Scale of Polonization of Germans in Wielkopolska

[Peterski]

Based on what I've read it is believed that the so called German Ostsiedlung in Wielkopolska took place only on a small scale.

For example a 1958 book "Historia Polski" ("History of Poland") Volume I, Part I, page 370, says:

"(...) colonization with use of German settlers was limited just to some provinces such as Silesia, Western Pomerania and Prussia, while in Lesser Poland and Greater Poland [Wielkopolska] it occured only on a small scale, and was nearly unknown in Masovia."

However, when comparing autosomal DNA of the inhabitants of Wielkopolska from the Early Piast period (an average of 36 individuals - from Ostrow Lednicki, Lad, Rumin, Dziekanowice, Legowo, Oblaczkowo and Poznan - their average dating is ca. year 1100 AD) with modern inhabitants of Wielkopolska (an average of 9 individuals, but the territorial scope is from nearly entire Wielkopolska - 4 people from northern Wielkopolska, 3 from southern, one from western and one from central) it turns out that Early Medieval Wielkopolans resembled modern Belarusians, while modern Wielkopolans are much more shifted westward, towards Germans.

In this PCA I compared a dozen Belarusians, a few dozen Germans and averages for Early Medieval and Modern Wielkopolska:



^^^
This indicates that throughout the centuries Poles from Wielkopolska absorbed and Polonized a large number of "Westerners".
A simple Vahaduo test modelling Wielkopolska Poles as a mix of Dutch and Early Medieval Wielkopolska, gives such results:
(I used Dutch because the German average has Slavic admixture, and I assume that Ostsiedlung settlers didn't yet have it)

Target: Wielkopolska_Modern(n=9)
Distance: 1.3772% / 0.01377226
71.4 Wielkopolska_Medieval(n=36)
28.6 Dutch

We can also test this model with an average of Poles from Bydgoszcz in Kuyavia (which is sometimes considered a subregion of Wielkopolska). This average is composed of hospital patients from Bydgoszcz, so we don't really know their genealogy, and some of them might hail from other regions of Poland:
(Here I also used the Wielkopolska_Medieval average because the number of Early Medieval samples from Kuyavia is very low)

Target: Polish_Bydgoszcz(n=70)
Distance: 0.9185% / 0.00918509
77.4 Wielkopolska_Medieval(n=36)
22.6 Dutch

Let's add that the percent of surnames of Germanic origin among ethnic Poles from Wielkopolska today, is around 10%.
So it seems that the majoirty of this Western admixture had to occur in times before surnames became commonly used.

Coordinates used:

Wielkopolska_Medieval(n=36),0.1289046,0.1255025,0.0766078,0.0709792,0.0410247,0.0252861,0.0067696,0.0129931,-0.0002898,-0.025999,-0.0019983,-0.009579,0.0186445,0.0224095,-0.0092893,0.0023976,0.0061498,-0.0001653,0.0028421,0.0016779,-0.0030051,-0.0057155,0.0079871,-0.0061453,0.0009846
Polish_Bydgoszcz(n=70),0.1331242,0.1298572,0.0726065,0.0610516,0.0418407,0.0241559,0.0088296,0.0115215,-0.0008035,-0.0183694,-0.0028348,-0.0062815,0.0113109,0.0184945,-0.0058825,0.0008807,0.0016522,-0.000029,0.0020399,0.0015525,-0.0029644,-0.0027752,0.0055444,-0.0022085,-0.0001574
Wielkopolska_Modern(n=9),0.1327936,0.1347269,0.0687617,0.0590013,0.0383318,0.0226831,0.0086168,0.0080254,0.0000683,-0.0191551,-0.0038251,-0.0063443,0.0124214,0.0151079,-0.0067257,0.0026664,0.0025498,0.0005912,0.0011312,0.0020286,-0.0042563,-0.0022257,0.006354,0.0035479,-0.0016364
Dutch,0.127441,0.134179,0.060271,0.044076,0.040844,0.016397,0.005402,0.007263,0.004209,0.001924,-0.005635,0.004427,-0.009846,-0.008676,0.01783,0.005623,-0.006516,0.001748,0.003909,0.002816,0.00448,0.003385,-5e-06,0.013892,-0.000656

What do you think about this?

