Galerie

 

been beneath their dignity to receive the new Prussian officials, whom they considered to be parvenus. Whether such a term fitted men like the new Oberpräsident, von Schoen, is beside the point.

The Pussians, on the other hand, apparently succeeded in reconciling the Danzig populace at large. In a period of rising nationalism the community of language and customs may have played its part. Added to that may be the comparatively liberal results of the Stein-Hardenberg reform which gave the Prussian towns a respectable degree oflocal self—government. Thus the Stadtverordnetenversamlung may have appeared as a successor to the Third Order. A reform ofthe outlived Danzig school system was another advantage which the new men from Berlin were able to grant. Von Schoen also succeeded in reducing the staggering debt of the city. The state took over the major part of the local indebtedness of twelve million talers. Hans Meinmling’s famous picture, “Das jüngste Gericht,” the seizure of which was one of the Flemish exploits of the “Peter von Danzig” was returned to Berlin from the Louvre, where Napoleon had taken it. After a protracted exchange of letters between Berlin and Danzig, the latter regained her painting, and is shown nowadays in the Marienkirche, with this elegiac couplet attached to it:

Als das ewige Gericht des Kleinods Räuber ergriffen gab der gerechte Monarch aus das Erkäinpfte zurück.

The liberal institutions of thc Free City, of course, disa ppeared entirely. The Code Napoleon was immediately abrogated, and the Prussian common civil law was
reintroduced. In 1844 the archaic “Danziger Caprice” disappeared too.

Whether the Danzigers were enthusiastic about the new order or whether they simply acquiesced in the fait accompli is a difficult question to decide. It should, however, be kept in mind that the Polish-Swedish wars and the turmoil of the Napoleonic era had brought war repeatedly to the gates of Danzig; the populace may have realized that the development of large national armies stood in the way of the city’s independence. If connection with a neighboring state was inevitable, was not Prussia the lesser of the evils? Poland, after all, had ceased to exist and Russian autocracy was surely a less tempting alternative.

At all events, the nineteenth century saw Danzig remote from war. Thc Danish blockade of 1864 and thc appearance of a French squadron in the Bay of Danzig in 1870 were distinctly minor events and remained without consequences.

On the negative side it must be stressed that Prussian Danzig never retained her dominating position in Baltic shipping. Cut from her economic union with P0] and, Danzig had lost her natural hinterland. The condition was aggravatcd by the

 

Danzig Report Vol. 1 - Nr. 76 - July - August - September - 1992, Page 14.