The German Question, Part Thirty-Two

"The Dismantling Of Poland," Part Three, "Poland Disappears"

In 1794, the year after the Second Partition of Poland, there was a serious uprising by the Poles led by Tadeusz Kościuszko against Russian forces stationed on Polish territory. Prussian forces eventually entered Polish territory to aid the Russians. The Poles had some military successes, but the overall forces against them were too great, and the uprising was defeated later in the year after some bloody fighting. This brought about the Third Partition of Poland, which erased Poland from the map as an independent nation. The Polish unrest convinced the three powers with lands in Poland (Russia, Prussia, and Austria), that an independent Poland could never be completely controlled.

The Russians took essentially what was left of Lithuania, the western part of what is now Belarus, and the northwestern part of Ukraine. The two German states, Prussia and Austria, each got considerable land, with Austria getting a substantial part of what had been left of southern Poland, which had a VERY definite Polish majority. Prussia got lands bordering south of East Prussia, including Warsaw, as well as a small part of Polish Silesia. Again, most the these newly acquired territories were populated heavily, and in some cases exclusively populated, by Poles. Poland will be a part of our story a couple of times, including in the not too distant future, but by that time as a result of the end of the German Empire.

WORD HISTORY:
Chin-This goes back to Indo European "genu/genw," which meant "jawbone, chin." This gave its  Old Germanic offspring "kennu," with the meaning "chin," which later moved up the face a bit to mean "cheek" in some dialects. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "cin/cinn," meaning "chin," which a bit later became the actual spelling, where it has remained for hundreds of years. The other Germanic languages have: German and Low German "Kinn," Dutch and West Frisian "kin," Danish "kind" (meaning, "cheek"), Norwegian "kinn" (cheek), Icelandic "kinn" (cheek), Swedish "kind" (cheek).