Given almost half of Poland was german lands just century ago, is there a differing culture/people compared to territories originally inhabited by polish people?

18 comments

  2. There is some cultural variety, but not the kind you’d expect. German people were forcefully expelled from the area, their property often being confiscated by the communist government. On their place came people from the former eastern territories taken from Poland (taken by the USSR) who, also forcefully, were made to leave their houses. Thus, today’s Wroclaw (former Breslau) and Opole (Oppeln) are largely inhabited by the former citizens of Lwow (today’s Lviv), which can be seen in some traits. One example of which is the Knysza, unknown elsewhere.

  3. From random facts: people from Szczecin and Wrocław speak the most correct Polish in the entire country. Apart from that in Pomerania the current ruling party is strongly hated for many years, and they never win here.

  8. Not really because you’re comparing borders to partitions forgetting history of the lands. Many of that lands werent fully German earlier.

    Even Breslau (Wrocław) was earlier Polish, then Czech. Names of closeby villages were translated by Germans from Polish/Czech into German sounding names such as Kottwitz were earlier Kotowice, Pavlov was Pawłów (from Polish Paweł or Czech Pavel, Germans used name Paul), Wilxen was Wilczyn or Treibnitz from Trzebnica. Yeah etymology seems very German. *Nein*

    So more likely most of “territorries lost to Poland after ’45” were in fact “lost to Germany earlier”.

    Getting back to questions:
    partitions of Upper Silesia has own dialects due hard work of Austria occupation. Dialect is Polish with German originated base words but polonised version like “wihajster”, “rugzug” etc. Germans couldn’t understand, Poles would onl knowing German in addition.

  9. First half of my family comes from teritories nearby Danzig and probably lived there in a Free city of Danzig. I observed that they use some words that are purely german, for example Kartofle (potatos) from die Kartoffeln. The second half comes from Kuyavia and we do not use that much german words but I use a word sznytki from german word die Schnitten (slice of bread) while in most of the Poland for a slice of bread there is a word kromka. Kromka sounds weird for me. Maybe there are much more words with german origin I use but I cannot recall at this moment. So there are some differences between Poles from different regions and that includes vocabulary.

  12. Technically speaking, most of Pomeranian territories – from Stolp in the East, to Rostock in the West used to be Slavic until XIV and XV century. Areas East from Stolp remained under predominantly Slavic influence (Kashubian culture).

    It is safe to say that areas marked with canary (when it comes to Polish territories) were predominantly Polish or Silesian (over 90%) in 1919.

    Question you should be asking should concern cultural and folklore differences between Germans from the lands west of Elbe and those living in Mecklenburg Vorpommern, Brandenburg or Saxony.

    When it comes to Poles inhabiting Western Poland (excluding green areas), they have been historically considered more secular, pragmatic, enterprising and westernized when compared with those from the East.

  14. Well, there is Poland A and B – Poland A is mostly from german side and it is wealthier than B, which used to be Russian and Austrian

  15. Interesting question! I am currently reading a book written by German author about Wroclaw where i was born and spent childhood. In short, after war Germans were moved to Germany, Poles from the eastern parts of Poland moved to take their place. The idea behind was to create societ without minorities…i saw cementeries turned to parks, monuments replaced with Polish monuments, simply previous dwellers of the land were gone. The author argues that local names were changed by whoever lived in the area and governed the land and the process is not unique.

  16. Century and a half ago there was no Poland on the map we call it “ZABORY”. But polish culture survived. Still in former German, Austrian and Russian part ppl are slightly different. And money are different. Russian part (east) was the poorest about money and infrastructure. After WWII many Germans from Western parts was moved to Germany and many Poles from Ukraine and Belarus came to Silesia, so, nowadays we have about 150K of Germans, not millions.

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