Post by Bonobo on May 5, 2010 20:35:11 GMT 1
Polish peasants are really stubborn.
Michał Drzymała (13 September 1857 in Dorf und Rittergut Zdroj near Grätz (Grodzisk Wielkopolski), Kingdom of Prussia - 25 April 1937 in Grabówno near Miasteczko Krajeńskie, Poland) was a Polish peasant, living in the Greater Poland region (or the Grand Duchy of Posen) under the Prussian rule. He is famous for the fact that after he was refused permission to build a house on his own land (only because he was Polish) by the Prussian authorities in the village of Kaisertreu, he bought a circus wagon and turned it into his home. The Prussian law considered any place of stay a house if it stayed in one place for more than 24 hours. Drzymała exploited it to avoid the consequences by moving the wagon each day and thus unabling the Prussians to penalize him. The Drzymała's wagon (Wóz Drzymały) became famous when this case was described by the Polish and European newspapers making fun of the Prussian state.
Drzymała's wagon (Polish: wóz Drzymały) was a symbol of Polish resistance to the official Germanization policy in Imperial Germany. During the Partitions of Poland, Michał Drzymała (1857-1937) with his wagon became a Polish folk hero in the Prussian- and later German-occupied sector of Poland.
In 1886, Prussia created a Settlement Commission to encourage German settlement in the Prussian partition of Poland. The Commission was empowered to purchase vacant property and sell it to approved German applicants. The Prussian government regarded this as a measure designed to counteract the German "flight from the East" (Ostflucht) and reduce the number of Poles. In Polish eyes, the establishment of the Commission was an aggressive measure designed to drive Poles from their lands.
The campaign against Polish landownership produced a strong opposition with its own hero, Drzymała. In 1904 he purchased a plot of land in the district of Wollstein (Wolsztyn) but found that the Colonization Commission's rules forbade him as a Pole to build a permanent dwelling on his land. To get around the rule, he set himself up in a gypsy wagon and for more than a decade tenaciously defied in the courts all attempts to remove him. The case attracted publicity all over Germany. It was typical of the conflict of nationalities in Prussia, where the Polish movement was dominated by peasants, while the state authorities confined themselves to legal methods of harassment.
The German Kulturkampf and the Colonization Commission succeeded in stimulating the Polish national sentiment that they had been designed to suppress.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drzyma%C5%82a%27s_wagon
Drzymała is another Polish folk figure intimately connected with that unfortunate interlude of partition and occupation that kept Poles busy between the 1770s and the 1900s. Like Rejtan he also had an unfeasibly large moustache but, unlike Rejtan, he definitely wasn’t a nobleman.
Michał Drzymała and his wife thinking happy thoughts about building houses.
Why he is a hero
Poles like to build their own houses. It’s a national obsession. Ask a Polish child what he wants to do when he grows up and he’ll say “You mean, before I build a house or after?” It’s up there with birth, death, and taxes as one of the inevitabilities of Polish life. The only mystery is why Poland still seems to be 90 percent empty after all these centuries of people building houses.
Drzymała was no different. Unfortunately he happened to live in a part of Poland that was temporarily being occupied by Prussians (a particularly virulent kind of German). When he applied for permission to build a house on his own land the Prussians said no, because he was Polish. Either the Prussians hadn’t heard of the whole Poles-building-houses thing or they just felt like being particularly annoying and oppressive that day. Drzymała was undaunted. In a classic early example of the Polish tradition of kombinować he bought a circus wagon and lived in that instead. I like to think the following conversation took place at some point:
Prussian official: Hey you, Drzymała, I thought we said you couldn’t build a house on this land!
Drzymała: If you notice those four round things, technically known as ‘wheels,’ at each corner you will understand that I haven’t built anything. Surely, by definition, something that is ‘built’ can’t be moved around (demonstrates point by pushing house backwards causing Mrs Drzymała to spill barszcz czerwony all over the carpet).
Prussian official: Well… that’s… actually a very good point (begins feverishly consulting German dictionary for definition of ‘build’)
Drzymała: Ha ha! Take that you over-officious square-head! It’s called kombinovać, get used to it.
drzymała-wagon
Drzymała’s cunning house on wheels which gave the Prussians such a headache.
