[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Germans in Poland (and elsewhere)

[Otto]

Good morning Listers,
stay warm.
We all are but a mote of dust, a pixel, of the big picture of history.
For many of us, our past was literally 'ripped away' from us so we now grope as if in the dark for our past identities.

To broaden the view of "what are Germans doing in Poland" would include a study of 2,000 years and more of history. The following, if studied thoroughly, will answer many of your basic questions.  (besides, it is too cold to go out and play)
If any of this is confusing, drop an E-letter to me personally.

As ethnic Germanic peoples, we have been there a long, long time.

-Go to website Wikipedia:
-just KLIKK the URL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
(Wikipedia is becoming a real reference gem)

On the Wiki main page at the upper right is a rectangular search box:
-Type in the names/terms in boldface below, the ones 'between' the brackets < These >
-Search and review them one at a time in the order I present them.

<History of German Settlement in Central and Eastern Europe>

<Ostsiedlung>    (east settling)

<Kraków>    (pronounced Krak'uf)

The old North/South commercial freeway through Poland.
The same river with different names:
Old name"<Vistula>"  German name"<Weichsel>"  Polish modern name-"<Wisła>" River

<Old Prussians>  (I personally refer to them as the South Shore Vikings)
<Goths>
<Germanic peoples>

I refer to the following as the beginning of globalization-
1200's through the 1600's
<Hanseatic League>
(Hanse, low german  Hansa, latin)

<Low German>

<Teutonic Knights>
(They arrived to conquer, not convert)
<State of the Teutonic Order>

<Duchy of Prussia>
(Not all Germans were Lutheran/Not all Poles were Catholic)
(Poles converted until the church invoked a death sentence for converting)
(some of the urban germans were catholic)

<Prussia>

1800's
<Drang nach osten>  ('pressure eastward'-not to be confused with 'east settling' )

<Partitions of Poland>
<History of Germans in Russia, Ukraine and the Soviet Union>
<Baltic Germans>


. . .   Otto
         " The Zen moment..." wk. of January 01, 2013-
                _____________________________________
                  "Answers out there . . .  Seeking us."