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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
In the first days of August 1914, as enthusiastic crowds hailing the German declaration of war on Russia and France swarmed in front of the imperial residence in Berlin, Kaiser Wilhelm II famously declared that he no longer knew political parties, only Germans. The remark was intended to be rhetorically inclusive, of course, to signal the surmounting not only of party-political divisions but also of the empire's chronic class, confessional, and regional tensions. But for one of the empire's most marginalized groups of subjects—those millions who did not consider themselves of German descent and who spoke Polish rather than German as a native language—the Kaiser's invocation of a common German identity was more effective in underlining the limits rather than the promise of civic solidarity. Unlike the Habsburg Monarchy or (to a lesser extent) the Czarist Empire, where Polish nationalists could hope to reconcile commitment to their national cause with faithfulness to an imperial dynasty or even a diffuse sense of patriotism to a multinational state, the Hohenzollern monarchy had, over the previous half-century, become virtually synonymous with hostility to all things Polish. Upholding the Prussian monarchy, it seemed, was functionally inseparable from promoting a culturally homogenized German nation-state.
1. In one of the standard texts on Polish involvement in the First World War, for example, 30 pages are devoted to an initial discussion of the Austrophile orientation, 14 pages to the Russophile orientation, and only four pages to the Germanophile orientation. Jerzy Holzer and Jan Molenda, Polska w pierwszej wojnie światowej (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1973).Google Scholar
2. Quoted in Robert Macray, Poland 1914–1931 (London: George Allen&Unwin, 1932), pp. 31–2.Google Scholar
3. Initially, even the National Democrats in the Austrian partition joined the united front calling for cooperation with the Center Powers. By the autumn, however, as Russian forces occupied most of Galicia, the National Democrats and other more right-wing parties gravitated to the Russophile position of their colleagues in the Russian partition zone. For a detailed account of the political groupings assuming a Russophile or Austrophile orientation in the First World War, see Holzer and Molenda, op. cit., pp. 85–133.Google Scholar
4. Marian Orzechowski, “Działalność polityczna Wojciecha Korfantego w latach I wojny światowej,” Zaranie Śla̦skie, 1963, No. 4, pp. 590–91.Google Scholar
5. Lech Trzeciakowski, Pod pruskim zaborem 1850–1918 (Wiedza: Warsaw, 1973), pp. 349–50.Google Scholar
6. The leading figures in this group included Prince Ferdinand Radziwiłł, Prince Ksawery Drucki-Lubecki, Prince Olgierd Czartoryski, and Count Franciszek Kwilecki. Drucki-Lubecki and another prominent loyalist, Franciszek Morawski, were given seats in the House of Lords during the war. Ibid, p. 351.Google Scholar
7. Trzeciakowski, op. cit., p. 345; image of poster reprinted in Holzer and Molenda, op. cit., opposite p. 65.Google Scholar
8. Jerzy Łojek, ed., Prasa polska w latach 1864–1918 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1976), p. 206.Google Scholar
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12. Oberpräsident Schlesiens to Regierungspräsident Oppeln, 3 April 1913 (Streng geheim), Sygnatura 116 (Akta spezialia betr. politisch gefährliche Personen), Präsidalbureau, Archiwum Państowowe w Opulu (APO).Google Scholar
13. Czapliński, Adam Napieralski, p. 181.Google Scholar
14. Ibid., pp. 188, 196–97.Google Scholar
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16. “Noch zwei Tatsachen,” Echo Polskie, 8 (21) May 1916, quoted in Gesamtüberblick über die polnische Presse (Berlin: Preussische Druckerei und Verlags A. G., 1916).Google Scholar
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19. “Auf der Wacht für das nationale Wohl,” Katolik, 11 September 1915, quoted in Gesamtüberblick (1915), p. 689.Google Scholar
20. Quoted in Szramek, “Ś. P. Adam Napieralski,” pp. 327–28.Google Scholar
21. Cited in Czapliński, Adam Napieralski, p. 185.Google Scholar
22. Matthias Erzberger, Erlebnisse im Weltkrieg (Berlin: Deutsche Verlag-Anstalt, 1920), p. 175.Google Scholar
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24. On Erzberger's overall role and the importance of Catholicism in his foreign propaganda efforts, see Klaus Epstein, Matthias Erzberger and the Dilemma of German Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), pp. 96–117.Google Scholar
