In the current debate on German colonial history, the former German colonies in Africa or the Pacific are in the foreground. However, an important chapter has remained largely unnoticed: Prussian expansion in Poland, which bears many of the hallmarks of colonial rule. Agnieszka Pufelska shows why a post-Prussian perspective is necessary, systematically embedding Prussia in a European history of imperialism.
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140 years ago, in 1885, some 32,000 Polish and Jewish inhabitants were expelled from Prussia – a dramatic event largely forgotten in Germany but deeply rooted in the collective memory of Poland. This so-called ‘expulsion of the Poles’ was not only a measure against unpopular ‘foreigners,’ but also an expression of the Prussian-German nation-state formation based on ethnic homogeneity and colonial ideas. Systematic Germanization, settlement policies, and racist discourses against the Polish and Jewish populations turned the Prussian eastern provinces into a kind of internal colony. In the current debate on German colonial history, the former German colonies in Africa or the Pacific are in the foreground. An important chapter, however, has gone largely unnoticed: Prussia’s expansion into Poland, which bears many of the hallmarks of colonial rule.
The reason for the forced exclusion of Prussia from Germany’s colonial past cannot be overlooked. The restored facades of the Berlin Palace alone make it clear that Prussia is still considered a positive point of reference in German history. In order not to tarnish this idealized image of Prussia as a cultural state, the dual statehood of the German Empire and Prussia is ignored, especially in the cultural institutions of Berlin and Brandenburg. In their post-colonial perspective, which they want to communicate to the outside world, they consistently ignore the fact that Prussia was not only the driving force behind the founding process, but also helped to shape the Reich and its colonial policy after 1871.
Germanization
The Prussian land grab in Poland began with the partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century. Prussia also owed its rise as a European power to its eastward expansion. Frederick II, King of Prussia, who remains popular to this day, justified the annexation of Polish territories as an act of civilization to bring the “backward Polish population” under Prussian rule.
However, the annexation of large parts of its eastern neighbor not only increased Prussia’s territory, but also the number of non-German-speaking subjects. Especially in the provinces of Posen and West Prussia, Polish and Yiddish speakers remained in the majority. They were by no means a homogeneous group. They included agricultural workers, wealthy landowners, urban merchants, and artisans. Regardless of their social status, however, they were increasingly viewed by the Prussian administration as ‘aliens’ who needed to be assimilated. This seemed all the more urgent as the Polish population remained economically and socially active, with their own schools, newspapers, and organizations. During the 19th century, the Prussian government declared the fight against national movements within the Polish population to be the order of the day and increasingly pursued a policy of exclusion and Germanization.
The policy of Germanization was largely driven by Otto von Bismarck. Especially after the foundation of the German Reich, his government tried to give a new urgency to the ‘Ostkolonization.’ The Kulturkampf, which Bismarck unleashed in the 1870s, was a large-scale offensive against the Catholic Church and thus also against the predominantly Catholic Polish population. In addition to Catholic institutions, the authorities also targeted the Polish language. Schools were forced to switch to teaching in German, Polish newspapers were heavily censored, and the use of the Polish language in public was increasingly interpreted as an act of resistance.
Settlement policy
The German government was willing to pay any price to roll back the ‘Polish threat.’ In 1886, the Royal Prussian Settlement Commission was established, which, with state funds of over 100 million Reichsmarks, bought land in the eastern provinces from Polish landowners and gave it to German-speaking settlers. The aim was to increase the German population in the eastern provinces and thus secure permanent control over the area. This land grab was pushed by powerful political groups such as the Ostmarkenverein and its allied Pan-German League. Their aggressive settlement policies culminated in a 1908 expropriation law that allowed the state to forcibly confiscate Polish property. But the heavily subsidized settlement colonialism met with little support from the start, and the hoped-for ethnic-national change in the provinces of West Prussia and Posen threatened to fail. A strategy with rapidly visible results was needed.
The 1880s mark a decisive phase in the anti-Polish policy of the German Empire. While the Berlin Congo Conference was negotiating German overseas expansion, Bismarck decided to take action against unwanted minorities at home. The Prussian government ordered the mass expulsion of Polish and Jewish workers, craftsmen, and merchants who did not hold German citizenship. Within months, more than 30,000 people lost their livelihoods and were left with nothing.
Racist exclusion
Bismarck’s decision came as no surprise and fueled the debate about the strength of the so-called ‘German colonial power.’ In order not to lose it, the then-popular ‘philosopher of the subconscious’ Eduard von Hartmann proposed to “eradicate Slavdom within our borders” and thus “ensure the unconditional dominance of the German people, at least in our own home.” Although Hartmann represented the majority view, he was not without his critics. On January 15, 1886, the Social Democrat Wilhelm Liebknecht, speaking in the Reichstag, called the ongoing expulsions an “act of barbarism committed in the name of culture.”
Hartmann’s appeal makes clear that hostility to the Polish-speaking population as Slavs was fueled not only by political but also by racist motives. The new quality of national-racial anti-Slavism was based on the ideological conviction of comprehensive German superiority. This drew on traditional cultural images of the enemy as a ‘barbaric East’ and combined them with new racial ideas about the alleged inferiority of the Slavs. The Poles were portrayed as a homogeneous ethnic group, allegedly incapable of civilizational progress without German intervention and threatening the German ‘cultural sphere’ with its atavistic tendencies. The aggressive policy of assimilation and Germanization could then be legitimized and propagated as a ‘cultural achievement.’
The racist warnings of Slavic domination could easily be placed in the context of widespread hostility to Jews. The historian Heinrich von Treitschke’s chilling vision of a “horde of ambitious young men selling trousers” crossing “our eastern border year after year from the inexhaustible Polish cradle” legitimized the prevailing anti-Semitism against Jewish immigration. The image of the alleged ‘flooding’ of the city by the so-called ‘Eastern Jews’ became the topos of the Berlin anti-Semitism debate. In an attempt to stop this, Jews without residence permits were expelled from the city beginning in 1883. Berlin outpaced all four of Prussia’s eastern provinces combined, deporting 677 people in one year, while 662 expulsions were carried out there. The subsequent ‘expulsion of the Poles,’ which also affected some 10,000 Jews, illustrates the deliberate conflation of anti-Semitism and anti-Slavism. The ‘barbaric East’ was conceived as homogeneous, both anti-Semitic and anti-Slavic.
Post-Prussia
The discursive reinvention of former Polish territories as colonial space developed in parallel with a series of material practices that, while not fully colonial per se and with clear differences from overseas colonialism, nevertheless exhibit the ideals of territorial expansion and racial subjugation. The strategically planned and executed eastward expansion of the Prussian border was accompanied by a policy of cultural assimilation and population transfer implemented as part of internal colonization.
The predominant rejection of the categorization of Prussian Polish policy in the 19th century as ‘colonial’ in the cultural industries of Berlin and Brandenburg does not explain the presence of the colonial discourse, nor does it eliminate its influence on Berlin and the eastern provinces of Prussia. For this reason alone, a post-Prussian perspective is necessary that systematically inscribes Prussia into a European history of imperialism. From this perspective, the multiple lines of connection between Prussia as an imperial power within Europe and the German Empire as a colonial power outside Europe become clear. At the same time, the post-Prussian look to the East reveals a longer history of Prussia as a historical land of immigration. Today, at a time when migration and border policies are once again highly topical, a critical examination of this chapter of German history is more necessary than ever.