{"id":462,"date":"2009-01-06T13:50:49","date_gmt":"2009-01-06T17:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/?p=462"},"modified":"2009-01-06T13:50:49","modified_gmt":"2009-01-06T17:50:49","slug":"the-question-of-prussia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/the-question-of-prussia\/","title":{"rendered":"The Question of Prussia"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago one of the readers made a comment about Prussia. A family member of hers claimed to have Prussian ancestry, not Polish. Personally, I find this statement a bit odd, but that’s just me, OK?<\/p>\n

Prussia, Prusy<\/strong> in Polish (a.k.a. Germany, or one of its many incarnations) was a neighbor of Poland for many, many centuries. Eventually, on August 5, 1772, it added a big chunk of Poland to its own territory.<\/p>\n

Remember the Partitions (rozbiory<\/strong>)? Well, that\u2019s when it happened. Russia and Austria got a nice piece each, too.<\/p>\n

You see, Prussia was very oddly shaped \u2013 there was East Prussia and West Prussia. And between them was a bit of Poland. Of course they didn\u2019t like it, and as soon as they got a chance, they took care of that issue \u2013 by adding the Polish territory to their own.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n click on the map to make it bigger<\/em><\/p>\n

Here, on the map you can see how Poland disappeared. The white area bordered by all the blue and the see \u2013 that\u2019s East Prussia. The darker blue area to the left of that \u2013 that used to be Poland. The slightly less dark blue area under the dark blue area used to be Poland, too. That chunk went to Prussia during the second partition.<\/p>\n

So unless someone\u2019s ancestors came from the white bit of East Prussia, or the white area to the left of the blue pieces \u2013 West Prussia, I\u2019m not sure just how Prussian they could be otherwise.<\/p>\n

If I remember correctly, I also have a bunch of relatives who claimed Prussian ancestry. They spoke German and had goofy German last names. And during communist times they all emigrated to West Germany.<\/p>\n

It just goes to show you that Poles come in all different flavors.
\nYet for some very odd reason it\u2019s more common for certain Poles from the Prussian part of Poland (after the Partitions) to say they are of Prussian origin than for Poles from the Russian part to admit to Russian origin.<\/p>\n

This post is in no way intended to stir controversy. It was simply to show you how Poland ceased to exist. Geographically, that is.<\/p>\n

Image: Wikipedia<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

A few weeks ago one of the readers made a comment about Prussia. A family member of hers claimed to have Prussian ancestry, not Polish. Personally, I find this statement a bit odd, but that’s just me, OK? Prussia, Prusy in Polish (a.k.a. Germany, or one of its many incarnations) was a neighbor of Poland…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[306831,7505,7547],"class_list":["post-462","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-history","tag-partitions","tag-prussia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}