Polish-Germans in Poland
by Jan Herman Brinks
French translation in: Politique Étrangère, (Les Allemands
de Pologne) Paris, 2/1999, pp 357-72.
"I could not prove it, of course, but I would not be surprised if the Polish secret service were behind all this". It comes as no surprise to Prof. Bartoding, who is a former representative of the German minority in the Polish parliament, the Sejm, to hear that the Polish taxi firm wanted to charge me almost ten times the normal rate to ride to his house in Strzelce Opolskie. He stands up in a fluster and proceeds a case stuffed with passkeys and bugs which one of his visitors recently left behind in his home. "The Polish secret service has not been cleaned up, the old guard still rules", he says and seems upset while he holds the case under my nose.
The communists kept a constant eye on the former professor of physics, who is one of the most prominent spokesmen of the German minority in Poland. But he cannot escape the impression that the Polish authorities continue to watch him closely. However, when asked how he judges the current relationship between Polish-Germans and Poles, he tactfully answers that he is not too pessimistic about that. With regard to human relations he does not foresee any problems, not least because he considers the Polish-Germans nowadays to be a politically passive group. This community, according to Gerhard Bartoding, finds itself in a "psychological no man's land" and he even doubts whether the German minority, many of whom live in the Opole district, will be able to survive.
At first sight he is right. Shortly after the disappearance of the Iron Curtain the Deutschstämmige were well represented with seven delegates in the parliament, but at the moment they have only two representatives in the Sejm. Bartoding complains particularly about the attitude of Polish officials, who try to make life miserable for the German minority. According to him, this harassment is also made abundantly clear by Poland's refusal, up to now, to ratify the European council outline agreement for the protection of minorities. Indeed there is no denying that Poland has longstanding problems with its minorities. After the eastern frontier was established at the Peace Treaty of Riga in March 1921, it appeared that 38 percent of the population belonged to one or other minority of which the Ukrainians, White Ruthenians, Jews and Germans constituted the largest groups. It was supposed at the time that the integration of the Slavic Ukrainians and White Russians could be advanced by means of assimilation; Jews and Germans on the other hand were regarded as unfit for integration.
Many Poles, especially the Polish politicians, were unsympathetic towards the minorities. For example Stanislaw Grabski, the foreign Policy spokesman for the Polish parliament and later Culture Minister, explained in 1919 in a speech in Poznan: "We want to base our relationships on love, but there is one kind of love for countrymen and another for aliens. Their percentage among us is definitely too high (...) The foreign element will have to see if it will not be better off elsewhere. Polish land for the Poles!"(1)
After the disappearance of the Iron Curtain it soon appeared that problems concerning minorities were not a thing of the past. There are, for example, tensions between Poles and the Ukrainian minority, whose number is estimated at 300.000 and who live primarily in the region of Przemysl in the south east of Poland.
Anti-semitism too can still be found. In 1995, for example, the former father confessor of Lech Walesa, Henryk Jankowski, stated during a sermon that Jews in Poland had a controlling influence on the country. According to the priest it was possible to detect the Jewish Star of David in both the hammer and sickle and in the swastika. Such ideas are also alive in the population at large and find expression in anti-semitic graffiti. Slogans on a wall next to Wroclaw university try to convince the passer-by that Soviet-communism and Zionism are identical, and, in the city's main street, the words "Jude Raus" are written in giant letters on a wall. Neither the passers-by nor the authorities apparantly care about these insults. As the Jewish community in Poland has largely been eradicated, one could say there exists a Polish "anti-semitism without Jews".
The German minority on the other hand is still conspicuously present, and since 1990 made itself heard on a regular basis. The estimates of the exact number of Polish-Germans vary widely. Wieslaw Lesiuk, director of the Silesian Institute in Opole, which was established in 1957 and was used by the communists to legitimize the territorial acquisitions on a historical basis, thinks that the concept of "Polish-German" is very arbitrary. "Here in Silesia everyone can call himself a German", he argues briefly and to the point.
