@@waynejohnson1786 well mainland Netherlands was always pretty small in most of it's history with pretty flat land that could easily be invaded but they still were a major power in Europe,I think that's pretty impressive
@@peacefulamerican4994 Not true. The Dutch Republic became a major power somewhere around 1609 and lost their major power status around 1750. The Dutch Republic only fell in 1795 Edit: the guy deleted his comment
As a Pole i love Netherlands. I used to live there for 4 years. One time i meet a girl from Poland who come to their friends living in Den Haag for 2 weeks vacations. Now we are living in Poland, she is my wife we have 2.5 y old son. Netherlands will be allways in my heart
Greetings from Kraków. As a half-Netherlandish reefer, half-Polish wodka myself, this was known to me and as historical tour guide I refer to it a lot. Kudos for the pronounciation! To this day, there is a town nearby Oświęcim / Bielsko-Biała (not too far west of Kraków) called Wilamowice (Willemsoord) where they still try and uphold the middle-Dietsch language (dubbed 'Wilamowski') and where once per year a festival is held to showcase the Netherlandish roots of the town's settlers. I say Netherlandish, though the migration in the 13th century took place mostly from Western Flanders. Plus, I dislike the adjective 'Dutch' and the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, London backs me up on this. Also, officially we now have to speak of 'Niderlandy' in Poland (and not 'Holandia' anymore) though in my case both are applicable - but: Netherlands they are and Netherlandish it is.
There were also Scots immigrants to Poland in the 16th century. I read a book about the Stuart dynasty that mentioned that since Scotland was such a poor country at the time, some Scots moved to Poland for better opportunities. Coincidentally about a week later at work I met a woman whose surname was "Lennox", but when I asked her where her family was from, she said her husband's family was from Poland. I told about what I had just read and we agreed that explained how a family with a quintessential Scots name came to America from Poland.
One of my biggest branches of family genealogy is from Bornholm island Denmark. I was surprised when a Scot fell out of the tree. First I thought it was a mistake but it wasn't. Your information makes perfect sense. Bornholm is last island before entering the Baltic Sea. Being off the coast of Germany/Poland & Sweden it got lots of shipping traffic from all over northern Europe. The record didn't say where the Scot was from and I haven't found what happened to him. Maybe he went to Poland. Could happen. :)
Doesn't sound too credible. Immigrants had their names polonised throughout generations. Plus, Polish basically dropped the letter X some 100 years ago. And yes, people always migrated.
Although some have chosen to throw you shade, I personally think it's a great story. Yes, while Polish may not feature "x" in native words, the letter exists, is used in loanwords (and names!)and all Poles recognise it and know how to pronounce it😏 If I had been you in the same scenario, I would have certainly taken an interest in her surname and (husband's) back story and related it to both the fact and coincidence of my recent reading on the topic of the Scots in Poland!😆❤
The Scots were great travellers and explorers and their descendants are all over the world from Russia to Canada throughout Africa and Asia you will find people with Scottish ancestry
As a person with Polish and Dutch parents, the topic of Olęders is insanely fascinating to me - I even jokingly call myself an Olęder, seeing how my Dutch father emigrated to Poland. Great stuff!
Even as a Polish person I'm quite intrigued by this story. Even tho we had something about this topic in school, it wasn't as covered as here. Love the video.
There is an important part that is ommited at the end of the video though. When speaking of the deportation of Germanics from Poland it is Imperative to Mentiaon that It was Stalin and the Soviet Union in General that enforced that deportation. The Polish government was an unwilling puppet state so the fact that this is not mentoned really does a disservice to this video because for the uninformed the conclusion is that it was Poles that Willingly kicked out The millions of Germans that lived inside modern Poland, meanwhile the entire policy was decided by The Soviet Government, Dominated by Russians and Led by a Georgian.
@@tkc5980 So modern-day Poland won't have problems to apologize for the extermination of Germanic culture, right? They wouldn't have problems to pay reparations, right? They wouldn't have problems to return this territory, right?
@@abukafiralalmani m8. Now there are Millions of Polish people living there, Mostly expelled from Poland's Eastern Territoties. For this proposal of yours to make any sense you would have to alter the borders of Europe Like mad hell all the while commiting Genocide by expelling like 10 million people. Not to mention that if someone should pay reparations it should be Russia. The people that now live In Post-Germanic Areas come largely from the East, where Poles were forcefully removed from and directed west. It isn't exactly our fault that The Soviet Union wanted to Punish Germany AND Poland at the same time. But expelling the population now when there is almost noone that even remembers living there left is absolutely idiotic. A the Vast MAjority of the people that would have to be resettled would be born on the territory they were beng expelled from and the Germans that would have to come would have never lived there in the first place. Your Proposal is idiotic and ,makes zero logical sense.
@@abukafiralalmani Your questions have nothing in common with what he wrote. Also, please stop with the senseless revanchism, it's 2023 and we don't need any more major wars in Europe.
Hi, I was born In Pasłęk (ger.Preussisch Holland) currently in Poland. I believe it’s the only town in Poland with a population +20k that has been established by the Dutch in Poland back in 13th century and this fact is widely known by the locals. Although the Mennonites have mostly left the area after 1945, I attended voluntary Dutch lessons in Gdansk back in 2000. The classes were subsidised by Koningin Beatrix. The story of Oląders still lives on in Poland.
I mean, almost a third of the Medieval German settlement in the East (Ostsiedlung) was by Dutch and Flemish settlers, so I doubt your city is the only one. Actually, the East Low German dialects in general still have a huge part of Dutch in them, so much that some Linguists describe them as pidgin languages between dutch and Low German.
I actually grew up in a town in Poland that was built on brine marshlands, which is now a famous spa town (Ciechocinek). There was an Olender settlement (called Słońsk, słony = salty in Polish, because the water there is salty) on the marshlands very close to it. They drained much of the swamps making space for my town to be built. There is still what remained of their protestant cemetery there, which was recently renovated by some local protestant activists. A very interesting video, thanks for making it.
As a descendant of Masurian Olęders I really appreciate this video. Very unique language of Wysymorys could make an interesting as well. Its a mix of Old German and Dutch with Polish spelling spoken in Silesia. It is extremely endangered but there are ongoing projects to preserve it.
Unfortunately our historical awareness is a bit twisted because of many years of Russian propaganda in communist times, so videos like that cover unpopular topics are so valuable. When I think of Polish - Dutch relations in times of the I Republic, I always think of admiral Arend Dickmann who was a Dutchman serving in Polish Navy and who died in the battle of Oliwa defeating Swedes. It wasn't big battle, but our naval history was never rich, so it's still our biggest battle and victory :D Thanks for this video, I'd love to see more like this!
@@adanbareth_ the stronger myth is the hard border between the Netherlands and Germany, it always used to be a soft border or none depending on the time.
They were relatively wealthy and produced a lot of kids, that swerved out all over the world. And they loved freedom, so most of them went their own way. The VOC (Dutch East India Company) didn't want Dutch as settlers because they would not accept authority and soon start their own independent settlement.
@@Varangoi Yep, many Dutch integrated with the local population, keeping a few good things from their culture. Rarely you'll find Dutch neighborhoods or villages. They didn't clutter or keep their language, but soon became successful locals, by combining the best of both worlds. Few exceptions are religious groups, they tended to stick together and live according their believes in a small community. But the large majority just dissolved into locals, though millions emigrated to US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many more countries. And adapted their family names to local customs.
@@ysbrandd I think even though I'm American and general claimant ancestry is English I recall seeing Dutch, Flemish and possibly Frisian merchants in my genealogy. Which surprised me when my ancestry lineage found that. Well 1.500 ancestors i guess such a thing was inevitable.
This is such an interesting topic, thank you for covering it! Even today, you can find some random Dutch people in Poland. My classmate was half-Dutch as his father was from the Netherlands but I also managed to meet a Dutch family living literally in the middle of nowhere in a Polish village that had 100 inhabitants at best. Till this day cannot wrap my head around it but they seemed very happy with their life so good for them.
Fun fact about the painting mentioned at 26:27 is that it's also a hidden act of defiance against the Polish King. The God's Hand covers the tip of the tower of the Danzig rathaus. The tip had a golden sculpture of Zygmunt II August, King of Poland. Covering the King symbolized the freedom of the city of Gdańsk.
Gdansk, Kakow and Lwow had the position of Royal Cities in the Kingdom of Poland with many special commercial privileges or general "business" privileges, and moreover, members of the self-government of these cities, especially the mayor and his council, had a similar status to the nobility and could participate in the debates and votes of the Polish parliament. And the Polish nobility already from the 15th century felt free and almost equal to the king. Special royal privileges meant that in Poland the typical feudal gradation from previous centuries was abandoned and every member of the nobility (as well as a high official of the self-government in Royal Cities) was equal to princes or other aristocracy, and the king (and parliament) had to take their opinion into account. In Polish history, it is called "golden freedom of the nobility".
