East is east and west is west!
and the wrong one I have chose . . .
This part of northern Europe was an area of settlement by Germans moving east in the 13th century (not unlike the settlement and colonization of the so-called Wild West of North America). A territory of contention, a marginal territory? Perhaps? A zone of fluidity, settlement, change, migration and opportunity, and, sometimes described as a backwater!
In the Economist article of September 2016 Mecklenberg-West Pomerania is described as a backwater where the right wing and populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party has growing support. Pomerania has been a political "buffer zone" for centuries. Maybe reactionary political ideas find a conducive culture for growth in places buffeted by history, and marginalized by the centres of economic and political power?
“WHEN the end of the world is nigh,” Otto von Bismarck allegedly said, “I will move to Mecklenburg, because everything happens 50 years later there.”
Even locals agree that the north-eastern state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania will always be a backwater. But backwaters can also be bellwethers. On September 4th, all Germany will be watching as Mecklenburg elects its state assembly, housed in a medieval castle on an island in one of Schwerin’s lakes. Not only is the state home to the electoral district of Chancellor Angela Merkel; it is the heartland of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a populist right-wing party that is polling at 21%, a hair behind the largest mainstream parties. “We want to become the strongest party,” says Leif-Erik Holm, the AfD’s top candidate in Mecklenburg.
This territory, Mecklenberg-Pomerania has been a zone of moving boundaries between Germans and Slavs for over a thousand years!
What is in a name?
The names "Szczecin" and "Stettin" are of Slavic
origin, though the exact etymology is the subject of ongoing research.
In Etymological dictionary of geographical names of Poland, Maria Malec
lists eleven theories regarding the origin of the name, including
derivations from either: a Slavic word for hill peak, (Polish: szczyt),
or the plant fuller's teasel (Polish: szczeć), or the personal name
Szczota.
Other medieval names for the town are Burstaborg (in the Knytlinga saga) and Burstenburgh (in the Annals of Waldemar). These names, which literally mean "brush burgh". The recorded history of Szczecin began in the eighth century, as Vikings and West Slavs settled Pomerania.
Ostsiedlung, literally east settling, and in English called the German eastward expansion, accelerated in Pomerania during the 13th century. Duke Barnim I of Pomerania granted Stettin a local government charter in 1237, separating the German settlement from the Slavic community settled around the St. Nicholas Church in the neighbourhood of Kessin (Polish: Chyzin). In the charter, the Slavs were put under German jurisdiction.
When Barnim granted Stettin Magdeburg rights in 1243, part of the Slavic settlement was reconstructed. The duke had to promise to level the burgh in 1249. Most Slavic inhabitants were resettled to two new suburbs north and south of the town. The last records of Slavs in Stettin are from the 14th century, when a Slavic bath (1350) and bakery are recorded, and within the walls, Slavs lived in a street named Schulzenstrasse. By the end of the 14th century, the remaining Slavs had been assimilated.
On 2 December 1261, Barnim I allowed Jewish settlement in Stettin in accordance with the Magdeburg law, in a privilege renewed in 1308 and 1371. The Jewish Jordan family was granted citizenship in 1325, but none of the 22 Jews allowed to settle in the duchy in 1481 lived in the city, and in 1492, all Jews in the duchy were ordered to convert to Christianity or leave – this order remained effective throughout the rest of the Griffin era.
Stettin was part of the federation of Wendish towns, a precursor of the Hanseatic League, in 1283. The city prospered due to its participation in the Baltic Sea trade, primarily with herring, grain, and timber; craftsmanship also prospered, and more than forty guilds were established in the city. The far-reaching autonomy granted by the House of Griffins was in part reduced when the dukes reclaimed Stettin as their main residence in the late 15th century. The anti-Slavic policies of German merchants and craftsmen intensified in this period, resulting in measures such as bans on people of Slavic descent joining craft guilds, a doubling of customs tax for Slavic merchants, and bans against public usage of their native language. The more prosperous Slavic citizens were forcibly stripped of their possessions, which were then handed over to Germans. In 1514 the guild of tailors added a Wendenparagraph to its statutes, banning Slavs.
Germans banning Slavs!
