History
Upon the German defeat in World War I, another Greater Poland Uprising broke out in 1918, which aimed to incorporate the lands once annexed by Prussia into a re-established Polish state. The forces of the Polish Military Organisation were able to oust the German administration from the bulk of the Greater Polish lands, whereafter the Posen governor (Landeshauptmann) Ernst von Heyking was forced to retire to Meseritz (Międzyrzecz) and de facto only ruled over the far western, predominantly German settled districts at the border with the adjacent Prussian provinces of Pomerania, Brandenburg and Silesia.
The Polish advance was halted, after the German forces had re-organised in several Freikorps units, and the demarcation line became the basis of the ruling by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, adjudicating the parts occupied by Polish forces uti possidetis to the Second Polish Republic. The governmental power of the German administration was confined to the smaller western parts of Posen and West Prussia, the Prussian state government was represented by the former Bromberg supervisor (Regierungspräsident) Friedrich von Bülow, who relocated his administrative seat to Schneidemühl. With the entry into force of the German Ostmark law on 1 July 1922, the province was created out of those smaller western parts of former Posen and West Prussia that remained with the Weimar Republic.
In view of the previous clashes of arms and the "lost" territories, the remaining German population from the beginning had a strong nationalistic attitude, with the national conservative German National People's Party (DNVP) emerging as the strongest political power in the provincial elections. Friedrich von Bülow, himself a member of the national liberal German People's Party, remained Oberpräsident until his retirement in 1933, whereafter he was succeeded by the Meseritz DNVP politician Hans von Meibom. After the DNVP dissolved in the course of the Nazi Gleichschaltung process, von Meibom was disempowered and replaced by the Nazi Oberpräsident of neighbouring Brandenburg, Wilhelm Kube. Kube, notorious for his corruption, ruled over both provinces until he was deposed after entering into a conflict with the Nazi jurist Walter Buch, father-in-law of mighty Martin Bormann. Posen-West Prussia was further on ruled with Brandenburg under Nazi Oberpräsident Emil Stürtz until it was dissolved in 1938, when its territory was divided between the adjacent provinces of Silesia, Pomerania and Brandenburg.
Read more about this topic: Posen-West Prussia
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