The Szlonzoks and their Language: Between Germany, Poland and Szlonzokian Nationalism

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EUI WORKING PAPERS

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European University Institute 3 0001 0041 6575 1 © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE, FLORENCE

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND CIVILIZATION

EUI Working Paper HEC No. 2003/1

The Szlonzoks and their Language:

Between Germany, Poland and Szlonzokian Nationalism

TOMASZ KAMUSELLA

BADIA FIESOLANA, SAN DOMENICO (FI)

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No part of this paper may be reproduced in any form without permission of die author(s).

European University Institute Badia Fiesolana I - 50016 San Domenico (FI)

Italy © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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Tomasz Kamusella

The Szlonzoks1 and Their Language:

Between Germany, Poland and

Szlonzokian Nationalism

Tomasz Kamusella

Jean M o n n e t F ellow , D ep artm en t o f H isto ry and C iv iliz atio n , E u ro p e an U n iv ersity Institute, F lo ren ce, Italy

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O p o le U niversity, O pole, P o lan d

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Please send any com m ents at m y hom e address: P ifk n a 3/2

47-220 K ?dzierzyn-K ozle P oland

tom ek 6 7 2 @ n o czta.o n et.pi

' This word is spelt in accordance with the rules of the Polish orthography and, thus, should be pronounced as /shlohnzohks/. © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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Tomasz Kamusella

Abstract

T his article analyzes the em ergence o f the S zlonzokian ethnic group or p roto nation in th e co n tex t o f the use o f language as an in stru m en t o f nationalism in C entral E urope. W h en language w as legislated into the statistical m easure o f n ationality in the second h a lf o f the nineteenth century, B erlin p ressu red the Slavophone C atholic peasan t-cu m -w o rk er p opulation o f U p p e r Silesia to becom e ‘p ro p e r G e rm an s’, th is is, G erm an-speaking and P rotestant.

To the G erm an en n atio n alizin g 2 pressure the P olish eq u iv alen t w as added after the division o f U p p er S ilesia betw een P oland and G erm any in 1922. The borders and enn atio n alizin g po licies changed in 1939 w hen the entire region was reincorporated into w artim e G erm any, and, again, in 1945 fo llow ing the in corporation o f U p p er Silesia into postw ar Poland. T he freq u en t changes o f borders and en n ationalizing p ressures produced som e G erm ans an d Poles, but, above all, the tw o con flictin g nationalism s nullified one another, th is solidifying the S zlonzokian eth n icity o f the m ajo rity o f the population. C om m unism further alienated the Szlonzoks vis-à-vis P olishdom ; and the p o ssib ility o f em igrating to W est G erm any m ade them clo ser to G erm andom . S ince 1989 those S zlonzoks w ho have o b tain e d G erm an p assp o rts w ithout leaving P o lan d declare them selves to be G erm ans, w h ereas the m ajo rity who have not and w h o feel to have been abused b y the P olish state, declare them selves to b e S zlonzoks and increasingly express th is id en tity in n ational term s. A ll these p olicy and identification changes have been legitim ized thro u g h the S zlo n zo k s’ m ultilingual social reality. B erlin, W arsaw and the Szlonzoks have interpreted this m ultilingualism and specific social b eh av io r patterns connected to it, accordingly, as ‘G erm an ’, ‘P o lish ’, o r ‘S z lo n zo k ia n ’.

Keywords: S zlonzoks, language, ethnolect, n ationalism , G erm any, Poland.

Acknowledgements

T his article has b en efited from advice o f the EUI P ro fesso rs A rfon E dw ard Rees and Bo Strath, and o f P ro fesso r T ro n d N ordby, U n iv ersity o f O slo. I also appreciate the close reading and m eticulous language co rrectio n s p ro v id ed by M s N icole H argreaves, E U I L anguage C enter. O bvio u sly , all erro rs and infelicities rem ain the respo n sib ility o f the author.

2 To ennationalize, that is, to shape a group of people into a nation, or to make part of a nation through incorporating a person or a group of people into this nation.

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Tomasz Kamusella

D ia lect w ords th o se terrible m arks o f the beast to the tru ly genteel.

(C harles D ick en s in: E vans, 1968: 168)

[N ational languages] are a ll huge system s o f vested interests, w hich sullen ly resist critica l enquiry.

(E dw ard S apir in M andelbaum , 1963: 118)

Introduction

L anguage has alw ays been used to differentiate betw een g roups o f p eo p le (cf. H augen, 1976: 361ff). B ut it is in C entral Europe th at the p o liticizatio n o f this m ost significant m edium o f interhum an com m unication h as been m o st

pronounced. L anguage is at the very basis o f the C entral E uropean nationalism s. S peaking a language equals natio n ality in this part o f E urope. T hose speaking this language are considered to be a nation, and the geo g rap h ical range o f their settlem ent is co n sid ered the territory o f this n atio n ’s ‘tru e ’ nation-state (K am usella, 2001).

T his specific coupling o f nationalism and language stem s from the use o f H erderian th o u g h t for political ends. In his 1813 song ‘W h at is the G e rm a n ’s F ath erlan d ?’ the p o et E rnst M o ritz A rn d t answ ered this question: ‘[the land that extends as] fa r as the G erm an tongue rin g s ’ (in Schulze, 1991: 54). A t this tim e during the B efreiu n g skrieg e (W ar o f L iberation)3 G erm an natio n alism w as forged in o p p o sitio n to that w as French and the F rench th em selv es.4 In the w ake o f the N apoleonic W ars the rulers and aristocracy o f the states in the territory o f the erstw hile H oly R om an E m p ire5 replaced French w ith G erm an as the m edium o f ‘cultured c o m m u n icatio n ’.6 T his ideological preference for G erm an as the language o f the G erm an n ation-in-m aking form ed the political basis for the conceptual tran sfo rm atio n o f language into the m easure o f nationality. T his novel concept w as p u t into practical use d u rin g the trial cen su ses conducted in som e o f P ru s sia ’s p rovinces d uring the 1820s (D avies, 1981: 132; D ziew ulski, 1972: 102). In 1846 the S ilesian-born h istorian H einrich W u ttk e p ro p o sed that on the ro ad to the G erm an n ation-state the w hole p o p u latio n o f P russia should becom e p ro ficien t in the G erm an language (T her in C ordell, 2000: 73). In 1861 3 This is, the War of the Sixth Anti-Napoleonic Coalition.

4 Amdt expressed this in the following words: ‘Let the unanimity of your hearts be your church, let hatred o f the French be your religion, let Freedom and Fatherland be your saints, to whom you pray!’ (1814: 430).

5 Napoleon dissolved this empire in 1806.

6 Friedrich the Great is one o f the most potent symbols of German nationalism. But when he could he preferred to speak in French. His friendship with Voltaire and the name of his Potsdam residence, Sans Souci,do indicate this Prussian king’s linguistic preferrence.

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Tomasz Kamusella

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the question about language construed as the m easure o f o n e ’s natio n ality w as included in the statew ide P russian census (cf. T riest, 1864).

L ater the P ru ssian statistician R ichard Bockh p ro d u ced tw o influential w orks D ie sta tistisch e B ed eu tu n g d er V olksprache als K en n zeich en der

N a tio n a lita t7 8 (1 8 6 6 ) and D er D eutschen V olkszahl u n d S p ra ch g eb iet8 (1870) (A non., 1888). T hese w o rk s caused the International S tatistical C ongress, convened at St. P etersburg in 1872, to accept language as the ‘o b jec tiv e ’ in d icato r o f natio n ality . T his becam e the standard ap p ro ach to ‘m ea su rin g ’ nations in C entral E u ro p e after this questio n had been included in the A ustro- H ungarian census in 1880 (H obsbaw m , 1990: 97, 100). B ut this m easuring o f n ations soon p ro v ed to be som ething com pletely u n intended. It rath er created than m easured natio n s. T his w as so because censuses started p ro viding nationalists w ith d em o g rap h ic figures as a political argum ent to be used in forging th eir striv en -fo r nations.

