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Abstract
The forced migration of twelve million Germans was central to German memory after 1945, and reflects fundamental changes in remembering the Second World War, that is, refocusing from German victims, such as expellees, to the victims of Germany in the Holocaust. Within this discourse, ‘flight and expulsion’ demonstrates Germany’s entangledness with her eastern neighbours and is turned into a European and transnational mnemonic discourse with the debates over a ‘Centre against Expulsions’ in the 2000s. This article studies ‘flight and expulsion’ between two mnemonic patterns, that is, the loss of the homeland against migration. After the collective imagination of a lost homeland in the east, the emerging Holocaust memory both marginalized ‘flight and expulsion’ in the late 1970s and introduced new patterns of commemoration. These patterns enabled a turn toward individual victimhood and the decontextualization of ‘flight and expulsion’ from the Second World War. The ‘Centre against Expulsions’ project demonstrates the coordination of the German example with other cases of forced migration and the claim for a universal commemoration of past expulsion and the condemnation of any future attempts. The case of Syrian civil-war refugees, however, reveals that such forms of decontextualization only in part transfer into humanitarian imperatives.
Notes
1. Original quote: “Ich hoffe, Sie meinen es nicht so bös', aber es ist eine Beleidigung der Vertriebenen, der wirklich damals vor 70 Jahren Vertriebenen, die in diesen Kontext zu stellen.” “Beleidigung der Vertriebenen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, August 28, 2015, http://www.sueddeutsche.de/medien/2.220/umstrittene-aeusserung-von-joachim-herrmann-beleidigung-der-vertriebenen-1.2625337 (accessed January 26, 2017). Lobo referred to an idea the Journalist Mario Sixtus made public on Twitter a few weeks before the incident. Mario Sixtus, “Tweet, 22.07.2015,” Twitter, https://twitter.com/sixtus/status/623857358444306432 (accessed January 26, 2017).
2. Jannis Panagiotidis, Patrice Poutrus, and Frank Wolff, “Integration ist machbar, Nachbar,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 29, 2015. The authors referred to an earlier intervention Jörg Baberowski, “Europa ist gar keine Wertegemeinschaft,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 14, 2015.
3. Jean-Claude Juncker, “State of the Union 2015: Time for Honesty, Unity and Solidarity, September 9, 2015,” http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-15-5614_en.htm (accessed January 26, 2017).
4. For instance, Gatrell, Making, 283, advocates a history of the twentieth century through the lens of refugees.
5. In addition to this Nazi-enforced migration, the Stalinist Soviet Union employed a regime of mass deportation in the Great Terror and during the Second World War. Snyder, Bloodlands.
6. Mazower, Dark Continent; Naimark, Fires of Hatred.
7. See for a recent attempt to narrate the contemporary history of Central Europe as a history of mobilities: Krzoska, Ein Land unterwegs.
8. German victimhood had been a persistent topic in West German debates, as Margalit: Germany Remembers, demonstrates. However, these controversies intensified in the middle of the 1990s with debates about the Allied bombings of German cities such as Dresden.
9. Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning in Memory,” 190; for the concept of entangled memory see, Feindt et al., “Entangled Memory.”
10. “Antrag der Abgeordneten Klaus Brähmig et al., 60 Jahre Charta der deutschen Heimatvertriebenen – Aussöhnung vollenden, Deutscher Bundestag Drucksache 17/4193,” http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/17/041/1704193.pdf (accessed January 26, 2017).
11. All quotes: “Charta der deutschen Heimatvertriebenen vom 5. August 1950,” http://www.dhm.de/datenbank/img.php?img=20043507&format=1, (accessed January 26, 2017).
12. Schildt, Zwischen Abendland und Amerika, 26.
13. Beer, “Flüchtlinge – Ausgewiesene – Neubürger – Heimatvertriebene,” 149f.
14. Stickler, “Ostdeutsch heißt Gesamtdeutsch,” 10.
15. E. Hahn and H. H. Hahn, Vertreibung im deutschen Erinnern, 495, for instance, stress that 4.8 million forced migrants resettled under the control of the Allied military government are the most disregarded group of expellees.
