In the war, my father’s father and his brothers were in the Home Army (Polish “resistance”), their mother’s brother was a Soviet general in the “wojsko sanitarne” – the medical corps?, and it appears that some other kind of uncle, somewhere on their father’s side, won an Iron Cross as an officer (can’t find the list now to say what rank) in the Luftwaffe. We couldn’t lose.
Laodicea 
January 26, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Quite ‘mildly amusing’! 😀
January 26, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Yet you could’t all win, either.
January 26, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Yes, that tends to be a problem with hedging one’s bets.
I should maybe clarify, in case anyone thinks this was some kind of cynical strategy, that the Luftwaffe uncle we haven’t yet located on the family tree, it’s just that he has a combination of names unusual except, as far as we know, in the family, and it seems to match up with a couple of vague family rumours. My great-grandmother was Russian, living in Wilno after the revolution but before the war (she eloped) – the rest of her family were in Soviet Russia – hence the Polish-Soviet division of the family just sort of happened.
January 26, 2008 at 1:58 pm
But the important thing is, who has the Iron Cross now? Oh, and was it first class or second class?
January 26, 2008 at 2:48 pm
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January 26, 2008 at 5:26 pm
That’s how it was in central Europe really. My grandmother’s father was “German”, and her first language was Platdeutsch. My other grandfather was “Jewish”-“Polish”. Why “”? Who of the simple folk thought about nationalities? They lived where they lived, spoke how they spoke and didn’t really think about it. Things started to corode when nationality became an issue.
January 26, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Echoes of the Master of Ballantrae.
Vague rumours can be either very useful or totally frustrating in genealogy. I know from experience, also, not to put too much weight on unusual combinations of names. They can eb a decent hint, but can also lead to some wild goose chases.
January 27, 2008 at 2:52 am
“… Things started to corrode when nationality became an issue …” (polishpress)
Yes, round about the 10th century when the Piasts began forming the Polish Kingdom. Remember that it was only an intense feeling of nationality that kept the Poles (of all classes) going from 1795 to 1918 during which time, following the Third Partition, the Polish state had ceased to exist. (And remember that it was the “simple folk” who formed the backbone of Kosciuszko’s uprising in 1794.)
January 27, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Londoniensis—> you may be right, but you may be wrong. depends how you look and where you look. I think you should rely a bit less on history books (which usually have an attitude of some kind) and a bit more on diaries and what living members of your family tell you. Reality is complex, and you can probably notice the media of today don’t cover it exactly. So you can imagine historians covering the relities of the past. What might be true in one region, might not be that true somewhere else. Even in one village, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s quite likely people held different views and one were concerned with lack of the proper Polish states, while others couldn’t care less making ends meet.
January 27, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Polishpress – Do you really think diaries and members of one’s family give a somehow “objective” account that is superior to the accounts found in history books? Diaries are historical material.
Archeological evidence, especially in materially poor cultures using mostly wood, can’t tell us much about people’s attitudes to ethnic or other identities. Written evidence is likely to come from some form of elite. Historians are of course going to interpret evidence, but other historians then argue with their interpretation – often on the grounds of underlying philosophical or ideological suppositions.
Your difficulty is that we have approximately zero record of the thoughts of villagers in Piast Poland, so you have no way of proving that they did not in any way share in the national consciousness (forgive my crude terminology) that can be traced in the historical sources of the time. Nor does grinding poverty and hopelessness ekcetra ekcetra mean that people have no time for ideology, cf. Islamo-madness in Pakistan and whathaveyou. It does of course vary from country to country, and I submit that where a peasant lives in the middle of a huge country where no foreign conflict ever affects him, he may well have little national consciousness (cf Figes’ anecdote re Russian peasant in “A People’s Tragedy”). Wherever any kind of meeting of nations takes places, national identity is strengthened, whether this be the university of Paris in the C13, the papal chapel in the C16, or any other time or place. The Hebrews in Egypt? By which I do not mean that all C19 nationalism has taught us to associate with national identity.