Language and identity

In the p re-m o d ern w o rld p eople spoke in order to co m m u n icate and did not have to speak som ething re ified as a language. W hat m attered w as the contents o f the m essage and its su ccessfu lly conveyance from one in terlo cu to r to another. For the purpose o f iden tificatio n religion, the line o f g enealogical d escen t and the p lace o f origin (birth) w ere o f m ore im port (A rm strong, 1982: 282; B illig, 1995: 31; C lark in Spencer, 1985: 389).9

N atio n al languages o f today are a v ery recent p ro d u ct o f m odernization and nationalism (H obsbaw m , 1990: 60-61). P rio r to the in troduction o f w riting language differed slightly and gradually from village to villag e, p arish to parish, prin cip ality to p rin cip ality .10 T hese areas o f graded linguistic change are conceptualized as ‘dialect co n tin u a’ (C rystal, 1987: 2 5 ) .11 Z o n es o f sharp 7 The Statistical Significance o f the People's Speech as the Indicator o f Nationality (my translation).

8 The Census o f the Germans and [Their] Speech Area (my translation).

9 Obviously, language difference that prevented any meaningful communication isolated human groups (speech communities) (Barbujani, 1990) and could lead to politicization of language. This phenomenon occurred in the fifteenth century during the Hussite Wars when some thinkers pitted Bohemian (Czech) against German. But this development was rather ambiguous and, at that time, did not turn language into an instrument o f politics (Zientara, 1996: 27).

10 O f course, this sketch relates to the European sedentary experience and, for the sake of brevity, disregards such complications as nomadism or pastoralism.

11 Present-day Central Europe partially overlaps with three of such continua, namely: North Slavic (from Vladivostok to the Polish-German border), West Germanic (from England to Austria’s southern and eastern borders and to Germany’s eastern border) and South-Slavic

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linguistic change only existed at the borders betw een such continua. I f m otivated to establish and m aintain contact speakers bridged th is gap in co m p reh en sio n in several w ays. F irst, the dom inated learned the language o f the dom inating. Second, if the speech co m m u n ities12 w ere o f equal social status this could pro m o te b ilin g u a lism .13 T h ird , a contact language could dev elo p through incorporation o f various elem ents from both the dialect co n tin u a (cf. A rm strong, 1982: 251).

This th ird p henom enon can stagnate or it can develop. If a contact language is o f tem porary use only, linguists label it as a ‘p id g in lan g u ag e’. B ut if spouses com ing from d ifferen t dialect continua com m unicate w ith each other and th eir o ffsp rin g in a p id g in , it becom es the first language o f the children. T hus, it is tran sfo rm ed into a creole (Fischer, 1999: 179; R om aine, 1 9 8 8 ).14 The creole-speakers can rem ain in touch with those w ho use d ialects from the original dialect continua. D epending on th e vagaries o f social d ynam ics a creole continuum can com e into being as a spanning elem ent betw een th e dialect continua (M cA rthur, 1992: 798).

W riting is closely related to the rise and grow th o f p olities. W ith o u t this skill m odem states w o u ld pro b ab ly not have been established (cf. C oulm as, 1989; T ym ow ski, 1999). T he skill o f w riting is invariably co n n ected to the pow er center, w h ich , in the E uropean context, was the capital. In m ost areas o f C entral E urope the very first w ritten language was L atin .15 It w as em ployed for (from Slovenia to Bulgaria). Within this area there are also isolated remnants of some dialect continua that hardly developed or that ceased to exist. These are represented today by Greek, Finno-Ugric Hungarian and Estonian or Baltic Latvian and Lithuanian (Crystal, 1987: 25). 12 The term 'speech community’ designates a human group that speaks its own ethnolect. This is, an idiom that provides this group with an internal cohesion and the ethnic boundary that differentiates it from other groups (cf. Raith, 1987).

'3 An enlightening example o f grassroots fostering o f multilingualism comes from the region o f Pozsony/Pressburg (Bratislava). To ease everyday communication speakers o f Hungarian, Slovak, German and Croatian living there developed a special way o f language learning. Parents from different speech communities exchanged children for a few months (or even a year) enabling them to acquire the languages o f the neighbor speech communities. This tradition commenced in the eighteenth century, was strong until the 1910s, and did not disappear completely until the 1980s (Liszka, 1996).

14 Popularly one speaks of creoles in the context of contact languages that developed through the interaction o f local and European languages in colonies (Arends, 1995: xv). But the specific and long-sustained contact between Norman French conquerors and English subjects seems to have spawned the Anglo-French creole (also known as Anglo-Norman) (McArthur,

1992: 69), which, in turn, gave rise to Middle English with a lot o f Romance vocabulary and Romancized syntax (cf. Bemdt, 1984: 23-35). Thus, it is justified to use the concept o f creole in a more general manner.

15 Slavonic of Greater Moravia written in the Glagolitic script disappeared from Central Europe after the state's demise at the beginning o f the tenth century. It continued to be used, however, in the Catholic Slavonic liturgy on the Croatian island of Krk until the beginning of

________ Tomasz Kamusella_________ © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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rudim entary ad m in istratio n and diplom atic contacts. B ecause the ru ler’s chancellery shaped and co n tro lled the w ritten form and u sage o f such L atin, it is term ed a ‘ch an cery lan g u a g e ’. W ith intensification o f intrastate relatio n s new chancery languages cam e into being on the basis o f everyday dialects th at the ruling strata sp o k e at the p o w er centers. C hancery G erm an em erg ed in the thirteenth cen tu ry (L ubos, 1995: 25), chancery B o h em ian 16 (C zech) in the fifteenth cen tu ry and chancery P olish in the sixteenth cen tu ry (S iatkow ska, 1992: 350).

The b ro a d er use o f the chancery languages for w ritin g b ooks, prose and poetry tran sfo rm ed them into literary languages. Instrum ental for this process was the in v en tio n o f the p rin tin g p re s s .17 T he grow ing n u m b er o f prints standardized the graphic representation o f the ch an cery /literary language and spread the kn o w led g e o f it am ong ever-w ider circles o f society (A nderson, 1991: 43-46). In C entral E urope th is m eant that the m em bers o f the estates m astered this language. G ram m ars and dictionaries set the b o rd ers o f acceptable usage. T his u sage w as inculcated in an increasing n u m b er o f speakers through the grow ing state adm inistration and the m ass m edia o f the press and cheap books. Finally, in the n in eteen th century, the en fran ch isem en t o f the m ale h a lf o f

________ Tomasz Kamusella_________

the twentieth century. Following the Christianization of the Kingdom o f Hungary, the Magyars dropped their runic script o f Turkish origin, in which they incised short notes (in their language) on wooden sticks, though this tradition continued until the sixteenth century in the Szeklers County (today in Central Romania, north of Brajov). The Hebrew language and alphabet was occasionally used for official state purposes (such as minting o f coins with inscriptions on them) in the Polish principalities, but only until the thirteenth century. Following the immense territorial growth o f the Grand Duchy o f Lithuania in the fourteenth century, its official language became Slavonic written in Cyrillic characters. After the duchy's union with the Kingdom o f Poland at the end of the century, this language survived in this capacity until the end o f the seventeenth century. A similar kind o f Slavonic in Cyrillic (side by side with the Byzantine Greek language) was employed in the administration o f Walachia and Moldavia from the thirteenth century until the eighteenth century. Afterward in the eastern part of Central Europe Slavonic has functioned within the confines o f the Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches. In the wake of the northward expansion o f the Ottoman Empire, during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in the south o f Central Europe Latin was replaced with three languages written in the Arabic alphabet: Arabic in religious contexts, Ottoman Turkish (Old Turkish) for administration, and Persian for literature and poetry (Kiss and Nagy in Kosa, 1999: 50; Sedlar, 1994: 350,421-457). 161 use the label ‘Bohemian’ rather than Czech because this chancery language stemmed from the dialect of Central Bohemia (this is, from around Prague). A similar though later process took place in Moravia, where the local Slavic chancery language was dubbed Moravian. The two languages were merged into standard Czech (developed from Bohemian) only at the close of the nineteenth century (cf. Triest, 1864).

