Abstract
In the years after 1910, two postcards, both produced by the Verlag J. Themal, began to circulate in the city of Poznań/Posen.1 The graphic images of the two postcards were identical. Both showed a blackboard with a picture of the city of Poznań/Posen and a text; a young boy stood in front, gesturing toward the board. A closer examination, however, reveals that the two postcards visually and textually represented the competing claims that Germans and Poles made to the cityscape of Poznań/Posen (Figure 2.1). One postcard, likely the first of the two to be produced, represented Posen as a modern German city. The view was from the west and showed a panorama of Posen’s new buildings—the imperial castle, the city theater, the royal academy, the zoological and botanical gardens, all built during the time of Prussian rule (most in the first decade of the twentieth century). The text emphasized that Posen’s beauty was situated in this “modern” cityscape, one forged by German governmental and civic institutions:
This is Posen seen from the new palace square. Many people believe that it is not beautiful here, but they have no idea at all. We now have here a newly built imperial palace and many beautiful parks all around and many stately buildings, for example, the Academy and the new City Theater. Then we have a large museum and a library and a Zoological and Botanical Garden and a very old town hall and many monuments. Here there are also many officers and many pretty girls. And a lot of beer and schnaps. Adieu!2
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Notes
“Das ist Posen vom neuen Schloßplatz aus gesehen. Viele Leute meinen, daß es hier nicht schön ist, aber die haben gar keine Ahnung. Wir haben jetzt hier ein neuerbautes Kaiserschloß und ringsherum viele schöne Parkanlagen und viele Prachtbauten, z.B. die Akademie und das neue Stadttheater. Dann haben wir ein großes Museum und die Bibliothek und einen Zoologischen und Botanischen Garten und ein ganz altes Rathaus und viele Denkmäler. Dann giebts hier viel Militär und viele schöne Mädchen. Und viel Bier und Schnaps. Adieuh!” Postcard produced between 1910 and 1915 by Tx [Themal], as reproduced in Sophia Kemlein, ed., Postkarten erzählen Geschichte: Die Stadt Posen 1896–1918 / Pocztówki opowiadają historię: Miasto Poznań 1896 –1918 (Lüneberg: Institut Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 1997), 176. All translations are my own.
For a valuable discussion on the increasing importance of the concept of “national property” in the many national conflicts in Central Europe, see Pieter Judson’s “‘Not Another Square Foot!’ German Liberalism and the Rhetoric of National Ownership in Nineteenth-Century Austria,” Austrian History Yearbook XXVI (1995): 83–97.
On Poznań/Posen under Prussian rule, see volume 2 of Dzieje Poznania, edited by Jerzy Topolski and Lech Trzeciakowski (Warsaw/Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 1994). For the broader history of the Prussian eastern provinces, see William W. Hagen, Germans, Poles, and Jews: The Nationality Conflict in the Prussian East, 1772–1914 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980);
Lech Trzeciakowski, Pod pruskim zaborem 1850–1918 (Warsaw: PW “Wiedza Powszechna,” 1973); and
Thomas Serrier, Entre Allemagne et Pologne: Nations et identités frontalières, 1848–1914 (Paris: Belin, 2002). See also
Piotr Wandycz, The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795–1918 (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1974).
For Prussian policy in the eastern provinces, see Martin Broszat, Zweihundert Jahre deutsche Polenpolitik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1972); Hagen, Germans, Poles, and Jews; Trzeciakowski, Pod pruskim zaborem; and
Richard Blanke, Prussian Poland in the German Empire (1871–1900) (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs/New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).
See Brian A. Porter, “The Social Nation and Its Futures: English Liberalism and Polish Nationalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Warsaw,” American Historical Review 101, no. 5 (December 1996): 1470–1492. The philosophy that developed to underlay the “organic work” movement was called Polish Positivism: a confusing term, since the philosophy, as Porter argues, owed more to English liberals such as John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and Charles Darwin than to Auguste Comte. For a discussion of Polish positivism often at odds with Porter’s interpretation, see Stanislaus
A. Blejwas, Realism in Polish Politics: Warsaw Positivism and National Survival in Nineteenth-Century Poland (New Haven, CT: Yale Concilium on International and Area Studies, 1984).
