Silesians

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the tribe, see Silesians (tribe).
Silesians
Related ethnic groups
Other West Slavs, other Germans, Vilamovians
Silesians in the Opole and Silesian Voivodeships of Poland (2011 census)
Silesians in Czech Silesia (2021 census)
Woman in Silesian dress from Cieszyn Silesia, 1914
"Ślōnskŏ nacyjŏ bōła, je a bydzie", which means "Silesian Nation was, is, and will be" - Eighth Autonomy March, Katowice, 18 July 2009

Silesians (

Mount Ślęża) in mid-southern Silesia, which served as a place of cult for pagans before Christianization
.

Ślęża is listed as one of the numerous Pre-Indo-European topographic names in the region (see old European hydronymy).[7] According to some Polonists, the name Ślęża [ˈɕlɛ̃ʐa] or Ślęż [ɕlɛ̃ʂ] is directly related to the Old Polish words ślęg [ɕlɛŋk] or śląg [ɕlɔŋk], which means dampness, moisture, or humidity.[8] They disagree with the hypothesis of an origin for the name Śląsk [ɕlɔ̃sk] from the name of the Silings tribe, an etymology preferred by some German authors.[9]

The term "Silesia" is a Latinized word of the original Polish/Lechitic name "Śląsk" inhabited by the ancient Lechitic tribes called Ślężanie. In Silesia, there are many places of the ancient Slavic Lechitic pagan cult of these ancient people, for example Góra Ślęża.

847,000 people declared themselves to be of Polish

Polish nationality), making it the third largest minority group in the country (93% of Germans living in Poland are in the Polish part of Silesia). 31,301 people declared Silesian nationality in the Czech national census of 2021, including 18,850 of those who declared two nationalities[3] (44,446 in Czechoslovakia in 1991),[10] and 6,361 people declared joint Silesian and Moravian nationality in the Slovak national census.[11]
Over 85% of the population in the Polish part of Upper Silesia declare themselves as Poles, and in the Czech part as Czechs.

During the

Nazi authorities conducted a census in East Upper Silesia in 1940. At the time, 157,057 people declared Silesian nationality (Slonzaken Volk), and the Silesian language was declared by 288,445 people. However, the Silesian nationality could only be declared in the Cieszyn part of the region. Approximately 400–500,000 respondents from the other areas of East Upper Silesia who declared "Upper Silesian nationality" (Oberschlesier) were assigned to the German nationality category.[12] After World War II in Poland, the 1945 census showed a sizable group of people in Upper Silesia who declared Silesian nationality. According to police reports, 22% of people in Zabrze considered themselves to be Silesians, and that number was around 50% in Strzelce County.[13]

History

Archaeological findings of the 20th century in Silesia confirm the existence of an early settlement inhabited by Celtic tribes.[14]

Until the 2nd century some parts of Silesia were populated by Celtic

migration period
.

The

Silesia Walls to guard them from invaders. The north-eastern border with Western Polans was not reinforced, due to their common culture and language.[17]

The 9th-century

Pomeranian tribes that "were considerably more closely related to one another than were the Germanic tribes."[22]

According to Perspectives on Ethnicity, written by

culture. This process is called ethnic consolidation, in which several ethnic communities of the same origin and cognate languages merge into one.[19]

Middle Ages

The Silesians lived on the territory that became part of the

Bishopric of Wrocław in Lower Silesia
in the year 1000.

In the

Crown of Bohemia, which was then passed to the Habsburg monarchy of Austria
in 1526.

Beginning in the 13th century, Slavic Silesia began to be settled by Germans from various parts of Germany, including Prussia and Austria. This led to changes in the ethnic structure of the province. In the Middle Ages, various German dialects of the new settlers became widely used throughout Lower Silesia and some Upper Silesian cities. However, after the era of German colonization, the Polish language was still predominant in Upper Silesia and parts of Lower and Middle Silesia north of the Odra river. Germans usually dominated large cities, and Poles mostly lived in rural areas. This required the Prussian authorities to issue official documents in Polish, or in German and Polish. The Polish-speaking territories of Lower and Middle Silesia, commonly called the Polish side until the end of the 19th century, were mostly Germanized in the 18th and 19th centuries, except for some areas along the northeastern frontier.[26][27]

Modern history

In 1742, most of Silesia was seized in the

Frederick the Great of Prussia, who named himself a 'Piast prince' (he was actually a remote descendant) in his first declaration. The remainder of Silesia, known as Cieszyn Silesia, remained in the Austrian Empire. The Prussian part of Silesia constituted the Province of Silesia until 1918. Later, the province was split into the Prussian provinces of Upper and Lower Silesia. Owing to the development of education, a rebirth of Polish culture took place in the second half of the 1800s in Silesia, which was connected with the emergence of a Polish national movement of a clearly Catholic character. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the fact that Silesians were part of the Polish nation was not questioned.[28] The language and culture of the self-declared Polish Silesians were put under the pressure of the Prussian Kulturkampf policies, which attempted to Germanize them in culture and language. The process of Germanisation was never completely successful. The cultural distance of Upper Silesians from the German population resulted in the development of Polish national awareness at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, culminating in the pro-Polish movements at the end of World War I.[29]

After the Silesian Uprisings, the eastern minor, but richer, part of Upper Silesia became part of the newly restored Poland; most of the land that had been ruled by the Habsburgs following the 1742 war went to Czechoslovakia, while Lower Silesia and most of Upper Silesia remained in Germany. The ethnic situation of the region became more complex as the division of Upper Silesia into Polish and German parts led to ethnic polarization. The people that lived in the western part of Upper Silesia were subject to a strong German Ostsiedlung, where those living in the eastern part of Silesia started to identify with the Polish culture and statehood.[28]