17 Some literary languages emerged prior to the coming o f print (Greek, Latin, Old Slavic, Italian, French or English). But they were few and their emergence was connected to religions and empires. Equally few pre-modem European polities had enough economic and political clout to support the costly use o f local vernaculars as literary languages.

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p opulation allow ed for the spread o f the standard lan g u ag e to every c o rn er o f society. It w as done through the use o f this standard w ithin the fram ew ork o f co m p u lso ry m ilitary service fo r all m ales and o f p o p u lar elem en tary education. O b viously, th e spread w as slow er or less efficient in the case o f w om en on several counts. F irst, for th e state adm inistration it w as a p rio rity to extend com pulsory elem entary education to boys n ot girls. The fo rm er w ere future soldiers and v o ters, w hile the latter w ere not. Second, w om en bein g excluded from p articip atin g in the co n scrip t army, they had no access to the m ost pow erful in stru m en t o f spatial and social m obility in the early m odern states o f E urope. T hird, w om en n o t h aving becom e full citizens and v o ters un til after W orld W ar I, they w ere barred from direct upw ard social m o b ility afforded by dem ocracy (H augen, 1966; T oth, 2000).

G erm an w as standardized d uring the eighteenth century, and P olish and C zech during the first four decades o f the nineteenth century (S iatk o w sk a, 1992: 274; Szulc, 1999: 57-85). N evertheless, until the close o f the eighteenth century the P russian aristocracy spoke in French. C hange cam e about w ith the

N apoleonic W ars. T he b irth o f G erm an nationalism elev ated G erm an to the rank o f a national language. In line w ith the C entral E uropean paradigm o f

politicizin g language, after 1848 activists o f non-G erm an n ationalism s also strove to gain this status for their languages. The Poles and the C zechs achieved som e success in this regard during 1869 and in the 1880s, respectively. F or P olish they secured the role o f the crow nland language in G alicia, and C zech becam e an o th er crow nland language besides Germ an in B ohem ia. H ow ever, P olish and C zech w ere m ade into unam biguous national languages only in 1918 w hen P o lan d and C zechoslovakia becam e independent n atio n -states (Johnson, 1996: 136-143).

Between language and dialect

The stark politicizatio n o f language turned the seem ingly sch o larly and o bjective relationship betw een language and dialect18 into an extrem ely sensitive m atter. In C entral E u ro p e if a d ialect is a language or form s p a rt o f a language, the 18 In 1926 the American linguist Leonard Bloomfield (p. 162) defined dialects as those language forms which speakers can use communicate with one another successfully while employing their own idioms during conversation. Conversely, if the idioms o f two interlocutors are not mutually comprehensible, they speak two different languages. This commonsensical and popularly accepted distinction between a dialect and a language fails to reflect the socially and geographically continuous nature of language, as well as the dominance of the extralinguistic (this is, politics) in taking a decision about what is a language and what is not. Thus, the identical Romanian and Moldovan are regarded as two separate languages, while mutually incomprehensible idioms of China are regarded as dialects o f the Chinese language.

7 © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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speakers o f the d iale ct, p e r defintione, form a nation or its co n stitu en t part. In 1918 the region sp lit into n u m ero u s self-proclaim ed and eth n o linguistically defined n atio n -states (R othschild, 1974). T hus, the capitals p e rceiv e the declaration o f the existence o f a new language as a d irect d a n g er to the integrity o f their n ations and natio n -states (cf. O strow ski, 2000; Spaginska-P ruszak,

1997).

Tomasz Kamusella________

P rio r to the com ing into bein g o f a language there are o n ly dialects (A m m on, 1987). D ue to the long-established trad itio n o f sedentarism in E urope coupled w ith the territo riality o f the m o d em state (P ierson, 1996: 48), linguists iden tify a dialect w ith a p rincipality, or, today, w ith a reg io n . The longer the continuous trad itio n o f p o litical existence o f a reg io n the m ore distinctive a dialect can be. T errito rial variations w ithin an area o f a d ialect (usually coterm inous w ith localities and p arishes) are dubbed ‘su b d ia le cts’ (M cA rthur, 1992: 290). T he m odel is ideolo g ized b u t rath er closely co rresp o n d s to the socio-cultural reality o f Europe.

B ut w hat is a language? A cco rd in g to the p o p u lar saying attributed to the US linguist M ax W ein reic h (or his pupil Joshua F ishm an) ‘a language is a d ialect w ith an arm y and n a v y ’. In 1589 G eorge P uttenham succinctly no ted the inherent p olitical ch aracter o f every language in The A r t o f E n g lish P o es ie : ‘A fter a speech is fu lly fashioned to the com m on u n d erstan d in g , and accepted by consent o f a w h o le country and nation, it is called a lan g u a g e ’ (in E vans,

1968: 374). P o litician s interacting w ith the populatio n they g o v ern m ake languages. A language is m ore a political than a lin guistic fact. To paraphrase A nderson (1 9 9 1 ) a language is as m uch im agined as a nation. B ut w hen it has been fash io n ed it does e x is t19.

D ev elo p in g a language th at is accepted by the ru lers and the ru led and serves as the only m edium o f com m unication in every situation o f private and p u b lic life, d ram atically increases the internal cohesion o f a polity (cf. H augen,

1966). S ignificantly, there are no languages p rio r to w ritin g 20, and a language 19 Cf. how decisions of missionaries as to what translation of the Bible to use influenced codification of African languages, and how arbitrary these decisions were. Had a different decision been taken a completely different language would have developed (Hastings, 1997: 156-157).

20 It happens that Westerners term some unwritten dialects used in postcolonial states as ‘languages’. In this manner they project the Eurocentric and politicized concept of language onto non-Westem parts o f the world. This is required by the logic o f decolonization that transformed the former colonies in the likeness of the Western nation-states. So if nowadays ‘natives’ are citizens in their own nation-states and not in colonies; they have to speak languages, and not: dialects, idioms, vernaculars, jargons, lingoes or kitchen speeches as it used to be prior to independence. It is so even if for administrative and educational purposes the postcolonial state employs a colonial language of the former Western masters and there has been no effort to write down and standardize the exclusively oral dialects, which the

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cannot be successfully standardized w ith o u t the po p u lar literacy that form s the basis for its spread into every c o m e r o f a polity (cf. B ow ers, 1968). M ost existing languages w ere standardized during the tw entieth century either in the colonial or postco lo n ial perio d (cf. Sow , 1999: 526-548).

W hen language fu nctions as an instrum ent o f differen tiatio n betw een groups o f people it is term ed an ‘eth n o lect’. Significant d ifferen tiatio n can arise at the level o f a locality, region o r polity so an ethnolect can be a subdialect, dialect, d ialect clu ster (this is, a group o f interrelated dialects) or language (M ajew icz, 1989: 10-11). H ow ever, now adays the natio n -state is the m odel o f basic social and political organization (cf. K ohn, 1962). A fter the collapse o f com m unism and the break-up o f the S oviet U nion the n eat division o f the w orld (at least the political m ap) into the latticew ork o f n ation-states w as com pleted.

