POLAK POTRAFI Poles Beat Prussians Gardner

Poland, a Study in National Idealism, by Monica Mary Gardner. 2018

An English Author Focuses on the Defiant Successes of Poles Under the Prussian Boot. The Indomitable Polish Spirit is Not Just Reactive or Defensive: It is a Positive Spirit

The author provides a snapshot of Poland prior to Poland’s re-acquired Independence (1918). Most of her work is not about history or politics, however. It is mainly about Mickiewicz, Krasinski, and Slowacki.

I focus on the historical aspects.

THE ESPECIALLY-OPPRESSIVE PRUSSIAN RULE

The Prussian repressions of their share of Partitioned Poland did not begin with Bismarck. They began immediately after the Partitions and then, after a relative lull in the early-middle part of the 19th century, came back with even greater force. Here are a series of quotes from author Monica M. Gardner:

The favourite anti-Polish colonization scheme of the Prussian Government dates from the years following the third partition. From 1799 to 1807 a fund, paid out of the taxes levied on the Poles, and a crown grant were devoted to the purpose of settling Germans on Polish soil. (pp. 14-15).
The KULTURKAMPF that, in the seventies of the nineteenth century, Bismarck directed against the Catholic Church in Germany fell upon Prussian Poland with a double violence of an attack upon religion and nationality. The Archbishop of Gnesen [Gniezno] and Posen [Poznan] was thrown into prison for refusing to allow the Polish children to be taught their faith in German…Over two hundred thousand Polish Catholics were left without a priest to minister to them the consolations of their religion. (p. 16).

In the following year—1886—the Colonization Bill was passed…In 1896, therefore, the Government established its own first right of purchase…A bill of 1907 prohibited Poles from building dwellings even on their own land…Then came the Expropriation law, passed in 1908, by virtue of which the Polish landowner is, at the bidding of the government, evicted from his estate. (pp. 16-18).

The battle for the Polish language proceeds on equal lines with the struggle for the land. (p. 21).
The children refused to recite the prayers in German instead of Polish. They were mercilessly flogged. The parents, hearing their children’s screams, ran to the schoolhouse and protested. Several of them—breadwinners of the family—were sent to prison…Fines, loss of employment, are the answers that the parents’ protests receive. (p. 22).

The Polish boy in the grammar-schools, however, marked his abilities, is debarred from scholarships and the government stipends granted to successful scholars, and for which, of course, his parents are taxed. Bullied and persecuted by his German masters and schoolfellows, he leads the life of a dog. He is compelled to sit and listen in indignant silence while, before the whole class, the teacher calumniates his nation, and expends his coarse ridicule on the beautiful language and on all that is Polish. (p. 23).

The Poles buy out the Germans and divide their estates among Polish tenants. The Government boycotts Polish goods. The Poles retaliate by boycotting German goods. (p. 26). [REVIEWER’S NOTE: The Polish boycott, of German goods in1909, was thwarted by the Jews, who went on buying German products. This caused the Polish boycott to fail, thus reinforcing German oppression over the Poles. The Jewish support for Poland’s enemies led to the Dmowski-led retaliatory boycott that followed the Duma elections of 1912].

The Poles of Prussian Poland organized a relief fund for the assistance of their starving and destitute brother Poles in those parts of Poland over which the war [WWI] has swept. The fund has been confiscated and its originators punished by the Prussian Government. (p. 27).

ASSESSING KONRAD WALLENROD

The following is a quote from Gardner:

The term WALLRENRODISM stands in the Polish language for duplicity of life, the self-defence by cunning and treachery that is enforced by oppression. Yet it is impossible that Mickiewicz advocated a system of national Machiavellism that has never, be it said to her honour, found any favour in the eyes of Poland, or ever formed part of her programme of methods. (p. 55).

THE INDOMITABLE POLISH SPIRIT: A POSITIVE–NOT JUST REACTIVE OR DEFENSIVE–SPIRIT

POLAK POTRAFI (The Pole Will Do It). I conclude my review with another direct statement from author Gardner:

Through unparalleled misfortune, against odds under which a less vivid and less heroic people must have gone down, the Polish nation, battling for dear life, has preserved an intense national existence, has kept her ideals unimpaired. Her soul remains, not merely alive, but passionate and invincible. (p. 28).