The German minority in Poland is not large, with around 300,000 of the country’s 38 million inhabitants professing their allegiance. But the fact that the school children of this minority are to be disadvantaged in Poland from now on is now also occupying German members of the Bundestag. According to the law, members of minorities are entitled to three hours of instruction in their language per week – the corresponding ordinance was changed on Friday, members of the German minority should only get one hour per week. Why? Because, according to the Polish government, students of Polish descent are not being adequately supported in Germany. The money saved will benefit Polish organizations in Germany.
The federal government’s representative for resettlers, Bernd Fabritius, calls the matter “unacceptable”. The CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag speaks of “targeted discrimination” and the SPD declares that this is “another attempt to score points domestically with anti-German politics”. They all emphasize the damage to German-Polish relations.
The Polish Federal Network for Participation and Social Affairs, an umbrella organization of Polish organizations in Germany, does not want the money that the Polish government is saving in this way. “We don’t want or need support at the expense of excluding others,” says an official statement that was also sent to the Polish government. “We do not agree that these solutions are implemented without discussions with us and without knowledge of the situation in Germany.” According to Federal Commissioner Fabritius, there is “no unmet demand for Polish lessons” anyway.
The Polish government wants symmetry
But the Polish government is obviously concerned with something else, namely equality. The amendment to the ordinance is intended to “restore Polish-German symmetry in mutual relations with regard to the treatment of the German minority in Poland and the Polish minority in Germany”. The Deputy Education Minister Dariusz Piontkowski is quoted in the Polish media.
Almost 900,000 Polish citizens live in Germany. More than two million people in Germany have Polish roots – including German late resettlers. However, the only recognized minorities in Germany are the Roma and Sinti, Sorbs, Frisians and Danes who have lived here for centuries. Not for the first time, however, the Polish side is pushing for Germany to officially recognize the Poles as a minority. Most recently, Polish President Andrzej Duda raised the issue when he celebrated the 30th anniversary of the signing of the German-Polish Neighborhood Agreement with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier last June. It is precisely this agreement that Poland is now violating – because it stipulates the promotion of the German minority.
Germany is also committed to appropriate language support. For North Rhine-Westphalia alone, the Polish federal network lists 70 cities in which Polish is offered at schools. The FDP member of parliament Renata Alt calls the accusations from Warsaw “out of touch with reality”: “In North Rhine-Westphalia alone, more than 5,000 schoolchildren receive Polish lessons in their native language.”
But that’s not particularly much. In fact, the allegations from Poland have a core of truth. While German is often the second foreign language after English at Polish schools, Polish is listed under “Other” in the statistics at German schools, with the exception of North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg and Saxony in particular are trying to introduce Polish as a school subject. Alone, there is a lack of demand. It’s different in Poland, where the German minority sees German as essential for “a good start on the job market”. The regulation is to come into force at the start of the school year on September 1, 2022. Until then, the representatives of the minority want to fight for German lessons with the EU and the federal government.