1.
Sejm
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The Sejm of the Republic of Poland is the lower house of the Polish parliament. It consists of 460 deputies elected by ballot and is presided over by a speaker called the Marshal of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland. In the Kingdom of Poland, Sejm referred to the entire three-chamber parliament of Poland, comprising the house, the upper house. It was thus a three-estate parliament, since the Second Polish Republic, Sejm has referred only to the lower house of the parliament, the upper house is called the Senat Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej. Sejm stems from an Old Slavic word meaning gathering and its origin was the Kings Councils, which gained power during the time of Polands fragmentation. The Sejm in Łęczyca was the most notable of these councils and it forbade arbitrary sequestration of supplies in the countryside and takeover of bishopric lands after the death of a bishop. These early Sejms were not an event, they convened at the Kings behest. After the 1493 Sejm in Piotrków, it became a regularly convening body, the bicameral system was also established there. The Sejm now comprised two chambers, the Senat of 81 bishops and other dignitaries, and the Chamber of Envoys, over time, the envoys in the lower chamber grew in number and power as they pressed the king for more privileges. The Sejm eventually became more active in supporting the goals of the privileged classes when the King ordered that the landed nobility. Its chambers reserved the final decisions in legislation, taxation, budget, and treasury matters, foreign policy, until the end of the 16th century, unanimity was not required, and the majority-voting process was the most commonly used system for voting. Later, with the rise of the Polish magnates and their increasing power, additionally, if the envoys were unable to reach a unanimous decision within six weeks, deliberations were declared void and all previous acts passed by that Sejm were annulled. From the mid-17th century onward, any objection to a Sejm resolution, by either an envoy or a senator, automatically caused the rejection of other, previously approved resolutions. This was because all resolutions passed by a session of the Sejm formed a whole resolution. It is estimated that between 1493 and 1793, a Sejm was held 240 times, the total sum of which was 44 years. The Chamber of Envoys, despite its name, consisted not only of 77 envoys from the hereditary nobility, all deputies were covered by Parliamentary immunity, with each individual serving for a term of office of six years, with half of the deputies being elected every two years. Candidates for deputy had to be able to read and write, the legal voting age was 21, except for those citizens serving in the military, the personnel of which were not allowed to vote. Parliamentary sessions were initially convened every two years, and lasted for 30 days, however, after many clashes between liberal deputies and conservative government officials, sessions were later called only four times
2.
Senate of Poland
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The Senate is the upper house of the Polish parliament, the lower house being the Sejm. The history of the Polish Senate is rich in tradition and stretches back over 500 years and it was one of the first constituent bodies of a bicameral parliament in Europe and existed without hiatus until the dismemberment of the Polish state in 1795. After a brief period of existence in the period the Senate was again abolished by the authorities of the Peoples Republic of Poland. It was not re-established until the collapse of communism and rebirth of democracy in Poland in 1989, the Senate is based in Warsaw and is located in a building which forms part of the Sejm Complex on Ul. Wiejska, close to Three Crosses Square and Ujazdow Castle and it consists of 100 senators elected by universal ballot and is headed by the Marshal of the Senate. The incumbent Marshal of the Senate is Senior Marshal Stanisław Karczewski, in line with Article 10, Paragraph 2, and Article 95 of the Polish Constitution of April 2,1997, the Senate and the Sejm exercises legislative power. The Senate is composed of 100 senators who are elected for a term of four years in general election in a vote by secret ballot. Alongside the Sejm, the President of the Polish Republic, the Council of Ministers and all citizens of Poland, the Senate is allowed 30 days to examine any piece of draft legislation passed by the Sejm,14 days if a bill is considered to be urgent. Any bill submitted by the Sejm to the Senate may be adopted by the latter without any amendments or amended or rejected. Any resolution of the Senate, as a result of which a bill is repealed or amended, is considered to be passed provided it has not been rejected by the Sejm, however, for the state budget, the Senate has 20 days to examine it. For amending the constitution, the Senate has 60 days for analysis, if the constitution is amended, identical wording of the amendment must be approved by both the Sejm and the Senate. The president cannot decide to stage a nationwide referendum on matters of importance unless he or she has been given explicit permission to do so by the Senate. The Senate is also empowered to examine any reports submitted by the Commissioner for the Protection of Citizens Rights, however, unlike the Sejm, the Senate has no role in providing for oversight of the executive. The Senate can be traced back approximately five hundred years to a council of royal advisors, in 1501 at Mielnik, senators attempted to force the soon to be crowned king Alexander I Jagiellon to devolve all royal powers relating to the governing of the state to them. However, whilst Alexander first agreed, after his coronation he refused to affirm this privilege, later the Nihil Novi act of 1505 affirmed the right of both the Chamber of Envoys and Senate to propagate common law for the kingdom. At this time the competences of the Senate were also laid down as pertaining to participation in legislation, foreign policy, in 1537 the Senate followed a course of action which would have seen it become the most important institution in protecting landowners’ rights and freedoms. However, this view was at odds with those of Sigismund I the Old who believed that the Senate was becoming far too powerful. Resultantly, over the period of 1562–69, the Senate lost many of its powers and influence, eventually becoming subordinate to its formerly-equal companion body, the Chamber of Envoys
3.
German Empire
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The German Empire was the historical German nation state that existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918, when Germany became a federal republic. The German Empire consisted of 26 constituent territories, with most being ruled by royal families and this included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. Although Prussia became one of kingdoms in the new realm, it contained most of its population and territory. Its influence also helped define modern German culture, after 1850, the states of Germany had rapidly become industrialized, with particular strengths in coal, iron, chemicals, and railways. In 1871, it had a population of 41 million people, and by 1913, a heavily rural collection of states in 1815, now united Germany became predominantly urban. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire operated as an industrial, technological, Germany became a great power, boasting a rapidly growing rail network, the worlds strongest army, and a fast-growing industrial base. In less than a decade, its navy became second only to Britains Royal Navy, after the removal of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck by Wilhelm II, the Empire embarked on a bellicose new course that ultimately led to World War I. When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, the German Empire had two allies, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, however, left the once the First World War started in August 1914. In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris quickly in autumn 1914 failed, the Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food. Germany was repeatedly forced to send troops to bolster Austria and Turkey on other fronts, however, Germany had great success on the Eastern Front, it occupied large Eastern territories following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 was designed to strangle the British, it failed, but the declaration—along with the Zimmermann Telegram—did bring the United States into the war. Meanwhile, German civilians and soldiers had become war-weary and radicalised by the Russian Revolution and this failed, and by October the armies were in retreat, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, Bulgaria had surrendered and the German people had lost faith in their political system. The Empire collapsed in the November 1918 Revolution as the Emperor and all the ruling monarchs abdicated, and a republic took over. The German Confederation had been created by an act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, German nationalism rapidly shifted from its liberal and democratic character in 1848, called Pan-Germanism, to Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarcks pragmatic Realpolitik. He envisioned a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany, the war resulted in the Confederation being partially replaced by a North German Confederation in 1867, comprising the 22 states north of the Main. The new constitution and the title Emperor came into effect on 1 January 1871, during the Siege of Paris on 18 January 1871, William accepted to be proclaimed Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. The second German Constitution was adopted by the Reichstag on 14 April 1871 and proclaimed by the Emperor on 16 April, the political system remained the same. The empire had a parliament called the Reichstag, which was elected by universal male suffrage, however, the original constituencies drawn in 1871 were never redrawn to reflect the growth of urban areas
4.
Warsaw
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Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It stands on the Vistula River in east-central Poland, roughly 260 kilometres from the Baltic Sea and 300 kilometres from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population is estimated at 1.750 million residents within a metropolitan area of 3.101 million residents. The city limits cover 516.9 square kilometres, while the area covers 6,100.43 square kilometres. Once described as Paris of the East, Warsaw was believed to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world until World War II. On 9 November 1939, the city was awarded Polands highest military decoration for heroism, Warsaw is one of Europe’s most dynamic metropolitan cities. In 2012 the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Warsaw as the 32nd most liveable city in the world, in 2017 the city came 4th in the “Business-friendly” category and 8th in the “Human capital and life style”. It was also ranked as one of the most liveable cities in Central, Warsaw is considered an Alpha– global city, a major international tourist destination and a significant cultural, political and economic hub. The city is a significant centre of research and development, BPO, ITO, the Warsaw Stock Exchange is the largest and most important in Central and Eastern Europe. Frontex, the European Union agency for external security, has its headquarters in Warsaw. Together with Frankfurt, London and Paris, Warsaw is also one of the cities with the highest number of skyscrapers in the European Union, the city is the seat of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra and the University of Warsaw. The historic city-centre of Warsaw with its picturesque Old Town in 1980 was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, buildings represent examples of nearly every European architectural style and historical period. Warsaw provides many examples of architecture from the gothic, renaissance, baroque, neoclassical and modern periods, furthermore, the city is positioning itself as Europes chic cultural capital with thriving art and club scenes and renowned restaurants. Folk etymology attributes the city name to a fisherman, Wars, according to legend, Sawa was a mermaid living in the Vistula River with whom Wars fell in love. In actuality, Warsz was a 12th/13th-century nobleman who owned a village located at the site of Mariensztat neighbourhood. See also the Vršovci family which had escaped to Poland, the official city name in full is miasto stołeczne Warszawa. A native or resident of Warsaw is known as a Varsovian – in Polish warszawiak, warszawianin, warszawianka, warszawiacy, other names for Warsaw include Varsovia and Varsóvia, Varsovie, Varsavia, Warschau, װאַרשע /Varshe, Варшава /Varšava /Varshava, Varšuva, Varsó. The first fortified settlements on the site of todays Warsaw were located in Bródno, after Jazdów was raided by nearby clans and dukes, a new similar settlement was established on the site of a small fishing village called Warszowa
5.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
6.
