THE PRUSSIAN PARTITION 95In entering the town from the Central Station, we obtain a view of the imposing
fortifications... Following either the Muhlen Strasse ... or the St. Martin-Strasse, we
reach the spacious andhandsome Wilhelm-Platz, bounded on the E. by the Stadt-
Theater. In front of the Theatre is a Monument to the soldiers of the 5th Corps d'Armee
who fell at Nachod in 1866. At the corner of the Wilhelms-Strasse, is the Raczynski
Library, a building adorned with 24 Corinthian columns, and containing 30,000 vols,
presented to the town by Count Raczynski (open daily 5-8) ... At right-angles to the
Wilhelms-Platz, runs the Wilhelms-Strasse one of the principal thoroughfares... On the
N. it ends at the Kanonen-Platz, with the imposing new Military Headquarters, in front
of which is the War Monument for 1870-1, with a statue of William I by Barwald...
Farther to the S. is the Schlossberg, with the Royal Palace, now containing the Municipal
Archives (open 9-1.), and the collections of the Historical Society of the province of
Posen. At the S. end of Wilhelms-Str., in the churchyard of St. Martin's Church, is a mon-
ument to the Polish Poet, Mickiewicz, (d. 1855).
To the E. of the Wilhelm-Platz, is the ALTE MARKT ... The Rathaus in the Alte
Markt, was built in 1508 and restored in I535 by Giovan Battista di Quadro, an Italian
architect, who added the loggia. The tower, 214 ft high in the Baroque Style, commands
an extensive view. .. The quarter to the N.E., is mainly inhabited by Jews, one of whose
synagogues is in the Dominikaner-Str...
The suburbs of Posen on the right bank of the Warthe are called the Wallischei (in
Polish Chwaliszewo) and Schrodka, and are inhabited mainly by Poles of the poorer
classes. Beyond it... the CATHEDRAL erected in its present form in 1775, is architec-
turally uninteresting but contains several treasures of art ... the sumptuous Golden
Chapel, erected in 1842 by a society of Polish nobles is in the Byzantine Style. Fine gilded
bronze group of the first Polish kings, by Rauch, (their remains are in the sarcophagus
opposite)...
The Museum of Count Melzynski, and the collections of the Gesellschaft der Freunde der
Wissenshafn, a Polish Society, occupy the same building, Muhlen-Str. 35. They include
paintings (of little value and doubtful authenticity), a library, coins, and prehistoric
antiquities, (open daily 12-5, 1 M, Sun lopf.; catalogue and inscriptions exclusively in
Polish.. .)
The Protest. Pauli-Kirche close by, was built in 1867-9, " Fortt Winiary affords the
best survey of the environs, (tickets at the Com-mandent's Office, Wilhelms-Platz 16, 50
pf.)io
In the countryside, ruthless measures applied in the realm of land ownership
met with little success. In 1886, Bismarck created the Prussian Colonization
Commission, the Ansiedlugskommission, to encourage German settlers. In the
government's eyes, this was a defensive measure designed to counteract the
drastic Ostflucbt or 'Flight from the East' which in twenty years before the First
World War was to denude the eastern provinces of some three million German
inhabitants. In Polish eyes, it was an aggressive measure designed to drive the
Poles from their land. Furnished with an initial fund of 500 million marks, the
Commission was empowered to purchase vacant estates and then to sell them to
approved candidates. Even so, in the twenty-seven years of its existence to 1913,
it could not prevent a decline both in the absolute number of German house-
holders working the land and in the over-all area of their holdings. The