The Other Prussia: Royal Prussia, Poland and Liberty, 1569-1772 by Karin s> Friedrich (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS I35 Friedrich,Karin. TheOther Prussia.RoyalPrussia, Poland andLiberty, I569-I 772. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000. xix + 280 pp. Glossary. Maps. Notes. Bibliography .Index. /40.0: $64.95. 'DEUTSCHER Geist und standische Freiheitim Weichsellande'was the title of Theodor Schieder's vehemently anti-Polish 'Habilitationsschrift' on the historyof political ideasin Royal Prussiabetween I569 and I 772 submittedat the universityof Konigsberg in I940. Like many German historians before and after him, Schieder presented historical Prussia's history as that of a genuinely, and exclusively, German region, and his study of the political writingsof German-speakingPrussianburgherswas to prove that, over three centuriesof 'foreign'Polishrule,the province neverceased to 'feel'and 'think' German. As he argues in the preface to his study, his task as a scholar had been to highlight the historical legitimacy of German territorialclaims in a generation-long 'Volkstumskampf'that now, with Poland defeated by the glorious Wehrmacht and territoriallydismembered, had found its historically 'necessary' outcome. Precisely sixty years later, Karin Friedrichonce again addressestheproblematicof collectiveidentityin Royal Prussiain an excellent book that, in turn, not only thoroughly deconstructs the historiographical concept of Prussia's Germanness but also offers an admiringly well documented , and most convincing, alternativeinterpretation. Her study is, of course, not the firstattempt at criticallyre-examining the German historiographic tradition and developing a more adequate understanding of early modern discourses of political, confessional and cultural identityin the region. Since WorldWarII, PolishhistoriansStanislawHerbst, Janusz Mallek, Stanislaw Salmonowicz and Jerzy Serczyk have produced most valuable studies of individual aspects and segments of the intellectual and scholarly life in Royal Prussia and suggested new approaches to conceptualizing pre-modern territorial identity in a post-nationalistic perspective . More recently, German historiansof the younger generation, such asJorg Hackmann or Hans-JurgenBomelburg,joined such efforts.Nevertheless , Karin Friedrich'sbook marks a breakthroughin the debate over premodern Prussianidentity in at least two respects. It is, on the one hand, the firstcomprehensive studyof the political and scholarlyself-representationsof Royal Prussia'surban elites over three centuries covering the widest possible range of relevant sources -from the well-known and frequentlycited works of Reinhold Curicke, Christoph Hartknoch, and Gottfried Legnich down to the level of political and legal documents, letters,unpublishedpamphlets and scholarly writings, and poetry. On the other hand, by focusing on the discoursesof urbanand regionalpatriotismand, more specifically,by reading her sources as expressions of a pre-modern Prussiannation-buildingprocess in its own right, the author develops an interpretative framework that represents the hitherto most convincing solution to the problem of how to bring together, in the case of Royal Prussia, the complex phenomena of competing loyalties and alliances, social and culturalcleavages, political and religiousrivalryin a consistentanalysisof urbanelite identity.The notion of a specifically Prussian identity, even of a Prussian proto-nation, had as such 136 SEER, 8i I, I, 2003 been introduced to the discussion earlier by Herbst and Mallek however only as subsidiaryconcepts that help to explain why the allegedly prevailing process of polarization between 'Polish' and 'German' witnessed certain delays and 'set-backs'. Friedrich instead rejects the idea of categorically distinguishingbetween national allegiance and regional or local patriotism, and she provides ample evidence for her assumption that, if there was a leitmotifin urban discoursesof identity over time, it consisted in the memory of, and loyaltytowards,a Prussiannation of estatesunderthe common roof of the multi-national Polish-LithuanianRepublic. This does not imply closing one's eyes to the factthat, asthe authorstresses,'nationalantagonismbetween Germans and Poles was not invented in 1772' (p. 217). Throughout the period, the German language of the Prussian burghers was perceived, and politicallyinstrumentalizedon eitherside, as a markerof'otherness', liketheir protestantconfessionand urbanlife-style.Inparticular,theeighteenthcentury witnessed a rapid politicization of such cultural cleavages, and a mutual alienation of German protestants and Polish Catholics. But never did the Prussian patriots view their identity as essentially defined by linguistic, let alone ethnic Germanity. Instead, they 'imagined a community, albeit small, whose historyand sense of origin, constitutions,privilegesand parliamentary institutions connected the Prussian province with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a harbourformany nations'(p. 9). The book is divided into nine chapters constructed according to a combination of chronological and systematiccriteria.Followingthe introduction , two chapters outline the provinces' political and constitutional history...