The Settlement Commission reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Settlement Commission

This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

The Settlement Commission (German: Ansiedlungskommission) was a department that operated in the decades around 1885 by Bismarck to increase land ownership of Germans at the expense of Poles in the eastern provinces of the German Empire, through the use of economic and political methods. The original goal of the Commision was to remove Polish owners from the land completely. The first budget of the Commision was 100,000,000 marks.

At later times, the bigger sums of funds were made available to purchase lands from Poles. At the same time, laws were enacted that discriminated against Poles, making it more difficult for them continue profitable operations and to rehabilitate failed operations.

The creation of the Commision made Poles to defend Polish ownership of the land, that gradually turned into Polish-German economical competition. It was to great extend won by Poles.

However, the Commission created numerous modern settlements, especially around city of Bydgoszcz.

Due to overall failure of the policy, Prussian diat pass the law, that enable forcible expropriation of Polish landowners by the Settlement Commission 1908. In 1912 first 4 Polish large estates were expropriated. In 1920 due to return of Polish provinces to Poland, the Commission ceaased to function. Subsequently, most of German settlers returned to Germany.

This is the "Settlement Commission" reference article from the English Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.