Posen

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Posen (region)

Posen (now Poznań in Poland) was the southern of two Prussian administrative regions, or Regierungsbezirke (Polish: Rejencja), of the Grand Duchy of Posen (1815–49) and its successor, the Province of Posen (1849-1918). The administrative region was bordered on the north by Regierungsbezirk Bromberg, to the west by the Province of Brandenburg, to the south by the Silesia Province, and to the east by Russian Congress Poland.

The Posen region was inhabited mainly by Roman Catholic Poles, although it had a minority of mostly Protestant Germans.

Divisions

Note: Prussian provinces were subdivided into units called Kreise (singular Kreis, abbreviated Kr., English "circle"), which were similar to large counties in US terms. Cities would have their own Stadtkreis (English: "urban district") and the surrounding rural area would be named for the city, but referred to as a Landkreis (English: "rural district"). In the case of Posen, the Landkreis was split into two: Landkreis Posen West, and Landkreis Posen East. The region was originally divided into 16 larger Kreise, which were later divided into the final 27 Kreise, the larger ones spinning off smaller units.

Province of Posen

The Province of Posen (German: Provinz Posen, Polish: Prowincja Poznańska) was a province of Prussia from 1848 and as such part of the German Empire from 1871 until 1918. The area, roughly corresponding to the historic region of Greater Poland annexed during the 18th century Polish partitions, was about 29,000 km² (11,000 sq mi). For more than a century, it was part of the Prussian Partition, with a brief exception during the Napoleonic Wars.

Incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Posen after the 1815 Congress of Vienna, the territory was administered as a Prussian province upon the Greater Poland Uprising of 1848. In 1919 according to the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had to cede the bulk of the province to the newly established Second Polish Republic.

Geography

The land is mostly flat, drained by two major watershed systems; the Noteć (German: Netze) in the north and the Warta (Warthe) in the center. Ice Age glaciers left moraine deposits and the land is speckled with hundreds of "finger lakes", streams flowing in and out on their way to one of the two rivers.