The Prussian authorities hoped that the town with then 50% Polish population (by 1867), would gradually become a centre of Germanization of Silesia.
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff was born in Markowitz (Markowice), a small village near Hohensalza (Inowrocław), in the then Province of Posen (at present part of the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship), to a Germanized family of distant Polish ancestry.