9° PREUSSEN
the start. Only the Polish nobility could make its voice heard in both chambers.
As from 1871, the government of Prussia was overlaid by the confederative
machinery of the German Empire. Whilst the King and Ministers of Prussia
assumed direction of the Empire's central institutions, additional electoral pro-
cedures had to be introduced for returning deputies to the Reichstag or 'Imperial
Diet'. Between 1872 and 1888, local government too, was reconstructed.
Henceforth, Prussia was to be divided into fourteen provinces, of which five -
Pomerania, Posen, Silesia, West Prussia, and East Prussia - contained a native
Polish element. Each province was subdivided into Regierungsbezirke
(Governmental Regions), and each region into Stadt-kreise (Urban Districts),
and Landkreise (Rural Districts). Although democratic elective institutions
functioned at all levels in the Landtag, the Bezirksrat (Regional Council), and
the Kreiserat (District Council), all executive 'officers were appointed by, and
were responsible to, the central government at all times. In such areas which
were not ceded to Poland in 1918-21, these separate Prussian institutions con-
tinued to operate until the advent of the Nazis in 1933.
The temper and the possibilities of the Poles in Prussia were far better suited
to conciliation than to revolution. In Posen, the conciliatory approach was
strongly advocated by Dr Karol Marcinkowski (1800-46), a local physician and
philanthropist, who in 1838 founded the Polish 'Bazaar' which housed a club, a
shop selling folk crafts, and a bookstore. In 1841, he launched the Society for
Educational Assistance (TNP) which granted scholarships to poor students.
Marcinkowski's spiritual heirs can be said to include Karol Libelt (1807-75), a
former revolutionary and defendant in the Berlin Trials who was converted by
the failure of the 1848 adventure; August Cieszkowski, the philosopher, who
initiated the short-lived Polish League; and above all, Hipolit Cegielski
(1813-68), who, from humble beginnings behind the counter of the Bazaar,
became a leading industrialist and the owner of the city's largest factory. Both
Libelt and Cegielski were involved in the local press, and both were elected to
the Prussian Landtag. Under their leadership, the Polish movement in Posnania
developed marked characteristics. It was very staid and bourgeois, and in many
ways was an avid imitator of German virtues. The Poles of Posen were con-
sciously striving to outdo their German neighbours at their own game. 'If you
are a Polish housewife', urged an article written in 1872, 'make your butter
cleaner and better than the Germans do: have better vegetables, linen, fruit and
poultry. In this way, you will save both yourself and Poland. .. Learning, work,
order, and thrift are our new weapons.'^4
Education was a crucial issue. At the time of the Partitions, Prussia had noth-
ing comparable to the schools of the National Education Commission in Poland
(which Prussian sources none the less contemptuously dismissed as 'Potemkin's
villages'). But after 1809, under Humboldt, a thorough, three-stage system of
state education was constructed. The universities of Halle, Berlin, Konigsberg,
and Breslau were of formidable quality, and attracted some of the greatest
minds of the age. At the secondary level they were supported by the state