, along with 180,000 essential German workers, although the official figures show that only 870,000 formally registered to take this option between 1946–48.(6)

  cccviii The Polish economy needed workers, especially in the vital industrial areas of Upper Silesia, a region second only to the Ruhr in the production of coal. Beyond this Silesia had Europe’s largest manufacturer of locomotive carriages, was a centre for the production of engineering components, a major producer of textiles, cement, had a substantial brewery and agricultural industry and was a centre for tobacco and wood craft. Many took this, which appeared to be a get-out-of-jail-free card, in the belief that Silesia’s status as part of Poland could not remain permanent.(7)

  cccix Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik was regarded as an utter betrayal by those who had been expelled from eastern Germany, as he accepted the Oder-Neisse border without question. For those minorities that remained behind that border he was regarded with disgust for not even raising the issue of the German minority with the Polish authorities. It also gave birth to a joint German-Polish historical commission at which the German historians humiliated themselves in a display of abject subservience by acquiescing to all the demands made by the communist Polish government, that the word Vertreibung (expulsion) not be used in the context of the ‘transfer’ of German populations, so as not to upset the delicate process of détente. His successor as German Chancellor gave communist Poland a further extended line of credit as part of the German-Polish friendship association. The only sign to show for it was a carbuncle of a building on the outskirts of Warsaw; the rest of the money simply disappeared into the Party’s empty coffers.

  cccx Estimates for the total size of the German minority in Poland today range from 250,000–800,000, with most of these being in Upper Silesia.

  cccxi In Upper Silesia, the German minority do not speak German on the street, after years of fearing the consequences of einen auf den deckle zu bekommen (literally ‘being beaten over the head’) and because they were labelled a revanchist fifth column during the long tyranny of communist governments. Since 1990, they have taken care to remember their dead, both civilian and military, of the two world wars. Well-maintained war memorials stand to the victims of the towns in Upper Silesia. One of the big issues of recent years has been the ability of these German minority communities to get bilingual signage for their towns on road signs and on official maps — a visible sign of their re-emergence as a minority in Poland. The first signs went up in November 2008. Half of them were immediately vandalised. At both Groß and Klein Stein (Kamien Slaski) and at Schloss Izbicko, the palatial residences and churches of the Strachwitz family have been beautifully restored after the ruin and decay caused by the war and are well worth a visit. These sites however remain notable exceptions. Dispossessing and expelling the old noble families and allowing the rich architectural heritage to rot for seventy years has in many parts of the former German east done irreversible damage to its heritage. Many buildings are simply beyond repair, the Polish government does not have the money and neither do the former owners, who in many cases — such as the family in question — once owned these properties but simply could not afford to take on such a mammoth undertaking. Groß Stein was restored with a generous grant from the German Federal Government. Schloss Izbicko was restored by a local private businessman.

  cccxii Only members of the German minority destined for the Catholic priesthood were allowed to study German and then only because they could have no children. It would be left to German-born high-ranking members of the Catholic Church such as Archbishop Alfred Nossol and the Bishop Jan Wieczorek of Gleiwitz to intercede on behalf of the German minority to be able to hear mass ‘in the language of their hearts’ in the 1980s. The first German language service on the pilgrimage site of the Annaberg took place on 4th June 1989.(13) The Archbishop has also been outspoken on the fact that the Vertreibung or expulsion of the Germans was a crime.

  cccxiii If you take one of the mini train rides through Colmar or see the official historical plaques that litter the region, the fiction is still maintained that Alsace was an entirely French province until the Germans arrived in 1871. The fact that the buildings are littered with German inscriptions, street and place names that date back hundreds of years before French military forces occupied the region in the late seventeenth century is anathema to the Francophone writers of local tourist guides.

  cccxiv Silesia had been part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation from 1335. Frederick the Great’s conquest of Silesia by Prussia against his Austrian adversary was not completed until 1763, after the third Silesian War. Silesia remained part of Prussia until 1871 when Prussia, along with Silesia, became part of the German Reich. Silesia was partitioned after the First World War, with part of Upper Silesia around Kattowitz and another tiny piece around Hultschin (Hlucín) going to Poland and Czechoslovakia respectively. Ninety per cent of Silesia, however, remained part of Germany until the end of the Second World War. Thereafter, 90 per cent went to Poland, with a morsel remaining part of a reconstituted Czechoslovakia and another small part remaining within the Soviet Zone of central Germany, this part of Silesia is today part of the modern German state of Saxony. A Polish professor from the University of Oppeln (Opole) has ignored the early history of Silesia and begins his history of Silesia with its Slavic settlement, stating it belonged to Poland from 986. History then jumps to 1348 when it formally became part of Bohemia. In 1526 it falls under the Habsburgs. It is conquered from 1740–63 by Prussia. In 1921, the eastern part of Upper Silesia ‘returns’ to Poland. The word German or Germany does not occur once. It’s hard not to laugh out loud at such an absurd summary of the region’s history.(15) A typically Stalinist memorial of a dancing couple stands to this day at Gogolin in Upper Silesia proclaiming ‘Carolina drove to Gogolin with Karol behind her, as though after a bride with a bottle of wine… This memorial was paid for by the Silesian people to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the People’s Republic of Poland, and as a symbol of the victory of Polish culture, tradition and song, over centuries of foreign aggression.’ This monument is testimony to the fabrication and falsification of Silesia’s history by communist historians. The local community of Gogolin, both majority Poles and minority Germans, intend to replace the Stalinist monstrosity with a symbol of reconciliation.

