ABSTRACT
A full seventy years after the 1815 Congress of Vienna had sanctioned the earlier partition of Poland among Prussia, Russia, and Austria, Prussia was still having difficulty digesting her Polish provinces. The “Polish Question” had, by 1885, become one of the German Reich’s most pressing problems (Grzes´ 1979: 202).1 Where earlier the Prussian government had attempted to Prussianize the Poles through language, schooling, and religious restrictions, the seemingly relentless increase in the sheer numbers of Poles led the government, in 1886, to a direct anti-Polish demographic policy. The centerpiece of this policy was an attempt to change the population proportions in favor of ethnic Germans by settling German farmers on the land in the “Polish Provinces.” The “Royal Prussian Settlement Commission in the Provinces of West Prussia and Poznania” (Königlich preußische Ansiedlungskommission in den Provinzen West Preussen und Posen),2 established by the law of April 26, 1886 “concerning the promotion of German settlement in the provinces of West Prussia and Poznania”, was to buy up large landed properties from Poles, subdivide these properties into smaller farms, and settle German peasants on the parcels. In this way “the proven Germanizing power of the German peasantry” (National Liberal Party deputy Enecerus, as quoted in Galos 1969: 49) could be brought to bear on the demographic problem: the advantage of large numbers and the influence of increasing share in the population were thus to begin to turn to favor the German side over the Poles.
