https://doi.org/10.31261/WSN.2005.05.11
The process of the polarisation of national attitudes among the population of Upper Silesia, which started in the second half of the 19th c., was not finished until the division of this region after the First World War. There still existed a numerous group of the nationally indifferent population, knows popularly as an ‘intermediate class’. Those people were the main object of Polish and German efforts to win them over in the campaign before the national Plebiscite. After 1922, the struggle continued. Before the elections to the local councils, to the Silesian Seym, to the Seym of the Republic, to personnel councils, church councils, health-insurance funds, both the Poles and the Germans attempted to secure the votes of their electorate. Both sides counted such people as belonging to their nationality. From a statistic point of view, this group enhanced the number of the German minority, and strengthened the German social and political organisations, and the German minority schools. The members of this group were often given priority, before the Polish workers, in the matters of employment. The group in question also gave the German politicians some excuse for a very subjective interpretation of the national divisions in the region, as the nationally undetermined persons tended, on the whole, to be more pro-German than pro-Polish, even though they were from an ethnically Polish stock. In the article, the reader may find many examples of the behaviour of the nationally indifferent people, and the German point of view on the matter has also been presented.
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Vol. 4 (2005)
Published: 2025-08-13
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