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People in Posen have always acknowledged that, in some way or another, the Jews formed a third nationality … We are not Germans, we are Jews.
MAX KOLLENSCHER, 1904PRUSSIAN POLICY TOWARDS THE POLES
IN THE SECOND half of the nineteenth century the conflict between Poles and Germans in Prussian Poland became increasingly acute, and by 1900 the area was a stronghold of the National Democrats (Endecja), the most zealous defenders of the Polish character of the region. At the same time the area was also the most prosperous part of Polish territory with the best-balanced agricultural system. As the national conflict escalated, a sense of Polish national identity began to develop in areas like Upper Silesia and East Prussia which had not been part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Jews, caught between the Poles and the Germans, mostly left the province. This was seen by the Endecja as the way the ‘Jewish question’ should be solved.
The events of 1848 convinced the Prussian government that it would never be able to win the hearts of its Polish subjects. In the words of a Ministry of the Interior report, the Poles, captives of their ‘longing to break away … cannot be won by any concessions’. The dilemma faced by the Prussian state was clearly put by the provincial president, Eugen von Puttkammer, who in 1851 wrote of the Polish national movement:
It is and will remain an element hostile to the Prussian government, no matter the form in which it may choose to appear. To conciliate it is impossible. To extirpate it is inhumane (as well as impossible; at least it would take generations to do so). Therefore, nothing remains but to confine it energetically to the subordinate position it deserves.
In spite of statements of this type, particularly after the beginning of the more liberal ‘New Era’ in 1858, there were significant limits on the restriction of Polish civil liberties. In particular, the Prussian courts upheld the right of Poles to use Polish in communications with government agencies, as well as their right to primary education in their mother tongue.
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