Masuria ( ; ; ) is an ethnographic and geographic region in northern and northeastern Poland. Masuria occupies much of the Masurian Lake District, known for its 2,000 lakes and a finalist of the New7Wonders of Nature initiative. Administratively, it is part of the Warmian–Masurian Voivodeship (administrative area/province). Its biggest city, often regarded as its capital, is Ełk. The region covers a territory of some 10,000 km2, which is inhabited by approximately 500,000 people.
Masuria is bordered by Warmia, Powiśle and Chełmno Land in the west, Mazovia in the south, Podlachia and Suwałki Region in the east, and Lithuania Minor in the north.
History Prehistory and early history Some of the earliest archeological finds in Masuria were found at Dudka and Szczepanki sites and belonged to the subneolithic Zedmar culture. Indo-European settlers first arrived in the region during the 4th millennium BC, which in the Baltic would diversify into the satem Balto-Slavic branch which would ultimately give rise to the Balts as the speakers of the Baltic languages. The Balts would have become differentiated into Western and Eastern Balts in the late 1st millennium BC. The region was inhabited by ancestors of Western Balts – Old Prussians, Sudovians/Jotvingians, Scalvians, Nadruvians, and Curonians while the eastern Balts settled in what is now Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus.
The Greek explorer Pytheas (4th century BC) may have referred to the territory as Mentenomon and to the inhabitants as Guttones (neighbours of the Teutones, probably referring to the Goths). In AD 98 Tacitus described one of the tribes living near the Baltic Sea () as Aestiorum gentes and amber-gatherers.
Old Prussians
Before the 13th century, the territory was inhabited by Old (Baltic) Prussians, a Baltic ethnic group that lived in Prussia (the area of the southeastern coastal region of the Baltic Sea neighbouring of the Baltic Sea around the Vistula Lagoon and the Curonian Lagoon). A part of the territory later called Masuria was then known as Galindia and was probably a peripheral, deeply forested and lightly populated area. Inhabitants of the now Masuria spoke a language now known as Old Prussian and had their own mythology. Although a 19th-century German political entity bore their name, they were not Germans. They were converted to Roman Catholicism in the 13th century, after conquest by the Knights of the Teutonic Order.
Estimates range from approximately 170,000 to 220,000 Old Prussians living in the entire Prussia around 1200.Kossert, Andreas: Ostpreussen, page 28 The wilderness was their natural barrier against attack by would-be invaders. During the Northern Crusades of the early 13th century, the Old Prussians used this vast forest as a broad zone of defence. They did so again against the Knights of the Teutonic Order, who had been invited to Poland by Konrad I of Masovia in 1226. The order's goal was to convert the native population to Christianity and baptise it by force if necessary. In the subsequent conquest, which lasted over 50 years, the original population was partly exterminated, particularly during the major Prussian rebellion of 1261–1283. A lot of Prussians went to Lithuania as war refugees too. But several Prussian noble families also accommodated the Knights to hold their power and possessions.
Teutonic Order
After the Order's acquisition of Prussia, Poles (or more specifically, Mazurs, that is, inhabitants of the adjacent region of Mazovia) began to settle in the southeastern part of the conquered region. German, Dutch, Flemish, and Danish colonists entered the area afterward, from the northwest. The number of Polish settlers grew significantly again at the beginning of the 15th century, especially after the first and the second treaties of Thorn (Toruń), in 1411 and 1466 respectively, following the Thirteen Years' War and the final defeat of the order. The Battle of Grunwald took place in western Masuria in 1410. It was one of the largest battles of medieval Europe and ended in a Polish-Lithuanian victory over the Teutonic Knights. In 1440, the anti-Teutonic Prussian Confederation was founded, and various towns of Masuria joined it. Western Masuria with Ostróda, was, next to the Chełmno Land, the place of the most widespread participation of the nobility in the foundation of the Confederation. In 1454 upon the Confederation's request King Casimir IV Jagiellon signed the act of incorporation of the entire region including Masuria to Poland. However, after the subsequent Thirteen Years' War (1454–1466), the Teutonic Order regained authority over the region as a fief of the Polish Crown.
Ducal Prussia
The secularisation of the Teutonic Order in Prussia and the conversion of Albert of Prussia to Lutheranism in 1525 brought Prussia, including the area later called Masuria, to Protestantism. The Knights untied their bonds to the Catholic Church and became land-owning noblemen and the Duchy of Prussia was established as a vassal state of Poland. The Polish language predominated due to the many immigrants from Mazovia, who additionally settled the southern parts of Ducal Prussia, till then virgin part of (later Masuria) in the 16th century. While the southern countryside was inhabited by these – meanwhile Protestant – Polish-speakers, the very small southern towns constituted a mixed Polish and German-speaking population. The ancient Old Prussian language survived in parts of the countryside in the northern and central parts of Ducal Prussia until the early 18th century. At that time, they proved to be assimilated into the mass of German-speaking villagers and farmers. Areas that had many Polish language speakers were known as the Polish Departments.Kossert, Andreas: Masuren, p. 81
Masuria became one of the leading centers of Polish Protestantism. In the mid-16th century, Lyck (Ełk) and Angerburg (Węgorzewo) became significant Polish printing centers.Erwin Kruk, Warmia i Mazury, Wrocław 2003, p. 62 (in Polish) A renowned Polish high school, which attracted Polish students from different regions, was founded in Ełk in eastern Masuria in 1546 by Hieronim Malecki, Polish translator and publisher, who contributed to the creation of the standards and patterns of the Polish literary language. The westernmost part of Masuria, the Osterode (Ostróda) county, in 1633 came under the administration of one of the last dukes of the Piast dynasty, John Christian of Brieg.
