Читать книгу The Pictures of German Life Throughout History - Gustav Freytag - Страница 7

Among the events of the thirteenth century, the wonderfully rapid colonization of the Sclave country east of the Elbe has never been sufficiently appreciated. In the course of one century a numerous body of German emigrants of all classes, almost as many as now go to America, spread themselves over a large tract of country, established hundreds of cities and villages, and united it for the most part firmly to Germany. Nearly the whole of the eastern part of Prussia extends over a portion of the territory that was thus colonized.

The time however of this outpouring of national strength was not the heroic period of Germany. The enthusiasm of the Crusades, the splendour of the Hohenstaufen, the short reign of German chivalry, and the greatest elevation of German art, were at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century, whereas the colonization of the Sclave frontier was carried on with most energy towards the close of it. This was the period when Neumark and Prussia were conquered, and Lausitz, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Rugen, and Silesia colonized. But there was a striking difference in the case of Silesia; for whilst in the other Sclave countries the people were crushed by the iron hand of the conqueror, and were compelled to adopt German habits of life, Silesia became the centre of a quiet, peaceful colonization, which spread itself far and wide over, the frontier towards the east.

How powerful a passion the love of wandering became in the German people at this period, is a point we will not attempt to enter upon. The expeditions of the Hohenstaufens into Italy, and still more the Crusades, had roused and excited the masses, who became restless and eager for foreign adventure; and the life of the peaceful labourer in Germany was full of danger, indeed almost insupportable. Pious monks, enterprising nobles, even princely brides were to be seen knocking at the doors of their peasantry, and trying to induce the young labourers to follow them to Poland. But little is known concerning this emigration; we do not even know from what province the great stream of Silesian wanderers flowed. There are grounds for thinking that most of them came from Magdeburg, Thuringia, and perhaps Franconia. There is no mention of it in the ancient manuscripts or chronicles; the only evidence concerning it might perhaps be found in the Silesian and Thuringian dialects, but even these have not been sufficiently investigated. We have however more knowledge as to who invited the Germans into the country of the Oder. It was the Sclavonian dukes of the Piasten family, who were then rulers of the country.

At the end of the twelfth century a race of ancient Polish princes resided on their paternal inheritance in Silesia; inferior to these were numerous Sclave nobles, and below them again a much oppressed and enslaved people. The country was thinly populated, and poor both in capital and labour. The heights of the Riesenberge and the plains of the Oder were clothed with wood; between them stretched out miles of desolate heath. Herds of wild boars laired in the swamps, bears picked the wild honey from the hollow trunks of the trees, and the elks fed on the branches of the pine; the beaver made its home beside the rivers, the fish eagle hovered about the ponds, and above him soared the noble falcon. The beaver and falcon were more valuable in the eyes of the princes than their serfs. The peasants looked from their miserable huts with horror on the lords of the water and air, for the preservation of which they had to pay exorbitant penalties. What the earth yielded freely they had to collect for their rigorous masters and the Church. They had to pay tribute from the water and the heath of fish and honey, and heavy imposts on their arable land, sheaves of corn, grain and money; and a certain amount of service was required of them. The greater part were serfs; few were free. And not only the peasants, but also the artisans and tradesmen of all kinds lived in every gradation of servitude, ground down by oppression without hope or pleasure in their work. The Sclave cities only differed from the villages in being a larger collection of bare huts, surrounded by a moat and wooden palisades, and usually situated in the vicinity of a nobleman's castle, under whose protection they lived. In peaceable times markets were held in the towns. Even till the end of the twelfth century the merchants often made their payments, as in Poland, with the tails of martins and skins of squirrels instead of money. But the Silesian mines were already being worked; they yielded silver and gold, copper and lead, and mining, which was considered the nobleman's right, was carried on actively. Mints were erected in all the great market towns, and, as in Poland, the coinage was changed three times a year; and the princes derived some of their income from tolls on the market-places, butchers' stalls, and public-houses.