Having spent my last summer holidays in Friesland (in Berlikum/Berltsum precisely) and ejoying them very much I have now only good feelings about the Netherlands, their people, landscape and history (thanks to seeing many interesting museums). This video is of great interest to me even if I knew a lot about settlers from the Low Countries in Poland in the centuries past.
In Żuławy Wiślane there are old mennonites cementaries, they lived there to the second world war. It is not a town but a natural region near the Wisła River Delta. There were alot of small villages with fairly good soil. They helped with drainage here, mainly building floodbanks which still stands today. Huge part of my familly history is connected to those lands, thats why I comment :) Nice video, Greetings for all of the Holendrzy watching this vid!
That is what my grandparents called the Grosses Werder. May of my ancestors farmed land there for centuries. Now we are scattered across the globe. I am in Uruguay, nice to hear there is still some memories of the Mennonites how lived there. Kind regards!!
My friend from Muenster Germany only could understand the old local German dialect, that her father spoke with his friends, only after she learned Dutch.
It is probably because dutch is the west germanic language that changed least compared to proto-germanic so it has sounds that died out everywhere else. maybe they have a dialect where some souds survived and made it difficult to understand if you only know german.
@@ysbrandd nah, it's bc plattdüttsch is a dying dialect, rarely spoken by the younger generations or the people they are mainly listening to in the Netherlands it's of course still simply their language which you just can't escape I can understand and if forced also almost fluently speak platt......often did it when visiting the Netherlands .....
@@feldgeist2637 Plattduutsch is not a dialect. a dialect of what? Hochdeutsch? Standard Hochdeutsch itself is a mongrel mix between actual hochdeutsch in southern Germany and the Plattduutsch language. Plattduutsch on the other hand is much older than Hochdeutsch, and with enough Plattduutsch skill you can even understand a few segments from old Saxon or so. hence almost all Germanic peoples have it easier understanding Plattdeutsch than the Mischling language replacing it. standard Hochdeutsch is a descendant of Plattduutsch.
Greetings from Gdańsk. As a Kashubian raised in Werder (Żuławy Region) I know this stories very well, and I'm happy that people from other countries are interested in my region history :)
0:45 PL: Cześć polscy ludzie. Ten filmik jest dla dziadka Zuzi. Dziękuję za czekanie i mam nadzieję że film Ci się spodoba. Dziękuje bardzo. EN: Hello polish people. This video is for Zusia's grandfather. Thank you for waiting and I hope you will like the video. Thank you so much.
The Uruguayan flag by the end caught me off guard. I knew many Poles went to Uruguay after the war but I didn't know they were Mennonites or that they were descendants of Dutch moved to Poland. This was a very interesting piece of history! I loved these stories that are lesser known but equally fascinating. Thanks for the video!
There were different groups. The Mennonites came mostly from the region around Gdansk ( dutch origin ) and Lwow ( now Lviv Ukraine, these were of swiss origin ). The ones from Dansk spoke mostly german the ones from Low were mostly bilingual in German and Polish. But here in Uruguay there where also other polish immigrants not of Mennonite origin. We had neighbors like that and my grandpa would speak polish with them no problem. So there's not one origin for polish immigrants in Uruguay. Poles, Jews, German/Dutch and German/Swiss Mennonites all came from current or historic Polish territories and spoke polish as a first or second language.
Great video Hilbert. As a political scientist with obsession with history I'm amazed how you keep finding pieces of history that I'd never heard of before and that are so interesting.
My dad came from the Neumark, which was Brandenburg and later Pomerania. He used to tell me that there were some "Holländer" in the ancestry. I never could really imagine anything other than a random family of Dutch people moving to Poland but never thought there was that much going on. I remember he told me that the Polish and German people didn't really mix where he lived. I found that our family name is existing in the Netherlands too. So thanks for clearing that for me! All the best from Berlin 😃
Great video and amazing channel! In my home village in Poland, there is a street called Holendry, and in a next village also a street named Olędry :) Great piece of history. Thank you!
Dobra robota i nareszcie wiem dlaczego trochę mówisz po polsku. 😉 Very good video and you can even make a fun of yourself (a bit). Fun fact, one of two types of old windmills in Poland is called "Holender". It was popular in the West of Poland till the 19th century. Basically in the lands taken later by Prussia/later Germany. However, there were also some, not so common, "Dutchman" windmills in Central and Eastern Poland as well as parts of today's West Ukraine. One of these Dutch inspired windmills is now in the "skansen" (open-air museum of traditions and folklore, for these who don't know) in Lublin, city where I live. It was originally build in interwar period in one of villages of Lublin voivodship by Polish people but with the solid Dutch inspiration I guess. There were very sparse "Olender" settlements set within the region of this voivodship (later Russian governate) up till the mid 19th century.
@@morriskaller3549 I know about it. The official name is different but people call it "skansen" between themselves. It became the eponym of open air folklore museum. The popular name has been used for many decades and was never meant to offend anyone.
@@morriskaller3549 Yeah, why say "autobus nocny linii numer trzy odjeżdża spod przystanku Muzeum Wsi Lubelskiej" when you can say "nocna trójka rusza spod skansenu" 🥴
@@annakobuk3618 Do you happen to know of any sources about the mentioned Dutch settlers around Lublin as mentioned in the video and in your comment? It's easy to find evidence of Dutch settlement in areas such as Pomorskie, Podlaskie, Mazowieckie, Śląsk; evidence in Lubelszczyzna and Red Ruthenia are harder to come by. If only place names all gave away their origins as quickly as "Niemce".
31:40 LOOK MOM, IM FAMOUS. Im glad you enjoyed my comment mate, vexillology is my one artistic passion, so it was quite fun to see you having fun with flags!
Ik weet niet precies waar ik het gehoord heb, maar ik heb begrepen dat tijdens de grote ontginning in met name Holland het allerlei mensen, ook uit niet Hollandse geweste naar Holland trokken om daar een stuk moeras droog te leggen en om vervolgens daar als vrij-boer op te kunnen leven. Het lijkt er op dat een soortgelijke aanpakt in Polen tijdens een later tijdseenheid gebruikt is. Ps. Mijn voorouders hebben rond 1550 zon soort stuk moeras gepacht van de kerk en zijn daarop vrij-boer geworden. Dat stuk moeras was veengebied of veen gebied en daardoor heeft heel wat later een andere latere voorouder zichzelf Feenstra genoemd - komend van het feen. Wat de Friese taal gebruikte nauwelijks de letter V maar eerder de letter F. Friso Feenstra
Hello Hilbert. At last a video my Polish friend from work can relate more to. My uncle was a UK POW in Silesia, where a friend from school was from. My only previous understanding was via that, from old maps and from history for wargames, which this peaceful settlement never featured in, so this was nice to learn.
great video. i love how you used so many languages(i didnt need the subtitles for the dutch and german texts). I also love the flag (im an expert on vexilology) .
That was fascinating and informative. For several years I've wanted to learn more about these "Hollander" villages, because one of my grandmothers came from a German village on the Vistula River in Russian-ruled Poland, which I've assumed was one of them. One of Grandma's cousins thought the family may originally have been Dutch, but I wonder if she wasn't getting that from the term "Hollander" or (Olęnder), as the family was all German Lutheran, and the village inhabitants are so-identified in the census of the Russian empire in the 1890s. (Grandma was born just a little too late for her own name to appear in the census.) One of Grandma's uncles had served in the Russian cavalry and could write in Russian, but he came to the U.S. (as did many others of the village) a few years before WWI started. Grandma had described three villages adjacent to each other, and it took me a while to figure out just where they were before we went to see the area in 2018, as she had given the German names for everything. She had spoken of going to school with Polish and Russian children, and said she and her friends walked home with two Russian girls, but they didn't speak to each other, and then the Russian girls went off to their home in the woods. (The area away from the river is forested now, too.) But I wish one of us had asked her how that worked with children of three different languages and three different religions. The language used in schools was often contested in German-ruled parts of Poland, and I wouldn't expect this to have been different. The Polish village of the three is still going strong. Grandma's village is now mostly underwater from a dam reservoir built in the 60s. Do you know of any English-language books about these Olęnder communities? Much of what I've learned about them has been from a couple of books by William Hagen.
