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To szopen You are absolutely right and you know it and I know it about all the complicated and diverse history of people in Europe. But I live in America since 1962. People here in general do not know anything about European or any other history besides what they hear daily: The USA is the greatest. Now I am over simplyfying and there are very educated people who know every detail. But the general public and overwhelming majority do not know anything about Europe other than WWI and WWII propaganda. Therefore I am writing my inputs in wikipedia with the majority of English speaking people in mind who live all around me. When you give them too many details they just get totally confused. In the last 10 years or so it has gotten better and I know from schools that now they show a little bit of European history in school books. But believe me the onesided Cold War education was totally black and white and the WW II education is still totally black and white. When you go to any book store here they have isle after isle of books all on WW II. Then if you are lucky you find maybe one or two books on a particular country. I started collecting historical facts by bits and pieces .The main reason why I spend this much time, which I should not, on inputting in this wikipedia , is to show the family relations of the leaders of the different countries in Europe.When you read about the "Polish crown" it is to me important to know who these people actually were. It is important to me that the Polanen who came into Germania were taken in as Brother of the Empire and received land in lien ( land on loan), the same as the other rulers who pledged allegiance to the emperors. And you are right , when you notice , that so many places in todays Poland were German speaking. The cities in Poland Ukraine and Lithuania were founded with German Magdeburg law and the cities had self government by a city council or Rat. Therefore you have the Rathaus ( Ratus ?) in Danzig. And no Germans wanted to be taken over by any other authority. Berliners did not like it when they had to give up the free independend Hanseatic League city status when the Kurfuerst electors of Brandenburg took their seat in Berlin. And the German phone book is full of Germans with Polish names, who all came to Germany over the centuries, rather than living under "Poland" which was actually under Russia. Another point about the German names of places in Poland. First of all this wikipedia is in English and there are guidelines about keeping the English names of places and in addition giving local names. Taw tries to change everything into Polish , which is wrong. Poland supposedly signed an agreement, that the German language is an official language again (I do not know if this is for the German parts taken over by Poland after 1945 only , or if it is valid for all of Poland).Therefore the German placenames (which are often also the English) are still absolutely correct to use. I have a 1998 Swedish atlas that shows both the German and the Polish names. I have a ca 1600 atlas, that shows a large German speaking city of Bromberg and below it a small town Bedgocz (or Bidgocz). I have looked at many church records of the LDS http://www.familysearch.com go to records and places. ,type in Bromberg or whatever town and you will find German churches going back as far as Lutherism. Some areas may have been officially in the kingdom of Poland but they were not Polish . Again ,when you look at the "Polish kings" , how many were Polish ? And as I have found out ,all dukes , kings of Poland pleadged allegiance to emperor, they had to, because they received land lien, on loan and if the son did not want to pledge allegiance, the land went back to the empire. That was the feudal law system. And it would be interesting to read the 1466 Treaty of Thorn, but I can tell you already, the emperor and the pope declined it in 1467, therefore it is not ratified, it is void. The emperor was still overlord of Prussia, even when Albrecht of Brandenburg Ansbach Prussia Hohenzollern pledged allegiance to his uncle Sigismund I (of the Jagiello Habsburg family). Albrecht was put under ban. So there are many different histories to everything and the Lutheran history is in opposit to the Catholic history. I just hope that many more people where you live, go and look at actual history in contrast to the official state histories. On the Schwiebus question I can tell you that I looked for Zuellichau (Polish Sulichow ?) on the Silesia map and it was not on there.I know my grandmother was born in Zuellichau, I have been there as child during bomb attacks on Berlin. Then I found out that officially Zuellichau has been in Brandenburg since ca 1450. But my family still considered it Silesia. I did find it on the Brandenburg map. On that 997 year for first time mentioning of Danzig ( Gyddancyk). Danzig as Gothiscandza -Gothic coast is mentioned centuries earlier. 997 AD is the year when the first Polish attempt together with St Adalbert to take over Prussians failed. And since Posen then stood under Magdeburg and Adalbert ( who had baptised Hungary) was educated at Magdeburg ,the German and Hungarian post office issued a commemorative stamp in 1997. On Lithuania, read the wikipedia on Lithuania and Latvia Riga. Many of these parts were ultimately under the empire. That is why it is so important to actually look at all the rulers ,their families and the dynasties of that time. That big "Polish" kingdom of the 15th century , largest land in Europe is more a myth, perpetuated by English speaking people in the 19 and 20 century, who had a great interest to have the European empires disappear. It is, what is called here "in the best interest of the economy". H. Jonat |
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