Such was the country that was then ruled by the royal Piasten families under the Polish sovereignty, which, however, was often disputed, and sometimes entirely thrown off. A great dissimilarity might however be discerned in the different branches of the family. The Piastens of Upper Silesia united themselves closely with Poland, and kept up the Sclave habits in their country, so that even at the present day a Sclave population is to be found there; but the rulers of Lower Silesia adhered to the Germans. It was their policy to marry the daughters of the German princes: they set the highest value upon everything German, and German manners were introduced into the court; their children were sent to travel in Germany, and often brought up there, so that in the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Piasten family was held in great consideration throughout that country; they sought for knighthood from their relations in the west, and out of courtesy to them dressed their followers in their colours. They knighted their own nobles with the German straight sword, instead of using the crooked Sclave sabre; they preferred getting drunk on malmsey and Rhine wines, instead of the old mead. The German dances were in great request among the ladies of the court.

In this way a numerous German nobility was established in the country, for these courtiers or adventurers and their relations soon became landed proprietors, and the Sclavonian institution of the Castellan was replaced by the German feudal tenure. But an influx of priests and monks tended still more to the promotion of German habits; a stream of them poured incessantly from the west into the half-civilized country. Monasteries, cloisters, and other pious establishments sprang up rapidly, and became as it were the strongholds of German life; for the brotherhoods of the west sent their best and most distinguished members, and continued to furnish them with learning, books, and spiritual energy. The princes, nobles, and clergy soon became aware of the difference between German and Sclave labour; under the latter, large tracts of country yielded little produce, except wood from the forest and honey from the heath. The landed proprietors therefore, with due regard to their own interests, introduced everywhere German labour. Thus in Silesia the great truth first dawned upon men, on which rests the whole system of modern life, that the labour of free men, can alone give stability to a nation and make it powerful and prosperous. The landed proprietors gave up the greater part of the claims which, according to the Polish law, they had upon men who dwelt on their property, and which were so exorbitant that they derived but little benefit from them. The princes granted the inhabitants as a favour, the right of founding cities and villages in accordance with German law, that is to say, free communities, and this privilege was eagerly sought after, especially by the ecclesiastical bodies, such as Cistertians, Augustines, &c.

A regular method was pursued in founding these communities; but the fate of the villages was very different from that of the cities in the latter part of the middle ages. In the cities, as the body politic continually gained fresh strength, their rights and independence increased; the burgesses acquired by purchase the mayoralty, with its rights and jurisdiction; whilst, on the other hand, the villages were unable to protect themselves from the exactions of the landed proprietors and the burdens laid upon them by their princes; they lost much of their freedom, and many rights they had possessed at their foundation in the thirteenth century were only restored to them in the beginning of this present one.

It was thus that after the beginning of the thirteenth century a new German race sprang up with a surprising rapidity, bordering on the Oder, between the Reisenberge and the plains of Poland. The emigration continued for a considerable period, and the quiet struggle between the German and Polish races lasted long after the former had gained the predominance; indeed, in some districts it has not yet ceased. But for the most part the pliant Sclave race of Silesia peaceably adopted the new customs, as it was very advantageous to put themselves under German law. And thus the new race showed in its dialect, manners, and education a new phase of the German popular character which one may perceive has arisen from the union of the German and Sclave races.

The people who thus sprang up were not destined to an easy life, and it required all the excitability they derived from the Sclaves, together with the higher capacity they inherited from the Germans, to preserve them from annihilation. Driven in like a wedge between Bohemia and Poland quite to the vicinity of Hungary, they contended with all these nations, dispensing blows and receiving them from their stronger neighbours. They were never able to attain to the independence of a united people. However strong particular communities and confederations became when it was a question of external enemies, the Silesians were almost always divided.

In the fifteenth century the country was visited by that terrible scourge the Hussite war. It is in that fearful time, when the fanatical warriors of the chalice burnt the Silesian villages and cloisters, and threw everything ecclesiastical into the flames, when the land was devastated for nearly a century by the horrors of war, that the peculiar Silesian character may be traced in contradistinction to that of the races dwelling in the adjoining country.

