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Emigration From Poland To Germany After World War II
As a result of Territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II, World War II, Poland's borders were shifted west. Within Poland's new boundaries there remained a substantial number of ethnic Germans, who were Flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland, expelled from Poland until 1951. The remaining Reichsdeutsche, former German citizens were primarily ''autochthons'', who were allowed to stay in post-war Poland after declaring Poles, Polish nationality in a verification process.The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War'', Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, European University Institute, Florense. HEC No. 2004/1. p.28 According to article 116 of the German constitution, all former German citizens (regardless of nationality) may be "re-granted German citizenship on application" and are "considered as not having been deprived of their German citizenship if they have established their domicile in Germany after May 8, 1945 and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Territorial Changes Of Poland Immediately After World War II
At the end of World War II, Poland underwent major changes to the location of its international border. In 1945, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Oder–Neisse line became its western border, resulting in gaining the Recovered Territories from Germany. The Curzon Line became its eastern border, resulting in the loss of the Eastern Borderlands to the Soviet Union. Decision These decisions were in accordance with the decisions made first by the Allies at the Tehran Conference of 1943 where the Soviet Union demanded the recognition of the line proposed by British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon in 1920. The same Soviet stance was repeated by Joseph Stalin again at the Yalta Conference with Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in February 1945, but much more forcefully in the face of the looming German defeat. The new borders were ratified at the Potsdam Conference of August 1945 exactly as proposed by Stalin who already controlled the whole of East-Central Europe. Harry ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Territorial Evolution Of Poland
Poland is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north. The total area of Poland is , making it the 69th largest country in the world and the ninth largest in Europe. From a nucleus between the Oder and Vistula rivers on the North-Central European Plain, Poland has at its largest extent expanded as far as the Baltic, the Dnieper and the Carpathians, while in periods of weakness it has shrunk drastically or even ceased to exist. Territorial history In 1492, the territory of Poland-Lithuania – not counting the fiefs of Mazovia, Moldavia, and East Prussia – covered , making it the largest territory in Europe; by 1793, it had fallen to , the same size as Great Britain, and in 1795, it disappeared completely. The first 20th-century incarnation of Poland, the Second Polish Republic, occupied , ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tadeusz Mazowiecki
Tadeusz Mazowiecki (; 18 April 1927 – 28 October 2013) was a Polish author, journalist, philanthropist and Christian-democratic politician, formerly one of the leaders of the Solidarity movement, and the first non-communist Polish prime minister since 1946.BBC (corporate author), p. 1 Biography Tadeusz Mazowiecki was born in Płock, Poland on 18 April 1927 to a Polish noble family, which uses the Dołęga coat of arms.Kopka & Żelichowski, p. 135Pszczółkowski, pp. 1-2 Both his parents worked at the local Holy Trinity Hospital: his father was a doctor there while his mother ran a charity for the poor.Pac, p. 1 His education was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. During the war he worked as a runner in the hospital his parents worked for. After the German forces had been expelled from Płock, Tadeusz Mazowiecki resumed his education and in 1946 he graduated from "Marshal Stanisław Małachowski" Lyceum, the oldest high school in Poland and one of the oldest cont ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kashubs
The Kashubians ( csb, Kaszëbi; pl, Kaszubi; german: Kaschuben), also known as Cassubians or Kashubs, are a Lechitic ( West Slavic) ethnic group native to the historical region of Pomerania, including its eastern part called Pomerelia, in north-central Poland. Their settlement area is referred to as Kashubia. They speak the Kashubian language, which is classified as a separate language closely related to Polish. The Kashubs are closely related to the Poles and sometimes classified as their subgroup. The Kashubs are grouped with the Slovincians as Pomeranians. Similarly, the Slovincian (now extinct) and Kashubian languages are grouped as Pomeranian languages, with Slovincian (also known as Łeba Kashubian) either a distinct language closely related to Kashubian,Dicky Gilbers, John A. Nerbonne, J. Schaeken, ''Languages in Contact'', Rodopi, 2000, p. 329, or a Kashubian dialect.Christina Yurkiw Bethin, ''Slavic Prosody: Language Change and Phonological Theory'', pp. 160ff, Camb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silesians
Silesians ( szl, Ślōnzŏki or Ślůnzoki; Silesian German: ''Schläsinger'' ''or'' ''Schläsier''; german: Schlesier; pl, Ślązacy; cz, Slezané) is a geographical term for the inhabitants of Silesia, a historical region in Central Europe divided by the current national boundaries of Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic. Historically, the region of Silesia (Lower and Upper) has been inhabited by Germans (German speakers), Czechs, Poles and Slavic Upper Silesians. Therefore, the term Silesian can refer to anyone of these ethnic groups. However, in 1945, great demographic changes occurred in the region as a result of the Potsdam Agreement leaving most of the region ethnically Polish and/or Slavic Upper Silesian. There have been some debates on whether or not the Silesians (historically, Upper Silesians) constitute a distinct nation. In modern history, they have often been pressured to declare themselves to be German, Polish or Czech, and use the language of the nation whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mazurians
The Masurians or Mazurs ( pl, Mazurzy; german: Masuren; Masurian: ''Mazurÿ''), historically also known as Prussian Masurians (Polish: ''Mazurzy pruscy''), is an ethnographic group of Polish people, that originate from the region of Masuria, within the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, Poland. They number around 5,000–15,000 people. In the 2011 Polish census, 1,376 individuals declared themselves to be Masurian as either a first or a secondary identification. Before World War II and its post-war expulsions, Masurians used to be a more numerous ethnic group found in the southern parts of East Prussia for centuries following the 16th century Protestant Reformation. Today, most Masurians live in what is now Germany and elsewhere. They are descended from Masovians ( pl, Mazowszanie; german: Masowier), who were Polish settlers from Mazovia. These settlers moved to the Duchy of Prussia during and after the Protestant Reformation. They spoke the Masurian dialect. Since the middle 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Federal Expellee Law
