AHC: Make Prussia accept Polish as a culture

With a point of divergence after 1788, but also having the Partitions of Poland be complete, how would it be possible for the Kingdom of Prussia (which if I recall correctly was roughly 40% Polish after the Third Partition) to no longer be just a German kingdom, but be a German-Polish kingdom, with no substantial attempted Germanization of their Polish territories, going as far as official bilingualism in government?
 
With a point of divergence after 1788, but also having the Partitions of Poland be complete, how would it be possible for the Kingdom of Prussia (which if I recall correctly was roughly 40% Polish after the Third Partition) to no longer be just a German kingdom, but be a German-Polish kingdom, with no substantial attempted Germanization of their Polish territories, going as far as official bilingualism in government?


The old KIngdom of Prussia would have been quite ok with that.

It was customary for Prussian Princes to learn the Polish language - a practice dating back to when its rulers were vassals of the Polish Kings. Ironically, the practice was discontinued by the liberal Friedrich III, who was a German nationalist as well as a liberal, and didn't wants his son to waste time learning what he considered to be a peasant patois.
 
Yes, but Prussia was still fundamentally a German principality/electorate where Poles happened to be in it. I'm looking for a much more coherent 'Prusso-Polish' culture of some sorts, where both the German and Polish elements were entirely accepted.

I do wonder if Prussia not losing New East Prussia may have pushed it in this direction a bit, since it lost a significant number of Polish subjects.
 
This is difficult because central and eastern Europe was not a melting pot. Indeed, the various ethnicities lived rigidly segregated lives, speaking their own languages, marrying within their own group and attending their own churches and schools.

But let's say Prussia hangs on to its 1795 borders in Poland. That's a huge land area with a solidly Polish population. Could the government suppress the culture or would they have to adopt a model more along the lines of Austrian Galicia?

If it is the latter model, then you see Polish culture evolving undisturbed, you see Polish aristocrats assuming important roles within the regional and even national government and you see Poles moving from the countryside into the cities as workers are needed there. They bring their culture with them and it has an impact on local culture--perhaps to a similar extent that Czechs and Jews impacted culture in Vienna.

This is the best I can muster.
 
Actually, the rulers of Prussia are the heirs of the Kuyavian branch of the Piasts, they could claim that they are the rightful rulers of Poland from the getgo and had liberated it from usurpers.
 
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Actually, the rulers of Prussia are the heirs of the Kuyavian branch of the Piasts, they could claim that they are the rightful rulers of Poland from the getgo and had liberated it from usurpers.

Interesting tell me more about it? how they would exploted that? maybe they would ask for galicia and other terrirtoires instead rhineland when napoleon is defeated?
 
Interesting tell me more about it? how they would exploted that? maybe they would ask for galicia and other terrirtoires instead rhineland when napoleon is defeated?

They'll get both Galicia and Cieszyn if they ally with Napoleon in that scenario or ask for those lands.
 
Simply have Prussia aquire more Polish land earlier on, if for example early Brandenburg-Prussia somehow gained Greater Poland/Wielkopolska, maybe even a bit more, then a significant part of their population would be polish and that would be hard to ignore. But Poland was more powerful than Early Brandenburg-Prussia, so that's hard, gotta jump together with Sweden/Russia.

Historically Polish was accepted, the problem as Prussia gained more land in Germany was that Polish became a more and more insignificant minority. Imagine if say they gained the land of roughly the modern borders of Poland before gaining the Rhineland, it would be close to a 50/50 German/Polish-Schlesian split, and the state would either crash and burn or be forced to adapt to both cultures.

Another options, and probably better for a long term strategy would be if somehow the Poles could be made to think of themselves, like the Czech did, as both Poles AND Germans. Ofc the rise of nationalism kinda screws with it, it had the tendency to ruin everything. :p

Have 20% of their tax base come from Polish provinces.
Haha. Prussia just need to pick Humanist ideas and it will be trivial to get Polish as an accepted culture, especially with how much base-tax Poland has now.
 
IIRC the most important towns in Poland-Lithuania were found by German settlers who imported the law regarding urban privileges from German-speaking areas and German commonly was used in urban courts of Poland-Lithuania.

Polish was pretty much associated with the rural population and the magnates. It would be quite complicated to give more power to Poles without pissing the urban population. Roughly, I think we can compare it with the Czech situation.
 
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