[AndreiDNA]

Target: AndreiKharchenko_scaled
Distance: 2.6300% / 0.02629983
74.4 Wielkopolska_Medieval(n=36)
13.0 Vepsian
9.0 Tatar_Crimean_steppe
3.6 Mari

Distance to: AndreiKharchenko_scaled
0.04196168 Wielkopolska_Medieval(n=36)
0.04522123 Vepsian
0.07763329 Tatar_Mishar
0.09610065 Romanian
0.10732441 Tatar_Kazan
0.14635334 Tatar_Lipka
0.18059864 Tatar_Crimean_steppe
0.19509536 Mari
0.25902435 Tatar_Siberian
0.28926120 Tatar_Siberian_Zabolotniye

[celticdragongod]

Distance to: CDG_scaled
0.01968100 Dutch
0.05829097 Wielkopolska_Modern(n=9)
0.06125900 Polish_Bydgoszcz(n=70)
0.07697193 Wielkopolska_Medieval(n=36)

Target: CDG_scaled
Distance: 1.9681% / 0.01968100
100.0 Dutch

[Dušan]

Playing with Wielkopolska_Medieval

[Fabricius]

Thanks to the Poles, German genes will not be extinct, at least.

[Figaro]

Shits and giggles

Target: Figaro
Distance: 2.2052% / 0.02205228
64.6 Dutch
28.6 Polish_Bydgoszcz(n=70)
6.8 Wielkopolska_Modern(n=9)

[Fabricius]

Target: Fabricius_K13-G25
Distance: 8.4727% / 0.08472744
100.0 Dutch

Target: Fabricius_K13-G25
Distance: 1.4840% / 0.01484026
72.0 Iberian
21.0 Wielkopolska_Modern(n=9)
7.0 SSA

Distance to: Fabricius_K13-G25
0.05580003 Iberian
0.08472744 Dutch
0.10562992 Wielkopolska_Modern(n=9)
0.10883429 Polish_Bydgoszcz(n=70)
0.11885325 Wielkopolska_Medieval(n=36)
0.70251291 SSA

[Peterski]

I made a map of German surnames among Poles based on research by Olszak-Przytycki from forum.gazeta.pl (from "Nazwiska Polski" subforum).

Several caveats:

1. He did not research the Regained Lands (except for the Upper Silesian part), so there is only data for areas within pre-1939 borders of Poland.
2. For some regions he did not publish data by county, but only for entire regions, so I painted all counties of these regions with the same colour.
3. Such regions are: Upper Silesia, Pomerelia, Kashubia (part within pre-1939 Poland), Kuyavia and Land of Chelmno-Dobrzyn-Lubawa-Michalowo.
4. For Upper Silesia he published two conflicting estimates: 13% and 17%. So I asked him, and he replied that 15-16% is the most accurate value.
5. For Kashubia I took the data from Rebala et al. 2013 (around 25% of German surnames).
6. For Cieszyn Silesia I took the data from this publication (which says: around 15%) - LINK.



Areas with the highest percentages of German surnames among Poles correlate with areas which had ethnically mixed (Polish-German) population for the longest time - Royal Prussia (which was from 1309-1454 under Teutonic rule), Krajna (north-western Wielkopolska). The rest of Wielkopolska also has high percentages even though I think that the High Medieval (1200s-1300s) German settlement there was completely Polonized, and German communities which existed in Wielkopolska later were descended from another wave of immigration (those coming between the 1500s and the 1800s). Among Silesians there is also a substantial percent of German surnames (13-17%) even though counties such as Bytom/Beuthen, Lubliniec/Lublinitz, Strzelce Opolskie/Gross Strehlitz, Olesno/Rosenberg, Pszczyna/Pless and Rybnik were almost completely Polish in the early 1800s (percentages of Polish-speaking population in these counties in the 1st half of the 19th century were, respectively, 95%, 94%, 94%, 93%, 94% and 94%). But it is probable that some German surnames in the Prussian Partition and in Upper Silesia were the result of administrative Germanization of surnames rather than actual German ancestry. BTW, most of my nine Wielkopolska samples are from these areas of Wielkopolska which have below average (5-10%) share of German surnames.

[The Sun King]

Wow! Very interesting and good to know!

[rothaer]

Based on what I've read it is believed that the so called German Ostsiedlung in Wielkopolska took place only on a small scale.

For example a 1958 book "Historia Polski" ("History of Poland") Volume I, Part I, page 370, says:

"(...) colonization with use of German settlers was limited just to some provinces such as Silesia, Western Pomerania and Prussia, while in Lesser Poland and Greater Poland [Wielkopolska] it occured only on a small scale, and was nearly unknown in Masovia."

