What is the Warmian Masurian voivodeship like in Poland?

Warmia is ok, filled with castles, culture, it has its own legends and local food. Olsztyn is in top10 hdi in polish cities and developing fast.
Masuria is a neglected region. It's mainly known for lakes and farms, it has some nice tourist spots and that's it. The transformation from communism to capitalism fucked it up badly and left in taters. I feel sorry for them.
There are minorities here and there. Germans of course, post ww2 ukrainian people that got resettled there and newcommers, some lithuanians, russians there are some french in Olsztyn due to michelin and some asians.

google.pl/maps/@53.7495234,20.473473,3a,75y,353.51h,89.78t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s_tB-vSlcUV19wiee7HMKPA!2e0!6s//geo2.ggpht.com/cbk?panoid=_tB-vSlcUV19wiee7HMKPA&output=thumbnail&cb_client=maps_sv.tactile.gps&thumb=2&w=203&h=100&yaw=302.56766&pitch=0&thumbfov=100!7i13312!8i6656

beautiful

>Germans of course
Have you met any Germans left behind?

oh hey, my oma is from there

it was a nice quaint place when the germans ruled it

Does she have any stories about it?

yeah some, they aren't really happy ones, as she was a kid during ww2. Before the russians came and burned her farm down and how her brother had to leave to fight in the war. but other than that she told me stories of working on her family farm and how she would have only her brothers and sisters as friends to play with. The surronding area was made up mostly of polish people whom she helped her father trade their farm's food with. It sounded a bit borning but it seemed cozy and simple. One of the happier stories she told me about was how the christmas celebration in her area was massive and very festive

Non meme answer is:

1. Relatively poor but visually better than Lithuania and light-years better than the neighboring Kaliningrad.
2. Pretty good vacation infrastructure. There are also small lakes off the beaten path where you can be entirely or almost entirely alone.
3. Nature in general looks amazing.
4. Lots of castles straight from the Teutonic era, most of them renovated.

t. close family lives there

> Germans

The bulk of the native populations were called Mazurs which could be best described with Polish-speaking Germans (like Alsatians were/are German speaking French). They were descended mostly from Polish settlers who got assimilated withing the course of time. Mazurs were distinct from both "Germans" and "Poles" ie. people who settled there later coming from either Germany proper of Poland proper.

After 1945 about 10-20% of Mazurs remained, they are mostly gone as a distinct group due to intermarriage and some emigration.

Mazur was actually a term for immigrant from Masovia.

1. the landscape is like from a fairy tale
2. poorest region in Poland
3. Beautiful lakes
4. very poor villages
5. Olsztyn, biggest city is alltight
6. my wife is from there. I visit this place from time to time.

Attached: lotnicze_uwm.jpg (880x580, 571K)

I know that.

mazus were polish but protestant which is why they identified with prussia/germany and not catholic poland. a similar thing existed in lithuania minor where protestant lithuanian people lived who also identified with prussia/germany rather than catholic lithuania.

They didn't identify with Germany until late 1920s. I kid you not. They were strongly into Protestant Prussian identity though.

true. Only Silesians identified with Poland because they were Catholic.

Silesians in Cieszyn (Teschen) Silesia identified as Poles because they were Protestant.

There were also Catholic Warmiaks in Warmia (Ermland) in East Prussia, whose affiliation was mixed.

Yes, there's a lot of them so why would I not.

Indeed. I also knew some "full-blooded" Mazurs. Their descendants mostly from mixed marriages live now in the area.

After WW1 was when German and Prussian identity had become inseparable, ironically losing the war made German national unity much stronger than before. Before that we had multiple kingdoms with their own armies etc in the Reich, after WW1 German identity trumped all and that included the remote and more ethnically diverse provinces who were in danger of being anexed by other countries.

Because they spoke Polish and no they weren't protestant. Only some were.

Mazury are poor but Warmia isn't.
Still the poorest regions in Poland are subcarpatia, mazovia without Warsaw and Podlasie and Mazury is right there with them but a tiny fracture richer due to tourism.

