Grand Duchy of Posen

Background . Yellow colour: Polish-speaking areas according to German authorities, as of 1905 Originally part of the Kingdom of Poland, this area largely coincided with Greater Poland. The eastern portions of the territory were taken by the Kingdom of Prussia during the Partitions of Poland; during the first partition (1772), Prussia took just the Netze District, the portion along the Noteć () river. Prussia added the remainder during the second partition in 1793. Prussia briefly lost control during the Kościuszko Uprising in 1794. It was initially administered as the province of South Prussia. The Poles were the primary ally of Napoleon Bonaparte in Central Europe, participating in the Greater Poland Uprising of 1806 and supplying troops for his campaigns. After the defeat of Prussia by Napoleonic France, the Duchy of Warsaw was created by the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807. 1815–1830 Following the Congress of Vienna, portions of Prussia's Polish territories were ceded to Congress Poland, a kingdom ruled in personal union by the Russian Czar. From the remainder, the Grand Duchy of Posen was created with the city of Posen as the administrative centre and the seat of the Statthalter Prince Antoni Henryk Radziwiłł. In reality, the governing power over the region lay with the provincial upper-president Joseph Zerboni di Sposetti. At the beginning of the Prussian takeover of Polish territories, the discrimination and repression of Poles consisted of reducing their access to education and the judicial system. Prussian officials identified Germanisation as the progress of higher culture over a lower one. As a result, the local administration discriminated against Poles. After 1824, attempts to Germanise the school system were hastened and the government refused to establish a Polish university in Posen. Polish politicians issued protests against Prussian policies and a secret, patriotic Polish organisation was founded called Towarzystwo Kosynierów (Society of Scythemen). The resistance activity of Poles resulted in a reaction from Berlin, where a trial was held in connection to links between Poles from the Grand Duchy with Poles from Russian-ruled Congress Poland. 1830–1840 The 1830 November Uprising within Congress Poland against the Russian Empire was significantly supported by Poles from the Grand Duchy. Afterward, the Prussian administration under Oberpräsident Eduard Flottwell known for his anti-Polonism 1840–1846 On 11 September 1840, an audience was held by the Prussian king for deputies coming from the Grand Duchy. Count Edward Raczyński, in the name of all Polish members of the Grand Duchy Sejm (parliament), issued a complaint against the repression and discrimination of the Polish population, which went against guarantees made in 1815. He accused the Prussian authorities of removing the Polish language from public institutions, courts and schools, as well as deleting the history of Poland from school teaching and substituting the name "Province of Posen" for the previous "Grand Duchy of Posen". He also blamed the authorities for erasing the Polish Eagle from the Grand Duchy's seals and emblems and for expelling Poles from offices in order to replace them with Prussians or foreign-born persons of German ethnicity. When land owners of Polish ethnicity sold land, it was often bought in order to resell it to colonists of German ethnicity. The Prussian king rejected the complaint; he was fully supportive of the Germanisation of Polish areas. However, he believed it had to be done through different methods, and in May 1841 decided to name Flottwell upper-president of the Prussian Province of Saxony, which included large territories annexed from the Kingdom of Saxony in 1815. Greater Poland Uprising of 1846 Before 1848, repressions intensified in the Grand Duchy, censorship was strengthened, and settlers of German ethnicity were brought in. Large patriotic demonstrations were held in memory of Antoni Babiński, a member of the Polish Democratic Society. He had been wounded by a gunshot when the Prussian gendarme, attempting to arrest him, engaged in a fight with him. Babiński was then captured, sentenced to death and executed in Posen. His public execution in February 1847 was accompanied by public mourning. Cloth soaked in his blood and other remains were distributed as national relics. Large prayers were held in his memory, often against the orders of Prussia. Members of such gatherings were persecuted by the police. At the same time, the national self-awareness grew among the rural population of Polish and German ethnicity alike. Whereas two thirds of the grand ducal population identified as ethnically Polish (mostly in the centre, south and east), one third envisioned themselves as being of German ethnicity. Anti-Prussian sentiment grew as a response to the policy of Germanisation and repression by Prussian authorities and the conspiracy organisation called Związek Plebejuszy found a potent ground. It was led by bookseller Walenty Stefański, poet Ryszard Berwiński and lawyer Jakub Krauthofer-Krotowski. Frankfurt Parliament of 1848 and the Duchy During the Revolutions of 1848, the Frankfurt Parliament attempted to divide the grand duchy into two parts: the province of Posen, which would have been annexed into a united Germany, and the province of Gniezno, which would have remained outside Germany, but because of the protest of Polish parliamentarians these plans failed and the integrity of the grand duchy was preserved. However, on February 9, 1849, after a series of broken assurances, the Prussian administration renamed the grand duchy the Province of Posen. Nevertheless, the territory remained outside of the German Confederation until its dissolution and but was incorporated into the North German Confederation upon its foundation. The Prussian kings retained the title of Grand Duke of Posen until the fall of the monarchy in 1918. == Area and Population ==