General school strike (1906-1907)

When, after Easter, in 1906, 203 folk schools in the province of Poznan introduced German into a religion lesson, a big wave of popular indignation arose. In June, the first small boycotts followed, in which, until the end of the summer semester, 2,897 provincial schoolchildren participated ^[1] . The strike has become universal since the beginning of the winter semester after October 16, 1906.

At its beginning, a lesson in religion in the province of Poznan was taught for 63% of Polish students in their native language and only for the remaining 37% (88,500 schoolchildren) in German ^[2] . Thus, only from them could one expect to be ready for strike. It reached its highest point on November 14, 1906, when out of these 88,500, slightly more than half of the schoolchildren participated in it: 46,886 pupils in 755 ^[3] schools in Poznan (there were 2,624 schools in the province, of which 1,455 were Catholic) ^{[4 ]} and 14,240 ^[5] pupils in 563 ^[6] schools in West Prussia (1,862 schools, 754 Catholic) ^[7] . Nevertheless, in historiography these events received the name “General School Strike” ( German Allgemeiner Schulstreik ). It lasted until the end of the summer holidays of 1907, that is, exactly one year ^[8] .

The beginning of the strike was influenced by the events in Russia, where its Polish school strike coincided with the revolution of 1905, which is why it was a success ^[9] . There, the government abolished many measures aimed at the Russification of Polish schools:

• in all schools of the Russian part of the former Poland, the lesson of the Catholic religion should henceforth be conducted in the native language of pupils by Catholic priests;
• studies in public schools and those higher schools that so desired should henceforth be conducted in Polish;
• orders were abolished, limiting the use of Polish by pupils during school hours.

But the idea of ​​starting a big strike in Prussia was not at first successful and found wide support only in October 1906, when in some places school boycotts spontaneously began and went. It is therefore wrong to say, as some authors do, echoing the opinion of the Prussian authorities that it was organized by the national Polish movement, although it certainly contributed to the events. The spread of the strike was strongly influenced by its main Polish archbishop, Florian Stablevski ^[10] .

At a special government meeting on October 10, 1906, before the start of a mass protest, it was decided not to respond to a strike with corporal punishment and fines, and a list of measures ^[11] that local authorities could resort to was developed. As a result, schoolchildren were left for additional hours at school and, at worst, for the second year, and those who went on strike after January 1, 1907 in the final certificate indicated that this student had participated in the boycott, which meant that he would not be accepted into higher education institution ; brothers or sisters of the strikers were excluded from the gymnasiums, which had consequences for the whole life (there were more than 50 cases of exclusion, but some of the excluded were later taken to study again); parents were reduced to subsidies for the maintenance of the school, and against those parents who were in the public service, they applied administrative measures up to and including dismissal ^[12] .

In 1907, after long discussions, the local authorities began to apply monetary fines, and in one case only one threat of imposing it was enough to stop the strike. Until the end of April 1907, such threats in Poznan province in 500 cases affected the fact that 1000 children stopped disobedience ^[13] . The most stringent measure applied by local authorities was, in two cases, the deprivation of parents of parental rights by a decision of the district court (November 9, 1906), contrary to the position of the guardianship court. But this came up against the government’s disapproval, and the Supreme Court in Berlin, which had already repeatedly established itself as an impartial arbiter on the national question, reversed this decision on January 23, 1907 ^[14] . In the province of Pomerania on November 26, 1906, a similar case also occurred, but the decision of the district court was soon overturned in a higher instance.

• Germanization
• Germanization of Poles in Prussia
• Wzhesnensky school boycott
• Pan-German Union
• Ostfluht
• Michal Dřimala
• Kulturkampf
• Pan-Germanism
• Germanophobia
• Polonophobia

• Balzer, Brigitte: Die preußische Polenpolitik 1894–1908 und die Haltung der deutschen konservativen liberalen Parteien (unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Provinz Posen), 1990.
• Korth, Rudolf: Die preußische Schulpolitik und die polnischen Schulstreiks. Ein Beitrag zur Polenpolitik der Ära Bülow, Phil. Diss., Würzburg 1963.