The Hanseatic cities, ports and depots
Clearly Stettin, and Szczecin, is a centre, and centres are the product of history. A quick glance at the central position of Pomerania on the coast of the Baltic, belies the idea that this is a place that is essentially a backwater. This European zone was one of trading along coasts and rivers, the quickest means of communication for centuries, and the trade routes for the cities and ports of the Hanseatic League.
It is the nature of hard borders to make places or regions peripheral, whilst soft borders allow regional values to thrive. Today, in the context of the EU, Pomerania is a region that straddles the borderlands between Poland in the east and Germany in the west.
This map is used on the webpage for Park-und Gartenanlagen in der Pomeraniaregion.
Euroregion Pomerania
„Euroregion Pomerania” notion concerns western part of historically understood Pomerania land – i.e. German Vorpommern (Fore-Pomerania) and Polish Pomorze Zachodnie (Western Pomerania).
Neighbouring Poland and Germany cooperate on many levels, but still there is a need for closer cooperation within specific common projects and ventures.
The answer for this need is a EU goal „European Territiorial Cooperation – Interregional Cooperation”, whose participants are now: German Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Brandenburg states and polish West Pomeranian voivodeship. It is a part of INTERREG Programme (community initiative European Regional Development Fund – ERDF).
Euroregion Pomerania currently covers a 35 500 square kilometer area on both sides of the Polish-German border - its combined population is approximately 2,4 million people.
Euroregion consists (as of 2014) of the following regions:
- Polish Zachodniopomorskie (West Pomerania) Voivodeship
- German districts of the Brandenburg state - Uckermark, Barnim and Märkisch-Oderland
- German district of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state - Rügen, Vorpommern, Mecklenburgische Seenplatte
Euroregion Pomerania areas, besides structural links, have a lot in common in terms of historical, landscape and geological similarities. All of these regions are characterized by the glacial landforms, their economies are mainly agricultural, all are relatively under-populated. In the past, all these areas were dominated by big landowners estates. Tree avenues led to the manor houses and mansions – their owners established not only vegetable or fruit gardens, but also landscape gardens.
This project is a cross-border co-operation between local authorities on each side of the Polish-German border that identify certain qualities in the region of Pomerania that deserve value and valuing. In this case it is the heritage present in landscape gardens.
The HOME page of this project explains:
If we look away from the daily life to the nature landscapes, we will be able to see, how they have also been influenced by humans.
There are no truly virgin landscapes in Germany nor in Poland anymore. Even in the deepest forests and on the green overgrown riverbanks – man has left his footprints everywhere, fulfilling his basic needs: food, shelter or clothing.
Once, only a few people had the privilege to shape the land not for agricultural, but only for ornamental purposes.
At first, in the Baroque era, garden-art was limited by the strict laws of geometry, symmetry and colour harmony. Then, in the 19th Century, it was set free from those restrictions, to expose native dynamics of nature, complemented by the play of the viewing axes.
The most famous representative of the German school of the classicist garden-architecture was Peter Joseph Lenné, who had numerous followers. Many parks and gardens from the area of the „Euroregion Pomerania Project” were designed by Lenné-himself, or by them.
Over the years a large number of those parks and gardens had lost their original appearance – at that time regional development policy had other, more important priorities. In effect, Mother Nature took those places back – garden ponds, paths and alleys grew wild with young trees and bushes, fountains and sculptures dissappeared in the green.
The following Polish-German project is a part of the INTERREG IV A Programme. Its goal is the thorough analysis and popularization of the subject. In the first step, the project aims to improve the condition of the three selected gardens, which in effect will help create a social network of experts and other involved parties.
So, soft borders are amenable to the creation of new social networks!
This map shows a number of cross-border areas in Poland and neighbouring countries where co-operations between local authorities each side of national borders have been explored and supported by the EU.
These are areas that have been identified across Europe as euroregions, or potential euroregions.
A euroregions map is a patchwork, not of states but localities, that in the context of the EU have the potential to develop, or regain, identity through co-operation rather than separation.
Seperatisms
The fluidity of the political geographies in Pomerania also reflects the fluidity of the wider context of European history, but in the Thirty Years' War politics becomes violently associated with the relationship of crises in Christian religious belief and political power.
The Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was a war fought primarily in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648. One of the longest and most destructive conflicts in human history, it resulted in eight million fatalities mainly from violence, famine and plagues, but also from military engagements.