The organisations of the Heimatvertriebene maintain that between 800.000 and 1 million Deutschstämmige live in Poland, but according to Danuta Berlinska, researcher at the Silesian Institute, their actual number nowadays amounts to some 400.000, of whom 300.000 live in the Opole district, 100.000 in the Katowice district and 40.000 in the district of Czestochowa. Berlinska's estimates seem to be reliable. Since 1990, hundreds of thousands of Polish-Germans have left the country to settle in the Federal Republic of Germany.(2) Nowadays, the German authorities try to discourage their emigration to Germany. As a result of a restrictive admission policy, the official number of immigrants in 1997 came to only 687 for the whole of Poland.
Friedrich Petrach, chairman of the tiny community of Polish-Germans in Wroclaw, former German Breslau, is particularly dissatisfied with the status of the Deutschstämmige in Poland. In his modern office, he criticises the Polish media and argues that the attitude of the Roman Catholic church also leaves much to be desired. He bears a particular grudge against the Polish authorities who do not give enough attention to instruction in the German language. This, he says, is of major importance as many Polish-Germans no longer speak German.
Since the disappearance of the Iron Curtain the Polish-Germans are offered training courses in the German language and many people nowadays seize the opportunity. At the moment there are bilingual classes at secondary schools in Poznan, Wroclaw, Opole en Szczecin. However, according to Petrach, there are great difficulties in finding suitable German teachers, who have to come over specially from Germany. At the moment they number 135, but, says Petrach, one cannot expect a German teacher to work for a "Polish salary". "We pay our taxes", he sighs, "but as a minority we do not get anything".
Yet the Polish Germans may have less reason for complaint than Petrach suggests. Since June 1991, Germany has agreed to support the German minority financially. The Ukrainian, White Russian, Lithuanian and Czech minorities may not count on such generous government-backing. Another important bone of contention between the Polish-Germans and the Poles is the teaching of history. Petrach blames the Poles for their "lack of good will" in that they use the same history books as were used by the communists. "Besides", he remarks, "the Poles should realize that Germany after all contributed to the foundation of the Polish state".
It is however doubtful whether one should look for gratitude. By the end of the eighteenth century, Poland had disappeared from the map and was partly annexed by Prussia. Then, in the middle of the First World War, on 5 November 1916, Germany and Austria-Hungary proclaimed a Polish Kingdom. But it soon became clear that its independence was illusory, and that the axis-powers had a Polish vassal state in mind.
Like Petrach, the greater part of the Polish-Germans consider themselves to be victims of a "tragedy", which they date back only to the end of the First World War, when the Polish state was reestablished and Germany lost territory in the East. This is especially true of the Silesians who, as a result of the Versailles treaty, all of a sudden became one of Poland's minorities.
Under the auspices of the allies, a referendum was held on 20 March 1921 in the greater part of Upper-Silesia, about whether this territory should go to Poland or stay with Germany. The vast majority of the population declared themselves in favour of staying part of Germany. Polish nationalists revolted against this but on 21 May 1921, were defeated on the Annaberg by the German Freikorps Oberland. Nevertheless Upper-Silesia was partitioned in 1922; the western part went to Germany and the eastern half, in which much of the industry was located, was assigned to Poland. The Poles justified this annexation, which was condoned by the French, by stating that the inhabitants were not Germans but Poles.
During the interwar period this situation led to permanent tensions between Germans and Poles. The Silesians in particular regarded themselves as victims who were forced to live under the "Shade of Versailles" and many decided to leave the country. In 1919 2,1 million Germans lived in Poland, a number which had fallen to 1 million on the eve of the Second World War.
