THE FOLLOWING IS A SHORT HISTORY OF POLAND AND  PARTICULARLY,  THE KASHUBIAN AREA OF  POLAND FROM WHICH HERMAN ADOLPH FRANZ   DREWA IMMIGRATED TO THE UNITED STATES IN 1860

“A SHORT POLISH AND KASHUBIAN HISTORY”

                               By:  Vincent Paul Drewa, Vancouver, B. C.

 THE DREWA’S ORIGIN IN NORTHERN POLAND

 The following two documents were provided by Vincent Paul Drewa of North Vancouver British Columbia, Canada.   He was born in Pelplin, Poland; moved to Traunstein, Germany in 1945; immigrating Canada in 1950.

     It would have been nicer if his mother and step-father could have settled  closer to us Drewa’s from Texas.  I have had the privilege of visiting with he and his family, go on an extended trip to Germany and Poland with him, and enjoy a frequent telephone call. He is  an extraordinary  person.  I wish that each of you could know him as I have. /s/ Vernon H. Drewa, Jr.

His father was Paul Drewa, who was killed in action, on September 16, 1939 in Poland, at the beginning of World War II.  He had been assigned an anti-aircraft battery in Central Poland and was killed by German Aircraft.  Germany invaded Poland September, 1, 1939.

 His mother married a Polish Army Colonel who had survived three years in various German concentration camps.  His last year was spent in solitary confinement. The last prison camp in which he was interred was Bernau.  His brother, who was a Catholic Priest, was killed in Auschwitz (Oswiecim in Polish) Concentration Camp.

 Vincent made his debut on July 19, 1937, in the small and inconspicuous Kashubian town of Pelplin, Poland.  It seems that no one really knows where Pelplin is.  Only Polish experts of trivia sometimes hesitatingly admit that they have heard of this small town with its immense, 14^th Century , Gothic Cathedral.  Even military or tourist maps seem reluctant to acknowledge the place.  Pelplin is only some thirty miles south of the Baltic port of Gdansk, better know for centuries as the Free City of Danzig.  

            This region of Pomerania is known as Kashubia and its indigenous people as the Kaszuby (Kashubians).  Along the Baltic coast the people are fishermen and mostly farmers inland.  Kashubia with its gentle hills and many small lakes is referred to as the Kashubian Switzerland (a Kashubian exaggeration of course).  Some Kashubians still speak an ancient Slavic dialect  (we heard a number of our distant relatives speak this in Chmielno, Kartuzy and Gdansk on our visit in 1994 and 1996) akin to Polish, but most speak Polish and/or German. 

            Recorded history in Pelplin began some 700 years ago, when the first Cistercian monks arrived on an October day to this gently rolling green landscape;  well-wooded, a myriad of small lakes and an overabundance of storks.  This is even chronicled as October 27, 1276;  when the Prince of Pomerania, Mszczuj II, transferred from Pogodki to Pelplin the monks that Prince Sambor II had brought in earlier,  in 1251, from Doberan, in the province of Mecklenburg. 

            To the first time caller, the contrast between the size of the local population and the Pelplin Cathedral is inexplicable.  The town’s 1965 census lists the population at 5,524 inhabitants and records indicate that at the end of the 18^th century there were no more than 300.  This must be the best hidden 14 century cathedral in all Europe.  It’s the second largest church in all of Poland; only Saint Mary’s in Gdansk is larger.   

            This region of Kashubia (Kaszuby) is well remembered by the world as the “Polish Corridor” that Herr Hitler made territorial demands on, for it separated East Prussia from West Prussia.  Pelplin was miraculously bypassed by the German and Russian war machine during the First and Second World War and thus spared from destruction.   Only German connoisseurs of art managed to strip the cathedral and the monastery bare in the winter of 1939 - 1940.  But not before the precious two - volume Gutenberg Bible from the years 1453 - 1455, was successfully evacuated with other Polish art treasures to Bucharest and eventually to safety in Canada. 

            Providence must have special reason for protecting this religious edifice and it’s small town all these centuries.  None the less, following the Germans’ military attack on September 1, 1939, the Germans rounded up two-thirds of the 690 priests of the Pelplin diocese, of whom 214 were shot. 

