Abstract
The aim of the article is to determine the most common means of persuasion used in the Upper Silesian press to influence the Polish-speaking inhabitants of Upper Silesia to vote in favour of joining Poland in the 1921 plebiscite. The campaigning was based on two mechanisms: emphasis on historical and cultural connections with Poland and a negative presentation of Germans and the German state. The Upper Silesian’s ties with the Polish nation were stressed by means of such arguments as: the myth of Silesia as an ancient Piast land, the trope of Poland as a mother figure waiting for the return of her lost child, and the community of Polish speech and Catholicism. The German state, on the other hand, was portrayed as a land of captivity, where the Upper Silesian people had been Germanized and economically exploited for centuries. The image of the German was, in turn, based on the stereotypes of the enemy, an oppressor of Polish speech and religion, and a ruthless capitalist.
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