Province of Pomerania (1815–1945)

Province of Prussia from 1815 to 1945
other provinces of this name

The Province of Pomerania (Provinz Pommern; Prowincja Pomorze) was a province of Prussia from 1815 to 1945. Pomerania was established as a province of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1815, an expansion of the older Brandenburg Prussia province of Pomerania, and then became part of the German Empire in 1871. From 1918, Pomerania was a province of the Free State of Prussia until it was dissolved following World War II by decree of the Allied Control Council with the de jure abolition of Prussia on 25 February 1947, and its territory divided between Poland and Allied occupied Germany. The city of Stettin (present day Szczecin, Poland) was the provincial capital.

The name Pomerania comes from Slavic po more, which means "Land at the Sea".

The province was created from the former Prussian Province of Pomerania, which consisted of Farther Pomerania and the southern Western Pomerania, and former Swedish Pomerania. It resembled the territory of the former Duchy of Pomerania, which after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 had been split between Brandenburg Prussia and Sweden. Also, the districts of Schivelbein (Świdwin) and Dramburg (Drawsko Pomorskie), formerly belonging to the Neumark, were merged into the new province. While in the Kingdom of Prussia, the province was heavily influenced by the reforms of Karl August von Hardenberg and Otto von Bismarck. The Industrial Revolution primarily affected the Stettin area and the infrastructure, while most of the province retained a rural and agricultural character. From 1850, the net migration rate was negative; Pomeranians emigrated primarily to Berlin, the West German industrial regions and overseas. After World War I, democracy and the women's right to vote were introduced to the province. After Wilhelm II's abdication, it was part of the Free State of Prussia. The economic situation worsened due to the consequences of World War I and worldwide recession. As in the previous Kingdom of Prussia, Pomerania was a stronghold of the national conservatives who continued in the Weimar Republic. In 1933, the Nazis established a totalitarian regime, concentrating the province's administration in the hands of their Gauleiter, and implementing Gleichschaltung. The German invasion of Poland in 1939 was launched in part from Pomeranian soil. Jewish and Polish populations (whose minorities lived in the region) were classified as "subhuman" by the German state during the war and subjected to repressions, slave work and executions. Opponents were arrested and executed; Jews who by 1940 had not emigrated were all deported to the Lublin reservation. Besides the air raids conducted since 1943, World War II reached the province in early 1945 with the East Pomeranian Offensive and the Battle of Berlin, both launched and won by the Soviet Union's Red Army. Insufficient evacuation left the population subject to murder, war rape, and plunder by the successors. When the war was over, the Oder–Neisse line cut the province in two unequal parts. The smaller western part became part of the East German State of Mecklenburg Vorpommern. The larger eastern part was attached to post war Poland as Szczecin Voivodeship. After the war, ethnic Germans were expelled from Poland in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement and the area was re settled with Poles. Currently, most of the territory of the province lies within the West Pomeranian Voivodeship, which share the same city—now Szczecin—as its capital. Until 1932, the province was subdivided into the government regions (Regierungsbezirk Köslin (eastern part, Farther Pomerania), Stettin (southwestern part, Old Western Pomerania), and Stralsund (northwestern part, Neuvorpommern). The Stralsund region was merged into the Stettin region in 1932. In 1938, the Grenzmark Posen West Prussia region (southeastern part, created from the former Prussian Province Posen West Prussia) was merged into the province. In 1925, the province had an area of , with a population of 1,878,780 inhabitants.

Although there had been a Prussian Province of Pomerania before, the province of Pomerania was newly constituted in 1815, based on the "decree concerning improved establishment of provincial offices" (link=no), issued by Karl August von Hardenberg on 30 April, and the integration of Swedish Pomerania, handed over to Prussia on 23 October. In early 1818, Governor Johann August Sack had reformed the county ([[Districts of Prussia) shapes, yet adopted the former shape in most cases. Köslin government region comprised nine counties, Stettin government region thirteen, and Stralsund government region four (identical with the former Swedish [[Amt (country subdivision) (districts)). and July, 1823, the Landtag was constituted by 25 lords and knights, 16 representatives of the towns, and eight from the rural communities. Subordinate to the provincial Landtag were two Kommunallandtag assemblies, one for former Swedish Pomerania (Western Pomerania north of the Peene River) and one for the former Prussian part. The counties each assembled a Kreisstand, where the knights of the county had one vote each and towns also just one vote. Throughout its existence, the province was a stronghold of the Conservative Parties.

