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Silesia

Silesia (German, Schlesien), a district in the eastern part of Germany, between 49° 28' and 52° 7' N. latitude and 13° 50' and 19° 20' E. longitude, was formerly united witn the kingdom of Bohemia in the form of a ducby (or rather group of duchies), and later unequally shared between Prussia and Austria. Geographically it was divided into Lower and Upper Silesia, the whole of the former and part of the latter belonging to Prussia. The total area was 17,540 square miles.

An important part of the province of Prussian Silesia belonged to the Kingdom of Poland, but on the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire it became the football of conquest, kicked about from one king to another until it finally fell permanently into the hands of Germany, where it remained until the armistice of 1918. Its great economic value consistrf of its very rich bituminous coal deposits. This coal, together with minerals such as iron, lead, and zinc, made it one of the great and rich manufacturing districts of the German Empire. Germans made Silesia as important for the coal and iron industry as Lorraine-tenfold more so than the entire Saar Valley. Upper Silesia was second only to the Ruhr Valley in mining and industrial wealth.

Owing to the character of its coal, by the time of the Great War it was one of the centers of the German dye industry. Upper Silesia, owing to the character of its coal deposits, was one of the great centers of the German coal-tar industry. This industry has for its ostensible object the making of dyes, in which Germany has led the world. But the very chemical processes which produce coal-tar dyes also produce high explosives and poison gas. Americans in authority at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 regarded the German dye industry as a peace industry and were either ignorant or refused to recognize that it was the basis of the manufacture of the most powerful explosives and the most deadly poison gas.

On the outbreak of the Hussite wars, German Silesia was frequently invaded and ravaged by the Hussite leader Procopius, and on the death of the latter the Bohemians acknowledged the authority of the Emperor. The death of Sigismund in 1437, however, again created a situation in which the interests of the ruling classes in Silesia clashed with a national movement under the leadership of George of Podebrad, who, in 1448, led an army to Prague, assumed the Regency, and after the death of Ladislas, in 1458, was elected king. Silesia was thus under the rule of a Czech monarch. In 1446 George was excommunicated by Pope Paul II, and in 1469 Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, was proclaimed King of Bohemia and Moravia at Olmtitz, and acknowledged by the German Silesians. On the death of George, in 1471, Vladislav, son of Casimir IV of Poland, was elected his successor by the National Party in Bohemia, a step which was followed by civil war between the Germans and the Poles, issuing in the temporary triumph of the former.

The provinces of Silesia, Moravia, and Lusatia were, in accordance with the Treaty of Brunn in 1479, ceded during his lifetime to Matthias, who, in turn, recognized the authority of Vladislav in Bohemia. On the death of Matthias, in 1490, Silesia passed again to the Bohemian Crown, but, after the decease of his son and successor, Louis, King of Bohemia and Hungary, the Bohemians elected as their sovereign the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, afterwards Emperor Ferdinand I. Silesia thus became part of the Hapsburg dominions. During the Reformation, the Reformed Church had obtained a strong hold on Silesia, and, for a time, the growth of Protestantism continued undisturbed. The accession of Rudolf II, in 1576, witnessed the beginning of a policy of active religious repression, but in 1609, in consequence of the revolt of his brother Matthias, Rudolf issued Majestdtsbriefe for Bohemia and Silesia, permitting freedom of conscience, in order to obtain the support of the Bohemians.

The Piast Dukes, who soon ceased to be Polish, and hung rather upon Bohemia, and thereby upon Germany, made a great step in that direction, when King Johann persuaded most of them, all of them but two, "pretio ac prece," to become Feudatories (Quasi-Feudatories, but of a sovereign sort) to his Crown of Bohemia. The two who stood out, resisting prayer and price, were the Duke of Jauer and the Duke of Schweidnitz, - lofty-minded gentlemen, perhaps a thought too lofty. But these also Johann's son, Kaiser Karl IV., "marrying their heiress," contrived to bring in; - one fruitful adventure of Karl's, among the many wasteful he made, in the German Reich. Schlesien was henceforth a bit of the Kingdom of Bohemia; indissolubly hooked to Germany; and its progress in the arts and composures, under wise Piasts with immigrating Germans, we guess to have become doubly rapid.

Schlesien, hanging to Bohemia,, extensively adopted Huss's doctrines; still more extensively Luther's; and that was a difficult element in its lot. It cost above a Century of sad tumults, Zisca Wars; above Two Centuries, including the sad Thirty-years War; - which miseries, in Bohemia Proper, were sometimes very sad and even horrible. But Schlesien, the outlying Country, did, in all this, suffer less than Bohemia Proper; and did not lose its Evangelical Doctrine in result, as unfortunate Bohemia did, and sink into "fanatical torpor, and big Crucifixes of japanned Tin by the wayside," though in the course of subsequent years, named of Peace, it was near doing so. Here are the steps, or unavailing counter-steps, in that latter direction.

