God’s Playground. A History of Poland, Vol. 2. 1795 to the Present

THE MODERN POLISH FRONTIERS 391

rival ambitions in Galicia, Pantaleimon Kulish was writing of the 'abominable
duel and the bedevilled frenzy' of 'the head-strong Ruthenian and his implaca-
ble enemy of the past thousand years' — a duel of which 'not one of their descen-
dants will be proud'. Even earlier, Taras Shevchenko was warning his
compatriots against the temptation to rejoice in Poland's misfortunes:

You boast, because we once

Brought Poland to calamity...

And so it was; Poland fell;

But you were crushed by her fall as well.^39

In the intervening years, such magnanimous words have been ignored all too
often.
By removing the ancient territorial feud, the settlement of 1945 achieved by
force what Poles and Ukrainians had proved incapable of achieving by mutual
consent. The two related families which had lived for centuries under the same
roof were roughly torn apart, and forced to move into separate quarters. Some
condemned the forcible separation out of hand: others have compared it to 'an
inevitable divorce' - unpleasant in itself but preferable to the perpetual discord
of an incompatible marriage. All must conclude that it provided both parties
with a period of respite, a time for sober reflection on the failures of the past and
the opportunities of the future.
Of all Poland's neighbours, however, the Germans had the most reason to
query the official version of Polish History as propagated in Warsaw. Whatever
they may have felt about the irrevocable loss of their eastern provinces - and
they seem to feel a mixture of guilt, resentment, and indifference - they cannot
consign a substantial slice of their heritage to oblivion. According to German
historians of the old school, the permanent link of Pomerania and Silesia with
the German lands was forged in 1138, and that of Prussia by the arrival of the
Teutonic Order in 12.2.6. Today, although the more extreme German claims
have been proved false, no amount of sophistry can dismiss the fact that the
German element was dominant in those parts for the last six or seven hundred
years. No one can deny that the population of Prussia's 'Polish provinces'
played an integral role in modern German History at its most brilliant epoch.
No one possessing even the most elementary knowledge of German culture can
overlook the contribution to its development made by its 'easterners', from
those cities and provinces recently incorporated into Poland, (see Map 22.)
If the propensity of the Polish authorities to build memorials to famous bat-
tles fought on their territory were to be applied in anything like an equitable
manner, the present monuments at Legnica and Grunwald would be joined by
a long list of others: by a monument to Wallenstein's engagement at Steinau-am-
Oder (Scinawa) in 1627; to Charles XII's victories over the Saxons at Ostenberg
(Puttusk), Punitz (Punice), and Fraustadt (Wschowa); to Frederick the Great's
victories at Mollwitz (Malujowice, 1741), where he fled the field in needless
panic, at Hohenfriedburg (Dobromierz, 1745), at Zorndorf (Sarbinowo, 1758),