T he n atio n -state being the top-notch political player, it effectiv ely controls and directs language planning. Those groups that have not secured n ation-states o f th eir ow n (th is is, m in o rities) face the problem o f how to retain their political and cultural distin ctiv en ess. I f a language is elevated to the ra n k o f national language (Ising, 1987), this m eans condem ning a (linguistic) m inority to in feriority u nless they m aster the prescribed national language (cf. T ollefson, 1991). On the oth er hand, non-d o m in an t ethnolects ( o f m inorities) tend to be appropriated b y the n ational language as ‘its ’ dialects.21 T his ‘ju s tifie s ’ the national lan g u ag e’s dom in atin g role and leads to the h o m ogenization o f the ethnolects so th at they m erge w ith the national standard. M ore often than not it also entails the assim ilation o f the m inorities w ith the successful nation (W eber, 1976: 67-94, 452-470).

The Szlonzoks

The S zlonzoks call them selv es ‘S ilesian s’. T his ethnonym is d eriv ed from the nam e o f the reg io n o f Silesia that extends 300 kilom eters from K atow ice (K atto w itz)22, P o lan d in the east to G orlitz, G erm any in the w est. B ut they have postcolonial citizenry use in their everyday life.

21 The popularly accepted conceptualization of dialects as an ‘offspring’ o f a language is anachronistic and false. On the temporary plane the oral always precedes the written. So written, standard or national languages emerged from dialects (however defined), and not the other way round. From the point o f view of linguistics, it is more truthful to say that a language is just a ‘written dialect’.

22 All of Upper Silesia together with almost all the deutsche Ostgebiete (German territories east of the Oder-Neisse line) were incorporated into post-1945 Poland. For the sake o f clarity I use contemporary forms o f place-names appending them with their present-day versions in parentheses. Conversely, when I talk about the post-World War II situation in parentheses I provide the German forms o f the mentioned place-names. I do not follow this practice where

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been the inhab itan ts only o f the eastern h a lf o f this large region. T his h a lf goes by the nam e o f U pper Silesia. T raditionally, the Szlonzoks w ere a p easant S lavophone p o p u latio n . T he estates (social elites), n ev er co n stitu tin g m ore than five per cen t o f the population, spoke G erm an o r w ere bilin g u al in this language and the local S lavic dialect. L ow er Silesia (including all the social strata) was overw h elm in g ly G erm an /G erm an ic-sp eak in g 23 and its inhabitants, in line with

L a n d esp a trio tism u s (regional identity) referred to th em selves as ‘S ilesian s’24

too. In 1740-42 F ried rich the G reat seized seven-eighths o f Silesia from the H absburgs leaving M aria T h eresia w ith the so uthernm ost fragm ent o f U pper Silesia. T his ‘A u strian S ilesia’ consisted o f two territo ries separated b y the M oravian w ed g e, w hich becam e know n as W est and E ast Silesia. In a w ay, they reflected the linguistic situation in L ow er and U pper Silesia. The

o v erw helm ingly Slavophone p opulace o f E ast Silesia also becam e know n as ‘S ilesian s’, even th o u g h ethnically th ey differed from the Szlonzoks (K w asniew ski, 2000: 12). F or th e sake o f clarity I refer to the fo rm er as the S lunzaks25 in o rd er to distin g u ish them from U pper S ile s ia ’s Slavophone group th at I refer to as the Szlonzoks. I have anglicized the p h onetic realizatio n o f th ese ethnic g ro u p s ’ ow n ethnonym s in order to be able to differentiate among the two g roups and b etw een the m ainly G erm an /G erm an ic-sp eak in g Silesians w ho id en tified w ith all o f Silesia. Som etim es th is p an -reg io n al identification (L a n d esp a trio tism u s) spread to all the populatio n o f S ilesia irrespectively o f language o r religion. O n the oth er hand, w ith the em ergence o f U pper Silesia as a d istinctive adm inistrative u n it at the b eginning o f the n in eteen th century, the U pper S ilesian L a n d esp a trio tism u s cam e into being too (K am usella, 1998; K am usella, 2001a).

T he S zlo n zo k s’ hom eland is U pper Silesia. A fter the N apoleonic onslaught (1806) alm ost razed Prussia, this state u n d erw en t sw eeping reform s. In th eir w ake the P rovince o f S ilesia w as subdivided into th ree regencies (1815). The O p p eln (O pole) R egency co incided w ith U pper S ilesia and su rvived as an adm inistrative unit un til 1945 (S tiittgen, 1977). T he p olitical and adm inistrative borders intersected w ith the ecclesiastical ones. T he territo ry o f U p p e r Silesia and E ast (A u strian ) S ilesia w as organized w ithin the borders o f the B reslau (W roclaw ) D iocese. B ut the so uthernm ost strip o f U pper Silesia to g eth er w ith W est (A u strian ) S ilesia belo n g ed to the O lm iitz (O lom ouc) A rch d io cese that also contained all o f M oravia. D ue to the social significance o f relig io n (B jork, these place-names have long-established English-language forms, such as Warsaw or Cracow. 23 The distinction between German- and Germanic-speakers alludes to the fact that before spread of the standard German the majority of the population spoke in variegated Germanic dialects. With the rise of popular elementary education German became a second language of Germanic-speakers. This phenomenon was less pronounced in Silesian than in East Prussia because the Germanic dialects o f Lower Silesia were relatively close to standard German. 24 This is ‘Schlesier’ in German.

25 Pronounce /sloonzahks/. ________ Tomasz Kamusella_________ © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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1999) and the im m obility o f the rural population the b o rd er b etw een the two d ioceses fostered the rise o f the M oraw ec26 ethnic group in the O lm iitz A rch d io cese’s section o f U pper Silesia (H annan, 1996; K am u sella, 1996).

Tomasz Kamusella

Language in Upper Silesia27

From around the sixth century Silesia had been S lavic-speaking. D uring the tw elfth century, h ow ever, the local tem poral and ecclesiastical lords beg an to invite settlers from the o v erp o p u lated areas o f the H oly R om an E m pire, the overw h elm in g m ajority o f w hom w ere G erm anic-speaking (D ralle, 1991: 114-

115). T he m eetin g p o in t betw een the W est G erm anic and N o rth S lavic dialect continuum stabilized at the b o rd er betw een L ow er and U p p er Silesia (K okot, 1973: 16-17, 42; N abert, 1994). F irst, the stratum o f literate sp ecialists used L atin in w riting b efo re starting to use chancery G erm an in the th irteenth and fourteenth centuries (B indew ald, 1935; L ubos, 1995: 26-28). D ue to the Slavophone ch aracter o f U pper S ilesia and the need fo r im proved

com prehension o f docum ents am ong the w ider circles o f the estate m em bers, chancery B ohem ian began to replace its Germ an co u n terp art especially from the sixteenth century onw ard (K nop, 1967: 6, 24). C hancery P olish w as p resen t too but to a lim ited degree. It w as connected to the paw ning o f the O ppeln (O pole) D uchy to the P olish -L ith u an ian king in the m id-seventeenth century and the increasingly on ly form al subjection o f the B reslau (W ro claw ) D io cese to the

G niezno m etropolitan see the seat o f the Polish prim ate. In 1821 the papal bull

term in ated this arran g em en t and also form alized the 1811 tran sfer o f the easternm ost slither o f U p p er Silesia from the Polish-speaking C racow A rchdiocese to the B reslau (W roclaw ) D iocese (K ohler, 1997: 2).

