German-Polish relations - bilateral diplomatic relations between Germany and Poland , as well as their historical predecessors. They have a long and complex history [1] .
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As far back as the 10th century, the Polish Kingdom of the Piast Dynasty founded by Prince Meshko I , had little close relations with the Holy Roman Empire , which were, however, overshadowed by the centuries-old Polish-Teutonic wars , which led to the transformation of the Duchy of Prussia into the feudal possession of the Kingdom of Poland. Prussia retained a certain level of autonomy under the rule of Poland. Later, the Kingdom of Prussia revolted and took part in the partition of Poland .
In 1918, Poland regained its state independence. After the First World War , under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was deprived of the territory of West Prussia , East Upper Silesia , Danzig and these lands were transferred to Poland. The Weimar Republic considered this act a great injustice. In 1939, the Third Reich attacked Poland , which served as the beginning of the Second World War , the most bloody conflict in history. After the capture of Poland , the Third Reich began to create concentration camps in occupied Poland, the largest of which was located in Auschwitz . After the end of World War II, Germany lost its former eastern territories , which were actually alienated in favor of Poland and the Soviet Union . In 1945-1950 A series of large-scale migrations took place, when 16 million ethnic Germans were forced to leave their homes and move to post-war Germany. It was the largest forced displacement of people in history.
During the Cold War, relations between the communist countries of the Polish People's Republic and the German Democratic Republic improved. Relations between Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany remained poor, but they improved after the chancellor Willy Brandt created New Eastern Politics . In 1990, Germany was united and the Polish-German agreement confirmed the border along the Oder - Neisse line . Both states are now members of the European Union and partners. The length of the state border between the countries is 467 km [2] [3] .
Content
History
The medieval legend of the Polish princess Wanda demonstrates German-Polish enmity. According to legend, Princess Wanda refused to marry the German ruler and the knight Ritiger . After that, he declared war on Poland. In the war, Wanda killed Rodiger with her sword and drowned herself in the Vistula in order to free Poland from further battle. According to another version, the German knight defeated the Poles and wanted to marry Wanda in order to consolidate his gains. According to the original chronicle of Vincent Kadlubek Wanda did not commit suicide and lived a long life with a German knight. And only from the XIII - XIV centuries in the Great Chronicle of Poland does the option of committing suicide, which became popular in the 15th century, be specified [4] .
Middle Ages
After the Kingdom of Germany was formed from German tribal duchies in eastern France in the 10th century , around 960, the West Slavic tribes of the fields led by the prince of the Piast dynasty Meshko I were able to create a sovereign state around Poznan and Gniezno , in the area that would later be called the Great Poland Prince Meshko significantly expanded his territory, conquering Mazovia in the middle Vistula basin , the land of Silesia on the border with Bohemia and the former Lesser Poland lands along the Vistula . Moving west to Pomerania and the lands of the Slav Slavs , in 962/63. first met with the Saxon forces of Margrave Hero I of Iron , ruler of the Saxon Eastern mark , which is located between the Zale and Bubr rivers and was founded in 937 by Otton the Great [5] . Since Meshko I could not resist Hera I of Iron , he decided to strengthen his principality: he sealed relations with the Bohemian Duke Boleslav I of Grozny , marrying his daughter Dubravka and adopting Christianity in 966. However, the following year, Meshko I again clashed with the troops of the Saxon renegade Wichmann the Younger in the battle for the island of Wolin on the Baltic coast. In 972, at the battle of Tsedin the prince also defended the Polish border along the lower Oder from the troops of Margrave Odo I.
Poland, meanwhile, was confronted with the desire of Otto I the Great to gain world power after he seized the Kingdom of Italy and was crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 982 by Pope John XII . According to the idea of ββthe transition of the empire , the emperor will continue the traditions of the Roman and Carolingian empires as the defender of the Catholic Church and will surpass all secular and church rulers. Sack I sought to improve relations with Otto the Great : he acted as a friend of the emperor at the Reichstag in Quedlinburg in 973 and 978. remarried with Oda , daughter of Dietrich von Haldensleben , Margrave of the Northern Mark .
In 984, the son of Meshko I, Boleslav I the Brave, married the daughter of Rikdag , Margrave Meissen . However, in the same year, the Polish ruler, instigated by the Bohemian Duke Boleslaw II the Pious , intervened in the conflict between the minor King Otton III and the deposed Duke of Bavaria, Henry II . Boleslav turned to the other side in time when he realized that Otton's mother, Feofano , would win and this would entail a long conflict with the Bohemian Dukes in Silesia and Lesser Poland. Meshko several times supported the German troops in clashes with the rebellious tribes of lyutich ( velet ) and until his death in 992 remained a loyal supporter of the emperor. It is equally important that Meshko managed to conclude Dagome Yudeks ( lat. Dagome iudex ) - a document according to which he transfers the Polish state under the protection of the Holy See .
