Context '' in
Malbork,
Poland. Founded in 1274 by the
Teutonic Order on the river
Nogat, it is the world's largest brick castle. After
1466 it served as one of several , fulfilling this function until
1772. The region of
Pomerelia or
Gdańsk Pomerania, historically Polish and never inhabited by
Old Prussians, was forcibly occupied by the
monastic state of the Teutonic Knights in 1308, following an invasion of Poland under the pretext of helping the King
Władysław I Łokietek to quell a rebellion, with subsequent Teutonic atrocities against the Polish population, such as the
Slaughter of Gdańsk. The possession of Danzig and Pomerelia by the Teutonic Order was questioned consistently by the Polish kings Władysław I and
Casimir the Great in legal suits in the papal court in 1320 and 1333. Both times, as well as in 1339, the Teutonic Knights were ordered by the Pope to return Pomerelia and other lands back to Poland, but did not comply. A small area in the west of Pomerelia, the
Lauenburg and Bütow Land, was granted to the rulers of Pomerania as a Polish
fief before it was reintegrated with Poland in 1637, and later again transformed into a Polish
fief, which it remained until the
First Partition of Poland.
East Prussia around
Königsberg, on the other hand, remained with the
State of the Teutonic Knights, who were reduced to vassals of the Polish kings. Their territory was
secularised to become the Lutheran
Duchy of Prussia according to the 1525
Treaty of Kraków and the
Prussian Homage. The duchy was later ruled in
personal union with the Imperial
Margraviate of Brandenburg from 1618. The
Hohenzollern rulers of
Brandenburg-Prussia were able to remove the Polish suzerainty by the 1657
Treaty of Wehlau, taking advantage of the
Russo-Swedish Deluge, shortly thereafter transforming their possessions into a kingdom. This development turned out to be fatal to the Polish monarchy, as the two parts of the rising
Kingdom of Prussia were separated by Polish land. Subsequently, the newly established kingdom entered into an alliance with Austria and Russia, invading Polish territories. Even though some German authors viewed the establishment of West Prussia as a historic reunification of the lands of the
Teutonic State, officially, the Prussian government shunned justifying the annexation by such an argument. The reason was that the
Teutonic Order still called for the reestablishment of their rule over East- and West Prussia.
Establishment In 1772
First Partition of Poland, the Prussian king
Frederick the Great took the occasion to annex most of Royal Prussia. The addition gave Prussia a land connection between the
Province of Pomerania and
East Prussia, cutting off the Polish access to the
Baltic Sea and rendering East Prussia more readily defensible in the event of war with the
Russian Empire. The annexed voivodeships of
Pomerania (i.e.
Pomerelia) excluding the City of Danzig,
Malbork () and
Chełmno () excluding the City of Thorn () were incorporated into the province of West Prussia the following year, along with the formerly East Prussian
Marienwerder Kreis.
Ermland () became part of East Prussia while the annexed parts of
Greater Poland and
Kuyavia formed a separate
Netze District located to the south. The
Partition Sejm ratified the cession on 30 September 1773, complemented by renouncement by the Polish king of his royal title in regard to Prussia. Thereafter, Frederick finally started to style himself "King
of Prussia" rather than "King
in Prussia." Both abovementioned exempted cities were ultimately captured by the Kingdom of Prussia upon the
Second Partition of Poland in 1793. The Polish administrative and legal code was replaced by the Prussian system, and 750 schools were built from 1772 to 1775. Both
Protestant and Roman Catholic teachers taught in West Prussia, and teachers and administrators were encouraged to be able to speak both German and Polish.
Frederick II of Prussia also advised his successors to learn Polish, a policy followed by the Hohenzollern dynasty until
Frederick III decided not to let
William II learn Polish. He had nothing but contempt for the , the numerous Polish nobility, and wrote that Poland had "the worst government in Europe with the exception of
Ottoman Empire". He considered West Prussia less civilized than
Colonial Canada and compared the
Poles to the
Iroquois. Frederick invited German immigrants to redevelop the province. Many German officials also regarded the Poles with contempt. According to
Christopher Clark, 54% of the annexed area and 75% of the urban population were German-speaking Protestants. Further Polish areas were annexed in the
Second Partition of Poland in 1793, now including the cities of Danzig () and Thorn ().