On the outbreak of the Hussite wars, German Silesia was frequently invaded and ravaged by the Hussite leader Procopius, and on the death of the latter the Bohemians acknowledged the authority of the Emperor. The death of Sigismund in 1437, however, again created a situation in which the interests of the ruling classes in Silesia clashed with a national movement under the leadership of George of Podebrad, who, in 1448, led an army to Prague, assumed the Regency, and after the death of Ladislas, in 1458, was elected king. Silesia was thus under the rule of a Czech monarch. In 1446 George was excommunicated by Pope Paul II, and in 1469 Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, was proclaimed King of Bohemia and Moravia at Olmtitz, and acknowledged by the German Silesians. On the death of George, in 1471, Vladislav, son of Casimir IV of Poland, was elected his successor by the National Party in Bohemia, a step which was followed by civil war between the Germans and the Poles, issuing in the temporary triumph of the former. The provinces of Silesia, Moravia, and Lusatia were, in accordance with the Treaty of Brunn in 1479, ceded during his lifetime to Matthias, who, in turn, recognized the authority of Vladislav in Bohemia.

On the death of Matthias, in 1490, Silesia passed again to the Bohemian Crown, but, after the decease of his son and successor, Louis, King of Bohemia and Hungary, the Bohemians elected as their sovereign the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, afterwards Emperor Ferdinand I. Silesia thus became part of the Hapsburg dominions.

In 1537 occurred the Erbverbruderung; Duke of Liegnitz, and of other extensive heritages, making Deed of Brotherhood with Kur-Brandenburg; - Deed forbidden, and so far as might be, rubbed out and annihilated by the then King of Bohemia, subsequently Kaiser, Ferdinand I. The Duke of Liegnitz had to give up his parchments, and become zero in that matter: Kur-Brandenburg entirely refused to do so; kept his parchments, to see if they would not turn to something.

By 1624 Schlesien, especially the then Duke of Liegnitz, and poor Johann (Jeorge, Duke of Jagerndorf, cadet of the then Kur-Brandenburg, went warmly ahead into the Winter-King project, first fire of the Thirty-years War; sufferings from Papal encroachment, in high quarters, being really extreme. Warmly ahead; and had to smart sharply for it; poor Johann George with forfeiture of Jagerndorf, with Reiches-Acht (Ban of the Empire), and total ruin; fighting against which he soon died. Act of Ban and Forfeiture was done tyrannously, said most men; and it was persisted in equally so, till men ceased speaking of it;- Jagerndorf Duchy, fruit of the Act, was held by Austria, ever after, in defiance of the Laws of the Reich. Religious oppression lay heavy on Protestant Schlesien thenceforth; and many lukewarm individualities were brought back to Orthodoxy by that method, successful in the diligent skilled hands of Jesuit Reverend Fathers, with fiscals and soldiers in the rear of them. By 1648 the Treaty of Westphalia mended much of this, and set fair limits to Papist encroachment;- had said Treaty been kept: but how could it? By Orthodox Authority, anxious to recover lost souls, or at least to have loyal subjects, it was publicly kept in name; and tacitly, in substance, it was nolated more and more.

By the Treaty of Westphalia, Silesia passed, with Bohemia, under the rule of the Imperial House.

In the course of the eighteenth century, there arose in northern Germany a Power that disputed with Austria hegemony in the Empire, and that in the nineteenth century expelled her from the German world in which she had for so many centuries played the first part Prussian expansion has this peculiarity, that it did not proceed from a single centre, but from three clearly marked areas which were gradually linked together. These areas were the Mark of Brandenburg, the duchy of Prussia, and the Prussian possessions on the Rhine. In the great wars at the beginning of the eighteenth century the Kings of Prussia, for such the Electors of Brandenburg became in 1701, fought to secure their possessions on the Rhine and to extend their dominions on the Baltic.

At the peace of Hubertusburg (1763) Prussia was left in possession of nearly the whole of Silesia, with the frontier as it still existed a century later. Frederick exerted himself to atone for the evils brought upon the district through the ravages of war by introducing colonists and capital, reforming the administration, granting complete religious liberty, and the like. That this seed did not fall on ungrateful soil seems proved by the modern prosperity of Silesia and the loyalty with which its inhabitants would cling to the Prussian cause. Silesia was a Catholic province, and in 1765 the King issued a long General Regulations (Code) for the Schools of Silesia, much like the previous (1763) Code for Prussia.

