Minority aspirations

Plans to discuss the situation of Polish minorities in Germany and prepare a ceremony to honor the 20th anniversary of the friendship treaty between the two countries were canceled until further notice last Friday, as politicians involved in the round-table negotiations said they needed more preliminary talks to thrash out details.

Whether or not they achieved anything is unclear, as both German Deputy Minister Christoph Bergner and his Polish counterpart, Tomasz Siemionak, refused to talk to the press. An unusual decision, as German-Polish relations have, at least officially, been considered excellent in the last four years.

Bone of contention

"The treaty on good neighborly relations and friendly cooperation" from June 17, 1991, guarantees equal rights to Germans and Poles living in Poland and Germany, including the right to learn their mother tongue and cultivate their respective traditions. Both countries agreed to provide financing for those efforts.

"But while the Polish government honors its duties and does exceptionally well in providing those services, in Germany, efforts to accommodate citizens of Polish descent remain inadequate," said the head of the German Polonia Congress, Wieslaw Lewicki. The word 'Polonia' is used to describe Poles living abroad.

In particular, Lewicki laments the lack of access in many German states to Polish-language courses for children of Polish descent.

"The Germans are not taking us seriously. It's an insult," Lewicki complained.

Demands for pre-war status

Whereas Lewicki and the majority of the Polonia associations in Germany insist on Germany honoring the contract, the Association of Poles in Germany goes a step further. The organization is the oldest of its kind, and its members demand that Poles be awarded minority status in Germany.

Before World War II, Poles had minority status in Germany, until the Nazi regime abolished it, killed around 2,000 members of Polish associations and seized their assets. A planned declaration by Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, is aimed at recognizing their plight.

Legal details and precedents

The German-Polish treaty from 1991 mentions "members of the German minority" in Poland and "persons with German citizenship in the Federal Republic of Germany, who are of Polish descent or those committed to the Polish language, culture and traditions." In other words, Germany denies minority status to people of Polish descent. One reason for that is the fact that, after the war, Germans in Poland were largely there already after the borders were redrawn, whereas Poles in Germany were mainly immigrants.

The German government fears that recognizing all Poles in Germany as a minority would set a precedent for other immigrant groups to demand the same status.

Unlike most of the Polonia associations, the Polish government does not insist on a minority status, but it does bemoan what it sees as the 'deficits' and 'asymmetry' in the implementation of the 1991 treaty.

Germany's Foreign Ministry admitted on Saturday that the government was aware of those deficits and that it was working on improving access to Polish-language lessons, according to Cornelia Pieper, Foreign Ministry coordinator for German-Polish relations.

Pieper told Deutsche Welle, however, that the government does not see any need for further discussions on the minority status, but she said she was optimistic about the ongoing round-table discussions between the two countries.

"It's a process that's taking a bit longer," she said, adding that talks would continue.

Author: Bartosz Dudek / ng
Editor: Nancy Isenson