In the 19th century, the first overland routes (Chaussee) and railways were introduced in Pomerania. In 1848, 126.8 Prussian miles of new streets had been built. On October 12, 1840, construction of the Berlin Stettin railway began, which was finished on 15 August 1843. Other railways followed: Stettin–Köslin (1859), Angermünde–Stralsund and Züssow–Wolgast (1863), Stettin–Stolp (1869), and a connection with Danzig (1870). The construction of narrow gauge railways was enhanced by a special decree of July 28, 1892, implementing Prussian financial aid programs. In 1900, the total of narrow gauge railways had passed the threshold. From 1910 to 1912, most of the province was supplied with electricity as the main lines were built. Plants were built since 1898. The Świna and lower Oder rivers, the major water route to Stettin, were deepened to five meters and shortened by a canal in 1862. In Stettin, heavy industry was settled, making it the only industrial center of the province. Stettin was connected to Berlin by the Berlin Stettin waterway in 1914 after eight years of construction. The other traditional waterways and ports of the province, however, declined. Exceptions were only the port of Swinemünde (Świnoujście), which was used by the navy, and the port of Stolpmünde (Ustka), from which parts of the Farther Pomeranian exports were shipped, and the port of Sassnitz, which was built in 1895 for railway ferries to Scandinavia. With the infrastructural improvements, mass tourism to the Baltic Coast started. The tourist resort (Ostseebad) Binz had 80 visitors in 1870, 10,000 in 1900, and 22,000 in 1910. The same phenomenon occurred in other tourist resorts.

Already in 1807, Prussia issued a decree (Steinsches Oktoberedikt) abolishing serfdom. Hardenberg issued a decree on September 14, 1811, defining the terms by which serfs were to be released (Hardenbergsches Regulierungsedikt). This could either be done by monetary payment or by releasing title to the land to the former lord. These reforms were applied during the early years of the province's existence. The so called "regulation" was applied to 10,744 peasants until 1838, who paid their former lords 724,954 taler and handed over of farmland to bail themselves out. On March 2, 1850, a law was passed settling the conditions on which peasants and farmers could capitalize their property rights and feudal service duties, and thus get a long term credit (41 to 56 years to pay back). This law made way for the establishment of Rentenbank credit houses and Rentengut farms. Subsequently, the previous rural structure changed dramatically as farmers, who used this credit to bail out their feudal duties, were now able to self determine how to use their land (so called "regulated" peasants and farmers, regulierte Bauern). This was not possible before, when the jurisdiction had sanctioned the use of farmland and feudal services according not to property rights, but to social status within rural communities and estates. From 1891 to 1910, 4,731 Rentengut farms were set up, most (2,690) with a size of . ), which entered into force in 1876. It redefined the responsibilities of the provincial administration (headed by the Oberpräsident) and the self administrative institutions (Provinzialverband, comprising the provincial parliament (Provinziallandtag), a Landeshauptmann (head) and a Landesausschuß (commission)). The Provinzialverband was financed directly from the Prussian state budget. The Landtag was responsible for streets, welfare, education, and culture. Landownership was no longer a criterion to become elected. The provincial Landtag (Provinziallandtag) was elected by the county representative assemblies (Kreistag for counties, Stadtverordnetenversammlung for town districts) for a six years' term. A subordinate Kommunallandtag only existed for Regierungsbezirk Stralsund, until it was abolished in 1881. In 1891, a county reform was passed, allowing more communal self government. Municipalities hence elected a Gemeindevorstand (head) and a Gemeindevertretung (communal parliament). Gutsbezirk districts, i. e. estates not included in counties, could be merged or dissolved.

During the First World War, no battles took place in the province. When the Treaty of Versailles entered into force on January 10, 1920, the province's eastern frontier became the border to the newly created Second Polish Republic, comprising most of Pomerelia in the so called Polish Corridor. Minor border adjustments followed, where 9,5 km2 of the province became Polish and 74 km2 of former West Prussia (parts of the former counties of Neustadt in Westpreußen and Karthaus) were merged into the province.

