German nationalists framed Silesia as a threatened borderland needing German civilizing settlement.

Evidence

Only recently have leading German, Polish, and international scholars begun to i nd some consensus or at least initiate conversation about the history of Silesia. Throughout the coming narrative, reference is made to three competing perspectives. From the nineteenth century onward, German nationalists portrayed Silesia as a threatened borderland, made prosperous through German settlement and efi ciency. As famously depicted in the Breslau novelist Gustav Freytag’s anti-Semitic and anti- Polish bestseller, Soll und Haben (1855), only Germans could “tame” the East: not only Silesia, but also Poland and beyond. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 239

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the borderland-as-threatened trope in German colonial ideology discussed across my colonial-history sources. — connects to: Borderland Germans framed their province as both a civilizing bridge and an anti-Slavic bulwark. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 235; Polish claims on Silesia were manufactured from a selective twelfth-century dynastic past. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 239; Upper Silesia’s mixed population held fluid national loyalties across the interwar period. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 239

Broader Connections

• Polish claims on Silesia were manufactured from a selective twelfth-century dynastic past. #contradicts (0.85) — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 239
• Upper Silesia’s mixed population held fluid national loyalties across the interwar period. #complicates (0.80) — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 239