The Federal Law on Refugees and Exiles (german: Bundesvertriebenengesetz, BVFG; ''Gesetz über die Angelegenheiten der Vertriebenen und Flüchtlinge''; literally: Law on the affairs of the expellees and refugees) is a federal law passed by the Federal Republic of Germany on 19 May 1953 to regulate the legal situation of ethnic German refugees and expellees who fled or were expelled after World War II from the former eastern territories of the German Reich and other areas of Central and Eastern Europe. The law was amended on 3 September 1971. The major force behind the law was the All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights party, which had among its supporters – besides German citizens, who had fled or were expelled from formerly German territory annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union – many formerly non-citizens, who experienced by the end of World War II and the post-war years of ethnic cleansing, denaturalisation, robbing and humiliation (1945–1950) carried ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Diaspora
The German diaspora consists of German people and their descendants who live outside of Germany. The term is used in particular to refer to the aspects of migration of German speakers from central Europe to different countries around the world. This definition describes the "German" term as a sociolinguistic group as opposed to the national one since the emigrant groups came from different regions with diverse cultural practices and different varieties of German. For instance, the Alsatians and Hessians were simply called Germans once they set foot in their new homelands. Terminology ''Volksdeutsche'' ("ethnic Germans") is a historical term which arose in the early 20th century and was used by the Nazis to describe ethnic Germans, without German citizenship, living outside of Nazi Germany, although many had been in other areas for centuries. During World War II, Hitler forbade the use of the term because it was being used in a derogatory way against the many ethnic Germans in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Right Of Return
The right of return is a principle in international law which guarantees everyone's right of voluntary return to, or re-entry to, their country of origin or of citizenship. The right of return is part of the broader human rights concept freedom of movement and is also related to the legal concept of nationality. While many states afford their citizens the right of abode, the right of return is not restricted to citizenship or nationality in the formal sense. It allows stateless persons and for those born outside their country to return for the first time, so long as they have maintained a "genuine and effective link". The right is formulated in several modern treaties and conventions, most notably in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the 1948 Fourth Geneva Convention. Legal scholars have argued that one or more of these international human rights instruments have attained the status of customary intern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oder–Neisse Line
The Oder–Neisse line (german: Oder-Neiße-Grenze, pl, granica na Odrze i Nysie Łużyckiej) is the basis of most of the international border between Germany and Poland from 1990. It runs mainly along the Oder and Lusatian Neisse rivers and meets the Baltic Sea in the north, just west of the ports of Szczecin and Świnoujście (German: ''Stettin'' and ''Swinemünde''). All prewar German territories east of the line and within the 1937 German boundaries—comprising nearly one quarter (23.8 percent) of the Weimar Republic—were ceded under the changes decided at the postwar Potsdam Conference (Potsdam Agreement), with the greatest part becoming part of Poland. The remainder, consisting of northern East Prussia with the German city of Königsberg (renamed Kaliningrad), was allocated to the Soviet Union, as the Kaliningrad Oblast of the Russian SFSR (today Russia). However this did not become completely official until the peace treaty for Germany was signed. The ethnic Germa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allied Occupation Zones
Germany was already de facto occupied by the Allies from the real fall of Nazi Germany in World War II on 8 May 1945 to the establishment of the East Germany on 7 October 1949. The Allies (United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and France) asserted joint authority and sovereignty at the 1945 Berlin Declaration. At first, defining Allied-occupied Germany as all territories of the former German Reich before Nazi annexing Austria; however later in the 1945 Potsdam Conference of Allies, the Potsdam Agreement decided the new German border as it stands today. Said border gave Poland and the Soviet Union all regions of Germany (eastern parts of Pomerania, Neumark, Posen-West Prussia, Free City of Danzig, East-Prussia & Silesia) east of the Oder–Neisse line and divided the remaining "Germany as a whole" into the four occupation zones for administrative purposes under the three Western Allies (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) and the Soviet Union. Although the t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Potsdam Agreement
The Potsdam Agreement (german: Potsdamer Abkommen) was the agreement between three of the Allies of World War II: the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union on 1 August 1945. A product of the Potsdam Conference, it concerned the military occupation and reconstruction of Germany, its border, and the entire European Theatre of War territory. It also addressed Germany's demilitarisation, reparations, the prosecution of war criminals and the Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950), mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from various parts of Europe. Executed as a communiqué, the agreement was not a peace treaty according to international law, although it created accomplished facts. It was superseded by the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany signed on 12 September 1990. As De Gaulle had not been invited to the Conference, the French resisted implementing the Potsdam Agreements within their occupation zone. In particular, the French refused to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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