My niewidzialni. Historia Polaków w Niemczech
We invisible. History of Poles in Germany

Author(s): Peter Oliver Loew
Subject(s): History, Middle Ages, Modern Age, Recent History (1900 till today), 6th to 12th Centuries, 13th to 14th Centuries, 15th Century, 16th Century, 17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century, Pre-WW I & WW I (1900 -1919), Interwar Period (1920 - 1939), WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Post-War period (1950 - 1989), Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Present Times (2010 - today)
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Poles in Germany; Prussian partition; resettlements; migrations; Polish minority in Germany
Summary/Abstract: The author presents the history of Poles in Germany: it deals with the history of Polish immigration, as well as the historical Polish minorities in Germany, from the Middle Ages to the present day. Poles have been a part of German society for centuries, but only after the partitions did they become a large minority in the Kingdom of Prussia. Soon, socio-economic changes triggered migration processes, as a result of which, between the beginning of the 19th century and sometimes today, eight million Poles moved to areas where the majority of the German-speaking population was. Today, Poles - the second largest minority group in Germany - form a very diverse community. Among them there are displaced persons and late displaced persons who do not admit to their Polish identity, and yet speak Polish at home - often in Silesian dialect. There are also displaced persons who want to integrate with German society as quickly as possible and those who try to remain Poles. There are people who emigrated for economic or political reasons - some of them have Polish citizenship, and some German. Hundreds of thousands of Polish seasonal workers come to Germany every year. At the same time, there are descendants of people who were thrown to Germany by the Second World War, as well as economic migrants from the pre-war period. Peter Oliver Loew attempted to sketch the overall picture, despite the obvious methodological problems related both to the ambiguity of the terms Germans and Poles, and to the concept of minorities.

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