The Germans and the East

From “verloren gehen” to “verloren bleiben”

226 From฀“verloren฀gehen”฀to฀฀ “verloren฀bleiben” Changing฀German฀Discourses฀on฀Nation฀and฀ Nationalism฀in฀Poznania ◆฀฀฀Elizabeth฀A.฀Drummond฀฀฀◆ On the eve of World War I, Poles and Germans in the Prussian province of Poznania1 had become firmly polarized into two opposing nationalist camps. Increasingly rigid notions of Germanness and Polishness as well as stereotypes about the “national other” gradually crowded out any meaningful room for peaceful national coexistence . For their part, German nationalists, adopting the architect of German unity, the former Prussian and German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, as their spiritual father, often invoked a Bismarck quotation as one of their slogans: “No foot of German land shall be lost nor shall any aspect of German law be sacrificed, that is our policy.”2 The quotation continued to be used after World War I and the loss of most of the province to the new state of Poland, but in a slightly altered form: “No foot of German land shall remain lost.”3 The change from “shall be lost [verloren gehen]” to “shall remain lost [verloren bleiben]” might seem to be merely a slight reworking of Bismarck’s quotation in acknowledgment of the changed postwar territorial situation. The change, however, mirrored a change in attitude towards the “Polish question,” one that reflected a more aggressive German nationalism and greater ease of recourse to chauvinistic and racialist discourses. Of the myriad patriotic societies which emerged in Imperial Germany in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the Pan-German League (Alldeutscher Verband)4 and, in particular, the German Eastern Marches Society (Deutscher Ostmarkenverein )5 engaged their energies in debating the so-called (Polish question.) Both societies claimed to serve as guardians of national symbols and the interests of From “verloren gehen” to “verloren bleiben” ◆ 227 Deutschtum. Deutschtum, the German Volk, at least before the war, was defined by a common language, culture, and history; that is, ethnicity was a cultural rather than a biological-racial category. While the Pan-German League, particularly after Heinrich Class ascended to the chairmanship of the League in 1908, increasingly embraced a discourse of scientific racism and anti-Semitism, the Eastern Marches Society generally refrained from employing such language, preferring Volk to Rasse.6 German nationalists justified German rule in the eastern provinces by asserting the superiority of German Kultur, a superiority that warranted political dominance as well. The publications of the Eastern Marches Society and the Pan-German League repeatedly highlighted the differences between Germany’s Kultur and Poland’s Unkultur .7 Images of German culture (Kultur), intelligence (Intelligenz), diligence (Fleiß), honesty (Ehrlichkeit, Redlichkeit), honor (Ehre), and constancy (Stetigkeit) contrasted starkly with images of Polish wantonness (Übermut), mismanagement (Mißwirtschaft), unruliness (Ungebärdigkeit), impudence (Frechheit), ill-breeding (Unerzogenheit), and impertinence (Unverschämtheit).8 For German nationalists, the cultural inferiority of the Poles and their inability to maintain a functioning political system, therefore, justified the partition of Poland in the late eighteenth century and German dominion over Poznania and West Prussia. For Germans living in the eastern provinces, the Ostmärker, this German dominance was to be eternal, regardless of whether Poznanian Poles eventually proved themselves culturally worthy of statehood. Indeed, German nationalists pointed to the emergence of a Polish middle class in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as evidence that German culture, German schools, and German administration had raised Polish society in the eastern provinces out of its natural, primitive state. But this emergent middle class did not, as hoped, become German, but rather developed into a bilingual pillar of Polish nationalism, now equipped with the weapons with which better to further Polishnational claims. For Ostmärker, the emergence of a recognizably Polish middle class symbolized the growing threat of the Polish movement. At the same time, however, it also reinforced the superiority of German Kultur. This tension in the ideology of prewar German nationalism—criticism of the growth of the Polish middle classes, considered the most dangerous arm of Polish nationalism, but ardent support for Germanization policies, to which they attributed the emergence of a Polish middle class—was apparent already before World War I. As the Pan-German Paul Samassa himself noted at the annual meeting of the managing committee in 1906, “Experience has taught us that the so-called ‘cultural policy’ in the Prussian East has merely led us to providing the enemies of our people with the weapons with which to fight. From the national standpoint we have no interest...