Prussian Silesia was the largest province of Prussia, with an area of 15,560 square miles forming the southeastern limb of the kingdom, and was hounded by Brandenburg, Posen, Russian Poland, Galicia, Austrian Silesia, Moravia, Bohemia, and the kingdom and province of Saxony. Besides the bulk of the old ducby of Silesia, it comprised the countship of Glatz, a fragment of the Neumark, and part of Upper Lusatia, taken from Saxony in 1815. The province was divided into three governmental districts - Liegnitz and Breslau corresponding to lower Silesia, while Oppeln took in the greater part of upper, southern, or mountainous Silesia. At the census of 1880 the population of Silesia was 4,007,925.

Silesia, half the size of Ireland, was the largest province in Prussia. It contained, in 1914, a million Poles, mostly settled near the frontier, and was the greatest manufacturing and mining district of eastern Germany. Silesia was thrust out like a wedge between Russia and Austria. While one of the richest divisions of Germany, its industrial advantages did not compare with those of lands along the lower Rhine. Wealth was not so evenly distributed there as in many other parts of the country. Silesia had vast estates, rich mines and great factory plants, owned by a few wealthy men, while the laboring classes were composed of the very poor. This was in part accounted for by the enormous seasonal influx of pauper labor that took place from Russian Poland and Galicia. Especially did Polish men and women compete in Silesia for work as agricultural laborers. They regularly swarmed across the border in seed-time and harvest and in a few cents of daily German pay found an opportunity for better living.

When the German armies surrendered in November, 1918, and the new Republic of Poland was erected, it was first proposed at the Paris Peace Conference to cede Upper Silesia outright to the Polish Republic, under the principle of making political and geographical boundaries correspond with racial lines, for the population of Upper Silesia is more than sixty per cent Polish. Germany, however, made a great outcry. Her protests were partly supported by American idealists at Paris who had been captivated by Mr. Wilson's doctrine of self-determination, and who therefore thought that the people of Upper Silesia ought to have something to say about it at the ballot-box. There was also a small but powerful party in Great Britain who objected to giving Upper Silesia outright to Poland, partly because they thought British commerce with Germany would be interfered with if the province were transferred to Poland, and partly because of a certain curiously narrowminded British sentiment against Roman Catholic countries, and Poland is a Roman Catholic country. So the Peace Conference compromised and left the matter to be determined by a plebiscite or election.

The result was that Germans poured into Upper Silesia by thousands, like the "carpetbaggers" in the days of Reconstruction after the Civil War. Germans had even gone from the United States to participate in the vote and to "save Upper Silesia", if possible, "for the Fatherland." The plebiscite took place on March 20, 1921, and the results were proclaimed on April 24; but the international commission failed to agree upon and therefore did not recommend a frontier line. In the whole plebiscite area 59.6 per cent, of the votes were cast for Germany and 40.4 percent for Poland. In certain districts toward the North and West, where the agricultural population is predominant, a great majority of the communes voted for Germany. In other districts, towards the South, where the inhabitants are chiefly of the agricultural and mining classes, the vote of the population was largely in favor of Poland.

On October 12, 1921, the Council of the League of Nations unanimously adopted a recommendation fixing the boundary line between Germany and Poland in Upper Silesia. The plebiscite area embraces only about 4,100 square miles, with a population in 1919 of 2,060,000, but its rich coal and zinc deposits and highly developed iron and steel industries make the region of great economic importance. The decision of the Allies allots to Poland about 1,300 square miles, but this zone comprises 47 per cent, of the population, threefourths of the coal production, all of the zinc mines and works, and half of the capacity of steel works. In this area about 510,000 votes were cast, of which about 285,000 were for Poland and 225,000 for Germany.

In 1913 the mines in Upper Silesia which were assigned to Poland produced approximately 32,500,000 tons of coal, and those assigned to Germany approximately 10,500,000 tons, the output for the whole area being valued at $75,000,000 annually. The total production of coal in Germany in the same year, excluding Alsace-Lorraine and the Saar Basin, was 174,000,000 tons, of which the production in the territory assigned to Poland constituted 19 per cent. The pre-war production of coal in the present territory of Poland, exclusive of Upper Silesia, was about 9,000,000 tons, so that the production of Poland wss multiplied about four times by the decision. Since the pre-war consumption amounted to about 18,000,000 tons, it was evident that Poland will now have a considerable surplus of coal for exportation. Poland, naturally, was treated by German writers as a mere outlying annex to France, and these two losses by Germany, Lorraine and Silesia, were described as raising France from a poor fourth in relative world-trade to a more dangerous prospective rival for England than Germany had become in 1914. The logical inference for some was that Germany, far from repentance, was already nursing the idea of a victorious war based upon aviation and poison gas. The Allgemeine Zeitung remarked , "the Pole has neither racial nor historical right in Upper Silesia. Not an inch of Upper Silesian earth belongs to him, not a piece of Upper Silesian coal, not an ounce of Upper Silesian ore, not a pit, nor a miner's shack."