The focus on land ownership was motived by the German "völkisch" idea that "where the German plough will plow, there German fatherland will arise". The settlement was to isolate Polish settlements in German inhabited areas by surrounding them with German settlements and spread German ones into Polish dominated areas to isolate specified Polish villages from the rest. The German settlements were to be always concentrated to provide a "barrier" to Polishness. While the Commission bought mostly German land, this was not interfering with the goal of increase of German presence, and buying a large tract of land from a single German owner to distribute it among many German colonists was perceived as beneficial to the goal. Of the colonists, 96.9% were Protestants as the Prussian authorities believed that ‘the true German is a Protestant". The whole practice was new and unheard in Europe. Besides Ostflucht, the German government justified its action to the international community by labeling Poles as internal enemies of the state. Those attempts did not achieve much success. Bismarck himself said that the Poles who find themselves without land should "move to Morocco".
