“New Citizens” or “Community of Fate”? Early Discourses and Policies on “Flight and Expulsion” in the Two Postwar Germanys

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 314-334
Author(s):  
Peter N. Gengler
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Humanitarian Crisis ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
Forced Migrations ◽  
Social Agendas ◽  
Social Recovery

AbstractThe historiography of the postwar Germanys often examined the Nazi legacy and the remarkable efforts needed for economic and social recovery after 1945. In both the FRG and GDR, the consequences of the war and resulting “flight and expulsion” featured prominently in public discourse and were among the most pressing challenges in the early postwar years. Examining how the competing regimes in East and West Germany attempted to solve the humanitarian crisis caused by the forced migration of 10 to 12 million German refugees in the first years after World War II reveals that the discourses and policies started from common points of departure yet diverged into competing narratives underpinning the states’ political and social agendas. Reconstructing the evolution of how the forced migrations were discussed and leveraged in the neglected period immediately after the war opens new perspectives on how Germans shouldered the burdens of dictatorship and defeat.

scholarly journals The Separation and Reunification of Germany: Rethinking a Natural Experiment Interpretation of the Enduring Effects of Communism

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sascha O. Becker ◽  
Lukas Mergele ◽  
Ludger Woessmann
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
World War ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
Cautious Interpretation ◽  
East And West ◽  
And Gender ◽  
And Control

German separation in 1949 into a communist East and a capitalist West and their reunification in 1990 are commonly described as a natural experiment to study the enduring effects of communism. We show in three steps that the populations in East and West Germany were far from being randomly selected treatment and control groups. First, the later border is already visible in many socio-economic characteristics in pre-World War II data. Second, World War II and the subsequent occupying forces affected East and West differently. Third, a selective fifth of the population fled from East to West Germany before the building of the Wall in 1961. In light of our findings, we propose a more cautious interpretation of the extensive literature on the enduring effects of communist systems on economic outcomes, political preferences, cultural traits, and gender roles.

Evolution and Normalization: Historical Consciousness in Germany

2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Philipp Lutz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Strong Continuity ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Nazi Era

German political culture has been undergoing gradual but significant changes since unification. Military engagements in combat missions, the introduction of a professional army, and a remarkable loss of recent historical knowledge mostly within the younger generations are hallmarks of the new millennium. Extensive education about the Holocaust is still prevalent and there is a strong continuity of attitudes and orientations toward the Nazi era and the Holocaust reaching back to the 1980s. Nevertheless, a lack of knowledge about history-not only the World War II period, but also about East and West Germany-in the age group of people under thirty is staggering. The fading away of the generation of victims who are the last ones to tell the story of persecution during the Holocaust and a parallel rise of new actors and technologies, present challenges to the educational system and the current political culture of Germany.

scholarly journals Germany: Twenty Years After The Union

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pete Mavrokordatos ◽  
Stan Stascinsky ◽  
Andrew Michael
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Final Section ◽  
German Economy ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
The World ◽  
Before And After

One of the most important events in the world after World War II was the reunification of Germany, during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The aim of this paper is to discuss the general economic conditions in Germany, before and after the reunification. This paper is divided into four parts. The introductory section provides a summative discussion of the economic conditions in East and West Germany from World War II until the time of reunification. The second section presents an evaluation of the German economy since the reunification. The third section presents macroeconomic data to illustrate the general impact of the unification on the German economy. The final section offers concluding remarks and recommendations.

scholarly journals A Post-World War II Tragedy: The Expulsion of Ethnic Germans From Poland and Czechoslovakia, 1945-49

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica Lamontagne
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
World War ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
Ethnic Germans ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Third Reich

Through a comparative approach, this essay examines the cruel and inhumane way in which ethnic Germans were expelled from Poland and the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in the years immediately following the end of World War II. It compares the nature of the expulsions in Poland and Czechoslovakia and how this negatively impacted the two countries in the aftermath of the expulsions. In Czechoslovakia especially, the nature of the expulsions of ethnic Germans greatly resembled Nazi policy toward Jewish people during the Third Reich. This essay also briefly examines the integration of ethnic German refugees from Poland and Czechoslovakia into both East and West Germany. As a result of ideological differences in East and West Germany, expellees had very different experiences upon resettlement, depending on where they arrived in Germany. The purpose of this essay is to break through the common misconception that most, or all, Germans at the end of World War II were criminals. Many ethnic Germans expelled from Poland and Czechoslovakia saw themselves as Poles or Czechoslovaks, and did not associate themselves with Nazi Germany. 

Returning to Stay? Jews in East and West Germany after the Holocaust

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 393-413
Author(s):  
Andrea A. Sinn
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Central Council ◽  
East And West ◽  
German Jewish

ABSTRACTTo better understand the position of Jews within Germany after the end of World War II, this article analyzes the rebuilding of Jewish communities in East and West Germany from a Jewish perspective. This approach highlights the peculiarities and sometimes sharply contrasting developments within the Jewish communities in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, from the immediate postwar months to the official East-West separation of these increasingly politically divided communities in the early 1960s. Central to the study are the policies of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, which exemplify the process of gradual divergence in the relations between East and West German Jewish communities, that, as this article demonstrates, paralleled and mirrored the relations between non-Jewish Germans in the two countries.

