Vistula Germans (German : Weichseldeutsche) 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 basin of central Poland up to just east of Toruń.
The Vistula flows south to north in a broad easterly loop that extends from the Carpathian Mountains to its mouth on the Baltic Sea near Gdańsk. Many were invited in by the German and Polish nobility, but most settled in cities and large towns which were often governed under a form known as German town law.
German settlement on abandoned or empty land in Kujawy and Royal Prussia increased as land owners sought to re-populate their lands after the losses of the Great Northern War (1700–1721). [1] Migration up the Vistula, to Płock, Wyszogród, and beyond, continued through the period of the Partitions of Poland by Prussia, Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire. Much of the Vistula river basin area came under Prussian rule in 1793, becoming the provinces of South Prussia and New East Prussia.
In spite of the brief liberation of Polish territories by Napoleon (when the region was known as the Duchy of Warsaw), and in spite of the takeover by Russia following the Treaty of Paris (1815), German migration continued into the region throughout the 19th century. They often settled in existing communities but also established many new ones so that, by World War I, well over 3000 villages with German inhabitants could be documented. [2]
Some German villages in the area were identified by the adjective Niemiecki, meaning "German" in Polish (e.g., Kępa Niemiecka). This differentiated a German village from another in the same immediate area where Poles lived (the Polish village might have the adjective Polski (e.g., Kępa Polska). After World War II, due to anti-German feelings, the adjective was commonly dropped or replaced by a term like Nowe (new). However, some villages even today still retain the old identifier.
The vast majority of Germans in this region were Lutheran. While they retained a clear Germanic ethnicity, traditions and language, they often adapted or adopted Polish culture and food and sometimes surnames. A limited amount of intermarriage between the cultures occurred. [3] Large numbers of these Germans chose to leave the area during the Napoleonic occupation, heading further south and east to the Black Sea and Bessarabian regions of Russia. Still others headed east to Volhynia during the Polish uprisings of the 1830s and 1860s. In addition to fleeing unsettled conditions, the latter were also attracted by offers of land that became available as a result of the emancipation of serfs in Russia.
Significant numbers of Vistula Germans (including many who had spent a generation or more in the Black Sea, Bessarabia, and Volhynia regions) migrated to North America in the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Since most were farmers, they tended to head for opportunities of inexpensive or virtually free homestead land in the Midwestern and Plains States, and Canadian prairies. They are of course scattered about in other regions as well.
Those who remained in the Vistula area through World War II were expelled to German territory in accordance with the post-war agreements between the Allied Powers of Britain, Russia, and the United States. In a few cases, ethnic Germans who had been detained by Communist Polish authorities for forced labor remained in Poland, as did some ethnic Germans who had family ties with ethnic Poles. Some ethnic Germans were captured by Soviet troops, and were forced east to settle in Kazakhstan and Siberia. They were never repatriated.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, settlers from the Netherlands and Friesland, often Mennonites, founded self-governing villages in Royal Prussia. This type of village organization became known as the Olęder Law, and such villages were called Holendry or Olędry. Inhabitants of these villages were called Olędrzy , regardless of whether they were of Dutch, German or other descent. [4] There were two Mennonite communities in Mazovia: one at Wymyśle Polskie and one at Deutsch Kazun. [5] Some Mennonite adherents lived in nearby villages where a substantial majority of the inhabitants were Lutheran Germans, such as Sady or Świniary, and there was some intermarriage between the two faith groups. These contacts may have contributed to the Germanization of these Mennonites.
Records for Lutheran Churches (as well as some Baptist and Moravian Brethren), many of them dating back to the late 18th century, can be found in Warsaw Archives and were microfilmed by the LDS Family History Library. Known available Lutheran records are listed on the website of the Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe. [6] In some places few if any records exist, primarily because of their destruction in World War II. Where Lutheran Churches did not exist, or in times before their existence, the Germans would have been obliged to register at a Roman Catholic church.
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.
The German minority population in Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union stemmed from several sources and arrived in several waves. Since the second half of the 19th century, as a consequence of the Russification policies and compulsory military service in the Russian Empire, large groups of Germans from Russia emigrated to the Americas, where they founded many towns. In 1914, an estimate put the remaining number of ethnic Germans living in the Russian Empire at 2,416,290. During World War II, ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union were persecuted and many were forcibly resettled to other regions such as Central Asia. In 1989, the Soviet Union declared to have an ethnic German population of roughly 2 million. By 2002, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many ethnic Germans had emigrated and the population fell by half to roughly 1 million. 597,212 Germans self-identified as such in the 2002 Russian census, making Germans the fifth-largest ethnic group in the Russian Federation. There were 353,441 Germans in Kazakhstan and 21,472 in Kyrgyzstan (1999); while 33,300 Germans lived in Ukraine.
