Prussian Settlement Commission

The Prussian Settlement Commission (German: Königlich Preußische Ansiedlungskommission in den Provinzen Westpreußen und Posen; Polish: Królewska Komisja Osadnicza dla Prus Zachodnich i Poznańskiego) was a Prussian government commission that operated between 1886 and 1924, but actively only until 1918. It was set up by Otto von Bismarck to increase land ownership by Germans at the expense of Poles, by economic and political means, in the German Empire's eastern provinces of West Prussia and the Posen as part of his larger efforts aiming at the eradication of the Polish nation. The Commission was motivated by anti-Polish sentiment and racism.

The Commission was one of Prussia's prime instruments in the official policy of Germanization of the historically Polish lands of West Prussia (the former Royal Prussia) and the dissolved Grand Duchy of Posen. The Commission ultimately purchased 613 estates from German owners and 214 from Poles, functioning to bail out German debtors often rather than fulfilling its declared national mission. By the end of its existence, a total of 21,886 German families (154,704 persons) out of a planned 40,000 had been settled. The Commission's activities had a countereffect in Poles using what has been termed "defensive nationalism", unifying "Polish nationalism, Catholicism and cultural resistance" and triggered Polish countermeasures, climaxing after World War I, when the Second Polish Republic was established, in the expropriation of Commission-owned lands and reversing Germanization. Some of the German colonists still remaining in Poland in 1939 were active in a Nazi campaign of genocide against Poles during World War II.

English translations include German Colonization Commission for Poznań,Prussian Colonization CommissionThe Royal Commission of Colonization for West Prussia and Posnania). The majority of Polish sources translate the title as Colonization Commission rather than Settlement Commission, which is more politically charged. The issue of translation is also connected to the fact that in 1904 the legal difference between settlement and colony was abolished in Prussia.

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