Becoming German, Becoming Polish

The small Mennonite German-speaking communities in the Russian and Austrian partitions developed in opposite directions during the interwar period. The congregation centered in Lviv accelerated its trajectory of integrating with Polish society, increasing Polish language usage while striving to maintain a separate, non-Catholic religious identity. The cluster of three rural congregations west of Warsaw faced the common problems of small landholders but resisted integration into Polish society at the same time as Polish society held them at arm's length. Examining these two little known groups provides additional illustrations of the complex situations of religious and linguistic minorities in the Second Polish Republic and the divergent ways they approached the challenges. This case study shows how what appeared to be similar starting places for minorities could lead initially to two different outcomes. The pressures of World War II, however, upended these tendencies. In the end, both groups ended up in the same places literally and metaphorically, in exile in West Germany and North and South America and closely identifying with a German diaspora.