T he 1740-1742 P russian seizure o f Silesia m ea n t the gradual replacem ent o f chancery B o h em ian and chancery P olish w ith standard G erm an as the language o f ad m in istratio n and education. T his process accelerated at the beginning o f the n in eteen th century (K neip, 1999: 25). T he role o f th e C atholic Church in p olitics w as lim ited by secularization (1810). In 1811 serfdom was abolished, w hich allow ed fo r the introduction o f co m p u lso ry m ilitary service for all m ales d uring the ‘W ar o f L ib eratio n ’ (1813-1815). P o p u lar elem en tary education com m enced in 1825 (W anatow icz, 1996: 27) and the right o f graded vote fo r all m ales w as introduced in Prussia in 1849. T he 1871 fou n d atio n o f the G erm an n ation-state in the form o f the G erm an E m pire com pleted th is process o f building the G erm an n ation steeped in the G erm an language. T his also m eant the equalization o f the legal and political status o f th e m ale population. Jew s

26 Pronounce /moravets/.

27 For a broader review of the problematic see Kamusella (1999a).

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w ere em an cip ated 28 and the sam e v o ting rights for all m ale citizen s w ere guaran teed (K inder, 1978: 63, 77; M uller, 1996: 164, 185).29

Increased social and spatial m obility (usually lim ited to m ales) w ithin the borders o f P ru ssia and the G erm an E m pire, co u p led w ith p o p u lar literacy achieved in the th ird q u arter o f the n ineteenth century (H ytrek, 1996: 41), provided the b u rg eo n in g industry w ith an indispensable literate w orkforce. In tu rn , in d ustrialization fed the state adm inistration w ith the n ecessary revenue that m ade these achievem ents possible (Schofer, 1974). T he U p p er S ilesian in dustrial b asin (located in the re g io n ’s easternm ost slither) em erged as second in continental E u ro p e and the G erm an E m pire only to th e R u h r (K om arek, 1998).

________ Tomasz Kamusella________

The clear p o litical em ergence o f non-G erm an n ational m ovem ents in the revolutionary y e ar 1848 c u rb ed G erm an nationalism and led to a certain acceptance for o th er languages. In U p p er S ilesia th is stren g th en ed the position o f the C atholic C hurch. B ecause it controlled elem entary and secondary education, in 1848-1849 standard P olish and M oravian w ere in tro d u ced as the m edia o f instru ctio n in the S lavophone areas o f U pper Silesia w ith in the borders o f the B reslau (W roclaw ) D iocese and the O lm iitz (O lo m o u c) A rchdiocese, respectively (Placek, 1996; Sw ierc, 1990). The p ro -state P ro testan t C hurch also follow ed this path b u t this w as o f m ore consequence fo r L o w er Silesia as in the O ppeln (O p o le) R egency n in ety per cent o f the populatio n w ere C atholics (B ahlcke, 1996: 94, 103; M ichalkiew icz, 1970: 125-126).

S tandard P o lish and M o rav ian functioned as ecclesiastical languages. H ow ever, M oravian m ainly based in its w ritten form on the subdialects o f southern U p p er S ilesia and northern M oravia w as closer to the speech o f the M oraw ecs th an stan d ard P olish to the S zlonzoks’ vernacular. In the latter case, Polish-language and bilin g u al P olish-G erm an education fostered situational bi- or trilingualism . In church S zlonzoks tended to use standard P olish (apart from the litu rg y )30, G erm an w hile co n tactin g state adm inistration and th eir Slavic dialect in the fam ily and am ong them selves (cf. W icherkiew icz, 1996). The situation w as m o re com plicated in th e rapidly industrializing an d urbanizing U pper S ilesian in d ustrial basin (cf. KlauGman, 1996). T he sustained intensive interaction betw een w o rk ers and, then, spouses speaking d ialects stem m ing from the G erm anic and S lavic d ialect continua, gave rise to the U p p er Silesian Slavic- G erm anic creole in the last decades o f the nineteenth century. Its form s ranged

28 The emancipation of Jews in Prussian Silesia had already started at the close of the eighteenth century (Bahlcke, 1996: 94).

29 Enfranchisement o f women took place only after 1918.

30 In Upper Silesia Latin remained the only language o f the liturgy until the beginning of the 1970s. © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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from one extrem e o f the Slavic d ialect and ecclesiastical standard P o lish to the o th er o f stan d ard G erm an and the G erm anic dialect (H annan, 1996: 106, 123; K am usella, 1998a; R eiter, 1960: 52).

B erlin grad u ally em braced G erm an nationalism ag ain st V ien n a in a bid for dom inance in the G erm an C onfederation. The obv io u s goal w as to create a G erm an n atio n -state after P russia had defeated the A ustrian E m p ire in 1866. This w as duly reflected in the language policy directed at U pper Silesia. In 1863 G erm an b ecam e the m edium o f education starting w ith the seco n d grade o f the elem entary school. D uring the K u ltu r k a m p f (war o f c u ltu res)31 B erlin separated the educational system from the C atholic C hurch in 1872, and stan d ard P olish and M o rav ian w ere b an n ed from education. In 1875 relig io n classes also ceased to be tau g h t in th ese languages. So the use o f P olish and M oravian w as lim ited to pasto ral services and serm ons and to religious instructions o ffered to children in churches (P lacek, 1996: 7-8). This situation thanks to the support o f the Church spurred the pu b licatio n o f m ainly religious b o o k s and periodicals in these languages (G lensk, 1992; G roschel, 1993).32 O n the p lan e o f this anational policy this C hurch com pletely dom inated the political scene o f U p p e r S ilesia until 1918 (B ahlcke, 1996: 104; B jork, 2001).

The ideological grounding o f the G erm an n atio n -state in P rotestantism and the G erm an language alienated the Szlonzoks. T h eir C atholicism becam e a liability and the subm ergence o f P russia in the G erm an E m pire m ade th eir steadfast identification w ith this ex-state and the P ru ssian king obsolete. B e rlin ’s novel en n ationalizing policy contributed to the eventual form ation o f the S zlonzoks as an ethnic group (Bqk, 1974: 48-49; K am u sella, 1998). The arrival o f P olish natio n alist activists from Posen (Poznan) in the 1890s did not alter this situation. P rio r to 1914 these activists num bered 120 (M olik, 1993: 77) and the users and m em b ers o f P o lish/P olish-language libraries and associations am ounted to fo rty -fifty thousand, that is, two per cent o f the p opulation o f the O ppeln (O p o le) R egency. At that tim e the G erm an n atio n al group o f U pper S ilesia corresp o n d ed to the G erm an-speakers (one m illion, fo rty -fiv e p er cent). H ence, the S zlonzoks am ounted to 1.1 m illion (fifty p e r cent), w h ile the M oraw ecs to fifty-sixty th ousand (2.5 per cent) (K am usella, 1998; P allas, 1970: 9-48; S tuttgen, 1977: 182).

31 The Kulturkampf amounted to an ideological struggle between the Prussian state and the Catholic Church. The former stood for the particularistic ideology of nationalism and the latter for the universalistic one o f Catholicism (Fischer-Wollpert, 1990: 299-300). 32 Significantly, prints in Moravian were brought out in Gothic type that additionally differentiated this language from standard Czech and standard Polish.

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Tomasz Kamusella

The Szlonzokian ethnolect

W hat is the S zlonzokian ethnolect? F irst o f all, it is the trad itio n o f situational m ultilingualism . Ideally, the Szlonzok spoke the Slavic dialect/S lavic-G erm anic creole, standard G erm an and standard P olish in different spheres o f social life.33 Because w om en did n o t particip ate in public and p olitical life u n til after W orld W ar I, the fem ale S zlonzoks had a w orse com m and o r no know led g e o f standard G erm an (cf. T riest, 1864: 36). T h eir forte w as the dialect/creole and they excelled in the passiv e com m and o f stan d ard Polish. O nly local clergy w ere fully literate in b o th the standard languages and retained th eir know led g e o f the dialect/creole acq u ired from th eir parents (cf. M iodek, 1991: 11).

