Agriculture in the eastern provinces of Prussia…

Agriculture in the eastern provinces of Prussia is to a high degree based on large-area manors (often repositioned from their formerly Polish owners) and run by German junkers, who employ thousands of migrating Poles from the Russian and Austrian part of partitioned Poland.

Also, the growing industrial region of Upper Silesia attracts workers from economically backward areas.

At the same time, parts of the local German and Polish population migrate in search of work to more industrialized western areas of Germany (Ostflucht).

Although no anti-German political activity among the Polish migrants is ever noted, the resulting increase of the Polish population alarms nationalist German circles, including Germany's chancellor Otto von Bismarck.

On March 26, 1885, the ministry of internal affairs of Prussia orders its provincial authorities to expel abroad all ethnic Poles and Jews holding Russian citizenship.

In July 1885, the expulsion order is extended to include Polish Austrian citizens also.

Additionally, the authorities are obliged to watch, that in the future no "undesirable foreigners" will settle on those territories. (Historia Polski, Vol. III 1850/1864-1918, Part 2 1850/1864-1900, edited by Polska Akademia Nauk [Polish Academy of Sciences], Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw 1967, p. 684.)

The order is executed upon all non-Prussian citizens regardless of their long term residence or previous service in the Prussian Army, and despite their state of health, age or sex.

The expellees are "driven in mass towards the eastern border under blows of gendarmes' rifle butts".

(Józef Feldman, Bismarck a Polska, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw 1966, p. 323.)

Fatal incidents are being reported, as the expulsions are carried in winter time.

In the initial months, nearly twenty-six thousand persons are expelled from eastern provinces of Prussia, mainly workers and craftsmen employed there.

The expulsions will be continued in subsequent years.

Through 1890, the number of expellees will exceed thirty thousand, and the border of Prussia will be closed to all migrants of Polish ethnicity.