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Informal Networks and Ordinary People’s Agency: A Microhistory of Global Migrations from Upper Silesia, 1830s–1930s

Andrzej Michalczyk

If one looks at a map of the Oder basin in Silesia published in 1896 (see Figure 1), one notices on closer inspection an inconspicuous but unusual place that is part of the large Oder village of Schalkowitz not far from Poppelau: Zadupie.

Figure 1: Map of the Oder basin in Silesia, 1896 (https://polska-org.pl/904052,foto.html; http://www.turze.net/historia/map/os1896-1.jpg [accessed 28 April 2019]).

In Polish, this name is not pleasing. The direct German translation, which does not sound very attractive either, is “Am Arsch der Welt” (which literally translates as “in the arse of the world” and means “far off the beaten track”). Those who came from the hamlet probably did not have as easy life. For Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who travelled through the region in 1790, Upper Silesia was already “far from educated people, at the end of the empire”, but he still visited the industrially progressive, developed townships. In the perception of Prussian travellers of the nineteenth century, Upper Silesia and its population were uneducated and backward as well as had problems with alcohol consumption.¹ Coming from this “primitive” region was like a social stigma. We can assume that the origin of Zadupie inspired even less respect. In this regard, it is astonishing that in the 1910s and 1920s lavish, modern houses were built in rows along the road between the highly regarded, at least locally, Schalkowitz village centre and remote Zadupie. The street, which until then had received little attention, was renamed Berliner Straße in the vernacular;² the elevation of inhabitants living far off the beaten track to “Berliners” is unmistakable. But what contributed to this surprising turnaround? What helped the “ordinary” people from disadvantaged places such as Zadupie to build up an economic, social, and cultural capital? An analysis of migration and mobility in this local area with a microhistorical perspective is highly revealing here.

The neighbouring villages of Poppelau and Schalkowitz and the surrounding villages in the northern of Oppeln County are outstanding examples of a culture of migration in the entire Upper Silesia region. Inhabitants migrated from here in all directions and developed bilocal transmigrant routes to Russian Poland, the province of Posen/Wielkopolska, the cities of the German Reich, the US states of Wisconsin and Minnesota, and the South Brazilian province of Paraná. The high mobility of the people from Poppelau and Schalkowitz was made possible by the gradual emancipation of serfs, which followed similar processes in other regions of Upper Silesia. By abolishing serfdom and the landlord’s right of residence, this mobility increased massively in many parts of the region from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards. The different routes and complex backgrounds of these migrations have hardly been explored to this day, although the settlement of the people from Poppelau and Schalkowitz in extremely different places offers an unusually complex insight into the phenomenon of migration in a broader, even global, context.

In the following chapter, I will therefore discuss my methodological approach against the background of current research findings and show the need for a microhistorical drilling down into the past that combines different levels of analysis – from local to global. In the next step, this drilling down will make it possible to systematize the sometimes surprising migration cycles and to discuss their sociocultural contexts of origin in a very small space. This will unlock the dynamics of migration systems and the social, cultural, and political repercussions of migrants on their places of origin. Finally, I can show the connection between informal migrant networks and the state’s claim to control and manipulate it. Only against this background does the power of the historical actors become visible, even if they come from such modest areas as the inhabitants of Zadupie.

There are two new studies on global migration and mobility from East-Central and Southeast Europe in English. According to Tara Zahra, who authored The Great Departure, we know far too little about “the situation the migrants sought to escape”, “the impact of their departure on their homelands”, and “the role of their own governments in keeping them home”.³ The author focuses mainly on the third aspect, analysing migration as an “instrument of policy [for] both domestic and international goals” and the expansion of state power for manipulating and controlling migration. Since the first two aspects are usually viewed from a macro perspective, being cursory and rarely considering the local conditions of the migrants, the knowledge gained is rather limited.

Oppositely, there is the outstanding book by Ulf Brunnbauer: Globalizing Southeastern Europe.⁴ The exemplary analysis very convincingly comprises three levels of investigation (macro, meso, and micro) and also considers in detail the interactions between them – an approach that I will make use of. Brunnbauer regards migration as “an opportune lens through which to study historical change in the region” and follows the research credo of Leslie P. Moch: “If we focus on the macroeconomic level alone, we lose the actors who are essential to this drama, dismissing their agendas and denying the factor of human agency. If we focus on the personal alone, we miss the opportunity to connect migration with historical change.” Consequently, the history of European migration is “the history of European social life” and is “embedded in collective patterns of familial and communal social practice”.⁵ Brunnbauer also uses the concept of transnational in a very productive way and draws attention “to the agency of migrants (and their non-migratory interlocutors), to the ties they build, and to the dynamic changes in social configurations engendered by migration”.⁶ This conceptualization enables him to present and explain the “dynamics of migration systems”, which includes rapid adaptation to new framework conditions and opportunities as soon as migration becomes established as an economic strategy as well as the repercussions brought about by migrants in changing the prevailing local value system. Only in this way can the close interactions between regional, seasonal, and transatlantic migration systems and their deep integration into local life plans and career expectations be demonstrated in a very small space. This is the only way to understand how migration becomes an indispensable element of local culture – a migration habitus. Brunnbauer’s approach also focuses on the complex repercussions of migration processes on sending communities, something that has seldom been done in research thus far. Finally, the interactions between emigration policy, state-building, state control, and political intervention ultimately occupy most of the space of his book.

Based on Brunnbauer’s approach, I would like to shift the focus away from the increasing state control and emigration policy to the human agency and multivector migration networks. I am more interested in the migrants themselves and how they dealt with governmental policies. Why did they seek to leave their homelands? And to what extent did their decision to migrate impact their home communities? Accordingly, what comes next is based on a bottom-up, microhistorical approach focusing more on “ordinary people” and their agency than on the governmental policies. Against this background, two more migrations studied are highly inspiring.

In contrast to the geographically broad monographs discussed above, Krystyna Duda-Diewierz microsociologically investigated a single Galician village and the migration behaviour of its inhabitants as early as the 1930s.⁷ Her study opened up completely new perspectives on the culture of migration in the most confined spaces (central versus peripheral districts) and on local social life (old residents versus newcomers), making the (global) movements and networks of the villagers comprehensible in the first place. Matthias Kaltenbrunner achieved similar results in his investigation of multilocal migration movements from the surroundings of the East Galician Sniatyn.⁸ His analysis of informal, transnational networks of migrants (as multivector networks) along a longer historical timeline is methodologically inspiring.

In my study, I have also been able to use Michael Esch’s summarizing reflections on transnational practices, effects, and paradigms in East-Central Europe to hone my terminology. With these instruments, it has become possible to study the phenomenon of transmigration in its transnational, transregional, translocal, and, last but not least, transcultural facets over a period of 100 years based on the experiences and lifeworlds in the county of Oppeln.