After the Kaiser was forced to abdicate, the province became part of the Free State of Prussia within the Weimar Republic. On November 12, 1918, a decree was issued allowing farmworkers' unions to negotiate with farmers (Junkers). The decree further regulated work time and wages for farmworkers. On May 15, 1919, street fights and plunder occurred following Communist assemblies in Stettin. The revolt was put down by the military. In late August, strikes of farmworkers occurred in the counties of Neustettin (Szczecinek) and Belgard (Białogard). The power of the councils however declined, only a few were left in the larger towns in 1920. Landowners formed the Pommerscher Landbund in February 1919, which by 1921 had 120,000 members and from the beginning was supplied with arms by the 2nd army corps in Stettin. Paramilitias ("Einwohnerwehr") formed throughout the spring of 1919.

The border changes however caused a severe decline in the province's economy. Farther Pomerania was cut off from Danzig (Gdańsk) by the so called corridor. Former markets and supplies in the now Polish territories became unavailable. Stettin particularly suffered from a post war change in trade routes. Before the territorial changes, it had been on the export route from the Katowice industrial region in now Polish Upper Silesia. Poland changed this export route to a new inner Polish railway connecting Katowice with the new build port of Gdynia within the corridor. As a counter measure, Prussia invested in the Stettin port since 1923. While initially successful, a new economical recession led to the closure of one of Stettin's major shipyard, AG Vulcan Stettin, in 1927. The province also reacted to the availability of new traffic vehicles. Roads were developed due to the upcoming cars and buses, four towns got electric street cars, and an international airport was built in Altdamm (Dąbie) near Stettin. until 1933. The settlers originated in Pomerania itself, Saxony, and Thuringia, also refugees from the former Province of Posen settled in the province. On the other hand, people left the rural communities en masse and turned to Pomeranian and other urban centers (Landflucht). In 1925, 50.7% of the Pomeranians worked in agricultural professions, this percentage dropped to 38.2% in 1933. With the economic recession, unemployment rates reached 12% in 1933, compared to an overall 19% in the empire.

Throughout the existence of the Weimar Republic, politics in the province was dominated by the nationalist conservative DNVP (Deutschnationale Volkspartei, German National People's Party); an entity composed of nationalists, monarchists, radical volkisch and anti semitic elements, and supported by Pan German League an old organisation believing in superiority of German people over others. Corswant led the party from his estate in Kuntzow. In the 1928 Reichstag elections, the Nazis got 1.5% of the votes in Pomerania. Party property was partially pawned. In 1929, the party gained 4.1% of the votes. Corswant was fired after conflicts with the party's leadership and replaced with Wilhelm Karpenstein, one of the former students who formed the Pomeranian Nazi party in 1922 and since 1929 a lawyer in Greifswald. He moved the headquarters to Stettin and replaced many of the party officials predominantly with young radicals. In the Reichstag elections of September 14, 1930, the party gained a significant 24.3% of the Pomeranian votes and thus became the second strongest party, the strongest still being the DNVP, which however was internally divided in the early 1930s. were arrested, this number rose to 600 during the following months. In Stettin Bredow (Szczecin Drzetowo), at the site of the bankrupt Vulcan shipyards, the Nazis set up a short lived "wild" concentration camp from October 1933 to March 1934, where SA maltreated their victims. The Pomeranian SA in 1933 had grown to 100,000 members. When the Nazis started to terrorize Jews, many emigrated. Twenty weeks after the Nazis seized power, the number of Jewish Pomeranians had already dropped by eight percent. On February 12 and 13, 1940, 1,000 to 1,300 Pomeranian Jews, regardless of sex, age and health, were deported from Stettin and Schneidemühl to the Lublin Lipowa Reservation, that had been set up following the Nisko Plan in occupied Poland. Among the deported were intermarried non Jewish women. The deportation was carried out in an inhumane manner. Despite low temperatures, the carriages were not heated. No food had been allowed to be taken along. The property left behind was liquidated. Up to 300 people perished from the deportation itself. In the Lublin area under Kurt Engel's regime, the people were subjected to inhumane treatment, starvation and outright murder. Only a few survived the war. Peter Simonstein Cullman in "History of the Jewish Community of Schneidemühl: 1641 to the Holocaust" and jewishgen. org say that the Jews of Schneidemühl were not "deported together with the more than 1,000 Jews of Stettin [Region] (who were subsequently sent to Piaski, near Lublin in Poland)", based on lack of evidence in the archives of Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (cf. file 75 C Re1, No. 483, Bundesarchiv Berlin, and USHMM Archives: RG 14.003M; Acc. 1993. A.059). He concludes that "while the deportations of the Jews of Schneidemühl had indeed been planned by the Gestapo to coincide with the terrible events that occurred in Stettin – those actions were not carried out together. The deportations of all Jews from the Gau were primarily planned on orders of Franz Schwede Coburg, the notorious Gauleiter of Pomerania, in cahoots with several Nazi authorities of Schneidemühl. The Gauleiter’s personal goal was to be the first in the Reich to declare his Gau Judenrein – cleansed of Jews". He based his statement on doc. 795 of the Trial of Adolf Eichmann. According to Cullmann, the following events took place in Schneidemühl: "On February 15, 1940, an order had been issued by the Gestapo in Schneidemühl that the Jews of that town should get ready to be deported within a week, ostensibly to the Generalgouvernement in Eastern Poland. When Dr. Hildegard Böhme of the Reichsvereinigung had become aware of Gauleiter Schwede Coburg's plan – and fearing a repetition of the events on the scale of the Stettin deportations – her timely and tireless intervention on behalf of the Reichsvereinigung with the RSHA in Berlin resulted in a modification of the planned deportations of Schneidemühl's Jews. The Stapo, the State police in Schneidemühl, however, played its own part in the planned round up of the city's Jews by giving in to the local Nazi Party cadre and to the orders of the city's fanatic Mayor Friedrich Rogausch, in concert with the Gauleiter. The latter two are known to have planned a Schneidemühl Aktion as a revenge for the earlier interference by the Reichsvereinigung in the Stettin deportations. Thus on Wednesday, February 21, 1940 – merely one week after the Stettin deportations – one hundred and sixty Jews were arrested in Schneidemühl, while mass arrests of Jews took place concurrently within an radius of Schneidemühl, in the surrounding administrative districts of Köslin, Stettin and the former Grenzmark Posen Westpreussen, whereby three hundred and eighty four Jews were seized by the Gestapo. In total 544 Jews were arrested during the entire Aktion in and around Schneidemühl. Those rounded up ranged from two year old children to ninety year old men. Surviving documents give a grim account of the subsequent Odyssey of those arrested. By then it had been decreed in Berlin that the victims of the round up should not be sent to Poland but be kept within the so called Altreich, i. e. within Germany's borders of 1937. Over the following eighteen months most of the arrested became ensnared in the Nazi's maw – on a journey of terminal despair. Only one young woman from Schneidemühl survived the hell of Auschwitz Birkenau and the death marches of mid January 1945."