Performance rating
Although he didn’t change anything much Drzymała wins maximum points for a perfect storm of civil disobedience. Not only did he invent the caravan, he showed Poles how to run rings around people who take rules and regulations too literally. Drzymała became famous in his lifetime when his story was picked up by newspapers across Europe, many of them running with headlines such as “Smart Pole makes Germans look like idiots.” He took his house-on-wheels on the road traveling all over Poland to publicize his grievances thereby performing the additional miracle of transforming a potentially tedious life looking after pigs into a lifelong road trip with groupies.
polandian.home.pl/index.php/2009/06/09/4-polish-heroes-youve-never-heard-of/
Michał Drzymała (13 September 1857 in Dorf und Rittergut Zdroj near Grätz (Grodzisk Wielkopolski), Kingdom of Prussia - 25 April 1937 in Grabówno near Miasteczko Krajeńskie, Poland) was a Polish peasant, living in the Greater Poland region (or the Grand Duchy of Posen) under the Prussian rule. He is famous for the fact that after he was refused permission to build a house on his own land (only because he was Polish) by the Prussian authorities in the village of Kaisertreu, he bought a circus wagon and turned it into his home. The Prussian law considered any place of stay a house if it stayed in one place for more than 24 hours. Drzymała exploited it to avoid the consequences by moving the wagon each day and thus unabling the Prussians to penalize him. The Drzymała's wagon (Wóz Drzymały) became famous when this case was described by the Polish and European newspapers making fun of the Prussian state.
Drzymała's wagon (Polish: wóz Drzymały) was a symbol of Polish resistance to the official Germanization policy in Imperial Germany. During the Partitions of Poland, Michał Drzymała (1857-1937) with his wagon became a Polish folk hero in the Prussian- and later German-occupied sector of Poland.
In 1886, Prussia created a Settlement Commission to encourage German settlement in the Prussian partition of Poland. The Commission was empowered to purchase vacant property and sell it to approved German applicants. The Prussian government regarded this as a measure designed to counteract the German "flight from the East" (Ostflucht) and reduce the number of Poles. In Polish eyes, the establishment of the Commission was an aggressive measure designed to drive Poles from their lands.
The campaign against Polish landownership produced a strong opposition with its own hero, Drzymała. In 1904 he purchased a plot of land in the district of Wollstein (Wolsztyn) but found that the Colonization Commission's rules forbade him as a Pole to build a permanent dwelling on his land. To get around the rule, he set himself up in a gypsy wagon and for more than a decade tenaciously defied in the courts all attempts to remove him. The case attracted publicity all over Germany. It was typical of the conflict of nationalities in Prussia, where the Polish movement was dominated by peasants, while the state authorities confined themselves to legal methods of harassment.
The German Kulturkampf and the Colonization Commission succeeded in stimulating the Polish national sentiment that they had been designed to suppress.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drzyma%C5%82a%27s_wagon
Drzymała is another Polish folk figure intimately connected with that unfortunate interlude of partition and occupation that kept Poles busy between the 1770s and the 1900s. Like Rejtan he also had an unfeasibly large moustache but, unlike Rejtan, he definitely wasn’t a nobleman.
Michał Drzymała and his wife thinking happy thoughts about building houses.
Why he is a hero
Poles like to build their own houses. It’s a national obsession. Ask a Polish child what he wants to do when he grows up and he’ll say “You mean, before I build a house or after?” It’s up there with birth, death, and taxes as one of the inevitabilities of Polish life. The only mystery is why Poland still seems to be 90 percent empty after all these centuries of people building houses.
Drzymała was no different. Unfortunately he happened to live in a part of Poland that was temporarily being occupied by Prussians (a particularly virulent kind of German). When he applied for permission to build a house on his own land the Prussians said no, because he was Polish. Either the Prussians hadn’t heard of the whole Poles-building-houses thing or they just felt like being particularly annoying and oppressive that day. Drzymała was undaunted. In a classic early example of the Polish tradition of kombinować he bought a circus wagon and lived in that instead. I like to think the following conversation took place at some point:
Prussian official: Hey you, Drzymała, I thought we said you couldn’t build a house on this land!
Drzymała: If you notice those four round things, technically known as ‘wheels,’ at each corner you will understand that I haven’t built anything. Surely, by definition, something that is ‘built’ can’t be moved around (demonstrates point by pushing house backwards causing Mrs Drzymała to spill barszcz czerwony all over the carpet).
Prussian official: Well… that’s… actually a very good point (begins feverishly consulting German dictionary for definition of ‘build’)
Drzymała: Ha ha! Take that you over-officious square-head! It’s called kombinovać, get used to it.
drzymała-wagon
Drzymała’s cunning house on wheels which gave the Prussians such a headache.
Performance rating
Although he didn’t change anything much Drzymała wins maximum points for a perfect storm of civil disobedience. Not only did he invent the caravan, he showed Poles how to run rings around people who take rules and regulations too literally. Drzymała became famous in his lifetime when his story was picked up by newspapers across Europe, many of them running with headlines such as “Smart Pole makes Germans look like idiots.” He took his house-on-wheels on the road traveling all over Poland to publicize his grievances thereby performing the additional miracle of transforming a potentially tedious life looking after pigs into a lifelong road trip with groupies.
polandian.home.pl/index.php/2009/06/09/4-polish-heroes-youve-never-heard-of/