1 Emigration Boom from Schalkowitz and Poppelau

The first destination of the emigrants from Schalkowitz and Poppelau was Russian Poland. The first departures to the area about 15 kilometres north of Czestochowa took place in 1837, where at least 66 families (over 300 people) settled in the parish of Biala in the neighbouring villages of Kuznica Kiedrzynska, Czarny Las, Kamyk, Tylin, and Wola Hankowska.⁹ At the same time, several dozen families headed for the district of Wielun, bordering Upper Silesia. Both cases were bilocal chain migrations – a process by which migrants from a particular place follow others from that place to a particular destination – that lasted for decades. The departing families still had just enough means to lease or acquire a small farm directly on the other side of the border, in the even poorer areas, from parcelled-out farms, and often a destitute young person was taken along as a servant or maid. It is noteworthy that the applications for dismissal as subjects of the Prussian king (an important source of information for the research) were practically always made after the fact, that is to say a few years after the departure. Moreover, this dismissal only was made official when the settlement in Russian Poland had already been successfully completed and when the permanent condition of the move was confirmed, which was particularly necessary for young men in view of their compulsory military service. Nevertheless, the bilocal, intensive contacts continued. Amongst the later emigrants from Schalkowitz to Curitiba, we find at least ten families in which one or both spouses were born in the parish of Biala.¹⁰ These included, for example, Nikolaus Wos, a brother of the Curitiba pioneer Sebastian Wos, or Lorenz Mainka, who was born in Kuznica near Czestochowa in 1849 into a Schalkowitz emigrant family but later returned to Schalkowitz (where he married) and made his way to Brazil with relatives in 1875.¹¹ From Teofil Rudzki, a Warsaw journalist who visited Paraná in 1882, we learn that Sebastian Wos attracted several Upper Silesian families from Wola Kedrzynska from the Czestochowa region to Brazil.¹² We also find some widowed women and men who were looking for their next spouse not only in Czestochowa but also in the marriage market in general, which had been extended to include their places of origin: these widowers found what they were looking for in their places of origin. Nevertheless, the marriage behaviour was hermetic amongst the children of the first emigrant generation in Russian Poland; they married almost exclusively amongst themselves, with only one marriage to a local inhabitant being documented.¹³

In March and April 1855, almost 20 years after the first departures to neighbouring Polish territories in the tsarist empire, 25 people, mainly from Poppelau and Chrosczütz, applied for departures to America – most probably to Texas, where the first wave of emigration from the counties of Groß Strehlitz and Tost began only a few months earlier.¹⁴ The news from the first emigrants must have been promising because there were already 87 applicants in the spring of 1856, this time mostly from the forest colonies of Brinnitz, Grabczok, Tauentzinow, Murow, and Horst.¹⁵ We find the majority of those willing to emigrate on the emigration lists of the agent Julius Schüler, who apparently was successful in helping migrants plan and execute their migration plans not only in Groß Strehlitz and Tost but also in the whole administrative district of Oppeln.¹⁶ A broker was obviously necessary for the very first groups of overseas emigrants. The agents represented the major shipping companies from Bremen and Hamburg and provided the necessary organizational know-how.¹⁷ But we will see that the later migrant supply was mostly self-organized. The Upper Silesians were practically the last Prussian group from the German Reich to be “infected” by the migration fever before the US Civil War (1861–1865). Migrating from 1854 to 1856, they only entered the migration process after hundreds of thousands of people had already migrated from German states to the USA.¹⁸ At the same time, however, they were the first Polish-speaking pioneers to find their way to America in large emigrant groups. The first Upper Silesian migrants in Texas have become an integral part of the Polish national master narrative, which has also been spread through research. Without taking a closer look at the context of their different origins, they are regarded as “the first Poles in America”.¹⁹ The major surveys on transatlantic migration also follow this national affiliation.²⁰

A multitrack emigration pattern emerged in the 1850s. Russian Poland got a new competitor but was not in last position in the list of possible destinations. Simon Patrzek, a relatively wealthy half farmer (Halbbauer) from Brinnitz with 600 reichstalers in assets, first applied for emigration to America in December 1855, but in 1858 he bought a mill in Russian Poland, where he was obviously able to establish himself successfully, as noted in the personal documentation of his departure in 1865.²¹ It seems that neighbouring Poland attracted many more Upper Silesians willing to leave the country than distant Texas. Emigration to the east clearly dominated between 1857 and 1867, as evidenced by the applications for emigration. In October 1861 alone, about 60 families emigrated from the county of Groß Strehlitz, with about 150 to 200 families for the entire year. In the county of Rosenberg, 270 people were released as subjects of the Prussian king to Russia in the spring of 1864. In the county of Leobschütz, 1,136 persons were already registered in 1865, and in the county of Rosenberg, 643 applicants were made in 1868. It is noticeable that the places of origin of the outbound wave to Russian Poland were much more widely scattered than the places from which the “Texas fever” was fed. In the 1860s, the district president of Oppeln reported on legal and illegal departures from almost all Upper Silesian counties to the part of Poland administered by Russia.²²

The monopoly position of Russian Poland as an outlet for ambitious emigrants who could not afford a small farm in their villages can be explained, on the one hand, by the US Civil War and, on the other hand, by Brazil’s unknown status as an emigrant destination. Furthermore, it was not the Upper Silesian industrial district that attracted the mostly young emigrants – the greatest wish was to acquire land and live independently as a farmer, an occupation from which social capital could be made. To possess a farm was regarded as a much more prestigious way of life than to earn dependent wage labour in the mines or to work as an iron or steel worker. Considering the number of migrants as well as prevalent migration processes, the fact that the direction of emigration to the east is still a blank spot today in research on Upper Silesia is surprising.

Much better documented, though with considerable gaps, is emigration to the US states of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Of the 19 families who applied for departure “to America” in 1855/56, we find 4 pioneer families from Poppelau who did not settle in Texas but in the north of the USA: Albert Baucz, a 29-year-old cottager (Angerhäusler) with a wife and one child; his brother Lorenz (27), also a cottager with a wife and one child; Peter Sura (33), a cottager with a wife and three children; and Peter’s brother-in-law, without any property, Leopold Kachel (31). They boarded a ship for Quebec, Canada. From there, they reached Milwaukee in Wisconsin by water, where, after stops in Watertown and New Lisbon, they purchased land not far from the settlement of Independence.²³ During their Prussian military service, the four Poppelau pioneers possibly learned about the promising possibilities in North America. In western Wisconsin in particular, settlement was only just being organized, and the state distributed a lot of farmland based on the Homestead Act (1862), with only a few restrictions and at very reasonable prices.

The US Civil War broke out immediately thereafter, and the subsequent migration from the home village came to a standstill. However, as Peter Marschalck convincingly shows, this only slowed down the migration flows from the German states. One can even speak of a pent-up demand in the first five years after the war because the emigration rate was above average.²⁴ People from Poppelau also followed this Central European trend. It was not until the spring of 1867 that Valentin Baucz, a 36-year-old farm labourer, set off with his wife and two daughters to start a new life with the help of his brothers. In the autumn of the same year, he was followed by four (possibly more) other people from Poppelau, who made it to the USA without an exit permit. Contact with the home village by letters obviously remained active and motivated other latecomers: 210 people, almost exclusively from Poppelau, applied for emigration to America between February and May 1868. Apart from emigration by official ways, considerable illegal emigration was certainly also an available option. More than 200 further exit permits from Poppelau, Schalkowitz, and the surrounding area were issued in 1869 with the aim of reaching America. At the same time, we find only a few applications to Poland; obviously, America now attracted more people.