Religion in the Holy Roman Empire on the eve of the Thirty Years' War
The people who perished over its course were overwhelmingly and disproportionately inhabitants of the Holy Roman Empire, and the rest were mostly fallen soldiers of foreign armies. It was the deadliest European religious war that left an everlasting national stigma in the German collective memory.
Initially a war between various Protestant and Catholic states in the fragmented Holy Roman Empire, it gradually developed into a more general conflict involving most of the great powers. These states employed relatively large mercenary armies, and the war became less about religion and more of a continuation of the France–Habsburg rivalry for European political pre-eminence.
The war was preceded by the election of the new Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II, who tried to impose religious uniformity on his domains, forcing Roman Catholicism on its peoples. The northern Protestant states, angered by the violation of their rights to choose that had been granted in the Peace of Augsburg, banded together to form the Protestant Union.
The Peace of Augsburg, also called the Augsburg Settlement, was a treaty between Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (the predecessor of Ferdinand I) and the Schmalkaldic League, signed in September 1555 at the imperial city of Augsburg.
It officially ended the religious struggle between the two groups and made the legal division of Christendom permanent within the Holy Roman Empire, allowing rulers to choose either Lutheranism or Roman Catholicism as the official confession of their state. Calvinism was not allowed until the Peace of Westphalia.
Ferdinand II was a devout Roman Catholic and relatively intolerant when compared to his predecessor, Rudolf II, who ruled from the largely Protestant city of Prague. Ferdinand's policies were considered strongly pro-Catholic and anti-Protestant.
These events caused widespread fears throughout northern and central Europe, and triggered the Protestant Bohemians living in the then relatively loose dominion of Habsburg Austria to revolt against their nominal ruler, Ferdinand II.
After the so-called Prague Defenestration deposed the Emperor's representatives in Prague, the Protestant estates and Catholic Habsburgs started gathering allies for war. The Protestant Bohemians ousted the Habsburgs and elected the Calvinist Frederick V, Elector of the Rhenish Palatinate as the new king of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Frederick took the offer without the support of the Protestant Union. The southern states, mainly Roman Catholic, were angered by this. Led by Bavaria, these states formed the Catholic League to expel Frederick in support of the Emperor. The Empire soon crushed this perceived rebellion in the Battle of White Mountain, executing leading Czech aristocrats shortly after. Protestants across Europe unanimously condemned the Emperor's action.
Contemporary woodcut depicting the Old Town Square execution of Protestant aristocrats in Prague, 1621
After the atrocities committed in Bohemia, Saxony finally gave its support to the union and decided to fight back.
The Lion of the North: Gustavus Adolphus depicted at the turning point of the Battle of Breitenfeld (1631) against the forces of Count Tilly.
Sweden, at the time a rising military power, soon intervened in 1630 under its king Gustavus Adolphus, transforming what had been simply the Emperor's attempt to curb the Protestant states into a full-scale war in Europe.
Spain, wishing to finally crush the Dutch rebels in the Netherlands and the Dutch Republic, intervened under the pretext of helping its dynastic Habsburg ally, Austria.
Catholic France joins the Protestant coalition of powers
No longer able to tolerate the encirclement of two major Habsburg powers on its borders, Catholic France entered the coalition on the side of the Protestants in order to counter the Habsburgs.
Devastation
The Thirty Years' War devastated entire regions, with famine and disease resulting in high mortality in the populations of the German and Italian states, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Southern Netherlands. Both mercenaries and soldiers in fighting armies traditionally looted or extorted tribute to get operating funds, which imposed severe hardships on the inhabitants of occupied territories. The war also bankrupted most of the combatant powers.
The Dutch Golden Age
The Dutch Republic enjoyed contrasting fortune; it ended its revolt against Spain in 1648 and subsequently enjoyed a time of great prosperity and development, known as the Dutch Golden Age, during which it became one of the world's foremost economic and naval powers.
The Ratification of the Treaty of Münster, 15 May 1648 (1648) by Gerard ter Borch
The Thirty Years' War ended with the treaties of Osnabrück and Münster, part of the wider Peace of Westphalia.