@@Superrichy261985 I think Volhynia is further to the east, or southeast. My grandmother's village was between Włocławek and Płock, but on the west side of the river. That area might be part of Masovia, but I'm not sure whether Masovia usually included any of the west side of the river. Grandma called her village Grossdorf, but that didn't help much because it just means big village. But we found her brother's naturalization application, which gave it as Gross Dembe. There is more than one Dęb Wielke in Poland, but Grandma had said her village was near Rötslavik (as my father had written it down) and Dęb Wielke is part of a cluster of three villages, just as Grandma had told us. The Russian empire census for Dęb Maly, which is adjacent to Dęb Wielke, is full of surnames of distant relatives of mine and other people I know from the small town in Minnesota where some of these people ended up. They all spoke German, but there are some Polish-sounding names among them, and one of Grandma's great-uncles, one with a stereotypical German surname, seems to have told the American census taker that his first language was Polish. Whether there were other German villages near Dęb Wielke and Dęb Maly, I don't know, and am not sure how to find out, either. Maybe I could figure it out with the help of that Russian empire census, but that would be tedious work.
That's really interesting. I've been researching the history of my family too recently and I had to search in archive census which is all written in russian cyrrylic cursive 😭 it's terrible. Btw I have a German sounding surname in my ancestry "Linder". Might it be also a Dutch surname? Or rather Austrian, as I am from southeastern Poland?
@@askarufus7939 I've known people with the surname Linder, but that was long ago. I assumed it was a German name, because I grew up in German communities or in communities with a strong German Lutheran presence, so I just became familiar with a lot of German names around me and tended to distinguish them from others. But I don't really know. The old ethnic distinctions were going away, and people of my generation tended not to make a big deal of them.
This was beyond fascinating. My Dutch husband loves all these videos about arcane Dutch history. I come from a Jewish community with strong cohesion and it was interesting to see how long a community can remain intact while moving around.
Thank you very much Hilbert for this interesting history I never ever heard ofit. We stayed at the end of february Szczyrk for wintersport and we loved it. Bedankt voor het interessante verhaal, groeten uit Zeeland.😀 👋
I'd like to hear you speak Scandinavian languages. Maybe a video about the Hanseatic league and Bergen, specifically it's dialect, being influenced by German and Dutch or Scanias dialect being Danish influenced.
Amazing I am an architect and I am currently building a house near the village of Cieciszew ( Konstancin Jeziorna district ) and what is a quiet interesting, part of this village has been inhabited by Olęders back then and there are original Olęder style houses to this day ( in designig proces i am obligaded to follow to the certain extend the historic architecture :) ) Kaz Olszaniecki Poland keep preparing next pieces
Great video! I thoroughly enjoyed it. I would love to hear more about the communities Tha moved abroad to North and South America. Also, a video on the language would be amazing. Thank you for all your hard work!
I have not expected to see "Olędrzy" on TH-cam. I grew up in Mazovia and I remember one school trip when they showed us countryside typical for the region and explained how Olędrzy had infuenced the traditions. I remembered they introduced hedgerows of willow trees as windbreaks and probably also for flood management. They never told us the circumstances which made them move and how they disappeared (although it might have been too much for 7 year olds), so many thanks for the explanation! Oh, and they said that they already settled in the Middle Ages, but it might be my brain misremembering things from almost 30 years ago :-)
Very cool video again. I love to watch them, maybe you can do a video about those people or other Dutch people who went to Ukraine like you said. Or maybe about the Dutch and the Danes. I read somewhere that they(we) are very close related as well with the English.
enjoyed your perspective of the mennonites, both sides of my family lived in prussia/poland and were part of the migration to ukraine/russia, then to north america (Kansas) in late 19th century. I’m also a descendant of Adam Wybe (wiebe) of 17th century Gdansk who was a Dutch engineer from Harlingen Friesland. Hope to visit Friesland and Poland some day!
Amazing video! I learned about my ancestors through a "Narrative Ahnentafel Report", my last known mennonite ancestor was born in the Netherlands around 1480-1500AD, then the report has Mennonite ancestors in the 1600's in Danzig Poland. So this Video was very interesting to me, also I love the flag you designed on the left!
17:35 After a single attempt at chatting in Plautdietsch -- as a Dutch speaker, I'd love to watch a video on the language. The Mennonites I came across in Ontario were very friendly, lovely people. We found Plautdietsch to be mutually unintelligible with Dutch, but were able to exchange some pleasantries using German. Meeting some South Africans at the Royal Alcázar was much easier. I mistook their Afrikaans for "a Flemish dialect I'm unfamiliar with" at first so we could easily understand each other, even if I couldn't catch every word. The only confusion we had was about rennen/hollen, and that was easily resolved with a bit of mime.
Couple of years ago I took part in a survey of German Olęder settlements in Greater Poland. They weren't Mennonites, but Evangelicals (the legal Olęders, not the ethnic ones). To this day there is a small population of German Olęder descendants living near Pyzdry in Greater Poland. Another group moved to Australia after Prussian imposed religious regulation in 19th century. There is also a group of people at the uni devoted to the research on Greater Poland Olęders and local museums are involved in preserving their heritage too.
Ik heb meer video's van je gezien. Interessant, zondemeer. Ook taalkundig historisch. Naast deze stroom is er ook de Hanze route waar ook Gedansk een belangrijke rol speelt. Veel Nederlanders hebben zich gevestigd om weer handel te drijven. 👍
This is a fantastic video - I learned so much! have you ever considered making one about the androsi-eraklonian migrations? I hear professor daniel griffin has an excellent monograph on the subject. Many thanks for your great work!!
Thank you for this film. Greetings to you and to your girlfriend 😊 Just like her I am Polish and I also had a dutch surname in my family. My last great-grandmother who was born in the northern Poland, near Chełmno, told me that her mother's surname was 'van Bleryck' (I might spell it incorrectly, but my grandma owns some kind of documents which shows the right spelling). That makes me around 1/32 Olęder 💪
Congrats, it's such in interesting video! I've seen these "Olędry" village names many times, but I only knew that we had some Dutch communities in the past and I vaguely remembered that they sought here religious freedom and had skills to deal with water and to dry wetlands. About the name - Olędrzy is plural, and it may sound strange to an English ear (because - how and why?), but the singular form is Olęder, and the plural form is just made according to one of usual patterns.
I would love to hear more about the history of the Mennonites/Anabaptists, both the Swiss-German Anabaptists and the "Russian Mennonites". I have grown up in and still apart of the Mennonite church, so I am aware of some of the history, but I am always interested in learning more. Among Mennonites in the US there is some cultural distinction between the Swiss/Southern German Mennonites, who later became the "Pennsylvania Dutch", and the Dutch/ Northern German Mennonites that we refer to as the "Russian Mennonites"
I myself am not of Olęder origin, but my ancestors also came from Germany, from an even earlier migration. The population descending from the people who migrated here at Polish-Hungarian border in ~12th century were called Głuchoniemcy, unfortunately they were fully linguistically assimilated, and I think their language wasn't documented enough to be reconstructed today.
Nooit geweten dit. Super interessant! Ik heb Friese, Noorse en Pruisische voorouders. En geloof nu te weten waarom ik mij zo aangetrokken voel tot deze gebieden. Leuk dat je ook iets prive laat zien. Ben ook wel benieuwd naar meer info over de taal. Love&Blessings from( Z-)Holland
I am a distant descendant of these settlers. Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, Raków village. Nearby there is a village called Holendry. My y-dna haplogrup (passed always from father to son ) is R-Z159 most frequent in Netherlands.
This is amazing and so good to learn about as a Pole! I never heard about Olenders, probably it has never been taught in my school, or I simply slept during the class that treated this subject. So, thank you so much for letting me know some interesting bits of my country's history! One small request pls: at the 10:14 when you show a picture of three peasants/serfs women you used a photograph of russian people. This is made by famous russian photographer and chemist Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky and these are great inputs into worlds history, but they depict russians not Poles. This mismatching our ethnicities is really hurtful in 2023 when russia is waging its war on Ukrainians - another nation that is also Slavic and is also very often mislabeled as russians. So, with all respect for your work and the outcome it makes, please don't use pictures of russians to depict other Slavs.
I knew about them since I started studying agriculture and got interested in the history of agriculture in Poland. Many modern day breeds of farm animals in Poland have a huge input of Olęders' animals blood. In Polish villages it was a huge sensation if some nearby nobleman happened to buy Olender cow or Olender pig. People from 20 km radius used to come to him to ask if they could breed this animal with their animals.
@@askarufus7939 This is fascinating. Was it something in the breeds Olenders brought with them that was better or people were just seeking novelty? I seriously would love to have our history classes focused mor eon these kind of things rather than neverending wars and generals. I know wars and political machinations are extremely important for the understanding of the history of the country, but stories of lives of ordinary people is so much more fascinating tbh.
