TheOther: Well, better a few wars here and there than 50% of your entire population wiped out within a short period of time
Germany lost 30% of its population during the 30 years war.
TheOther: Who was leading the catholic church in Poland (other than the pope, I mean)? The king? Would he be able to convert the whole clergy to the orthodox church?
The local archbishop, however the real power rested with the king and the magnates, the church was powerfull but it could not and did not get uppity without the consent of the great houses or the crown and untill late XVI century none of them agreed to any meddling, religion was to be a free choice and that was it.
TheOther: David, you seem to have missed the point. The whole discussion was about whether Germany was a 'craphole' between 1300 and 1600, as Sok said, or not.
I'll be more specific, life in Germany for an average German subject of any country in the HRE was massively less attractive then the life of an average peasant or citizen in Poland.
Polish subjects had easier access to jobs, were far better protected by law, were not exploited by nobles, paid smaller taxes and didnt know what hunger was, no one abused you because of your race or religion and there was no inquisition.
In addition it was much easier to establish a business since Poland from 1333 to approximately 1600 was experiencing an explosive economic boom, education was also much cheaper and easy to access since before 1550 there existed no class restrictions.
Why do you think so many Germans, Jews, Tartars, Ruthenians, Scots, Irish, Hungarians and Czechs settled in Poland? In comparison to medieval-medium reinessance Poland every other country looked crap from the perspective of a common man, and Germany was particulary unpleasant to live in unless you were a rich noble, probably the only worse place would be medieval England.
Matyjasz: The problem here is that the subject matter is to vague to discuss it properly
Its not vague at all, we know quite a lot about those times, including the prices of shoes or loaves of bread in specific polish and german cities.
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