Gustavus Adolphus' landing in Pomerania, near Wolgast, 1630
How Sweden came to rule in Pomerania
The Swedish invasion of Germany came in 1630, after the Danish involvement, referred to as the Low Saxon War or Kejserkrigen ("the Emperor's War"), which began when Christian IV of Denmark, a Lutheran who also ruled as Duke of Holstein, a duchy within the Holy Roman Empire, helped the Lutheran rulers of neighbouring Lower Saxony by leading an army against the Imperial forces in 1625.
Denmark-Norway had feared that the recent Catholic successes threatened its sovereignty as a Protestant nation.
To fight Christian, Ferdinand II employed the military help of Albrecht von Wallenstein, a Bohemian nobleman who had made himself rich from the confiscated estates of his Protestant countrymen. Wallenstein pledged his army, which numbered between 30,000 and 100,000 soldiers, to Ferdinand II in return for the right to plunder the captured territories.
Christian, who knew nothing of Wallenstein's forces when he invaded, was forced to retire before the combined forces of Wallenstein and Tilly. Christian's mishaps continued when all of the allies he thought he had were forced aside: France was in the midst of a civil war, Sweden was at war with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and neither Brandenburg nor Saxony was interested in changes to the tenuous peace in eastern Germany. Moreover, neither of the substantial British contingents arrived in time to prevent Wallenstein defeating Mansfeld's army at the Battle of Dessau Bridge (1626) or Tilly's victory at the Battle of Lutter (1626).
Wallenstein's army marched north, occupying Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and Jutland itself, but proved unable to take the Dano-Norwegian capital Copenhagen on the island of Zealand.
Wallenstein lacked a fleet, and neither the Hanseatic ports nor the Poles would allow the building of an imperial fleet on the Baltic coast.
He then laid siege to Stralsund, the only belligerent Baltic port with sufficient facilities to build a large fleet; it soon became clear, however, that the cost of continuing the war would far outweigh any gains from conquering the rest of Denmark.
Wallenstein feared losing his northern German gains to a Danish-Swedish alliance, while Christian IV had suffered another defeat in the Battle of Wolgast (1628); both were ready to negotiate.
Negotiations concluded with the Treaty of Lübeck in 1629, which stated that Christian IV could retain control over Denmark-Norway (including the duchies of Sleswick and Holstein) if he would abandon his support for the Protestant German states.
Thus, in the following two years, the Catholic powers subjugated more land. At this point, the Catholic League persuaded Ferdinand II to take back the Lutheran holdings that were, according to the Peace of Augsburg, rightfully the possession of the Catholic Church.
Only the port of Stralsund continued to hold out against Wallenstein and the emperor, having been bolstered by Scottish 'volunteers' who arrived from the Swedish army to support their countrymen already there in the service of Denmark-Norway. These men were led by Colonel Alexander Leslie, who became governor of the city. As Colonel Robert Monro recorded:
Sir Alexander Leslie being made Governour, he resolved for the credit of his Country-men, to make an out-fall upon the Enemy, and desirous to conferre the credit on his own Nation alone, being his first Essay in that Citie.Leslie held Stralsund until 1630, using the port as a base to capture the surrounding towns and ports to provide a secure beach-head for a full-scale Swedish landing under Gustavus Adolphus.
Some in the court of Ferdinand II did not trust Wallenstein, believing he sought to join forces with the German princes and thus gain influence over the Emperor. Ferdinand II dismissed Wallenstein in 1630. He later recalled him, after the Swedes, led by King Gustavus Adolphus, had successfully invaded the Holy Roman Empire and turned the tables on the Catholics.
Like Christian IV before him, Gustavus Adolphus came to aid the German Lutherans, to forestall Catholic suzerainty in his back yard, and to obtain economic influence in the German states around the Baltic Sea. He was also concerned about the growing power of the Holy Roman Empire, and like Christian IV before him, was heavily subsidized by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister of Louis XIII of France, and by the Dutch.
From 1630 to 1634, Swedish-led armies drove the Catholic forces back, regaining much of the lost Protestant territory. During his campaign, he managed to conquer half of the imperial kingdoms, making Sweden the continental leader of Protestantism until the Swedish Empire ended in 1721.
Swedish forces entered the Holy Roman Empire via the Duchy of Pomerania, which served as the Swedish bridgehead since the Treaty of Stettin (1630).
