Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany by Rogers BRUBAKER

Author:Rogers BRUBAKER
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

The Vicissitudes of Prussian-German Polenpolitik

It is difficult to distinguish ethnonational from state-national concerns in Prussian and German Polenpolitik.70 Yet one can discern a shift in accent from the statist concern to secure the political loyalty of Poles to the Prussian (and later the German) state, to a nationalist concern to Germanize the Reichspolen, and ultimately to an ethno-demographic concern to Germanize the eastern territories of the Reich by colonization.71 Even under Bismarck there are significant traces of this shift in accent. Bismarck’s distance from the ethnonational point of view is well known.72 Yet he was not equally distant from the two sorts of ethnonational concerns I have distinguished. Toward the national aspirations of Germans outside the Reich, Bismarck was indifferent; toward demands for intervention on their behalf, or, in the case of Austro-Germans, for their incorporation into the Reich, he was hostile.73 This hostility was based on considerations of both foreign and domestic policy. On the one hand, Bismarck wanted to assure the international community of the “saturation” of the Reich and of its lack of interest in further territorial acquisitions; on the other hand, he wanted to preserve North German-Protestant-Prussian dominance in the Empire and was resolutely opposed to residual grossdeutsch demands for the incorporation of the Austro-German Catholics.74

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