Following the Treaty of Stettin of 1630, the town (along with most of Pomerania) was allied to and occupied by the Swedish Empire, which managed to keep the western parts of Pomerania after the death of Bogislaw XIV in 1637. From the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Stettin became the Capital of Swedish Pomerania[58]. Stettin was turned into a major Swedish fortress, which was repeatedly besieged in subsequent wars. The Treaty of Stettin (1653) didn't change this, but due to the downfall of the Swedish Empire after Charles XII, the city went to Prussia in 1720. Instead Stralsund became Capital of the last remaining parts of Swedish Pomerania 1720-1815.
Wars inhibited the city's economic prosperity, which had undergone a deep crisis during the devastation of the Thirty Years' War and was further impeded by the new Swedish-Brandenburg-Prussian frontier, cutting Stettin off from its traditional Farther Pomeranian hinterland. Due to a Plague during the Great Northern War, the city's population dropped from 6,000 people in 1709 to 4,000 in 1711. In 1720, after the Great Northern War, Sweden was forced to cede the city to King Frederick William I of Prussia. Stettin was made the capital city of the Brandenburg-Prussian Pomeranian province, since 1815 reorganised as the Province of Pomerania. In 1816 the city had 26,000 inhabitants.
The Prussian administration deprived Stettin of her right to administrative autonomy, abolished guild privileges as well as its status as a staple town, and subsidised manufacturers. Also, colonists were settled in the city, primarily Huguenots.
The Protestant Huguenots and immigration to Prussia
Louis XIV of France gained the throne in 1643 and acted increasingly aggressively to force the Protestant Huguenots to convert to Catholicism.
At first he sent missionaries, backed by a fund to financially reward converts to Catholicism. Then he imposed penalties, closed Huguenot schools and excluded them from favoured professions. Escalating, he instituted dragonnades, which included the occupation and looting of Huguenot homes by military troops, in an effort to forcibly convert them. In 1685, he issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, revoking the Edict of Nantes and declaring Protestantism illegal.
The revocation forbade Protestant services, required education of children as Catholics, and prohibited emigration. It proved disastrous to the Huguenots and costly for France. It precipitated civil bloodshed, ruined commerce, and resulted in the illegal flight from the country of hundreds of thousands of Protestants many of who were intellectuals, doctors and business leaders whose skills were transferred to Britain as well as Holland, Prussia, and South Africa. Four thousand emigrated to the North American colonies, where they settled in New York and Virginia, especially. The English welcomed the French refugees, providing money from both government and private agencies to aid their relocation. Those Huguenots who stayed in France became Catholics and were called "new converts".
After this, Huguenots (with estimates ranging from 200,000 to 1,000,000) fled to surrounding Protestant countries: England, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, and Prussia – whose Calvinist Great Elector Frederick William welcomed them to help rebuild his war-ravaged and underpopulated country.
The Huguenot refugees are offered shelter in Brandebourg in 1686
Many came from border areas, for instance Metz and its region where the Protestant community was considerable, but also from Picardie, Champagne and Sedanais.
Others came from Southern France – Dauphiné, Provence, Languedoc, Cévennes- and were directed towards Switzerland. But it could not keep them all, and was only a stop on the way to the United Provinces and mainly Germany.
The princely family of Brandenburg, the Hohenzollern, converted to Calvinism as early as 1613, without imposing it on the population who remained Lutheran, Calvinism being the religion of the Court.
Frederick William welcoming Huguenot refugees
Frederic-William (1620-1688), the prince-elector of Brandenburg, known as the Great Elector, published and circulated the Edict of Potsdam (the 29th of October, 1685) granting French refugees particularly generous conditions to come and settle in his state devastated by wars. The edict guaranteed that emigrants would be taken charge of in terms of material assistance, passport, transportation to Brandenburg, freedom to choose the settlement place in the prince’s states, freedom of worship in their native language with a pastor paid by the prince, tax exemption for the first four years, option to occupy vacant housing or to build new houses with some help, equal rights and privileges as the natives, but especially naturalisation without any requirement to integrate immediately.
