Prussian Partition

History

The Kingdom of Prussia acquired Polish territories in all three military partitions.

The First Partition

The First Partition of Poland in 1772 included the annexation of the formerly Polish Prussia by Frederick II who quickly implanted over 57,000 German families there in order to solidify his new acquisitions. In the first partition, Frederick sought to exploit and develop Poland economically as part of his wider aim of enriching Prussia. and described it as an "artichoke, ready to be consumed leaf by leaf". As early as 1731 Frederick had suggested that his country would benefit from annexing Polish territory. By 1752, he had prepared the ground for the partition of Poland–Lithuania, aiming to achieve his goal of building a territorial bridge between Pomerania, Brandenburg, and his East Prussian provinces. The new territories would also provide an increased tax base, additional populations for the Prussian military, and serve as a surrogate for the other overseas colonies of the other great powers.

Frederick did not justify his conquests on an ethnic basis; he pursued an imperialist policy focused on the security interests of his state. However, Frederick did use propaganda to justify the partition and his economic exploitation of Poland, portraying the acquired provinces as underdeveloped and in need of improvement by Prussian rule; these claims were sometimes accepted by subsequent German historiography and can still be found in modern works. Frederick wrote that Poland had "the worst government in Europe with the exception of Turkey". After a prolonged visit to West Prussia in 1773, Frederick informed Voltaire of his findings and accomplishments: "I have abolished serfdom, reformed the savage laws, opened a canal which joins up all the main rivers; I have rebuilt those villages razed to the ground after the plague in 1709. I have drained the marshes and established a police force where none existed. … [I]t is not reasonable that the country which produced Copernicus should be allowed to moulder in the barbarism that results from tyranny. Those hitherto in power have destroyed the schools, thinking that uneducated people are easily oppressed. These provinces cannot be compared with any European country—the only parallel would be Canada." However, in a letter to his favorite brother, Prince Henry, Frederick admitted that the Polish provinces were economically profitable:

It is a very good and advantageous acquisition, both from a financial and a political point of view. In order to excite less jealousy I tell everyone that on my travels I have seen just sand, pine trees, heath land and Jews. Despite that there is a lot of work to be done; there is no order, and no planning and the towns are in a lamentable condition.

Frederick's long-term goal was to displace the Poles from the conquered region and colonize it with Germans, whom he considered better workers. To accomplish this goal, Frederick invited thousands of German colonists into the conquered territories by promises of free land. He also engaged in the plunder of Polish property, gradually appropriating starostwie (Polish Crown estates) and monasteries and redistributed them to German landowners. He also aimed to expel the Polish nobles—who were viewed as wasteful, lazy, and negligent—from their land by taxing them at a rate higher than other regions of Prussia, which increased their financial burden and reduced their power. In 1783, Frederick also passed legislation allowed buyouts of noble land. This legislation allowed the free alienation of Polish nobles' estates so that this property could be purchased by German colonists. This resulted in a greater percentage of noble land being transferred to bourgeoise owners than in any other part of Hohenzollern land. Ultimately, Frederick settled 300,000 colonists in territories he had conquered.

Frederick undertook the exploitation of Polish territory under the pretext of an enlightened civilizing mission that emphasized the supposed cultural superiority of Prussian ways. He saw the outlying regions of Prussia as barbaric and uncivilized, He expressed anti-Polish sentiments when describing the inhabitants, such as calling them "slovenly Polish trash". He also compared the Polish peasants unfavorably with the Iroquois, and named three of his new Prussian settlements after colonial areas of North America: Florida, Philadelphia and Saratoga. The Poles remaining in the territories were to be Germanized.

The Polish language was marginalized. Teachers and administrators were encouraged to be able to speak both German and Polish, and recognizing that his kingdom now had Polish inhabitants, Frederick also advised his successors to learn Polish. However, German was to be the language of education. The introduction of compulsory Prussian military service would also Germanize the Poles. And, the rural Poles were to be mixed with German neighbors so these Poles could learn "industriousness", "cleanliness, and orderliness" and acquire a "Prussian character". By such means, Frederick boasted he would "gradually...get rid of all Poles".

The Second Partition

In the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, the Kingdom of Prussia annexed Gdańsk (Danzig) and Toruń (Thorn), part of the Crown of Poland since 1457. The incursion sparked the first Greater Poland Uprising in Kujawy under Jan Henryk Dąbrowski. The revolt ended after General Tadeusz Kościuszko was captured by the Russians.

The Third Partition

The subsequent third partitioning of 1795 marked the Prussian annexation of Podlasie region, with the remainder of Masovia, and the capital city of Warsaw (handed over to the Russians twenty years later by Frederick III).

The second Greater Poland Uprising against Prussian forces (also under General Dąbrowski) broke out in Wielkopolska (Greater Poland) in 1806, ahead of the Prussian total defeat by Napoleon who created the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807. However, the fall of Napoleon during his Russian Campaign lead to the dismantling of the Duchy at the Congress of Vienna (1815) and the return of Prussian control.

The third Greater Poland Uprising under Ludwik Mierosławski occurred in 1846. The Uprising was designed to be part of a general uprising against all three states that had partitioned Poland. Some 254 insurgents were charged with high treason in Berlin. Two years later, during the Spring of Nations, the fourth Polish uprising broke out in and around Poznań in 1848, led by the Polish National Committee. The Prussian army pacified the area and 1,500 Poles were imprisoned in Poznań Citadel. The Uprising showed to Polish insurgents that there was no possibility whatsoever to try to negotiate Polish statehood with the Germans. Only sixty years later, the Greater Poland Uprising (1918–1919) in the Prussian Partition helped Poland regain its freedom in the aftermath of World War I.