The Szlonzoks th em selves w hen they spoke p o n a szym u 34 (in our ow n way) they m eant the dialect/creole. T hey also designated it as nosza slonsko

g odka (our Silesian sp eech ).35 In the 1870s and 1880s w hen B erlin w as w aging

the K u ltu r k a m p f w ith th e C atholic C hurch the local clergy attem pted to overhaul the dialect/creole into a d istinctive and separate U pper Silesian language (W anatow icz, 1992: 51). B ut the B reslau B ishop reach ed a m o d u s viven d i with B erlin in the latter h a lf o f the 1880s so any o fficial su p p o rt for the codification o f this language ceased. (G alos, 1996: 189). T hus, in th e w ritten form the dialect/creole w as p re serv e d only in verbatim court testim onies and a few hum orous p rin ts (Jasinska, 1997; O brqczka, 1997).

T he presen t-d ay re ad e r m ay ask i f there is any w ritten trad itio n o f this d ialect/creole. T he creole being a relatively recent d evelopm ent in the context o f high enn atio n alizin g p ressu re o f standard G erm an and standard P olish, it seem s to have no sig n ifican t w ritten trad itio n apart from the ab o v e-m en tio n ed prints and court testim o n ies.36 T he dialect w as, how ever, qu ite ex ten siv ely u sed in 33 Because of the multilingual character o f Upper Silesia and the increasing role of language as the core o f ethnic or national identification, code-switching and code-mixing became a common phenomenon. Here I do not consider their social and political role or that of diglossia due to the brevity o f this article.

34 For this saying (and further ones) in the Szlonzokian Slavic dialect I have used Polish spelling. In research on Upper Silesia and the Szlonzoks one can also come across quotations in Szlonzokian jotted down in German and Czech spelling (for instance, po naschimu, po

nasymu), or in phonetic notation. However, my use of Polish orthography for writing down

the Szlonzokian dialect should not be interpreted as an argument for subsuming the Szlonzoks into the Polish nation or their ethnolect into the Polish language; it is simply a matter of convenience in the absence of any standardized Szlonzokian spelling. It only befits that the Szlonzoks themselves undertake such political decisions. The scholar's task is to describe and analyze a given problematic, not to alter it.

35 These terms one can hear in a Szlonzokian village or urban neighborhood to this day. 36 German authors used elements o f this creole (written down in accordance with the rules of German spelling) to denote the Szlonzokian/Upper Silesian specificity in novels and stories (cf. Kaluza, 1935: 64-65). © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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religious literatu re b eginning w ith the sixteenth century though, today, scholars display an anachronistic p enchant (cf. K am usella, 200 0 ) for identifying this corpus o f w ritin g s w ith chancery P olish or chancery B ohem ian or even w ith standard P olish and standard C zech. T hose w ritings that they claim as ‘P o lis h ’ correspond to the S zlonzokian and Slunzakian d ialects, w h ereas those dubbed as ‘C z ec h ’ to the M oraw ec and S lunzakian dialects (L ubos, 1974: 4 7 8 -4 9 6 , 587- 601).

A choice o f tran scrib ed oral texts, poem s and official eighteenth-century docum ents in ch an cery languages, w hich interacted w ith the S zlonzokian subdialect o f S ankt A nnaberg (G o ra sw. A nny) can be found in O lesch (1959: 88-107). It is in terestin g th at in 1959 th is G erm an sch o lar o f S zlonzokian origin (L ipnicki, 1999) term ed this subdialect as ‘P o lish ’. B efore W o rld W ar II he had term ed it ‘S la v ic ’ (O lesch, 1937). Perhaps the incorporation o f all o f U pper Silesia into po stw ar P o lan d convinced O lesch that this p o litical act also extended to the lin guistic reality?

P ro testan t w riters from the L ow er Silesian D uchy o f B rieg (B rzeg) (w hich b o rd ered directly on U p p er Silesia) transplanted the trad itio n o f w ritin g and

p u blishing in a local S lavic dialect to w ould-be E ast (A u strian ) S ilesia37 38 in the

eighteenth century. T his tradition continued there, w hile the in troduction o f standard G erm an and stan d ard P olish extinguished it in U p p er Silesia (W ronicz, 1995: 13-16). H ence, the use o f the S lunzakian ethnolect in w ritin g and print continued in E ast (A ustrian) S ilesia until 1918 as did th at o f th e M oraw ec ethnolect in the south o f U pper Silesia.

H ow ever, th at th ere w as a difference betw een the S zlonzokian d ialect and chancery/standard P olish w as clearly understood. In the 1804 p h raseb o o k D er

hoch- u n d p la tte n p o ln isc h R eiseg efd h rte f i r einen reisenden D eu tsch en nach Siid-P reussen u n d O b ersch lesien 3S the anonym ous au th o r d istin g u ish ed betw een 'H o c h p o n is h ', this is, chancery/literary P olish and ‘P la tte n p o ln ish ’, this is the

U pper Silesian S lavic dialect, by analogy to H ochdeutsch (sta n d ard G erm an) and P la ttdeutsch (L ow G erm an today spoken in northern G erm an y ) (R ospond, 1948). In the 1821 N auka s z tu k ip o lo z n ic ze y dla n iew ia st39 in stan d ard P olish the p ublisher w ishing to m ark et it in U pper Silesia found it necessary to supplem ent this h andbook w ith a glo ssary o f im portant term s tran slated into the ‘g ornoslqski

i$ zy k ’ (U pper S ilesian language) (M ayer, 1956).

37 That is, the eastern half of Austrian Silesia separated from the western half by the Moravian wedge. Prior to the introduction o f new divisions in the eighteenth century East Silesia corresponded to the Duchy of Teschen (Cieszyn/Tesin).

38 The High and Low Polish Phrasebook fo r a German Traveling in Southern Prussia and

Upper Silesia (my translation).

39 The Handbook o f the Art o f Midwifery fo r Women (my translation).

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B eg in n in g w ith the seventeenth century this d ialect b egan to be know n as

‘W asserp o ln isch ’. It is o f u n clear o rigin but this term translates as ‘W ater

P o lish ’. T his gave rise to tw o interpretations o f its so ciolinguistic nature. First, that the speech o f the Szlonzoks is a k in d o f ‘kitchen P o lish ’ (popsuta

p o lszc zy zn a ) (Pallas, 1970: 19-20). A nd, second, that it is ‘S la w o d eu tsc h e s’

(Slavic G erm an ) (S chuchardt, 1884). The first d esignation co rrelates m ore w ith the dialect, w hile the latter reflects the em ergence o f the creole. U n d er the influence o f teach ers and intellectuals, in the seco n d h a lf o f the nineteenth century the S zlonzoks began to p erceive their v ern acu lar as ‘u n c u ltu re d ’. This prevented the fledgling S zlonzokian language m o v em en t, w hich w as active in the 1860s and 1870s, from u sin g this dialect/creole fo r w riting and publishing (P allas, 1970: 25). E v en tu ally , only standard G erm an and stan d ard P olish were d eem ed to be suitab le for w riting and publishing.