16. Applegate, A Nation of Provincials.
17. The Sudetenland was itself an abstract umbrella term that emerged after 1918 to describe the Czechoslovak border regions, in which the German minority formed a local majority.
18. Demshuk, The Lost German East, xx.
19. Wildenthal, Language of Human Rights, 58–60.
20. Demshuk, “What was the ‘Right to the Heimat’?” For instance, opinion polls showed that 30% of West Germans rejected a return by 1959. Cf. Jahrbuch für öffentliche Meinung, 505.
21. Rudolph, Evangelische Kirche und Vertriebene, 46–9, see for a Catholic position, Voßkamp, Katholische Kirche und Vertriebene, 232–4.
22. Die Lage der Vertriebenen, 37. See Feindt, “Zwischen ‘Recht auf Heimat.’” For a similar Catholic position, see the Bensberg Circle, an unofficial group of Catholic intellectuals and theologians. Bensberger Kreis, Memorandum.
23. Struve, “‘Vertreibung’ und ‘Aussiedlung’,” 293.
24. Kittel, Vertreibung der Vertriebenen? 90–2.
25. Ibid., 127; Lotz, Die Deutung des Verlusts, 133.
26. Hartwich, “Wirtualny Heimat;” Beer, ed., Das Heimatbuch; Eisler, Verwaltete Erinnerung.
27. Lehmann, Im Fremden ungewollt zuhaus, 144.
28. This applies especially for expellees from southeastern Europe; see Faehndrich, Eine endliche Geschichte, 216.
29. Demshuk, “Heimaturlauber.”
30. Cf. examples of imagining such realms as Polish: Thum, Uprooted; Hartwich, Das schlesische Riesengebirge. It is striking that this self-appropriation came along with the public forgetting of forced migration – both of the migration of previous and current inhabitants of the area. Wylegała, Przesiedlenia a pamięć, 434.
31. Faehndrich, Eine endliche Geschichte, 216.
32. Kittel, Vertreibung der Vertriebenen. For a critique of Kittel’s argument, see Lotz, Deutung, 207.
33. Hesse, “Denkmäler und Gedenkstätten,” 115.
34. For Kohl’s strategy, see Korte, Deutschlandpolitik, 247–54; Wicke, Helmut Kohl's Quest for Normality, 150–3.
35. Wolfrum, Die geglückte Demokratie, 277.
36. Schulz, “Film und Fernsehen.”
37. Levy and Sznaider, Holocaust, 59–64.
38. Horn, Erinnerungsbilder.
39. Wilke, “Fernsehserie.”
40. The Historikerstreit centred on the possible or impossible comparison between Nazi and Stalinist mass violence. See for an analysis, Große Kracht, “Der Historikerstreit.”
41. The exhibition caused major controversies since its launch in 1995 and toured several German cities. The authors withdrew it in 1999 after claims that pictures portrayed crimes other than those of the Wehrmacht, but renewed the exhibition in 2001. Hartmann, Hürter and Jureit, Verbrechen der Wehrmacht.
42. The controversy drew upon the position of the Holocaust in German memory, see Schirrmacher, Die Walser-Bubis-Debatte.
43. Olick, The Politics of Regret.
44. See, for instance, the commissioning editors’ explanation, Mühlfenzl, “Warum erst jetzt?” 8.
45. Kittel, Vertreibung der Vertriebenen, 159.
46. Janßen, “Für das Leben gezeichnet,” Die Zeit, February 20, 1981.
47. Franzen, “Der Diskurs als Ziel?,” 5.
48. Naimark, Fires of Hatred, 2–4.
49. Danubius, “Tézy;” Lipski, “Two Fatherlands – Two Patriotisms.” For a contextualization in oppositional discourse, see Feindt, Auf der Suche nach politischer Gemeinschaft, 195–9 and 206–21.
