Poles in Germany
The number of currently living in Germany Poland can not be precisely quantified. One reason for this are various common definitions of who should be classified as a Pole. The different definition criteria ( Polish citizenship, Polish mother tongue, corresponding migration background, commitment to Polish ) lead to very divergent results. Estimates range accordingly from 1.5 million people with a Polish immigrant ( micro-census 2009 in Germany ) up to 2 million people with a completely or partially Polish ethnic, cultural or linguistic identity. The number of people with Polish citizenship was only at 532 375 2012. Thus, the Polish citizens are in accordance with the Turkish citizens, the second largest group of foreigners in Germany. The number of people with Polish and German citizenship was angegeben.Beleg with 1.2 million in 2005? People of Polish descent living today, especially in the metropolitan areas of Berlin ( 180,000 ), Hamburg ( 110,000 ), Cologne ( 50,000 ) and Munich ( 60,000 ), and the Ruhr Area ( 700,000 ) and also increasingly on the German side of the German since Poland's EU accession - Polish Oder-Neisse border area and are in German society as invisible and rather inconspicuously.
- 5.1 Literature
- 5.2 External links
- 5.3 Organisations and Groups
- 5.4 Notes and references
History
Since the partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795 and the integration of parts of Polish territory in the Prussian state lived within the borders of the Prussian state over 3 million Polish-speaking people, especially in the new Prussian provinces of Posen and West Prussia.
The increased influx of Poland along the Spree, Rhine and Ruhr coincided with the period of transition from an agrarian to an industrial state and the associated considerable demand for labor on the one hand and the high population surplus by the agrarian reform in the eastern provinces of Prussia on the other. Thus began in the 1880s and especially 1890s, a mass emigration from the eastern provinces, which resulted in an East- West migration in Berlin, central Germany and the Ruhr. Since the 1870s, there was in the industrial areas in the Rhine and Ruhr mainly by the rapid expansion of the coal industry, an increased demand for labor. Since this could not be satisfied from the immediate environment, workers from other regions had to be recruited.
Until the First World War, an increase of more than two million people from the East was recorded. This remarkable values of the proportion of the Polish population reached in some circles, as in 1900, for example, in Recklinghausen, at 13.8 %, or county Gelsenkirchen with 13.1%.
1903, the Polish National Democratic Party was founded, which was replaced in the 1920s by the " Polish People's Party " and 1932 by the "Poland " list. The most prominent representative of Poland party in the Reichstag was the Silesian journalist Wojciech Korfanty.
In the Weimar Republic, the Poles have been recognized as a national minority. The total number of Poland was at the time of the Weimar Republic to Polish count (which appears unrealistically high ) about 2 million, which also Masuria and Upper Silesians were included. The official German statistics from the mid-1920s, about 200,000 people deported from Polish native speakers. The votes for Polish parties were in the Reichstag elections in the Weimar Republic 1919-1932 33000-101000. In August 1939, the leadership of the Polish minority, was arrested shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War and then interned in the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. On 7 September 1939, immediately after the beginning of the Polish campaign, the recognition was withdrawn as a national minority of the Nazi dictatorship of Hitler by decree prohibited the Union of Poles in Germany. On 3 June 1940, the real estate, banking and other assets of the Polish minority organizations were seized in the German Reich.
With the westward shift of Poland to the Oder -Neisse line, 1945, the areas where an autochthonous Polish minority was established ( especially the border regions of the Prussian provinces border Posen, West Prussia, Upper Silesia and East Prussia ) came to the now Communist-dominated Poland.
Since the 1950s came a total of about 2.5 million people from Poland, especially emigrants, but also political exiles of the Solidarity period in the Federal Republic.
Current Situation
Pay
When living in the Federal Republic of Germany Poland is mostly to German -Polish emigrants, together with the other Polish-born populations about 1.9 % ( micro-census 2009; loud Polish sources: 2.5 %) of the population. The indicator of an actual number is complicated by the fact that a large proportion of the emigrants was born in Poland, but due to its Deutschstämmigkeit came to the Federal Republic. These persons are considered to be German within the meaning of Article 116 paragraph 1 of the Basic Law and thus have the German citizenship. Overall kammen 1950-2005 1,444,847 ethnic Germans from Poland, of which about 800,000 in the 1980s and 1990s and now own either the German or German and Polish citizenship.
