[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Trolling the Web treasures

[Manfred Hensel]

Am 13.04.2016 um 21:42 schrieb Richard Benert:
> Question:  was he right about the character of north and south Germans?
a summary of prejudice at it´s best  ;-)
and also some geografic inaccuracy...

North Germans may have been "from Prussia, Mecklenburg and other areas" but
today the people of Holstein, Hamburg, Bremen, Lower Saxony, in general
the areas of
North, East and West Friesland are meant and Mecklenburg too along the
Baltic Sea coast.

South Germans are those from Württemberg, Baden, Bavaria, perhaps
Palatine too,
but not including those from Saxony in my opinion,
and the term "Schwaben" describes a quite special species of people and
even an area
between Stuttgart and Lake Constance (north to south) and Black Forest
and Lech
(west to east).

Respective the language each of the mentioned ethnic groups, not only
the "north Germans"
used their specific dialect, which is far away from todays High German.
The taunting saying "der Schwabe kann alles, nur kein Hochdeutsch" or
"the Swabian is able to manage everything but not speaking in High
German" is well known.

In question our ancestors being colonists in former Russian Poland I
have read a short
characterisation as follows:
some, most or almost all of the new colonists coming from Württemberg or
Hesse had not
been aware (correct english??) of the jungle, the old forests of beeches
they got to cultivate.
They have been craftsmen, manufacturers because the land area they came
from has been
narrow and poor ... the reason why they left their home.
A lot of them became desperate about the huge duty.

Against that their neighbours coming from e.g. Pomerania were familiar
with this kind of work and
it is told that those families even left their parcel of land they had
cultivated and farmed some
years and pushed along to cultivate new land areas and pushed along to ....
It is said about these people they were stubborn, bullish, hard but
diligent and the polish authority
had a lot of trouble with them,
but these characteristics depends on the point of view of the author,
his own history and the spirit
of the time.

Manfred

-- 
Manfred Hensel