Greater Poland historical timeline

Greater Poland is where the Polish state was founded, and its later history is the story of losing that centrality and then fighting to rejoin the country.

The first Poland

The Polans, the tribe that gave the country its name, were based here, and their strongholds at Gniezno, Poznan and Ostrow Lednicki formed the core of the emerging state. In 966 Mieszko I accepted Christianity — the founding act of Poland as a European polity — and in 1000 the Congress of Gniezno established the first Polish archbishopric, with Emperor Otto III attending in person. Poland’s first two rulers are buried in Poznan cathedral.

Eclipse

A pagan reaction and a Bohemian raid devastated the region in the 1030s, and the capital shifted to Krakow. Greater Poland remained important but no longer central.

Prussian rule

The partitions put the region under Prussia from 1793. Germanisation intensified through the nineteenth century — the language was pushed out of schools, and a colonisation commission bought Polish land for German settlers. The Polish response was organic work: cooperatives, banks, farming circles and adult education, building economic strength instead of mounting doomed revolts. It is why the region entered the twentieth century comparatively prosperous and highly organised.

The uprising

In December 1918, with the German state collapsing, Greater Poland rose — sparked by a visit from the pianist and statesman Ignacy Paderewski — and by February 1919 had taken control of the region, which the Treaty of Versailles then confirmed. It is the only major Polish uprising that succeeded.

War and after

Annexed directly into the Reich in 1939 with mass expulsions; rebuilt and industrialised after 1945, and since 1989 one of Poland’s more prosperous regions.