Activism
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Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, or direct social, political, economic, and/or environmental reform or stasis with the desire to make improvements in society. One can also express activism through different forms of art, daily acts of protest such as not buying clothes from a certain clothing company because they exploit workers is another form of activism. One view holds that acknowledging privileges and oppressions on a daily basis ranks as a form of activism, research has begun to explore how activist groups use social media to facilitate civic engagement and collective action. The Online Etymology Dictionary records the English words activism and activist from 1920, Activists can function in roles as public officials, as in judicial activism. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. introduced the term judicial activism in a January 1946 Fortune magazine article titled The Supreme Court,1947, some activists try to persuade people to change their behavior directly, rather than to persuade governments to change or not to change laws. Other activists try to persuade people to remain the same, in an effort to counter change, the cooperative movement seeks to build new institutions which conform to cooperative principles, and generally does not lobby or protest politically. Activism is not always an action by Activists, every year more than 100 environmental activists are killed, in 2014116 environmental activists were assassinated, in 2015185 activists were killed around this planet. Since the 1990s, the Internet has been a tool used by activists for mobilization and communication of causes, specific platforms like MoveOn. org, founded in 1998, allow individuals to establish petitions and movements for social change. Protesters in Seattle in 1999 used email to organize protests against the WTO Ministerial Conference, throughout the 2000s, protesters continued to use social media platforms to generate interest. The power of Internet Activism came into a lens with the Arab Spring protests. They use different means to political persecution, such as Tor Browser. The activism industry consists of organizations and individuals engaged in activism, Activism is often done full-time, as part of an organizations core business. Many organizations in the industry are either non profit organizations or non-governmental organizations. Most activist organizations do not manufacture goods, the term activism industry has often been used to refer to outsourced fundraising operations. However, activist organizations engage in activities as well. Lobbying, or the influencing of decisions made by government, is another activist tactic, many groups, including law firms, have designated staff assigned specifically for lobbying purposes. In the United States, lobbying is regulated by the federal government, many government systems encourage public support of non-profit organizations by granting various forms of tax relief for donations to charitable organizations. Governments may attempt to deny these benefits to activists by restricting the political activity of tax-exempt organizations, randy Shaw, The Activists Handbook, A Primer for the 1990s and Beyond
7.
Journalist
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A journalist is a person who collects, writes, or distributes news or other current information. A journalists work is called journalism, a journalist can work with general issues or specialize in certain issues. However, most journalists tend to specialize, and by cooperating with other journalists, for example, a sports journalist covers news within the world of sports, but this journalist may be a part of a newspaper that covers many different topics. A reporter is a type of journalist who researches, writes, and reports on information in order to present in sources, conduct interviews, engage in research, and make reports. The information-gathering part of a job is sometimes called reporting. Reporters may split their time working in a newsroom and going out to witness events or interviewing people. Reporters may be assigned a beat or area of coverage. Depending on the context, the term journalist may include various types of editors, editorial writers, columnists, Journalism has developed a variety of ethics and standards. While objectivity and a lack of bias are of concern and importance, more liberal types of journalism, such as advocacy journalism and activism. This has become prevalent with the advent of social media and blogs, as well as other platforms that are used to manipulate or sway social and political opinions. These platforms often project extreme bias, as sources are not always held accountable or considered necessary in order to produce a written, nor did they often directly experience most social problems, or have direct access to expert insights. These limitations were made worse by a media that tended to over-simplify issues and to reinforce stereotypes, partisan viewpoints. As a consequence, Lippmann believed that the public needed journalists like himself who could serve as analysts, guiding “citizens to a deeper understanding of what was really important. ”Journalists sometimes expose themselves to danger. Organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders publish reports on press freedom, as of November 2011, the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 887 journalists have been killed worldwide since 1992 by murder, crossfire or combat, or on dangerous assignment. The ten deadliest countries for journalists since 1992 have been Iraq, Philippines, Russia, Colombia, Mexico, Algeria, Pakistan, India, Somalia, Brazil and Sri Lanka. The Committee to Protect Journalists also reports that as of December 1st 2010,145 journalists were jailed worldwide for journalistic activities. The ten countries with the largest number of currently-imprisoned journalists are Turkey, China, Iran, Eritrea, Burma, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Cuba, Ethiopia, apart from the physical harm, journalists are harmed psychologically. This applies especially to war reporters, but their offices at home often do not know how to deal appropriately with the reporters they expose to danger
8.
Reichstag (German Empire)
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The Reichstag was the Parliament of Germany from 1871 to 1918. Legislation was shared between the Reichstag and the Bundesrat, which was the Imperial Council of the princes of the German States. The Reichstag had no right to appoint or dismiss governments. All German men over 25 years of age were eligible to vote, members were elected in single-member constituencies by majority vote. If no candidate received a majority of the votes, an election took place. In 1871, the Reichstag consisted of 382 members, but from 1874 it was enlarged to 397 members, the term of office was initially set at three years, and in 1888 this was extended to five years. The Reichstag was opened once a year by the Emperor, in order to dissolve parliament, the approval of the Imperial Council and the emperor were required. Members of parliament enjoyed legal immunity and indemnity, the Reichstag first met in the Prussian Landtag building in Berlin. For a time it met in a former porcelain factory at number 4. That 23-year temporary location was the scene of political debates that are associated with names like Bebel, Liebknecht. The premises were considered too small, so in 1871 a decision was made to construct a new building. In 1872, there was a competition which attracted 103 entries by architects. Ten years on, in 1882, another competition was announced. The winner of the competition was the Frankfurt architect Paul Wallot. On 29 June 1884, the foundation stone was finally laid by the Emperor. The new building was acclaimed for its cupola of steel and glass, in 1888, before it was completed, Emperor Wilhelm I died, and 1888 was the Year of Three Emperors. The third of these, Wilhelm II, objected to a greater extent to the very concept of parliament as a democratic institution. The new building opened in 1894, the famous inscription – DEM DEUTSCHEN VOLKE – was added in 1916 by Peter Behrens, and it still towers above the monumental entrance
9.
Landtag of Prussia
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After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–19 the Landtag diet continued as the parliament of the Free State of Prussia between 1921 and 1933. The Prussian National Assembly however was dismissed by royal decree of 5 December 1848, both houses and the King of Prussia had the right to introduce bills. The assembly raised a blistering protest and over the following years Bismarcks cabinet had to govern without a government budget passed by the legislature. In September 1866 the prime minister, at a peak of his power after the Battle of Königgrätz, the balloting led to the split-off of the National Liberal Party which became a loyal supporter of Bismarcks policies. During the German Revolution of 1918–19 the new Prussian government of Social Democrats, a constitutional convention was elected on 26 January 1919, after the introduction of equal franchise for all men and women. After the failed Kapp Putsch of 1920, the confirmed the first cabinet of Minister-president Otto Braun. The Preußischer Landtag was re-established as the parliament of the Free State of Prussia in 1921, the provinces were represented in the Prussian State Council, which succeeded the former Herrenhaus as a kind of upper house. The Cologne mayor Konrad Adenauer served as its president until 1933, a legislative period lasted for no longer than four years. The parliament could be dissolved early by joint resolution of the minister and the presidents of the Landtag. In 1931 just such a referendum took place on the initiative of the Stahlhelm veterans association with the support of the Nazi Party, Landtag elections took place on 20 February 1921, on 7 December 1924, on 20 May 1928 on 24 April 1932 and on 5 March 1933. In 1899, the House of Representatives moved into a building on Prinz-Albrecht-Straße No,5, close to Potsdamer Platz and situated opposite to the Martin Gropius Bau. During the German Revolution of 1918–19 the Reichsrätekongress held its assemblies here from 16 to 20 December 1918, on 1 January 1919, the Communist Party of Germany was founded here. The seat of the Prussian House of Lords on Leipziger Straße was inaugurated in 1904, both buildings were built back-to-back according to plans designed by Friedrich Schulze, they intercommunicate via a common restaurant wing. Upon the Nazi Machtergreifung, the Herrenhaus building served as an annex of the neighbouring Ministry of Aviation, after World War II it housed several departments of the German Academy of Sciences and since 29 September 2000 is the seat of the German Bundesrat. Philo Fine Arts, Dresden 2001, ISBN 3-364-00378-5 Tabelle zur Geschichte des Preußischen Landtags Informationen zum Freistaat Preußen
10.