The Edict written in German and in French was widely circulated in German countries, in Switzerland and smuggled into France. The publicity continued under his son, prince-elector Frederic II who came in power in 1688, and was to become Frederic I, king of Prussia in 1701. During his reign the Huguenots had the same rights as German subjects, while keeping the privileges granted by the Edict of Potsdam, meaning that they had their own courts of justice, schools and French churches. 20,000 was the estimated number of refugees who took advantage of these offers.
The Jewish community
From 1683 to 1812, one Jew was permitted to reside in Stettin, and an additional Jew was allowed to spend a night in the city in case of "urgent business". These permissions were repeatedly withdrawn between 1691 and 1716, also between 1726 and 1730 although else the Swedish regulation was continued by the Brandenburg-Prussian administration. Only after the Prussian Edict of Emancipation of 11 March 1812, which granted Prussian citizenship to all Jews living in the kingdom, did a Jewish community emerge in Stettin, with the first Jews settling in the town in 1814. Construction of a synagogue started in 1834; the community also owned a religious and a secular school, an orphanage since 1855, and a retirement home since 1893. The Jewish community had between 1,000 and 1,200 members by 1873 and between 2,800 and 3,000 members by 1927–28. These numbers dropped to 2,701 in 1930 and to 2,322 in late 1934.
Prussia conferred citizenship on the Prussian Jews in 1812, though this by no means resulted in full equality with other citizens. Jewish emancipation did not eliminate all forms of discrimination against Jews, who often remained barred from holding official state positions. The German federal edicts of 1815 merely held out the prospect of full equality, but it was not genuinely implemented at that time, and even the promises which had been made were modified. However, such forms of discrimination were no longer the guiding principle for ordering society, but a violation of it. In Austria, many laws restricting the trade and traffic of Jewish subjects remained in force until the middle of the 19th century in spite of the patent of toleration. Some of the crown lands, such as Styria and Upper Austria, forbade any Jews to settle within their territory; in Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia many cities were closed to them. The Jews were also burdened with heavy taxes and imposts.
In the German kingdom of Prussia, the government materially modified the promises made in the disastrous year of 1813. The promised uniform regulation of Jewish affairs was time and again postponed. In the period between 1815 and 1847, no less than 21 territorial laws affecting Jews in the older eight provinces of the Prussian state were in effect, each having to be observed by part of the Jewish community. At that time, no official was authorized to speak in the name of all Prussian Jews, or Jewry in most of the other 41 German states, let alone for all German Jews.
Nevertheless, a few men came forward to promote their cause, foremost among them being Gabriel Riesser (d. 1863), a Jewish lawyer from Hamburg, who demanded full civic equality for his people. He won over public opinion to such an extent that this equality was granted in Prussia on April 6, 1848, in Hanover and Nassau on September 5 and on December 12, respectively, and also in his home state of Hamburg, then home to the second-largest Jewish community in Germany.
In Württemberg, equality was conceded on December 3, 1861; in Baden on October 4, 1862; in Holstein on July 14, 1863; and in Saxony on December 3, 1868.
After the establishment of the North German Confederation by the law of July 3, 1869, all remaining statutory restrictions imposed on the followers of different religions were abolished; this decree was extended to all the states of the German empire after the events of 1870.
Map showing the distribution of Jews in the German Empire in the 1890s
Prisoners of Franco Prussian War
After the Franco Prussian war of 1870–1871, 1,700 French POWs were imprisoned in deplorable conditions, resulting in the death of 600 of them; after the Second World War monuments in their memory were built by the Polish authorities.
A "New Town"
Until 1873, Stettin remained a fortress. When part of the defensive structures were levelled, a new neighbourhood, Neustadt ("New Town") as well as water pipes, sewerage and drainage, and gas works were built to meet the demands of the growing population.
The Society of Polish-Catholic Workers
On 20 October 1890, some of the city's Poles created the "Society of Polish-Catholic Workers" in the city, one of the first Polish organisations. In 1897 the city's ship works began the construction of the pre-dreadnought battleship Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse.
In 1914, before World War I, the Polish community in the city numbered over 3,000 people. These were primarily industrial workers and their families who came from the Poznań (Posen) area and a few local wealthy industrialists and merchants. Among them was Kazimierz Pruszak, director of the Gollnow industrial works and a Polish patriot, who predicted the eventual return of Szczecin to Poland.