The Germans who stayed in Poland were supported by the Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland, the Deutsche Auslandsinstitut and the Deutsche Stiftung. Germany tried to discourage immigration of Polish-Germans to Germany. In 1924 Stresemann explained in a memo: "For domestic-political, economic and financial reasons too, such a continued influx of Germans from foreign lands into Germany is undesirable...A large part of these returnees have lost their base of support and become a burden on public welfare".(3)
After the German attack on Poland many Polish-Germans joined the National Socialists, or became members of the so called Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz, a vigilante patrol which was also used to recruit men for the army. German animosity towards Poland now assumed shocking proportions. For example, in 1940 Theodor Oberländer, who was to become minister in the Federal Republic for Vertriebene from 1953 to 1960, urged the need te expel the Polish population. In a publication, the future CDU-politician argued: "The Eindeutschung (Germanization) of the eastern territories must, whatever we do, be total. Those affected may find measures of complete emigration and resettlement hard...but a once-only toughness is better than a petty struggle that lasts for generations... For this reason in addition to many others, one has to reject the assimilation of the Poles"(4). This attitude, and still more the savage behaviour of the German army, resulted after 1945 in a long and bloody day of reckoning for the Polish-Germans in Poland.
Immediately after the war the Polish communists started the violent expulsion and expropriation of the belongings of the German population in Silesia, East- and West Prussia, Pomerania, Danzig and East Brandenburg. This campaign, in which hundreds of thousands lost their lives, was presented as the "return of the Western- and Northern territories to the motherland". During this degermanisation everything that reminded one of Germany, both its language and culture, was forbidden, and offenders were severely punished. Most Germans were expelled and some were taken prisoner. Notorious for its cruelty towards German prisoners was the concentration camp of Lambinowice, former German Lamsdorf, where Russians had been interned during the Great War and which had served as a concentration camp under the Nazis.
Yet not all Germans were expelled after 1945. This applied especially to the Upper-Silesians. The Polish state had after all pronounced them Polish citizens in 1922. Besides - and this was the most important reason why they were allowed to stay - they were urgently needed in the mining industry. On 8 January 1951, Polish nationality was forced by decree upon those Germans who did not flee, or who were not expelled from the country.
But this Sammeleinbürgerung did not turn them emotionally into Poles. On the contrary. Just as in other peoples' democracies, in Poland also it appeared to be impossible to create a homo sovieticus. At the beginning of the eighties Polish-Germans started to offer resistance to enforced polonisation and founded the AGMO, an organisation which looked after the interests of the "ethnic minority of the Germans".(5)
In the meantime the Polish authorities persistently denied the existence of a German community in Poland. As late as May 1985 the Polish prime minister Jaruzelski explained in Wroclaw, that "the question of a national German minority in Poland" has "ceased to exist forever". A year earlier, he had argued to a gathering of officers that there was talk of a "fictitious problem" which could be taken as justification for an "ethnic partition" of Poland.(6)
However, immediately after the fall of the wall the claim that there were almost no "heimatverbliebene" Germans left in Poland was belied. In spite of, but more likely because of the policy of forced polonisation, many Germans in Silesia had remained faithful to their German identity. This became clear in 1990 when the German minority gained several sensational electoral victories in the eastern part of the Opole district, where they received between 65 and 90 percent of the votes. They also showed gains in Radlów, Dosbrodzien and Olesno in the district of Czestochowa, just as in Opole, Kedzierzyn-Kozle, Kluczbork and Strzelce Opolskie. Twenty five mayors now came from the ranks of the German minority.(7)
Since the implosion of party communism, the Polish-Germans and their descendants, who are well organized, have the wind in their sails again. On the Annaberg, which was previously Upper-Silesia's cultural and religious centre, the Polish-Germans once more have the opportunity of holding church services. With the support of the AGMO they have also formally established so called Deutsche Freundschaftskreise, associations which can count on modest financial support from their cousins in the Bund der Vertriebenen.
The Landsmannschaft Schlesien in particular renders assistance. This homeland association, which is closely related to the CDU/CSU of former chancellor Kohl, has as its motto: "Silesia is our Heimat, our assignment is called Silesia". It was no coincidence that Kohl could barely be restrained from visiting the Annaberg during his state visit to Poland in 1989. In the end, he visited Krzyzowa (former German Kreisau), where at the end of the war national-conservative German officers offered resistance to Hitler. For Kohl, who was greeted at Krzyzowa by thousands of Polish-Germans from Silesia, this place was an acceptable alternative - not least because at Krzyzowa convinced anti-communists and German-nationalists have been honoured.