During the Middle Ages, the Germans expanded their territories eastward from modern western and central Germany, to sparsely populated regions east of the Elbe and Hall . The territory inhabited by the Germans stretched from Slovenia and Estonia to the south of Transylvania . A phenomenon called "the Germans' eastward settlement " ( German Ostsiedlung ) accompanied the territorial expansion of the Holy Roman Empire and the state of the Teutonic Order . At different times, the Polish rulers of the Piast dynasty encouraged Germans to settle in the east. Ethnic conflicts arose between the newly arrived migrants and the local population [6] . In the 13th century, Poland suffered from attacks by Prussian tribes. To counter the attacks, Conrad I of Mazowiecki hired an army of unemployed crusaders from the Teutonic Order . After the unsuccessful Prussian crusades , the Teutonic Order arose conflicts with the Polish state. As a result, the Teutonic Order took control of the entire southeast coast of the Baltic Sea . They remained a serious force in the region until 1410, when the combined Polish-Lithuanian army defeated the Teutonic Order in the battle of Tannenberg .
New time
After the German lands were drawn into the Counter-Reformation movement and the Thirty Years War in the 16th century , Poland became a stronghold of the Roman Catholic Church . In 1683, the Polish army under the command of the Polish king Jan III Sobieski helped defeat the Ottoman forces in the Battle of Vienna , stopping the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in Europe and preventing the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire .
In the second half of the 18th century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was divided three times between the Russian Empire , the Kingdom of Prussia and the Habsburg Monarchy . Separations occurred in 1772 , 1793 and 1795 . The following 123 years, there was no Polish independent state. Various uprisings arose against the partition of Poland, including in Prussia [7] .
XX century
1918-1939
After gaining independence in 1918, Poland received part of the German territory obtained by it after the partition . Most of these territories were Polish in previous centuries. However, in the border areas of Upper Silesia and Greater Poland , Polish and German nationalists fought for the right to manage the lands. In the end, Poland took away almost all the provinces of Greater Poland and the industrial part of Upper Silesia .
German-Polish conferences on school history books 1937-1938
Two conferences were held to discuss school history books used in Germany and Poland:
- Warsaw , August 28-29, 1937
- Berlin , June 27-29, 1938
Poland was represented at the conference by professors Dabrowski, Navrochinsky and Kowalski. The German delegates were Aubin, Fitzeck and Arnulf Schroeder.
World War II (1939-1945)
In 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland and divided the country together with the Soviet Union . In 1941, Hitler carried out Operation Barbarossa and attacked the Soviet Union. At the Tehran Conference of 1943, Stalin demanded that the border with post-war Germany and Poland be moved west in order to create a buffer zone between the Soviet Union and Germany. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, this policy led to a series of large-scale German migrations from the territories returned to Poland.
Cold War (1945-1969)
Communist Poland had good relations with the German Democratic Republic during the Cold War , but relations with the Federal Republic of Germany were tense at the beginning.
New Eastern Policy (1970-1989)
Relations between Poland and West Germany improved after the introduction of Willy Brandt 's New Eastern Policy. The Polish-German agreement confirmed the border along the Oder - Neisse line .
Relations After the Fall of Communism and the Unification of Germany (1989-2004)
After the fall of communism , diplomatic relations between Poland and a united Germany were mostly positive. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Germany initiated Poland's participation in NATO and its entry into the European Union . At this time, Poland received reparations from World War II and this compensation was distributed through the Polish-German Reconciliation Foundation which was supported by both states.
Joining the European Union (2004 - present)
German-Polish relations are complicated when questions of the Second World War and the post-war forced resettlement of German residents from territories taken away by Poland are raised [8] . Rare xenophobic statements by conservative politicians from both states, the most famous of which are Erika Steinbach and Jaroslav Kaczynski , slow down the improvement of relations.
On September 24, 2013, Lech Walesa noted that he was keen to see Poland and Germany unite to improve the economy; he also believes that European borders do not matter and will change in the future [9] .
Resident Diplomatic Missions
German Embassy in Warsaw
Consulate General of Germany in Gdansk
Consulate General of Germany in Krakow
Consulate of Germany in Opole
Embassy of Poland in Berlin
Consulate General of Poland in Hamburg
Consulate General of Poland in Munich
Notes
- β German-Polish Relations: A History of Betrayal
- β The World Factbook
- β (Polish) Informacje o Polsce - informacje ogΓ³lne Archived June 25, 2009. . Page gives Polish PWN Encyklopedia as reference.
- β Vincent Kadlubek legend of Wanda, who lived in the land of the Wandalen, Vandals, page 56.57
- β Timothy Reuter | Reuter, 164. Howorth, 226.
- β The Germans and the East Charles W. Ingrao, Franz AJ Szabo, Jan Piskorski Medieval Colonization in Europe, page 31, Purdue University Press, 2007
- β A history of modern Germany, 1800β2000 Martin Kitchen Wiley-Blackwel 2006, page 130)
- β Jorunn Sem Fure, Department of History, University of Bergen, βThe German-Polish Border Region. A Case of Regional Integration? β
- β Poland and Germany should unite, says Lech WaΕΔsa , The Daily Telegraph
Links
- German-Polish Relations: A History of Betrayal , Spiegel Online, 18 June 2007
- Timeline: War and Peace in German-Polish Relations , Deutsche Welle, 23 August 2006
- Jean Ciechanowski, German-Polish Relations , International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Relations 1931-1939), Vol. 12, No. 3 (May 1933), pp. 344-366, JSTOR
Literature
- Harold von Riekhoff, German-Polish Relations, 1918-1933 , Slavic Review, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Dec., 1972), pp. 917-918
- Reuter, Timothy, The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. III: c. 900-c. 1024 , Cambridge University Press, 2000