Zur Entstehung des Begriffs „polnische Wirtschaft”

The article examines the circumstances of the emergence of the “polnische Wirtschaft” stereotype, a symbol of particularly evident disorder, and its frequent appearance in the literary German language in the late 18th and early 19th century. The author analyses two issues: the circumstances in which Georg Forster, a traveller and naturalist who in 1784–1787 was active as professor of natural history at the University of Vilnius, emerged as the author of the term “polnische Wirtschaft” (I) (or its advocate and promoter) as well as the contexts in which the term appeared in writings published in print in the late 18th and early 19th century (a period ending with the publication of Forster’s correspondence in 1829, II). The author draws the following conclusions from his analysis: Georg Forster, who used the term “polnische Wirtschaft” four times in his letters sent from Vilnius, was not the author who introduced it into literary German for the first time. Nor is it possible to defend the thesis that Forster contributed significantly to the spread of the term, as it had been common in Silesia already in the early 18th century. It must have been at that time or slightly later that it spread to other areas of the Polish-German borderland. From the mid-1770s the formula was used by the Prussian administration including King Frederick William. It was used at the Berlin court to describe the disorder and bad organisation in the provinces incorporated into the Hohenzollerns’ monarchy as a result of the successive partitions of Poland. The term “polnische Wirtschaft” was referred to by Prussian officials not only in official documents but also in publications devoted to other matters, for example the economy. In the first or second quarter of the 19th century at the latest the term lost its original meaning associated with the location from which came its name, becoming an illustration of disorder and lack of discipline, not necessarily associated with the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its inhabitants.