Whilst in the regions adjoining the Oder, and still farther off by the shores of the Baltic, the German race, proud of their recent conquest over the Sclaves, desired to improve themselves by union with Germany, a great Sclave population had arisen in the middle of the German states, the toughest and most stable of all that family: it was firmly incorporated in the Empire, and had long been under the influence of German culture. Prague in the beginning of the fifteenth century might have passed for a German city, for not only in its laws and commerce, but also in science and art it exhibited all the vigour and independence of German life. About 1289 the King of Bohemia rode as a German elector to the election of the Emperor, and waved the golden glass at the coronation; the Bohemian minstrels and chroniclers wrote in the Swabian language and style, and Bohemian artists painted pictures of saints and windows for the German churches. Under the Luxemburgers Bohemia became the centre of the empire. The Bohemian throne was adorned with the German Imperial eagle and crown, and the flower of Germany's youth flocked to the many-turreted Moldavian city, in order to win in the first German university a nobler patent of nobility than the sword could give. It seemed then for a considerable period as if this fine compact Sclave country, lying with its mountain ramparts in the midst of Germany like a gigantic fortress, was likely to become the kernel of a great united empire, spreading far beyond the Rhine on the west, and to the Vistula on the east, or even perhaps to the swamps of the Theis. But just at this time an energetic reaction of Sclave popular feeling was roused in Bohemia against the Germans, and a long struggle ensued which fearfully shook the political, religious, and social life of Germany, rent the unity of the Roman Catholic Church, weakened the empire and threw it into confusion, depopulated large districts by a war full of cruelty, and amidst the flames of burning cities and the waning of millions, gave the death-blow to the Holy Roman Empire of the middle ages. It was the peculiar destiny of Germany that this great struggle should first break out among the teachers and scholars in the halls of the universities, and that the funeral pile of a Bohemian professor should give a new direction to the policy of German princes and people.

The auto-da-fé of Huss did not appear to the Germans a very striking or blamable occurrence; people in those days were hastily condemned to death, and there hardly passed a year that the torch was not laid to the stake in every large city. However great the grief and indignation of the national party of Bohemia might be at these proceedings, the wild fanaticism of the people was first roused by another, and greater crime of the reckless Emperor Sigismund, who, at the head of the orthodox German fanatics, began the strife by the great massacre in 1420; this outrage gave the Bohemians the strength of despair, and was the beginning of the wars which raged between the Germans and the Sclaves to the end of that century. Even after dissensions had broken out amongst the Bohemians themselves, and after the death of Georg von Podiebrad, feuds continued, and predatory bands spread themselves over the neighbouring lands, the people and nobility of Bohemia as well as those of the suffering frontier lands became lawless, and a hatred of races, less passionate but more savage and more enduring, took the place of fanaticism.

No land suffered more from the terrors of the Hussite time than Silesia, and it must be confessed that the Silesians showed to less advantage in this century than at any other period of their history; by the division of their country they were politically weak, and quite unfitted to withstand by their own strength the attacks of powerful enemies; when danger approached a feeling of the helplessness of their position came over them and disheartened them; but whenever they could breathe more freely, they became overbearing and full of high-flown plans which generally ended in nothing. As neighbours they were bitter enemies of the Bohemians, and from hatred to them, zealous in their orthodoxy; they were actively engaged in the first disgraceful devastation of Bohemia, and thus, by breach of faith, brought down on themselves the vengeance of the Bohemians. As in the Roman time the truth of a Carthaginian was a byword, so now in Silesia was that of a Bohemian; but the Silesians had no right to reproach the Bohemians with breach of faith. Their dangerous position did not make them more careful, and they allowed their possessions and cities to be destroyed from the want of timely succour; they were always irritating their enemies and causing fresh attacks by their insolent witticisms and small perfidies. Their vigour and elasticity, however, were most enduring; as often as the Bohemians burnt down their cities and villages, they rebuilt them, and patched up whatever would hold together; they never tired of irritating the heretical Girsik, as they called Georg von Podiebrad.^[4] If, however, they were in need of his assistance, they tried to appease him by a present of a hundred oxen. After a time, however, their hatred became more manly; they took up arms and fought him valiantly; and when at last he sank into the grave, they had the satisfaction of feeling that they had embittered the life and thwarted the ambitious plans of this determined character by their perpetual opposition.

It is the beginning of this unhappy period which is described in the following narrative. It is taken from the report of a merchant in Bolkenhain,^[5] named Martin, the fragment of his notes which we possess, published by Heinrick Hoffman (in Scriptores rerum Lusaticarum I., 1839).

