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• The Grand Duchy of Poznań emerged from the debates (...)
• The enfranchisement was (...)
• The turbulent events of the year 1848 (...)
• Its first stage was the Kulturkampf policy (...)

The Grand Duchy of Poznań emerged from the debates of the Vienna Congress which introduced a new order in Europe after years of revolutionary and Napoleonic turmoil. In the case of the Polish territories, the problem that was most heatedly discussed in Vienna was the territory of the Duchy of Warsaw, which came into being in the year 1807 and was made up of the territories of the second and third Prussian partition and expanded in the year 1809 with territorial acquisitions obtained at the expense of Austria as part of the third partition. Although the simplest solution would have been to restore the rule of Prussia and Austria, the interests of the Russian empire got in the way. After all, these were the Russians who had occupied the territory of the Kingdom of Warsaw at the beginning of 1813, driving out the remnants of the Great Army, devastated within their own territory to the west. For some reason, the Russians were not too eager to return this territory to their German allies and rivals, skilfully playing with the Polish card. However, ultimately, a compromise was reached and, on 3 May 1815, Prussia, Russia and Austria signed treaties with each other organising the political order on the Polish territories, including the return of the western departments of the Kingdom of Warsaw back under the sceptre of the Hohenzollerns. On this basis, on 15 May, Frederick William III issued a patent which proclaimed the establishment of a new province from most of them, which was supposed to bear the name of the Grand Duchy of Poznań. At the end of May, the Russians, who had so far been stationed in the new Duchy, withdrew and were again replaced by Prussians; on Sunday, on 28 May 1815, General Heinrich Ludwig von Thümen (1757-1826) entered Poznań at the head of some hussars and an infantry unit, taking over the territories granted to Prussia in the name of the Prussian king. A few days later, a representative of the civil authority, the “Royal-Prussian Supreme President of the Grand Duchy of Poznań”, Joseph Zerboni di Sposetti (1766-1831) arrived in the city, and on Thursday, 8 June, he took power over the province. The Polish eagles in the town hall and the seat of the prefecture located in the post-Jesuit building at Gołębia Street were replaced by the coats of arms of the Grand Duchy of Poznań which presented a black Prussian eagle with a Polish emblem on its chest against a red background. Both parties, i.e. the Poles and the Germans, were anxious about the good atmosphere in which the new/old authority could be inaugurated. During a solemn parade, General Thümen and Zerboni di Sposetti were led, among others, by Senator Voivode Józef Wybicki, the main promotor of the Napoleonic option in the previous years, and during the banquet organised on that occasion, the supreme president proposed toasts in Polish in honour of the Prussian king. 

The Grand Duchy of Poznań was kind of an experiment of the Prussian authorities, which was anticipating the arrangements of the final act of the Vienna Congress signed on 9 June 1815, and which guaranteed the preservation of the national identity of the Poles, leaving the determination of the scope of Polish rights to the monarchs of the partitioning countries. The national reality was certainly taken into account in the solutions worked out in Berlin, because as many as 65.7% of the inhabitants of the Kingdom out of the total number of 776000 were Poles, 27.7% were Germans and 6.4% were Jews. Another important issue was the awareness of the failure of the previous Prussian policy on these territories, incorporated into the Hohenzollerns' state as a result of the second partition in the year 1793. At that time Berlin had used the simplest integrating solution - the newly annexed Polish territories were referred to as the South Prussia province, which was quite a cheeky act of historical policy, also, the Prussian administrative and legal system was introduced and lessons started to be conducted in German. The prevalence of Prussian officials and soldiers met with resistance not only from the Poles but also the Jews and even the local German population. No wonder then that the arrival of the French in Autumn 1806 was welcomed with genuine enthusiasm, which must have been a great shock for the Prussian authorities. From the point of view of Berlin, the Poles demonstrated a complete lack of loyalty towards their monarch and state; what is even more, their aristocratic elites, such noble families as the Niegolewskis and Chłapowskis shed blood for Napoleon - a child of revolution and a Corsican usurper - instead of defending Prussia. 