After the death of Albert Frederick, Duke of Prussia in 1618, his son-in-law John Sigismund, Margrave of Brandenburg inherited the duchy (including Masuria), combining the two territories under a single dynasty and forming Brandenburg-Prussia. In 1656, during the Battle of Prostki, the forces of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, including 2,000 Tatar raiders, beat the allied Swedish and Brandenburg army capturing Bogusław Radziwiłł. The war resulted in the destruction of most towns, 249 villages and settlements, and 37 churches were destroyed. Over 50% of the population of Masuria died within the years 1656–1657, 23,000 were killed, another 80,000 died of diseases and famine, and 3,400 people were enslaved and deported to Russia.Kossert, Andreas: Masuren, p. 74Sławomir Augusiewicz, Prostki 1656, Bellona Publishing, Warsaw 2001. ^ Jacek Płosiński, Potop szwedzki na Podlasiu 1655–1657, Inforteditions Publishing, 2006. The Treaty of Wehlau ended the sovereignty of Poland in 1657.
From 1709 to 1711, in all of Ducal Prussia, between 200,000 and 245,000 out of 600,000 inhabitants died from the Black Death. In Masuria, the death toll varied regionally; while 6,789 people died in the district of Rhein (Ryn), only 677 died in Seehesten (Szestno). In Lötzen (Giżycko), 800 out of 919 people died.Kossert, Andreas: Ostpreussen, p. 96Kossert, Andreas: Masuren, p. 85 Losses in population were compensated by migration of Protestant settlers or refugees from Scotland, Salzburg (expulsion of Protestants 1731), France (Huguenot refugees after the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685), and especially from the counterreformed Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, including Polish brethren expelled from Poland in 1657. The last group of refugees to emigrate to Masuria were the Russian Philipons (as "Old Believers" opposed to the State Church) in 1830, when King Frederick William III of Prussia granted them asylum.
Kingdom of Prussia
The region became part of the Kingdom of Prussia with the coronation of King Frederick I of Prussia in 1701 in Königsberg. Masuria became part of a newly created administrative province of East Prussia upon its creation in 1773. The name Masuria began to be used officially after new administrative reforms in Prussia after 1818. Masurians referred to themselves during that period as "Polish Prussians" or as "Staroprusaki" (Old Prussians) During the Napoleonic Wars and Polish national liberation struggles, in 1807, several towns of northern and eastern Masuria were taken over by Polish troops under the command of generals Jan Henryk Dąbrowski and Józef Zajączek. Some Masurians showed considerable support for the Polish uprising in 1831, and maintained many contacts with Russian-held areas of Poland beyond the border of Prussia, the areas being connected by common culture and language; before the uprising people visited each other's country fairs and much trade took place, with smuggling also widespread. Nevertheless, their Lutheran belief and a traditional adherence to the Prussian royal family kept Masurians and Poles separated. Some early writers about Masurians - like Max Toeppen - postulated Masurians in general as mediators between German and Slavic cultures.
Germanisation policies in Masuria included various strategies, first and foremost they included attempts to propagate the German language and to eradicate the Polish language as much as possible; German became the obligatory language in schools from 1834 on. In 1813 the old Polish school in Ełk, founded in 1546, was transformed into a German gymnasium. Fryderyk Tymoteusz Krieger, superintendent of the school, actively defended the rights of local Poles to use the Polish language, becoming the first pastor in Masuria to protest against the initiated Germanization of Polish schools in the region. Prussian authorities launched investigations against Krieger three times. Polish people who had acquired knowledge of the German language, including children whose parents did not speak German, were officially classified as ethnic Germans by the authorities and were denied the right to attend Polish church services.Sukertowa-Biedrawina, p. 67 In 1836, a synod was organized in Olecko which protested against Germanization policies. The synod's protest was signed by all the pastors in the Olecko County, and its arguments were later used by the well-known defenders of the Polish language in Masuria, Gustaw Gizewiusz and Krzysztof Celestyn Mrongovius. The protests were successful; however, the campaign of Germanisation was resumed in 1865 and later intensified. The Lutheran churches and their vicars principally exerted their spiritual care in Polish as concerned to Polish mother tongue parishioners.