After dismissing Wallenstein in 1630, Ferdinand II became dependent on the Catholic League. Gustavus Adolphus allied with France in the Treaty of Bärwalde (January 1631). France and Bavaria signed the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau (1631), but this was rendered irrelevant by Swedish attacks against Bavaria. At the Battle of Breitenfeld (1631), Gustavus Adolphus's forces defeated the Catholic League led by Tilly.
A year later, they met again in another Protestant victory, this time accompanied by the death of Tilly. The upper hand had now switched from the league to the union, led by Sweden.
With Tilly dead, Ferdinand II returned to the aid of Wallenstein and his large army. Wallenstein marched up to the south, threatening Gustavus Adolphus's supply chain. Gustavus Adolphus knew that Wallenstein was waiting for the attack and was prepared but found no other option. Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus clashed in the Battle of Lützen (1632), where the Swedes prevailed, but Gustavus Adolphus was killed.
Death of King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden at the Battle of Lützen, 6 November 1632
By the spring of 1635, all Swedish resistance in the south of Germany had ended. After that, the Imperial and Protestant German sides met for negotiations, producing the Peace of Prague (1635), which entailed a delay in the enforcement of the Edict of Restitution for 40 years and allowed Protestant rulers to retain secularized bishoprics held by them in 1627. This protected the Lutheran rulers of northeastern Germany, but not those of the south and west (whose lands had been occupied by the imperial or league armies prior to 1627).
The treaty also provided for the union of the army of the emperor and the armies of the German states into a single army of the Holy Roman Empire.
Finally, German princes were forbidden from establishing alliances amongst themselves or with foreign powers, and amnesty was granted to any ruler who had taken up arms against the emperor after the arrival of the Swedes in 1630.
This treaty failed to satisfy France, however, because of the renewed strength it granted the Habsburgs. France then entered the conflict, beginning the final period of the Thirty Years' War. Sweden did not take part in the Peace of Prague and it continued the war together with France. Initially after the Peace of Prague, the Swedish armies were pushed back by the reinforced Imperial army north into Germany.
The city's fortifications, as seen in 1642
Stettin and Swedish Pomerania
Stettin and Pomerania under Sweden and Prussia
Following the Treaty of Stettin of 1630, the city, 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. 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.
The map of Europe after the Thirty Years' War became another "patchwork" image, echoing feudal state entities!
The partitions of the Duchy of Pomerania:
In 1155, the duchy was partitioned in Pomerania-Demmin and Pomerania-Stettin. With short interruptions, this division lasted until 1264.
In 1295, the duchy was partitioned in Pomerania-Wolgast and Pomerania-Stettin.
In 1368/72, Pomerania-Stolp was split from Pomerania-Wolgast.
In 1376, Pomerania-Barth was split from truncated Pomerania-Wolgast.
In 1402, Pomerania-Rügenwalde was briefly split from Pomerania-Stolp for three years.
In 1451, Pomerania-Barth was for six years merged back into Pomerania-Wolgast.
In 1459, Pomerania-Stolp was merged back into Pomerania-Wolgast.
In 1464, Pomerania-Stettin was claimed by both Pomerania-Wolgast and Brandenburg, and merged with Pomerania-Wolgast following the Peace of Prenzlau (1472/79).
In 1478, Pomerania-Barth was merged back in, temporarily ending the internal division.
In 1532, the duchy was partitioned in a Pomerania-Stettin and a Pomerania-Wolgast of significantly different shape as the earlier divisions of the same names.
In 1569, Pomerania-Barth was split from Pomerania-Wolgast and Pomerania-Rügenwalde was split from Pomerania-Stettin, these partitions also differed in shape from earlier partitions with the same name.
In 1625, the duchy came under the sole rule of the last duke of the Griffin dynasty, who died during the Thirty Years' War in 1637, when the duchy was under Swedish occupation.
After the war, the Swedish Empire and Brandenburg-Prussia succeeded the Griffin dukes in the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and divided it in the Treaty of Stettin (1653) into a Swedish Pomerania and a Brandenburg-Prussian Pomerania. Both the Swedish and Brandenburgian rulers, in contrast to the Griffin dukes, became hereditary dukes in their respective share.
In 1679 and 1720, the Brandenburg-Prussian part was enlarged at the expense of the Swedish share.
In 1815, all the former duchy was reorganized in the Prussian province of Pomerania.
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