Neverless, both destinations were equally attractive for migrants for the years between the 1840s and 1860s. A multitrack group emigration pattern emerged with Russian Poland, Texas, and Wisconsin as the favourite destinations. We tend to think the USA must have been a “default option” and more attractive than the allegedly “poor” European East. However, the migration routes from the supposedly “rich” west (here, from Prussia or “from Germany”) between the 1840s and 1860s led rather to the poor east, mutatis mutandis from the USA to Central America, and continued the west-east migration that had prevailed until then as a continental migration system.²⁵ At the end of the 1860s, a very attractive option was added – Brazil. There were 16 families, mainly from Schalkowitz, who decided to leave for South America in June 1869. Another 16 families followed one year later.²⁶ But how did the remarkable change of direction come about? The role of the pioneer and chance is crucial here.

Sebastian Wos, born in Schalkowitz in 1844, the second son of a local, wealthy farmer, provided the impetus for emigration to Brazil. His family had spent money for several years on the education of their son in Oppeln, which was a symbolic act within the community – very few village boys enjoyed further, expensive education in the town. Wos probably had a similar upward mobility, both socially and physically, in mind as Leopold Moczygemba, the pioneer of the Texas emigration of the Upper Silesians. Moczygemba also came from a wealthy farming family and was sent to the town to attend a high school (Gymnasium), which enabled him to study theology and become an ordained priest. For a Polish-speaking Upper Silesian boy from a village, the priestly vocation was the only possibility for social advancement outside the local community.²⁷ This soon led the young Moczygemba far away: he joined the Franciscan order and studied in Italy for five years before moving to the Oggersheim monastery in the Palatinate. In his homeland, he enjoyed extraordinary esteem: through his studies in the vast, uncertain world and as a representative of the highly esteemed Catholic Church, Father Leopold became the figurehead of the Moczygemba family.²⁸

Wos, on the other hand, probably did not finish high school but stayed in town and got a modest job at the Oppeln post office. Perhaps he saw no prospect for himself to be accepted into the state service; first, he would have to have completed his Prussian military service anyway. Therefore, he decided to avoid conscription and fled Oppeln, landing in the port of Hamburg. It is unclear whether Wos went overseas as early as 1864 or only one or two years later, and when and why he decided not to emigrate to North America to his Poppelau neighbours in Wisconsin but to South America are unknown. His decision against the USA could well have been due to the US Civil War raging there and to his flight to avoid conscription, which did not allow him to wait for a more favourable development in North America. What is certain is that he landed first in Uruguay, then in Argentina, and, only after these stops, in 1867 in the Brazilian province of Santa Catarina. In the meantime, he changed his name, perhaps to escape the fate of the soldiers: Sebastian Wos became Edmund Saporski.²⁹ In Brazil, he completed a course for land surveyors and oversaw the colonization process in the German colony of Blumenau: the parcelling out of the land as well as the arrival and rise of German emigrants – just like Father Leopold had done 15 years earlier in Texas. Wos remained in correspondence with his relatives and neighbours and obviously drew a picture of great opportunities in the southern hemisphere. Moczygemba and Wos enjoyed high prestige in their village communities despite their young age, and they represented highly respected farming families, enjoyed an urban education, and were successful in the far, unknown outside world. However, both were only “trendsetters” in their village contexts. Wos was an ordinary postman in the town; only back in the village could he “brag” and enjoy esteem. Moczygemba was also an ordinary priest/monk in the town and could only gain recognition and authority in the village. But both are important because they motivated the first group of emigrations overseas; both promised a successful new start, and both were trusted. Later, they were followed by other pioneers (the Baucz brothers to Wisconsin and the Swiatek family to Minnesota) from the lower classes of the village. Amongst the first 32 families to venture to Brazil were strikingly many young men the same age as Wos, including three men from farming families related to Wos – potential leaders amongst the emigrants.³⁰

At this point, the relevance of historical contingency must be emphasized. The pioneers, whether Father Leopold, Wos, or the Baucz brothers, landed in their “final destinations” simply by chance. This contingency, as well as human agency, is underestimated in migration research and in major structural theories.

In the decade between 1868 and 1877, Poppelau, Schalkowitz, and the surrounding villages were all plagued by an American fever. It is remarkable, however, that specific bilocal routes developed here too. People from Poppelau mainly went to Wisconsin, in the area around Independence. Those from Schalkowitz followed their leader, landed in Brazil, and settled close together around the city of Curitiba. As the US frontier moved further west, an emigrant from the nearby village of Dammratsch began to direct his relatives and neighbours to Minnesota, in the vicinity of North Prairie. Group emigrations were common, so that people from Poppelau, destined for Wisconsin, and people from Dammratsch, destined for Minnesota, made their exit applications together, started the train journey to Hamburg, boarded a ship there to New York, and finally travelled by train to La Crosse, situated along the Mississippi. Only there did they part ways but maintained contacts between the new settlers. Bilocal marriage patterns, for example, between Independence and North Prairie still existed for decades.³¹

The annual number of applications for emigration was very high, without us knowing the number of unrecorded cases of illegal emigration. In the spring of 1870, almost 200 people applied to be released as subjects of the Prussian king. However, only 40 people applied between February and May 1871; this drop in number was related to the Franco-German War (1870/71) – the authorities did not want potential recruits to leave the country. Illegal emigration possibly increased at the same time. Between 1872 and 1876, the district government of Oppeln recorded continuously high numbers of applications: applications for emigration of 268 people to Wisconsin and Brazil in 1872, 139 to America in 1873, 263 to Minnesota in 1874, and 256 in 1875. The number of unreported illegal departures must have been similarly high. In 1876, the authorities received applications for the release of 241 people, but there are 333 names on the passenger list of only one steamship, the Salier, which went from Antwerp to Rio de Janeiro and on to Santa Catarina on 31 July, with Schalkowitz, Poppelau, and the surrounding area as places of residence.³²

From 1868, however, there were only a few applications for release to Russian Poland; North and South America clearly dominated. Regular departures to North and South America continued until the end of the 1880s. The number of applications for release was not as high as in the 1870s, but, at the same time, the number of illegal departures increased. In 1886, the district president of Oppeln reported that 213 people had emigrated in April from Schalkowitz, Kaniow, and Chrosczütz to Curitiba without permission.³³ The authorities were at a loss; they could not control the flow of people, let alone steer it.

Characteristic perceptions of the migration behaviour of the “poor people of the village” by the urban elites were revealed. The public prosecutor’s office in Oppeln, for example, was looking for an organized network of secret emigration agents. To the official’s own astonishment, he was unsuccessful in uncovering one. In my opinion, the role of agents is also disproportionately emphasized in current research, for example, in Zahra and Brunnbauer. Nevertheless, a closer look reveals the importance of informal networks: the supposedly uneducated, rural lower classes have repeatedly been able to take their fate into their own hands without professional brokers. We know, for example, that Anton Wosch, a 36-year-old cottager from Schalkowitz and leader of the group of Curitiba emigrés in 1876, which consisted of more than 330 people, was in contact with the shipping company Lobedanz, in Antwerp. Since he obviously could not write well enough in German, he had his letters written by the brother of the community secretary (Gemeindeschreiber) and regularly exchanged information with a representative of the company in Antwerp. Carl Maciossek, from Schalkowitz, and Franz Psiorz, from Poppelau, even went to Antwerp themselves to clarify the details of the Atlantic crossing directly on site. The people who wanted to leave the country met in the Schalkowitz tavern and were informed about the current status of the process. The emigration to Curitiba in 1876 was well-organized. However, those wishing to leave were able to find out even more about the situation in Brazil and the trip there, as some of those who had already emigrated returned home and brought with them the latest information as well as several letters from relatives. The letters then circulated around the village, spreading practical advice on how to organize the departure. They were written in local Polish and difficult for German-speaking local officials to understand. At the request of the county commissioner of Oppeln; the head forester Kaboth, from Poppelau; the head of the Schalkowitz community Schmid; and the chief guard Miensopust, from Chrosczütz, complained that obtaining information on the spot was difficult and that they encountered a lot of mistrust. At the same time, the “poor” and “uneducated” were grossly underestimated. For example, when Josef Prudlik, from Schalkowitz, who had already emigrated to Curitiba, visited his village in the spring of 1878 and organized the free departure of other relatives and neighbours, the county commissioner of Falkenberg reported that it was impossible for him to work as an emigration agent as Prudlik “could hardly write”.³⁴

