Origins of The Idea
The Polish people had constituted one of the largest minorities in the German Empire since its creation in 1871. It was as a result of the earlier acquisitions made by Prussia, the very state that initiated the Unification of Germany. The Kingdom of Prussia, with its capital in Berlin after 1451, acquired historic lands with significant Polish population in a series of military operations, and, in the second half of the 18th century, had seized western territories of the Polish Kingdom by taking part in the Partitions of Poland and the Silesian Wars with Austria.
The idea of pan-Germanism, demanding the unification of all Germans in one state, including the German diaspora East of the imperial border, grew out of Romantic nationalism. Some pan-Germanists believed that Germans were ethnically superior to other peoples — including Slavs, whom they viewed as inferior to the German "race" and culture. The Nazi concept of Lebensraum in turn demanded "living space" for German people, claiming overpopulation of Germany and alleged negative traits of heavy urbanisation in contrast to agricultural settlement. The desired territories were to be taken particularly from Poland. Both pan-Germanism and Lebensraum theory viewed Poles as an obstacle to German hegemony and prosperity as well as future expansion of the German state.
Read more about this topic: Expulsion Of Poles By Germany
Famous quotes containing the words origins of, origins and/or idea:
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)