  cccxv A few of Breslau’s Nobel community include:

  1902 Theodor Mommsen for Literature (Ancient History), 1905 Phillip von Lenard for Physics (Photoelectrons)

  1907 Eduard Buchner for Chemistry (Fermentation), 1908 Pa
ul Ehrlich for Medicine (Immune Systems)

  1912 Gerhart Hauptmann for Literature (Drama and Prose), 1918 Fritz Haber for Chemistry (Synthesis of Ammonia)

  1931 Friedrich Bergius for Chemistry (Synthetic Fuel), 1943 Otto Stern for Physics (Magnetic Momentum)

  1954 Max Born for Physics (Quantum Mechanics), 1994 Reinhard Selten for Economics (Industrial Games Theory)(17)

  cccxvi The Borussia organisation in the old Ermland region of East Prussia along with organisations such as Karta are looking to fill the blind spots in Polish history of these regions. And similar groups such as Antikomplex are doing the same in the Czech Republic. Joana Manderla, a representative of the German minority in Upper Silesia told me, ‘Slowly the truth is coming out… there is less fear. Things are improving.’ There are now over 300 kindergartens where the minority’s children can learn German. The focus of where the money is being spent is now much more targeted on supporting the preservation of the German language. Since 1990 there is now also much greater freedom, in terms of celebrating Catholic Mass again in German, which is particularly appreciated by the older community.(21)

  cccxvii There are mountainous frontiers along the northern borders with Saxony in the form of the Erzgebirge and further east again along the border with Silesia, the Riesengebirge.

  cccxviii Mass graves as a result of the ethnic cleansing are common finds even today. One was recently discovered on the outskirts of Eger (Cheb), another in Aussig (Usti Nad Labem).

  cccxix Bavaria took over the ‘Patenschaft’ and thereby became the umbrella state to protect the interests of the Sudeten Germans and finance their cultural endeavours after the war, in the same way that Niedersachsen did for the Silesians. In fact, the Sudeten Germans have been adopted as the fourth ‘tribe’ of Bavaria, the state consisting of the ancient tribes of Bavarians, Franks, Swabians and since 1945 also Bohemian Sudeten Germans.

  cccxx Should Germans and Russians ever choose to find examples of happier shared historical moments, there are plenty to quote from, including: Peter the Great studied in Germany, Catherine the Great was German, Tsar Nicolas I and Frederick Wilhelm III united to fight and rid Europe of Napoleon. Countless royal connections, including: Tsar Nicolas I’s son married the beautiful Princess Charlotte, daughter of Frederick Wilhelm III and Queen Louise. Their son Alexander II was the greatest reforming Tsar of the nineteenth century; he in turn married another German princess, Marie of Hesse. Nicolas II was Kaiser Wilhelm’s I cousin and was also married to a German princess from the House of Hesse. Bismarck was a great Russophile. After the First World War, after the Treaties of Rappallo and Berlin, Stresemann followed a path of rapid rapprochement with Soviet Russia. By the time of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Stalin was building on a long history of friendship between Prussia and Russia, from which the First World War had largely been an aberration. Hitler and his geopolitical goals of Lebensraum for his new ‘Master Race’ would destroy all that, and in turn Stalin would demand the ultimate price from the Prussian military caste that had fed the German war machine: the annihilation of Prussia itself from the map of European nations. One can only hope that in better times if relations between Russia and Germany again blossom, some of East Prussia’s old glory might one day again be rekindled.

  cccxxi Among the most impressive constructions of this era were the city’s reading rooms and the building which housed the government of the Reich region of Elsass-Lothringen (Alsace-Lorraine), now the conservatorium and national theatre of Strasbourg, along with the beautiful Protestant neo-gothic twin spired church of (Saint Paul) built from 1889–1892.

  cccxxii The oldest German language universities are: Prague 1348, Vienna 1365, Heidelberg 1386, Rostock 1419, Greifswald 1456, Tübingen 1477, Wittenberg 1502, Breslau 1505, Marburg 1527, Königsberg 1544, Straßburg 1621, Halle 1694 an Göttingen 1734.

  cccxxiii There were leading German Elsassers on Hitler’s staff, including Otto Meissner and Rudolf Schmundt, who agitated for the reinclusion of the Alsace and the German-speaking part of Lorraine into the Reich. The couple I spoke to from Mulhouse said the Nazis did much to break the bond many Elsassers felt for Germany when they conscripted 400,000 young men to fight in the war, of which 130,000 died. The Third Reich stipulated that they should not fight on the Western Front, so they all got sent east, which explains the high death toll.