From my understanding there are very few left.

Attached: German_Minority_Opole_and_Silesian.png (669x624, 243K)

I'm from Olsztyn a big chunk of my friends are protestants who are descendants of pre ww2 locals. I never knew that until they told me themselves. They have surnames that suggest it but so do many people here.

Prior to the end of WW2, the most traumatic event in Mazurs' history was the Russian invasion of East Prussia. I dearsay that it was the dread of those day that decisively shifted Mazurs towards Prussia and killed-off the fledging Polish movement among them. Still, in my oppinion it was only in the 1920s that Mazurs became Germans by heart, largely because of shift in education, press etc.

Attached: german-ethnicity-before-and-after-ww2.jpg (1031x1314, 490K)

German minority in Opole is actually a meme. They are direct descendants of people who voted for Poland in the 1921 plebiscite, because the Polish option actually was prevailing there, as opposed to the industrial cities.

Most left but there's a noticable minority, protestants churches, we still take care of all the pre ww2 graveyards and if we find one that has been hidden underground due to constructions or war damage we ask the local protestants community for the right to move it.

Don't take this map too seriously.

"After World War II, many Masurians were classified as Germans and therefore mostly expelled along with them or emigrated after 1956 from what was now Poland to post-war Germany. Although most of them left for the West, some also ended up in East Germany. "

German minority is an absolute disaster. They always vote for liberals and hold leftist views. Scum of the earth if you ask me.

Are you quoting Wiki to people who know the issue first-hand?

South Warmia always had a huge % of Poles and was catholic since XIII century so the german numbers weren't as big and there's only a few thousand of them in my city.

It's you who is a disaster if you denigrate people simply because they vote not like you do.

Maybe they are weird. Miroslav Klose is from there and he played for Germany but married a Polish woman and speaks Polish to his kids yet I've heard some Polish people complain he doesn't give a fuck about Poland. His father also said he refuses to be called a Pole.

I'm not arguing really. I've just never heard of it before.
If you do have a sauce, that would be good too. I usually archive it.

These people are massively butthurt because the commie-era Poland didn't turn out to be the land of milk and honey like they thought.

It was due to gommunism, not Poland of course. But it doesn't matter.

This is what I found anyway.

Attached: German_Minority_Warmian_Masurian_Prussia.png (917x463, 218K)

>An actual civil thread on Jow Forums
love you all peoples

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The actual number of natives who stayed is much larger. However, due to intermarriage the descendants of Mazurs are quite unlike to consider themselves as Germans.

I know. I'm surprised too.
Usually when Germany and Poland are brought up in the same topic, it's an absolute shitfest.

That's because luckily Poles and Germans are by large cool.

Of course they are weirdos on both sides, but I hope that nowadays there's much more that keeps us together than apart.

I don't get why this map is getting reposted. It's so silly.

It doesn't represents where germans were majority, only where germans were present.

You could make entire map of PLC with parts of Russia if you did the same map but with Poles.

There are some political scandals in Poland, so I suppose that trolls have migrated elsewhere to fight their internet battles.

If I have a few polish speaking friends, would going up there for a summer holiday be a nice idea? just relax in the nature and stuff. there or somewhere near the Podkarpackie where one lives and goes every summer anyway

>would going up there for a summer holiday be a nice idea?

See for yourself. It's from a BBC documentary.
youtube.com/watch?v=1mYqY5YELd0

Mazury has lots of lakes and mosquitos. Podkarpackie is quite nice, especially the Solina lake and the landscapes.

Sauce is mostly in Polish unfortunately.

Olsztyn is ok for 2 days max 3 than you can use it as a hub to visit lakes and castles. Mazury has some infrastructure in Mikołajki and Giżycko which seem the best for sailing, sightseeing and being in a place with a lot of nature.

Do they actually speak German? In the villages with German street signs, is German used as the main language ?

