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Comment by ulrischa | Hacker News Reader

Poznań is Posen - a former German area with lot of German literature culture

Poznań has been Polish for a millennia, it was a part of Germany from 1793 to 1919.

It was majority Polish during that period, with Germans making up at most 40% of the population, or ~65000, when it became a part of Poland again.

Neither "Germans" nor "Poles" have existed for millennia, the idea of national identity isn't that old. Also going back only 2 millennia, it was Germanic territory, the Burgundians lived in the area before they were displaced by Slavs coming from the east during the Migration Period. So if one were to make the argument that territory belongs to whoever was there first, Germanic peoples would have a better claim on it by that logic.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Roman_Em...

Poles have existed for a millennia, the first Polish state started in 966 AD as the Kingdom of Poland with the adoption of Western Christianity by the first Polish king. Maybe the idea of a nation hadn't been formed yet, but Poland had. The Polish word for Germany is "Niemec" or land of mutes, because they were unintelligible.

Why would anyone make that argument? Claiming Poznań as German reeks of irredentism. Germanic != German. Do germans still claim the cities of other Germanic countries and former lands like Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and the Baltics as German?

Do you mean a former German area during the WW2 occupation of Poland or after the Second Partitioning of Poland at the end of 18th century?

No, Poznań is Poznań.

> Former German area.

Former from 1939 to 1945.

Both true. And translated it is Posen

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