@@jazy3091 They were much more productive. The best cow breed in the world is to this day a Holstino-Fresian cow. The typical white-black cows we see everywhere are either pure breed HF cows or have at least 25% of it in their ancestry (Polska Czarno-biała). Polish cows are Polska Czerwona- the most "native" one and "Białogrzbieta" which as far as I remember was also brought here from the Dutch regions but much earlier that HFs. When it comes to pigs they have much much more "local" genes as peasants used to reproduce them by letting them go freely into the woods to pair with wild boars. It was a common practice until like 1920's. The most fancy pigs were the british ones so they were used to make the local ones "better". Nowadays the best polish pig is Wielka Biała Polska which is basically a copy of british Large White pig. The difference is that Large White has 5% of british boars and WBP has a 5% of polish boars and 95% of Large White 😅
This is an excellent video with loads of utmost interesting information. Thank you! Świetny film i kopalnia ciekawych informacji! Dziękuję! Pozdrowienia z Krakowa 😃
Thank You! I read a pretty famous Polish novel recently (partly bc of a vaguely remembered tv-series in my childhood) "The Farmers"? Not sure what the title is in English, or ofthe author, Henryk Sienkewizc? Anyway one of the conflicts was that the local big landowner brought in "Germans" to break new land, that the village wanted to buy, I guess they might have been "Olenders"?
Hilbert, dank voor je documentaire. Ik had iets meer realtime foto’s van de situaties zoals huizen, plaatsen waar ze woonde, iets veel tekeningen. Succes dank voor je inzet. Max
I live in Gdańsk, or as some of you may recognize this city - Danzig, and I've hears that our downtown has been designed by some Dutch architects. That's why it's pretty similar to many Dutch cities downtowns.
If you are from Holland, and you visiting Poland 🇵🇱 i recommend Etnographic Park in Wiączemin Polski near Płock, there is very good open air museum about Olęnders 👍. Na Razie Hilbert...
There is the Scots in Poland, if I remember rightly, a "Skot" is a nickname for a traveling salesman, especially of books, and it comes from the Scots in Poland. If your last name is "Maciej" or an equivalent of it, then you probably have Scottish roots.
Many scottish came to russia, lithuania and poland via norway and sweden where they were mercenaries, there is still today scottish family names in the baltic and russia you can see,
No. Skot is an archaic term for cattle. The term survived through names of villages/towns. In the early middle ages in Poland there was no feudalism by the western standards. Instead, each (former) ducal seat had a number of settlements within a radius of approx. 50 km that provided a particular kind of service or goods. And they were named after the function they fulfilled. If a place is called Skotniki it means that in the middle ages the duke or king would be getting his cattle from there.
Descendants of the Olendrers still live in Australia. In the 1990s, a group of them came to Poland. There was even a long TV report about it. They visited the lands where their ancestors lived. An interesting fact is that they do not consider themselves Dutch, but rather Germans. Today, this community has almost died out.
Thanks, It was do good! But there's one thing, that is missing here - One od the symbols od Poland, typical for Polish landscape is "ogłowiona wierzba nad strumykiem/rowem/kanałkiem" („shaved" willow on the bank of a drainage ditch) - both come from the Dutch/Frisian/Mennonite/Flemish culture.
I onse knew a polish woman with Lastname Olendrovicz (Holenderin), she had red hair and said that her ancestors settled from h-Olend in Poland in the time of some of the Kings from the Jagelonian Dinasty, but that is now a distant History, they are all integrated and catolic Polish
What's also worth mentioning here is the forgotten 'Urzecze' or 'Urzyce' region. It was stretched alongiside both shores of Wisła (Vistula) to the south from Warsaw. Urzecze was a fertile, rich region which provided Warsaw with crops and various goods trasported through the Vistula river (by 'plisacy' or 'oryle', who also had their own identity). Olęders who settled there at the beginning of 17th century contributed to the separate identity of people who lived in Urzyce, as well as to the economy of this region. The history of this unique microregion was completely forgotten during the communist rule in Poland but was revived in the 21st century.
Living in southwestern Ontario when I was much younger, I meant many Mennonites. At first I had thought that everyone was like my grandma's family that being Mennonites from Pennsylvania. A friend named Fast explained to me that was not the case with his family. They had actually come from Flanders and had gone to the Danzig area in search of land and religious freedom. Later they immigrated to Russia and then to Argentina and then finally to Canada. Please, go give us more programs about this interesting ethnic group.
Hilbert why won't you in future of course make video about Scotish and Istalians. that lived in poland as long as Olenders. Some polish citys until this day have part of them called "Wlochy" since Italians lived there. Greate video!
there is so many polish people with german/dutch/jewish and more surnames nowadys yet we all are raised in polish roman catholic culture it's very interesting and shows the diverse history of poland
Keep in mind that some families germanised their last names during the partitions to avoid persecution and mostly never bothered to change them back after this problem disappeared.
Great video! My nose has been in Prussian church records all day. I witnessed exactly rhe ethnic mix you’re talking about. My gg grandfather was a German Lutheran, (Gruebnau), married to a Dutch Mennonite (Hooge). As baptismal witnesses we have Abrahams, Clossowski, and Vogt. They lived in Schwarzdam, near Elbing.
Not only Pommerania or Wistula region had "Dutch" migrants. Also the area around the Elbe river and East of it towards Berlin. This used to be swampy, wet areas or with floodings and Dutch drainage knowlegde was welcome. There were several waves of people moving in starting from the 12th century, though some could have been from areas which are today part of Belgium. There is region between the Elbe river and Berlin called "Fläming" refering to the Flemish. Some names of villages there resemble Flemish town names. The local dialect (nowadayd nearly distinct) also had many Dutch terms.
Hilbert. Have you heared about Wilamowice? A village in southern Poland whose inhabitants (as well as anybody in Poland) tend to believe in their Frisian ancestry - although in fact they were settled on the German not Olęder Law and came mostly from mid west HRE? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wymysorys_language
Fun fact: a famous polish singer from the seventies, Anna German (Hörmann) was actually a mennonite (mother from russian mennonites, and father from polish mennonites).
Considering how small Netherlands is it's impressive how they were a major power for a long period
Fax
If you think about it, most of the worlds major powers started from a small geographical location. Whether it’s Romans, Mongols, British, etc
@@waynejohnson1786 well mainland Netherlands was always pretty small in most of it's history with pretty flat land that could easily be invaded but they still were a major power in Europe,I think that's pretty impressive
@@peacefulamerican4994 Not true. The Dutch Republic became a major power somewhere around 1609 and lost their major power status around 1750. The Dutch Republic only fell in 1795
Edit: the guy deleted his comment
it still is
As a Pole i love Netherlands. I used to live there for 4 years. One time i meet a girl from Poland who come to their friends living in Den Haag for 2 weeks vacations. Now we are living in Poland, she is my wife we have 2.5 y old son. Netherlands will be allways in my heart
jako polak który mówi po polsku, niderlandzku, angielsku i francusku potwierdzam :D
groeten uit het westland :)
lekker gedaan jonge!! Gratki!
Greetings from Kraków. As a half-Netherlandish reefer, half-Polish wodka myself, this was known to me and as historical tour guide I refer to it a lot. Kudos for the pronounciation!
To this day, there is a town nearby Oświęcim / Bielsko-Biała (not too far west of Kraków) called Wilamowice (Willemsoord) where they still try and uphold the middle-Dietsch language (dubbed 'Wilamowski') and where once per year a festival is held to showcase the Netherlandish roots of the town's settlers. I say Netherlandish, though the migration in the 13th century took place mostly from Western Flanders.
Plus, I dislike the adjective 'Dutch' and the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, London backs me up on this. Also, officially we now have to speak of 'Niderlandy' in Poland (and not 'Holandia' anymore) though in my case both are applicable - but: Netherlands they are and Netherlandish it is.
@HistoryWithHilbert- thanks, if only I had Telegram (not)
Wilamowski is considered a separate language by most
I live in Poland for 29 years as a Holander. Nobody told this ever to me! so THNX
@@elselienvanpunkturijslande1712 zelfs op TH-cam kun je leren via de comments :)
Isnt oswiecim Auschwitz?
There were also Scots immigrants to Poland in the 16th century. I read a book about the Stuart dynasty that mentioned that since Scotland was such a poor country at the time, some Scots moved to Poland for better opportunities. Coincidentally about a week later at work I met a woman whose surname was "Lennox", but when I asked her where her family was from, she said her husband's family was from Poland. I told about what I had just read and we agreed that explained how a family with a quintessential Scots name came to America from Poland.
One of my biggest branches of family genealogy is from Bornholm island Denmark. I was surprised when a Scot fell out of the tree. First I thought it was a mistake but it wasn't. Your information makes perfect sense. Bornholm is last island before entering the Baltic Sea. Being off the coast of Germany/Poland & Sweden it got lots of shipping traffic from all over northern Europe. The record didn't say where the Scot was from and I haven't found what happened to him. Maybe he went to Poland. Could happen. :)
Doesn't sound too credible. Immigrants had their names polonised throughout generations. Plus, Polish basically dropped the letter X some 100 years ago. And yes, people always migrated.
