Drzymała's wagon
Drzymała's wagon | |
---|---|
wóz Drzymały | |
General information | |
Type | House on wheels |
Owner | Michał Drzymała |
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Drzymała's wagon (
In 1886, by resolution of the
While the campaign against Polish landownership largely missed its aims, it produced a strong opposition with its own hero, Drzymała. In 1904 he purchased a plot of land in Pogradowitz in the Posen district of Bomst, but found that the newly implemented Prussian Feuerstättengesetz ("furnace law") enabled local officials to deny him as a Pole the permission to build a permanent dwelling with an oven on his land. The law considered any place of stay a house if it stayed in one place for more than 24 hours. To get around the rule, he set himself up in a former circus caravan and for several years tenaciously defied in the courts all attempts to remove him. Each day, Drzymała moved the wagon a short distance, thereby exploiting the loophole and avoiding any legal penalties, until in 1909 he was able to buy an existent farmhouse nearby.[1]
The case attracted publicity all over Germany.[2] The German Kulturkampf measures and the Settlement Commission ultimately succeeded in stimulating the Polish national sentiment that they had been designed to suppress.
See also
- Anti-Polish sentiment
- Germanisation of Poles during Partitions
- Kulturkampf
- Spite house
References
- ^ a b "Nationalheld auf Rädern", Zeit Online, 2004, http://www.zeit.de/2004/26/A-PolBoden?page=all
- ISBN 978-3-87969-386-3.