Grzęda (1994) says that in 1910, according to German data, 10,500 Poles lived in the Stettin (Szczecin) area, and that in his view the number was most likely reduced. Fenske (1993) and Buchholz et al. (1999) say that in 1910, 7,921 Poles lived steadily in the province; Wynot (1996) says that during the interwar era, between 22,500 and 27,000 Poles lived "along the border of the Poznan/Pomorze region", the majority of whom were peasants, with a small number of shopkeepers and craftsmen. In addition, "a colony of about 2,000 workers" existed in Stettin. A number of the Poles in Szczecin (Stettin) were members of the Union of Poles in Germany, a Polish scouts team was established there as well, in addition to a Polish school where the Polish language was taught. Repressions intensified after Adolf Hitler came to power and led to closing of the school. Other DNVP members, who had addressed their opposition already before 1933, were arrested multiple times after the Nazis had taken over. Ewald Kleist Schmenzin, Karl Magnus von Knebel Doberitz, and Karl von Zitzewitz were active resistants. Within the Pomeranian provincial subsection of the Evangelical Church of the old Prussian Union, resistance was organized within the Pfarrernotbund (150 members in late 1933) and Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche), the successor organization, headed by Reinold von Thadden Trieglaff. In March 1935, 55 priests were arrested. The Confessing Church maintained a preachers' seminar headed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Zingst, which moved to Finkenwalde (Zdroje) in 1935 and to Köslin and Groß Schlönwitz (Słonowice) in 1940. Within the Catholic Church, the most prominent resistance member was Greifswald priest Alfons Wachsmann, who was executed in 1944. After the failed assassination attempt of Hitler on July 20, 1944, Gestapo arrested thirteen Pomeranian nobles and one burgher, all knight estate owners. Of those, Ewald von Kleist Schmenzin had contacted Winston Churchill in 1938 to inform about the work of the German opposition to the Nazis, and was executed in April 1945. Karl von Zitzewitz had connections to the Kreisauer Kreis group. Among the other arrested were Malte von Veltheim Fürst zu Putbus, who died in a concentration camp, as well as Alexander von Kameke and Oscar Caminecci Zettuhn, who both were executed.

