“Please Send Us a Priest of Our German Nationality…”: The Confessional/Ethnic in the Worldview of the Siberian Catholics

The study is devoted to the analysis of the correlation of the confessional element with the ethnic element within the construction of "ethnoconfession" for the Catholic Germans of Siberia. The relevance of the study of the topic is dictated by the modern processes of ethnic and confessional identification/self-identification that have replaced globalization. Notably, due to the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional nature of the Siberian population, a peculiar and unique concept of the frontier has developed, determined by historians as the “Siberian frontier”. The temporal boundaries of the study include the twentieth century: from the moment of mass migrations from the Crimea, the Volga region and Ukraine to the Trans-Urals in the context of the Stolypin agrarian reform to the beginning of the active return movement of Russian Germans to Germany. The methodological basis of the study was the work of both ethnographers and sociologists. The content analysis method revealed the peculiarities of the mentality of representatives of various confessional groups within the German ethnic group. The research is based on the materials of the Russian State Historical Archive. The conclusions about the importance of confessional self-awareness are important for the self-identification and successful socialization of Russian Germans. The article is intended for specialists in the field of history and ethnography of Russian Germans, as well as for researchers interested in the features of frontier communications in Siberia.

Identität und Sprache des Migranten in der Fremde im Werk von Franco Biondi

Seen from the point of view of literary-sociological studies, Franco Biondi’s works are part of the migrant and foreign literatures which emerged in Germany in the wake of the recruitment of foreign labour starting in the 1950s. This literature – written by authors who are not Germans in the sense of the old German nationality and citizenship legislation, but who live in Germany and have their works published in the German language area – was formerly called ‘guest-worker literature’. Then, in the 1980s, it was referred to as a literature of ‘shock and stunned silence’, and in the 1990s as ‘migrant literature’ or ‘literature of foreign parts’. The theme in Biondi ’s works is the break with origin and the process of ‘coming-to-language’ of the identity that is forming through the medium of language in the encounter with the foreign. Immigration for Biondi becomes immigration into a new language.

German Population Local Evacuations from the USSR Occupied Regions in winter-spring 1943

One of the elements of the “total war” declared by the Nazi leadership in February 1943 was the massive displacement of the civilian population of the occupied Soviet territories to the deep rear. As a rule, these movements were voluntary compulsory. Among those who were also subjected to mandatory evacuation were ethnic Germans, who, as a rule, enjoyed the special patronage of the occupation authorities. Most of them, of course, could not help fearing reprisals after the return of Soviet power and therefore preferred to retreat with the Wehrmacht. As a result, during the first few months of 1943, thousands of refugees of German nationality were quickly evacuated from several occupied regions of the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the BSSR. Some of them, by decision of the SS leadership, remained on the territory of the Reichskommissariat “Ukraine”, while others left for the imperial region of Warthegau and the General Government. Despite their very modest scale, these evacuations had at least two main outcomes. First, they became, in a sense, a prototype (especially at the organizational level) of administrative relocations that unfolded in the autumn of the same year on the territory of Ukraine. Some considerations (such as the idea of the concentration of German refugees on the right bank of the Dnieper or in Galicia) would later form the basis for further plans of the Nazi leadership. Secondly, the arrival of a fairly large contingent of Soviet Germans in the Reich required several changes to the legal framework governing the procedure for their naturalization. A significant part of these innovations will determine the fate of the majority of German immigrants from the USSR practically until the end of the war. In the presented article, based on the involvement of a significant array of documents from the archival funds of Germany, the characteristic features of the evacuation of ethnic Germans from the occupied regions of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus in winter-spring 1943 are considered.

The Interplay of Parental Response to Anger, Adolescent Anger Regulation, and Externalizing and Internalizing Problems: A Longitudinal Study

Numerous studies have reported substantive correlations between anger socialization, children’s anger regulation, and internalizing/externalizing problems. However, substantially less is known about the interplay among these constructs during the developmental stage of adolescence, and longitudinal studies on causal relations (i.e., parent-directed, adolescent-directed, or reciprocal effects) are rare. It is also unclear whether the development of internalizing and externalizing problems have similar causal relations. We collected three waves of longitudinal data (Grade 6, Grade 7, Grade 9) from multiple informants. A sample of N = 634 adolescents (mostly 11–12 years at Time 1; 50.6% male) and their parents (predominantly Caucasian with German nationality) completed questionnaires assessing parents’ responses to anger, adolescents’ anger regulation, and adolescents’ internalizing/externalizing problems at each wave. Comparisons of different cross-lagged models revealed reciprocal rather than unidirectional effects. However, we found more parent-directed effects with respect to the development of internalizing problems, whereas relations regarding externalizing problems were more adolescent-directed, i.e., adolescents’ externalizing problems and their anger regulation predicted changes in their parents’ responses to anger across time. Adolescent anger regulation was an important maintaining factor of parents’ responses to anger in later adolescence. Our findings suggest that assumptions regarding bidirectional relations should be emphasized much more in emotion socialization frameworks, particularly for the period of adolescence. Moreover, our study emphasizes the transdiagnostic importance of parents’ responses to anger for both externalizing and internalizing problems and also suggests different underlying mechanisms.