Second Polish Republic
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The Second Polish Republic, also known as the Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland, refers to the country of Poland between the First and Second World Wars. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland and it had access to the Baltic Sea via a short strip of coastline either side of the city of Gdynia. Between March and August 1939, Poland also shared a border with the then-Hungarian governorate of Subcarpathia, the Second Republic was significantly different in territory to the current Polish state. It included substantially more territory in the east and less in the west, the Second Republics land area was 388,634 km2, making it, in October 1938, the sixth largest country in Europe. After the annexation of Zaolzie, this grew to 389,720 km2, according to the 1921 census, the number of inhabitants was 27.2 million. By 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, almost a third of population came from minority groups,13. 9% Ukrainians, 10% Jews,3. 1% Belarusians,2. 3% Germans and 3. 4% Czechs, Lithuanians and Russians. At the same time, a significant number of ethnic Poles lived outside the country borders, Poland maintained a slow but steady level of economic development. By 1939, the Republic had become one of Europes major powers, the victorious Allies of World War I confirmed the rebirth of Poland in the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919. It was one of the stories of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Poland solidified its independence in a series of wars fought by the newly formed Polish Army from 1918 to 1921. The extent of the half of the interwar territory of Poland was settled diplomatically in 1922. In the course of World War I, Germany gradually gained overall dominance on the Eastern Front as the Imperial Russian Army fell back, German and Austro-Hungarian armies seized the Russian-ruled part of what became Poland. In a failed attempt to resolve the Polish question as quickly as possible, Berlin set up a German puppet state on 5 November 1916, with a governing Provisional Council of State, the Council administered the country under German auspices, pending the election of a king. A month before Germany surrendered on 11 November 1918 and the war ended, the Regency Council had dissolved the Council of State, with the notable exception of the Marxist-oriented Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, most Polish political parties supported this move. On 23 October the Regency Council appointed a new government under Józef Świeżyński, in 1918–1919, over 100 workers councils sprang up on Polish territories, on 5 November 1918, in Lublin, the first Soviet of Delegates was established. On 6 November socialists proclaimed the Republic of Tarnobrzeg at Tarnobrzeg in Austrian Galicia, the same day the Socialist, Ignacy Daszyński, set up a Provisional Peoples Government of the Republic of Poland in Lublin. On Sunday,10 November at 7 a. m, Józef Piłsudski, newly freed from 16 months in a German prison in Magdeburg, returned by train to Warsaw. Piłsudski, together with Colonel Kazimierz Sosnkowski, was greeted at Warsaws railway station by Regent Zdzisław Lubomirski, next day, due to his popularity and support from most political parties, the Regency Council appointed Piłsudski as Commander in Chief of the Polish Armed Forces
11.
Silesian Uprisings
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In the latter-day history of Poland after World War II, the insurrections were celebrated as centrepieces of national pride. Much of Silesia had belonged to the Polish Crown in medieval times, frederick the Great of Prussia seized Silesia from Maria Theresa of Austria in 1742 in the War of Austrian Succession, after which it became a part of Prussia and in 1871 the German Empire. Although the province had by now become overwhelmingly German speaking, a large Polish minority remained in Upper Silesia, Upper Silesia was bountiful in mineral resources and heavy industry, with mines and iron and steel mills. The Silesian mines were responsible for almost a quarter of Germanys annual output of coal,81 percent of its zinc and 34 percent of its lead, the area in Upper Silesia east of the Oder was dominated by ethnic Poles, most of whom were working class. Most spoke a dialect of Polish, but many felt they were a Slavic group of their own called Silesians. In contrast, most of the middle and upper classes – the landowners, businessmen, factory owners, local government, police. There was a division along religious lines. The German Silesians were almost all Protestant, while the Polish Silesians were invariably Roman Catholic, in the German census of 1900, 65% of the population of the eastern part of Silesia was recorded as Polish speaking, which decreased to 57% in 1910. This was partly a result of forced Germanization, but was due to the creation of a bilingual category. The Treaty of Versailles had ordered a plebiscite in Upper Silesia to determine whether the territory should be a part of Germany or Poland. Thus the plebiscite took place in all of Upper Silesia, including the predominantly Polish-speaking areas in the east, the Upper Silesian plebiscite was to be conducted on March 20,1921. In the meantime, the German administration and police remained in place, meanwhile, propaganda and strong arm tactics by both sides led to increasing unrest. The German authorities warned that those voting for Poland might forfeit their jobs, pro-Polish activists argued that, under Polish rule, Silesian Poles would no longer be discriminated against. Poland also promised to honour their German state social benefits, such as the old age pensions, however, many German Army veterans joined the Freikorps, a paramilitary organization whose troops fought any pro-Polish activists. The pro-Poland side employed the Polish Military Organisation – a secret military organisation, eventually, the deteriorating situation resulted in Upper Silesian Uprisings conducted by Poles in 1919 and 1920. The right to vote was granted to all aged 20 and older who either had been born in or lived in the plebiscite area, a result was the mass migration of both Germans and Poles. The German newcomers accounted for 179,910, the Polish newcomers numbering over 10,000, without these new voters, the pro-German vote would have had a majority of 58,336 instead of the final 228,246. The plebiscite took place as arranged on March 20, two days after the signing of the Treaty of Riga, which ended the Polish–Soviet War of 1919/1920, a total of 707,605 votes were cast for Germany and 479,359 for Poland
12.
Province of Upper Silesia
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The Province of Upper Silesia was a province of the Free State of Prussia from 1919 to 1945. It comprised much of the region of Upper Silesia and was divided into two administrative regions called Bezirk Kattowitz, and Oppeln. The provincial capital was Oppeln and Kattowitz, while other towns included Beuthen, Gleiwitz. Between 1938 and 1941 it was reunited with Lower Silesia as the Province of Silesia, perhaps the earliest exact census figures on ethnic or national structure of Regierungsbezirk Oppeln are from year 1819. Within Weimar Germany, the Prussian Province of Silesia was divided into the provinces of Upper Silesia, Silesian Uprisings of Poles against Germans occurred in Upper Silesia from 1919 and 1920. Uproar over the Upper Silesia plebiscite of 1921 led to a third uprising, the territory remaining in Prussian Upper Silesia was administered within Regierungsbezirk Oppeln and - according to Polish sources - had 530,000 Poles within it. After the Nazis takeover in Germany, the German-Polish Accord on East Silesia was signed, among other stipulations, according to the treaty each contractual party guaranteed in its respective part of Upper Silesia equal civil rights for all the inhabitants. The German Upper Silesian Franz Bernheim succeeded in convincing the League of Nations to force Nazi Germany to abide by the Accord, the Province of Upper Silesia was joined to Lower Silesia to form the Province of Silesia in 1938. After the invasion of Poland in 1939, Polish Upper Silesia and this annexed territory, also known as East Upper Silesia, became part of the new Regierungsbezirk Kattowitz. A second wave of arrests happened during October and November in Intelligenzaktion Schlesien, aimed against Polish intellectuals, a third wave of arrests came in April and May 1940 during the AB Aktion. A prison and penal camp were established in the region in which Polish activists from Upper Silesia were held. At the same time, the Polish population was expelled from eastern Upper Silesia, in their place, ethnic Germans from Volhynia and the Baltic countries were settled in Upper Silesias urban areas. Until 1943, about 230,000 ethnic Germans were located on the Polish territories of eastern Upper Silesia and the Wartheland. The death toll of the Polish population in Upper Silesia at the hands of Germans is about 25,000 victims, with 20,000 of them being from urban population. In 1941, the Province of Silesia was again divided into the Provinces of Upper and Lower Silesia, the German province of Upper Silesia was conquered by the Soviet Red Army from February until the end of March 1945 during World War IIs Lower and Upper Silesian Offensives. The post-war Potsdam Agreement granted the provinces territory to the Peoples Republic of Poland. Most Germans remaining in the territory were expelled westward, the Landsmannschaft Schlesien represents German Silesians from Upper and Lower Silesia. Near and in Opole, a German minority remains, Upper Silesia was known to be a poor, but heavily industrialised and polluted area
13.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
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Discrimination
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This includes treatment of an individual or group, based on their actual or perceived membership in a certain group or social category, in a way that is worse than the way people are usually treated. Discriminatory traditions, policies, ideas, practices, and laws exist in countries and institutions in every part of the world. In some places, controversial attempts such as quotas have been used to benefit those believed to be current or past victims of discrimination—but have sometimes been called reverse discrimination, the term discriminate appeared in the early 17th century in the English language. It is from the Latin discriminat- distinguished between, from the verb discriminare, from discrimen distinction, from the verb discernere, Discrimination derives from Latin, where the verb discrimire means to separate, to distinguish, to make a distinction. Moral philosophers have defined discrimination as disadvantageous treatment or consideration, an individual need not be actually harmed in order to be discriminated against. They just need to be treated worse than others for some arbitrary reason, in addition to this discrimination develops into a source of oppression. It is similar to the action of recognizing someone as different so much that they are treated inhumanly, social competition is driven by the need for self-esteem and is aimed at achieving a positive social status for the in-group relative to comparable out-groups. Consensual discrimination is driven by the need for accuracy and reflects stable, the United Nations stance on discrimination includes the statement, Discriminatory behaviors take many forms, but they all involve some form of exclusion or rejection. International bodies United Nations Human Rights Council work towards helping ending discrimination around the world, important UN documents addressing discrimination include, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination is a United Nations convention, the Convention commits its members to the elimination of racial discrimination. The convention was adopted and opened for signature by the United Nations General Assembly on 21 December 1965, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women is an international treaty adopted in 1979 by the United Nations General Assembly. Described as a bill of rights for women, it came into force on 3 September 1981. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is a human rights instrument treaty of the United Nations. Parties to the Convention are required to promote, protect, and ensure the full enjoyment of human rights by persons with disabilities, the text was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 13 December 2006, and opened for signature on 30 March 2007. Following ratification by the 20th party, it came into force on 3 May 2008, ageism or age discrimination is discrimination and stereotyping based on the grounds of someones age. It is a set of beliefs, norms, and values used to justify discrimination or subordination based on a persons age. Ageism is most often directed towards old people, or adolescents, Age discrimination in hiring has been shown to exist in the United States. In Europe, Stijn Baert, Jennifer Norga, Yannick Thuy and Marieke Van Hecke, researchers at Ghent University, interestingly, they found that age discrimination is heterogeneous by the activity older candidates undertook during their additional post-educational years
