West Prussia

• 1. Introduction

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  West Prussia was a province of Prussia established in 1773 from lands seized in the First Partition of Poland. It occupied the lower reaches of the Vistula River, stretching to the Baltic coast, with the city of Danzig at its northern heart. Frederick the Great wrote to his brother Henry about the new province. He called it 'a very good and advantageous acquisition, both from a financial and a political point of view.' He also advised telling everyone he had seen 'just sand, pine trees, heath land and Jews.' In a letter from 1735, Frederick had already described the region's inhabitants as 'dirty' and 'vile apes.' The province would be dissolved, reconstituted, and ultimately carved apart across nearly two centuries. The provincial capital alternated between Marienwerder and Danzig throughout its early existence.

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• 2. The Vistula and Its Lands

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  The Hel Peninsula stretches 35 kilometers into Gdańsk Bay, forming the most visible landmark of West Prussia's northern coastline. The Vistula River defined the province's character, fanning out into a delta of approximately 2,000 square kilometers before reaching the Baltic Sea. Much of that delta lay below sea level, heavily cultivated and prone to flooding. Danzig, the largest city in the province, was founded at the northwestern end of this delta. In the western uplands, the Brahe River drained through Bromberg before joining the Vistula, and large tracts of woodland, including the Tuchola Forest, covered the surrounding region. Turmberg, known today as Wieżyca, stood at 329 meters above sea level in the Kashubian Lake District, the highest point of the former province. Further south, the Vistula carved a flat plain with escarpments sometimes exceeding 60 meters in height. The fertile Chełmno Land held historic cities: Culm, Thorn, and Graudenz. The Nogat river, a distributary of the Vistula, ran northeast past Marienburg before emptying into the Vistula Lagoon. West Slavic peoples had inhabited this landscape since the early Middle Ages, long before any Prussian or German power claimed the land as its own.

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• 3. Conquest and Reclamation

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  In 1308, Teutonic Knights forcibly occupied Pomerelia, invoking the pretext of helping King Władysław I Łokietek suppress a rebellion. What followed included atrocities against the Polish population, among them the Slaughter of Gdańsk. The possession of Danzig and Pomerelia by the Teutonic Order was challenged in the papal court by Polish kings Władysław I and Casimir the Great. They filed suits in 1320 and in 1333. The Pope ruled against the Order both times and again in 1339, each time ordering the return of Pomerelia to Poland. The Knights did not comply. A series of Polish-Teutonic Wars followed through the 14th and 15th centuries. Local resistance, first organized as the Lizard Union and later as the Prussian Confederation, brought about the Thirteen Years' War. That conflict ended with the Second Peace of Thorn, which restored most of the region to Poland as Royal Prussia. The region initially had a degree of autonomy through its own legislature, the Prussian Estates, maintaining its own laws and customs. Following the Union of Lublin in 1569, Royal Prussia was fully absorbed into the Polish Crown. Under Teutonic rule, German-speaking farmers, traders, and craftsmen had been encouraged to settle the region. Their presence would shape the province's ethnic make-up for generations. East Prussia became the Lutheran Duchy of Prussia under the 1525 Treaty of Kraków. Its Hohenzollern rulers used the 1657 Treaty of Wehlau to remove Polish suzerainty. The result was two halves of a rising kingdom separated only by Polish land.

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• 4. Frederick and His Province

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  The Partition Sejm ratified the cession of West Prussia on the 30th of September 1773. Once confirmed, Frederick began styling himself 'King of Prussia' rather than 'King in Prussia.' The annexation gave Prussia a land connection between Pomerania and East Prussia. It simultaneously cut Polish access to the Baltic Sea and made East Prussia easier to defend against Russia. Frederick invited German immigrants to settle and develop the province. Polish historian Jerzy Surdykowski estimates that Frederick introduced 300,000 German colonists to the region. Christopher Clark noted that 54% of the annexed area was already German-speaking Protestant at the time of annexation, as was 75% of the urban population. Between 1772 and 1775, 750 schools were built. Both Protestant and Catholic teachers staffed them, and teachers and administrators were expected to speak both German and Polish. Frederick II advised his successors to learn Polish. That policy lasted until Frederick III chose not to extend it to William II. Privately, Frederick held his new subjects in low regard. He wrote that Poland had 'the worst government in Europe with the exception of Ottoman Empire.' He considered West Prussia less civilized than colonial Canada and compared the Poles to the Iroquois. Danzig and Thorn, excluded from the original annexation, were absorbed in the Second Partition of Poland in 1793.