Prawo czy bezprawie? O legalności wprowadzenia Niemieckiej Listy Narodowościowej na Górnym Śląsku w świetle czwartej konwencji haskiej postrzeganej przez pryzmat wykładni prawa międzynarodowego przez prawników niemieckich i polskich

In the following article, I will attempt to present the matter of the German Nationality List in Upper Silesia from three historical and legal perspectives, as well as a brief overview of how it influenced the fate of the Upper Silesians and the Polish-German relations. After a short description of the most important results of the introduction of the German Nationality List in Upper Silesia and its impact on the relations between the Polish and German people, I will present the literal wording of the Fourth Hague Convention (with particular emphasis on the third chapter including the exercise of occupation) and show an example of its use after the First World War. In the next part, I will present the Polish legal interpretation of its provisions in the context of assessing the legality of introducing the German Nationality List in Upper Silesia. In the last part, I will present the different standpoint of German lawyers to achieve my main research goal, which was to present (in a comparative way) the importance of the legal interpretation in international law – although texts of the conventions are most often formulated clearly and initially their wording does not raise any doubts in the interpreter, they create the possibility of a broad interpretation, often openly undermining the foundations of the entire international order. Although the example itself is historical, the subject of differences in the interpretation of international law is particularly important nowadays, with the advancing globalization and international integration. The article uses both the texts of legal acts (the Fourth Hague Convention and the Briand-Kellogg Pact) and their subsequent interpretations by Polish and German lawyers. In the part concerning Polish-German relations in the light of the German Nationality List in Upper Silesia, the memories of witnesses of history were also used.

“Return of Mental Borders”: A Diary of COVID-19 Closures between Kehl, Germany, and Strasbourg, France

This paper retraces the author’s personal experience of the COVID-19 lockdown from March to July 2020 at the Franco-German border from a threefold perspective: that of a cross-border worker living in Kehl, Germany, and working in Strasbourg, France; that of a Franco-German citizen with a family and children of both French and German nationality; and that of a researcher specialized in border studies. The paper deals with national re-bordering policies and their direct personal and psychological consequences for borderlanders, and also questions whether such measures are adequate to contain the pandemic, especially in a context of European Union integration which is based on the principle of a “Europe without borders”.

Einbürgern und Ausschließen. Staatsangehörigkeit und Bürgerrecht in Deutschland während des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts

Naturalizing and excluding. Nationality and citizenship law in 19th and 20th century Germany. Nationality law in Germany came up as a legal institution of German federal states at the beginning of 19th century and underwent a process of nationalization. The principle of descent (Abstammungsprinzip), which was – before a legal reform in 2000 – hegemonic, was used to define German nationality primarily as a community of ethno-cultural descent. This restrictive use of German nationality law did not establish, however, a direct line of conceptual and political continuity between ‘ethno-cultural’ and ‘racial’ criteria, and it was primarily based on a politico-social constellation of political, demographic and national instability, not on a specific German national discourse.

The documentary evidence of the deportation of Germans from the territory of Stanislav region of Ukraine (1946)

The article publishes and analyzes the documents of the Soviet special services on the deportation of the group of Germans from Stanislav region (October–December 1946). Eight documents presented in this article demonstrate the circumstances of the deportation of a large group of Germans from the territory of Stanislav region of Ukrainian SSR in late 1946. These documents are stored in the State Archives of the Security Service of Ukraine. These are official correspondence between the heads of institutions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) at various levels. The first of these documents is the report of one of the executives of the Department of the MIA in Stanislav region, Hrytsenko, on the case of the registration of Germans in Stanislav region who are subject to resettlement. It was reported that 38 German families (34 men, 51 women, 70 children under the age of 16) live in the Dolyna district of Stanislav region – a total of 155 people. They allegedly fled with the German Army as early as 1944, but were intercepted by Red Army and sent home. The Soviet authorities planned to send them to a special settlement in Aktubinsk region of Russia, but temporarily used this group of Germans to build a railway station. The Document № 3 is very important. The telegram was sent from Moscow to Kyiv on November 14, 1946, ordering the German families from Stanislav region of the USSR to be sent to a special settlement in the Mary Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in Russia. They were to be handed over to the Suslonger Forestry, which was a structural part of the “Marybumles” Trust. Personal farms and cattle were allowed to be sold. Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR were obliged to find the required number of vans for the deportation of Germans. The conditions for organizing the deportation of these German families are disclosed in other documents. In the end, according to L. Pastelnyak, the Deputy Head of the Anti-Banditry Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Stanislav region (document № 8), the echelon with the Germans was sent from the Dolyna station on December 29, 1946. Unfortunately, we do not know the circumstances of transporting the group of Germans to Suslonger railway station, as well as the circumstances of their stay at the special settlements and the subsequent fate after the liquidation of the special settlement system in the 1950-ies. Thus, the published documents reveal some circumstances of the deportation of one and a half hundred people of German nationality from the territory of Dolyna of Stanislav region to Russia at the end of 1946. Of course, the operation carried out by the Soviet repressive authorities should be called deportation, i.e. “forced eviction from the place of permanent residence of a person, group of persons or people”. Documents are published in the original language (Russian) in compliance with the necessary archaeographic requirements.

Lutheran population of Saint Petersburg in the first half of the 18th century according to the paris h marriage regis ters

Based on the marriage registers of the Lutheran congregation of St. Peter and Vasileostrovskaya community (in the future — St. Catherine) the article recreates the models of national and social structures of Petersburg Lutherans in the first half of the 18th century. The author found that German communities included, in addition to Germans, a small percentage of Swedes and Poles. By the middle of the century, with the total number of Lutheran communities in St. Petersburg in 1500—1700 believers of both sexes, they could contain about 1200—1300 persons of German nationality, 150—200 Finns, about a hundred Swedes, several dozen people (no more than fifty) Germanized Polish. The article makes a clear conclusion that among the Petersburg Lutherans had predominated craftsmen of working professions and clerks. They may have numbered more than seven hundred in the middle of the 18th century. The military, merchants, and officials were represented in much smaller proportions.