Yes, as a Pole i did DNA heritage test and was surprised I have a bit of Scottish blood :)
Although some have chosen to throw you shade, I personally think it's a great story. Yes, while Polish may not feature "x" in native words, the letter exists, is used in loanwords (and names!)and all Poles recognise it and know how to pronounce it😏
If I had been you in the same scenario, I would have certainly taken an interest in her surname and (husband's) back story and related it to both the fact and coincidence of my recent reading on the topic of the Scots in Poland!😆❤
The Scots were great travellers and explorers and their descendants are all over the world from Russia to Canada throughout Africa and Asia you will find people with Scottish ancestry
As a person with Polish and Dutch parents, the topic of Olęders is insanely fascinating to me - I even jokingly call myself an Olęder, seeing how my Dutch father emigrated to Poland. Great stuff!
I think your claim to Olęderdom is legit
Even as a Polish person I'm quite intrigued by this story. Even tho we had something about this topic in school, it wasn't as covered as here. Love the video.
There is an important part that is ommited at the end of the video though. When speaking of the deportation of Germanics from Poland it is Imperative to Mentiaon that It was Stalin and the Soviet Union in General that enforced that deportation. The Polish government was an unwilling puppet state so the fact that this is not mentoned really does a disservice to this video because for the uninformed the conclusion is that it was Poles that Willingly kicked out The millions of Germans that lived inside modern Poland, meanwhile the entire policy was decided by The Soviet Government, Dominated by Russians and Led by a Georgian.
@@tkc5980 yeah, XX century is in general full of periods in europe, we mostly dont talk about :)
@@tkc5980 So modern-day Poland won't have problems to apologize for the extermination of Germanic culture, right? They wouldn't have problems to pay reparations, right? They wouldn't have problems to return this territory, right?
@@abukafiralalmani m8. Now there are Millions of Polish people living there, Mostly expelled from Poland's Eastern Territoties. For this proposal of yours to make any sense you would have to alter the borders of Europe Like mad hell all the while commiting Genocide by expelling like 10 million people. Not to mention that if someone should pay reparations it should be Russia. The people that now live In Post-Germanic Areas come largely from the East, where Poles were forcefully removed from and directed west. It isn't exactly our fault that The Soviet Union wanted to Punish Germany AND Poland at the same time. But expelling the population now when there is almost noone that even remembers living there left is absolutely idiotic. A the Vast MAjority of the people that would have to be resettled would be born on the territory they were beng expelled from and the Germans that would have to come would have never lived there in the first place. Your Proposal is idiotic and ,makes zero logical sense.
@@abukafiralalmani Your questions have nothing in common with what he wrote. Also, please stop with the senseless revanchism, it's 2023 and we don't need any more major wars in Europe.
Hi, I was born In Pasłęk (ger.Preussisch Holland) currently in Poland. I believe it’s the only town in Poland with a population +20k that has been established by the Dutch in Poland back in 13th century and this fact is widely known by the locals. Although the Mennonites have mostly left the area after 1945, I attended voluntary Dutch lessons in Gdansk back in 2000. The classes were subsidised by Koningin Beatrix. The story of Oląders still lives on in Poland.
I mean, almost a third of the Medieval German settlement in the East (Ostsiedlung) was by Dutch and Flemish settlers, so I doubt your city is the only one. Actually, the East Low German dialects in general still have a huge part of Dutch in them, so much that some Linguists describe them as pidgin languages between dutch and Low German.
I actually grew up in a town in Poland that was built on brine marshlands, which is now a famous spa town (Ciechocinek). There was an Olender settlement (called Słońsk, słony = salty in Polish, because the water there is salty) on the marshlands very close to it. They drained much of the swamps making space for my town to be built. There is still what remained of their protestant cemetery there, which was recently renovated by some local protestant activists. A very interesting video, thanks for making it.
As a descendant of Masurian Olęders I really appreciate this video. Very unique language of Wysymorys could make an interesting as well. Its a mix of Old German and Dutch with Polish spelling spoken in Silesia. It is extremely endangered but there are ongoing projects to preserve it.
Oleders were dutch jews
I would also love to hear about it on this channel
Next episode: the Dutch colonies on Mars and how they seeded the earth with life billions of years ago
Dutch/Frisian
how they build a deadstar 🤣
@@KaasSchaaf666 how the dutch/frisians built and destroyed both deathstars!
He already did that episode! But he didn't explain how the Frarsians came to Mars...
Nice try, but the Dutch settled down on estates that had been vacated by their previous occupants. So the Poles beat the Dutch to Mars
Unfortunately our historical awareness is a bit twisted because of many years of Russian propaganda in communist times, so videos like that cover unpopular topics are so valuable. When I think of Polish - Dutch relations in times of the I Republic, I always think of admiral Arend Dickmann who was a Dutchman serving in Polish Navy and who died in the battle of Oliwa defeating Swedes. It wasn't big battle, but our naval history was never rich, so it's still our biggest battle and victory :D
Thanks for this video, I'd love to see more like this!
Arend Dickmann was German from Dithmarschen, unfortunately it is another type of post-war antigerman propaganda :)
@@adanbareth_ the stronger myth is the hard border between the Netherlands and Germany, it always used to be a soft border or none depending on the time.
@@adanbareth_ how is that? Polish, English, and Dutch wikipedia says he was a Dutchman
nie pierdol
My grandmother had the surname Holland. her lineage goes back to a dutch farm in Norway.
Dutch people seem to have been everywhere...
they were traders and seafarers so that is quite logical, but it is still cool to think about!
They were relatively wealthy and produced a lot of kids, that swerved out all over the world.
And they loved freedom, so most of them went their own way. The VOC (Dutch East India Company) didn't want Dutch as settlers because they would not accept authority and soon start their own independent settlement.
@@dutchman7623 That's a cool fact.
@@Varangoi Yep, many Dutch integrated with the local population, keeping a few good things from their culture. Rarely you'll find Dutch neighborhoods or villages.
They didn't clutter or keep their language, but soon became successful locals, by combining the best of both worlds.
Few exceptions are religious groups, they tended to stick together and live according their believes in a small community.
But the large majority just dissolved into locals, though millions emigrated to US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many more countries. And adapted their family names to local customs.
@@ysbrandd I think even though I'm American and general claimant ancestry is English I recall seeing Dutch, Flemish and possibly Frisian merchants in my genealogy. Which surprised me when my ancestry lineage found that. Well 1.500 ancestors i guess such a thing was inevitable.
This is such an interesting topic, thank you for covering it! Even today, you can find some random Dutch people in Poland. My classmate was half-Dutch as his father was from the Netherlands but I also managed to meet a Dutch family living literally in the middle of nowhere in a Polish village that had 100 inhabitants at best. Till this day cannot wrap my head around it but they seemed very happy with their life so good for them.
it is very busy here. people tend to move away to buy some land and raise a family. i might do it myself soon.
Fun fact about the painting mentioned at 26:27 is that it's also a hidden act of defiance against the Polish King. The God's Hand covers the tip of the tower of the Danzig rathaus. The tip had a golden sculpture of Zygmunt II August, King of Poland. Covering the King symbolized the freedom of the city of Gdańsk.
Gdansk, Kakow and Lwow had the position of Royal Cities in the Kingdom of Poland with many special commercial privileges or general "business" privileges, and moreover, members of the self-government of these cities, especially the mayor and his council, had a similar status to the nobility and could participate in the debates and votes of the Polish parliament. And the Polish nobility already from the 15th century felt free and almost equal to the king. Special royal privileges meant that in Poland the typical feudal gradation from previous centuries was abandoned and every member of the nobility (as well as a high official of the self-government in Royal Cities) was equal to princes or other aristocracy, and the king (and parliament) had to take their opinion into account. In Polish history, it is called "golden freedom of the nobility".
As a Dutch I love poland! Jeszcze Polska nie zginela ❤
Greetings from Poland :)
Having spent my last summer holidays in Friesland (in Berlikum/Berltsum precisely) and ejoying them very much I have now only good feelings about the Netherlands, their people, landscape and history (thanks to seeing many interesting museums). This video is of great interest to me even if I knew a lot about settlers from the Low Countries in Poland in the centuries past.
Aww 🥰 thank you! Right back at you!
In Żuławy Wiślane there are old mennonites cementaries, they lived there to the second world war. It is not a town but a natural region near the Wisła River Delta. There were alot of small villages with fairly good soil. They helped with drainage here, mainly building floodbanks which still stands today. Huge part of my familly history is connected to those lands, thats why I comment :) Nice video, Greetings for all of the Holendrzy watching this vid!