Napoleonic Wars After the defeat of Prussia by the Napoleonic
French Empire at the 1806
Battle of Jena-Auerstedt followed by the
Treaties of Tilsit, West Prussia lost its southern territory in the vicinity of Thorn and Kulm (Chełmno) to the short-lived
Duchy of Warsaw; it also lost Danzig, which was a
Free City from 1807 until 1814. After the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Danzig, Kulm, and Thorn were returned to West Prussia by resolution of the
Vienna Congress. Some of the areas of Greater Poland annexed in 1772 that had formed the Netze District were added to West Prussia as well (the remainder became part of the
Grand Duchy of Posen).
Restoration The
Congress of Vienna established the
German Confederation (), an association of 39 German-speaking states in Central Europe under the nominal leadership of
Austrian Empire, as a replacement for the dissolved
Holy Roman Empire. Its boundaries largely followed those of its predecessor, the Holy Roman Empire, defining the territory of Germany for much of the 19th century. Except for the
Lauenburg and Bütow Land and the former
Starostwo of Draheim, the Prussian lands which had been outside the Empire remained outside the Confederation, namely the former Ducal Prussia and those territories gained during the partitions of Poland. This included both predominantly Polish- or Kashubian-speaking areas (former Greater Poland and Pomerelia within West Prussia and the
Grand Duchy of Posen) and German-speaking areas (
Malbork Land within West Prussia and most of
East Prussia). A failed attempt to include these lands in the
German Empire (1848–1849) was undertaken by the
Frankfurt Parliament. In 1815, the province was administratively subdivided into the
Danzig and
Marienwerder. From 1829 to 1878, West Prussia was combined with East Prussia to form the
Province of Prussia, after which they were re-established as separate provinces. In 1840, King Frederick William IV of Prussia sought to reconcile the state with the Catholic Church and the kingdom's Polish subjects by granting amnesty to imprisoned Polish bishops and by re-establishing Polish instruction in schools in districts having Polish majorities.
Incorporation into Germany in 1896 With rise of
nationalism, the Hohenzollern-ruled territory increasingly became a target of aggressive
Germanisation efforts, German settlement, anti-Catholic campaigns (
Kulturkampf), as well as
disfranchisement and expropriations of Poles, and was finally annexed into Germany following the
North German Confederation Treaty (1866). The Polish historian
Andrzej Chwalba cites Germanization measures that included: • Ethnic Germans were favoured in government contracts, and only they won them over Poles. • Ethnic Germans were also promoted in investment plans and supply contracts. The western remainder formed
Grenzmark Posen-West Prussia in 1922, while the eastern remainder became part of
Regierungsbezirk West Prussia within
East Prussia. The
1920 East Prussian plebiscite was also held in the eastern part of West Prussia, which was known as the
Marienwerder Plebiscite Area, and included partially or fully, the districts of
Marienwerder,
Stuhm,
Rosenberg and
Marienburg. The residents of this region voted by a majority of 92.4% to remain with Germany.
World War II In 1939, the region was invaded, then included in the
Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia within
Nazi Germany during
World War II and settled with 130,000 German colonists, while between 120,000 and 170,000 Poles and Jews were removed by the Germans through
expulsion, massacres, enslavement or killed in
extermination camps. As in all other areas, Poles and Jews were classified as "
Untermenschen" by the German state, with their fate being slavery and extermination, the latter in particular during
Intelligenzaktion Pommern, as well as in the
Stutthof concentration camp. Later in the war, many West Prussian Germans fled westward as the
Red Army advanced on the
Eastern Front. All of the areas occupied by Nazis were restored to Poland according to the post-war
Potsdam Agreement in 1945, along with further neighbouring areas of former Nazi Germany and areas that had been part of Germany before. The vast majority of the remaining German population of the region that had not fled was subsequently
expelled westward. Many German civilians were deported to
labor camps like
Vorkuta in the
Soviet Union, where a large number of them perished or were later reported missing. In 1949, the refugees established the non-profit
Landsmannschaft Westpreußen to represent West Prussians in the
Federal Republic of Germany. == Historical population ==