"The creation of the 'Polish Corridor' running from Upper Silesia to Danzig thus left East Prussia as a bleeding chunk of Germany between the Vistula and the Niémen. Was Danzig really a free city? Or was it actually a Polish captive? And was that also the true situation of East Prussia? To assert their claims, the Poles sought to monopolize the Danzig postal service; at the same time, they constructed a rival port, Gdynia, to divert commerce away from the Free City. Danzigers who wished to travel to Germany (including Prussia) required a Polish transit visa. The poisoned atmosphere generated by such petty sources of friction is well preserved in Günter Grass's Danzig trilogy, The Tin Drum, Cat and Mouse and Dog Years. It is no accident that the most memorable fictional personification of the German catastrophe, the stunted drummer Oscar Matzerath, is born in Danzig in 1924."
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Academics from GermanyPoets from GermanyEssayists from GermanyPlaywrights from GermanyNovelists from Germany
Original Language: English
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Sources
Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), pp. 163-164
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnter_Grass
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Günter Grass
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