Pomerelia, also known as Eastern Pomerania, Vistula Pomerania, and also before World War II as Polish Pomerania, is a historical sub-region of Pomerania on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in northern Poland.
Prussia is a historical region in Central Europe on the south-eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, that ranges from the Vistula delta in the west to the end of the Curonian Spit in the east and extends inland as far as Masuria, divided between Poland, Russia and Lithuania. This region is often also referred to as Old Prussia.
Volhynia or Volynia is a historic region in Central and Eastern Europe, between southeastern Poland, southwestern Belarus, and northwestern Ukraine. The borders of the region are not clearly defined, but in Ukraine it is roughly equivalent to Volyn and Rivne Oblasts; the territory that still carries the name is Volyn Oblast.
Podlachia, also known by its Polish name Podlasie, is a historical region in north-eastern Poland. Its largest city is Białystok, whereas the historical capital is Drohiczyn.
The Province of West Prussia was a province of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and 1878 to 1919. 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.
The Russian Mennonites are a group of Mennonites who are the descendants of Dutch and North German Anabaptists who settled in the Vistula delta in West Prussia for about 250 years and established colonies in the Russian Empire beginning in 1789. Since the late 19th century, many of them have emigrated to countries which are located throughout the Western Hemisphere. The rest of them were forcibly relocated, so very few of their descendants currently live in the locations of the original colonies. Russian Mennonites are traditionally multilingual but Plautdietsch is their first language as well as their lingua franca. In 2014, there were several hundred thousand Russian Mennonites: about 200,000 live in Germany, 74,122 live in Mexico, 150,000 in Bolivia, 40,000 live in Paraguay, 10,000 live in Belize, tens of thousands of them live in Canada and the US, and a few thousand live in Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.
Selbstschutz is the name given to different iterations of ethnic-German self-protection units formed both after the First World War and in the lead-up to the Second World War.
The Bessarabia Germans were a German ethnic group who lived in Bessarabia between 1814 and 1940.
The presence of German-speaking populations in Central and Eastern Europe is rooted in centuries of history, with the settling in northeastern Europe of Germanic peoples predating even the founding of the Roman Empire. The presence of independent German states in the region, and later the German Empire as well as other multi-ethnic countries with German-speaking minorities, such as Hungary, Poland, Imperial Russia, etc., demonstrates the extent and duration of German-speaking settlements.
Żuławy Wiślane, in English known as the Vistula Fens, is the alluvial delta area of the river Vistula, in the northern part of Poland. It is a flat and deforested region comprising wetlands and agricultural plains that cover approximately 1,700 squared kilometres, with much of the land being situated below sea level. Poland's lowest point is located at Raczki Elbląskie in the Żuławy region.
Książki is a village in Wąbrzeźno County, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, in north-central Poland. It is the seat of the gmina called Gmina Książki. It lies approximately 10 kilometres (6 mi) north-east of Wąbrzeźno and 45 km (28 mi) north-east of Toruń.
Olenders were people, often of Dutch or Frisian ancestry, who lived in settlements in Poland organized under a particular type of law.
Vistula delta Mennonites were a historic Mennonite community, established in the mid-16th century in the Vistula river delta in Poland. It originated from the Netherlands and present-day northern Germany. The Mennonite community played an important role in the drainage and cultivation of the Vistula delta and the trade relations with the Netherlands. In the late 18th century a significant number of Mennonites emigrated further and formed the nucleus of the Mennonite settlements in Russia, while many remained in the region after the annexation of the region by Prussia in the Partitions of Poland. With the end of World War II and the flight and expulsion of Germans the Mennonite settlements in the Vistula delta ceased to exist.
The Expulsion of Poles by Nazi Germany during World War II was a massive operation consisting of the forced resettlement of over 1.7 million Poles from the territories of German-occupied Poland, with the aim of their Germanization between 1939 and 1944.
Mazovia or Masovia is a historical region in mid-north-eastern Poland. It spans the North European Plain, roughly between Łódź and Białystok, with Warsaw being the unofficial capital and largest city. Throughout the centuries, Mazovia developed a separate sub-culture featuring diverse folk songs, architecture, dress and traditions different from those of other Poles.
The Vistulan dialect was a dialect of Low Prussian, which belongs to Low German. The dialect was spoken in West Prussia around Zarnowitzer See, Danzig and Graudenz. It had a border to Mundart der Weichselwerder. It is related to Nehrungisch.
Kępa Zawadowska is a neighbourhood and a City Information System area in Warsaw, Poland, located within the district of Wilanów.