The Port and Industry
During the interwar period, Stettin was Weimar Germany's largest port on the Baltic Sea, and her third-largest port after Hamburg and Bremen. Cars of the Stoewer automobile company were produced in Stettin from 1899 to 1945. By 1939, the Reichsautobahn Berlin–Stettin was completed.
Stettin played a major role as an entrepôt in the development of the Scottish herring trade with the Continent, peaking at an annual export of more than 400,000 barrels in 1885, 1894 and 1898. Trade flourished till the outbreak of the First World War and resumed on a reduced scale during the years between the wars.
Voting in the Nazis
Votes for the Nazi Party in the March 1933 elections
In the March 1933 German elections to the Reichstag, the Nazis and German nationalists from the German National People's Party (or DNVP) won most of the votes in the city, together winning 98,626 of 165,331 votes (59.3%), with the NSDAP getting 79,729 (47.9%) and the DNVP 18,897 (11.4%).
In 1935 the Wehrmacht made Stettin the headquarters for Wehrkreis II, which controlled the military units in all of Mecklenburg and Pomerania. It was also the area headquarters for units stationed at Stettin I and II; Swinemünde; Greifswald; and Stralsund.
The Polish population in the inter-war years
In the interwar period, the Polish minority numbered 2,000 people. A number of Poles were members of the Union of Poles in Germany (ZPN), which was active in the city from 1924. A Polish consulate was located in the city between 1925 and 1939. On the initiative of the consulate and ZPN activist Maksymilian Golisz, a number of Polish institutions were established, e.g., a Polish Scout team and a Polish school. German historian Musekamp writes, "however, only very few Poles were active in these institutions, which for the most part were headed by employees of the [Polish] consulate." The withdrawal of the consulate from these institutions led to a general decline of these activities, which were in part upheld by Golisz and Aleksander Omieczyński.
Intensified repressions by the Nazis, who exaggerated the Polish activities to propagate the idea of this being an infiltration, led to the closing of the school. In 1938 the head of Szczecin's Union of Poles unit, Stanisław Borkowski, was imprisoned in Oranienburg. In 1939 all Polish organisations in Stettin were disbanded by the German authorities. Golisz and Omieczyński were murdered during the war. According to Musekamp, the role of the pre-war Polish community was exaggerated for propagandistic purposes in post-war Poland which made "the numerically insignificant Polonia of Stettin... probably the best-researched social group" in the history of the city". After the defeat of Nazi Germany, a street in Szcecin was named after Golisz.
Stettin during World War II
On 15 October 1939, neighbouring municipalities were joined to Stettin, creating Groß-Stettin, with about 380,000 inhabitants, in 1940. The city had become the third-largest German city by area, after Berlin and Hamburg.
Slave Workers
As the war started, the number of non-Germans in the city increased as slave workers were brought in. The first transports came in 1939 from Bydgoszcz, Toruń and Łódź.
Female forced laborers wearing "OST" (Ostarbeiter) badges are liberated from a camp near Lodz.
Ostarbeiter (German: lit. "Eastern worker") was a Nazi German designation for foreign slave workers gathered from occupied Central and Eastern Europe to perform forced labor in Germany during World War II. Deportations of civilians commenced at the beginning of the war and reached unprecedented levels following Operation Barbarossa of 1941.
"Lets do agricultural work in Germany. Report immediately to your Vogt" from recruiting post.
During the war, 135 forced labour camps for slave workers were established in the city. Most of the 25,000 slave workers were Poles, but Czechs, Italians, Frenchmen and Belgians, as well as Dutch citizens, were also enslaved in the camps.
Deportation of Jews from Stettin
In February 1940, the Jews of Stettin were deported to the Lublin reservation.
International press reports emerged, describing how the Nazis forced Jews, regardless of age, condition and gender, to sign away all property and loaded them onto trains headed to the camp, escorted by members of the SA and SS. Due to publicity given to the event, German institutions ordered such future actions to be made in a way unlikely to attract public notice.
Allied Air Raids
Allied air raids in 1944 and heavy fighting between the German and Soviet armies destroyed 65% of Stettin's buildings and almost all of the city centre, the seaport, and local industries.