Despite all the resentments, the state pragmatism resulted in corrections of the previous policy in 1815, as exemplified by the call for reconciliation announced, expressis verbis, in the appeal of King Frederick William III attached to the patent dated 15 May. The Prussian monarch declared respect for the identity and religion of his Polish subjects, adding generously, in quite sloppy Polish: “My genuine will is to let the past be completely forgotten. My exclusive care is a matter of the future”. In accordance with these declarations, the Grand Duchy of Poznań was supposed to be a part of the Prussian state, being at the same time provided with a number of elements which ensured its legal separateness, and above all, the recognition of the full equality of the Polish language in the public sphere, offices, courts and schools. From the administrative point of view, the Duchy was formed in the same way as other Prussian provinces, the provincial authorities were led by the supreme president residing in Poznań, and two administrative districts - Poznań and Bydgoszcz were lower level units. However, as well as the supreme president who exercised administrative power, the office of governor of the Grand Duchy of Poznań was also established, and this was an important institutional indication of its separateness. Despite the name, in addition to representative functions, the governor also held the position of representative of the Prussian king for contacts with his Polish subjects, holding the right to suspend any regulations of the supreme president which would affect the interests of the Polish community and to submit them for final settlement to the king. The status of the office of the governor was also lifted by the person who held it, Duke Antoni Radziwiłł, an aristocrat who had family ties with the House of Hohenzollerns through his wife, Duchess Luiza, the niece of Frederick the Great and the aunt of the ruling king of Prussia. 

The Polish elites approached these solutions with caution, still trying to rely on Warsaw and hoping that this belonging to Prussia was only of a temporary nature and that sooner or later the Duchy would be integrated with the Kingdom of Poland. The Prussians did not overly demonstrate their enthusiasm, many of them looked down on the Poles, however, a more important issue was that from the point of view of the bureaucratic apparatus, the Polish language and the existing legal specificities of the Duchy were an additional complication that made the management of the new province more difficult. Therefore, a natural objective was a gradually progressing integration with the rest of the monarchy and the first step which led to this was the introduction of the Prussian law and judiciary system in 1817, which was followed by a progressive Germanisation of the administrative apparatus, motivated by practical reasons - the legal educational background and the command of language. Attempts were also made to extend the scope of teaching German in gymnasiums and municipal secondary schools, which, in the end, from the point of view of the Polish youth who were then able to receive an education at excellent Prussian universities – was not a circumstance which should only be evaluated in a negative light. As an element of the actual limitation of the rights granted to Poles, this, however, was strongly opposed by the Polish elites, just like the inflow of a greater and greater number of German officials, teachers and soldiers to the Duchy. It is also necessary to pay attention to the fact that the Prussian rule brought a number of decisions which entailed far-reaching consequences. In 1821, under the influence of Berlin, the Holy See raised the status of the Poznań diocese to archdiocese, this was more aimed at lowering the status of the primate of Gniezno, however, nolens volens subordinated the entire Poznań region to the authority of a single archbishop, making him the natural representative of the Polish, mostly Catholic, community. One act with significant consequences was the introduction of school duty in 1825, which, in the future, was to make the Duchy (and in general, the entire Prussian partition), an area with the highest level of alphabetisation that would stand in clear contrast with the other partitions. The difficult financial situation of the Polish landowners was improved by the establishment of the Land Credit Society in 1821, whose initial capital was provided by the state, however, the management - just as was the case with other Prussian provinces, remained in the hands of landowners. This, in turn, caused this institution to remain under Polish management for many years. On the other hand, the Regulation Act, that is, the Enfranchisement Act of 1823, was welcomed by the landed gentry with much less enthusiasm, though the introduced solutions, inspired by the Prussian legislation adopted sixteen years before, were much more advantageous for large private properties. Only large peasant farms were subject to enfranchisement, and the process itself was spread over many years, while the form and amount of compensation provided to a landowner for the loss of the free serfdom were to be an outcome of bilateral arrangements between the landowner and his peasants. The role of the state was to supervise the process of proper implementation of the regulations and their legal legitimisation. As a consequence of this, enfranchisement created a healthy and effective agricultural system in the Poznań region, maintaining the strong position of the landed gentry and economically viable peasant farms, which, as opposed to other partitions, would not be subject to divisions resulting from successions. It is worth emphasising that enfranchisement in Galicia was proclaimed twenty five years later, after the regulatory edict, and in the Kingdom of Poland forty years later.