Rejecting Radbruch: The European Court of Human Rights and the Crimes of the East German Leadership

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 653-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Miller
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Central Line ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
European Court ◽  
East German ◽  
East And West

The European Court of Human Rights found no violation of the Convention in its judgement in the complaints of the former East German political and military leaders Streletz, Kessler, and Krenz. All three were convicted and sentenced to terms in prison by German courts in relation to the deaths of East Germans who were killed in attempts at fleeing across the fortified border between East and West Germany. Nonetheless, the Court's decision constitutes a clear rejection of the Radbruch Formula, which served as a central line of reasoning in the decisions of the German courts in the cases. The author addresses the Court's rejection of the Radbruch Formula, focusing especially on the distinct historical and political circumstances that existed after World War II and in 1989.

scholarly journals Psychiatry in former East and West Germany since reunification

1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (10) ◽  
pp. 637-639 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred Bauer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conservative Christian ◽  
The Government ◽  
Expert Commission ◽  
First Time

Discussion of the need to reform psychiatric services in former West Germany started relatively late. It was only in the late 1960s, when the government changed from the conservative Christian Democrats to a coalition of the Social Democratic and Liberal Parties, that psychiatry became a public issue for the first time since World War II. Parliament appointed an expert commission, which after four years gave a comprehensive report in which the inadequate care of mentally ill patients was criticised.

Turkish Youths in Berlin: Transnational Identification and Double Agency

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 85-106
Author(s):  
Sabine Mannitz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Guest Workers ◽  
World War ◽  
Culture Conflict ◽  
German Politics ◽  
Social Recovery ◽  
Turkish Migrant

Migration research has often stressed the adverse circumstances of Turkish immigrants living in Germany. The situation of the so-called second and third generations in particular has been seen as entailing a problematic double-bind of living “between two cultures.” In this scholarship, the image of such youth trapped in a structural culture conflict creates the impression that serious personal and emotional crises are an inevitable part of Turkish migrant youths' coming of age in Germany. Moreover, former guest workers and their families have been treated with a less than hospitable attitude insofar as efforts to facilitate their incorporation, for example, by way of the German legal system. Although the hiring of foreign laborers undeniably contributed to the economic and social recovery of West Germany after National Socialism and World War II, immigration has never been treated as a favorable option in German politics. The project of hiring laborers from abroad on a temporary basis gradually developed into de facto immigration, unintended on the part of both Germans and Turks. The resulting demographic multi-nationalization has not (yet), however, become a self-evident ingredient of the German conscience collective (Schiffauer, 1993, pp. 195-98). The very ambivalence of this situation influences the prevalent conceptualizations of the various social groups, as the following brief account illustrates.

scholarly journals Narratives Transcending Borders: Sabrina Janesch’s "Katzenberge" as a German Response to Polish Migration Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-171
Author(s):  
Stephen Naumann
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
World War ◽  
Polish Spaces ◽  
Migration Literature ◽  
Polish Migration ◽  
Eastern Border ◽  
Border Narratives

The establishment of the Oder-Neisse border between Poland and Germany, as well as the westward shift of Poland’s eastern border resulted in migration for tens of millions in regions that had already been devastated by nearly a decade of forced evacuation, flight, war and genocide. In Poland, postwar authors such as Gdańsk’s own Stefan Chwin and Paweł Huelle have begun to establish a fascinating narrative connecting now-Polish spaces with what are at least in part non-Polish pasts. In Germany, meanwhile, coming to terms with a past that includes the Vertreibung, or forced migration, of millions of Germans during the mid-1940s has been limited at best, in no small part on account of its implication of Germans in the role of victim. In her 2010 debut novel Katzenberge, however, German author Sabrina Janesch employs a Polish migration story to connect with her German readers. Her narrator, like Janesch herself, is a young German who identifies with her Polish grandfather, whose death prompts her to trace the steps of his flight in 1945 from a Galician village to (then) German Silesia. This narrative, I argue, resonates with Janesch’s German audience because the expulsion experience is one with which they can identify. That it centers on Polish migration, however, not only avoids the context of guilt associated with German migration during World War II, but also creates an opportunity to better comprehend their Polish neighbors as well as the geographical spaces that connect them. Instead of allowing border narratives to be limited by the very border they attempt to define, engaging with multiple narratives of a given border provide enhanced meanings in local and national contexts and beyond. 

The Political Refugee: 35 Years Later

1981 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 26-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunther Beyer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Socioeconomic Aspects ◽  
Forced Migrations ◽  
The World ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Refugee Problem

This article describes the human and socioeconomic aspects of the political refugee problem before and after World War II, and explains the facts which caused the flows of forced migrations throughout the world.

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