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German minority in Upper Silesia: Opole Voivodeship (west) and Silesian Voivodeship (east). German minority in Warmia and Masuria. According to the 2021 census, most of the Germans in Poland (67.2%) live in Silesia: 59,911 in the Opole Voivodeship, i.e. 41.6% of all Germans in Poland and a share of 6.57% of the local population; 27,923 in the Silesian Voivodeship, i.e. 19.4% of all Germans in ...
The history of Germans in Poland dates back almost a millennium. Poland was at one point Europe's most multiethnic state during the medieval period. Its territory covered an immense plain with no natural boundaries, with a thinly scattered population of many ethnic groups, including the Poles themselves, Germans in the cities of West Prussia ...
According to the 2002 census, 147,094 Germans live primarily in the region of Opole, Katowice and Częstochowa (south-western Poland). [10] Germans first came to Silesia during the Late Middle Ages, [20] and were expelled from regions of present-day Poland which were German-speaking for centuries. Gorals
The remaining German minority in Poland (109,000 people were registered in the 2011 census [91]) enjoys minority rights according to Polish minority law. There are German speakers throughout Poland, and most of the Germans live in the Opole Voivodeship in Silesia. Bilingual signs are posted in some towns of the region.
Germans first came to Silesia during the Late Medieval Ostsiedlung. [34] The last Polish census of 2011 showed that the Silesians are the largest ethnic or national minority in Poland, Germans being the second; both groups are located mostly in Upper Silesia. The Czech part of Silesia is inhabited by Czechs, Moravians, Silesians, and Poles.
During World War II, expulsions were initiated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. The Germans deported 2.478 million Polish citizens from the Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, [30] murdered 1.8 to 2.77 million ethnic Poles, [31] another 2.7 to 3 million Polish Jews and resettled 1.3 million ethnic Germans in their place. [32]
Refugees moving westwards in 1945. During the later stages of World War II and the post-war period, Germans and Volksdeutsche fled and were expelled from various Eastern and Central European countries, including Czechoslovakia, and from the former German provinces of Lower and Upper Silesia, East Prussia, and the eastern parts of Brandenburg and Pomerania (Hinterpommern), which were annexed by ...
In the course of the Ostsiedlung in the medieval period, Germans had settled in the region, especially in the western parts. Beginning in the 18th century there were several attempts at German colonisation, the first by the Prussian ruler Frederick the Great, who settled around 300,000 colonists in the Eastern provinces of Prussia, and simultaneously aimed to reduce Polish ownership of land.