Kashubians
 Kashubian flag | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 50,000 to 200,000 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 Poland,  Canada | |
| Languages | |
| Polish, Kashubian | |
| Religion | |
| Catholicism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Poles · Sorbs · Czechs · Slovaks |
Kashubians (Kashubian: Kaszëbi; Polish: Kaszubi; German: Kaschuben), also called Kassubians or Cassubians, are a Slavic ethnic group living in northwestern Poland.
Their unofficial capital city is Kartuzy (Kartuzë). Among the larger towns, Gdynia (Gdiniô) contains the largest proportion of people of Kashubian origin. The main occupations of the Kashubians were originally agriculture and fishery; today it is agriculture and services (mainly agrotourism).
The main organization that maintains the Kashubian identity is the Kashubian-Pomeranian Association. A young group called "Odroda" fervently supports a renewal of Kashubian culture.
Population
The number of Kashubians depends on definitions. A common estimate is that over 300,000 people in Poland are of the Kashubian ethnicity. The most extreme estimates are as low as 50,000 or as high as 500,000
In the Polish census of 2002, only 5,100 people declared Kashubian ethnicity, although 51,000 declared Kashubian as their native language. Most Kashubians prefer to declare Polish nationality and Kashubian ethnicity, to be considered as both Polish and Kashubian. However, there was no option to declare a different nationality and ethnicity or more than one nationality. Some claim that the census was falsified and many people were not freely allowed to declare their Kashubian nationality. Only a few such cases have been confirmed.
History
Kashubians are the direct descendants of an early Slavic tribe of Pomeranians, who took their name from the fact that they settled down in Pomerania (from Polish Pomorze, "the land along the sea"). It is believed that the ancestors of the Kashubians came into the region between the Odra and Vistula Rivers during the Migration Period. The oldest known mention of the name dates from the thirteenth century (a seal of Duke Barnim I of Pomerania), when they ruled areas around Szczecin (Kashubian: Szczecëno).
An early mention of the Kashubians is in the 13th century, when the Dukes of Pomerania included "Duke of Kashubia" in their titles. From the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, after the Thirty Years' War, parts of West Pomerania became Swedish, and the Swedish kings titled themselves "Dukes of Kashubia" from 1648 to the 1720s.
The Landtag (parliament) of the Kingdom of Prussia in Königsberg in 1843 decided to change the official church language from Polish to German, but this decision was soon repealed, and starting in 1852 Kashubian was taught at the Gymnasium (high school) of Wejherowo. In the 1830s, several hundred Kashubians emigrated to Upper Canada and created a settlement named Wilno, in Renfrew County, Ontario, which still exists today. In the 1870s a fishing village was established in Jones Island in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, by Kashubian and German immigrants. They had no deed for the land and the city of Milwaukee evicted them as squatters in the 1940s and turned it into an industrial area.
Pomeranians living in the territories of the former Duchy of Pomerania, among them Slovincians, were almost entirely Germanised between the 14th and 20th centuries and lost their ethnic identity, mainly due to Prussian language politics and the fact that they were Lutheran Protestants like most Germans. Some of those living in Pomerelia (Eastern Pomerania) have survived and today regard themselves as Kashubians in modern Poland, though many more were violently expelled by the Poles as "Germans" after World War II. Most Kashubians, unlike Slovincians and Pomeranian Slavic Wends, remained Roman Catholic and, like the Poles, still exist today.
Kashubian language
Around 50,000 Kashubians speak Kashubian, a West Slavic language belonging to the Lechitic group of languages in northern Poland. Many Polish linguists formerly considered Kashubian to be a Polish dialect, though most now believe it is a separate Slavic language.
There are other traditional Slavic ethnic groups inhabiting Pomerania, such as the Kociewiacy, Borowiacy, Krajniacy and others. The dialects spoken by these are between Kashubian and the Polish dialects of Greater Poland and Mazovia. This might indicate that they are not only descendants of ancient Pomeranians, but also of settlers who arrived to Pomerania from Greater Poland and Masovia in the Middle Ages. However, this is only one possible explanation.
The earliest writing in Kashubian is Martin Luther's Protestant catechism in 1643 (new editions in 1752 and 1828). Scientific interest in the Kashubian language was sparked by Mrongovius (publications in 1823, 1828) and the Russian linguist Hilferding (1859, 1862), later followed by Biskupski (1883, 1891), Bronisch (1896, 1898), Mikkola (1897), Nitsch (1903). Important works are S. Ramult's, Słownik jezyka pomorskiego, czyli kaszubskiego, 1893, and F. Lorentz, Slovinzische Grammatik, 1903, Slovinzische Texte, 1905, and Slovinzisches Wörterbuch, 1908.
The first activist of the Kashubian/East Pomeranian national movement was Florian Ceynowa after 1846. He devised a Kashubian alphabet, wrote a Kashubian grammar (1879), published a collection of ethnographic-historic stories of the life of the Kashubians (Skórb kaszébsko-slovjnckjé mòvé, 1866-1868), and wrote several smaller works. Another early writer in Kashubian was Hieronim Derdowski. The next stages were: the Young Kashubian movement led by Aleksander Majkowski and the authors publishing in the nationalist "Zrzësz Kaszëbskô" (the so called "Zrzëszincë" group) who contributed significantly to the development of the Kashubian literary language.
In 2005, the Kashubian language was made an official subject on the Polish matura (an exam roughly equivalent to English A-Level and French Baccalaureat) for the first time. Despite a very small interest (an uptake of only twenty-three students), it is an important element in the preservation of Kashubian culture. In some towns and villages Kashubian is the second spoken language after Polish. Kashubian presently enjoys legal protection in Poland as a minority language, and appears on some streets signs and is also taught at schools.
Notable Kashubians
- Gerard Labuda, historian
- Aleksander Majkowski, writer
- Danuta Stenka, actress
- Donald Tusk, politician, leader of Platforma Obywatelska
- Hans David Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg, Prussian Field Marshal in the napoleonic era
- Günter Grass, writer (Kashubian mother, German father)
See also
