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The remaining German minority in Poland (152,897 people were registered in the 2002 census) enjoys minority rights according to Polish minority law. There are German speakers throughout Poland, and most of the Germans live in the Opole Voivodship in Silesia. Bilingual signs are posted in some towns of the region. In addition, there are ...
German minority in Upper Silesia: Opole Voivodeship (west) and Silesian Voivodeship (east). German minority in Warmia and Masuria. According to the 2021 census, most of the Germans in Poland (67.2%) live in Silesia: 59,911 in the Opole Voivodeship, i.e. 41.6% of all Germans in Poland and a share of 6.57% of the local population; 27,923 in the Silesian Voivodeship, i.e. 19.4% of all Germans in ...
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 ...
Following the partitions, the Prussian authorities started the policy of settling German speaking ethnic groups in these areas. Frederick the Great, in an effort to populate his sparsely populated kingdom, settled around 300,000 colonists in all provinces of Prussia, most of which were of a German ethnic background, and aimed at a removal of the Polish nobility, which he treated with contempt.
Polish authorities banned the use of the German language. There are still unresolved feelings on the sides of both Poles and Germans, largely because of Nazi Germany's war crimes on Poles and the forced expulsion and ethnic cleansing of native Germans from former German territories that were transferred to Poland in the wake of the Potsdam ...
Bielsko-Biała German language island before WW2 (blue line), with some possible Walddeutsche settlements from the Middle Ages and later.. In origin, Wymysorys is considered to derive from 12th-century Middle High German, with a strong influence from Polish, and presumably also some influence from Low German, Dutch, Old English and perhaps Frisian.
However, after the era of German colonization, the Polish language was still predominant in Upper Silesia and parts of Lower and Middle Silesia north of the Odra river. Germans usually dominated large cities, and Poles mostly lived in rural areas. This required the Prussian authorities to issue official documents in Polish, or in German and Polish.
From the start of Prussian rule Poles were subject to a series of measures against their culture: the Polish language was replaced by German as the official language; [14] most administrative positions were filled by Germans. Poles were portrayed as "backward Slavs" by Prussian officials who wanted to spread Protestantism in the German language ...