However, when comparing autosomal DNA of the inhabitants of Wielkopolska from the Early Piast period (an average of 36 individuals - from Ostrow Lednicki, Lad, Rumin, Dziekanowice, Legowo, Oblaczkowo and Poznan - their average dating is ca. year 1100 AD) with modern inhabitants of Wielkopolska (an average of 9 individuals, but the territorial scope is from nearly entire Wielkopolska - 4 people from northern Wielkopolska, 3 from southern, one from western and one from central) it turns out that Early Medieval Wielkopolans resembled modern Belarusians, while modern Wielkopolans are much more shifted westward, towards Germans.

In this PCA I compared a dozen Belarusians, a few dozen Germans and averages for Early Medieval and Modern Wielkopolska:



^^^
This indicates that throughout the centuries Poles from Wielkopolska absorbed and Polonized a large number of "Westerners".
A simple Vahaduo test modelling Wielkopolska Poles as a mix of Dutch and Early Medieval Wielkopolska, gives such results:
(I used Dutch because the German average has Slavic admixture, and I assume that Ostsiedlung settlers didn't yet have it)

Target: Wielkopolska_Modern(n=9)
Distance: 1.3772% / 0.01377226
71.4 Wielkopolska_Medieval(n=36)
28.6 Dutch

We can also test this model with an average of Poles from Bydgoszcz in Kuyavia (which is sometimes considered a subregion of Wielkopolska). This average is composed of hospital patients from Bydgoszcz, so we don't really know their genealogy, and some of them might hail from other regions of Poland:
(Here I also used the Wielkopolska_Medieval average because the number of Early Medieval samples from Kuyavia is very low)

Target: Polish_Bydgoszcz(n=70)
Distance: 0.9185% / 0.00918509
77.4 Wielkopolska_Medieval(n=36)
22.6 Dutch

Let's add that the percent of surnames of Germanic origin among ethnic Poles from Wielkopolska today, is around 10%.
So it seems that the majoirty of this Western admixture had to occur in times before surnames became commonly used.

Coordinates used:

Wielkopolska_Medieval(n=36),0.1289046,0.1255025,0.0766078,0.0709792,0.0410247,0.0252861,0.0067696,0.0129931,-0.0002898,-0.025999,-0.0019983,-0.009579,0.0186445,0.0224095,-0.0092893,0.0023976,0.0061498,-0.0001653,0.0028421,0.0016779,-0.0030051,-0.0057155,0.0079871,-0.0061453,0.0009846
Polish_Bydgoszcz(n=70),0.1331242,0.1298572,0.0726065,0.0610516,0.0418407,0.0241559,0.0088296,0.0115215,-0.0008035,-0.0183694,-0.0028348,-0.0062815,0.0113109,0.0184945,-0.0058825,0.0008807,0.0016522,-0.000029,0.0020399,0.0015525,-0.0029644,-0.0027752,0.0055444,-0.0022085,-0.0001574
Wielkopolska_Modern(n=9),0.1327936,0.1347269,0.0687617,0.0590013,0.0383318,0.0226831,0.0086168,0.0080254,0.0000683,-0.0191551,-0.0038251,-0.0063443,0.0124214,0.0151079,-0.0067257,0.0026664,0.0025498,0.0005912,0.0011312,0.0020286,-0.0042563,-0.0022257,0.006354,0.0035479,-0.0016364
Dutch,0.127441,0.134179,0.060271,0.044076,0.040844,0.016397,0.005402,0.007263,0.004209,0.001924,-0.005635,0.004427,-0.009846,-0.008676,0.01783,0.005623,-0.006516,0.001748,0.003909,0.002816,0.00448,0.003385,-5e-06,0.013892,-0.000656

What do you think about this?

A nice consideration, thanks! I've two comments.

1. From when are your Wielkopolska Medieval samples? I only ask for excluding the possibility that they are fresh immigrants that still lived beside possible restgermanen and now are a selection from the whole population. I'd say if they are from after 900 AD we are safe and likely even when they are from after 800 AD.

2. "I used Dutch because the German average has Slavic admixture, and I assume that Ostsiedlung settlers didn't yet have it":

This will just apply to the earliest ostsiedlung settlers. Later ostsiedlung Germans mostly came from neigbouring areas and they will have comprised a Slavic admixture (of uncertain level). As a general take you can say the far more east, the later was the settlment.



Do you recall some statements on Gluchoniemcy? They will have been notably Slavic and hailed from East Thuringia etc. I think you can even deduce that from the Landshut/Lancut genetics in combination with the high proportion of German surnames (another map of you showed that).

I'm aware that all this makes the assumed ethnic German contribution in Wielkopolska even higher.