Neopietyzm a postawy narodowe. Ruch gromadkarski na Mazurach w XIX i XX w. (do 1956) Część I

The Small Group Movement in East Prussia, in spite of some external inspiration, was an original product of the local Masurian (and Lithuanian) community, deeply embedded in it and reflecting its religious needs. Its initial radicalizing effect, however, created local distrust, but this was not characteristic of the Movement as such, but only some of its outer forms. Nevertheless, the Small Group Members, unless they denied it of their own will, remained the rightful members of their communities, and were not excluded from them. Modernization processes in the second half of the nineteenth century, marked by significant association trends, reached the community Movement as well, the expression of which was the establishment of the East Prussian Prayer Association in 1885 and other organizations originating from it. The source of these divisions were matters stemming from social tensions, general cultural changes and the desire to take up the challenge. However this Movement, remained in a large measure a bulwark of conservatism and multilinguistic conceptions of the Prussian state, the latter dating back to the period prior to 1871, although the desire to preserve old traditions (principally to maintain the Polish and Lithuanian languages as lingua sacra) did not mean resistance to the state. On the contrary, according to the criteria of the Movement, they acknowledged strictly every authority, unless it contravened common moral rules.