History of Germans in Poland

The history of Germans in Poland dates back almost a millennium. Poland was at one point Europe's most multiethnic state during the medieval period. Its territory covered an immense plain with no natural boundaries, with a thinly scattered population of many ethnic groups, including the Poles themselves, Germans in the cities of West Prussia, and Ruthenians in Lithuania. 5 to 10% of immigrants were German settlers. (In the Middle Ages, there was no homogeneous German state; the label "German" generally refers to German-speaking people, including Germanized Polabian Slavs and Lusatian Sorbs.)

The Polish princes granted burghers in the cities, many of whom were German speaking, autonomy according to the "Magdeburg rights", modeled on the laws of the cities of ancient Rome. In this way, cities emerged of the German-Western European medieval type. Before the 13th century ended, around one hundred Polish towns had Magdeburg-style municipal institutions. (Adoption of Magdeburg laws should not be equated with German colonization in Poland, as the laws were used in many places inhabited solely by Poles.) The governing classes in these towns were increasingly German and German-speaking. At the synod of Łęczyca in 1285, Archbishop Jakub Świnka of Gniezno warned that Poland might become a "new Saxony" if German negligence for Polish language, customs, clergy and ordinary people went unchecked. By the end of the Middle Ages significant populations in a number of western Polish cities were German-speaking, and some municipal documents were written partly in German (until the transition to Latin, and later to Polish).