2 The Sociocultural Context of Emigration

But who decided to embark on the arduous journey overseas? Why did so many people take the risk of completely restarting their lives in an unknown place? To answer these questions, a look at the evolution of the social composition of American emigrants is revealing. There are, therefore, questions about “the particular situation those migrants sought to escape”, as Zahra puts it, without, however, thoroughly analysing the respective local emigration context. We have a great deal of reliable data for Schalkowitz (see Figure 2).³⁵

Figure 2:Social Structure of Schalkowitz, 1815–1865.

In 1815, on the verge of rural structural change, 45 relatively wealthy farming families lived in the village. They were able to feed themselves from the agriculture they produced as well as through the farmhands, maidservants, and day labourers on their farms they employed. In 1865, at the threshold of the great waves of migration, there were only slightly more farming families (53 families), although none of them had a full-size farmstead, instead having only half- or quarter-size farmsteads; that is to say, their possessions and therefore also their agricultural yields were significantly lower. This was a consequence of the division of inheritance. In the area of the next group of owners, the gardeners, who owned similar sized farms as the half- and quarter-size farmers, conditions remained stable – increasing from 32 to 33. However, the structural changes in the other two village strata were decisive: the number of those persons who only owned a very small house or a very small piece of land, the cottagers, increased almost fivefold from 53 to an enormous 249. The sons of the farmers, who were excluded from the division of the inheritance, often became a part of this group, often having new families and surviving only with great difficulty. Around 1800, the even poorer residents, who had no land or house and amongst whom the day labourers and generally the poorest in the village were recruited, made up 300 people in the village; in 1861, they were already half the population (1,018 out of 2,063 inhabitants). Demographic growth was related primarily to decreasing infant mortality, with more and more members of a generation cohort surviving infancy and childhood years and reaching adulthood.³⁶ At the same time, the number of young adults without land and means increased enormously because they could no longer make a living with their parents. The destruction of the rural subsistence economy by the increasing presence of a capitalist market economy accelerated, especially in the two decades between 1845 and 1865. The emigration first to Russian Poland and later overseas was an outlet for the increasing population and impoverishment. At the same time, the income gap between farming families and those who owned little or nothing continued to widen. This, in turn, increased the social distance within the village, the signs of which were visible in practically every area and segmentation of life.

The 30 to 40 farming families occupied the old village centre, settled only amongst themselves, and built the largest houses and farm buildings. They dressed up more elegantly, especially on Sundays and holidays, married almost exclusively amongst themselves, and then celebrated excessive weddings. At the same time, they occupied most of the positions in the local administration and in the pastoral council (although access had already been liberalized) and paid attention to the hierarchical distribution of seats during church services and the running order of processions. Accordingly, the social ranks were publicly and repeatedly displayed.³⁷ In many cases, the rapidly growing group of lower village classes was economically dependent on the peasant elites and, in turn, suffered only discrimination. The group of wealthy local peasants discriminated and exploited the poor – not necessarily undertaken by the “German” authorities. We tend to overestimate the political or even the nationally explained push factors. The oppression in everyday life was linked much more to local circumstances than to macro politics.³⁸

Against this background, the step of starting a new life in a promising country with cheap farmland rich in social capital was not as huge as one would intuitively assume. Many researchers tend to describe the rural lower classes as fatalistic and sluggish. But their migration behaviour shows that they were willing to take great risks and that, as Brunnbauer puts it when analysing Southeastern European peasant migrants, “they enjoyed agency”.³⁹ Amongst the first 32 families to travel to Brazil, there were only 3 descending from farming families (mainly due to their relationship to Wos), but there were 12 families of cottagers, amongst which were 9 without any property, and 4 of poor artisans.⁴⁰ Village lower classes also dominated in the departure lists of the 1870s and 1880s. The prospect of going to Brazil seemed especially attractive and mobilized people to act. This was connected with the recruitment from the Brazilian side. The Brazilian government started a wide-scale policy to “whiten” and “Europeanize” the country with the help of white, Christian, European settlers and provided a free passage to Brazil, with cheap land and tax incentives for the new settlers. Therefore, many of the poorest preferred to leave for Brazil than for other destinations. Franz Kulig, from Schalkowitz, applied to emigrate to North America in March 1868. But he let the permission expire; possibly the promising news came from Brazil just at that time. Five years later, he again applied for an exit permit, this time for a free crossing to Brazil, and kept his savings for buying land in Curitiba.

The high numbers of migrants allegedly led to “villages that became ghost towns overnight”, as Zahra cites based on older literature.⁴¹ The census results from Schalkowitz in 1905 – that is to say, after six decades of the most intensive emigration – do not, however, confirm such general statements. There were still 2,463 Catholics (42 German-speaking and 2,421 Polish-speaking) and 56 Protestants (55 German-speaking and one Polish-speaking) living in the village, meaning the number of inhabitants had continued to rise despite massive emigration, which was due to high birth rates and an extreme drop in infant and child mortality.⁴²

3 Internal Migrations in the German Reich and their Repercussions on Places of Origin

The direction of migration changed again around 1890, having serious consequences on the people from the Oppeln county. After 20 years of mass emigration to the USA and Brazil, regions within the German Reich began to become attractive. Seasonal work on estates in Lower Silesia and Saxony had already existed since the 1870s; here too, the migration routes were very stable, and the additional demand for farm workers during the time of sowing and harvesting was met directly by migrant networks. This tradition of migration created the basis for mobility between 1890 and 1914. The participants had the necessary migrant know-how and knew that departure could be profitable, and being mobile was already part of their sociocultural repertoire – their “habitual imprint”. Thus, migration should not just be considered as a singular event as the emigrations facilitated the next migration decisions.

The approximate three decades of mobility before the First World War, however, had completely different goals, dimensions, and repercussions in regard to the home villages than the migrations taking place up to the end of the nineteenth century. The people from Poppelau and Schalkowitz took part in the major infrastructure expansion of the new German state. As bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers, painters, locksmiths, unskilled construction workers, and navvies, they found work in the construction of modern sewer networks and water pipes, industrial projects, and new settlements in Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig, and Dresden and worked on the laying of new railway lines and roads between these metropolises. They worked much more rarely in the mining industry of the Ruhr area, where Upper Silesians from the surroundings of Ratibor and Rybnik dominated – this once again underlines the crucial importance of bilocal informal networks.⁴³ The Upper Silesian industrial district on their doorstep did not seem to be attractive either; wages were poor here because of cheap workers from Galicia and Russian Poland.

