As we all know, East and West Germany unified, after the fall of communism. My question: what about East Prussia? It was part of the German Empire, and it was germanic for centuries before that. So, shouldn’t Poland return this territory of Germany?
Are there any ethinic germans left in East prussia?
Are they in favor of joining Germany?
It’s my understanding that at the end of the Third Reich, virtually every German living east of the Oder-Neisse line moved west in a hurry, as a refugee and with the complicit ‘encouragement’ of the Red Army and the Lublin Polish government. That’s a general;ization and I’m sure there are exceptions, but apart from questions of the ethicaltiy of Stalin and Bierut’s actions, I suspect it’s broadly true. Certainly there are not many Germans in Kaliningrad oblast, the north half of former East Prussia, and the ethnic map shows the former south half, in northeast Poland, as being Polish without even the specklings that flag scatteed minorities in a region.
I think in general this is also true for Silesia and Pomerania, the twoi “tentacles” of Weimar/early Third Reich Germany extending eastward. There are, however, several cities along the Oder that were divided by the the drawing of the Oder-Neisse line, and some German residents in the Polish halves of them.
However, I have a strong hunch that even now, for Germany to ask for even minor border rectification would be an indescribably Bad Move politically.
Germany formally renounced all claims of territory east of the Oder Neisse line by treaty with Poland in 1990. For more on the status of German land claims in Poland, see here
I read somewhere that the Prussians,the most Germanic of Germans were actually ethnically Slavs but only culturally German.
Just as modern day Greeks are of the same ethnicity as their most hated enemies the Turks and Jews and Arabs are both Semitic races.
In Ulster and the R.O.I. many of the people who were all for ethnic cleansing all Ulstermen and other Brits from the island of Ireland were unbeknownst to them descendants of Anglo Norman invaders .
Apart from my own time there distant relations of mine were killed by the security forces while serving in the PROVOs and another relative was murdered by the PROVOs while serving in the R.U.C.
Disappeared into the dustbin of history, as noted.
However if you persuasive enough, you could always try talking German-majority Austria, Switzerland and Lichtenstein into joining ;).
How are you defining ethnicity? In Anthropology ethnicity is typically defined as the perceived differences in culture, nationality, and historical experience by which groups of people distinguish themselves from others.
Marc
Balts, actually. The Prussians in the stricter sense were a baltic people. Since the middle ages there was also a population of German colonists and as you said culturally they were almost completely germanized when Prussia became part of the German empire in 1871.
However you have to keep in mind that “Prussia” also ruled over large territories in present-day Germany, inhabited by Germanic people.
– kellner, part East Prussian, part Silesian
Define “ethnicity” and “races”. Jews are not a race, by any definition of that term that I can think of. Arabs might be a more closely related to each other than Jews are, but they are also not a race.
Sorry to all I’m not an anthropologist just a layman trying to put over some none controversial stuff I’d heard that I thought might be of interest to Dopers generally.
As to the correct terminology perhaps those who know more about this subject then I do could give me a few pointers so that in the future I’m a bit more on the ball.
Jews and Arabs were originally the same (or very close) ethnicity, but both have interbred with out populations quiet a bit in the last 2,000 years-- especially Jews, who are spread all over the world. Hebrew and Arabic are both Semitic languages, but that doesn’t make Jews and Arabs the same ethnicity.
Turkey has a very checkered past, and while part of it was historically occupied by ancient Greeks (which they called Anatoia), there were all sorts of people living there over time, not to mention actual (ethnic) Turkic people who migrated there starting 1,000 years from ago further east and north in Asia.
I thought the Teutonic knights pretty much wiped out the native Prussians (who were originally Balts of some sort) when they moved in around the 12th century?
I’d been taught that as a result of this, the ‘prussian’ people who’d lived in the region in the 11th century and earlier were pretty much exterminated or absorbed by the conquering Teutons.
Not only that, but if we got East Prussia we wouldn’t know what to do with it - an almost wholly non-ethnic-German population that would integrate even worse than the East Germans, no mineral resources to speak of, lots of nice flat countryside i.e. a farm subsidies sink (i.e. like Mecklenburg only still much poorer).
I think we have known for a long time now that the welfare of modern industrialized countries is not depending on acquiring real estate - it’s the capital invested into population, institutions and infrastructure that counts. Nazi Germany’s expansionism was already an economic anachronism in its time IMO.
Now that the first-generation fugitives from the former eastern areas of Germany are dying out there isn’t a significant constituency that’s even interested in these regions let alone wants back souvereignty over them.
BTW polls these last few years have shown that for a significant minority of Germans reunification has gone too far: e.g. when polled in Aug-Oct 2007 21 % of Germans wanted the Berlin Wall back (cite (German language))