History of Germans in Poland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The history of Germans in Poland dates back almost a millennium. Poland was at one point Europe's most multiethnic state during the medieval period. Its territory covered an immense plain with no natural boundaries, with a thinly scattered population of many ethnic groups, including the Poles themselves, Germans in the cities of West Prussia, and Ruthenians in Lithuania. 5 to 10% of immigrants were German settlers.[1] (In the Middle Ages, there was no homogeneous German state; the label "German" generally refers to German-speaking people, including Germanized Polabian Slavs and Lusatian Sorbs.[1][2])
The Polish princes granted burghers in the cities, many of whom were German speaking, autonomy according to the "Magdeburg rights", modeled on the laws of the cities of ancient Rome.[3] In this way, cities emerged of the German-Western European medieval type. Before the 13th century ended, around one hundred Polish towns had Magdeburg-style municipal institutions. (Adoption of Magdeburg laws should not be equated with German colonization in Poland, as the laws were used in many places inhabited solely by Poles.[1]) The governing classes[1] in these towns were increasingly German and German-speaking. At the synod of Łęczyca in 1285, Archbishop Jakub Świnka of Gniezno warned that Poland might become a "new Saxony" if German negligence for Polish language, customs, clergy and ordinary people went unchecked. By the end of the Middle Ages significant populations in a number of western Polish cities were German-speaking, and some municipal documents were written partly in German (until the transition to Latin, and later to Polish[4]).