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27. Czapliński, Adam Napieralski, pp. 188, 191–92.Google Scholar
28. “Die römische Frage und die polnische Fraktion,” Katolik, 14 September 1915, in Gesamtüberblick (1915), pp. 688–89.Google Scholar
29. “Die Angriffe der freimaurerischen italienischen und französischen Zeitungen auf den Apostolischen Stuhl,” Kraj, 17 October 1916, in Gesamtüberblick (1916), p. 1211. Kraj had been founded in Lissa (Leszno—province of Posen) a few months earlier by a group of loyalists headed by Franciszek Morawski. Paweł Dombek, a protege of Napieralski and a delegate to the Reichstag, was appointed editor. Czapliński, Adam Napieralski, p. 199.Google Scholar
30. Quoted in Emil Szramek, “Ks. Jan Kapica: Źyciorsys a zarazem fragment z Historji Górnego Śla̦ska,” Roczniki Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk na Śla̦sku, Vol. V, 1936, p. 50.Google Scholar
31. Szramek, “Ks. Jan Kapica,” p. 54.Google Scholar
32. Jan Kapica, Die Deutsche Kulturmission, der Katholizismus, und die nationale Versöhnung (Beuthen: Druck und Verlag Katolik, 1917), p. 64.Google Scholar
33. Ibid., pp. 71–72.Google Scholar
34. Ibid., p. 48.Google Scholar
35. Ibid., p. 44.Google Scholar
36. Ibid., pp. 120–21.Google Scholar
37. Ibid., p. 130.Google Scholar
38. Ibid., p. 169.Google Scholar
39. Thomas G. Masaryk, The New Europe (The Slav Standpoint) (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1972) (originally published 1918), pp. 103–104.Google Scholar
40. Kapica, op. cit., p. 162.Google Scholar
41. Ibid., p. 173.Google Scholar
42. Czapliński, Adam Napieralski, pp. 205–206.Google Scholar
43. Königliche Grenzkommissar (Mädler) to Regierungspräsident Oppeln, 10 May 1915, Akta spezialia betreffend Tygodnik Katolicki (Sygnatura 128), Präsidialbureau, APO.Google Scholar
44. This is how the well-informed Father Szramek describes the genesis of the meeting. “Ks. Aleksandr Skowroński, p. 147.Google Scholar
45. Czapliński, Adam Napieralski, p. 206. Mendel, op. cit., pp. 149–51; Szramek, “Ks. Jan Kapica,” pp. 55–56.Google Scholar
46. August-Hermann Leugers Scherzberg, August Hermann, Felix Porsch 1853–1930: Politik für Katholische Interessen in Kaiserreich und Republik (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald Verlag, 1990), p. 248 and fn. 5.Google Scholar
47. Emil Szramek, “Ks. Aleksandr Skowroński, obraz życia i pracy na tle problematyki kresów zachodnich,” Roczniki Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk na Śla̦sku, Vol. V, 1936, pp. 147–49.Google Scholar
48. Schwerin to Kapica, 2 December 1915, reprinted in: Jan Kapica, “Delegatura Biskupia,” in Emil Szramek, ed., Mowy—Odezwy—Kazania (Katowice: Kółko Homiletyczne Kapłanów Diecezji Katowickiej, 1933), p. 246.Google Scholar
49. From Schlesische Volkszeitung, No. 118, quoted in Szramek, “Ks. Jan Kapica,” p. 57.Google Scholar
50. On Korfanty's wartime trajectory, see Marian Orzechowski, “Działalność polityczna Wojciecha Korfantego w latach I wojny światowej,” Zaranie Śla̦skie, 1963, z. 4. For a more comprehensive political biography, see Orzechowski's Wojciech Korfanty: Biografia polityczna (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich Wydawnictwo, 1975).Google Scholar
51. As early as 1915, Upper Silesian women had led militant hunger marches to protest high prices and shortages. By 1917, wildcat strikes were commonplace, and labor union membership was growing rapidly. See Mendel, op. cit., pp. 196–215; and Wolfgang Schumann, Oberschlesien 1918/19: Worn gemeinsamer Kampf deutscher und polnischer Arbeiter (Berlin: Rütten&Loening, 1961), pp. 39–56.Google Scholar
52. A detailed account of the by-election can be found in Mendel, op. cit., pp. 156–74.Google Scholar
53. Schlesische Volkszeitung, No. 273, quoted in Szramek, “Ks. Jan Kapica,” pp. 52–53.Google Scholar
54. Ibid., p. 46.Google Scholar
55. Adam Napieralski, Deutschland, Österreich, Polen (Ein Beitrag zur Lösung der polnischen Frage) (Bytom: Katolik, 1918), pp. 22–23, cited in Paweł Dubiel's sharply critical article: “Memoriał Adama Napieralskiego w sprawie odbudowy państwa polskiego,” Zaranie Śla̦skie, Vol. 2, 1970, pp. 302–12.Google Scholar
56. Czapliński, Adam Napieralski, p. 218. While Napieralski would never again be as influential as he was in the prewar era, his exile from politics was only temporary. During the 1920s, Napieralski resumed the direction of his publishing enterprise and became active in the politics of the Polish minority in German Upper Silesia.Google Scholar
57. Paul Nieborowski, Oberschlesien, Polen, und der Katholizismus (Berlin: Hans Robert Engelmann Verlag, 1919), pp. 45–46.Google Scholar
58. Jan Kapica, “Delegatura Biskupia,” in Emil Szramek, ed., Mowy–Odezwy–Kazania, p. 245.Google Scholar
