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Koziczkowski, Zelewska, Burant, Zynda, and Ostrowski emigrated from the Kashubian district of West Prussia and settled in Portage County, Wisconsin. The Kashubs were a slavic tribe whose history can be traced back to 1000 A.D.Reprinted below is an article taken from Polish American Studies, Vol. XXIII, No.1 Jan, June 1966. The present day Kashubs are a Slavic people whose language is closely related to those of the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Sorbs. Together these languages comprise the western group of Slavic languages, which, combined with the South and East Slavic Languages, form the Slavic branch of Indo-European. Archeological evidence shows that ca.2200 B.C. the Indo-European peoples migrated from north of the Caspian Sea westward to the shores of the Baltic Sea. In merging with the cultures already present in Europe, they brought about a significant cultural change between the Baltic and Aegean Seas. By 2000 B.C. the Indo-European language had separated into its various branches. Of the Indo-European peoples the Balts, the Ceks, and the Goths preceded the Slavs in the area between the lower Oder and the lower Vistula Rivers. Between 600 A.D. and 900 A.D. the Slavs moved northward into this territory, held chiefly by the Balts. By the 10th century A.D. Slavs had settled this whole region. They were called the Pomeranians (Slavic: Pomorjane "inhabitants of the seacoast"). However, Slavic expansion along the Baltic Sea did not terminate at the Oder River, but extended to the Elbe. The Slavic tribes in this area have since become extinct; but one tribe, the Polabians, who lived along the lower Elbe, did leave behind some texts before dying out in the 18th century. Within the Pomeranian group, the Slovincians survived on the shores of Lakes Leba and Gardno until the beginning of the 20th century. Some good records of their speech have been preserved. As late as 1945 there still remained a few older people who could utter some phrases in Slovincian. The eastern-most group of the Pomeranians are the Kashubs. They are found on the left bank of the lower Vistula River where they border on the Polish linguistic area. The 100,000 to 200,000 present day Kashubs in Poland are the only survivors of the Pomeranians in their original habitat. The history of the Kashubs in Europe is one of alternate Germanization and Polonization. The recorded history of the Kashubs begins ca. 1000 A.D., when the East Pomeranian prince who was reigning in Danzig married the daughter of the Polish king Boleslaw Shrobry and was baptized. During the following century Polish missionaries were active in the Kashubian area. However, in the 13th century there began a struggle with the Teutonic Knights (Germans) which terminated in subjugation and colonization by the Knights from 1309 until 1466. After the defeat of the Teutonic Knights by the Poles in 1466, East Pomerania came under Polish influence, which lasted until the first partition of Poland in 1772. During this period, which included the Protestant Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Poles remained Catholics and the Germans became Protestants. East (Polish) Pomerania and West (German) Pomerania became even more rigidly opposed to one another. In East Pomerania the Kashubian nobility became Polonized and the German minority was absorbed. With the first partition of Poland in 1772 the Kashubs came completely under Prussian (German) control, which lasted until just after the First World War (1919-1920). In 1842 the King of Prussia decreed that every child in Prussia could be instructed in his mother tongue. This helped to awaken latent Kashubian nationalism. In 1865 the King rescinded his order of 1842 and decreed that all subjects must use German. Soon afterward Bismarck initiated his "Kulturkampf," a policy of rigid Germanization and colonization among non-Germanic ethnic groups in Prussia. These conditions provided an added stimulus for Kashubian emigration to America, which had already begun in 1848. In the Treaty of Versailles (1919-1920), Poland was given a narrow strip of land, leading to the Baltic Sea, west of the Vistula River and between East and West Prussia. Known as the "Polish Corridor," this strip of land was populated, for the most part, with Kashubs. This precarious location between two large segments of German territory cause much apprehension in Poland between the two World Wars. In trying to solidify their claim to the territory, the Poles produced polemic literature, varying in form from descriptive geography to scientifically sound ethnographic studies of the Kashubs, proving their relationship to the Poles. Nevertheless, in 1939 the Germans seized the "Corridor" and once again the Kashubs were under German control. After the establishment of the Oder-Neisse boundary between Poland and East Germany in 1950, however, the Kashubs were officially returned to Poland. |