In the same way the Polish communists have misused the history of the Third Reich for purposes of propaganda and agitation, many of the Deutschstämmige show an inclination to dispose of Nazi outrages as "communist propaganda" or to whitewash these crimes. This is true of both the German community in Poland and the Vertriebene in Germany who, for example, implicitly lay the blame for Hitler's rise to power on the allies: "Especially in Silesia and in the other Eastern provinces, the saying that >Adolf Hitler was born in Versailles< rings very true", according to the Bund der Vertriebenen.(8)
The anger of most Deutschstämmige in Silesia is particularly aimed at the Soviet Union and the Polish communists, who for decades have tried to polonise the Polish-Germans. Already during the summer of 1990, several weeks after the first free municipal elections, a monument dedicated to the Red Army was demolished in the Upper-Silesian town of Prudnik, formerly the German town of Neustadt. A city councillor argued that the Red Army had not come as liberators, but that the population had experienced them mainly as looters and rapists.
It is not surprising that after 1990 German right wing radicals thought they would find fertile soil for their ideas in Upper-Silesia. In several villages, including Dziewkowice near Strzelce Opolskie, Polish-Germans let houses to German right-wing radicals who carried out their agitation and propaganda from there. Tensions between the Polish-Germans and the Poles built up in such a dramatic way that in 1992 the Polish prime minister Walesa took the matter in hand. He announced steps against those who supported German Neo-Nazis and against Polish-Germans who were planning to reerect German war monuments.
Mutual relations between the German minority and the Poles are still complicated. "On the official level", according to Aleksandra Trzcielinska-Polus, who is a researcher at the Silesian Institute in Opole, "relations are very cordial, and contacts between organisations go reasonably well. But in ordinary life tensions do sometimes occur. There is a barrier between Germans and Poles", she remarks, "it is as if they look at each other through glass"(9). A Polish saying maintains that Poles and Germans will not be friends as long as the world exists. I got a taste of this when I arrived at the railway station of Opole and a policeman, who obviously took me for a Heimatvertriebener, snapped at me that he wanted to see my passport. When I told him - in English - that I was rather surprised that a policeman should want to check my papers in a place like this, this formality all of a sudden appeared to be unnecessary.
However, the frictions between Deutschstämmige and Poles have not only historical but also economic backgrounds. In accordance with subsection 1 of section 116 of the German constitution, the Polish-Germans fall under a Schutzpflicht of the government to protect them so they can count on modest support from the German authorities. The more so as it is in the interest of Bonn to restrict the number of Aussiedler from Central and Eastern Europe who want to emigrate to Germany.
These Polish-Germans, who have both a Polish and a German passport at their disposal, have the opportunity to work in Germany, while, as they are Polish, they also remain residents of their Polish municipality. There they can invest their money, for example, by buying houses and other real estate. In Upper-Silesia one sees many uninhabited houses belonging to Polish-Germans who have bought a house in Poland while they themselves live and work in Germany. This sometimes breeds bad blood with Poles who do not have these opportunities and who occasionally refer to their deutschstämmige compatriots as Volkswagendeutschen.
To obtain the passionately coveted German passport, some Poles even went, until recently, to the Berlin Document Center to look for documents which might prove that their parents or grandparents had collaborated with the Nazis during the war. In that way they could assert their rights as Germans.
For most Deutschstämmige it is very important for them to distinguish themselves from the Poles by means of a "German identity". According to Berlinska, Polish-Germans feel themselves Germans "because of a common past, a common participation in the Second World War or because of an imagined common value system". These views were passed on to the generations born during and after the war.
This sociological question of what they assume to be a "common value system" particularly merits further attention. Common values and standards which Polish-Germans regard as "typically German" and by which, in their perception, they distinguish themselves from the Poles, are: respect for order, law, a strong pattern of work ethos and respect for good management; an attitude which, in their eyes, is at odds with the Polnische Wirtschaft. In fact here the so called Prussian Tugenden are at stake.
