Indeed and you describe the equivalent to what I wrote about the descendants of the first large Polish emigration wave to Germany in the late 19th century. Neither Miller, Lepper etc. themselves, nor a German would connect these guys to Germany, like you wouldnt connect Dariusz Rosati to Italy.
My point exactly. The fact that majority Germans remaining in Poland are assimilated ones does not mean there are no Germans feeling part of german nation.
I still dont see any evidence, that the descendants of the Ruhrpoles are a reason for the legitimation of a status as a national minority. Where do you find evidence, that members of this group actually define themselves as Poles?
Where do you have an evidence that NONE do?
BdPiD was founded in 1922 in Berlin, disbanded in 39 and reemerged in 1950 and sees itself as a representation of all Poles in Ger, so they are not a special Ruhrpolen organization. And the state of Poland didnt subsidize the Bund in the communist time, iirc.
Because there was a split in the organisation and Poland supported only its own faithfull ones?
Polish cultural and political legacy of the old emigration isnt visible in the Ruhr area anymore. Thus, claiming continuation of Polish presence there, a connection between Ruhrpolen and todays Poles, is a very debatable
Rheinland was also the place where Poles emmigrated in 70s... and do now. There is continuous polish presence there, though not necessarily genetic continuation.
Look at when all those Polonia Organizations were founded, who now claim national minority status. Most of them were founded in the 90s, after the decline of communism, when national polish consciousness and symbols in Poland were no subjects of suppression anymore. People of Polish nationality or connected to Poland didnt lobby for minority rights and Polishness or the promotion of Polish symbols before the fall of communism,
and that proves - what?
although there was no open or covert suppression of it in Germany.
One may disagree with that. Lack of recognition of polish minority may be treated as suppression.
I dont see why a state should fund those clubs.
German minority's former leader, mr Kroll, had many outrageous claims that I find untolerable, yet he was tolerated and german minority gets all the rights it should get.
Nowadays you seem to have some political troubles with those remaining Germans.
I don't think so. As I've mentioned, mr Krall was an idiot, but fortunatelly the leader of german minority has changed because even Germans found him too agressive. The "problems" are few. For example, lately there was a case of a war monument established, which commemorated local citizens who died in ww1 and ww2 fighting on german side. OK. But there was an iron cross on both parts of the monument, ww1 and ww2 ones, while iron cross is forbidden in Poland if associated with ww2, because it's treaten as a nazi symbol. Therefore, the iron cross of the ww2 part of the monument is to be removed, and german minority leaders approved of that.
It's german minority that has problems, because people are abandoning it. Krall claimed at least 0,5 mln Germans, and also claimed that all Silesians, Kashubs etc are germans, which would mean +2,5mln Germans in poland, while only 150 thousands people declared german nationality. The political influence of german minority continues to decline, as seen through their election results: from 7 parliamentary sits through 4, 2 for a long time and now 1.
And under the last Polish government the relations with Germany became complicated, too. In the Polish perception the Preußische Treuhand claims, the Ostsee Pipeline, the planned centre for expellees, a trend in German history research projects to analyze events like Dresden, Hamburg, the displacements etc. all look like Germany is developing a dominant revisionist understanding of its history and a reemerging nationalism. But Poland doesnt see that those topics represent only a limited part of many options, opinions and trends inside the german society. So Poland under Kaczynski & co wants to strengthen Polish identity anyway, sees the need to revise its foreign policy towards Germany to tackle their reemerging nationalism and looks for leverages aginst Germany. The perceived discrimination of the Polonia in Germany represented through claims that Polish language at work is forbidden and the one with the father who is not allowed to speak in Polish with his kids, while they are supervised by a social-worker comes handy. And when I said that the very heterogeneous groups of German-Poles and Poles in Ger are instrumentalized, then these are further reasons for it
Well, Germany helps nationalists in Poland doing moves that have to antagonise Poles... Both the pipeline (I remind You that originally Russians wanted to by-pass Ukraine by going through Belarus and Poland, but Poland didn't want that, because it would mean more influence of Russia in Ukraine - and only then Russia invented the Baltic pipeline, to by-pass BOTH Ukraine and Poland, and Germany gladly agreed, though it had to be seen as a stab in the back to Poland defending Ukraine), the centre for the vertrieben (it would have been much less controversial had Steinbach not have been involved - a daughter of occupational german officer borned in a house of an expelled polish family as leader of the expelled is extremly bac PR), german presidents and chancellors meeting with Steinbach, lack of condemnation to the PT, etc... Poles have good reasons to be angry at all that, though Kaczynskis are overusing it for political gains, obviously. For them even current prime minister is a German or something.