"In the year of our Lord 1425, the Hussites appeared one Saturday evening before the town of Wünschelburg. On Sunday, about the time of vespers, they made breaches in the walls, and by their overwhelming force gained an entrance. The people flew to the house of the mayor,^[6] which was a high stone building. When all the men and women had arrived there, they set fire to the city from the mayor's house, and thought thereby to save themselves; but the Bohemians waited till the fire had burnt out, then rushed in a powerful body against the stone house, endeavouring to storm and undermine it. Then followed a parley: the mayor let himself down to the Hussites by means of a coarse tilt,^[7] that he might negotiate with them whether the citizens should be allowed to go free. He was so long absent in the town that the people began greatly to fear, especially the pastor of the town, who was godfather to the mayor; he called out to them, asking whether the mayor was still below, requiring him to show and report himself, and come back to them; whereupon the mayor returned to the house and was again drawn up. When he had come up, his godfather the pastor asked how it had gone with him, and whether he had obtained from the enemy freedom for himself and his chaplain. Then spake the mayor: 'No, godfather; they give no mercy to priests!' Then the pastor and his chaplain were sore troubled, and said, 'How miserably you abandon and betray me, be God Almighty your judge. When aforetime I wished to fly, you bade me remain with you, saying you would abide by me for good or for evil, even unto death; and you said, Shall the shepherd fly from his sheep? And now, alack, evil is the day, the sheep fly from the shepherd.' Then spake the women and the citizens' wives to him, weeping, 'We will disguise you and your chaplains, and will bring you down with us safely.' Then spoke the pastor Herr Megerlein, 'That, please God, will I never do. I must not disavow my office and dignity, for I am a priest and not a woman; but look to it well, you men; see in what a pitiful way you deliver me over to death to save yourselves.' No one heeded these complaints; but the two chaplains allowed themselves to be disguised, and carried children on their shoulders--not so the pastor.

"Whilst they thus held converse together, the mayor agreed with the citizens on what terms they would surrender. They then went down, one after the other, and the Bohemians and Hussites were there in front of the building, and made prisoners of them all; they allowed only the women and children to go free. But many of the women, maidens, and children had been in such fear that they had taken refuge in the cellars; so when the fire reached them they were suffocated and perished. Now when all in the house had surrendered, there remained only the pastor, with a few journeymen and artisans who had been unable to purchase their liberty, and who feared death and imprisonment; these the pastor exhorted as follows: 'Dear companions, look well after your necks, and be firm, for if they make you prisoners they will torment and martyrize you.' Then they replied they would do as he advised. But when they saw that the citizens had all surrendered, great fear came over them, and they went down and submitted themselves; but the pastor remained there with an old village priest to the last. Then the Hussites went up to them and brought them down, and led them into the midst of the army and the multitude. Then Master Ambrosius, a heretic of Grätz, being present, spoke to these gentlemen in Latin: 'Pastor, wilt thou gainsay and retract what thou hast preached? thus thou mayst preserve thy life; but if thou wilt not do this, thou must be burnt.' Then answered Herr Megerlein the pastor, and said, 'God forbid that I should deny the truth of our holy Christian faith on account of this short pain. I have taught and preached the truth at Prague, at Görlitz, and at Grätz,^[8] and for this truth will I gladly die.' Then one of them ran and fetched a truss of straw, which they bound round about his body so that he could not be seen; they then set fire to the straw, and made him, thus surrounded by flames, run and dance about in the midst of the multitude, till he was suffocated. Then they took him as a corpse and threw him into a brewer's vat of boiling water; they also threw in the old village priest, and let them boil therein; thus they were both martyred; but the two chaplains of whom I have before spoken, came out with the women concealed in women's clothes, and the child that one of these priests bore on his arm began to weep and to cry after its mother, and the priest tried to comfort and quiet it. So the Hussites discovered by the voice that it was a man, and one of them took the veil off him; then he let fall the child, took to flight, and ran with all his might; they followed after and killed him. The other came away with the women and children. This happened at Wünschelburg.

"1429. Soon after this the Hussites returned home, but remained there scarcely six weeks; they called out for another campaign, collected again in great strength, and passed into the land of Meissen. The Meisseners, however, were strong in the field, with others such as Brunswickers, Saxons, and people from the marshes, also some from the Imperial cities. The Hussites entered the country with fire and sword, killing and taking prisoners and living lawlessly. Now when the Hussites had advanced to where a large army of Meisseners and people from the Imperial cities were collected together, they encamped opposite to them, and threw up a barricade of waggons. When the armies were thus lying opposite each other they exchanged letters. The Meisseners wrote thus:--'Oh! you apostates from the faith, and cursed heretics, we shall, God willing, fight you to-morrow, and make you food for the dogs.' To which the Hussites thus replied:--'Oh! you hounds, we shall, God willing, make you food for the dogs, only wait for us to-morrow.' When it was still quite early on the following morning, the Hussites prepared themselves for the fight; they first heard mass, than ate and drank their fill, and when they moved forward to begin the fight, they received intelligence that the Meisseners had fled. When they heard this, they hastened onward and chased them two whole days. When they found they could not catch them, they deliberated, and dividing themselves spread all over the country, burning, killing, and making prisoners, and entering the towns from which the people had retired.