The new destinations had an impact on sociocultural relations in the home villages on several levels. In contrast to the earlier seasonal patterns of agricultural migration, more (young) women were now part of the movements to the large German cities as maids and workers, providing additional income for the poorest families. Together with the relatively good wages of their brothers and husbands, a hitherto unknown large amount of cash flowed into the village and turned social conditions upside down. The migrants began to build new, large houses and competed on an equal footing with the previous cultural trendsetters – the locally prominent farming families. The latter were able to increase their income through new fertilizers as well as were able to profit from the increasing sources available for building, in turn establishing brickworks and wood-processing businesses in the village. But this time, the mobile lower classes quickly caught up economically and fully relied on the profitable labour without completely reinvesting the profits in arable land.⁴⁴ In this way, symbolic capital slowly shifted from land ownership to modern urban consumption, which was observed in the large metropolises they worked in and implemented at home. The lifestyle of the workers in the village became worthy of imitation and some nouveau riche took over the role of local trendsetters. This is symbolized, for example, by the introduction of the first bicycle, brought from a German city, which began to revolutionize local communication and small local transport from 1900 onwards.

Despite the new trend, many still had the greatest desire to run their own farm. New opportunities arose for this in the province of Posen in the 1890s. A colonization commission appointed by the Reichstag in 1886 began a settlement action there. It bought up indebted estates with massive public funds and parcelled them out amongst new colonists. Obviously, it was not only “German” farmers from the interior of the German Reich who went to the province of Posen to buy a cheap farm and increase the size of the “German” population there. In 1894, several dozen families from Schalkowitz, Poppelau, and Chrosczütz acquired farms in the district of Gnesen not far from each other, and these became starting points for new chain migration. Several families followed them, even directly after the First World War and in the interwar period, when the area had already become part of the re-established Polish state – the new political framework was obviously not an obstacle for those hungry for land.⁴⁵

To this day, there are descendants of chain migrants from the surroundings of Poppelau and Schalkowitz in six distant regions of the world: in today’s Poland near Czestochowa, Wielun, and Gnesen; on the German side of the border in Berlin; and on the other side of the Atlantic near San Antonio, Minneapolis, and Curitiba – an enormous spread!

From the 1890s onwards, the most frequently practised model of mobility was seasonal work from March to around November inside the German Reich, while construction and earthworks had to be suspended for the remaining months due to frost. As a result, the peripheral village settlements of the cottagers, craftsmen, and farm labourers seemed depopulated for a long time; only in the winter months did the entire village fill with life again. Some, who were mostly married men and whose families remained in the village, were already commuters around 1900 and visited their families once or even twice a month. Even if the wife found employment abroad, the children often remained in the care of their grandparents in their home village⁴⁶ – all circumstances that we know only too well from today’s commuter migrants and “Euro orphans” from Eastern Europe or the Balkans. A look at the migration habitus of the Poppelau and Schalkowitz families around 1900 allows one more fundamental comment to be made.

Departure to the interior of the German Reich (Polish: do rajchu), has a clear beginning and is by no means a “supertemporal” practice beyond time. It is not true that inhabitants of Upper Silesia “always” went do rajchu. Mobility to the interior of the German Reich did not become popular until around the 1880s and did not become dominant until the 1890s. Previously, German cities and industrial districts competed with other attractive locations – in Russian Poland, the USA, and Brazil. This may also be surprising for researchers studying US immigration. The USA was obviously not the default option, especially for emigrants from German states; there were areas as well as phases in which a majority of the emigrants chose destinations in South America or Western and Eastern Europe.⁴⁷

If emigration to the USA and Brazil functioned primarily as an outlet for the overpopulated village, the seasonal departures to the large conurbations of the German Reich changed the social and economic conditions locally in Poppelau and Schalkowitz. The system of norms began to shift in favour of urban values. A special charisma came from Berlin, where one could also get regular jobs in local companies, and, as a result, more and more families settled in the capital. “Double housekeeping” became popular with a small apartment in Berlin or Hamburg and a large house in the home village. The inhabitants of the rising marginal settlements, such as the Zadupie mentioned at the beginning of this chapter and their neighbours along Berliner Straße, began to write their economic and social success stories. In the 1920s and 1930s, an increasing polarization of the village could be observed. The relatively wealthy workers made themselves economically independent of the old peasant elites and increasingly set the cultural tone. They built large houses with rooms for subletting, which were especially popular with younger, still low-income, single people or families. Since the subtenants were also employed as workers, they preferred to pay monthly rents instead of paying for their accommodation by working for the farmer.⁴⁸

In doing so, and this is central to my questions, the migration habitus began to become a dominant cultural pattern. Economically rising village underclasses did not invest their income into the education of children. A secondary school in the town had the reputation of conveying foreign cultural values, being open to new ideas, and thereby endangering the conservative Catholic view of the world. A young person from the village would be left on his/her own without the safety net of relatives and neighbours. This was accompanied by the conviction that education was not a gateway to economic and social advancement. It was enough to attend the local elementary school with its German and arithmetic lessons and then to complete a technical apprenticeship. Professionally equipped in this way, young adults (mainly men) could find their first livelihood on construction sites and in industrial enterprises inside the German Reich and acquire further technical qualifications, which promised a higher income and finally a good life in their homeland. The mobile workers gained new experiences and broadened their horizons without, however, falling out of the village migration network and thus without alienating themselves from the community. Therefore, they were able to show off by imitating urban manners and also speaking better German, which was perceived as a valued language of the upper social strata. The “bricklayers”, as they were called in Poppelau and Schalkowitz, were respected and sought after on the marriage market.⁴⁹ Migration and mobility meant economic and social advancement for previously disadvantaged village classes.

4 Dynamics of Migration Systems, State Control, and Migrants’ Political Impact, 1880s to 1930s

The local data show shifts in the dynamics of the migration systems. The two decades between around 1880 and 1900 were decisive here. Before 1880, most Upper Silesians focused mainly on rural migration in order to acquire a farm. From around 1880 onwards, a number of interrelated factors changed this migratory behaviour. First of all, the expansion of the railway network in the German Reich should be mentioned, with simultaneous acceleration, reduction in costs, and increased frequency of train journeys. This was accompanied by a higher need for labour for urbanization, industrialization, and the infrastructural expansion of the German Reich. At the same time, the German Reich developed increasingly into a welfare state with a health system, accident insurance funds, and increased worker protection and safety for insured workers. However, it required a distinction under state law between natives and foreigners. As Prussian citizens, the Upper Silesians were on the side of the beneficiaries. This created new possibilities for them (and other Polish-speaking Prussians), which led to new migration systems “quasi as a network of technical possibilities”.⁵⁰ Building on the experience of seasonal migrations as agricultural workers, the new mobility into the German Reich became manageable and economically rewarding. The large cities were easily and quickly accessible from a transport point of view, and the welfare state reduced the risks. Temporary migration, aimed at saving up and returning, was the predominant form in the transmigrant everyday life of the Upper Silesians until the 1930s.