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• 5. A Mixed Population

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  According to estimates from 1819, West Prussia held 630,077 inhabitants: 327,300 Poles (52%), 290,000 Germans (46%), and 12,700 Jews (2%). By 1890, the population had grown to 1,433,681, including 717,532 Catholics, 681,195 Protestants, and 21,750 Jews. By 1910, the census recorded 1,703,474 residents. The 1910 figures were read differently depending on who was counting. German statisticians placed Poles at 35.5% of the population, while Polish statisticians measured the share at 42.5%. Part of the discrepancy lay in how Prussian census clerks counted Kashubians. Contemporary estimates put Kashubian numbers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries at between 80,000 and 200,000. Many were recorded as Catholic Germans by Prussian officials. Distribution varied sharply by district. The Danziger Niederung was over 99% German-speaking, while Karthau was 72.4% Polish or Kashubian. Sizeable Mennonite and Jewish communities were also present across the province. Andrzej Chwalba documented Germanization measures, including an order that soldiers not buy from Polish shops on pain of arrest. Tax incentives and favorable business arrangements were offered exclusively to German officials willing to settle in Polish-inhabited areas. Poles known as Kociewians, Borowians, and Chełminians continued to predominate in Pomerelian territories west of the Vistula. Together with Kashubians, they accounted for around 36% of the province's total population. The province's boundaries had been moved by Napoleon's campaigns and adjusted again at Vienna in 1815.

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• 6. Disruption and Restoration

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  At the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt in 1806, Napoleon's forces defeated Prussia decisively. The resulting Treaties of Tilsit stripped West Prussia of territory around Thorn and Kulm, ceding it to the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw. Danzig became a Free City from 1807 until 1814. After Napoleon's final defeat, the Vienna Congress in 1815 returned Danzig, Kulm, and Thorn to West Prussia. The German Confederation, established at Vienna, was an association of 39 German-speaking states in Central Europe that replaced the dissolved Holy Roman Empire. West Prussia, along with East Prussia and other territories from the Polish partitions, sat outside this Confederation. In 1815, the province was divided administratively into Regierungsbezirk Danzig and Regierungsbezirk Marienwerder. From 1829 to 1878, West Prussia merged with East Prussia to form the Province of Prussia. The two were separated again when the merger was reversed. In 1840, King Frederick William IV granted amnesty to imprisoned Polish bishops and restored Polish-language instruction in majority-Polish districts. The Frankfurt Parliament failed to bring West Prussia into a unified Germany in 1848-1849. German Unification came in 1871. Anti-Catholic campaigns known as Kulturkampf, combined with systematic disfranchisement and expropriation of Poles, marked the province's final decades inside the German Empire. From 1918, West Prussia was a province of the Free State of Prussia within Weimar Germany, the old imperial framework stripped away.

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• 7. Versailles and Dissolution

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  After the Treaty of Versailles in 1919-62% of West Prussia's territory passed to the Second Polish Republic. The transferred population was 57% of the province's total, the majority of whom were Polish. The Free City of Danzig received 8% of the territory and 19% of the population. Weimar Germany retained the remaining portions. The Marienwerder Plebiscite Area, covering the districts of Marienwerder, Stuhm, Rosenberg, and Marienburg, held a vote on whether to remain with Germany. The residents voted 92.4% to stay. The western German remainder became Grenzmark Posen-West Prussia in 1922. The eastern remainder was merged with East Prussia as the Region of West Prussia district. The German invasion of 1939 would create the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia on precisely the territory the peace conference had divided.

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• 8. War and Expulsion

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  Between 120,000 and 170,000 Poles and Jews were removed from the territory through expulsion, massacres, enslavement, or death in extermination camps. The Germans settled 130,000 colonists in the region. Poles and Jews were officially classified as Untermenschen by the German state, their prescribed fate being slavery or extermination. The Intelligenzaktion Pommern targeted the Polish intelligentsia for elimination, and the Stutthof concentration camp operated within the region. As the Red Army advanced on the Eastern Front, many West Prussian Germans fled westward. The Potsdam Agreement in 1945 restored the formerly Nazi-occupied areas to Poland. Nearly all remaining Germans were expelled westward in the aftermath. German civilians were also deported to Soviet labor camps, including Vorkuta, where many died or were reported missing. In 1949, displaced West Prussians formed the non-profit Landsmannschaft Westpreußen in the Federal Republic of Germany. The province whose name they carried had been gone for thirty years.

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