"1443. The country armed and prepared itself, and raised a troop of four hundred horse. It was known that the Bohemians and Hussites intended making an inroad upon the country, therefore the States encamped themselves some miles from Schweidnitz by Bögendorf, in order to watch the enemy, as they knew not at what point they would enter. But Hein von Czirnan had a presentiment that they would come to Bolkenhain (where he had settled), as did indeed happen; therefore he sent a horseman in all haste to Bolkenhain, to inform the burgomaster, and beg him to set a strong and vigilant watch, as he had certain intelligence that the enemy would enter the country in that quarter. The burgomaster sent warning to the villagers, but Hein von Czirnan's messenger arriving only in the evening, the watch not being well established in the city, the enemy appeared on the walls at the dawn of morning; for they had approached the city early in the evening and concealed themselves behind the hills and among the rocks, and had in the night quite at their leisure prepared ladders. The ladders were short, each of four rundles, so that four of these ladders could hardly reach up the wall; but the first piece of ladder had in front a little wheel; when this was placed, not being fixed, it advanced up the wall. The other ladders were so contrived that one fitted into the other, and fastened together by an iron band. With such cunning and malice had they so early set to work against us. They had placed these same ladders in the night by the walls where the city and hill were highest, the ladders were so broad and wide that two of the enemy could mount at a time. As now at daybreak they had placed many of the ladders, they began to ascend four at once, but when they arrived at the top of the wall they found no passage on it towards the city, and were obliged for some distance to slide and creep along till they came to a watch-house, where they found some steps; so, alas! they came upon us in the city. And when in this way many of them had assembled, they began to cry and to holloa out most terribly, like devils. This took place the last Thursday before Bartlemy-tide. When we heard this terrible noise and tumult, we were woefully frightened, and every one that was able fled to the towers of the gate, church, or any other tower that was accessible; but we could not get into the stronghold, as the enemy had surrounded it, and whoever attempted to enter it was slain. As the people of the city thus concealed themselves, the Hussites went in great troops about the town; some rushed to the churches, others to the best houses; about eight came to my house and forced themselves up into the shop, and placed two of their number with naked swords at the door, and let no one enter the house till they had plundered and divided the whole of my shop and goods. My wife was at that time in the midst of her confinement, God be merciful to her, and she had in her room many valuable things, such as her bed-linen and her clothes; they treated her however with such respect, that no one entered her room. But two of them who were well known to her, and to whom she had shown great kindness, went to the door of her room, told her how they pitied her, and brought her secretly a coverlet and bed-cover, and said, 'Good woman, they will soon set fire to the city, therefore lose no time in being carried to the cellar with all that you desire to save, for we shall be off immediately.' When they had pillaged all the houses they would gladly have left the town, but could not, for the inhabitants who had taken refuge in the towers and gate-houses, threw down stones upon them, so that they could not pass through the gates, however much they wished it. At last they found an old gate which for many years had been walled up; this they broke open, and carried through it all their plunder, with which they loaded their waggons, and intended to return to Bohemia; they fired the city, and marched off to Landshut. When the troops of the provincial states assembled at Bögendorf beheld such a great smoke and fire, they said to one another, 'It is indeed at Bolkenhain, or in its neighbourhood;' then they started off at full speed for Landshut, and overtook their enemies. When therefore the Bohemians and Hussites began to retrace their steps, they perceived a great host of our town-people coming towards them over the Galgenberg; so they in great fear took to flight. Then our people fell upon them, and the men who had charge of the waggons loaded with our goods, abandoned them and fled for refuge into the woods; thus we deprived them of their plunder, and made many prisoners, both horse and foot, who were distributed among the cities."--So writes Martin of Bolkenhain.