However, the implementation of these "virtues", which were also held in high regard in the former GDR and which had a strong political meaning there(10), has put heavy pressure on the relationship between Poles and Germans which obviously has not been forgotten. Berlinska presents photos taken in 1992 and 1993 which show walls plastered with swastikas and curses hurled at Heinrich Kroll, one of the delegates of the German community in the Sejm. In addition, threats were uttered. "Immediately after 1990", Berlinska says, "we were afraid of a Jugoslavian state of affairs but this did not happen here".
It is not surprising that this fear rose from the ashes and still has not disappeared completely. Silesia, which was annexed in 1763 by Frederick II and was subsequently incorporated into Prussia, has long constituted a schwebendes Volkstum, a kind of melting pot between Germans and Slavs. Those who considered themselves to be Germans often fiercely resisted the Slavs.
German anti-Slavism, which was often directed at the Poles, had prominent spokesman in the nineteenth century. In a letter in March 1861 to his sister Malwine, Bismarck, for example, expressed the Prussian-German attitude towards the Poles which turned out to be a blueprint for the future: "So clobbeth the Poles so that they despair; they have my deepest sympathy for their situation, but, if we want to exist, we have no choice but to wipe them out ('ausrotten'); the wolf cannot help it that he was created by God the way he is, but one shoots him yet, if one can."(11)
When the German empire made frenetic attempts to germanise her Polish provinces, she was supported by organisations like the Ostmarkenverein or the Pan-German alliance. These endeavours were also well received by prominent German intellectuals. As, for example, the sociologist Max Weber, once a member of the Pan-German alliance, put it: "It was we who humanised the Poles"(12). This anti-Slavism was to be brought to a climax during the Third Reich.
However, subdued tensions between the Poles on the one hand and the Polish-Germans and the Vertriebene on the other do not only have historical and socio-economic backgrounds, they are also fostered by political decisions, especially about the Polish western border. Since 1945 Germany has never signed a peace treaty which implies that the German Reich de jure, i.e. according to international law, still exists within the frontiers of 31 December 1937. In spite of the recognition of the western border in 1990 by Bonn and Warsaw, previously laid down at the Treaty of Görlitz in 1950 between the GDR and Poland, and the Warsaw Treaty in 1970 between Willy Brandt and Józef Cyrankiewicz, there is still concern in Poland about its western frontier. This anxiety is not entirely surprising since part of the annexation of the German territories after 1945 was illegal; it was not entirely according to the Potsdam Treaty, and took place under pressure from Stalin.
From as long ago as 1985, the GDR and Poland had been arguing about the territory in the curve of Pomerania north of Swinemünde and Szczecin. According to the Treaty of Potsdam of 1945, the former German Stettin and its western hinterland were not to come under Polish administration. But in September 1945 an area of 800 square kilometres with half a million German inhabitants was annexed. This was indeed counter to agreements, and as a result Berlin was cut off from its port of Szczecin.
With the recognition of the Polish western border in 1990, the problems
between Poland and Germany seemed to be settled. However, it was remarkable
that the German chancellor considered the recognition of the border
to be the price for German unity, and refused to see it as a compensation
for Polish suffering caused by Germany. Helmut Kohl was the last to
fall on his knees before the Polish people as Willy Brandt once did
in Warsaw. On the contrary, the German chancellor demanded that Poland
officially apologize for the expulsion of the German population.