Polish Home Army intelligence assisted in pinpointing targets for Allied bombing in the area of Stettin.
The city centre in 1945
The city itself was covered by the Home Army's "Bałtyk" structure, and Polish resistance infiltrated Stettin's naval yards. Other activities of the resistance consisted of smuggling people to Sweden.
Nearly 400,000 Germans fled or were expelled from Stettin in 1945, and the city was severely underpopulated for the next 30 years. The Soviet Red Army captured the city on 26 April.
Reversal of German colonization and the mass population displacement
The colonization of this part of northern Europe by a German population was called the Ostsiedlung (literally east settling), in English called the German eastward expansion, and was the medieval eastward migration and settlement of Germanic-speaking peoples from the Holy Roman Empire.
The 20th century wars and nationalist policies severely altered the ethnic and cultural composition of Central and Eastern Europe. After World War I, Germans in reconstituted Poland were set under pressure to leave the Polish Corridor, the eastern part of Upper Silesia and Poznań. Before World War II, the Nazis initiated the Nazi-Soviet population transfers, wiping out the old settlement areas of the Baltic Germans, the Germans in Bessarabia and others, to resettle them in occupied Poland. Room for them was made during World War II, in line with the Generalplan Ost by expulsion of Poles and enslaving these and other Slavs according to the Nazi's Lebensraum concept. While further realization of this mega plan, aiming at a total reconstitution of Central and Eastern Europa as a German colony, was prevented by the war's turn, the beginning of the expulsion of 2 million Poles and settlement of Volksdeutsche in the annexed territories yet was implied by 1944.
With the Red Army's advance and Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945, the ethnic make-up of Central and Eastern and East Central Europe was radically changed, as nearly all Germans were expelled not only from all Soviet conquered German settlement areas across Central and Eastern Europe, but also from former territories of the Reich east of the Oder-Neisse line, mainly, the provinces of Silesia, East Prussia, East Brandenburg, and Pomerania. The Soviet-established People's Republic of Poland annexed the majority of the lands while the northern half of East Prussia was taken by the Soviets and made a new exclave of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic. The former German settlement areas were resettled by ethnic citizens of the respective succeeding state, (Czechs, Slovaks and Roma in the former Sudetenland and Poles, Lemkos, ethnic Ukrainians in Silesia and Pomerania). However, some areas settled and Germanised in the course of the Ostsiedlung still form the northeastern part of modern eastern Germany, like the Bundesländer Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony and east of the limes Saxoniae in the Holstein part of Schleswig-Holstein.
The medieval colonization areas, in modern times constituted as the eastern provinces of the German Empire and the Austrian Empire, were inhabited by some 30 millions of Germans by the beginning of the 20th century. The westward withdrawal of the political boundaries of Germany, partly in 1919, but substantially in 1945, was followed by the removal of some 15 millions, to be concentrated within the borders of present-day Germany and Austria. Only the first 12th-century colonization area remained German in language and culture.
Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50)
The post war expulsion of the Germans formed a major part of the geopolitical and ethnic reconfiguration of Eastern Europe in the aftermath of World War II, that attempted to create ethnically homogeneous nations within redefined borders.[3] Between 1944 and 1948 about 31 million people, including ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) as well as German citizens (Reichsdeutsche), were permanently or temporarily moved from Central and Eastern Europe.
By 1950, a total of approximately 12 million Germans had fled or been expelled from east-central Europe into Allied-occupied Germany and Austria. The West German government put the total at 14 million, including ethnic German migrants to Germany after 1950 and the children born to expelled parents. The largest numbers came from preexisting German territories ceded to Poland and the Soviet Union (about 7 million), and from Czechoslovakia (about 3 million). During the Cold War, the West German government also counted as expellees 1 million foreign colonists settled in territories conquered by Nazi Germany during World War II.
The death toll attributable to the flight and expulsions is disputed, with estimates ranging from 500,000, up to a West German demographic estimate from the 1950s of over 2 million. More recent estimates by some historians put the total at 500-600,000 attested deaths; they maintain that the West German government figures lack adequate support and that during the Cold War the higher figures were used for political propaganda. The German Historical Museum puts the figure at 600,000, maintaining that the figure of 2 million deaths in the previous government studies cannot be supported. The current official position of the German government is that the death toll resulting from the flight and expulsions ranged from 2 to 2.5 million civilians.