Ciekawe urodziłem się w Elblągu A moje nazwisko pochodzi z Sobolowa
That is what my grandparents called the Grosses Werder. May of my ancestors farmed land there for centuries. Now we are scattered across the globe. I am in Uruguay, nice to hear there is still some memories of the Mennonites how lived there. Kind regards!!
My friend from Muenster Germany only could understand the old local German dialect, that her father spoke with his friends, only after she learned Dutch.
It is probably because dutch is the west germanic language that changed least compared to proto-germanic so it has sounds that died out everywhere else. maybe they have a dialect where some souds survived and made it difficult to understand if you only know german.
@@ysbrandd nah, it's bc plattdüttsch is a dying dialect, rarely spoken by the younger generations or the people they are mainly listening to
in the Netherlands it's of course still simply their language which you just can't escape
I can understand and if forced also almost fluently speak platt......often did it when visiting the Netherlands .....
@@feldgeist2637 Plattduutsch is not a dialect. a dialect of what? Hochdeutsch? Standard Hochdeutsch itself is a mongrel mix between actual hochdeutsch in southern Germany and the Plattduutsch language.
Plattduutsch on the other hand is much older than Hochdeutsch, and with enough Plattduutsch skill you can even understand a few segments from old Saxon or so. hence almost all Germanic peoples have it easier understanding Plattdeutsch than the Mischling language replacing it. standard Hochdeutsch is a descendant of Plattduutsch.
Greetings from Gdańsk. As a Kashubian raised in Werder (Żuławy Region) I know this stories very well, and I'm happy that people from other countries are interested in my region history :)
My mom's parents and their ancestors come mostly from that region. Mennonites who then emigrated to Uruguay in 1948.
0:45
PL: Cześć polscy ludzie. Ten filmik jest dla dziadka Zuzi. Dziękuję za czekanie i mam nadzieję że film Ci się spodoba. Dziękuje bardzo.
EN: Hello polish people. This video is for Zusia's grandfather. Thank you for waiting and I hope you will like the video. Thank you so much.
Not Zusia, but Susan/Suzy
@@eava708 Zuzanna ;-)
@@justmynickname I mean the English version of this name
@@eava708 you don't have to translate the name, it can stay in Polish version
@asjevon1826 I know but he translated it, and he did it wrong. "Zusia" is not english version, but Suzy
The Uruguayan flag by the end caught me off guard. I knew many Poles went to Uruguay after the war but I didn't know they were Mennonites or that they were descendants of Dutch moved to Poland. This was a very interesting piece of history! I loved these stories that are lesser known but equally fascinating. Thanks for the video!
Well they werent polish, they considered themselves germans migrating from the russian empire,
There were different groups. The Mennonites came mostly from the region around Gdansk ( dutch origin ) and Lwow ( now Lviv Ukraine, these were of swiss origin ). The ones from Dansk spoke mostly german the ones from Low were mostly bilingual in German and Polish. But here in Uruguay there where also other polish immigrants not of Mennonite origin. We had neighbors like that and my grandpa would speak polish with them no problem. So there's not one origin for polish immigrants in Uruguay. Poles, Jews, German/Dutch and German/Swiss Mennonites all came from current or historic Polish territories and spoke polish as a first or second language.
Great video Hilbert. As a political scientist with obsession with history I'm amazed how you keep finding pieces of history that I'd never heard of before and that are so interesting.
My dad came from the Neumark, which was Brandenburg and later Pomerania. He used to tell me that there were some "Holländer" in the ancestry.
I never could really imagine anything other than a random family of Dutch people moving to Poland but never thought there was that much going on. I remember he told me that the Polish and German people didn't really mix where he lived. I found that our family name is existing in the Netherlands too.
So thanks for clearing that for me! All the best from Berlin 😃
Great video and amazing channel! In my home village in Poland, there is a street called Holendry, and in a next village also a street named Olędry :) Great piece of history. Thank you!
Dobra robota i nareszcie wiem dlaczego trochę mówisz po polsku. 😉 Very good video and you can even make a fun of yourself (a bit). Fun fact, one of two types of old windmills in Poland is called "Holender". It was popular in the West of Poland till the 19th century. Basically in the lands taken later by Prussia/later Germany. However, there were also some, not so common, "Dutchman" windmills in Central and Eastern Poland as well as parts of today's West Ukraine. One of these Dutch inspired windmills is now in the "skansen" (open-air museum of traditions and folklore, for these who don't know) in Lublin, city where I live. It was originally build in interwar period in one of villages of Lublin voivodship by Polish people but with the solid Dutch inspiration I guess. There were very sparse "Olender" settlements set within the region of this voivodship (later Russian governate) up till the mid 19th century.
There is only one skansen and it's in Stockholm. - a swede.
@@morriskaller3549 I know about it. The official name is different but people call it "skansen" between themselves. It became the eponym of open air folklore museum. The popular name has been used for many decades and was never meant to offend anyone.
@@morriskaller3549 Yeah, why say "autobus nocny linii numer trzy odjeżdża spod przystanku Muzeum Wsi Lubelskiej" when you can say "nocna trójka rusza spod skansenu" 🥴
@@annakobuk3618 Do you happen to know of any sources about the mentioned Dutch settlers around Lublin as mentioned in the video and in your comment? It's easy to find evidence of Dutch settlement in areas such as Pomorskie, Podlaskie, Mazowieckie, Śląsk; evidence in Lubelszczyzna and Red Ruthenia are harder to come by. If only place names all gave away their origins as quickly as "Niemce".
31:40 LOOK MOM, IM FAMOUS. Im glad you enjoyed my comment mate, vexillology is my one artistic passion, so it was quite fun to see you having fun with flags!
Ik weet niet precies waar ik het gehoord heb, maar ik heb begrepen dat tijdens de grote ontginning in met name Holland het allerlei mensen, ook uit niet Hollandse geweste naar Holland trokken om daar een stuk moeras droog te leggen en om vervolgens daar als vrij-boer op te kunnen leven. Het lijkt er op dat een soortgelijke aanpakt in Polen tijdens een later tijdseenheid gebruikt is. Ps. Mijn voorouders hebben rond 1550 zon soort stuk moeras gepacht van de kerk en zijn daarop vrij-boer geworden. Dat stuk moeras was veengebied of veen gebied en daardoor heeft heel wat later een andere latere voorouder zichzelf Feenstra genoemd - komend van het feen. Wat de Friese taal gebruikte nauwelijks de letter V maar eerder de letter F. Friso Feenstra
What an awesome video, Thank you Hilbert and keep it up!
Hello Hilbert. At last a video my Polish friend from work can relate more to. My uncle was a UK POW in Silesia, where a friend from school was from. My only previous understanding was via that, from old maps and from history for wargames, which this peaceful settlement never featured in, so this was nice to learn.
As a Pole I am always happy to see Polish related videos! Dziękuje!
amazing work as always
Really cool stuff! I'm always learning things I never knew before here on your channel, thank you!
great video. i love how you used so many languages(i didnt need the subtitles for the dutch and german texts). I also love the flag (im an expert on vexilology) .
Love your obscure knowledge videos..
That was fascinating and informative. For several years I've wanted to learn more about these "Hollander" villages, because one of my grandmothers came from a German village on the Vistula River in Russian-ruled Poland, which I've assumed was one of them. One of Grandma's cousins thought the family may originally have been Dutch, but I wonder if she wasn't getting that from the term "Hollander" or (Olęnder), as the family was all German Lutheran, and the village inhabitants are so-identified in the census of the Russian empire in the 1890s. (Grandma was born just a little too late for her own name to appear in the census.) One of Grandma's uncles had served in the Russian cavalry and could write in Russian, but he came to the U.S. (as did many others of the village) a few years before WWI started. Grandma had described three villages adjacent to each other, and it took me a while to figure out just where they were before we went to see the area in 2018, as she had given the German names for everything. She had spoken of going to school with Polish and Russian children, and said she and her friends walked home with two Russian girls, but they didn't speak to each other, and then the Russian girls went off to their home in the woods. (The area away from the river is forested now, too.) But I wish one of us had asked her how that worked with children of three different languages and three different religions. The language used in schools was often contested in German-ruled parts of Poland, and I wouldn't expect this to have been different. The Polish village of the three is still going strong. Grandma's village is now mostly underwater from a dam reservoir built in the 60s.
