Relations between Polish and German Coal-Miners in the Ruhr, 1871–1914

Abstract

The coal-mines of the Ruhr region first recruited large numbers of Polish-speaking workers from the eastern provinces of Prussia in the 1870s.¹ According to the last survey of the languages spoken by the Ruhr’s miners, by 1897 over 18 per cent were German citizens who spoke only Polish.² Estimates of the subsequent growth of the percentage of Polish-speaking miners derive from statistics on the number of miners born in the provinces of East and West Prussia and Poznania and in the Oppeln (Opole) regency known as Upper Silesia. The portion of the work force that came from these areas of the Prussian East expanded by nearly half between 1898 and 1908, when it reached a peak of almost 38 per cent of the total.³ Significantly, by 1913 Poznania, the only province of Germany with a Polish-speaking majority, provided more migrants than the other eastern regions of Prussia, its portion of the total workforce having risen by more than half from 9 per cent in 1898 to nearly 14 per cent.⁴ In addition, the migrants’ descendants born in the provinces of Rhineland and Westphalia, where by 1910 they constituted nearly 33 per cent of the Polish-speaking population, also began to work in the mines.⁵ Thus, before the First World War Polish-speaking miners came to form a quarter or perhaps even a third of the Ruhr’s 400 000 coal-miners.