Page - 9 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

9 Horst Pöttker Successful Integration? Media and Polish Migration in the German Empire at the Turn of the 20th Century For some time now, German politicians have claimed that their country is cosmopolitan, that it open-mindedly accepts immigrants of foreign descent and culture and encourages their integration into society. Such claims have become popular since politicians discovered that Germany has been a country distinguished by immigration for years and since they discovered their country’s need for immigrants in order to maintain its economic and political position in the world despite a blatantly low birth rate. Current proclamations of German willingness to and capacity for integration often cite Polish migrants as a perfect example. In the decades prior to World War I, these people emigrated to the growing industrial region along the rivers Rhine and Ruhr, and their descendants today may, at best, be recognized by their Slavonic last names. But is this really an appropriate example? An answer may be found by looking at the role that the media – at that time, primarily the press – played in the development of the relationship between the German majority and the Polish minority in society. 1. Theoretical background In his seminal work on the Polish population (Kleßmann 1978) in the Rhine- Ruhr area from the 1870s to 1945, social historian Christoph Kleßmann focuses his analysis on the integration of the Polish minority. In addition to factors beneficial to integration – in particular, the fact that the so called Ruhr Poles, many of whom did not emigrate from a foreign country, but from the Eastern regions of the then German Empire, were of German citizenship – Kleßmann also notes an impressive number of circumstances and tendencies detrimental to integration, such as Polish nationalism, which was fueled by territorial divisions and the lack of statehood during the 19th century. But Kleßmann restricted himself to an analytical classification of integrative and adverse factors, without considering the success or failure of this integration process. The approach here is more practically oriented and is concerned with the following issue: With regard to the Polish minority, is it apt to talk about a process of successful integration? Statistics on the number of Polish migrants and their descendants who remained in Germany will be one crucial criterion. Further considerations raise an issue that is of special significance for media