The Baltic Coast: Prussian? Polish? German? Russian?

gdynia_1920_nac.jpg, default, The Baltic Coast: Prussian? Polish? German? Russian?, Coastal fishing boats in the port of Gdynia - view of a dozen or so boats moored at the seashore, 1930, photo: www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC), center, #000000

Every summer, millions of residents of Poland flock to the beaches of the Baltic coast for their summer holidays. Along with the lakes of Mazury and the mountains of Galicia, Lesser Poland, and Upper Silesia, the southeastern Baltic littoral is a vacation destination quintessentially Polish, perhaps most quintessentially Polish.

Indeed, the entire coastal region of Pomerania, Warmia, and Mazury is an integral part of modern Polish national identity. But prior to the mid-20^th century, this region had a remarkably fluid and varied history, to which the Polish people and state was only one of many crucial contributors.

The traditional geographical coastal regions of Pomerania and Prussia, together extending from modern north-central Germany through Poland and the Kaliningrad Oblast to the southern coast of Lithuania, have been at the center of some of the most significant historical moments and events of the last millennium. During the last two centuries, their centrality to world history has been especially grave. Their role in the Partitions of Poland, German Unification, and both World Wars was practically paramount.Polish people, institutions, and states have been integral to that entire history. But throughout the last millennium, they have never been alone there, and only rarely have they been dominant. Rather the region also has been shaped by people, institutions, and states identifying alternately as Pomeranian, Prussian, German, Lithuanian, Dutch, Swedish, and Russian, among others. Indeed, the modern subregions of Pomerania, Kuyavia, Warmia, Mazury, and Kaliningrad have been – for all intents and purposes – at various times Pomeranian, Prussian, Polish, German, Prussian (again, albeit quite different), and Russian.

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Szczecin Cathedral, photo: Dariusz Gorajski / Forum

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Such influences still can be seen in the region’s language, art and architecture, topography and geology, agriculture and industry, urban planning and roadways, and of course national and provincial borders. In the same way that ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity was fundamental to the premodern development of Poland in general, such diversity also was fundamental to the development of the southeastern Baltic littoral, which only relatively recently – since 1945, or in some places 1918 – has been unequivocally Polish. So how have these various historical identifications influenced the region?

Pomerania is a wide geographical area that stretches along the Baltic coast from modern north-central Germany to the left bank of the Vistula River in modern north-central Poland. Its primary influence on the broader region was an ancient one. Non-Christian Germanic and Slavic peoples living in the area more than one thousand years ago were crucial trading partners with Christian kingdoms farther South and West. They also drew ambitious Christian conquerors and missionaries beginning in the 10^th century. These included the Piast Duchy of Poland and St. Otto of Bamberg. Then, the Duchy of Pomerania – culturally and linguistically German – dominated much of this area intermittently between the 12^th century and the 17^th century. During this period, it contributed to Baltic trade and diplomacy, balanced rivalries between German and Polish polities, oversaw the Protestant Reformation of much of northern German lands, and was an important prize during the Thirty Years’ War. Pomerania lends its name to three modern voivodeships of Poland—West Pomerania, Pomerania, and Kuyavia-Pomerania—and to the Mecklenburg-West Pomeranian state of Germany. Its history has left traces across the broader region in the form of stout brick-gothic churches, regimented medieval old towns, expansive tracts of farmland, well-traveled river mouths, and populations that have gone back and forth between Catholicism and Lutheranism.

German Prussian influence

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'The Prussian Homage,' Jan Matejko Painting, 1879-1882, photo: Sukiennice Museum, Krakow / Krakow National Museum

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Prussia is the geographical coastal area stretching from the opposite bank of the Vistula River up into modern Lithuania. Its historical role has been even more changeable, volatile, and appropriable. Its initial distinct influence—there would be several—on the broader region also was an ancient one. The Baltic Old Prussian tribes living there more than one thousand years ago similarly were crucial trading partners with neighboring polities, especially in amber, 90% of the world’s extractable supply of which is located along the Prussian littoral. Eventually, the polytheistic and animistic Prussian populations also drew Christian missionaries and conquerors, most notably St. Adalbert of Prague (św. Wojciech, also Bishop of Gniezno) and the Teutonic Order (Krzyżacy). Despite great initial conflict, eventual conquest, and ultimately conversion to Christianity at sword point, Old Prussian populations continued to influence the broader region, even speaking Old Prussian and requiring Old Prussian Christian catechisms into the 17^th century. Nowadays, amber is still a ubiquitous consumer good in the region, and in the area around Olsztyn the infamous ‘Baba Pruska’ stone sculptures can be seen keeping alive some of the ancient aesthetics of the region.

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Baba Pruska z Mózgów / Laseczna in the Archaeological Museum in Gdańsk, photo: Wikimedia.org

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German influence in this region is nearly as ancient but has been longer lasting, albeit less so since the mid-20^th century. During the Middle Ages, the sparsely populated southeastern Baltic coastal region experienced a huge influx of settlers from German-speaking regions to the West. Many were invited in by local landowners, while others came more independently. Most were members of the lesser nobility or people looking for more available arable farmland. Even the Teutonic Order (Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem) was invited in to convert the Prussian peoples. The Order stuck around for centuries, eventually building a Teutonic State. It shaped the construction of towns, castles, churches, agricultural production, trade routes, and political relations until 1525. German became a dominant spoken language in the broader region from the 13^th century until the mid-20^th century, even during periods of stronger Polish rule. Then during the 19^th century and through much of the early 20^th century, German states—the Second Reich, and then the Third Reich—either ruled or occupied the Baltic littoral, with the familiar devastating consequences for non-German populations also living there. In recent decades, the lake country in Warmia and Mazury has been an attractive destination for German tourists, both for leisure and for tracing ancestry.