The increasing attractiveness of the German internal market for the Upper Silesians in the 1880s was accompanied by correspondingly restrictive migration regulations for Poles from the tsarist empire and Austria-Hungary. Within the framework of anti-Polish policies, attempts were made to reverse Polish migration and prevent any in the future. An obvious sign was set with the “expulsion of Poles” in 1885.⁵¹ These measures were not necessarily successful but, nevertheless, had an impact on the decisions of Polish migrants. There were still hundreds of thousands of Poles coming to the German Reich, most of them migrating temporarily.⁵² But a considerable group of their neighbours decided in the 1880s to take up (mostly temporary) employment in booming US cities. The German welfare state was closed to them anyway, if not hostile, and, simultaneously, the cheapening and acceleration of the Atlantic crossing allowed the circulation of labour on a large scale.⁵³ South America was the only attractive alternative left if one wanted to possess a farm.⁵⁴ For the Upper Silesians, as part of the German migration to America, the American and Brazilian inland colonization was only attractive until the 1880s, whereas the Polish-speaking migrants from the tsarist empire and Austria-Hungary were latecomers and occupied the remaining, less productive land in the hinterland from the 1880s onwards. Therefore, today, we find hardly any descendants of Upper Silesian chain migrants in Argentina or the industrial cities of Chicago, Detroit, or Pennsylvania. However, in time Upper Silesians abandoned the ideas of moving to the Americas in favour of relatively good, secure, numerous, and less competitive jobs in the German cities and industry.

The change in sociocultural attitudes, orientations, and expectations caused by migration also had a direct impact on political developments in the Upper Silesian countryside. The hundreds of migrants provided not only transfers of money but also transfers of knowledge: they brought new experiences to the regions of origin. This was particularly evident in the plebiscite on Upper Silesia’s state affiliation, which was mandated after the First World War by the Treaty of Versailles and carried out on 20 March 1921 (see Figure 3).⁵⁵

Figure 3:Plebiscite Results in the Northern County of Oppeln, 20 March 1921.

In Poppelau, almost 600 votes (i.e., almost 30 per cent of all votes) were cast by “migrants”, that is to say, natives over 21 years old living in the interior of the country. Schalkowitz recorded similar figures: 550 migrant votes (27 per cent of voters). In Kolonie Poppelau, there were even higher figures – just under 270 votes (45 per cent) came from migrants. However, only 53 votes (under 20 per cent) came from migrants in Neu-Schalkowitz. The result of the referendum in these 4 villages was very similar: Germany received between 75 and 80 per cent of all votes. A clear polarization line is noticeable. Those who were supraregionally mobile and pursued flexible working conditions on the metropolitan industrial market within the German Reich usually chose Germany. Many saw their transmigrant networks, as the basis for economic existence and social advancement, as being at risk if they joined Poland. On the other hand, support for Poland came primarily from the ranks of the old but shrinking peasant elites. As agricultural producers, they were anchored in the local market and had few supraregional links to the west. Rather, some large farming families represented a kind of Polish avant-garde and had been running since 1893 a local branch of the Polish Catholic society, Oświata (Education), headed by Alexander Psikala, a wealthy farmer. At the same time, a group of rich farmers organized themselves into a mutual aid loan fund, modelled on Polish farmers from the province of Posen.⁵⁶ The connections to the Polish territories were thus more active than to the interior of the German Reich and mostly led to support for Poland.⁵⁷

This analysis also reveals another political aspect. It has already been described above how the district government of Oppeln helplessly observed human fluctuation and illegal departures to the USA or Brazil. In the 1880s, the number of applications for dismissal fell rapidly, but the number of actual emigrants did not decrease noticeably. The civil servants tried to get the matter under control and compiled lists of potential emigrants, but some of them included names of people who had long been on a transatlantic ship or had just settled overseas.⁵⁸ The state representatives operating in Poppelau and Schalkowitz were mostly recruited from outside the local milieu and had only limited access to sensitive information. Even in the plebiscite, neither the Polish nor the German government could be sure what the outcome would be. It was the large group of migrants who made the political yield unpredictable here (the proposal to include migrants in the vote came first from the Polish side). In the 1930s, the particularly high mobility of seasonal workers from the district of Oppeln to the interior of the German state became even less predictable and controllable, with Schalkowitz and Poppelau showing the highest fluctuation rates.⁵⁹ The National Socialists attempted to control the labour market better through legally enforced ties to companies and a predetermined demand for professions.⁶⁰ However, the employment agencies had significantly less influence on the placement of jobs and thus on the control of labour demand than they wanted it to be. Most of the jobs went to relatives and acquaintances of the workers without official mediation, which was only partly in line with the economic goals and plans. This was deplored, for example, by the district president of Oppeln in the spring of 1938.⁶¹

The shift from legal emigration to illegal emigration in the 1880s and the uncontrollable human fluctuation in the 1930s under the National Socialists point to an extremely important phenomenon: with the constant expansion of the state even into the most remote places and with the rapidly progressing nationalization just after the foundation of the empire, it was the aim of the authorities to control and effectively administer more and more areas of life of the citizens. At first glance, they assumed that this project could be achieved without significant resistance from the inhabitants of Upper Silesia. It was assumed that the inhabitants were a “multiple disadvantaged” population: poor and uneducated, Catholic, and Polish-speaking. The Prussian elites, most of whom were Protestants, expected hardly any friction with the supposedly unassertive villagers in their forced modernization of the state. However, they had to realize that it was precisely this population that repeatedly eluded state control and made it difficult for the authorities to plan and govern efficiently. At the moment when the Prussian government wanted to ensure the booming economy of the German Reich continued to be strong for potential workers and therefore approved the applications for emigration less and less, the Poppelau and Schalkowitz citizens often began to leave the country illegally without any regard to the economic considerations of the politicians. At the same time, the authorities were not able to classify and fix Upper Silesians in national terms – Upper Silesians declared what they thought they were expected to declare in records and official documents, which made the statistics unreliable and confusing.⁶² It was obviously not the case that the poor and uneducated members of society and/or members of linguistic minorities were exclusively objects of policies from Berlin and had to subordinate themselves to the decisions of “great men of history”. By acting in their own best interest, such as deciding to migrate where they wanted to and not where the authorities intended to direct them, they unsettled the authorities and made forecasting and planning difficult. Therefore, the agency of the individual is a stimulus for questioning the binary opposition between “high politics” and local “everyday life” and a boundary between the public (political) sphere and private (allegedly apolitical) world of “everyday life”.⁶³ The same goes for people who were born in Zadupie – “Am Arsch der Welt”.

5 Conclusions

The microhistorical example from the northern county of Oppeln shows that a constantly new experience of migration led to the development of a culture of migration. Most migrants did not lose their ties to their home places, relatives, neighbours, and friends, instead supporting a new migration at their place of origin through informal networks. As a result, the actors possessed the necessary migrant know-how and knew that the departure could be profitable. Being mobile quickly became part of their sociocultural repertoire, their “habitual imprint”. Even at an early stage (from the 1870s at the latest), migration from the villages analysed was a widespread practice, which eventually developed into a sustainable life model over generations (and to this day).

