[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] "Germans and Poles"

[Otto]

Good day Rachael,
Questions had been asked about baptism.

This is a historical view, not a religious one, even though a  
religious undercurrent is felt in the underlying structure of society.

It will help persons to view through the eyes of their forefathers.
City dwellers, village dwellers, farmers, Protestant, Catholic, Pole,  
German,... and so on.
As territories were developed people flowed in, not necessarily due  
to a freedom to prosper, a freedom to believe, but knowing those  
freedoms would be enforced and protected by the ruling government.  
These people did not care for governmental taxation to uphold these  
freedoms, yet no one ever will. Governmental protection served as  
impetus for some Poles to convert from their traditional belief.

In the first half of the 1700's Frederick ll the Great (Der alter  
Fritz) and Voltaire elsewhere strongly influenced the Enlightenment  
movement. Separation of Church and State, Freedom of Religion,  
Mandatory education for the masses... and so on. Trickle down to the  
provincial territories was slow and is acknowledged here. Old Fritz  
himself was Lutheran. (for awhile, more-so a free thinker)

Protestantism under its various brotherhoods, the evangelical  
Lutherans, freedom and villages, seemed to have an affinity for each  
other. Poland itself was fairly open-minded to the Reformation in the  
1500's.  I also acknowledge here that a fair amount of Germans in the  
large citie$ in the territories were Catholic.

In the 1600's things changed. (this also illuminates the life of a Pole)
An excerpt from a writing, in 1995, by Marian Hillar, a Danzig  
educated M.D., Phd.
"The recent dramatic events in Poland linked to changes in all of the  
Eastern Europe due to the overthrow of an imposed political system  
elicit comparison with the situation in Poland in the XVIIth century  
when the development of the nation was interrupted by imposition of  
religious laws. From 1668 to 1776 apostasy from the catholicism was  
punished by death. The death penalty was then changed to banishment  
in 1768. Poland was the last country in Europe to abolish such a law  
in 1921. "




. . .   Otto

             " The Zen moment..." wk. of April 1, 2007-
              ________________________________
              "Like fishing. . . always beyond the surface."