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Germanisation
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Germanisation refers to the spread of the German language, people and culture or policies which introduced these changes. It was a plank of German conservative thinking in the 19th and 20th centuries. In linguistics, Germanisation also occurs when a word from the German language is adopted into a foreign language, during the Nazi era, Germanisation turned into a policy of ethnic cleansing and later into genocide of non-Germans. Historically, there are different forms and degrees of the expansion of the German language. There are examples of complete assimilation into German culture, as happened with the pagan Slavs in the Diocese of Bamberg in the 11th century. A perfect example of adoption of German culture is the field of law in Imperial and present-day Japan. Germanisation took place by cultural contact, by decision of the adopting party. Since the flight and expulsion of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe however, another form of Germanisation is the forceful imposition of German culture, language and people upon non-German people, Slavs in particular. Early forms of Germanisation were related by German monks in manuscripts like Chronicon Slavorum, a complex process of Germanisation took place in Bohemia after the defeat of Bohemian Protestants at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. The German prince and Frederick V, Elector Palatine, elected as king of Bohemia by the Bohemian estates in 1619, was defeated by Catholic forces loyal to the Habsburg Emperor, Ferdinand II. Among the Bohemian lords who were punished and had their lands expropriated after Fredericks defeat in 1620 were German-, thus, this conflict was feudal in nature, not national. This linguistic border remained almost unchanged until the late 19th century, in Tyrol there was a Germanisation of the Ladino-Romantsch of the Venosta Valley promoted by the Austria in the 16th century. There was made for avoiding contact with Protestants of the Graubünden, in the German colonies, the policy of having German as an official language led to the forming of German-based pidgins and German-based creole languages, such as Unserdeutsch. Joseph II, a leader influenced by the Enlightenment, sought to control of the empire. He decreed that German replace Latin as the official language. Hungarians perceived Josephs language reform as German cultural hegemony, and they reacted by insisting on the right to use their own tongue, as a result, Hungarian lesser nobles sparked a renaissance of the Hungarian language and culture. The lesser nobles questioned the loyalty of the magnates, of less than half were ethnic Magyars. The Magyar national revival subsequently triggered similar movements among the Slovak, Romanian, Serbian, following the partitions, the previous Germanisation attempts pursued by Frederick the Great in Silesia were extended to the newly gained Polish territories
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Province of Silesia
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As a Prussian province, Silesia became part of the German Empire during the Prussian-led unification of Germany in 1871. The territory on both sides of the Oder river formed the part of the Prussian kingdom. It furthermore included the part of Upper Lusatia around Görlitz and Lauban. In the northeast, Upper Silesia bordered on remaining Congress Poland, the incorporated Upper Lusatian strip of land in the west touched the remaining territory of the Saxon kingdom. Immediately after the coronation of Maria Theresa as Bohemian queen regnant, King Frederick the Great of Prussia had invaded Silesia, attempts by Maria Theresa to regain the crown land in the Second Silesian War failed and she ultimately had to relinquish her claims by the Treaty of Dresden. As the lands had been part of the Holy Roman Empire until 1806, the character of the provinces eastern third, Upper Silesia, had been much lesser shaped by the medieval German Ostsiedlung. According to the census of 1905, about three-quarters of the Silesian inhabitants were German–speaking, the Upper Silesian Industrial Region was the second largest industrial agglomeration of the German Empire after the Ruhr area. Ethnic tensions rose on the eve of World War I, with politicians like Wojciech Korfanty separating from the Centre Party, after the war, the parts remaining in Weimar Germany were re-organized into the two provinces of Lower Silesia and Upper Silesia in 1919. Further, in 1920 the Hlučín Region was ceded to Czechoslovakia according to the Treaty of Versailles, after the Nazi Germany conquest of Poland in late 1939, the Province of Silesia was extended when a part of Poland was merged into that province. In 1941, the Province was divided again, the German-speaking population left or was expelled following World War II, though a minority remains. A smaller western part of the former Silesia Province lies within modern German states of Saxony, coats of arms of Upper Silesian towns while part of the Province of Silesia Administrative subdivision and population breakdown of the Province of Silesia in 1900/1900
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Technical University of Berlin
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The Technische Universität Berlin, known as TU Berlin and unofficially as the Technical University of Berlin, is a research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in 1879 and became one of the most prestigious institutions in Europe. It has one of the highest proportions of students in Germany. It belongs to the Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education, the TU Berlin is home of two innovation centers designated by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. The university is known for its highly ranked engineering programmes, especially in engineering and engineering management. The university alumni and professor list include US National Academies members, the TH Charlottenburg was named after the borough of its location in Charlottenburg just outside Berlin. Beforehand, the college had been, however, for several decades under the auspices of the Frederick William University. After Charlottenburgs absorption into Greater Berlin in 1920 and Germany being turned into Weimar Republic, in 1927, the Department of Geodesy of the Agricultural College of Berlin was incorporated into the TH Berlin. The shell construction remained unfinished after the outbreak of World War II and after Beckers suicide in 1940, the north section of the main building of the university was destroyed during a bombing raid in November 1943. Due to the fighting at the end of the Second World War. Planning for the re-opening of the school began on June, 2nd 1945, once the acting rectorship led by Gustav Ludwig Hertz and Max Volmer was appointed. As both Hertz and Volmer remained in exile in the Soviet Union for some time to come, since 2009 the TU Berlin houses two Knowledge and Innovation Communities designated by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. The TU Berlin covers 604,000 m², distributed over various locations in Berlin, the main campus is located in the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. The seven schools of the university have some 33,933 students enrolled in 90 subjects, El Gouna campus, Technische Universität Berlin has established a satellite campus in Egypt to act as a scientific and academic field office. The nonprofit public-private partnership aims to offer services provided by Technische Universität Berlin at the campus in El Gouna on the Red Sea, in addition there are 2,651 student assistants and 126 trainees. International student mobility is applicable through ERASMUS programme or through Top Industrial Managers for Europe network, the new common main library of Technische Universität Berlin and of the Berlin University of the Arts was opened in 2004 and holds about 2.9 million volumes. The library building was sponsored partially by Volkswagen and is named officially University Library of the TU Berlin, a source of confusion to many, the letters above the main entrance only state Volkswagen Bibliothek – without any mentioning of the universities. Bruno Ahrends, architect Steffen Ahrends, architect Stancho Belkovski, Bulgarian architect, head of Higher Technical School in Sofia, wilhelm Cauer, mathematician, essential contributions to the design of filters
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Berlin
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Berlin is the capital and the largest city of Germany as well as one of its constituent 16 states. With a population of approximately 3.5 million, Berlin is the second most populous city proper, due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one-third of the area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers. Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world, following German reunification in 1990, Berlin once again became the capital of all-Germany. Berlin is a city of culture, politics, media. Its economy is based on high-tech firms and the sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations. Berlin serves as a hub for air and rail traffic and has a highly complex public transportation network. The metropolis is a popular tourist destination, significant industries also include IT, pharmaceuticals, biomedical engineering, clean tech, biotechnology, construction and electronics. Modern Berlin is home to world renowned universities, orchestras, museums and its urban setting has made it a sought-after location for international film productions. The city is known for its festivals, diverse architecture, nightlife, contemporary arts. Since 2000 Berlin has seen the emergence of a cosmopolitan entrepreneurial scene, the name Berlin has its roots in the language of West Slavic inhabitants of the area of todays Berlin, and may be related to the Old Polabian stem berl-/birl-. All German place names ending on -ow, -itz and -in, since the Ber- at the beginning sounds like the German word Bär, a bear appears in the coat of arms of the city. It is therefore a canting arm, the first written records of towns in the area of present-day Berlin date from the late 12th century. Spandau is first mentioned in 1197 and Köpenick in 1209, although these areas did not join Berlin until 1920, the central part of Berlin can be traced back to two towns. Cölln on the Fischerinsel is first mentioned in a 1237 document,1237 is considered the founding date of the city. The two towns over time formed close economic and social ties, and profited from the right on the two important trade routes Via Imperii and from Bruges to Novgorod. In 1307, they formed an alliance with a common external policy, in 1415 Frederick I became the elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which he ruled until 1440. In 1443 Frederick II Irontooth started the construction of a new palace in the twin city Berlin-Cölln
