A few weeks ago one of the readers made a comment about Prussia. A family member of hers claimed to have Prussian ancestry, not Polish. Personally, I find this statement a bit odd, but that’s just me, OK?
Prussia, Prusy in Polish (a.k.a. Germany, or one of its many incarnations) was a neighbor of Poland for many, many centuries. Eventually, on August 5, 1772, it added a big chunk of Poland to its own territory.
Remember the Partitions (rozbiory)? Well, that’s when it happened. Russia and Austria got a nice piece each, too.
You see, Prussia was very oddly shaped – there was East Prussia and West Prussia. And between them was a bit of Poland. Of course they didn’t like it, and as soon as they got a chance, they took care of that issue – by adding the Polish territory to their own.
click on the map to make it bigger
Here, on the map you can see how Poland disappeared. The white area bordered by all the blue and the see – that’s East Prussia. The darker blue area to the left of that – that used to be Poland. The slightly less dark blue area under the dark blue area used to be Poland, too. That chunk went to Prussia during the second partition.
So unless someone’s ancestors came from the white bit of East Prussia, or the white area to the left of the blue pieces – West Prussia, I’m not sure just how Prussian they could be otherwise.
If I remember correctly, I also have a bunch of relatives who claimed Prussian ancestry. They spoke German and had goofy German last names. And during communist times they all emigrated to West Germany.
It just goes to show you that Poles come in all different flavors.
Yet for some very odd reason it’s more common for certain Poles from the Prussian part of Poland (after the Partitions) to say they are of Prussian origin than for Poles from the Russian part to admit to Russian origin.
This post is in no way intended to stir controversy. It was simply to show you how Poland ceased to exist. Geographically, that is.
Image: Wikipedia
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). And young people often use it's shortened form "nara" (just like you said) 
6 Comments
I think it would be more accurate to say that the map shows how the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ceased to exist…
Technically Prussia wasn’t ‘Germany’ but a state in the North (and especially Northeast) of the German speaking areas (before WWII of course) of Europe.
Most of what’s now Southern Germany didn’t really have anything to do with Prussia before the establishment of the German empire.
Prussia was an especially … influential part of the German speaking areas and had a fair amount of world influence in educational and military affairs (IIRC the modern education system of Japan was modeled after the Prussian system).
In modern Poland, Poznań, historically part of Prussia as Posen, prides itself on its Prussian influence (and has historically been among the most European, forward looking and efficiently managed cities in Poland).
Hi Michael!
That’s true, and that’s why I said it was “Germany” in one of its many incarnations, and when the capital of Prussia was moved to Berlin, Prussia became de facto Germany.
Gdańsk also prides itself on its German (and Dutch) influence, however it took some time for the influence to re-emerge after WW2. But Prussian influence on Polish soil is one thing, and a Pole (coming from a village by Warsaw IIRC) claiming to be of Prussian and not Polish decent is another. But then again, people would have claimed Klingon ancestry if that could have helped them leave Poland during the communist times…
X,
Thank you for pointing it out! How silly of me not to realize that there was no such thing as Poland, but the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Duh! I must have been asleep in my history classes.
I’m looking for a Michael A Farris who was a student at the University of Florida in the early 1990s and who moved to Poland to teach. Have I found him?
The Prussians were also a Baltic ethnic group in the area, who lent their name to the state. The language they spoke was Old Prussian, the most closely related living languages of which are Latvian and Lithuanian. This language saw extinction about three hundred years ago when its speakers gradually disappeared into the more numerous populations of Germans, Poles and Lithuanians surrounding them.
I have tried to research my last name with no luck. Older family members are passed away. The farthest back I found is my great grandfather Jon Kwaschnefski who left Bremen Germany for the US in the late 1800’s. Polish, German, or Prussian? Just want to know to tell my son. I have always said Polish, but often times Polish names have milder sounding names than mine. Any help would be appreciated.