            Poland and Germany have struggled for this area for ten centuries.  This struggle began in earnest when the Polish provincial ruler, Duke Conrad of Masovia (the province to which Warsaw also belonged) in 1224 invited a militant religious order of German monks, the Teutonic Knights; to come and help in the work of Christian conversion, pacification, and administration of heathen Prussia tribes - a region east of Kashubia and the Vistula river.  In 1228, Conrad of Masovia gave the Teutonic Order a generous grant of lands in his domain in the lower reaches of - the Vistula and allowed them to establish a German colony.  The Order soon began to interfere with Poland’s free access to the sea through Gdansk (Danzig). 

            Twenty four (24) miles from Danzig the knight-monks built (1275-1280) one of Europe’s most magnificent monistic castle called Marienburg.  This became a monastery of the Knight-monks and their chief stronghold as well as the residence of the Grand Master, who moved there from Venice in 1309.  In 1457, Marienburg was annexed to the Kingdom of Poland and renamed Malbork.  Conrad thought he was inviting pious friars, who would help him in controlling  the heathen Prussian tribes.  But the Knights  had not the slightest intention of serving the Duke or the Church in the development of Christianity.  They were servant of the German Empire and their purpose was to promote German interest and nothing else.  Their method of conquest was simple and effective:  all Prussian and Kashubians who would not accept Christianity were slaughtered.  Those that accepted Christianity became serfs of the Knights – who established themselves as feudal barons.  Thus Prussia became the principal stronghold of the Knights and from the local population they stole everything including their name “Prussia”. 

            It took 200 years of fighting before Poland could control these lands again.  During those years the Knights annexed provinces, including Kashubia, and eventually succeeded in occupying - the whole of the North.  On November 14^th, 1308, while Danzig was being attacked by the Brandenburgers and defended by a Polish garrison, the Polish King Wladyslaw IV Lokietek called the Teutonic Knights to help the garrison.   The Brandenburgers were forced to withdraw when the Teutonic Knights arrived.  However, once the Knights were in control they turned their arms against the Polish garrison and massacred it.  Afterwards they massacred some 10,000 of the city’s inhabitants, and the remnants of the population were expelled to the neighboring villages.  Danzig remained in the hands of the Teutonic Knights from 1308 to 1454.  During this period German settlers were invited and since that time the City became German - speaking. 

            Not until 1410 were the incursions of the Teutonic Knights halted.  Then, in Masuria on the battlefield of Grunwald ( Tannenberg) Polish-Lithuanian Forces, in one of the greatest battles in European history, decisively defeated the Knights and their Allies.  Despite their efforts, and the bloody 13-year war (1454-1466) against Poland, the Knights were never able to regain their old position of dominance on the Southern Baltic shores.  A hundred and fifteen years after Grunwald (Tannenberg) the order was dissolved.  The Grand Master proclaimed himself hereditary Duke of East Prussia:  His name was Albert of Hohenzollern of Brandenburg, and among his descendants was the last Kaiser of Germany 

            At this point, Vincent asked;  are you still with me Vernon?  This abbreviated history lesson is becoming a big lengthy but to better appreciate the origins of the DREWA clan you have to bear with me a little longer.           

            Danzig became a free city after the Treaty of Thorn (Torun), 1466, under the benevolent flag of Poland.   Kashubia with Danzig which had been held for a hundred years by the Teutonic Order again became part of Poland for the next three hundred years. Danzig continued servicing in its key position at the mouth of the Vistula river as the chief outlet for the country’s  sea borne export-import trade. 

            The black dragon of the Kashubes blazoned side by side with the white eagle of Poland above the great gate of Danzig.  Upon the walls of the great cathedral of Oliva, a suburb of Danzig, portraits of the Polish Kinds have hung for centuries beside those of the Kushubian Princes.  Incidentally Vernon, if you should visit this area it would be inexcusable if you neglect to visit the Oliva Cathedral.  It has one of the world’s largest organs:  consisting of 6000 pipes, 101 registers and four manuals.  ( I was able to take my grand daughter, Joey Lynn Skrasek to Oliva in 1994 and I again visited it with Vincent and his wife Terrie in 1996.  It is truly the most gorgeous edifice I have ever viewed. /s/ Vernon H. Drewa, Jr.) 