50. Majewski, “Zwischen Versöhnung,” 39–41.
51. Kraft, “Platz der Vertreibung,” 342–8. For an overview of the debates, see Bachmann, Verlorene Heimat; Petr Pithart et al., Die abgeschobene Geschichte.
52. Röger, Flucht, Vertreibung und Umsiedlung, 69.
53. Ibid., 50.
54. For a concise comparison, see Ther, Deutsche und polnische Vertriebene.
55. Probably at least part of this new self-identification 45 years after the original experience came from financial aid. In accordance to the original “equalization of burdens” (Lastenausgleich), a large-scale financial transfer on behalf of the expellees, a new law opened such ways for Eastern Germany in 1994. See Röger, Flucht, Vertreibung und Umsiedlung, 50.
56. Bajohr and Wildt, Volksgemeinschaft; Thießen, “Erinnerungen an die ‘Volksgemeinschaft’.”
57. Franzen, “In der neuen Mitte,” 51.
58. Ther, “Diskurs,” 35.
59. Röger, Flucht, Vertreibung und Umsiedlung, 161–2.
60. This was mostly exemplified with the Allied bombings of Dresden. See, Benda-Beckmann, German Historians, 271–333, Berek, Interaction between national and local memory.
61. Röger, “Zeitzeugen.”
62. Franzen, “Diskurs,” 10.
63. Steinbach, “Zweierlei Gewicht,” 28.
64. Ibid., 22.
65. Proverbs 20:10 (King James Version).
66. “Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen,” 287.
67. “Gemeinsame Erinnerung als Schritt in die Zukunft: Für ein Europäisches Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen, Zwangsaussiedlungen und Deportationen – Geschichte in Europa gemeinsam aufarbeiten, Juli 2003,” http://markus-meckel.de/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Aufruf-Europ%C3%A4isches-Zentrum-gegen-Vertreibungen_mit-Unterzeichnern.pdf (accessed January 26, 2017).
68. Adam Michnik, “Breslau, nicht Berlin,” Die Welt, May 15, 2002; Leszek Kolakowski, “Noch einmal: Über das Schlimmste,” Die Zeit, September 18, 2003.
69. Piotr Semka, “Za wcześnie na Wroclaw,” Rzeczpospolita, March 28, 2002.
70. The debate revolved around Jan Tomasz Gross’s book Neighbors, published in Poland in 2000, and on Jedwabne.
71. Majewski, “Zwischen Versöhnung,” 48–50. A similar debate revolved around the so-called Beneš decrees that regulated the forced migration of Germans from Czechoslovakia.
72. Sławomir Sieradzki, “Niemiecki koń trojański,” Wprost, March 21, 2003.
73. For instance, Thomas Urban, “Troja in Warschau,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 18, 2003.
74. Röger, Flucht, Vertreibung und Umsiedlung, 115 and 213–7.
75. “Absichtserklärung,” 307.
76. Troebst, “Wiederbelebung einer ‘Totgeburt’? Das Europäische Netzwerk Erinnerung und Solidarität: Polen-Analysen 33, May 20, 2008,” http://www.laender-analysen.de/polen/pdf/PolenAnalysen33.pdf (accessed January 26, 2017).
77. Rösgen, ed., Flucht, Vertreibung, Integration. For a detailed description of the exhibition, see Völkering, Flucht und Vertreibung im Museum, 78–83.
78. Ibid., 77–8.
79. Franziska Augstein, “Auf dem Leiterwagen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 3, 2005; Sabine Voßkamp, “Ausstellungs-Rezension zu: Flucht, Vertreibung, Integration 03.12.2005-17.04.2006, Bonn, in: H-Soz-u-Kult, March 18, 2006,” http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensionen/id=35&type=rezausstellungen (accessed January 26, 2017).
