sentences:  In 1871, Prussia, including Rybnik, merged into the German Empire, the first modern German nation state.At this point, Poland had already ceased to exist as an independent state, having been divided between Prussia, Austria and Russia in the Third Partition of Poland of 1795.With the intensification of Germanization and anti-Polish politics in the German Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century, the ethnically mixed region of Upper Silesia became affected by growing tensions between German and Polish nationalists.