The German-Polish Optant War and the break-up of the supra-national cooperation. Migration and local politics in Międzychód (Birnbaum) after the First World War
2013
Abstrakt
The contribution with the example of the small town Międzychód (Birnbaum) on the Western border of newly established Polish state analyzes the role of the option and its significance for the re-formation of local society. The result is that the emigration of the German population and the immigration of the Polish population of this town did not influence the supra-national cooperation in communal politics in the first years, because it was based on older personal networks.
Only international conflict between the German and the Polish state on the optants was used by the new elites, in order to enforce their dominance in numbers in the arena of local politics, too.