So the German state, alongside most of all others, says the crucial factor for granting minority status is that a minority needs to be traditionally bound to a specific settlement area in current Germany, like the Frisians to Friesland, the Sorbs to the Lausitz and the Danes to Schleswig. So these are the areas, where a Dane has the right to go to Danish speaking school, the courts are bound to use Danish language when needed, a supply of Danish speaking media has to be ensured etc.
Well, in Poland a recognised minority has its rights in all the areas it occupies or would occupy, as long as it reaches certain quota. I understand german position in this case, but I think it's not quite fair, it can be seen as a minimalistic one.
A national minority is an indigenous people of a certain area. The Sinti and Roma are the big exemption and their case is unique in the whole of Europe, btw.
polish case is unique in Germany.
That sounds like generous politics on paper. But I wonder how those rights come to practice. So does that mean an Armenian has the right to go to a state funded Armenian speaking school anywhere in the country? Do the Karaim have state funded tv stations anywhere in the country accessible?
Bilingual road signs?
There are too little Armenians or Karaims to do that, and they are too dispersed. A minority has to be 20% in municipality to get all this... apart from tv, of course.
Well, I guess that is not the case. The Poles in Germany are widely spread and there are no real traditional centres of Polish culture and language in current Germany. So where should one apply the minority rights?
where they reach 20%
If Germany grants the Poles the status of a minority it needs a better reason, because otherwise Germany would have to grant the same rights to a lot of other groups sooner or later.
That's not true. As I've mentioned:
1) Poles were a recognised minority until ww2
2) Part of territory of Germany was inhabited by Poles before it became german.
3) Part of current territory of Germany used to be part of Poland.
You can't say that about Turks, Arabs, Portuguese, Kurds, Chineese or any other nation in the world. Polish case it unique. Of course, there is hardly a genetic link between Poles living in Lebus / Lubusz 800 years ago and Poles living in Bonn now, but if there was, that would be a completely clear case for Poles. It is not, and that's why it isn't completely obvious.
Do the Poles make the same claims towards other countries like France or Britain or the USA, too?
No, because
1) Poles weren't inhabiting USA, France or UK before current dwellers
2) Poles were not a recognised minority there before
3) No part of UK, France of USA was ever part of Poland.
I initially answered to your rant about Germany and objected against your Germany-proudly shows-looted-art-statement and tried to remind you, that such a proud display takes place in Poland, too.
Poles didn't invade Germany, loot Berlinka and transport it to Poland. They found it on their territory. Quite an obvious difference.
Btw, the land was not really sold, but seized and annexed. So well, your analogy is as flawed as mine.
No it isn't. Poland didn't seize these lands. They were seized by USSR and transphered to Poland in exchange for the territories east to Bug river, much bigger, may I add. And Germany sold these lands - for peace.
Some sources say there were 15k in PL. But the commuinst were not really fond of acknowledging or even supporting minorities, but whatever. PL is not the great patron of Sorbs like it wants to portray itself and like I said in the other thread, they gave a . .. .. .. . about them until the upcoming of panslavist ideas in the 19 th century.
You are quite wrong... Again, people ruling Poland directly after ww2 were people found on the streat by communists, too few themselves to fill the positions. I don't think they even knew who Sorbs were, just like they weren't mostly aware who Masures, Warmiaks, Silesians, Slowincians are... I've been going through documents of year 1945 concerning east Prussia. It is a horrible lecture, but it shows well the complete lack of power of polish general authorities, and complete lack of any knowledge of the area by the people who were accidentally chosen to rule it. There was a terrible difference between the official approach and the actual one... and it was not delibatory.
) in interested in changing borders any more, so why continue to argue them?