Londiniensis – I would point out that Kosciuszko’s promise of lifting pańszczyzna probably had something to do with his relative popularity among the peasants; which of the following revolutions (i get them all mixed up, it’s a bit like Bond films trying to remember which scene goes in which one) came to a tragic end when the Austrians more or less bribed the peasantry into stabbing it in the back?
January 27, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Wherever any kind of meeting of nations takes places, national identity is strengthened, whether this be the university of Paris in the C13, the papal chapel in the C16, or any other time or place.
I’m not at all convinced of that. The experience of the Church Universal in Rome seems to draw one into a sense of belonging to something greater and more universal that one’s own nation.
Certainly, total isolation from other nations would probably tend to lessen the sense of national identity and conflict between nations certainly heightens it… but I don’t think that it’s necessarily always true that the meeting of nations strengthens national identity.
January 27, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Do you not find that the congress of nations in Rome strengthens national identity in a positive way? I’ve no idea only having visited and never having lived there. A Dominican Father once told me his reading of Bede was that the Church would not necessarily survive in England but there would at least be some English people in heaven at the end of time. Perhaps one’s country is one of those things of which Our Lord says “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice and these other things will be added unto you”? Two genuine questions.
January 27, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Do you not find that the congress of nations in Rome strengthens national identity in a positive way?
Personally speaking, not especially. I mean, it doesn’t weaken my sense of patriotism or cause me to despise my country in any way. However, what it does do is encourage a more global outlook and a greater sense of belonging to something international.
Perhaps one’s country is one of those things of which Our Lord says “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice and these other things will be added unto you”?
Ah! That I can well believe to be true. De Lubac makes an interesting distinction between the patriotism which is a religious duty and forms of nationalism which exalt the state and place it before God. Growth in faith should lead to a greater and purer love of country. However, that’s not the same as saying that the experience of the Church Universal in Rome leads to this.
January 28, 2008 at 5:34 am
polishpress You are of course right, but only up to a point. A lot depended on where you were: whether in Wielopolska or Małopolska Zachodnia or whether in, say, Prusy or Wołyń. Prior to the 18th century, it also depended on who you were: szlachta (c. 15% of the population) felt “Polish”; for the peasantry feelings of Polishness depended on language, customs and religion; many towns were significantly “German” (the szlachta would not go into trade or the professions – other than the Church – so these positions were filled by Germans and, later, Jews).
berenike Again, up to a point. Kościuszko had been one of the leaders of the Polish-Russian war of 1792, which had pitted the King, and the supporters of the Constitution of 3rd May 1791, against the Russians and their Targowica allies. This ended in a rout after the King went over to Targowica and the Second Partition followed in 1793. Kościuszko’s insurrection in 1794 was a second attempt at establishing an independent Poland based on the new Constitution, which had, inter alia, reformed pańszczyzna: this aspect was extended to outright abolition in Kościuszko’s Uniwersał Połaniecki. Were the peasants who flocked to Kościuszko’s banners motivated by self-interest? Partly perhaps, but I think that without a more profound feeling of “Polishness” there would have been no kosynierzy, no Wojciech Bartos Głowacki and no Żywią i Bronią.
Also very interestingly, one of the heroes of Kościuszko’s insurrection was Colonel Berek Joselewicz, a Jew, who raised a Jewish regiment to fight in the Polish cause.
The back-stabbing to which you refer is the rzeź galicyjska of 1846 in the southern part of Austrian occupied Poland. This was provoked by the Austrians to smother a planned 1846 Polish uprising against all three partitioning powers. In the event a Polish uprising against the Austrians occurred in Kraków, which given the very brutal horrors of the rzeź, and the influx of 55,000 Austrian troops, was very short-lived. (The Powstanie Wielkopolskie in the same year in Prussian occupied Poland was also put down quickly.)
If you read Polish, then the Polish version of Wikipedia has some good articles.
January 28, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Londiniensis – I was only saying that this wasn’t irrelevant :-).