Category:Walddeutsche (Polish Uplanders)

English: Walddeutsche Germans (German: Walddeutsche, or Taubdeutsche, Polish: Głuchoniemcy; meaning "speechless people" (from Polish głuchy - deaf, i.e. unable to communicate or głusz from wood), sometimes simply called Polish Uplanders and Polish Germans, the name for a group of people, mostly of German origin, who settled during the 14th-17th century on the territory of present-day Sanockie Pits, Poland, a region which was previously only sparsely inhabited because the land was difficult to farm.

According to Wacław Maciejowski, writing in 1858, the people did not understand German but called themselves Głuchoniemcy. Wincenty Pol wrote in 1869 that their attire was similar to that of the Hungarian and Transylvanian Germans and that their main occupation was farming and weaving. He stated that in some areas, the people were of Swedish origin, however, they all spoke flawlessly in a Małopolska dialect of Polish. In 1885 Józef Szujski wrote that the Gluchoniemcy spoke only Polish, but there were traces of a variety of original languages which testified to the fact that, at the time of their arrival, the term Niemiec was applied to "everyone".

The people inhabited the central and the southern half of the Beskids in Poland, including the Ciężkowickie, Strzyżowskie and Dynowskie Plateau as well as Jasło-Sanok Pits, from the White River (Biała) in the west to the San River in the east. They represent the component population groups inhabiting the Subcarpathian Voivodeship.