The removals occurred in three overlapping phases, the first of which was the organized evacuation of ethnic Germans by the Nazi government in the face of the advancing Red Army, from mid-1944 to early 1945. The second phase was the disorganised fleeing of ethnic Germans immediately following the Wehrmacht's defeat. The third phase was a more organised expulsion following the Allied leaders' Potsdam Agreement, which redefined the Central European borders and approved expulsions of ethnic Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Many German civilians were sent to internment and labour camps where they were used as forced labour as part of German reparations to countries in eastern Europe. The major expulsions were complete in 1950. Estimates for the total number of people of German ancestry still living in Central and Eastern Europe in 1950 range from 700,000 to 2.7 million.
The expulsion policy was part of a geopolitical and ethnic reconfiguration of postwar Europe. In part, it was retribution for Nazi Germany's initiation of the war and subsequent atrocities and ethnic cleansing in Nazi-occupied Europe. Allied leaders Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States, Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom, and Joseph Stalin of the USSR, had agreed in principle before the end of the war that the border of Poland's territory would be moved west (though how far was not specified) and that the remaining ethnic German population were subject to expulsion. They assured the leaders of the émigré governments of Poland and Czechoslovakia, both occupied by Nazi Germany, of their support on this issue.
One of the reasons given for the population transfer of Germans from the former eastern territories of Germany was the claim that these areas had been a stronghold of the Nazi movement. Neither Stalin nor the other influential advocates of this argument required that expellees be checked for their political attitudes or their activities. Even in the few cases when this happened and expellees were proven to have been bystanders, opponents or even victims of the Nazi regime, they were rarely spared from expulsion. Polish Communist propaganda used and manipulated hatred of the Nazis to intensify the expulsions.
Stettin becomes Szczecin from 5 July 1945
After the occupation of the city by the Soviet Red Army, Polish authorities tried to gain control, but in the following month, the Polish administration was twice forced to leave. Finally the permanent handover occurred on 5 July 1945.
However, in the meantime, part of the German population had returned, believing it might become part of the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, and the Soviet authorities had already appointed the German Communists Erich Spiegel and Erich Wiesner as mayors.
Because Stettin is located mostly west of the Oder river, there was an expectation that the river would become Poland's new western border, placing Stettin in East Germany. This would have been in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement between the victorious Allied Powers, which envisaged the new border to be in "a line running from the Baltic Sea immediately west of Swinemünde, and thence along the Oder River[...]".
Because of the returnees, the German population of the town swelled to 84,000. The mortality rate was at 20%, primarily due to starvation.
However, Stettin and the mouth of the Oder River (German: Stettiner Zipfel) became Polish on 5 July 1945, as had been decided in a treaty signed on 26 July 1944 between the Soviet Union and the Soviet-controlled Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN) (also known as "the Lublin Poles", as contrasted with the London-based Polish government-in-exile).
On 4 October 1945, the decisive land border of Poland was established west of the 1945 line, but it excluded the Police (Pölitz) area, the Oder river itself, and the Szczecin port, which remained under Soviet administration. The Oder river was handed over to Polish administration in September 1946, followed by the port between February 1946 and May 1954.
The city was transferred to Poland. Szczecin was transformed from a German into a Polish city. As the flight and expulsion of the German population went on, the Poles expelled from the East were greeted by the new authorities. To ease the tensions between settlers from different regions, and help overcome fear caused by the continued presence of the Soviet troops, a special event was organised in April 1946 with 50,000 visitors in the partly destroyed city centre.
Brichah and Jewish "DP's"
In 1945 and 1946 the city was the starting point of the northern route used by the Jewish underground organisation Brichah to channel Jewish "Displaced Persons", or "DP's", from Central and Eastern Europe to the American occupation zone.
Bricha (Hebrew: בריחה, translit. Briẖa, "escape" or "flight") was the underground organized effort that helped Jewish Holocaust survivors escape post–World War II Europe to the British Mandate for Palestine in violation of the White Paper of 1939. It ended when Israel declared independence and annulled the White Paper.