This endless war ruined German Silesia: the plains lay waste and desolate, and most of the German peasantry in this century of fire and sword sank into a state little removed from that of the Sclave serfs. The smaller cities were burnt down and impoverished, and only a few of the larger ones have since attained any degree of importance. The Silesian nobles became rude and predatory; they learnt from the Bohemians to steal cattle, to seize merchants and traders, and to levy contributions on the cities. The princes in their endless disputes with one another allied themselves sometimes with the Bohemians, and shared their booty with them; indeed, some of them took pleasure in a wild robber life, carrying it on even in their own country. These deeds of violence and lamentable struggles continued quite into the sixteenth century, till the Reformation gave a new bent to this lively and impressible race, and brought with it new sufferings.

Through all these times the Silesians retained their love of orderly arrangements, even in the most desperate situations. When, for example, in the year 1488, Duke Hans of Sagen, one of the lawless characters who figured in the border wars, imprisoned seven honourable counsellors of his own city, Glogau, in a tower, and starved them to death because they had refused to act contrary to a solemn engagement; these seven martyrs, in a truly German manner, punctually and conscientiously kept a diary of their sufferings, and left in writing, prayers to the Almighty for mercy and a happy death; but it is a truly Silesian and almost modern trait, that the writer of this fearful journal had a certain gloomy pleasure in reflecting on his painful fate, and in the last lines he wrote before his death, he endeavoured to depict the destitution of his situation by mentioning that he had been obliged to use the black of the burnt wick as ink.^[9]

In the century of the reformation, the Silesians, as might be expected of a people of such quick susceptibilities, were for the most part zealous for the new teaching. They had been bound by strong ties to the old Church, like most of the other races; for it was partly at the call of the Church that their ancestors had come into that country; notwithstanding which, almost the whole people freed themselves from Rome, and manfully ventured life and property for their convictions. And most severely was their constancy tried; for the supreme power, which had been in Polish and Bohemian hands, had now fallen into those of the House of Austria.^[10] Of all the countries under the power of the House of Hapsburg, Silesia is the only one which did not make a sacrifice of the new faith to the iron hand of reaction, but maintained a desperate resistance even into the eighteenth century. These were indeed two most unhappy centuries; the Thirty years' war laid the country waste, and not a third part of the former population escaped from the brutality of the soldiers, or from pestilence, or famine. But just at this time, when the whole of Germany had become one vast burial-ground, in which not even the loud wail of sorrow was heard, the genius of Silesia, as the representative of Germany, entered on the only domain in which advance was possible. Whilst they were still exchanging blows with the Imperial soldiers, they took pleasure in poetry and songs. Already the delicate and polished writings of the vapid Opitz gave pleasure amidst the coarse language of the camp; but truly refreshing to the heart was the short; humorous laugh of Logau, at a period when nothing was to be seen save sad or angry faces. The whole of the educated Silesians were eager to sympathize with Opitz, Logau, Gryphius, and Günther, and to vie with them in making heroic verses. Their songs have few charms for us, but we must always feel thankful to them that they had the power of giving expression to the ideal feelings of Germany. It was a great thing to be able to show at such a time, when the coarse and the commonplace overlaid the German life, that there was still something beautiful on earth, and a more intellectual enjoyment than could be found in dissolute revelry, and also that behind the grey and colourless sky which overspread the land, there was another world, full of brilliant colours, and of nobler and more refined feelings.

But whilst the songs of the Silesian "Swans and Nightingales" were held in honour by the other German races, and the fame of the Silesian poets rose high, the worldly position of the Silesians themselves was lamentable. The Thirty years' war was followed by a century of persecution and oppression, which so diminished their energies, that at last it appeared as if they would fall into the same condition as that in which they had found the Sclaves,--a death-like apathy, and a future without hope. The Silesians never became utterly downcast, for they took every opportunity of enjoying themselves, but it was only in feasting and revelry. When, however, the misery of the country was at the highest, the Prussian drum sounded on the frontier from Müncheberg, and the trumpets of the Ziethen hussars pealed along the same roads on which five hundred years before the first song of the German colonists had resounded with the good words, "We come in God's name."

The Germanizing of the country was not thoroughly accomplished till it was conquered by Prussia; it is only since that time that the Silesians have become conscious of being an integral part of the German nation. What was begun by the Sclave Piastens of the thirteenth, was concluded by the German Hohenzollern of the eighteenth, century.