Identity and commitment to Polish are pronounced differently based on historical developments in the Polish-speaking population. This results in the existence of a variety of terms such as Polish -speaking, people of Polish descent and Polish descent, describing this population. In this large group of people are represented by diverse ties to the Polish culture, who refer to themselves as well as German, Masuria, Kashubian or Silesians and be conducted under the terms repatriates repatriates.
2012 lived permanently in Germany 532 375 people with exclusively Polish nationality. This corresponds to about 0.66 % of the total population of the Federal Republic.
Legal Status
In Articles 20 and 21 of the German - Polish neighborhood Treaty of 17 June 1991, both countries commit to respect the rights of persons established in their territories of the other origin:
" Art 20
Article 21
Position of the German government
According to the Federal Government may, the Poles living in Germany German nationality as immigrant group - in contrast to the long-established indigenous German minority in Poland - according to German law and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of Europe on 1 February 1995 was not granted the status of a national minority be. The German Government points out that the Poles living in Germany are not referred to in the German - Polish neighborhood contract as a national minority. In addition, the German citizens of Polish descent should have been getting all civil and political rights, including the possibility of maintaining their own culture and language.
Position of the Polish politicians and ethnic groups
In the opinion of representatives of the Polish community, the federal government ignoring the fact that those born in Germany descendants of the Polish minority as well as the descendants of the members of the Polish minority in Germany who were born under German law by birth as a German citizen in Poland, but understood as Poland and live in Germany. From the perspective of the German government authorities are all from Poland who entered exclusively ethnic German citizens. But that does not necessarily correspond to reality because most under German law also have the right to German citizenship in the 60s, 70s, and especially in the 80s who have entered Germany emigrants continue to Polish citizens have remained, however. However, this group of people often include the descendants of the former Polish minority in Germany, who emigrated to Germany mainly because of the generally critical in this period of economic and political situation of the former People's Republic of Poland. The Federal Republic has this condition in the Federal Refugees Act § 3 extends regardless of ethnicity on the families of the descendants of the former German citizen of Polish culture and their family members.
Under Article 116 of the Basic Law under German constitutional law anyone who " has the German nationality or found as a refugee or displaced persons of German ethnic origin or as the spouse or descendant in the territories of the German Empire as it stood on December 31, 1937 recording" applies today nor as " German ". " This results in the German view that the people living in the Oder- Neisse territories former German nationals and their descendants still have the German nationality. Since only the citizenship and non-ethnic criteria were used, so are the more than one million Poles who lived in the German Reich within the borders of 1937 as a recognized minority, and their descendants German within the meaning of the Basic Law. " This created a paradoxical situation that many descendants of former members of the Polish minority in the German Reich were taken due to the then German nationality of their ancestors in the Federal Republic as a German. This also explains that most German citizens of Polish minority are dual citizens.
Representatives of the Polish community demand the recognition of Poles in Germany as a national minority and grant the rights resulting therefrom. They also demand the removal of their opinion on the existing asymmetry. Caused a stir in this context, cases in which binational marriages after divorce, the loss of custody met the Polish, German and foreign parent and youth services had assisted the permitted use allowed only in German language. In Polish press publications this was equated with the actions of the Nazis against the Polish people and the Polish language. Due to this young official cases the Federal Republic of Germany had been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for violation of human rights on several occasions.
Clubs and organizations
Until October 1, 1939, was in the German Reich including the Union of Poles in Germany and the association of national minorities in Germany.
Among the most important today working at the federal level associations include the Union of Poles in Germany and the Polish Congress in Germany, and the German - Polish Society of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German - Polish Society Federal Association.
A special role of the Polish Catholic Mission, which offers in addition to their pastoral work and teaching for children in the Polish language.
In the operation of the Union of Poles in Germany and the Representative of Konwents Polish organizations in Germany was on August 20, 2010 in Dortmund, the Standing Conference of the Polish umbrella organizations in Germany that combines all Polish umbrella organizations in Germany for the first time since May 1945. The task of the Standing Conference is to develop common positions and postulates against the German, Polish and European institutions and authorities and to represent.