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'Kashubians' (; ; ), also called 'Kassubians' or 'Cassubians', are a West Slavic ethnic group of north-central Poland.
The Kashubian unofficial capital is Kartuzy (''Kartuzë''). Among larger cities, Gdynia (''Gdiniô'') contains the largest proportion of people declaring Kashubian origin. The traditional occupations of the Kashubians were agriculture and fishing; today the two are joined by the service and hospitality industry, and agrotourism.
The main organization that maintains the Kashubian identity is the Kashubian-Pomeranian Association. The recently formed "Odroda" is also dedicated to the renewal of Kashubian culture.

Contents

Population

History

Kashubian language

Today

Notable Kashubians

See also

External links

Population

The total number of Kashubians varies depending on one's definition. A common estimate is that over 300,000 people in Poland are of the Kashubian ethnicity. The most extreme estimates are as low as 50,000 or as high as 500,000
In the Polish census of 2002, only 5,100 people declared Kashubian ethnicity, although 51,000 declared Kashubian as their native language. Most Kashubians declare Polish nationality and Kashubian ethnicity, and are considered both Polish ''and'' Kashubian. However, on the 2002 census there was no option to declare one nationality and a different ethnicity, or more than one nationality. Some claim that the census was misleading and inaccurate, or even falsified.

History

Kashubians are the direct descendants of an early Slavic tribe of Pomeranians who took their name from the land in which settled, Pomerania (from Polish ''Pomorze'', "the land along the sea"). It is believed that the ancestors of Kashubians came into the region between the Odra and Vistula Rivers during the Migration Period. The oldest known mention of the name dates from the 13th century (a seal of Duke Barnim I of Pomerania), when they ruled areas around Szczecin (Kashubian: ''Szczecëno'').
Another early mention of the Kashubians from the 13th century saw the Dukes of Pomerania including "Duke of Kashubia" in their titles. From the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, after the Thirty Years' War, parts of West Pomerania fell under Swedish rule, and the Swedish kings titled themselves "Dukes of Kashubia" from 1648 to the 1720s.
The ''Landtag'' parliament of the Kingdom of Prussia in Königsberg changed the official church language from Polish to German in 1843, but this decision was soon repealed, and beginning in 1852 Kashubian was taught at the ''Gymnasium'' (high school) of Wejherowo. In the 1830s, several hundred Kashubians emigrated to Upper Canada and created the settlement of Wilno, in Renfrew County, Ontario, which still exists today. Kaszub immigrants founded St. Josaphat parish in Chicago's Lincoln Park community in the late 19th century. In the 1870s a fishing village was established in Jones Island in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, by Kashubian and German immigrants. The two groups did not hold deeds to the land, however, and the government of Milwaukee evicted them as squatters in the 1940s, with the area soon after turned into industrial park.
Many Pomeranians in the former Duchy of Pomerania, most of them Lutheran Protestants (including the Slovincians), were Germanised between the 14th and 19th centuries in the wake of the Prussian political program of Germanisation. Some communities in Pomerelia (Eastern Pomerania) have survived and today regard themselves as Kashubians in modern Poland, although others were expelled by Poland's Communist government as "Germans" after World War II. Most Kashubians in Eastern Pomerania, unlike Slovincians and Pomeranian Slavic Wends, remain Roman Catholic.
During the Treaty of Versailles, Kaszub activist Antoni Abraham in agitating for Cassubia's integration into Poland issued his famous quote ''Nie ma Kaszub bez Polonii a bez Kaszub Polski" which translates into English as- There is no Cassubia without Poland, and no Poland without Cassubia.

Kashubian language

Main articles: Kashubian language

About 50,000 Kashubians speak Kashubian, a West Slavic language belonging to the Lechitic group of languages in northern Poland. Many Polish linguists formerly considered Kashubian to be a Polish dialect, though most now believe it is a separate Slavic language.
There are other traditional Slavic ethnic groups inhabiting Pomerania, such as the Kociewiacy, Borowiacy, Krajniacy and others. These dialects tend to fall between Kashubian and the Polish dialects of Greater Poland and Mazovia. This might indicate that they are not only descendants of ancient Pomeranians, but also of settlers who arrived to Pomerania from Greater Poland and Masovia in the Middle Ages. However, this is only one possible explanation.
The earliest surviving example of written Kashubian is Martin Luther's 1643 Protestant catechism (with new editions in 1752 and 1828). Scientific interest in the Kashubian language was sparked by Mrongovius (publications in 1823, 1828) and the Russian linguist Hilferding (1859, 1862), later followed by Biskupski (1883, 1891), Bronisch (1896, 1898), Mikkola (1897), Nitsch (1903). Important works are S. Ramult's, ''Słownik jezyka pomorskiego, czyli kaszubskiego'', 1893, and F. Lorentz, ''Slovinzische Grammatik'', 1903, ''Slovinzische Texte'', 1905, and ''Slovinzisches Wörterbuch'', 1908.
The first activist of the Kashubian/East Pomeranian national movement was Florian Ceynowa. Among his accomplishments, he documented the Kashubian alphabet and grammar by 1879 and published a collection of ethnographic-historic stories of the life of the Kashubians (''Skórb kaszébsko-slovjnckjé mòvé'', 1866-1868). Another early writer in Kashubian was Hieronim Derdowski. The Young Kashubian movement followed, led by author Aleksander Majkowski, who wrote for the paper "Zrzësz Kaszëbskô" as part of the "Zrzëszincë" group. The group would contribute significantly to the development of the Kashubian literary language.

Today

In 2005, Kashubian was for the first time made an official subject on the Polish matura exam (roughly equivalent to the English A-Level and French Baccalaureat). Despite an initial uptake of only 23 students, this development was seen as an important step in the official recognition and establishment of the language.
Today, in some towns and villages in northern Poland Kashubian is the second language spoken after Polish, and it is taught in regional schools.
Kashubian presently enjoys legal protection in Poland as an official minority language.

Notable Kashubians

★ Günter Grass (
★ 1927). German Nobel Prize-winning German author of Kashub descent

★ Gerard Labuda, historian

★ Aleksander Majkowski, writer

★ Danuta Stenka, actress

★ Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, inventor

★ Donald Tusk, politician, leader of Platforma Obywatelska

★ Hans David Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg, Prussian Field Marshal in the napoleonic era

See also

★ Kashubian language

★ Kashubian alphabet

External links

★ http://www.zk-p.pl/

★ (in Kashubian, Polish, German) http://www.kaszubia.com/

★ http://www.republika.pl/modraglina/kaszlink.html

★ http://www.cassubia-slavica.com/