Through an analytical combination of macro- and microhistorical processes, a dynamic of migration systems and interdependent interactions between regional, seasonal, and transatlantic migration systems become clearly visible. Moreover, their integration into local conditions is evident. Personal, family-focused, bilocal, or milieu-related relationships and the associated social practices reveal the actual core of migration behaviour. This requires a methodological rethink. On the one hand, an enormous expansion of the geographical radius of investigation is necessary and must cover North and South America (or other continents) as well as Western and Eastern Europe. On the other hand, local communities must be subjected to analytical scrutiny both in the regions of origin and in the regions of arrival. Both have so far been practiced far too little in historical migration research. However, the innovative proposal of a microhistory of global migrations has the great potential to explore the phenomenon of migration at micro, meso, and macro levels simultaneously. This is the only way to understand how migration becomes an indispensable element of local culture and a – sometimes globally oriented – migration habitus.

The challenge is to combine structural and microhistorical perspectives to reveal not only state migration regimes but also concrete social practices, such as migrant networks, kinship, marriage, and other individual and informal practices. The instruments of state regulation and control structure the conditions of migration. But it is the migrants themselves who interpret, sometimes undermine, and circumvent these framework conditions. It is, therefore, the Eigensinn of the not-always-controllable migrants who, through their behaviour, reveal gaps in the structures and possibly trigger structural adaptations and transformations of the migration regimes. Only a focus on the agency of “ordinary” people can contribute to uncovering holes and inaccuracies in structural abstractions. It is an approach that can provide motivation for the exploration of (East-Central) European history in the age of mobility and unlimited communication.

Notes

1

See H. Dobbelmann, V. Husberg, and W. Weber (eds.), “Das preußische England”: Berichte über die industriellen und sozialen Zustände in Oberschlesien zwischen 1780 und 1876, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1993.

2

D. Dobrowolska and D. Myrcik-Markowska, “Zróżnicowanie klasowe i społeczne wsi Siołkowice Stare i Nowe od połowy XIX w. do 1955 r.” [Class and Social Differences in Siołkowice (German: Schalkowitz), 1850–1955], in: M. Gładysz (ed.), Siołkowice Stare, Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1958, pp. 37–69, at 60.

3

T. Zahra, The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.

4

U. Brunnbauer, Globalizing Southeastern Europe: Emigrants, America, and the State Since the Late Nineteenth Century, New York: Lexington Books, 2016.

5

Ibid., pp. 2, 7.

6

Ibid., p. 11.

7

K. Duda-Dziewierz, Wieś Małopolska a emigracja amerykańska: Studium wsi Babica powiatu Rzeszowskiego [US-American Migration from Małopolska Villages. The Case of Babice, Rzeszów District], Warszawa/Poznań: Polski Instytut Socjologiczny, 1938. Also see the current continuation of the local study conducted by J. Kulpińska, “Multigenerational Migration Chains of Families from the Village of Babica: An Attempt to create a Typology”, Polish American Studies 75 (2018) 2, pp. 77–94.

8

M. Kaltenbrunner, Das global vernetzte Dorf: Eine Migrationsgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2017.

9

P. Wiśny, “Zapomniana emigracja” [The Fortgotten Migration], 17 January 2015, http://staresiolkowice.pl/zapomniana-emigracja/ (accessed 28 April 2019).

10

Ibid., information based on the parish registers of Biala compiled by P. Wiśny.

11

“Weggezogene aus dem Kreis Oppeln 1874–1878”, in: Archiwum Państwowe w Opolu, Regierung Oppeln I/12295, p. 240, ed. in M. Richau, “Von Oberschlesien nach Amerika. Quellen zur Auswanderung aus dem Kreis Oppeln in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts”, Herold-Jahrbuch 10 (2005), pp. 151–196, at 177.M. Kutyma, Siołkowice: Zarys dziejów wsi opolskiej [A Concise History of Opole Villages], Opole: Instytut Śląski, 2007, p. 248, mentions further contacts between related families from Schalkowitz and the Polish parish of Biala.

12

K. Groniowski, Polska emigracja zarobkowa w Brazylii 1871–1914 [Polish Work Migration to Brazil, 1871–1914], Wroclaw: Ossolineum, 1972, p. 24.

13

Wiśny, Zapomniana emigracja.

14

See A. Michalczyk and D. Skrabania (eds.), Migrationsgeschichte Oberschlesiens: Globale Migration in regionaler Perspektive (forthcoming in 2021).

15

“Ausgetretene aus dem Kreis Oppeln 1851–1857”, in: Richau, Von Oberschlesien nach Amerika, pp. 157–158.

16

Silesian Profiles Committee (ed.), Silesian Profiles: Polish Immigration to Texas in the 1850s,vol. 1, Panna Maria, TX: Panna Maria Historical Society, 2005, p. 180. For the year 1856, Schüler reported that he sent 239 people almost exclusively to Texas. See T. L. Baker, The First Polish Americans: Silesian Settlements in Texas, College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1979, pp. 28–29.

17

Cf. A. Bretting, “Funktion und Bedeutung der Auswanderungsagenturen in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert”, in: A. Bretting and H. Bickelmann (eds.), Auswanderungsagenturen und Auswanderungsvereine im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart: Steiner, 1991, pp. 11–90.

18

R. Cohn, Mass Migration Under Sail: European Immigration to the Antebellum United States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 15; P. Marschalck, Deutsche Überseewanderung im 19. Jahrhundert: Ein Beitrag zur soziologischen Theorie der Bevölkerung, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1999, pp. 45–48.

19

See J. Przygoda, Texas Pioneers from Poland: A Study in Ethnic History, Waco: Texian Press, 1971; A. Brożek, “The Roots of Polish Migration to Texas”, Polish American Studies 30 (1973) 1, pp. 20–35; Baker, The First Polish Americans.

20

Walter Nugent, for example, repeats the designation of “the first Poles in America in the settlement of Panna Maria” in his book Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations 1870–1914, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992, p. 92. Also see K. Bade, Europa in Bewegung: Migration vom späten 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, München: Beck, 2000, or C. Langenfeld et al. (eds.), Enzyklopädie Migration in Europa: Vom 17. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007.

21

“Ausgetretene aus dem Kreis Oppeln 1851–1857”; “Weggezogene aus dem Kreis Oppeln 1858–1867”, in: Richau, Von Oberschlesien nach Amerika, pp. 157, 160.

22

A. Brożek, “Emigracja zamorska z Górnego Śląska w II połowie XIX wieku” [Oversees Migration from Upper Silesia, 1850–1900], in: Instytut Śląski w Opolu (ed.), Konferencja popularnonaukowa “100 lat polonii brazylijskiej” [Conference Papers from “100 Years of Polish Migration to Brazil”], conference report, 23–24 October 1969, Opole, 1969, pp. 1–34, here p. 17.

23

S. S. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, Independence, Wisconsin: One Hundred Years 1875–1975: A History and Parish Directory, Wisconsin: S. S. Peter & Paul Church, 1975, p. 30.

24

Marschalck, Deutsche Überseewanderung, pp. 42–44.

25

See M. Esch, “Zugänge zur Migrationsgeschichte und der Begriff des Transnationalen in der Migration”, in: F. Hadler and M. Middell (eds.), Handbuch einer transnationalen Geschichte Ostmitteleuropas: Von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017, pp. 457–487, at 466.

26

M. Kutyma, “Przyczyny wychodźstwa ze Śląska Opolskiego na przykładzie wsi Siołkowice w powiecie opolskim” [Push-factors for Migration from the Opole-Region. The Case of Siołkowice, Opole-County], in: Instytut Śląski w Opolu (ed.), Konferencja popularnonaukowa “100 lat polonii brazylijskiej”, pp. 1–12, at 10–11.

