Upper Silesia and Politics

Abstract

When the Congress of Vienna in 1815 failed to provide hope for an independent Poland, nationalistic agitation spread, and in 1846 revolutionaries in Cracow sent agitators to Upper-Silesia. However, they caused unrest only in religious matters, because they felt that Polish national propaganda had no prospect of success. At the All-Slavic Congress of 1848 in Prague it was proposed to look after the interest of all Poles living in Prussia. The name Silesia was mentioned, but those who made the motion were not Upper-Silesians. In the Prussian Parliament of the same year there were only Poles from the province of Posen who claimed to speak for the “Upper-Silesian Poles.”¹ All this the National Poles did against their better judgment, for in their opinion the Upper-Silesians were considered to be at best fallen-away and backward brothers. As late as 1890, von Stablewski, archbishop of Gnesen-Posen, a leader of the Poles in Prussia. said: “It would be unjust and false, to include the Upper-Silesians in the circle of Polish aspirations; the Upper-Silesians never had any Polish national feeling and could never have it.”²