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Marxism
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It originates from the mid-to-late 19th century works of German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As the contradiction becomes apparent to the proletariat through the alienation of labor, Marxism has since developed into different branches and schools of thought, and there is now no single definitive Marxist theory. Marxism has been adopted by a number of academics and theorists working in various disciplines. Critics have taken issue with particular Marxist claims or accused Marxism as a whole of being inconsistent, refuted based on new information. The Marxian analysis begins with an analysis of the material conditions, the economic system and these social relations form a base and superstructure. As forces of production, most notably technology, improve, existing forms of social organization become inefficient, from forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution and these inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society in the form of class struggle. Under the capitalist mode of production, this struggle materializes between the minority who own the means of production, and the vast majority of the population who produce goods, the socialist system would succeed capitalism as humanitys mode of production through workers revolution. According to Marxism, especially arising from crisis theory, socialism is a historical necessity, in a socialist society private property, in the form of the means of production, would be replaced by co-operative ownership. A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits, Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. The historical materialist theory of history analyses the causes of societal development. All constituent features of a society are assumed to stem from economic activity, the base and superstructure metaphor portrays the totality of social relations by which humans produce and re-produce their social existence. According to Marx, The sum total of the forces of production accessible to men determines the condition of society and this relationship is reflexive, at first the base gives rise to the superstructure and remains the foundation of a form of social organization. As Friedrich Engels clarified, The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, accordingly, Marx designated human history as encompassing four stages of development in relations of production. Primitive Communism, as in tribal societies. Slave Society, a development of tribal to city-state, aristocracy is born, feudalism, aristocrats are the ruling class, merchants evolve into capitalists. Capitalism, capitalists are the class, who create and employ the proletariat. According to the Marxist theoretician and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, the content of Marxism was Marxs economic doctrine
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Werner Sombart
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Werner Sombart was born in Ermsleben, Harz, the son of a wealthy liberal politician, industrialist, and estate-owner, Anton Ludwig Sombart. He studied law and economics at the universities of Pisa, Berlin, in 1888, he received his Ph. D. from Berlin under the direction of Gustav von Schmoller and Adolph Wagner, then the most eminent German economists. Although faculties at such eminent universities as Heidelberg and Freiburg called him to chairs, Sombart, at that time, was an important Marxian, someone who used and interpreted Karl Marx — to the point that Friedrich Engels said he was the only German professor who understood Das Kapital. Sombart called himself a convinced Marxist, but later wrote that It had to be admitted in the end that Marx had made mistakes on many points of importance. As one of the German academics concerned with social policy, Sombart also joined the Verein für Socialpolitik around 1888, together with his friend. Sombart was not the first sociologist to devote a book to the concept of social movement as he did in his Sozialismus und soziale Bewegung. His understanding of social movements was inspired by Marx and by a book on social movements by Lorenz von Stein, for him, the rising worker’s movement was a result of the inherent contradictions of capitalism. The proletarian situation created a “love for the masses”, which, in 1902, his magnum opus, Der moderne Kapitalismus, appeared in two volumes. It is a history of economics and economic development through the centuries. The first book deals with the transition from feudal society to capitalism, in 1903 Sombart accepted a position as associate editor of the Archives for Social Science and Social Welfare, where he worked with his colleagues Edgar Jaffé and Max Weber. In 1906, Sombart accepted a call to a professorship at the Berlin School of Commerce. Here, inter alia, companion volumes to Modern Capitalism dealing with luxury, fashion, and war as economic paradigms appeared, also in 1906 his Why is there no Socialism in the United States. The book is a work on American exceptionalism in this respect to this day. Excluded from the system, Sombart argued, the Jews broke it up and replaced it with modern capitalism, in competition was unlimited. Paul Johnson, who considers the work a book, notes that Sombart left out some inconvenient truths. Sombart refused to recognize, as Weber did, that wherever these religious systems, including Judaism, were at their most powerful and authoritarian, commerce did not flourish. Jewish businessmen, like Calvinist ones, tended to operate most successfully when they had left their traditional religious environment, the book begins with the greed for gold, the roots of private enterprise, and the types of entrepreneurs. To Sombart, in work, the highest ideal is the German idea of the State
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Polish language
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Polish is a West Slavic language spoken primarily in Poland and is the native language of the Poles. It belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of the West Slavic languages, Polish is the official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the languages of the European Union. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic Latin script, Polish is closely related to Kashubian, Silesian, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, after Russian, in history, Polish is known to be an important language, both diplomatically and academically in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a language in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine, west and central Lithuania, as well as the northern parts of the Czech Republic. There are 55 million Polish language speakers around the world, Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. With Christianity, Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet, which made it possible to write down Polish, the precursor to modern Polish is the Old Polish language. Ultimately, Polish is thought to descend from the unattested Proto-Slavic language, Poland is the most linguistically homogeneous European country, nearly 97% of Polands citizens declare Polish as their first language. Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, Polish is the most widely used minority language in Lithuanias Vilnius County and is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries, in the United States, Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census were found in three states, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services offer services available in Polish at all of their machines in addition to English and Spanish. According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England, in Canada, there is a significant Polish Canadian population, There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to the 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto and Montreal. The geographical distribution of the Polish language was affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II. Poles settled in the Recovered Territories in the west and north and this tendency toward a homogeneity also stems from the vertically integrated nature of the authoritarian Polish Peoples Republic. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak standard Polish somewhat differently, first-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty distinguishing regional variations
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Newspaper
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A newspaper is a serial publication containing news about current events, other informative articles about politics, sports, arts, and so on, and advertising. A newspaper is usually, but not exclusively, printed on relatively inexpensive, the journalism organizations that publish newspapers are themselves often metonymically called newspapers. As of 2017, most newspapers are now published online as well as in print, the online versions are called online newspapers or news websites. Newspapers are typically published daily or weekly, News magazines are also weekly, but they have a magazine format. General-interest newspapers typically publish news articles and feature articles on national and international news as well as local news, typically the paper is divided into sections for each of those major groupings. Papers also include articles which have no byline, these articles are written by staff writers, a wide variety of material has been published in newspapers. As of 2017, newspapers may also provide information about new movies, most newspapers are businesses, and they pay their expenses with a mixture of subscription revenue, newsstand sales, and advertising revenue. Some newspapers are government-run or at least government-funded, their reliance on advertising revenue, the editorial independence of a newspaper is thus always subject to the interests of someone, whether owners, advertisers, or a government. Some newspapers with high editorial independence, high quality. This is a way to avoid duplicating the expense of reporting from around the world, circa 2005, there were approximately 6,580 daily newspaper titles in the world selling 395 million print copies a day. Worldwide annual revenue approached $100 billion in 2005-7, then plunged during the financial crisis of 2008-9. Revenue in 2016 fell to only $53 billion, hurting every major publisher as their efforts to gain online income fell far short of the goal. Besides remodeling advertising, the internet has also challenged the business models of the era by crowdsourcing both publishing in general and, more specifically, journalism. In addition, the rise of news aggregators, which bundle linked articles from online newspapers. Increasing paywalling of online newspapers may be counteracting those effects, the oldest newspaper still published is the Gazzetta di Mantova, which was established in Mantua in 1664. While online newspapers have increased access to newspapers by people with Internet access, literacy is also a factor which prevents people who cannot read from being able to benefit from reading newspapers. Periodicity, They are published at intervals, typically daily or weekly. This ensures that newspapers can provide information on newly-emerging news stories or events, currency, Its information is as up to date as its publication schedule allows
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Poles in Germany