            Danzig, the finest port in the Baltic attracted not only commerce but also foreigners.  Dutch Protestants, refugees from the Spanish-Netherlands wars, settled there in large numbers;  they were followed by so many English and Scottish merchants that Queen Anne took the city under her special protection in 1706.  Thus, there is a light probability that the DREWA name originated in Scotland as Drew, Drewar and Drews.  (Vince hit the nail on the head, because in October 1996, I received documentation from the head of the Research Department  Library at Southern Methodist University , Dallas, Texas, USA, that indeed the DREWA name was Welsh.  This was the first time that we have been able to locate the name Drewa, outside immediate relatives in Poland, a few in Germany.    As of 10-9-97, I am still awaiting word from researchers in Scotland. /s/ Vernon H. Drewa.)   It may have become Polonized as Drewa that now becomes pronounceable in Polish, while the Scottish or English pronunciations are tongue twisters in the Polish language.  Nevertheless, the strongest evidence suggests that the name Drewa originates from “drewno”, the Polish word for piece of wood. 

            The 15^th and 16^th century saw the heyday of the old Polish state.   The union with Lithuania brought it vast Lithuanian and Russian territories;  the Jagiellonian dynasty also ruled over Bohemia and Hungary.  However, this excessive territorial expansion and the ensuing diversity of the population, as well as the weakening effect of being one of the first European countries to possess a two-chamber Parliament with full powers of legislation while the elective Kings exercised strictly limited power. 

            This occurring in historic circumstances that finds Poland defending herself and Christian Europe from Turks and Mongols.  She is surrounded by strong autocratic monarchies.  Also, since the reformation she is now almost encircled by Protestant Prussians, Swedes and Transilvanians who join hands against her with Turks and Russians. 

            Sapping the strength of the Polish republic are the ruinous wars of the 17^th century:  1612 Polish occupation of Moscow,  1648 Ukrainian Cossack rebellion, 1654 war with Russia, 1655 -1660 Swedish invasion, 1667 conflict with Russia. 1660-1673 Cossack rebellion, 1672-1676 war with Turkey, 1683 King John Sobieski’s gallant rescue of Vienna and Christian Europe from Turkish invasion, 1703 second invasion by Sweden.  Between 1600 and 1715 Poland had known 87 years of war and only 29 years of peace. 

            Poland’s political deterioration is furthered by the combined social and economic flaws by a few rich families of great nobles, on whom large numbers of poor and unenlightened country gentlemen were dependent.  Growing rich on their exports of grain, the nobles governed Poland exclusively on lines of agricultural class interest and so allowed the once wealthy Polish towns to become impoverished.  The nobility and gentry, as elsewhere in Europe, scorned the pursuit of commerce, considering it a debasing occupation, and the peasants were practically bound as serfs to the fields.  Thus the Jews along with the Germans filled a gap in the economic life-of the country.  They formed the majority of an emerging urban class.  Thus, no strong (Polish) middle class arose to act as an element of balance in the State as it did in Western Europe. 

            Taking advantage of Poland’s situation, Russia, Prussia and Austria partitioned Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795:  each seized a slice of territory adjacent to its own borders.  Consequently,  Poland disappeared from the political map for 132 years on which it had formed a major territorial unit for eight centuries.  This period of enslavement was one of unremitting struggle against the occupiers, with climaxes in armed  uprisings of 1806, 1831-2, 1846, 1848, 1863-4, 1905-7, 1918. 

            Before the rise of Prussia as-a dangerous neighbor in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Poles had seen the Germans as able and industrious people, rather stolid and unimaginative,  lacking in social graces, but highly successful as farmers, artisans, and administrators.  German immigrants into Poland gave proofs of an unshakable attachment to the country of their adoption.  When planted down in the midst of Polish surroundings these settlers commonly became rapidly assimilated to their  surroundings.  Many Polonized Germans have contributed to the list of martyrs to Polish patriotism. 

            Tadeusz ( Thaddeus)  Kosciuszko  served with distinction as a General under George Washington in the American Revolutionary War:  He assisted the Southern Army by his engineering services both in the way of entrenchments and of transport organization.  He chose and entrenched the position at Saratoga, fortified West Point, and barred the British advance up the Hudson by drawing chains cross the river.  Now, in 1795, he led a revolt against the Third Polish Partition. 

            Tired of this corpse that did not wish to die, the occupying nations decided to take extreme measures.  In Russian Poland reigned tyranny, oppression, inefficiency and corruption.  The Russians settled down to the task of complete Russianization of their part of Poland. 

            In Austrian Poland the situation was much easier.  The cosmopolitan Empire was living through story days, and concessions were made to secure the friendship of the Poles.  A modicum of home rule was granted:  Polish universities and schools were permitted and Polish culture and traditions were allowed to flourish. 

