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Grand Duchy of Poznań

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Grand Duchy of Poznań coat of arms
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Grand Duchy of Poznań coat of arms

Polish Statehood

The Grand Duchy of Poznań (Polish: ) or Grand Duchy of Posen (German: ) was an autonomous province of the Kingdom of Prussia in the Polish lands commonly known as "Great Poland" between the years 1815-1848. The name was unofficially used afterwards for denoting the territory, especially by Poles, and today is used by modern historians to describe different political entities until 1918. Its capital was Poznań (German: Posen).

Contents

Area and population

The area was 28,951 km² and contained most of the territories of the historical province of Greater Poland, which comprised the western parts of the Duchy of Warsaw (Departments of Poznań, Bydgoszcz, partly Kalisz) that were ceded to Prussia according to the Congress of Vienna (1815) with an international guarantee of self-administration and free development of the Polish nation.

Population:

Territorial administration

The monarch of the duchy, with title of Grand Duke of Poznań, was the Hohenzollern king of Prussia and his representative was the Duke-Governor: the first was Prince Antoni Radziwiłł (1815-1831), who was married to Princess Luise of Prussia, the king's cousin. The governor was assigned to give advice in matters of Polish nationality, and had the right to veto the administration decisions; in reality, however, all administrative power was in the hands of the Prussian over-president of the province.

The Prussian administrative unit that covered the territory of the Duchy was called the Province of the Grand Duchy of Poznań in the years 1815-1849, and later to simplify just the Province of Poznań (Polish: Prowincja Poznańska, German: Provinz Posen).

The territory of the duchy was divided into two districts (Polish: Rejencja, German: Regierungsbezirk): Poznań District, Bydgoszcz District, which were further divided into 26 original counties (Polish: Powiat(y), German: Kreis(e)) administered by the "landrats" ("county councils"). Later, these were redivided into 40 counties, plus 2 urban districts. In 1824, the Duchy also received the provincial council (term started in 1827) but with little administrative power, limited to providing advice. In 1817, Chełmno Land was moved to West Prussia.

The territorial administration in 1897:

Poznań District, (Rejencja Poznańska), Poznań

(English county name, Polish county name, county town)

(English county name, Polish county name, county town)

History

The Prussian province of Posen. Yellow colour: Polish-speaking areas
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The Prussian province of Posen. Yellow colour: Polish-speaking areas

Up to 1830 the Prussian authorities were relatively tolerant to the Polish people, although the Prussian administrative schemes were introduced and the role of the German language was strengthened in education.

Repression system after 1830

The 1830 November Uprising within Congress Poland against the Russian Empire was significantly supported by Poles from the Grand Duchy of Poznań, Afterwards, the Prussian administration under over-president Edward Flotwell introduced a system of police and repression against the Poles. He started to expel the Poles from administration, tried to weaken the Polish nobility by buying its lands, and after 1832 the role of the Polish language in education was significantly suppressed.

Milder period after 1840

to be written

Autonomy abolished 1848

During the Revolutions of 1848 the Frankfurt Parliament attempted to divide the Duchy into two parts: the Province of Poznań, which would have been given to the Germans and annexed to a newly-created German Empire, and the Province of Gniezno, which would have been given to the Poles and held outside Germany, but because of the protest of Polish parliamentarians these plans failed and the integrity of the duchy was preserved. However on February 9th, 1849, after a series of broken assurances, the Prussian administration renamed the duchy to the Province of Poznań (Provinz Posen). The line that divided the two proposed parts was ignored. However the Grand Duchy of Poznań remained a possession of the Hohenzollern dynasty and the name remained in unofficial use until 1918.

Kulturkampf

In the 1880s Chancellor Otto von Bismarck started the Germanization policies, such as an increase of police forces, a colonization commission, the German Society for the Eastern Borders (Hakata), and the Kulturkampf. In 1904 special legislation was passed against the Polish population. The legislation of 1908 allowed the confiscation of Polish landed property. The Prussian authorities did not allow the development of industries, so the Duchy's economy was dominated by high-level agriculture.

The liberation 1918-1919

After World War I, the fate of the Grand Duchy was undecided. The Poles demanded that this historically Polish region be included in the newly independent Second Polish Republic, while the Germans refused any territorial concessions. The Greater Poland Uprising that broke out on 27 December 1918, a day after the speech of Ignacy Jan Paderewski, allowed the region to be liberated from German occupation. The Treaty of Versailles decided that most of the territory of the Grand Duchy would be included in Poland.

Polish organizations in the Grand Duchy of Poznań

German organizations in the Grand Duchy of Poznań

Famous people of the Grand Duchy of Poznań

Poznań town hall
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Poznań town hall

(in alphabetical order)

See also

References

 

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