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Poles in Germany are the second largest Polish diaspora in the world and the biggest in Europe. Estimates of the number of Poles living in Germany vary from 2 million to about 3 million people living that might be of Polish descent, according to the latest census, there are approximately 2,006,410 Poles in Germany. The main Polonia organisations in Germany are the Union of Poles in Germany, Polish surnames are relatively common in Germany, especially in the Ruhr area. Poles also settled in present-day Germany during the 18th century e. g. in Dresden, during the late 19th century rapid industrialisation in the Ruhr region attracted about 300,000 Poles, especially from East Prussia, West Prussia, Poznań, and Silesia. They comprised about 30% of the Ruhr area population by 1910, participants in this migration are called the Ruhr Poles. After 1870 the Poles were under a pressure of Germanisation. Most Catholic bishops were imprisoned or exiled, however, these Germanisation policies were not at all successful. The policy of forced cultural Germanisation alienated large parts of the Polish-speaking population against the German authorities, after the First World War, the predominantly Polish provinces had to be ceded to the newly created Polish Republic. Polish-speaking minorities remained especially in Upper Silesia and parts of East Prussia, after the rise of the Nazis, all Polish activities were systematically constrained, since mid-1937 also in Upper Silesia. However, in August 1939, the leadership of the Polish community was arrested and interned in the Nazi concentration camps of Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. On 7 September 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II and this was formally confirmed by Hermann Görings decree of 27 February 1940. Today the German government does not recognise German nationals of Polish ethnicity as a national minority, Polish agencies claim, that this way Germany is not recognising the right of self-determination for the group. After Poland joined the European Union, several organisations of Poles in Germany attempted to restore the official minority status. Being German citizens, they retain all civil and political rights every German citizen possesses. About 10,000 Polish citizens have moved to German localities along the Polish-German border. Data of 2015, German minority in Poland Union of Poles in Germany List of notable Germans of Polish origin Association of National Minorities in Germany Cyganski, Miroslaw. Nazi Persecutions of Polish National Minorities in the Rhineland-Westphalia Provinces in the Years 1933-1945, Polish Western Affairs 17#12 pp 115–138 Fink, stresemanns Minority Policies, 1924-29, Journal of Contemporary History 14#3 pp. 403–422 in JSTOR Kulczycki, John J. School Strikes in Prussian Poland 1901-1907, The Struggle over Bilingual Education Kulczycki, the Polish Coal Miners Union and the German Labor Movement in the Ruhr, 1902-1934, National and Social Solidarity Kulczycki, John J
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Centre Party (Germany)
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The German Centre Party is a lay Catholic political party in Germany, primarily influential during the Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic. In English it is called the Catholic Centre Party. Formed in 1870, it successfully battled the Kulturkampf which Chancellor Otto von Bismarck launched in Prussia to reduce the power of the Catholic Church. It soon won a quarter of the seats in the Reichstag, after World War II, the party was refounded, but could not rise again to its former importance, as most of its members joined the new Christian Democratic Union. The Centre Party was represented in the German parliament until 1957 and it exists as a marginal party, mainly based in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Many Catholics found themselves in Protestant dominated states and this led to serious aggressions against the Catholic population of the Rhineland and Westphalia and culminated in the arrest of the Archbishop of Cologne. The conflict relaxed after 1840, with Frederick William IVs accession to the throne, the Revolution of 1848 brought new opportunities for German Catholics. In October, the bishops had their first meeting in 40 years in Würzburg, in the National Assembly, which was convened to draw up a German constitution, a Catholic club was formed. This was not yet a party, but a loose union aimed at protecting the Churchs liberties in a future Germany. The later demise of the National Assembly proved to be a setback for Political Catholicism. In reaction this led to a doubling of Catholic representatives in the subsequent elections, in 1858, when the New Era governments of Wilhelm I adopted more lenient policies, the club renamed itself Fraction of the Centre in order to open itself up to include non-Catholics. This name stemmed from the fact that in the Prussian Diet the Catholic representatives were seated in the centre, faced with military and constitutional issues, where there was no definite Church position, the group soon disintegrated and disappeared from parliament after 1867. The main points were, Preservation of the Churchs autonomy and rights, defense against any attack on the independence of Church bodies, on the development of religious life and on the practice of Christian charity. Effectual implementation of parity for recognised denominations, rejection of any attempt to de-Christianise marriage. Preservation or founding of denominational schools, with such a manifesto, the number of Catholic representatives in the Prussian Diet rose considerably. In December 1870, they formed a new Centre faction, also called the Constitution Party to emphasise its adherence to constitutional liberties, three months later, early in 1871, the Catholic representatives to the new national parliament, the Reichstag, also formed a Centre faction. In the age of nationalism, Protestant Germans, whether Conservative or Liberal, after the First Vatican Council, Bismarck launched the Kulturkampf or cultural struggle against the Catholic Church. But the Catholics fought back vigorously and with near-unanimity, the Centre party gained greater support from the Catholic population
25.
West Prussia
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The territory was included within Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia from 1939–45, after which it became part of Poland. West Prussia is also used as a name for the region in historical context from the 13th century to 1945. Due to immigration and cultural changes, the population became mixed over centuries and consisted of Germans, Kashubians, Poles, as well as Slovincians, Huguenots, Mennonites, most of the territory of West Prussia is today part of Poland’s Pomeranian Voivodeship, whose capital is Gdańsk. The province became a Land of the Polish Crown within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by the 1569 Union of Lublin, East Prussia around Königsberg, on the other hand, remained with the State of the Teutonic Knights, who were reduced to vassals of the Polish kings. Their territory was secularised to the Duchy of Prussia according to the 1525 Treaty of Kraków, ruled in personal union with the Imperial Margraviate of Brandenburg from 1618, the Hohenzollern rulers of Brandenburg-Prussia were able to remove the Polish suzerainty by the 1657 Treaty of Wehlau. This development turned out to be fatal to the Polish monarchy, in the 1772 First Partition of Poland the Prussian king Frederick the Great took the occasion to annex most of Royal Prussia. Further annexed areas of Greater Poland and Kuyavia in the formed the Netze District. The Partition Sejm ratified the cession on 30 September 1773, thereafter Frederick styled himself King of Prussia rather than King in Prussia. The Polish administrative and legal code was replaced by the Prussian system, both Protestant and Roman Catholic teachers taught in West Prussia, and teachers and administrators were encouraged to be able to speak both German and Polish. Frederick II of Prussia also advised his successors to learn Polish, despite this, Frederick II looked askance upon many of his new citizens. He considered West Prussia less civilized than Colonial Canada and compared the Poles to the Iroquois, in a letter to his brother Henry, Frederick wrote about the province that it is a very good and advantageous acquisition, both from a financial and a political point of view. In order to excite less jealousy I tell everyone that on my travels I have seen just sand, pine trees, heath land and Jews. Despite that there is a lot of work to be done, there is no order, and no planning, Frederick invited German immigrants to redevelop the province. Many German officials also regarded the Poles with contempt, according to the Polish historian Jerzy Surdykowski, Frederick the Great introduced 300,000 German colonists. According to Christopher Clark 54 percent of the areas and 75 percent of the urban population were German-speaking Protestants. Further Polish areas were annexed in the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, now including the cities of Danzig, some of the areas of Greater Poland annexed in 1772 that formed the Netze District were added to West Prussia in 1793 as well. After the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Danzig, Kulm, in 1815 the province was administratively subdivided into the Regierungsbezirke Danzig and Marienwerder. From 1824-1878 West Prussia was combined with East Prussia to form the Province of Prussia, however, after the region became part of the German Empire in 1871 during the unification of Germany, it was subjected to measures aimed at Germanization of Polish-speaking areas
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Warmia
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Warmia is a historical region in northern Poland. It is nowadays the core of the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship and it has about 4,500 km2 and 350,000 inhabitants. Its biggest city is Olsztyn, while the capital was Lidzbark Warmiński. Important landmarks include the cathedral in Frombork, where Mikołaj Kopernik elaborated the theory, and sanctuary in Gietrzwałd. It is an area of lakes, it lies at the upper Łyna river and on the right bank of Pasłęka. Warmia is part of the province of Prussia and has traditionally strong connections with Masuria. Warmia has been under the dominion of various states over the course of its history, most notably the Old Prussians, the Teutonic Knights, the Kingdom of Poland, the history of the region is closely connected to that of the Archbishopric of Warmia. The region is associated with the Prussian tribe, the Warmians, according to folk etymology, Warmia is named after the legendary Prussian chief Warmo, whereas the name Ermland derives from his widow Erma. By the early Middle Ages the Warmians, an Old Prussian tribe, in the 13th century the area became a battleground in the Northern Crusades. The first Bishop of Prussia, Christian of Oliva, was commissioned in 1209 to convert the Prussians, in 1226 Duke Konrad I of Masovia invited the Teutonic Knights to Christianize the pagan Prussians. He supplied the Teutonic Order and allowed the usage of Chełmno Land as a base for the knights and they had the task of establishing secure borders between Masovia and the Prussians, with the assumption that conquered territories would become part of Masovia. The Order waited until they received official authorisation from the Empire, the papal Golden Bull of Rieti from Pope Gregory IX in 1234 confirmed the grant, although Konrad of Masovia never recognized the rights of the Order to rule Prussia. Later, the Knights were accused of forging these land grants, by the end of the 13th century the Teutonic Order had conquered and Christianized most of the Prussian region, including Warmia. The new régime reduced many of the native Prussians to the status of serfs, over several centuries the colonists, native Prussians and immigrants gradually intermingled. In 1242 the papal legate William of Modena set up four dioceses, from the 13th century new colonists, mainly Germans, settled in the Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights. The bishopric was exempt and was governed by a prince-bishop, confirmed by Emperor Charles IV, the Bishops of Warmia were usually Germans or Poles, although Enea Silvio Piccolomini, the later Pope Pius II, served as an Italian bishop of the diocese. After the Polish army moved out of Warmia, the new Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Heinrich von Plauen the Elder, accused the bishop of treachery, soon after, in 1467, the Cathedral Chapter elected Nicolas von Tüngen against the wish of the Polish king. The Estates of Royal Prussia did not take the side of the Cathedral Chapter, nicholas von Tüngen allied himself with the Teutonic Order and with King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary
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Province of Posen
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The Province of Posen was a province of Prussia from 1848 and as such part of the German Empire from 1871 until 1918. The area, roughly corresponding to the region of Greater Poland annexed during the 18th century Polish partitions, was about 29,000 km2. For more than a century, it was part of the Prussian Partition, incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Posen after the 1815 Congress of Vienna, the territory was administered as a Prussian province upon the Greater Poland Uprising of 1848. In 1919 according to the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had to return the bulk of the province to the newly established Second Polish Republic, the land is mostly flat, drained by two major watershed systems, the Noteć in the north and the Warta in the center. Ice Age glaciers left moraine deposits and the land is speckled with hundreds of lakes, streams flowing in. Agriculture was the industry, as one would expect for the 19th century. The three-field system was used to grow a variety of crops, primarily rye, sugar beet, potatoes, other grains, significant parcels of wooded land provided building materials and firewood. Small numbers of livestock existed, including geese, but an amount of sheep were herded. When this area came under Prussian control, the system was still in force. It was officially ended in Prussia in 1810, but lingered in some practices until the late 19th century, the situation was thus that Polish serfs lived and worked side by side with free German settlers. Though the settlers were given initial advantages, in time their lots were not much different, serfs worked for the noble lord, who took care of them. Settlers worked for themselves and took care of themselves, but paid taxes to the lord, typically, an estate would have its manor and farm buildings, and a village nearby for the Polish laborers. Near that village, there might be a German settlement, and in the woods, there would be a foresters dwelling. The estate owners, usually of the nobility, owned the local grist mill, in many places, windmills dotted the landscape, reminding one of the earliest settlers, the Dutch, who began the process of turning unproductive river marshes into fields. This process was finished by the German settlers employed to reclaim unproductive lands for the host estate owners, the territory of later province had become Prussian in 1772 and 1793 during the First and Second Partition of Poland. After Prussias defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, the territory was attached to the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807 upon the Franco-Prussian Treaty of Tilsit. In 1815 during the Congress of Vienna, Prussia gained the third of the Warsaw duchy. Instead Prussian Germanisation measures increased under Oberpräsident Eduard Heinrich von Flottwell, a first Greater Poland Uprising in 1846 failed, as the leading insurgents around Karol Libelt and Ludwik Mierosławski were reported to the Prussian police and arrested for high treason
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East Prussia
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East Prussia was a province of Prussia from 1773–1829 and from 1878–1945. East Prussia was the part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast. East Prussia enclosed the bulk of the lands of the Baltic Old Prussians. During the 13th century, the native Prussians were conquered by the crusading Teutonic Knights, the indigenous Balts who survived the conquest were gradually converted to Christianity. Because of Germanization and colonisation over the centuries, Germans became the dominant ethnic group, while Poles. From the 13th century, East Prussia was part of the state of the Teutonic Knights. After the Second Peace of Thorn in 1466 it became a fief of the Kingdom of Poland, in 1525, with the Prussian Homage, the province became the Duchy of Prussia. The Old Prussian language had become extinct by the 17th or early 18th century, because the duchy was outside of the core Holy Roman Empire, the prince-electors of Brandenburg were able to proclaim themselves King of Prussia beginning in 1701. Between 1829 and 1878, the Province of East Prussia was joined with West Prussia to form the Province of Prussia, the Kingdom of Prussia became the leading state of the German Empire after its creation in 1871. Following Nazi Germanys defeat in World War II in 1945, war-torn East Prussia was divided at Joseph Stalins insistence between the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of Poland, the capital city Königsberg was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946. The German population of the province was evacuated during the war or expelled shortly thereafter in the expulsion of Germans after World War II. An estimated 300,000 died either in war time bombings raids or in the battles to defend the province. Upon the invitation of Duke Konrad I of Masovia, the Teutonic Knights took possession of Prussia in the 13th century, local Old-Prussian and Polish toponyms were gradually Germanised. Its defeat was formalised in the Second Treaty of Thorn in 1466 ending the Thirteen Years War, together with Warmia it formed the province of Royal Prussia. Eastern Prussia remained under the Knights, but as a fief of Poland,1466 and 1525 arrangements by kings of Poland were not verified by the Holy Roman Empire as well as the previous gains of the Teutonic Knights were not verified. The Teutonic Order lost eastern Prussia when Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach converted to Lutheranism, Albert established himself as the first duke of the Duchy of Prussia and a vassal of the Polish crown by the Prussian Homage. Walter von Cronberg, the next Grand Master, was enfeoffed with the title to Prussia after the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, in 1569 the Hohenzollern prince-electors of the Margraviate of Brandenburg became co-regents with Alberts son, the feeble-minded Albert Frederick. The Administrator of Prussia, the grandmaster of the Teutonic Order Maximilian III, when Maximilian died, Alberts line died out, and the Duchy of Prussia passed to the Electors of Brandenburg, forming Brandenburg-Prussia
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Masuria
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Masuria is a region in northern Poland famous for its 2,000 lakes. Before the end of World War II, it was inhabited by Polish-speaking Lutheran Masurians. Masuria occupies much of the Masurian Lake District, administratively, it belongs to Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship. Its biggest city is Ełk, often regarded as its capital and it has territory of about 10,000 km2 and population of 500,000. Before 13th century, the territory was inhabited by the Old Prussians also called Baltic Prussians, the territory later called Masuria was then known as Galindia and was probably a peripheral, deeply forested and lightly populated area. Its inhabitants spoke a language now known as Old Prussian and had their own mythology, although a 19th-century German political entity bore their name, they were not Germans. They were converted to Roman Catholicism in the 13th century, after conquest by the Knights of the Teutonic Order, estimates range from about 170,000 to 220,000 Old Prussians living in the whole of Prussia around 1200. The wilderness was their natural barrier against attack by would-be invaders, during the Northern Crusades of the early 13th century, the Old Prussians used this wide forest as a line of defence. They did so again against the Knights of the Teutonic Order, the orders goal was to convert the native population to Christianity and baptise it by force if necessary. In the subsequent conquest, which lasted over 50 years, the population was nearly exterminated. After the Orders acquisition of Prussia, Poles began to settle in the part of the conquered region. German, Dutch, Flemish, and Danish colonists entered the area afterward, western half of the province was ceded to Poland, and the grand master became a vassal of the Polish crown. The secularization of the Teutonic Order in Prussia and the conversion of Albert of Prussia to Lutheranism in 1525 brought Prussia including the later called Masuria area to Protestantism. The Polish language predominated due to the immigrants from Mazovia. While the countryside was inhabited by Protestant Polish-speakers, who took refuge, the ancient Old Prussian language survived in parts of the countryside until the early 18th century. Areas that had many Polish language speakers were known as the Polish Departments, in 1656, during the Battle of Prostki, the forces of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, including 2,000 Tatar raiders, beat the allied Swedish and Brandenburg army capturing Bogusław Radziwiłł. The war resulted in the destruction of most towns,249 villages, over 50% of the population of southern Prussia died within the years 1656–1657,23,000 killed, another 80,000 died of diseases and famine,3,400 people were enslaved. In Lötzen 800 out of 919 people died, the last group of refugees to emigrate to Masuria were the Russian Philipons in 1830, when King Frederick William III of Prussia granted them asylum
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Silesia