Nor could the Treaty of Friendship, which in 1991 was concluded for
a period of ten years between Kohl and the Polish prime-minister Bielecki,
dispel a hidden uneasiness. An official supplement to the treaty argues
emphatically that this treaty is "unconcerned with questions relating
to nationality and property".(13)
Such phrasing contributes to a situation in which Vertriebene and their descendants think that, sooner or later, they might be able to reclaim their former possessions by taking civil action against the present owners.(14) Quite a few nowadays feel that they, just like the Bosnians, for example, are victims of ethnic cleansing and therefore put themselves on a par with them. The German government also facilitates a climate in which such ideas may develop. On 29 May 1998, a resolution was passed which described the expulsion of the Germans from the territories to the east of the Oder and Neiße as a breach of international law and called on continue to support the Vertriebene. Furthermore, according to the German government, the Heimatvertriebene should be granted all "European basic civil rights" once Poland has joined the European Union; in other words, they should be able to settle in their former places of residence.
Not surprisingly such resolutions give rise to concern in Poland. On 3 July 1998 the Polish parliament adopted with clear unanimity a motion in which this policy was strongly condemned and in which there was talk of "ambiguities" and "dangerous tendencies".(15)
Not only the Vertriebene, but also the Polish-Germans, hope that the balance of power and "questions relating to nationality and property" will be solved to their advantage. For them "Unified Europe" is a magic phrase and they have high hopes for the Polish-German Euro-Regions with striking names like "Pomerania", "Spree-Neiße-Bober", "Pro-Europa Viadrina" and "Neiße" - regions which all have strong historical ties with Germany. Since Poland has, from the beginning of 1998 and on the encouragement of the European Union, closed its Eastern borders, trade in Polish markets with its Slavic cousins in the East, i.e. with Russians, White Russians and Ukrainians, has sharply declined. According to many Poles, the present state of affairs is a far cry from "Unified Europe" and one gets more of an impression of "Fortress Europe".
Feelings towards the Euro-Regions among the Polish population seem to be fairly mixed. According to an investigation which was published in 1993 in the journal "Rynek Jeleniogórski" ("Der Hirschberger Markt", 3, 1993), two years after the establishment of the Euro-Regions, which were established to improve trade, commerce and mutual relations between border regions, 40 percent of the interviewees did not know about their existence. 30 percent took the view that they represented an attempt by Germany to dominate the border regions, and ten percent declared themselves openly against the Euro-Regions. According to Berlinska, only 15 percent of the interviewees knew about the problem from the media and supported the Euro-Regions as a way of developing European integration.
In spite of frequent political declarations of friendship between Warsaw and Bonn, the Polish-German relationship is still laden with subdued tensions of an historical, socio-economic and political character. Whether a "Unified Europe" will contribute to settling these problems is an open question; a "Fortress Europe", however, is more likely to bring old animosities back to life - between Poles and Germans as well.
Notes
1. Deutsche Zeitung, 2 September 1919, quoted in: Blanke, Richard, The German Minority in inter-war Poland and German foreign policy - Some reconsiderations, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol 25, 1990, p. 87-102, (here:) p. 89.
2. In 1998 the German community of the Ukraine, which is estimated between 40.000 and 100.000 people, was startled by rumours that within the next two years they would have to choose between emigration to Germany or permanent residence in the Ukraine. During a state visit in 1998, German president Roman Herzog emphatically assured the Ukrainian Germans that the door to the Federal Republic will stay open.
3. Memo of 14 February 1924, Bundesarchiv R431 120, 204f; quoted in: Blanke, Richard, The German Minority in inter-war Poland and German foreign policy - Some reconsiderations, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol 25, 1990, p. 87-102, (here:) p. 93.
4. Oberländer, Theodor, Von der Front des Volkstumskampfes, Neues Bauerntum, 32 (1940), p. 127-130, here: p. 128. According to Oberländer this quotation and other passages in 'Neues Bauerntum' were falsely attributed to him by the Nazis.
5. The complete name is 'Arbeitsgemeinschaft Menschenrechtsverletzungen in Ostdeutschland in der Schlesischen Jugend - Bundesgruppe e.V.' (Working group for the violation of human rights in Eastern Germany in the Silesian youth - Federal group Inc.). Since 1990 the name of this organisation is 'Agmo-Ostdeutsche Menschenrechtsgesellschaft e.V.'. (Agmo-East German Society for Human Rights Inc.)