Do you know of any English-language books about these Olęnder communities? Much of what I've learned about them has been from a couple of books by William Hagen.
the area you are describing might be Volhynia. That woul be in german Wolhinien or something similar
@@Superrichy261985 I think Volhynia is further to the east, or southeast. My grandmother's village was between Włocławek and Płock, but on the west side of the river. That area might be part of Masovia, but I'm not sure whether Masovia usually included any of the west side of the river. Grandma called her village Grossdorf, but that didn't help much because it just means big village. But we found her brother's naturalization application, which gave it as Gross Dembe. There is more than one Dęb Wielke in Poland, but Grandma had said her village was near Rötslavik (as my father had written it down) and Dęb Wielke is part of a cluster of three villages, just as Grandma had told us. The Russian empire census for Dęb Maly, which is adjacent to Dęb Wielke, is full of surnames of distant relatives of mine and other people I know from the small town in Minnesota where some of these people ended up. They all spoke German, but there are some Polish-sounding names among them, and one of Grandma's great-uncles, one with a stereotypical German surname, seems to have told the American census taker that his first language was Polish.
Whether there were other German villages near Dęb Wielke and Dęb Maly, I don't know, and am not sure how to find out, either. Maybe I could figure it out with the help of that Russian empire census, but that would be tedious work.
That's really interesting. I've been researching the history of my family too recently and I had to search in archive census which is all written in russian cyrrylic cursive 😭 it's terrible.
Btw I have a German sounding surname in my ancestry "Linder". Might it be also a Dutch surname? Or rather Austrian, as I am from southeastern Poland?
@@askarufus7939 I've known people with the surname Linder, but that was long ago. I assumed it was a German name, because I grew up in German communities or in communities with a strong German Lutheran presence, so I just became familiar with a lot of German names around me and tended to distinguish them from others. But I don't really know. The old ethnic distinctions were going away, and people of my generation tended not to make a big deal of them.
This was beyond fascinating. My Dutch husband loves all these videos about arcane Dutch history. I come from a Jewish community with strong cohesion and it was interesting to see how long a community can remain intact while moving around.
Thanks for this. There are a lot of Mennonites in this area of Canada and you helped me understand another bit of their history.
Thank you very much Hilbert for this interesting history I never ever heard ofit.
We stayed at the end of february Szczyrk for wintersport and we loved it.
Bedankt voor het interessante verhaal, groeten uit Zeeland.😀 👋
I'd like to hear you speak Scandinavian languages. Maybe a video about the Hanseatic league and Bergen, specifically it's dialect, being influenced by German and Dutch or Scanias dialect being Danish influenced.
Or Finland-Swedish. Some Swedish dialects in Finland are the most Conservative versions of Swedish
Amazing
I am an architect and I am currently building a house near the village of Cieciszew ( Konstancin Jeziorna district ) and what is a quiet interesting, part of this village has been inhabited by Olęders back then and there are original Olęder style houses to this day ( in designig proces i am obligaded to follow to the certain extend the historic architecture :) )
Kaz Olszaniecki Poland
keep preparing next pieces
Great video! I thoroughly enjoyed it. I would love to hear more about the communities Tha moved abroad to North and South America. Also, a video on the language would be amazing. Thank you for all your hard work!
Wonderful information and video.Thanks a lot, from an elderly Dutch born living in Australia.
I have not expected to see "Olędrzy" on TH-cam. I grew up in Mazovia and I remember one school trip when they showed us countryside typical for the region and explained how Olędrzy had infuenced the traditions. I remembered they introduced hedgerows of willow trees as windbreaks and probably also for flood management.
They never told us the circumstances which made them move and how they disappeared (although it might have been too much for 7 year olds), so many thanks for the explanation! Oh, and they said that they already settled in the Middle Ages, but it might be my brain misremembering things from almost 30 years ago :-)
Very cool video again. I love to watch them, maybe you can do a video about those people or other Dutch people who went to Ukraine like you said. Or maybe about the Dutch and the Danes. I read somewhere that they(we) are very close related as well with the English.
enjoyed your perspective of the mennonites, both sides of my family lived in prussia/poland and were part of the migration to ukraine/russia, then to north america (Kansas) in late 19th century. I’m also a descendant of Adam Wybe (wiebe) of 17th century Gdansk who was a Dutch engineer from Harlingen Friesland. Hope to visit Friesland and Poland some day!
Harlingen is a very pictureque town worth visiting especially in summer.
Amazing video! I learned about my ancestors through a "Narrative Ahnentafel Report", my last known mennonite ancestor was born in the Netherlands around 1480-1500AD, then the report has Mennonite ancestors in the 1600's in Danzig Poland. So this Video was very interesting to me, also I love the flag you designed on the left!
Suriname, New York, India, Indonesia, Japan, Poland.... Dem Dutchies are everywhere 😳
17:35 After a single attempt at chatting in Plautdietsch -- as a Dutch speaker, I'd love to watch a video on the language. The Mennonites I came across in Ontario were very friendly, lovely people. We found Plautdietsch to be mutually unintelligible with Dutch, but were able to exchange some pleasantries using German.
Meeting some South Africans at the Royal Alcázar was much easier. I mistook their Afrikaans for "a Flemish dialect I'm unfamiliar with" at first so we could easily understand each other, even if I couldn't catch every word. The only confusion we had was about rennen/hollen, and that was easily resolved with a bit of mime.
Couple of years ago I took part in a survey of German Olęder settlements in Greater Poland. They weren't Mennonites, but Evangelicals (the legal Olęders, not the ethnic ones). To this day there is a small population of German Olęder descendants living near Pyzdry in Greater Poland. Another group moved to Australia after Prussian imposed religious regulation in 19th century. There is also a group of people at the uni devoted to the research on Greater Poland Olęders and local museums are involved in preserving their heritage too.
Ik heb meer video's van je gezien. Interessant, zondemeer. Ook taalkundig historisch. Naast deze stroom is er ook de Hanze route waar ook Gedansk een belangrijke rol speelt. Veel Nederlanders hebben zich gevestigd om weer handel te drijven. 👍
This is a fantastic video - I learned so much!
have you ever considered making one about the androsi-eraklonian migrations? I hear professor daniel griffin has an excellent monograph on the subject. Many thanks for your great work!!
Thank you for this film. Greetings to you and to your girlfriend 😊
Just like her I am Polish and I also had a dutch surname in my family. My last great-grandmother who was born in the northern Poland, near Chełmno, told me that her mother's surname was 'van Bleryck' (I might spell it incorrectly, but my grandma owns some kind of documents which shows the right spelling). That makes me around 1/32 Olęder 💪
Congrats, it's such in interesting video! I've seen these "Olędry" village names many times, but I only knew that we had some Dutch communities in the past and I vaguely remembered that they sought here religious freedom and had skills to deal with water and to dry wetlands.
About the name - Olędrzy is plural, and it may sound strange to an English ear (because - how and why?), but the singular form is Olęder, and the plural form is just made according to one of usual patterns.
Great stuff, thanks for the deep research and sharing!
I would love to hear more about the history of the Mennonites/Anabaptists, both the Swiss-German Anabaptists and the "Russian Mennonites". I have grown up in and still apart of the Mennonite church, so I am aware of some of the history, but I am always interested in learning more. Among Mennonites in the US there is some cultural distinction between the Swiss/Southern German Mennonites, who later became the "Pennsylvania Dutch", and the Dutch/ Northern German Mennonites that we refer to as the "Russian Mennonites"
Very interesting subject! Unknown to me!
Being from Gdańsk I had to watch all the way till the end. Interesting stuff 👍
I myself am not of Olęder origin, but my ancestors also came from Germany, from an even earlier migration. The population descending from the people who migrated here at Polish-Hungarian border in ~12th century were called Głuchoniemcy, unfortunately they were fully linguistically assimilated, and I think their language wasn't documented enough to be reconstructed today.
Sooo the Dutch took the Indonesian wok to Poland ?
I'm Polish, but NEVER heard about it..
Good point of this fact is that now it's fair - I'm on immigration in Netherlands xD
I survived this video! Infinitely more interesting than my CAD assignment I’ve been doing while listening.
Nooit geweten dit. Super interessant! Ik heb Friese, Noorse en Pruisische voorouders. En geloof nu te weten waarom ik mij zo aangetrokken voel tot deze gebieden. Leuk dat je ook iets prive laat zien. Ben ook wel benieuwd naar meer info over de taal. Love&Blessings from( Z-)Holland
I am a distant descendant of these settlers. Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, Raków village.
Nearby there is a village called Holendry.
My y-dna haplogrup (passed always from father to son ) is R-Z159 most frequent in Netherlands.
Old Poland was ethnicly diversified and tolerant country. I hope this heritage prevails. I knew man with Olender surname. Great episode !
This is amazing and so good to learn about as a Pole! I never heard about Olenders, probably it has never been taught in my school, or I simply slept during the class that treated this subject.
So, thank you so much for letting me know some interesting bits of my country's history!