The invasion of Poland by the Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939, which marked the beginning of World War II, was in part mounted from the province's soil. General Guderian's 19th army corps attacked from the Schlochau (Człuchów) and Preußisch Friedland (Debrzno) areas, which since 1938 belonged to the province ("Grenzmark Posen Westpreußen"). According to Kozłowski & Krzywicki (1988), around 56,000 Polish POWs were located in Pomerania after the invasion, and soon Germany stripped them of their status (against international law) turning them into forced labourers; in April 1940 they were 82.417 of them in Pomerania, with the number reaching 116.330 Polish forced labourers in 1944 September

Because the invasion of Poland (and later the Soviet Union) was a success and the battle front moved far more east (Blitzkrieg), the province was not the site of battles in the first years of the war. Germany operated several prisoner of war camps, including Stalag II B, Stalag II C, Stalag II D, Stalag II E, Stalag Luft I, Stalag Luft II, Stalag Luft IV, Stalag Luft 7, Stalag 302, Stalag 351, Oflag II B, Oflag II C, Oflag II D and Oflag 65, for Polish POWs and civilians, including women and children, and French, Belgian, Dutch, Serbian, Italian, American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander, Czech, Soviet, Senegalese, Tunisian, Moroccan, Algerian, South African and other Allied POWs, with numerous forced labour subcamps in the region. There were also several subcamps of the Stutthof concentration camp and several Nazi prisons with numerous forced labour subcamps in the region. Połczyn Zdrój was the location of a Germanisation camp for kidnapped Polish children. Piła, Unieszyno and Police housed camps for Sinti and Romani people (see Romani Holocaust). The Polish resistance movement was active in the region, including the Odra organization and local units of the Home Army. Activities included espionage of German military activity, infiltration of the local German industry, sabotage actions, distribution of Polish underground press, and facilitating escapes of Polish and British prisoners of war who fled from German POW camps by the Baltic Sea to neutral Sweden. Since 1943, the province became a target of allied air raids. The first attack was launched against Stettin on April 21, 1943, and left 400 dead. On August 17/18, the British RAF launched an attack on Peenemünde, where Wernher von Braun and his staff had developed and tested the world's first ballistic missiles. In October, Anklam was a target. Throughout 1944 and early 1945, Stettin's industrial and residential areas were targets of air raids. Stralsund was a target in October 1944. Despite these raids, the province was regarded "safe" compared to other areas of the Third Reich, and thus became a shelter for evacuees primarily from hard hit Berlin and the West German industrial centers. The province of Pomerania became a battlefield on January 26, 1945, when in the beginning of the Red Army's East Pomeranian Offensive Soviet tanks entered the province near Schneidemühl (Piła), which surrendered on February 13. The fast advances of the Red Army during the East Pomeranian Offensive caught the civilian Farther Pomeranian population by surprise. The land route to the west was blocked since early March. Evacuation orders were issued not at all or much too late. The only way out of Farther Pomerania was via the ports of Stolpmünde (Ustka), from which 18,300 were evacuated, Rügenwalde (Darłowo), from which 4,300 were evacuated, and Kolberg, which had been declared fortress and from which before the end of the Battle of Kolberg some 70,000 were evacuated. Those left behind became victims of murder, war rape, and plunder. On March 6, the USAF shelled Swinemünde, where thousands of refugees were stranded, killing an estimated 25,000.

On March 20, the Wehrmacht abandoned the last bridgehead on the Oder rivers eastern bank, the Altdamm area. The frontline then ran along Dziwna and lower Oder, and was held by the 3rd Panzer Army commanded by general Hasso von Manteuffel. After another four days of fighting, the Red Army managed to break through and cross the Oder between Stettin and Gartz (Oder), thus starting the northern theater of the Battle of Berlin on March 24. Stettin was abandoned the next day. In the first days of May, Wehrmacht abandoned Usedom and Wollin islands, and on May 5, the last German troops departed from Sassnitz on the island of Rügen. Two days later, Wehrmacht surrendered unconditionally to the Red Army. Regierungsbezirk Stralsund was fused into Regierungsbezirk Stettin in 1932.