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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 turbulent events of the year 1848 and the suppression of the Polish movement marked a new phase of Prussian policy in the Duchy, and a symbol of this was an official regulation which ordered the exclusive use of the name Poznań province (Provinz Posen), though the name of the Grand Duchy of Poznań was still present in the titulary of Prussian kings, and then also German emperors until the abdication of William II. The Poles, in fact, used this name ostentatiously, emphasising the separateness of the Poznań region in relation to other parts of the Hohenzollerns monarchy. Though the civic rights of the Polish subjects were also confirmed in the Prussian constitution from the year 1848, and then in 1850, the provincial authorities still used all legal measures possible to limit Polish activity. In 1850, a special act on the ban on the activities of organisations of a supra-local character brought an end to the Polish League established two years before, whose objective had been to gather together all of the Polish social and political activities. The official withdrawal of postal rights contributed to the collapse of the dynamically developing Polish press. However, the hostile attitude of the Prussian administration was not the only problem. The events of the Revolutions of 1848 quashed the democratic myth that the Polish cause in Prussia boiled down to a conflict between Polish society and the authorities with their bureaucratic apparatus. Meanwhile, the aforementioned hostile actions taken by a certain part of the German and Jewish populations against the Poles started to gain the attributes of a nationality-based conflict in the Poznań region, in which the anti-Polish acts of the authorities could count on social support. The political motion of the German liberal circles, which had traditionally expressed their support for the Polish independence aspirations until the times of the November uprising, was of great importance. This revealed itself fully during the assemblies of the German-wide parliament in Frankfurt-am-Main, when the new formula of the German Confederation, which was to lead to the unification of the politically disintegrated Germany was discussed. At that time, a Polish parliament member, Priest Jan Janiszewski made an appeal that, as a historically Polish territory, the Poznań region should not be incorporated into the Confederation, affirming at the same time the right of Germany to unification. In a vote on 27 July, the Polish position was only supported by a very few representatives of the radical left wing (31) and some Catholic parliament members, it was rejected by a majority of 342 parliament members, who not only included conservatives;, but also most of the liberals who questioned the historical argument, highlighting the fact that Germany had acquired the right to these territories as a consequence of civilisational work that had lasted half a century. During the “Polish debate” (”Polendebatte”) Ernst Moritz Arndt classified the German friends of Poland as ”ignorants, clowns or scoundrels”, and another liberal parliament member Wilhelm Jordan, dotted his I's claiming that Germany should “wake up from the daydreaming self-oblivion” to pursue “healthy national selfishness”.

This declaration was to define Prussian policy towards the Duchy and the Poles to a greater and greater extent. These, however, gained a new platform for national activity, that is, the establishment of the Prussian parliament (Sejm). Although this was just the legislative body of a partitioning country, the Polish parliament members, elected by the votes of the Polish electorate, became the natural representatives of their communities, which removed the odium of collaboration with the partitioning authorities from their activities in Berlin, which were in opposition to the ethos of an honest Pole. One body which represented Polish aspirations was the Polish Circle set up in 1849. In 1871, a similar circle would join it in the newly established parliament of the united Reich. It spoke with a consistent voice only in matters related to Polish rights, did not enter any deals with German parties and was the voice of the Polish community that demonstrated its aspirations and defended its rights. Although frequently this was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, sometimes the Polish Circle managed to achieve certain real effects, as was the case in 1859, when, owing to the loud inquiries of the Polish parliament members, it was possible to overcome the resistance of the provincial administration and bring about the unveiling of the first monument of Adam Mickiewicz on Polish territories, who had died just four years previously.