6. Urban, T., Deutsche in Polen. Geschichte und Gegenwart einer Minderheit. Munich, 1994, p. 96.
7. Ibidem, p. 115.
8. H. Neubach, Kleine Geschichte Schlesiens, Kulturelle Arbeitshefte Nr. 24, Bund der Vertriebenen - Vereinigte Landsmannschaften und Landesverbände - , Bonn, 1994, p. 18
9. In 1998 the Deutsch-Polnische Gesellschaft was of the opinion that, from the German side, these had reached an all time low. 'Polenwitze: Kultur?', (Jokes about Poles: Culture?), Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), 19 November 1997.
10. In 1980, the East German scholar of cultural affairs Helmut Hanke even formulated the Catalogue of Virtues which 'German socialism' needed: 'order, punctuality, professional honour and bond with the organisation, precision and accuracy, honesty and solidarity with one's colleagues, cleanliness, culture in the village, house, farm and garden.' And further 'respectability, quality, the work ethic, professional honour and thrift', wrote Hanke. Hanke, H., Zur Rolle von Traditionen in Lebensweise und Kultur, Weimarer Beiträge, Vol. 1, 1980, year 26, p. 35-58; (here) esp. p. 45.
11. Gall, Lothar, Bismarck. Der weiße Revolutionär, Frankfurt/M, Berlin, Vienna, 1983, p. 91.
12. ('Weber vertrat die Ansicht, erst die Deutschen hätten "die Polen aus Tieren zu Menschen gemacht" '; in:) Gregor Schöllgen, Titanisches Bemühen ins Leere. Das Scheitern Max Webers: Was bleibt vom "größten Deutschen" dieses Jahrhunderts? SZ am Wochenende, Feuilleton-Beilage der Süddeutschen Zeitung (SZ), 22./23.8. 1998; also: Kohn, H. The mind of Germany. The education of a nation, New York, 1960; Dutch translation: 'De Duitse geest. De vorming van een volk', Amsterdam, 1962, p. 287.
13. In the ten-year treaty "about good and friendly cooperation between neighbours" which was signed on 17 June 1991 by chancellor Helmut Kohl and prime-minister Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, the rights of the German minority in Poland were laid down for the first time. An exchange of letters between the two ministers for Foreign Affairs in order to regulate the "details" of this treaty, emphatically states: "This treaty is not concerned with questions relating to nationality and property". Dokumentation Deutsch-polnischer Nachbarschaftsvertrag zur Minderheit (Auszüge), (Documentation German-Polish neighbourly treaty concerning the minority [extracts] ) in: Urban, Thomas, Deutsche in Polen. p. 199-202; (here:) p. 202.
14. Cp. Bowdler, Neil, Kohl extends hand of friendship to Warsaw to heal wounds of war ... but Germans stir up old fears by laying claim to land in Poland, The Guardian, 12 June, 1998.
15. Alle Fraktionen im Warschauer Parlament einig. Polen attackiert Bonner Vertriebenen-Resolution, (All parliamentary parties agree. Poland attacks Bonn's Vertriebene resolution), SZ, 4/5 July, 1998.
About the Author
Jan Herman Brinks has researched in modern and contemporary German history for the last 14 years and has published in a range of journals of international provenance. A graduate of the State University of Groningen, he was awarded the Erasmus Study Prize in 1992 for his thesis Die DDR-Geschichtswissenschaft auf dem Weg zur deutschen Einheit. Luther, Friedrich II und Bismarck als Paradigmen politischen Wandels (Frankfurt/New York 1992), currently being prepared for publication in English by the Marquette University Press. His book Children of the New Fatherland: Germany's Post-War Right Wing Politics will be published in 1999 by I.B. Tauris with a preface by the distinguished American commentator David Binder of The New York Times. Dr Brinks has held fellowships at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies of the Johns Hopkins University in 1995-6 and from 1997-8 was Charlemagne Research Fellow, supported by the EC, at the University of Bath and at Birkbeck College in London. He is currently working on political anti-fascism in the German Democratic Republic.