One small request pls: at the 10:14 when you show a picture of three peasants/serfs women you used a photograph of russian people. This is made by famous russian photographer and chemist Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky and these are great inputs into worlds history, but they depict russians not Poles. This mismatching our ethnicities is really hurtful in 2023 when russia is waging its war on Ukrainians - another nation that is also Slavic and is also very often mislabeled as russians. So, with all respect for your work and the outcome it makes, please don't use pictures of russians to depict other Slavs.
I knew about them since I started studying agriculture and got interested in the history of agriculture in Poland. Many modern day breeds of farm animals in Poland have a huge input of Olęders' animals blood. In Polish villages it was a huge sensation if some nearby nobleman happened to buy Olender cow or Olender pig. People from 20 km radius used to come to him to ask if they could breed this animal with their animals.
@@askarufus7939 This is fascinating. Was it something in the breeds Olenders brought with them that was better or people were just seeking novelty?
I seriously would love to have our history classes focused mor eon these kind of things rather than neverending wars and generals. I know wars and political machinations are extremely important for the understanding of the history of the country, but stories of lives of ordinary people is so much more fascinating tbh.
@@jazy3091 They were much more productive. The best cow breed in the world is to this day a Holstino-Fresian cow. The typical white-black cows we see everywhere are either pure breed HF cows or have at least 25% of it in their ancestry (Polska Czarno-biała). Polish cows are Polska Czerwona- the most "native" one and "Białogrzbieta" which as far as I remember was also brought here from the Dutch regions but much earlier that HFs.
When it comes to pigs they have much much more "local" genes as peasants used to reproduce them by letting them go freely into the woods to pair with wild boars. It was a common practice until like 1920's. The most fancy pigs were the british ones so they were used to make the local ones "better". Nowadays the best polish pig is Wielka Biała Polska which is basically a copy of british Large White pig. The difference is that Large White has 5% of british boars and WBP has a 5% of polish boars and 95% of Large White 😅
i knew about them because i literally have surname 'Olender'
Someone was sleeping through history classes 🙃
That intro in Polish was adorable ngl. Zuzia's grandpa will definitely be happy.
This is an excellent video with loads of utmost interesting information. Thank you!
Świetny film i kopalnia ciekawych informacji! Dziękuję!
Pozdrowienia z Krakowa 😃
Nice research and presentation.
Thank You!
I read a pretty famous Polish novel recently (partly bc of a vaguely remembered tv-series in my childhood) "The Farmers"? Not sure what the title is in English, or ofthe author, Henryk Sienkewizc?
Anyway one of the conflicts was that the local big landowner brought in "Germans" to break new land, that the village wanted to buy, I guess they might have been "Olenders"?
Hilbert, dank voor je documentaire. Ik had iets meer realtime foto’s van de situaties zoals huizen, plaatsen waar ze woonde, iets veel tekeningen. Succes dank voor je inzet. Max
Next episode; Lipka Tatars in Poland, please?
I live in Gdańsk, or as some of you may recognize this city - Danzig, and I've hears that our downtown has been designed by some Dutch architects. That's why it's pretty similar to many Dutch cities downtowns.
More like by Polish architects in the 50s trying to make it look like it was designed by Dutch architects.
If you are from Holland, and you visiting Poland 🇵🇱 i recommend Etnographic Park in Wiączemin Polski near Płock, there is very good open air museum about Olęnders 👍. Na Razie Hilbert...
Hi 😀
I normally subscribe to handel after watching 5+ vids. You got my full attention after just one 👍
Great job and waiting for more 😀
5:45 great accidental pun "pole/pull factors"
This is some cool info.
There is the Scots in Poland, if I remember rightly, a "Skot" is a nickname for a traveling salesman, especially of books, and it comes from the Scots in Poland. If your last name is "Maciej" or an equivalent of it, then you probably have Scottish roots.
Many scottish came to russia, lithuania and poland via norway and sweden where they were mercenaries, there is still today scottish family names in the baltic and russia you can see,
No. Skot is an archaic term for cattle. The term survived through names of villages/towns. In the early middle ages in Poland there was no feudalism by the western standards. Instead, each (former) ducal seat had a number of settlements within a radius of approx. 50 km that provided a particular kind of service or goods. And they were named after the function they fulfilled. If a place is called Skotniki it means that in the middle ages the duke or king would be getting his cattle from there.
Descendants of the Olendrers still live in Australia. In the 1990s, a group of them came to Poland. There was even a long TV report about it. They visited the lands where their ancestors lived. An interesting fact is that they do not consider themselves Dutch, but rather Germans. Today, this community has almost died out.
Thanks, It was do good! But there's one thing, that is missing here - One od the symbols od Poland, typical for Polish landscape is "ogłowiona wierzba nad strumykiem/rowem/kanałkiem" („shaved" willow on the bank of a drainage ditch) - both come from the Dutch/Frisian/Mennonite/Flemish culture.
I onse knew a polish woman with Lastname Olendrovicz (Holenderin), she had red hair and said that her ancestors settled from h-Olend in Poland in the time of some of the Kings from the Jagelonian Dinasty, but that is now a distant History, they are all integrated and catolic Polish
Im living in a small town in Poland which was in Dutch possession. I've always wondered why :D
Dzięki ziomuś!
What's also worth mentioning here is the forgotten 'Urzecze' or 'Urzyce' region. It was stretched alongiside both shores of Wisła (Vistula) to the south from Warsaw. Urzecze was a fertile, rich region which provided Warsaw with crops and various goods trasported through the Vistula river (by 'plisacy' or 'oryle', who also had their own identity). Olęders who settled there at the beginning of 17th century contributed to the separate identity of people who lived in Urzyce, as well as to the economy of this region. The history of this unique microregion was completely forgotten during the communist rule in Poland but was revived in the 21st century.
Living in southwestern Ontario when I was much younger, I meant many Mennonites. At first I had thought that everyone was like my grandma's family that being Mennonites from Pennsylvania. A friend named Fast explained to me that was not the case with his family. They had actually come from Flanders and had gone to the Danzig area in search of land and religious freedom. Later they immigrated to Russia and then to Argentina and then finally to Canada. Please, go give us more programs about this interesting ethnic group.
Thank you very much .... I found the video really interesting (= NZ history and language geek)
Very interesting 👌
In local dialects was called Olandry
Some settled down in Wilkowice as well
Plus was 30 thousand people from Scotland
i love it! please turn down the music though, it’s competing with your narration! 😊
never knew that stuff about Matt Groening but it does make sense onto why milhouse has a dutch background
Incredibly up to date map.
Nice, greet from Poland
Ja mieszkam w Toruniu, niedaleko Wielkiej Nieszawki, gdzie znajduje się Olenderski Park Etnograficzny👍
Hilbert why won't you in future of course make video about Scotish and Istalians. that lived in poland as long as Olenders. Some polish citys until this day have part of them called "Wlochy" since Italians lived there. Greate video!
Polish villages called "Wlochy" have nothing to do with Italians. Wlochy in Warsaw got its name after a previous owner
there is so many polish people with german/dutch/jewish and more surnames nowadys yet we all are raised in polish roman catholic culture it's very interesting and shows the diverse history of poland
Keep in mind that some families germanised their last names during the partitions to avoid persecution and mostly never bothered to change them back after this problem disappeared.
Great video! My nose has been in Prussian church records all day. I witnessed exactly rhe ethnic mix you’re talking about. My gg grandfather was a German Lutheran, (Gruebnau), married to a Dutch Mennonite (Hooge). As baptismal witnesses we have Abrahams, Clossowski, and Vogt. They lived in Schwarzdam, near Elbing.
Fills in some of the holes in my personal history. My 9 yr. old Grandad hopped on a ship with the rest of his family in Odessa & travelled to Canada
Dzień dobry , I really love netherlands and dutch people , feel welcome in Poland on vacation , fine tag :)
Not only Pommerania or Wistula region had "Dutch" migrants. Also the area around the Elbe river and East of it towards Berlin. This used to be swampy, wet areas or with floodings and Dutch drainage knowlegde was welcome. There were several waves of people moving in starting from the 12th century, though some could have been from areas which are today part of Belgium. There is region between the Elbe river and Berlin called "Fläming" refering to the Flemish. Some names of villages there resemble Flemish town names. The local dialect (nowadayd nearly distinct) also had many Dutch terms.
Hilbert. Have you heared about Wilamowice? A village in southern Poland whose inhabitants (as well as anybody in Poland) tend to believe in their Frisian ancestry - although in fact they were settled on the German not Olęder Law and came mostly from mid west HRE?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wymysorys_language
Fun fact: a famous polish singer from the seventies, Anna German (Hörmann) was actually a mennonite (mother from russian mennonites, and father from polish mennonites).
Hast kreas dien hear Hilbert ;). Ik sjoch graach nei dyn fideo's.
16:50 Some Olęders were also Lowland Scots. And therefore spoke Scots, a Germanic language not to be confused with the Celtic Scots-Gaelic