Germans, Poles and the Socialist Movement

Abstract

In the political landscape of the German—Polish provinces, the formation of specifically transnational forms of consciousness and behaviour found a second source in the Social Democratic movement. The first weak flickers of socialism had appeared in Posen and West Prussia during the 1870s. Its most important representatives were the German Social Democrats (SPD) and, after 1892, the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). This chapter examines the juncture between nationalism and transnationalism within the local context. It is to be argued that at grass-roots level, transnational organizational structures and behaviours came into existence in the Eastern Marches which were, above all, the consequence of an ‘internationalist’ ideology. It is therefore necessary first to examine the ideological discourses within the Social Democratic movement that had a bearing upon the national question in the Prussian East.1