German Prussian influence – as distinct from Old Prussian influence – in the region was especially notable toward the end of the early modern period and into the 19^th century. As the Duchy of Prussia (founded in 1525) and then Kingdom of Prussia (reorganised in 1701) grew stronger and more militaristic in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, it exercised an outsised influence on diplomacy and politics in Central Europe and the Baltic basin. By the end of the 18^th century, it orchestrated the Partition of Poland and thus doubled in size. Society and culture throughout the broader coastal region increasingly reflected the militarism and industrialization of the Prussian state. In the 1860s and 1870s, the Kingdom of Prussia drove the unification of the Second German Empire, and after 1871, non-German minority populations in Prussia faced greater restriction, exclusion, and even persecution. During this period, several of the cities and towns of Prussia – many of which now are in Poland – were refurbished and modernised, keeping their medieval layout and many buildings but having installed railway stations, tram lines, plumbing, and electricity for the first time.

Dutch, Swedish & Russian influences

During the early modern period, even the Dutch grew into an influential population along this stretch of the Baltic littoral. Many religious refugees from the Low Countries – typically Anabaptists and Mennonites – fled persecution in Western Europe and settled along the Vistula River due to the relative religious leniency afforded by the Kingdom of Poland. Their ultimate contribution to the history of the broader region was remarkable. For centuries, the Vistula floodplain and delta had been a fertile area but also a fickle landscape on which to settle, due to shifting river channels and marshy land. Dutch immigrants in the 16^th century, familiar with hydroengineering from their prior environment in the Low Countries, were able to construct dikes, drainage ditches, and river channels along the northernmost stretch of the Vistula and throughout the delta. They rendered the landscape much more stably inhabitable. Thereafter, it became one of the more productive agriculture areas of Poland.

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Malbork Castle, photo: Cezary Wojtkowski / Forum

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Pomerania and Prussia also hosted a modicum of Swedish influence during the 17^th century, when warfare between the Swedish Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth precipitated periods of occupation by Swedish military forces.

Finally, the mid-20^th century brought heightened influence from Russia along the southeastern Baltic littoral, which has continued to the present. The treaties resolving the Second World War granted the Kaliningrad Oblast—formerly the territory surrounding Prussian Königsberg—to the Soviet Union. Conditions in the Communist Bloc then influenced social, cultural, and political developments in the broader region via Poland into the 1990s. Since then, Russia’s presence in the region via the Kaliningrad Oblast has been a near constant point of contention, especially for contemporary Poland and the Baltic States.

The Free City of Danzig, or Polish influences

Of all of these influences, though, the Polish historical influence in this region has been perhaps the most consistent, even if not the most dominant. At times it appears to be the most intentional and persistent through the past eleven centuries. The very first Polish rulers in the 10^th and 11^th centuries attempted to conquer, incorporate, and settle parts of the region, finding the most success on the left bank of the Vistula around the modern city of Gdańsk. For the next millennium, Polish authorities worked to build and maintain authority in the coastal region, contested by various political, economic, and social entities from throughout the Baltic basin. Polish princes invited the Teutonic Order into Prussia to convert and subdue the Old Prussian population. Later such princes negotiated a limited rule over the provinces of Royal Prussia and Ducal Prussia during the early modern period, the main urban centers of which were Gdańsk, Toruń, Elbing, and Königsberg. They also encouraged Polish populations from Mazovia to migrate to Prussia to settle and farm available land there. After the First World War, the Second Polish Republic attempted to reestablish political and cultural dominance in the area, symbolised most clearly by the administration of the ‘Polish Corridor’, the construction of the port city of Gdynia, and active relations with the Free City of Danzig. After World War II, much of the Baltic littoral returned to the Polish state, and obviously it is a proudly Polish area today, including the memory of the Solidarity trade union and social movement founded at the shipyards in Gdańsk.

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Poles hold a Stocznia Gdynia shipyard banner aloft in a rally against the closure of the Gdansk shipyards, the cradle of the 'Solidarity' movement, in the run-up to Poland's first free elections in 1989, photo: Bernard Bisson / Getty Images

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Poland’s long and complicated history is incomprehensible without accounting for ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity, regardless of how homogeneous Poland’s contemporary population may be. The history of Poland’s Baltic coastline not only similarly demands attention paid to such diversity, but it also necessitates the acknowledgment that the region was at various times something—or somethings—other than Polish. But that is a beautiful characteristic. The traditional regions of Pomerania and Prussia, nowadays northern Poland and Kaliningrad, would not be the fascinating and compelling places they are without the historical input of Pomeranians, Prussians, Poles, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Russians, and numerous others. For modern residents of and vacationers to this region alike, all it takes is a glance, and you often will catch a glimpse of a remnant of the southeastern Baltic littoral’s wonderfully diverse history.

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