Lol'd
Thanks for the replies, we've talked years about going somewhere in Poland together, and I missed a chance to visit him in Warsaw in October because of uni exams.
Hopefully soon though, Poland looks like a great place.

No. They are just called germans. I once checked the cities and villages in google maps because I was wondering if they are really german, and everything was in Polish. Just like regular towns in Poland.

They never spoke German in the first place. They are learning it as a second language.

So what's the point of all the street signs in German? When driving through Opole i saw like half of all the villages have German signs.

For bored teenagers to have something to vandalize, to get gibs from Germany and to suck up to the elderely German tourists. I live right next to the supposedely 40% german counties and I've never met anybody who speaks German at home. I do have some friends who are muh herritage larpers in that regard, with dual citizenship and whatnot

It's memery for the most part.

This part of Silesia was the most Polish-speaking actually, far more than the industrial cities in eastern parts where the German component was far stronger. Their ancestors voted mostly for Poland in 1921, but due to several reasons they ended up in German part of Silesia.

After 1945 these people stayed because they declared themselves as Poles and were exempted from expulsions. Then they correctly found out that communist Poland is absolute shit and felt cheated and disappointed. Within one Generation they started to consider themselves as German.

>visually better than Lithuania
wow rude!

I did not intended it that way. That was my impression when I recently went there and just afterwards traveled to Lithuania.

In my town commies demoslished the protestant church and build houses with bricks from it

Attached: Kosciol_ewangelicki_dawny_pl_Szarych_Szeregow_Prudnik_371153[1].jpg (955x605, 96K)

you're supposed to lie for the sake of international relations, also I figured ostra brama makes up for any other shortfall we have from the point of view of a Pole

I am not religious and I hated being dragged to that place by my relatives.

The only demolishing in Olsztyn was done by russians and to rebuild warsaw(because reclaimed lands, fuck them right?), our protestants church still stands and I think there's more than one.

I expected that. My mother is from silesia and has German citizenship but doesn't speak German at all, the german passport is only used for visa free travel lmao.
I thought it would be different in places with high "german" population, but no. Muh heritage LARPing is fun though.

Ostra Brama is visited because it's nostalgic for Poles.

We have "cry toursism" where we take 90 year old granny to where they used to live and they usually cry hence the name.

It's kind of sad actually.

tell them they're all crypto-lithuanians anyway so it's fine if they move back so long as they learn the language

We get cry tourists from Germany too, when I was a kid an elderly pair visited my Grandparents farm and we showed them around the place and the village

I can't speak because I'm from real Poland, so I wondered if ziemie odzyskane have this too.

Prussia is Balt clay.

Tell the survivors of Volhynian genocide that they are crypto-ukrainians and they have to learn ukrainian........

>ukrainians
no such thing

Lubuskie here. My grandparents were sometimes visited by former German inhabitants. It was quite embarrassing at the time desu. Poland was poor as fuck, while Germans arrived in their shiny new cars almost like aliens from another planet.

I wondered who shitposts that on /his/. Eternal Balt as it turns out.

agree but genocide was real though.

I was about to show you the reaction of a lady who came there after 70 years to see what's left of her village but this is too emotional and I don't want to.

But villages in Lubuskie still looks the same shitty as they were in 90's so it would still be embarrassing though.

Poles just recently have ability to travel so our cry tourism started much later than 90's. 00's-10's would be the start I suppose.

Based for an Jow Forums lithuanian, i tought you guys hated us here

That's news to me, but it makes sense.
Old world is so much better than the New World in terms of everything except nature.

>That's news to me
Why so? Lots of people had been thrown off their properties and resettled somewhere else including to the Warmia-Mazuria, but also Warsaw.

That's nice t b h.

I was surprised "cry-tourism" was a thing, but I guess there are still lots of people alive from prior to WW2.

Yes, quite a lot. Lots of 90 and 100 year ones too.

I had a Russian teacher who was born in Brest 4 months before Germany declared war on Poland. He and his family were Belarussian.
He was around 80 when he died, he had liver issues.
He will probably be buried back in Belarus.

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