Page 91 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

rule, and they criticized the deleterious effects that Germanizing policies, including Bismarck’s

Kulturkampf and the internal colonization program, had had on Polish cultural, economic, and

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political developments. But while traditional Polish historiography tended to depict the creation of
the new state as the triumph of long-term anti-German sentiments that culminated in the Greater

Polish Uprising of 1918-19, most Polish-speaking populations in prewar Posen had not pushed for

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independence. In fact, attitudes toward the German state were doubled-edged. Even if German
imperial personnel had described Poles through the language of backwardness, Poznanian elites

argued that the experiences of German rule, along with their own practices of organic work within

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the empire, made them the most effective carriers of European civilization in the new Polish state.

After all, when post-Bismarckian state officials attempted a policy of “uplift” (Hebungspolitik)

among Polish populations, Posen—with its new municipal facilities and regulated streets—had

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formed the centerpiece. As Polish-speaking elites in Poznań looked to navigate their position in the

wake of the German empire’s collapse, they articulated a civilizing mission that drew upon the same

terms as those used by the imperial authorities that had governed here until recently.

Poznań was also a largely Endecja-supporting city. In the 1922 election for the sejm (the

lower chamber of the Polish parliament), 76% of voters had supported the right-wing electoral bloc

(Chrześcijański Związek Jedności Narodowej), while an even higher number (86%) had supported

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the bloc in the election for the upper house (senat). Building on Endecja traditions, Poznanians

promoted themselves as a counterpoint to the “foreign” legacies of the Russian empire in two

68 Zygmunt Zalewski, “Rezultaty rządów niemieckich w Poznaniu,” Kronika Miasta Poznania, November 30, 1923,
209-215.
69 Jens Boysen, “Simultaneity of the Un-simultaneous: German Social Revolution and Polish National Revolution in
the Prussian East, 1918/19,” in Germany 1916-23: A Revolution in Context, edited by Klaus Weinhauer, Anthony
McElligott, and Kirsten Heinsohn (Bielefeld, 2015), 232.
70 William W. Hagen, “National Solidarity and Organic Work in Prussian Poland, 1815-1914,” Journal of Modern
History 44, no. 1 (1972): 38–64.
71 Polak-Springer, Recovered Territory, 26.
72 Tadesuz and Witold Rzepecki, Sejm i Senat 1922-1927: podręcznik dla wyborców, zawierający wyniki wyborów
w powiatach, okręgach, województwach, podobizny senatorów i posłów sejmowych oraz mapy poglądowe (Poznań,
1923). For Sejm: 513; for Senate: 546-7.

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