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Silesia is a region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic and Germany. Its area is about 40,000 km2, and its population about 8,000,000, Silesia is located along the Oder River. It consists of Lower Silesia and Upper Silesia, the region is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesias largest city and historical capital is Wrocław, the biggest metropolitan area is the Upper Silesian metropolitan area, the centre of which is Katowice. Parts of the Czech city of Ostrava fall within the borders of Silesia, Silesias borders and national affiliation have changed over time, both when it was a hereditary possession of noble houses and after the rise of modern nation-states. The first known states to hold there were probably those of Greater Moravia at the end of the 9th century. In the 10th century, Silesia was incorporated into the early Polish state, in the 14th century, it became a constituent part of the Bohemian Crown Lands under the Holy Roman Empire, which passed to the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy in 1526. Most of Silesia was conquered by Prussia in 1742, later becoming part of the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the varied history with changing aristocratic possessions resulted in an abundance of castles in Silesia, especially in the Jelenia Góra valley. The remaining former Austrian parts of Silesia were partitioned to Czechoslovakia, in 1945, after World War II, the bulk of Silesia was transferred to Polish jurisdiction by the Potsdam Agreement of the victorious Allied Powers and became part of Poland. The small Lusatian strip west of the Oder-Neisse line, which had belonged to Silesia since 1815 and its centres are Görlitz and Bautzen. Most inhabitants of Silesia today speak the languages of their respective countries. The population of Upper Silesia is native, while Lower Silesia was settled by a German-speaking population before 1945, an ongoing debate exists whether Silesian speech should be considered a dialect of Polish or a separate language. Also, a Lower Silesian German dialect is used, although today it is almost extinct and it is used by expellees within Germany, as well as Germans who were left behind. The names all relate to the name of a river and mountain in mid-southern Silesia, the mountain served as a cultic place. Ślęża is listed as one of the numerous Pre-Indo-European topographic names in the region, according to some Polish Slavists, the name Ślęża or Ślęż is directly related to the Old Slavic words ślęg or śląg, which means dampness, moisture, or humidity. They disagree with the hypothesis of an origin for the name Śląsk from the name of the Silings tribe, in the fourth century BC, Celts entered Silesia, settling around Mount Ślęża near modern Wrocław, Oława, and Strzelin. Germanic Lugii tribes were first recorded within Silesia in the 1st century, Slavic peoples arrived in the region around the 7th century, and by the early ninth century, their settlements had stabilized. Local Slavs started to erect boundary structures like the Silesian Przesieka, the eastern border of Silesian settlement was situated to the west of the Bytom, and east from Racibórz and Cieszyn
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Rebellion
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Rebellion, uprising, or insurrection is a refusal of obedience or order. It refers to the resistance against the orders of an established authority. The term comes from the Latin verb rebellō, I renew war (from re- + bellō, the rebel is the individual that partakes in rebellion or rebellious activities, particularly when armed. Thus, the rebellion also refers to the ensemble of rebels in a state of revolt. A rebellion originates from a sentiment of indignation and disapproval of a situation, Rebellion can be individual or collective, peaceful or violent In political terms, rebellion and revolt are often distinguished by their different aims. If rebellion generally seeks to evade an oppressive power, a revolt seeks to overthrow and destroy that power, the goal of rebellion is resistance while a revolt seeks a revolution. As power shifts relative to the adversary, or power shifts within a mixed coalition, or positions harden or soften on either side. The following theories broadly build on the Marxist interpretation of rebellion and they explore the causes of rebellion from a wide lens perspective. Marx writes about the structure of society that must be elucidated through an examination of the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers. The mismatch, between one mode of production, between the forces and the social ownership of the production, is at the origin of the revolution. The inner imbalance within these modes of production is derived from the modes of organization, such as capitalism within feudalism. The dynamics engineered by these class frictions help class consciousness root itself in the collective imaginary, for example, the development of the bourgeoisie class went from oppressed merchant class to urban independence, eventually gaining enough power to represent the state as a whole. Social movements, thus, are determined by a set of circumstances. The proletariat must also, according to Marx, go through the process of self-determination which can only be achieved by friction against the bourgeoisie. In Marxs theory revolutions are the locomotives of history, it is because rebellion has for ultimate goal to overthrow the ruling class and its antiquated mode of production. Later, rebellion attempts to replace it with a new system of political economy, one that is suited to the new ruling class. The cycle of rebellion, thus, replaces one mode of production by another through the constant class friction, in his book Why Men Rebel, Ted Gurr looks at the roots of political violence itself applied to a rebellion framework. He defines political violence as, all collective attacks within a political community against the political regime, the concept represents a set of events, a common property of which is the actual or threatened use of violence
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League of Nations
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The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organisation founded on 10 January 1920 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first international organisation whose mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament, at its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, however, the Great Powers were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them, after a number of notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. Germany withdrew from the League, as did Japan, Italy, Spain, the onset of the Second World War showed that the League had failed its primary purpose, which was to prevent any future world war. The League lasted for 26 years, the United Nations replaced it after the end of the Second World War on 20 April 1946 and inherited a number of agencies and organisations founded by the League. As historians William H. Harbaugh and Ronald E. Powaski point out, the organisation was international in scope, with a third of the members of parliaments serving as members of the IPU by 1914. Its aims were to encourage governments to solve disputes by peaceful means. Annual conferences were held to help refine the process of international arbitration. Its structure consisted of a council headed by a president, which would later be reflected in the structure of the League, at the start of the 20th century, two power blocs emerged from alliances between the European Great Powers. It was these alliances that, at the start of the First World War in 1914 and this was the first major war in Europe between industrialised countries, and the first time in Western Europe that the results of industrialisation had been dedicated to war. By the time the fighting ended in November 1918, the war had had an impact, affecting the social, political and economic systems of Europe. Anti-war sentiment rose across the world, the First World War was described as the war to end all wars, the causes identified included arms races, alliances, militaristic nationalism, secret diplomacy, and the freedom of sovereign states to enter into war for their own benefit. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, a British political scientist, coined the term League of Nations in 1914, together with Lord Bryce, he played a leading role in the founding of the group of internationalist pacifists known as the Bryce Group, later the League of Nations Union. The group became more influential among the public and as a pressure group within the then governing Liberal Party. In Dickinsons 1915 pamphlet After the War he wrote of his League of Peace as being essentially an organisation for arbitration and conciliation
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Silesians
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Silesians are the inhabitants of Silesia, a historical region divided by the current national boundaries of Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic. This central European ethno-linguistic group should not be confused with German Silesians, today, Silesians inhabiting Poland are considered to belong to a Polish ethnographic group, and they speak a dialect of Polish. They are of Slavic descent, but because Germany ruled Silesia for a long time, there have been some debates on whether or not the Silesians constitute a distinct nation. In modern history, they have often been pressured to declare themselves to be German, Polish or Czech, nevertheless,847,000 people declared themselves to be of Silesian nationality in the 2011 Polish national census. However, the era was already over, and these divisions reflected only political subdivisions of the Polish realm. Within Poland, from 1177 onward, Silesia was divided into many smaller duchies, in 1178, parts of the Duchy of Kraków around Bytom, Oświęcim, Chrzanów and Siewierz were transferred to the Silesian Piasts, although their population was of Vistulan and not of Silesian descent. Between 1327 and 1348, duchies of Silesia came under suzerainty of the Crown of Bohemia, beginning in the 13th century, Slavic Silesia began to be settled by Germans. This led to changes in the structure of the province. In the Middle Ages, various German dialects of the new settlers became widely used throughout Lower Silesia, however, after the era of German colonization, the Polish language was still predominant in Upper Silesia and parts of Lower and Middle Silesia north of the Odra river. Germans usually dominated large cities, and Poles mostly lived in rural areas and this required the Prussian authorities to issue official documents in Polish, or in German and Polish. In 1742, most of Silesia was seized in the War of the Austrian Succession by King Frederick the Great of Prussia, the remainder of Silesia, known as Cieszyn Silesia, remained in the Austrian Empire. The Prussian part of Silesia constituted the Province of Silesia until 1918, later, the province was split into the Prussian provinces of Upper and Lower Silesia. At the beginning of the century, the fact that Silesians were part of the Polish nation was not questioned. The language and culture of the self-declared Polish Silesians were put under the pressure of the Prussian Kulturkampf policies, the process of Germanisation was never completely successful. The ethnic situation of the region became more complex as the division of Upper Silesia into Polish, World War II and its aftermath amplified this polarization. Three groups took shape within the Silesian population, the Polish group was the strongest, the German group, which was primarily in central Silesia, was clearly less numerous. A third group supported separatism and an independent Silesian nation-state, the separatists were of marginal importance, finding little support among native Silesians. The reasons for these transitions were boundary shifts and population changes that came after World War II
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Silesian Parliament
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Silesian Parliament or Silesian Sejm was the governing body of the Silesian Voivodeship, an autonomous voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic between 1920 and 1945. It was elected in elections and had certain influence over the usage of taxes collected in Silesia. The eastern part of Upper Silesia became part of the Second Polish Republic following the Silesian Uprisings throughout the Upper Silesian region between 1918 and 1921, and Upper Silesia Plebiscite. The land was divided by an allied commission and the League of Nations. Together with Cieszyn Silesia it formed Silesian Voievodeship with significant autonomy, designed by architect Lech Wojtyczko, the Silesian Parliament was built in 1925-1929. For a very time it was the biggest structure in Poland. Currently it hosts the offices of the Silesian Voivodship, the building has seven floors and contains one of four paternosters currently in use in Poland. When the building was inaugurated in May 1929, Michal Grazynski, President of the Province of Upper silesia, called the building a symbol of Polish culture. The building is one of Polands official national Historic Monuments, as designated October 22,2012 and tracked by the National Heritage Board of Poland