D ue to the specific C entral E uropean cou p lin g o f language w ith n ationalism , G erm an natio n alists and adm inistration p referred to present

W asserpolnisch as a language separate from P olish not u nlike the Slavic

v ern acu lars o f the K ash u b s40 and the M azurs41 (P allas, 1970: 27). O n the other hand, the P o lish teacher Jerzy Sam uel B andtkie, w ho w o rk ed at B reslau (W roclaw ) from 1791 to 1811, considered the S zlonzokian d ialect a variatio n o f the ‘P olish lan g u a g e ’. B u t he did not identify the Szlonzoks w ith the Poles, preferring to call them ‘P o lish S ilesian s’ (B andtkie, 1952). A n o th er P olish scholar, L ucian M alin o w sk i42, chose to call the d ialect ‘S la v ic ’ (1 8 7 3 ).43

T here w as som e intellectual confusion about w h at the Szlonzokian dialect ‘really is ’. In the P ru ssian and G erm an censuses the categ o ry o f the Polish language w as used fo r n o ting the S lavic dialect and S lavic-G erm anic creole o f U pper Silesia. It w as so even though the P ru ssian /G erm an statisticians used the categories o f the M oravian (this is, M oraw ec) and B ohem ian languages and not that o f the C zech language, as w ell as o f the K ash u b ian and M azurian languages and n ot o f the P olish language (cf. W eber, 1913; Pallas, 1970: 30). T raditionally the S lavic-speaking p art o f U pper Silesia w as referred to as ‘P o lish S ilesia’

40 The Kashubs survive to this day in the area around the city o f Gdansk (Danzig). In the 1990s they re-affirmed their ethnic difference vis-à-vis the Polish nation by codifying their language, which is used as the medium of instruction in a handful o f elementary schools attended by Kashubian children (Breza, 2001; Synak, 1998).

41 Due to polonization the Mazurs disappeared as a distinctive group but there remain some publications in their language printed in the Gothic type (black letter) (Blanke, 2001; Sakson, 1990).

42 Father of the famous anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski.

45 The present-day Polish linguists consider Lucian Malinowski’s study as the ‘first scientific work devoted to a Polish dialect’ (Deyna, 1994: 9). This interpretation, in a way, appropriates the Slavic subdialects Malinowski researched, for the Polish language, precluding the equally valid possibility o f considering them dialects of the Czech or the Szlonzokian language.

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(Snoch, 1991: 141).44 A nd in h is 1908 w o rk the G erm an scholar, E. N ikel, referred to this dialect as ‘P o lish ’.

The P o lish national m o v em e n t’s eventual appropriation o f the S zlonzokian idiom as a d ialect o f the P olish language can b e traced b a ck to a 1905 m ap th at g rap h ically and unam biguously (at least on pap er) split U pper Silesia into th e th ree areas ‘b elo n g in g ’ to the G erm an-, P olish- and C zech speaking com m unities (G regor). T hen in line w ith ethnic n ationalism , during the years 1920-1921 the P olish scholar K azim ierz N itsch 45 eq u alized the territo ry o f the P olish n atio n -state w ith the area w here the P o lish-speakers (o r persons considered as such) resided. H e included U pper S ilesia in th is schem e, draw ing on his 1909 w o rk that identified the S zlonzokian dialect as ‘P o lish ’.

T his dogm a obtains in P o lish nationalism and lin guistics to th is day. The quite recen tly constructed identification o f the S zlonzokian d ialect w ith the P olish language is anachronistically (K am usella, 2 000) p rojected onto the distant past. P olish scholars even seriously claim th at th is d ialect is the oldest o f all the P olish d ialects (cf. A lek san d er B ruckner in M iodek, 1991:16). From the n ationalist p o in t o f view th is m akes U pper S ilesia even ‘m ore P o lish ’ than W arsaw o r C racow . T his p arallels General Charles de G a u lle ’s fam ous sound bite m ade d u rin g his 1967 state visit to Poland. In sup p o rt o f W a rs a w ’s claim to the legal o w nership o f the deutsche O stgebiete (G erm an territo ries east o f the O der-N eisse line)46 he said that ‘Zabrze is the m ost P olish o f all the P olish c itie s’ (M iodek, 1991: 15). H indenburg (Z abrze), w hich belo n g ed to G erm any un til 1945, in fact grew from a tiny village into an in d u strial city d u rin g the second h a lf o f the n ineteenth century and at the b eginning o f the tw en tieth w hen U pper S ilesia w as an integral part o f P russia and the G erm an E m pire.

O n the o th er hand th ro u g h o u t the interw ar p e rio d and d u rin g W o rld W ar II G erm an sch o lars and politicians called the S zlonzokian d ialect/creole

44 Originally, this designation was not intended to emphasize or ‘prove’ the primordial Polishness of Upper Silesia. Basically, after 1848 standard Polish (and Moravian) was introduced there (in addition to German) as a medium of elementary education. Reflecting on this development the German-language press of Lower Silesia coined the sobriquet of 'Polish Silesia’. At the turn o f the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Polish national movement appropriated this as the ‘apparent’ German acknowledgement o f the ‘fact’ that Upper Silesia was Polish and should become part of the would-be Polish nation-state (cf. Snoch, 1991). 45 Interestingly, all the three above-mentioned Polish scholars (Bandtkie, Malinowski and Nitsch) were in one way or another connected to the Jagiellonian University at Cracow in Galicia. In 1867 Galicia obtained cultural autonomy and as o f 1869 Polish became the official language in this crownland. Thus, Polish nationalism could develop there much more freely than in Russia or Prussia/Germany.

46 The de jure transfer o f these territories de facto incorporated into Poland in 1945 took place only with the ratification of the Polish-German border treaty in 1990 (cf. Blumenwitz, 1989).

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W asserpolnisch o r O berschlesisch (U pper S ilesian) (W in k ler, 1921; B lachetta,

1939: 9-11). I f th ey w ished to avoid these politically tainted term s they could d escribe this dialect w ith the m ore neutral attributive ’S la v ic ’ (O lesch, 1937).

Between Germ any and Poland

In 1922 U p p er S ilesia w as split b etw een G erm any and P o lan d .47 T he P olish section o f this reg io n to g eth er w ith h a lf o f E ast (A ustrian) S ilesia48 w as shaped into the autonom ous S ilesian V oivodeship w ith its capital at K atow ice (K attow itz). T he p a rt o f U p p er Silesia rem aining w ith G erm any w a s elevated to the status o f the P ro v in ce o f U p p er Silesia. T his arran g em en t su rvived until the outbreak o f W o rld W ar II.49 D uring the w ar the d ram atically en larg ed Germ an Province o f U p p e r S ilesia com prised n o t only the S ilesian V oiv o d esh ip but also the ad jacen t counties o f P o lan d 's K ielce and C racow V o iv o d esh ip s. This necessitated the in tern al division o f this p ro v in ce ’s territo ry into the O ppeln (O pole) and K atto w itz (K atow ice) R egencies (Stiittgen, 1977; Serafin, 1996).

The 1922 d iv isio n o f U pper S ilesia entailed the in tro d u ctio n o f the policies o f p o lo n izatio n and germ anization into the re g io n ’s resp ectiv e sections allocated to W arsaw an d B erlin. T he League o f N a tio n s’ su pervision d uring the fifteen-year long tran sitio n p erio d 50 m itigated en nationalization but only to a lim ited degree. It becam e increasingly d ifficult fo r the in tern atio n al com m unity to safeguard the n ational sta tu s quo in both p arts o f U pper S ilesia after dem ocracy w as d ism an tled in P oland in 1926 and in G erm an y in 1933.

D uring the years 1922-1939, 190 th ousand U pper S ilesians w ho considered them selv es to be G erm ans left the S ilesian V o iv o d esh ip for G erm any, and 100 th o u san d o f those w ho considered them selves to be Poles the 47 In 1919 the southern fragment of the Ratibor (Raciborz) county, known as the Hultschiner Landchen (Hlucinsko), was transferred to Czechoslovakia. In 1938 it returned to Germany and was re-incorporated into the Oppeln (Opole) Regency the following year. The majority of the Morawecs lived in the Hultschiner Landchen. In the interwar period, subjected to forced czechization, they began to identify themselves as Germans and adopted the regional ethnonym of the ‘Hultschiners’. Czechs called them ‘Prajzaci’ (Prussians) (Palys, 1997: 15; Placek, 2000).

