Pomerania

Pomerania is the Latin and English name, Pomorze is the Polish name, Pommern is the German name of a land or province which before World War II belonged to Germany. It is situated at the Baltic Sea on both sides of the Oder river and reaches nearly to the Vistula river in land recorded in 98 AD by Tacitus as Magna Germania. Since after 1000 AD it has been recorded as Pomerania.

In the early 12th century Otto of Bamberg converted Pomerania to christianity.

In 1181 Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich II invested duke Bogislaw with land, later called Pomerania, thereby making it directly subject to the emperor (reichsunmittelbar), without another intermediate lord.

In 1231 emperor Friedrich II invested the Ascanian Brandenburg Margrave with the dukedome of Pomerania.

After the extinction of the Ascanian Brandenburg Line several other ruling houses were invested with the government of Pomerania by the empire.

After 1945 the eastern part of Pomerania, according to an agreement signed in Potsdam in 1945 by United Kingdom, United States of America and Soviet Union, was given under the temporary administration of Poland until a peace treaty. There was never any peace treaty, but Willy Brandt and Helmut Kohl signed bilateral agreements with Poland according to which Germany recognizes the current factual reality of the Oder/Neisse Line.

Eastern part of Pomerania is since 1945 a geographical and historical region in Poland that encompasses three Polish voivoidships : Zachodniopomorskie, Pomorskie and Kujawsko-Pomorskie.

The western part of Pomerania situated to the west of the Oder/Neisse Line became a part of the German GDR, later German Bundesland Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.