Prussian Amphibians: The Construction of German and Polish Nationalism in Posen

Abstract

This paper investigates the importance of the “Bambergers†to the development of German nationalist discourse during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly in the writings of Max Bär. The Bambergers, the ancestors of German-speaking migrants who had settled near Poznan in the early eighteenth century, were used as a warning of the potential for the assimilation of Germans to Polish nationality. For German nationalists, the mythologized tale of their assimilation became evidence for the necessity of a more aggressive Germanization policy in the Prussian East.