80. Jürgen Günther, “Annäherung an ein heikles Thema,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, December 16, 2005. See for a summary: “Pressestimmen zur Ausstellung Flucht, Vertreibung, Integration Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland Bonn vom 3. Dezember 2005 – 17. April 2006,” http://www.zeitgeschichte-online.de/sites/default/files/documents/presse_ausstellung_bonn_0.pdf (accessed January 26, 2017).
81. Puttkamer, “Irrwege des Erinnerns,” 290.
82. See Die Gerufenen: Deutsches Leben in Mittel- und Osteuropa, http://www.ausstellung-diegerufenen.de/index.php (accessed May 17, 2016). A third exhibition focused on the integration of expellees after 1945. See Angekommen: Die Integration der Vertriebenen in Deutschland, http://www.ausstellung-angekommen.de/ (accessed January 26, 2017).
83. This was the result of the grand coalition’s compromise to support a “visible sign” as a memorial for the forced migration of Germans after the Second World War. See “Gemeinsam für Deutschland – mit Mut und Menschlichkeit, Koalitionsvertrag zwischen CDU, CSU und SPD, 11.11.2005,” https://www.cdu.de/system/tdf/media/dokumente/05_11_11_Koalitionsvertrag_Langfassung_navigierbar_0.pdf?file=1&type=field_collection_item&id=543, 114 (accessed January 26, 2017).
84. “Beauftragter der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (19.03.2008) “Sichtbares Zeichen gegen Flucht und Vertreibung Ausstellungs-, Dokumentations- und Informationszentrum in Berlin,” http://www.sfvv.de/sites/default/files/downloads/konzeption_bundesregierung_2008_sfvv.pdf (accessed January 26, 2017).
85. “Antrag der Abgeordneten,” 4. Eventually, Germany initiated such a memorial day in 2014 and opted for 20 June, the international day of the refugee. Although the federal states of Hessen and Bavaria had introduced memorial days of their own to be held in September, the public commemoration of ‘flight and expulsion’ proved a niche topic. Dräger, “Ein Hoch.”
86. For various examples of these organizations protesting against calls for reconciliation with Poland for the sake of territorial claims, see Heller, Macht, Kirche, Politik, 86; Boll, “Der Bensberger Kreis.” For the Nazi past of many early functionaries of the expellees’ organizations, see Schwartz, Funktionäre mit Vergangenheit.
87. Steinbach, for instance, had written about ‘extermination camps’ for Germans in a newspaper article, Erika Steinbach, “Das Leid von 15 Millionen vertriebenen Deutschen,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 8, 2000, and Hartmut Saenger, another BdV-candidate doubted the guilt for the Second World War. See Franziska Augstein, “Versöhnen oder verhöhnen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 31, 2010. In total, the board comprises 19 members: four members of the Bundestag, three government representatives, six representatives of the BdV and two representatives each for the Protestant Church in Germany, the Catholic Church and the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
88. A first wave of such accusations prevailed in 2005–7 with Marek A. Cichocki, an advisor to the Polish President Lech Kaczyński, Darisuz Gawin, the director of the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising, and Zdzisław Krasnodębski, a Polish sociologist teaching in Germany, being the most prominent critics. See Gawin, Pamięć i odpowiedzialność; Cichocki and Kosiewski, Pamięć jako przedmiot władzy. The concept of strong national politics of history based on an antagonism toward Germany appeared again under the new national-conservative government since 2015. See Bogdan Musiał, “Triumf niemieckiej Propagandy,” W Sieci, February 8, 2016.
89. Sabrow et al., “Einleitung,” 14.
90. Both Kittel, Vertreibung der Vertriebenen, and Kossert, Kalte Heimat, argued that the Heimatvertriebenen composed a distinct social group that is represented by Steinbach and her Bund der Vertriebenen. In 2009 and 2010 both assumed positions in the new ‘Centre against Expulsion’ foundation, Kittel as a director (until 2014) and Kossert as a research consultant.