The movement of Jewish refugees from the Displaced Persons camp in which they were held (one million persons classified as "not repatriable" remained in Germany and Austria) to Palestine was illegal on both sides, as Jews were not officially allowed to leave the countries of Central and Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union and its allies, nor were they permitted to settle in Palestine by the British.
In late 1944 and early 1945, Jewish members of the Polish resistance met up with Warsaw ghetto fighters in Lubin to form Bricha as a way of escaping the antisemitism of Europe, where they were convinced that another Holocaust would occur. After the liberation of Rivne, Eliezer and Abraham Lidovsky, and Pasha (Isaac) Rajchmann, concluded that there was no future for Jews in Poland. They formed an artisan guild to cover their covert activities, and they sent a group to Cernăuţi, Romania to seek out escape routes. It was only after Abba Kovner, and his group from Vilna joined, along with Icchak Cukierman, who had headed the Jewish Combat Organization of the Polish uprising of August 1944, in January 1945, that the organization took shape. They soon joined up with a similar effort led by the Jewish Brigade and eventually the Haganah (the Jewish clandestine army in Palestine).
After the Kielce pogrom of 1946, the flight of Jews accelerated, with 100,000 Jews leaving Eastern Europe in three months. The Kielce Pogrom was an outbreak of violence toward the Jewish community centre's gathering of refugees in the city of Kielce, Poland on 4 July 1946 by Polish soldiers, police officers, and civilians during which 42 Jews were killed and more than 40 were wounded. Polish courts later sentenced nine of the attackers to death in connection with the crimes.
As the deadliest pogrom against Polish Jews after the Second World War, the incident was a significant point in the post-war history of Jews in Poland. It took place only a year after the end of the Second World War and the Holocaust, shocking Jews in Poland, Poles, and the international community. It has been recognized as a catalyst for the flight from Poland of most remaining Polish Jews who had survived the Holocaust.
Operating in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia through 1948, Berihah transferred approximately 250,000 survivors into Austria, Germany, and Italy through elaborate smuggling networks. Using ships supplied at great cost[citation needed] by the Mossad Le'aliyah Bet, then the immigration arm of the Yishuv, these refugees were then smuggled through the British cordon around Palestine. Bricha was part of the larger operation known as Aliyah Bet, and ended with the establishment of Israel, after which immigration to the Jewish state was legal.
Displacement of People
People who have experienced forced displacement have been often termed a "forced immigrant", or more usually in the years after the Second World War, a "displaced person" (DP), rarely also a "displacee", or if it is within the same country, an internally displaced person (IDP). In some cases the forced immigrant can also become a refugee, as that term has a specific legal definition.
After World War II ended in 1945, there were 7 to 11 million displaced people, or refugees, still living in Germany, Austria and Italy.
To have some of these refugees come to the United States, Truman asked Congress to enact legislation. Truman’s administration, along with a lobbying group for refugees, Citizens Committee on Displaced Persons, favored allowing European refugees from World War II to enter the United States. Truman signed the first Displaced Persons Act on June 25, 1948. It allowed 200,000 displaced persons to enter the country within the next two years. However, they exceeded the quota by extending the act for another two years, which doubled the admission of refugees into the United States to 415,000.
From 1949 to 1952, about half the 900,000 immigrants that entered the United States were displaced persons. In order to qualify for American visas, only those that were in internment camps by the end of 1945 were eligible. The displaced persons that were trying to come to America had to have a sponsor and a place to live before their arrival, a guarantee that they would not displace American workers and, even more preferable, was that they had a relative that was an American citizen. Voluntary social service agencies, created by religious and ethnic groups, helped the refugees settle into American life. Of the DPs the US admitted from eastern Europe between 1941 and 1957, 137,450 were European Jews.
By 1953, over 250,000 refugees were still in Europe, most of them old, infirm, crippled, or otherwise disabled. Some found resolution through suicide. Some European countries accepted these refugees on a humanitarian basis. Norway accepted 200 refugees who were blind or had tuberculosis, and Sweden also accepted a limited number. In the end most of them were accepted by Germany and Austria for their care and ultimately full resettlement as citizens.
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