48 East Silesia was split between Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1920.

49 After the Munich Agreement, in 1938, Warsaw seized from Czechoslovakia most of Prague’s part of East Silesia and incorporated it into the Silesian Voivodeship. In the same year Berlin renewed the Province of Silesia. Three years later (1941), however, the Province of Upper Silesia wasre-established (Stiittgen, 1977; Serafin, 1996).

50 This transition was regulated by the longest and most detailed (over 600 articles) of all the post-Versailles treaties. Because it was signed at Geneva (1922), the document has been popularly known as the ‘Geneva Convention’ (Genfer Konvention, Konwencja Cenewska) in Germany and Poland.

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P rovince o f U pper Silesia for P oland (K am usella, 1999: 56). P o lo n izatio n o f the Silesian V oiv o d esh ip w as im m ediate. A ll the place-n am es w ere ch an g ed and m onum ents rem in iscen t o f G erm andom razed. S im ilar alterations o f ‘too Slavic- so u n d in g ’ p lace-n am es com m enced in the P rovince o f U pper Silesia in 1933. In the 1930s th is w as co u p led w ith p ressu re on the Szlonzoks to either germ anize or p o lonize their surnam es and first nam es in the p rovince and th e voivodeship, respectively. T he term in atio n o f the internationally su p erv ised tran sitio n regim e in 1937 allo w ed W arsaw to suppress G erm an-language ed u catio n , bilingual shop signs, inscriptions in p u b lic places and restaurant m enus in the

voivodeship. T he sam e o ccurred vis-à-vis the P olish language in the province. In 1939 the inten sificatio n o f retributive hostilities led to the de fa c to (though not

de ju r e ) com plete ban on the p ublic use o f P olish in the p ro v in ce 51 and o f

G erm an in the v o ivodeship (L inek, 1999).52

It is alto g eth er too easily fo rgotten but prior to the division o f U pper Silesia the big g est local grassroots organization w as n o t that o f P olish or G erm an natio n alists b u t o f the Szlonzoks. A fter W orld W ar I B erlin w ished to overhaul the w hole o f Silesia or U pper Silesia into a separate pro-G erm an state. In this w ay the U pper Silesian industrial basin w ould have been saved from shouldering the o v erw h elm in g burden o f w ar reparations and w ould not have fallen into P olish hands (H auser, 1991). The S zlonzokian (p roto-)national m ovem ent sp earh ead ed by the local C atholic clergy hoped that the proposed Free State o f U p p er S ilesia (F reiesta a t O berschlesien) w ould be a Szlonzokian n ation-state. A state w here the official bilingualism in stan d ard G erm an and standard P olish w ould have been coupled with full accep tan ce o f the use o f the d ialect/creole in com m u n ity and fam ily life (C im ala in H aw ran ek , 1982: 23; 662). T h e S zlo n zo k ian m ovem ent w as based on the Z w iqzek

G órnosléjzaków /Bund d er O b ersch lesier (Z G /B dO , U nion o f th e U pper Silesians). T he Z G /B dO b o asted the m em bership o f 350 th o u san d to h a lf a m illion (S ch m id t-R ò sler, 1999: 11). B earing in m ind the fact that w om en obtained the right to vote only in 1919 and had h ardly p a rticip ated in political life prior to th is year, one m ay in fer th at the Z G /B dO m em b ersh ip coincided w ith w ell o v er fifty p er cent o f the adult m ale U pper S ilesians. In other w ords, the overw h elm in g m ajority o f S zlonzoks subscribed to it.

A fter 1922 W arsaw and B erlin successfully sup p ressed the S zlonzokian n ational m ovem ent. In the Silesian V oivodeship, in itially, p ro -P o lish Szlonzoks w ere allow ed to take high posts in the civil service. N ot know ing any standard language b u t G erm an th ey even corresponded w ith the central authorities in it.

51 This ban also applied to Moravian.

52 A year earlier a ban on the use of the Czech language was introduced in the new section of the Silesian Voivodeship seized from Czechoslovakia. Berlin retained this ban after the 1939 annexation of Poland. 19 © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.

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Soon G erm an w as ph ased o ut from voivodeship civil service and know led g e o f the d ialect/creole w as not d eem ed as am ounting to any com m and o f Polish. So m ost o f the S zlonzokian officials lost their positions and w ere rep laced with new com ers from G alicia and central P oland (K opec, 1980). T he latter w ith their fam ilies num bered betw een forty and six ty thousand (W an ato w icz, 1982).

T his situation alienated m any Szlonzoks from the P olish natio n -state and contrib u ted to the fortificatio n o f th eir ethnic separateness o r espousal o f G erm an n ational id entification (G erlich, 1994). T he estab lish m en t o f the au thoritarian regim e in P oland after the 1926 coup the m ore estranged the S zlonzoks accu sto m ed to the w ell-established tradition o f P russian/G erm an p arliam en tarian dem ocracy. The incom ing p o s t-1926 ad m inistration o f the voivodeship d ecid ed to am eliorate this situation especially in the w ake o f the econom ic collapse spurred by the G reat D epression.

O n the id eo lo g ical plane this am ounted to acceptance o f the Szlonzokian dialect as p a rt o f the v o iv o d es h ip ’s cultural life. B ut the tentative espousal o f the dialect w as n ot ex ten d ed to the creole, w hich w as rid icu led as a ‘P olish-G erm an ja rg o n ’. T he elevation o f the socio-political status o f the d ialect entailed

‘p u rify in g ’ it o f G erm an and C zech linguistic loans. T his de fa c to polonization o f the dialect m ade it into a dialect o f the P olish language (K opec, 1980). The P olish-language p o p u lar education, com pulsory m ilitary service, the press, cinem a and rad io accelerated this process. The change w as dram atic. The P olish w riter K ornel M akuszyhski w rote th at h e ‘could n o t com m unicate w ith the [S lavic-speaking] youth from U p p er S ilesia p rio r to 1914 b u t now [this is, in the 1930s] they speak p u re P o lish ’ (in K opec, 1980: 46). T he g o al o f th is p o licy was obvious: to tran sfo rm the S zlonzoks from an ethnic g ro u p /p ro to -n atio n into a regional gro u p o f the P olish nation (K opec, 1980: 46).

W hile the ap p ro p riatio n o f the Szlonzokian dialect as a constituent o f the P olish language u n d erlay the p o licy o f polonization o f the S zlonzoks, in the P rovince o f U p p er S ilesia the G erm an authorities continued to em phasize the separateness o f this d ialect vis-à-vis standard P olish. T he first step w as to lim it the encro ach m en t o f stan d ard P olish th at the transitory regim e allow ed for in the m inority ed ucation and publications. B erlin w as quite successful at th is especially in the late 1930s. A nother step am ounted to d eclarin g the Szlonzoks as an ethnic group w ith tw o m o th er tongues: the U p p e r Silesian language (this is, the d ialect/creole) u sed at hom e and G erm an used in o fficial contexts (Pallas, 1970: 30-31).

T his theory w as com patible w ith w hat the S zlonzoks th o u g h t about them selves and th eir situation after 1918, and m ade it possible to claim them for the G erm an n ation as an ‘A d o p tiv sta m m ’ (adopted tribe). T he S lavic-speaking

Tomasz Kamusella________ © The Author(s). European University Institute. version produced by the EUI Library in 2020. Available Open Access on Cadmus, European University Institute Research Repository.