91. E. Hahn and H.H. Hahn, Die Vertreibung. Several reviews considered the book at least in part a ‘pamphlet’. See Röger, “Review;” Winfried Halder, “Ein schiefes Bild?” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 12, 2011.
92. Ther, “Diskurs,” 29. See for the history of these commissions Guth, Geschichte als Politik; Strobel, Transnationale Wissenschafts- und Verhandlungskultur.
93. “Arbeitspapier VI der Kopernikus-Gruppe ‘Europäisches Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen’ Handlungsempfehlungen für eine Konzeption,” http://www.deutsches-polen-institut.de/politik/kopernikus-gruppe/arbeitspapier-vi/ (accessed January 26, 2017); cf. “Bonner Erklärung.”
94. Röger, Flucht, Vertreibung und Umsiedlung, 179–80.
95. See http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/index.asp?pn=texte&id=1350 (accessed January 26, 2017).
96. Martin Schulze Wessel et al., “Konzeptionelle Überlegungen für die Ausstellungen der ‘Stiftung Flucht, Vertreibung, Versöhnung’ (2010),” http://www.hsozkult.de/daten/2010/Konzeptpapier_Vertreibungen_ausstellen_Aber_wie.pdf (accessed January 26, 2017). The concept received vivid reaction, often criticizing the too complicated and intellectual approach feeling more like a book than a museum.
97. For a wider discussion of this epistemic shift see, Esslinger et al., Die Figur des Dritten; Bedorf et al., Theorien des Dritten.
98. Wolfgang Görl, “Von Verdun bis Lampedusa,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 11, 2014.
99. Steinbach, “Zweierlei Gewicht.”
100. Gauck used this argument for the first time in his 2013 Christmas Address and repeated the analogy frequently “Weihnachtsansprache 2013 von Bundespräsident Joachim Gauck,” http://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Reden/2013/12/131225-Weihnachtsansprache-2013.pdf;jsessionid=7A65C839A4CB94485DEB85E633AD074F.2_cid388?__blob=publicationFile, 2 (accessed January 26, 2017).
101. For instance, Martin Gehlen and Christian Böhme, “Das grenzenlose Drama der syrischen Flüchtlinge,” Tagesspiegel, October 26, 2014.
102. Alt, however, integrated refugees, forced migrants, repatriates and economic migrants into a single group and considers migrants as such a cultural stimulus. Alt, Flüchtling, 9.
103. “Flüchtlinge könnten Wirtschaftswunder bringen,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 15, 2015. Some publicists openly questioned his comparison as ahistorical; see, for instance, Virginia Kirst, “Was Flüchtlinge von Gastarbeitern unterscheidet,” Die Welt, September 18, 2015.
104. All quotations Bernd Fabritius, “Ansprache zum Tag der Heimat des Bundes der Vertriebenen am 29. August 2015 in der Berliner Urania,” http://www.bund-der-vertriebenen.de/presse/news-detail/datum/2015/09/03/ansprache-zum-tag-der-heimat-des-bundes-der-vertriebenen-am-29-august-2015-in-der-berliner-urania.html (accessed January 26, 2017). Capitals according to the original.
105. Karsten Kammholz, “Vertriebene erfinden sich durch Flüchtlingshilfe neu,” Die Welt, September 9, 2015.
106. Andreas Kossert, “Flüchtlinge: Böhmen, Pommern, Syrien,” Die Zeit, October 12, 2015. It goes without saying that such comparison is often simplistic, as Beer, “Die ‘Flüchtlingsfrage,’” emphasizes.
107. Bernd Fabritius, “[Speech], Plenarprotokoll der Deutschen Bundestages,” 18. Wahlperiode, 148. Sitzung, 17. Dezember 2015, pp. 14386–14388, http://dipbt.bundestag.de/doc/btp/18/18146.pdf (accessed January 26, 2017).
108. Goschler, “Versöhnung und Viktimisierung,” 874.
109. Koschorke, Ein neues Paradigma der Kulturwissenschaften.