Masuria is an ethnographic and geographic region in northern and northeastern Poland, known for its 2,000 lakes. Masuria occupies much of the Masurian Lake District. Administratively, it is part of the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship. Its biggest city, often regarded as its capital, is Ełk. The region covers a territory of some 10,000 km2 which is inhabited by approximately 500,000 people.
Following the Invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War II, nearly a quarter of the entire territory of the Second Polish Republic was annexed by Nazi Germany and placed directly under the German civil administration. The rest of Nazi-occupied Poland was renamed as the General Government district. The annexation was part of the "fourth partition of Poland" by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, outlined months before the invasion, in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
The Masurians or Mazurs, historically also known as Prussian Masurians, are an ethnic group originating from the region of Masuria, within the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, Poland. They number around 5,000–15,000 people. In the 2011 Polish census, 1,376 individuals declared themselves to be Masurian as either a first or a secondary identification. Before World War II and its post-war expulsions, Masurians used to be a more numerous ethnic group found in the southern parts of East Prussia for centuries following the 16th century Protestant Reformation. Today, most Masurians live in what is now Germany and elsewhere.
The Ostflucht was the migration of Germans, in the later 19th century and early 20th century, from areas which were then eastern parts of Germany to more industrialized regions in central and western Germany. The migrants originated in East Prussia, West Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania and Posen; they moved to provinces along the Rhine and Ruhr rivers. Most of the migrants were ethnic Germans, but many migrants to the Ruhr were of Polish ethnicity, later known as Ruhrpolen.
The Prussian Settlement Commission, officially known as the Royal Prussian Settlement Commission in the Provinces West Prussia and Posen was a Prussian government commission that operated between 1886 and 1924, but actively only until 1918. It was set up by Otto von Bismarck to increase land ownership by ethnically German Germans at the expense of ethnically Polish Germans, by economic and political means, in Prussia's eastern provinces of West Prussia and the Posen as part of his larger efforts aiming at the eradication of the Polish nation. The commission was motivated by German racism.
The Province of Posen was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1848 to 1920. Posen was established in 1848 following the Greater Poland Uprising as a successor to the Grand Duchy of Posen, which in turn was annexed by Prussia in 1815 from Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It became part of the German Empire in 1871. After World War I, Posen was briefly part of the Free State of Prussia within Weimar Germany, but was dissolved in 1920 when most of its territory was ceded to the Second Polish Republic by the Treaty of Versailles, and the remaining German territory was later re-organized into Posen-West Prussia in 1922.
The Province of West Prussia was a province of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and 1878 to 1920. West Prussia was established as a province of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1773, formed from Royal Prussia of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth annexed in the First Partition of Poland. West Prussia was dissolved in 1829 and merged with East Prussia to form the Province of Prussia, but was re-established in 1878 when the merger was reversed and became part of the German Empire. From 1918, West Prussia was a province of the Free State of Prussia within Weimar Germany, losing most of its territory to the Second Polish Republic and the Free City of Danzig in the Treaty of Versailles. West Prussia was dissolved in 1920, and its remaining western territory was merged with Posen to form Posen-West Prussia, and its eastern territory merged with East Prussia as the Region of West Prussia district.
Hans Hartwig von Beseler was a German colonel general.
Greater Poland uprising of 1806 was a Polish military insurrection which occurred in the region of Wielkopolska, also known as Greater Poland, against the occupying Prussian forces after the Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1772–1795).
The Greater Poland uprising of 1848 or Poznań Uprising was an unsuccessful military insurrection of Poles against forces of the Kingdom of Prussia, during the Revolutions of 1848. The main fighting in the Prussian Partition of Poland was concentrated in the Greater Poland region but some fighting also occurred in Pomerelia. In addition, protests were also held in Polish inhabited regions of Silesia.
Polish Positivism was a social, literary and philosophical movement that became dominant in late-19th-century partitioned Poland following Romanticism in Poland and the suppression of the January 1863 Uprising against the Russian Empire. The Positivist period lasted until the turn of the 20th century and the advent of the modernist Young Poland movement.
Wielbark is a town in Szczytno County, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina called Gmina Wielbark. It lies approximately 19 kilometres (12 mi) south of Szczytno and 52 km (32 mi) south-east of the regional capital Olsztyn. It is part of historic Masuria.
After partitioning Poland at the end of the 18th century, the Kingdom of Prussia and later the German Empire imposed a number of Germanisation policies and measures in the newly gained territories, aimed at limiting the Polish ethnic presence and culture in these areas. This process continued through its various stages until the end of World War I, when most of the territories became part of the Second Polish Republic, which largely limited the capacity of further Germanisation efforts of the Weimar Republic until the occupation during World War II. The genocidal policies of Nazi-Germany against ethnic Poles between 1939 and 1945 can be understood as a continuation of previous Germanization processes.
The expulsion of Poles by Germany was a prolonged anti-Polish campaign of ethnic cleansing by violent and terror-inspiring means lasting nearly half a century. It began with the concept of Pan-Germanism developed in the early 19th century and culminated in the racial policy of Nazi Germany that asserted the superiority of the Aryan race. The removal of Poles by Germany stemmed from historic ideas of expansionist nationalism. It was implemented at different levels and different stages by successive German governments. It ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.
Vistula Germans are ethnic Germans who had settled in what became known after the 1863 Polish rebellion as the Vistula Territory. This territory, so designated by the ruling Russians of the time, encompassed most of the Vistula River watershed of central Poland up to just east of Toruń (Thorn).
Józef Feldman was a Polish historian of Jewish ethnicity, professor of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and a member of the Polish Academy of Learning.
Sebastian Petrycy of Pilzno, in Latin known as Sebastianus Petricius, was a Polish philosopher and physician. He lectured and published notable works in the field of medicine but is principally remembered for his masterly Polish translations of philosophical works by Aristotle and for his commentaries to them. Petrycy made major contributions to nascent Polish philosophical terminology.
The Germanisation of the Province of Posen was a policy of the Kulturkampf measures enacted by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, whose goal was to Germanize Polish-speaking areas in the Prussian Province of Posen by eradicating and discrimination of Polish language and culture, as well as to reduce the influence of the "ultramontanist" Roman Catholic clergy in those regions.
The Second Battle of Nowa Wies was a skirmish of the January Uprising in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth against the Russian Empire on 26 April 1863. It took place near the village of Nowa Wies, which at that time belonged to Russian-controlled Congress Poland. A thousand Polish insurgents under Frenchman Leon Young de Blankenheim were victorious over some seven hundred soldiers of the Imperial Russian Army.
The Battle of Pyzdry, one of many skirmishes of the January Uprising, took place on April 29, 1863, near the town of Pyzdry, which at that time belonged to Russian-controlled Congress Poland. 1,200 Polish insurgents under Edmund Taczanowski and Alojzy Oranowski clashed here with 1,500 soldiers of the Imperial Russian Army. The battle ended in Polish victory.
