The Politics of the ‘Catholic-Polish Axis’

Abstract

The political spectrum in Posen and West Prussia was one that appeared to have become polarized by the end of Bülow’s chancellorship between ‘German national’ elements and the representatives of Polish nationalism. The national conflict, of which this was symptomatic, had gradually intensified since the Bismarckian era. Discriminatory and oppressive Polenpolitik had been ratified during the 1870s and then again in the late 1880s. The sharpening of anti-Polish legislation that occurred during the reign of Wilhelm II, together with increasing mass participation in political life, caused the national conflict in the Prussian East to reach a peak of intensity after 1900. But the polarization in political life of ‘German’ and ‘Polish’ national interests, which has structured much of the historiography in this field, can obscure the specifically transnational forms of consciousness and behaviour which had been developing between Germans and Poles in party and associational life. This was mediated in the Eastern Marches particularly by Catholicism and its various political formations. The principal phenomenon of this kind was the way in which confessional allegiance led German Catholics to support Polish candidates electorally.’ This political phenomenon was a corollary of the general semantic conflation of religious and national identities existing in the Prussian borderland. As the Thorner Zeitung reported on 19 February 1871: Since the great majority of Catholics, both of German and Polish nationality, are attached more strongly to their priests and their church than to their nationality, not only Polish Catholics, but also a great number of German Catholics, are willing to vote for a Polish party candidate, provided he is a zealous defender of Catholic interests and is recommended by their priest.2 KeywordsPolish AxisPolish FactionPolish QuestionGerman NationCatholic PriestThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.