For the “organic work” movement in Poznania, see Witold Jakóbczyk, Studia nad dziejami Wielkopolski w XIX wieku (Dzieje pracy organicznej), 3 vols. (Poznań: Poznańskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk, 1951–1967). See also
William W. Hagen, “National Solidarity and Organic Work in Prussian Poland, 1815–1914,” Journal of Modern History 44, no. 1 (1972): 38–64; and Hagen, Germans, Poles, and Jews.
Both organizations were founded by Dr. Karol Marcinkowski, the founder of the “organic work” movement in Poznań/Posen, in the 1840s. For Marcinkowski and his initiatives, see Witold Jakóbczyk, Karol Marcinkowski 1800–1846 (Warsaw/Poznań: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1981);
Witold Jakóbczyk, W Poznańskim Bazarze 1838–1839 (Poznań, 1986); and
Witold Jakóbczyk, Towarzystwo Naukowej Pomocy w Wielkopolsce 1841–1939 (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1985).
See Elizabeth Drummond, “On the Borders of the Nation: Jews and the German-Polish National Conflict in Poznania, 1886–1914,” Nationalities Papers 29, no. 3 (2001): 459–475.
See Sophia Kemlein, Die Posener Juden 1815–1848: Entwicklungsprozesse einer polnischen Judenheit unter preußischer Herrschaft (Hamburg: Dölling & Galitz Verlag, 1997) and Drummond, “On the Borders of the Nation.”
GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 195, Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, no. 9b, 55ff: Bovenschen’s speech to a meeting of the Gesamtausschuß in Poznań/Posen, December 7, 1902 (M). See also Adolf Warschauer, “Städtewesen: 1. Provinz Posen,” in Die deutsche Ostmark, ed. Deutscher Ostmarkenverein (Lissa i.P.: Oskar Eulitz Verlag, 1913), 204–220, 206.
Zwangzig Jahre deutscher Kulturarbeit: Tätigkeit und Aufgaben neupreußischer Kolonisation in Westpreußen und Posen (Berlin: W. Moeser Buckdruckerei, 1907). For the history of the Settlement Commission, see Witold Jakóbczyk, Pruska Komisja Osadnicza 1886–1919 (Poznań, 1976); Jakóbczyk, Kolonizatorzy i hakatyści (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie, 1989); and Jakóbczyk, “The First Decade of the Prussian Settlement Commission’s Activities, 1886–1897,” The Polish Review 71, no. 1 (1972).
Wolfgang Hofmann, “Reichshauptstadt und Hauptstadt der ‘Ostmarken’. Staatlicher Städtebau in Berlin und Posen im deutschen Kaiserreich (1871–1914),” in Ideologie, Poglądy, Mity w Dziejach Polski i Europy XIX I XX wieju, ed. Jerzy Topolski, Witold Molik, and Krzysztof Makowski (Poznań: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, 1991), 25–27; Warkoczewska, “Städtebauliche Veränderungen”; Zofia Ostrowska-Kęblowska and Jan Skuratowicz, “Architektura I budownictwo.”
See Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 179–183.
Albert S. Kotowski, Polens Politik gegenüber seiner deutschen Minderheit 1919–1939 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassovwitz, 1998), 56. See also
Richard Blanke, Orphans of Versailles. The Germans in Western Poland 1918–1939 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1993); and
Dariusz Matelski, Mniejszość niemiecka w Wielkopolsce w latach 1919–1939 (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 1997).
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© 2014 Jeffry M. Diefendorf and Janet Ward
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Drummond, E.A. (2014). Posen or Poznań, Rathaus or Ratusz: Nationalizing the Cityscape in the German-Polish Borderland. In: Diefendorf, J.M., Ward, J. (eds) Transnationalism and the German City. Studies in European Culture and History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137390172_3
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