The turn of the 1850s and 1860s meant the reactivation of the Polish movement, and the first effect of this was the establishment of the Society of the Friends of Arts and Sciences in Poznań in 1857. A significant, national impulse was given to it by the events which took place in the Kingdom of Poland, especially the so called moral revolution which was initiated by the tragic events of 27 January 1861, when five Polish patriots were killed by Russians during a demonstration in Warsaw. The national-religious demonstrations also spread over the Poznań region, and what is even more, these patriotic emotions were also expressed at an organisational level, just to mention, for example, the Central Economic Society established in Poznań in the year 1861, an equivalent of the Warsaw-based Agricultural Society, which was to remain the main form of activity of the Polish landed gentry in the following decades. After the outbreak of the uprising, Poznań residents again rushed to the Kingdom; during its first months, the Poznań region was also an important base for the insurgent movement, though this was a subject of a heated dispute that divided the local elites. Some of the elites were against the uprising, which, in their opinion, never had a chance to succeed. As it turned out, they were right; the ruthless suppression of the January Uprising by the Russians, the greatest Polish defeat in the 19th century was a huge blow for Poznań residents too. As “Dziennik Poznański” wrote: “We are in the position of a farmer whose granary was destroyed by fire, crops were affected by hail and livestock was taken away by disease” (No. 230, 8.10.1865). However, it was actually in the middle of the 1860s that the previous organic work movement was reborn and intensified. This was demonstrated by the establishment of a number of organisations such as earning associations, industrial societies and agricultural circles, which were to play a key role in Polish national activity in the following decades.

In the same period however, the Poles had to face yet another dangerous foe who would become a symbol of the anti-Polish policy of the Prussian state in the second half of the 19th century. This was one of the greatest European politicians of his time, the main architect of the unification of Germany - Otto von Bismarck, who was appointed prime minister of the Prussian state in 1862. Bismarck, who, for a long time, was regarded as an unpredictable politician and therefore was not treated too seriously, had unambiguously expressed his negative stance towards the Polish cause even at the dawn of his career, in the year 1848. As a nobleman through and through, he treated the previous support of the burgher liberals for the Poles with unfeigned contempt, regarding this as a symptom of their political stupidity. With iron realism, he pointed out that the rebirth of the Polish state must cause Poles to claim not just the territories which were in the possession of Prussia and were an important geopolitical component of integrity of the Prussian state, but even East Prussia and Pomerania. Therefore, he considered the establishment of independent Poland to be in a structural conflict with Prussian/German state interests. As prime minister he was very concerned about the development of the situation in the Kingdom of Poland, especially the reforms of Aleksander Wielopolski, perceiving them as a significant threat. Therefore he was relieved by the outbreak of the January uprising and immediately - on 8 February 1863 - he brought about the signing of the so called Alvensleben Convention with Russia directed against the Polish movement. It is worth paying attention to the fact that the situation in the Russian partition was of utmost importance for the Polish policy of Berlin; the strengthening of the position of the Poles in the Russian state made the adoption of a more severe approach towards their comrades in Prussia impossible because it would reinforce their aspirations and throw them in the arms of Russia. In this situation, the brutal suppression of the uprising and the adoption of a definitely anti-Polish course by Saint Petersburg was a green light for Berlin which allowed them to take measures aimed at the marginalisation of the Polish community. Representative of Bismarck’s political manifesto regarding the Polish cause was the speech delivered on 18 March 1867 – as a response to the voice of the Polish parliament member, Kazimierz Kantak – in parliament, regarding the North-German Union established after the victory over Austria in 1866. Here, again, the dispute concerned the membership of the Poznań region in this Union, against which Kantak traditionally protested. Bismarck questioned the right of the Poznań parliament member to speak on behalf of the Poles, emphasising that he had been elected to the German parliamentary body by Prussian subjects. Above all, however, he deconstructed the notion of the Polish nation, which Kantak understood as 17 million people living in the territory of the Republic of Poland from the year 1772. Bismarck pointed out that the entire territory of the former eastern Poland was inhabited, for the most part, by Orthodox Ruthenian population, which had more in common with the Russian authorities than with the Polish nobleman, who in his opinion was - “one of the most reactive creatures that God called into existence”. This effectively reduced the number of ethnic Poles to 6500000 people, whereby the majority were peasants who just like their Ruthenian comrades, hated the Polish noblemen and were loyal to the authorities. Evidence of this was the bloody Galician slaughter in the year 1846 and the events of the Spring of Nations in Greater Poland, when – in Bismarck’s opinion – the Polish movement was supported only by agricultural workers while peasant-owners preferred to stay away from it. An important argument was also the loyal attitude of the Polish soldiers of peasant origin (for the most part) during the wars waged by Prussia against Denmark and Austria. The Polish problem was thus reduced to a small group of aristocratic troublemakers and clergy that supported them, negatively affecting the essentially loyal masses of Polish peasants that were satisfied with the Prussian rule. These distinctive views, representative as it seems for the Prussian elites, were reflected in the successive phases of Prussian policy towards the Poles during the following decades.