27

See A. Michalczyk, “Josef Jaglo (1872–1949)”, in: J. Bahlcke (ed.), Schlesische Lebensbilder, Insingen: Degener, 2012, pp. 449–460.

28

T. L. Baker, “The Reverend Leopold Moczygemba, Patriarch of Polonia”, Polish American Studies 41 (1984) 1, pp. 66–109, at 66–69.

29

A. Brożek, “Z badań nad początkami osadnictwa polskiego w Brazylii: Emigracja z Górnego Śląska do Parany” [The Beginnings of Polish Settlement in Brazil. Migration from Upper Silesia to Paraná], in: R. Czepulis-Rastenis (ed.), Między feudalizmem a kapitalizmem: Studia z dziejów gospodarczych i społecznych. Prace ofiarowane Witoldowi Kuli [Between Feudalism and Capitalism. Historical Economy and Social Studies for Witold Kula], Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1976, pp. 167–179, at 170; E. Miś, “Losy i rola Siołkowiczan w Brazylii ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem działalności Sebastiana Edmunda Wosia Saporskiego” [History of People from Siołkowice in Brazil and their Leader’s Sebastian Edmund Wos Saporski], in: Instytut Śląski w Opolu (ed.), Konferencja popularnonaukowa “100 lat polonii brazylijskiej”, pp. 1–11, at 1; K. Smolana, “Sebastian Edmund Saporski (Woś-Saporski, pierwotnie Woś)”, Polski Słownik Biograficzny XXXV (1994), www.ipsb.nina.gov.pl/a/biografia/sebastian-edmund-saporski-wos-saporski-pierwotnie-wos (accessed 28 April 2019).

30

Kutyma, “Przyczyny wychodźstwa ze Śląska Opolskiego”, pp. 10–11.

31

See M. Richau, Familienchronik Richau, Berlin: s. n., 1993, pp. 133, 144.

32

Passenger list of the Salier from Antwerp to Santa Catarina from 31 August 1876 (copy from the National Archives Rio de Janeiro provided by Domiciano Spisla from Curitiba).

33

H. Kokot and J. Moczko, “Emigracja do Brazylii z Siołkowic, Popielowa i okolicy w latach 1875–1886: Opracowano na podstawie dokumentów w Archiwum Państwowym w Opolu” [Migration from Siołkowice and Popielów, 1875–1886. Sources from the State Archive in Opole], 9 March 2013, http://staresiolkowice.pl/emigracja-do-brazylii (accessed 28 April 2019).

34

Ibid.

35

Kutyma, “Przyczyny wychodźstwa”, p. 6; Dobrowolska and Myrcik-Markowska, “Zróżnicowanie klasowe i społeczne”, p. 43.

36

Still plausible: H. Medick, Weben und Überleben in Laichingen 1650–1900: Lokalgeschichte als Allgemeine Geschichte, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996, pp. 295–378.

37

Kutyma, “Przyczyny wychodźstwa”, pp. 8–9; Dobrowolska and Myrcik-Markowska, “Zróżnicowanie klasowe i społeczne”, pp. 45–49.

38

See also Duda-Dziewierz, Wieś Małopolska.

39

Brunnbauer, Globalizing Southeastern Europe, p. 38.

40

Kutyma, “Przyczyny wychodźstwa”, p. 10. Four families could not be identified.

41

Zahra, The Great Departure, p. 26.

42

Nor did the research villages of Krystyna Duda-Dziewierz and Matthias Kaltenbrunner become depopulated. See also W. D. Kamphoefner, Westfalen in der Neuen Welt: Eine Sozialgeschichte der Auswanderung im 19. Jahrhundert, Münster: Coppenrath, 1982, or J. Puskas, From Hungary to the United States, 1880–1914, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1982.

43

See L. Budrass, “Von Biertultau nach Batenbrock. Oberschlesier in Bottrop”, in: L. Budrass, B. Kalinowska-Wójcik, and A. Michalczyk (eds.), Industrialisierung und Nationalisierung: Fallstudien zur Geschichte des oberschlesischen Industriereviers im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Essen: Klartext, 2013, pp. 111–146; Michalczyk and Skrabania (eds.), Migrationsgeschichte Oberschlesiens.

44

Dobrowolska and Myrcik-Markowska, “Zróżnicowanie klasowe i społeczne”, pp. 50–52; Kutyma, Siołkowice, pp. 255–257.

45

Kutyma, Siołkowice, pp. 248–249; interview with Benedykt Kwosek from Schalkowitz, whose relatives live in Wielkopolska, on 15 September 2017.

46

Dobrowolska and Myrcik-Markowska, “Zróżnicowanie klasowe i społeczne”, pp. 54–55.

47

See W. Kamphoefner, “Südamerika als Alternative? Bestimmungsfaktoren der deutschen Überseewanderung im 19. Jahrhundert”, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 41 (2000) 1, pp. 199–215.

48

Dobrowolska and Myrcik-Markowska, “Zróżnicowanie klasowe i społeczne”, p. 63.

49

Kutyma, Siołkowice, pp. 304–305.

50

M. Esch, “Migration: Transnationale Praktiken, Wirkungen und Paradigmen ”, in: Hadler and Middell (eds.), Handbuch einer transnationalen Geschichte Ostmitteleuropas, pp. 131–187, at 147.

51

Ibid., pp. 182–183.

52

Bade, Europa in Bewegung, p. 87.

53

E. Morawska, “Labor Migrations of Poles in the Atlantic World Economy, 1880–1914”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1989) 2, pp. 237–272; M. Wyman, Round-Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880–1930, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.

54

For waves of immigration, see Groniowski, Polska emigracja zarobkowa.

55

Plebiscite results in the northern part of the county of Oppeln, 1921 in “Odpisu urzędowego dziennika Komisji Międzysojuszniczej Rządzącej i Plebiscytowej na Górnym Śląsku w Opolu”, Journal Officiel de Haute-Silesie 21 (7 May 1921), http://www.historycy.org/index.php?showtopic=14864 (accessed 28 April 2019).

56

Kutyma, Siołkowice, p. 303.

57

Stanisław Ossowski reports a similar situation in his analysis of the neighbouring village Groß Döbern in “Zagadnienie więzi regionalnej i więzi narodowej na Śląsku Opolskim” [Regional and National Bonds in Opole-Silesia], Przegląd Socjologiczny 9 (1947), pp. 73–124.

58

Kokot and Moczko, Emigracja do Brazylii z Siołkowic, Popielowa i okolicy.

59

A. Brożek, Ostflucht na Śląsku [Ostflucht from Silesia], Katowice: Wydawnictwo Śląsk, 1966, p. 94.

60

Dobrowolska and Myrcik-Markowska, “Zróżnicowanie klasowe i społeczne”, p. 58.

61

Brożek, Ostflucht, p. 151.

62

See A. Michalczyk, Heimat, Kirche und Nation: Deutsche und polnische Nationalisierungsprozesse im geteilten Oberschlesien 1922–1939, Köln: Böhlau, 2010, pp. 244–248.

63

See T. Zahra, “Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis”, Slavic Review 69 (2010) 1, pp. 93–219, at 97.