THE PRUSSIAN PARTITION 99rapid strides. In 1894, the Deutscher Ostmarkenverein (German Society for the
Eastern Borders) was formed in Posen to promote the welfare of German cul-
ture and German interests. Known to the Poles as the 'Hakata', from the initials
of its three guiding spirits — F. Hansemann, H. Kennemann, and H. Tiedemann
- it soon gained the reputation of a powerful, extremist lobby. Some of its slo-
gans were reminiscent of later Nazi talk of German Lebensraum.^15 Petty anti-
Polish measures were intensified. Street names, and official signs, even in
cemeteries or public lavatories, were Germanized. Inowroc?aw was changed to
Hohenzalza in line with many other places-names. Bonuses were paid not just
to teachers, but to any German official who would serve in the east. Posen had
the highest percentage' of government employees in any city of the Empire.
Schools, railroads, libraries, and museums were built on the strength of special
grants. Every effort was made to exaggerate and inflame the German element's
sense of insecurity. Even the socialists joined the chauvinist fashion. Max
Weber, who joined the Pangerman League as proof of his loyalty, once
remarked in public: 'Only we Germans could have made human beings out of
these Poles.'^16
On the Polish side, national feeling spread into classes and areas which hith-
erto had rarely considered themselves Polish. The Polish national movement,
known to officialdom as the Agitationspartei, put down grass roots in all the
Polish provinces. In Posnania, it assumed the proportions of a veritable mass
movement. In May 1901, at Wreschen (Wrzesnia), near Posen, a school strike
was launched against the imposition of German into religious classes. Children
who played truant were flogged. Parents who supported their children were
gaoled. In 1906-7, school strikes affected almost half the schools of the
province. In Silesia, in the 1890s, a Polish press appeared, and, in the persons of
W. Korfanty (1873-1939) and Adam Napieralski (1870-1918), the first Polish
deputies to the Reichstag. Among the Kashubs, the poet Hieronium Dudowski
coined the unheard-of slogan: 'No Kashubia without Poland — no Poland with-
out Kashubia'. In Eastern Prussia in 1890, the first Polish candidate ever was
elected to the Landtag at Allenstein. A national revival of such widespread
proportions was inconceivable only one generation earlier.
To the outside observer at this stage, the exponents of German and Polish
nationalism displayed striking similarities. Both cultivated myths about their
own exclusive blood and culture; both believed in their unique civilizing mission
in Eastern Europe; both regarded the other as a 'reactionary' obstacle to the
achievement of their 'rights', and as a usurper of the 'ancient land of their fore-
bears'. The Polish nobleman who sold his estates to the Colonization
Commission, like the German who took a Polish bride, were both denounced as
renegades to their nation.
In fin de siecle Prussia, historical symbols enflamed growing Polish-German
antagonism. In the feverish imaginations of late Gothic-Romanticism, the
Germans of the eastern provinces were tempted to see themselves as the sons
of the Teutonic Knights — an embattled minority of skilled and dedicated