World War II and its aftermath amplified this polarization. Three groups took shape within the Silesian population. The Polish-speaking group was the largest, while the German-speaking group, which primarily lived in central Silesia, was noticeably smaller. A third group supported separatism and an independent Silesian nation-state. The separatists were of marginal importance, finding little support among native Silesians.[30]

Silesians in traditional costumes during the 2015 Autonomy March

The reasons for these transitions were boundary shifts and population changes that came after World War II. As a result, the vast majority of the former German Silesia, even

expelled, but after being sifted out from the ethnic Germans by a process of "national verification", the Silesians classified as "autochthons" by the Polish communist authorities were allowed to remain, and they were intensely polonized.[31]

Between 1955 and 1959, under the supervision of the

Red Cross, some of the remaining Silesians were able to emigrate to West and East Germany to reunite with their families there.[32]
But some had to wait for years. Until 1989, nearly 600,000 Silesians emigrated to Germany.

Between 1945 and 1949, millions of ethnic Poles from the former (pre-1939) eastern Poland (especially

Communist rule in Poland, there have been calls for greater political representation for the Silesian ethnic minority. In 1997, a Katowice court of law registered the Union of People of Silesian Nationality (ZLNS) as the political representative organization of the Silesian ethnic minority, but after two months, the registration was revoked by a regional court.[33]

According to M.E. Sharpe, Silesians inhabiting Poland are considered to belong to a Polish ethnographic group, and they speak a dialect of Polish. United States Immigration Commission also counted Silesian as one of

have been displaced to Germany in 1945-47
.

Language

Main article: Silesian language

The Slavic Silesian language[37] (often called Upper Silesian) is spoken by the Silesian ethnic group or nationality inside Polish Upper Silesia. According to the last census in Poland (2011), some 509,000[38] people declared Silesian to be their native language; however, as many as 817,000 people declared themselves to be of Silesian nationality, not necessarily speaking Silesian, even though the Silesian nationality has not been recognized by Polish governments since its creation in 1945.

There is some contention over whether Silesian is a dialect or a language in its own right. Most Polish linguists consider Silesian to be a prominent regional dialect of

Sorbian, Czech and Slovak. In July 2007, the Silesian language was officially recognized by the Library of Congress and SIL International. The language was attributed an ISO
code: SZL. The first official dictation contest of the Silesian language took place in August 2007.

Although the

Polish
.

Historical data

Prussian Lower Silesia

In year 1819, the Breslau Regency had 833,253 inhabitants, the majority of whom—755,553 (90%)—were German-speakers; with a Polish-speaking minority numbering 66,500 (8%); as well as 3,900 Czechs (1%) and 7,300 Jews (1%).[39] The Liegnitz Regency was inhabited by Germans with a small Sorbian minority.

Table 1. Ethno-linguistic structure of Prussian Silesia in early 19th century (1800–1825)
Ethnic group acc. G. Hassel[39] % acc. S. Plater[40] % acc. T. Ładogórski[41] %
Germans 1,561,570 75.6 1,550,000 70.5 1,303,300 74.6
Poles 444,000 21.5 600,000 27.3 401,900 23.0
Sorbs 24,500 1.2 30,000 1.4 900 0.1
Czechs 5,500 0.3 32,600 1.9
Moravians 12,000 0.6
Jews 16,916 0.8 20,000 0.9 8,900 0.5
Population c. 2.1 million 100 c. 2.2 million 100 c. 1.8 million 100

Prussian Upper Silesia

The earliest exact census figures on

ethnolinguistic or national structure (Nationalverschiedenheit) of the Prussian part of Upper Silesia, come from year 1819. The last pre-WW1 general census figures available, are from 1910 (if not including the 1911 census of school children—Sprachzählung unter den Schulkindern—which revealed a higher percent of Polish-speakers among school children than the 1910 census among the general populace). Figures (Table 1.) show that large demographic changes took place between 1819 and 1910, with the region's total population quadrupling, the percent of German-speakers increasing significantly, and that of Polish-speakers declining considerably. Also the total land area in which Polish language was spoken, as well as the land area in which it was spoken by the majority, declined between 1790 and 1890.[42] Polish authors before 1918 estimated the number of Poles in Prussian Upper Silesia as slightly higher than according to official German censuses.[35]

Plebiscite in Prussian Upper Silesia

Main article:
Upper Silesia plebiscite

In the 1921 plebiscite, 40.6% of eligible voters (people over 20 years old – a minimum age that favoured the German-speaking population, whose

median age was greater than that of Polish-speakers of Upper Silesia, according to censuses of 1900–1910[47]) decided to secede from Germany and become Polish citizens.[48] In total, over seven hundred towns and villages voted in favour of Poland, especially in the counties of Pszczyna,[49] Rybnik,[50] Tarnowskie Góry,[51] Toszek-Gliwice,[52] Strzelce Opolskie,[53] Bytom,[54] Katowice,[55] Lubliniec,[56] Zabrze,[57] Racibórz,[58] Olesno,[59] Koźle[60] and Opole.[61]

Historiography

See also: List of Slavic studies journals

See also

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Silesians.

References

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  61. ^ Die Volksabstimmung in Oberschlesien 1921: Oppeln Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine
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