            In the Prussian section, where the Drewa’s lived, the rule was efficient, severe and unequivocal.  The Germans conducted an incessant campaign of transforming these lands and its people into a German region.  The Prussian rule before 1871 was undisguised  a rule of anti-Polish oppression, but Imperial German rule after 1871, and since Bismarck’s advent of power became increasingly more so when he stirred up his famous Kulturkampf.  In 1887, it was taught only as one of the subjects of the otherwise purely  German curriculum.  Only one vestige of the formerly Polish character of the schools remained:  a Catholic prayer in the Polish language, said by the children before the lessons- - was forbidden in the year 1901. 

            A Colonization Commission for the Polish provinces with a seat in Poznan was established in 1886 with the purpose of buying up Polish farmland and settling on it German farmers.  The budget for this purpose was originally 100 million Marks, but by 1913 it was already increased to 1 milliard (means a thousand million /s/ Vernon Drewa) Marks.  A law passed in 1904 forbade the activities of Polish banks who were dividing large Polish estates into smaller Polish farms.  Polish farmers could not build a new house on his farm without special permission and such a permission was always refused.  The solidarity of the Polish landowners and farmers, who did not want to sell land to the German Colonization Commission made it more and more difficult for this Commission to get any land for its purposes.  Therefore, in 1908, a law was passed which allowed the German government to make compulsory purchases of Polish land for German Colonization. 

            After 1903, German civil servants and employees of state undertakings such as the post office, the railway etc.  were receiving a special supplement to their salaries called “Ostmarkenzulage”,  when they were employed in the Polish provinces,  while the Poles were practically excluded in their homeland from any job connected with the state. 

            In 1894, a great all-German society, called Ostmarkenverein, commonly known as Hakatist, was formed on the initiative of Bismark with the air of the German element in the Polish provinces to increase.  This society had at its disposal great funds of money and among  other things it encouraged German merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, lawyers, doctors etc.  to settle in the Polish provinces, paid them large subsidies and covered their deficits. 

            Although Bismarck was an enemy of-the Poles and all things Polish, he differed from his contemporaries in the fact that he did not regard the Polish community in general as enemies of the Prussian State, but only the Catholic clergy, nobility and gentry. 

            Until World War I,  there was much intermarriage between Germans and Poles, in urban as well as rural society.  In communities with Polish majority, the German partner in such a marriage seems to have often accepted the language and if he had been Protestant he often also accepted the Catholic faith.  Under the exigencies of war, such families could and did call themselves Polish or German according to the need of the moment.  In general, the majority of Kashubians and Poles are Roman Catholic.  Under German rule some of the Kashubians were converted to Protestantism, as were the Mazurians in East Prussia.           

            Towards the end of the 19^th century there was a large migration of Poles to Western Europe and North and South America.  Between 1880-1890 more than 600,000  Poles arrived, from the Prussian annexed zone, in the  United States.  I believe they would have been identified as Germans from Prussia as Poland was not on the map.  Polish immigrants also settled in Canada.  Official Canadian government statistics state:  “The first Poles who came to Canada came from the Kashuby region of Northern Poland.  They settled the Madawaska River Valley in 1858”.   I believe the reference is made to the Kashubes that arrived in Quebec in 1858 from the German port of Bremen after about eleven weeks at sea in an over crowded ship, suffering from typhus and hunger.  There were 16 families, 76 people in this group.  As a result of the concern of the Canadian immigration agent over their plight, the group was transported to the Renfrew, Ontario area and located with established residents there.  They were allocated land and within a few years other families joined them, settling in the township of Hogarty, Richards, Sherwood, Joens and Burns.  Others followed and by 1864 there were about 500 Kashubes in the area.

             The mid-1890’s saw a renewal of Kashub emigration, and another 250 families arrived within a period of four years, recruited in Poland by the Wilno Parish Priest.  Another 40 families came from the United States, where they had been since the 1860’s but where they suffered from local economic depression.  These families settled in Barry’s Bay and other nearby communities. 

            In 1976, the community of Barry’s Bay had a population of about 1,400, of which 75% were of Polish origin.  The community of Wilno, a short distance from Barry’s Bay, remains secluded and ethnically distinct.  It has a population of about 700, all of them Kashubs and-their descendants.  The Kashubs were and remain a deeply religious people.  

             In the United States, by 1860 there were 30,000 Polish immigrants, their numbers rose to 50,000 by 1870, to 500,000 by 1880, and to over 1,000,000 in 1890. 

 /s/ Vincent Drewa