Dear Hugo42,
please note that Germany is a free country where government does not horn in map publishing. For this reason, there is a wide variety of maps available - some with Polish names, some with German names, and some bilingual maps. Buyers on market decide which map they want to buy - that is called a free market economy.
OpenStreetMap wants to give map producers the maximum choice, including the choice of preferred language. For this reason, street names are available in some major languages:
name=* is the street name given by internationally recognized government.
name:en=* is the name used by English users, regardless whether it is located in Great Britain or abroad
name:de=* is the name used by German users, regardless whether it is located in Germany or abroad
Please note the Red Square in Moscow: http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1577673
Despite being in Russia, it is also labelled in Chinese (红场), Croatian (Crveni trg), English (Red Square), Estonian (Punane väljak), French (Place Rouge), German (Roter Platz), Italian (Piazza Rossa), Polish (Plac Czerwony), Ukrainian (Красна площа) and Vietnamese (Quảng trường Đỏ). Did you ever ask Russian users why Red Square is labelled with a Polish name?
Please note also that there are churches in Germany which have Polish labels, e.g. Cologne Cathedral (Katedra św. Piotra i Najświętszej Marii Panny w Kolonii), because these churches are frequently visited by Polish Catholics: http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/4532022
A substantial part of German visitors to Poland is interested to see grandfather’s house, grandfather’s school and grandfather’s church. With OpenStreetMap, it is possible to retrieve them online - at least in some selected destinations. Creating a technical device that switches between both languages is extremely hard, and those who are in a hurry to criticize for ideological reasons usually don’t participate in detailed engineering.
The majority of Polish mappers thinks that name:de is a specific issue of German mapping community and not a subject of Polish attention. German mapping community is divided between far-leftist users who prefer to use badly pronounced Polish names for reasons of political correctness and liberal-conservative users who prefer to keep German names in order to honour history. It’s probably obvious that I consider myself being a member of the latter group.
By the way:
“Straßennamen” wird im Deutschen in einem Wort zusammengeschrieben. Könnte ein Mod bitte diese Deppen Schreib Weise ändern?