  cccxxiv Inscriptions in the town of Schlettstadt (Selestat) relating to the famous visitors who had been to the town are somewhat selective about their start dates and the nationality of their visitors. The dates start in 1681 with the visit of Louis XIV and continue through to Louis Napoleon in 1850, then abruptly stop until 1918 when President Poincaré turns up. Apparently no famous Germans visited the place before 1681 nor from 1870–1918. In Colmar, the main street through Little Venice is named after Marshal Turenne, who ‘solemnly’ entered the city at the head of 800 cavalry in 1684. Why he needed that many men to enter the city it does not say!

  cccxxv On 11th November 1918, the day the Armistice was signed, the Landtag (regional parliament) proclaimed itself the ‘National Council of Alsace-Lorraine’, proclaiming the independent sovereignty of the region. Their independence was short lived. French troops occupied Strasbourg on 21st November.

  cccxxvi The linguist frontier until the Second World War was not the Rhine; it was the Vogesen (Vosges) hills to the west of the Rhine. To the west of these hills, the place names and population were French speaking, to the east the place names at least have largely remained German.

  cccxxvii The building is the Pfister Haus, built in 1537, one of the most famous medieval buildings in the winding streets of the old town. I would not recommend the restaurant opposite!

  cccxxviii Linguistic imperialism; the French government began a ‘romanisation’ campaign after the First World War, but it was only after the Second World War that a rigorous anti-Germanisation policy was implemented, which banned the use of German and the Elsassisch dialect in public life and from use in schools and universities.

  cccxxix In 1997, Chancellor Schröder’s government signed the Czech-German declaration on the very favourable principle for the Czechs that ‘the parties would not burden their relations with political and legal issues which stem from the past’.

  Appendices

  1) Additional note on Czech & German population statistics in major urban centres of the Bohemian crown lands:

  To map out the fortunes of Bohemia and Moravia’s two largest communities, a look at the old town records will show a constant ebb and flow in the make-up of their populations. For example, in Aussig (Usti nad Labem) from the period of the Hussite rebellion until the end of World War Two: the Hussites laid waste to the town in 1426, then it came under the control of the Duke of Moravia and was later resettled again, primarily with German speakers. The Czech population then gradually began to increase, eventually becoming the majority in 1459. Local records show that in 1471, eighty-four properties were owned by Czech families and seventy-three by Germans, and by 1488, the Czechs had a clear majority on the town council. By the second half of the sixteenth century, the population majority had swung back in favour of the German-speaking community. This remained the case in many of the larger towns and cities in the border areas until 1945, when they were thoroughly ethnically cleansed of their German-speaking inhabitants.

  During the reign of Charles IV in the fourteenth century, Prague’s population was roughly one-third German-speaking. In 1787, the year Mozart first performed Il Don Giovanni in Prague, the German and Czech populations of the city had reached virtual parity. By the 1840s two thirds of the city’s population were German-speaking. But this changed radically again with industrialisation and the migration of Czech speakers from rural areas into the cities. From 1880 to 1910 the population of Prague doubled and by 1911, during the era of Franz Kafka, Czechs made up 90 per cent of the population, and Germans speakers 9 per cent.

  2) Why the Czechs wanted the Sudetenland:

  Because o
f the vital economic role the region played in the national economy. The following is a list of every major industry in Czechoslovakia and the percentage of each which was located in German Sudetenland during the first Czechoslovak Republic from 1918–1938:

  Silk industry: 100

  Textile and clothing industry: 95

  Road building and tar production: 95

  Bottle and glass industries: 93

  Plate glass industry: 91

  Textile machinery: 90

  Button manufacture: 90

  Mineral oil industry: 90

  Glass industry in general: 86

  Wool industry: 85

  Linen industry: 85

  Synthetic silk industry: 80

  Cement industry: 80

  Paper industry: 80

  Cotton wool industry: 75

  Coach making industry: 75

  Electro technical industry: 70

  Colour and paint industry: 70

  Chemical industry: 70

  Coal industry: 66

  Brewery industry: 64

  Synthetic dye industry: 60

  Timber industry: 60

  Sugar industry: 58

  Saw tool industry: 55

  Candle production: 55

  Soap industry: 50

  Spinning factories: 50

  3) Weimar Era Reichstag election results 1919–33:

  Source: R.Wolfson: Years of Change (London 1978).

  *See the Nazi Party’s election results going from 2.6 per cent in 1928 to 37.3 per cent in July 1932 to become the largest party in the Reichstag, but falling back again in the November 1932 election to 33.1 per cent. The March 1933 election results where they achieve 43.9 per cent are achieved at a time when politicians of opposition parties have been beaten and incarcerated and the full power and machinery of the state has been ruthlessly used by the Nazi Party against its opponents. After this election all other political parties other than the NSDAP are banned or ‘dissolved’ and opposition politicians are forced to flee Germany or face incarceration in the newly established concentration camps.