Coming Home to Germany?

by Rock, David; Wolff, Stefan

• ISBN13: 9781571817297
• ISBN10: 1571817298
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-07-01
• Publisher: Berghahn Books

Summary

The end of World War II led to one of the most significant forced population transfers in history: the expulsion of over 12 million ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1950 and the subsequent emigration of another four million in the second half of the twentieth century. Although unprecedented in its magnitude, conventional wisdom has it that the integration of refugees, expellees, and Aussiedler was a largely successful process in postwar Germany. While the achievements of the integration process are acknowledged, the volume also examines the difficulties encountered by ethnic Germans in the Federal Republic and analyses the shortcomings of dealing with this particular phenomenon of mass migration and its consequences.

Table of Contents

List of Tables	ix
Preface	x
Acknowledgements	xvi
List of Abbreviations	xvii
Glossary	xviii
Introduction From Colonists to Emigrants: Explaining the `Return-Migration' of Ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe	1	(18)
Stefan Wolff
PART I Refugees, Expellees and Aussiedler in the Federal Republic of Germany: Historical, Social, Politic and Legal Dimensions of the Integration Process
Integrating Ethnic Germans in West Germany: The Early Postwar Period	19	(19)
Daniel Levy
The Struggle of Past and Present in Individual Identities: The Case of German Refugees and Expellees from the East	38	(18)
Rainer Schulze
Expellee Policy in the Soviet-occupied Zone and the GDR: 1945-1953	56	(21)
Philipp Ther
The Integration of Ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union	77	(10)
Andreas Heinrich
Jus Sanguinis or Jus Mimesis? Rethinking `Ethnic German' Repartition	87	(15)
Stefan Senders
The Decline of Privilege: The Legal Background to the Migration of Ethnic Germans	102	(19)
Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels
PART II The Transition from German Minority Culture to the National Culture of Germany: Art as a Medium to Address and Express the Challenges of Migration and Integration
`From the periphery to the centre and back again': An Introduction to the Life and Works of Richard Wagner	121	(18)
David Rock
'...a form of literature which was intentionally political.'	139	(6)
Richard Wagner
David Rock
Stefan Wolff
Millennium	145	(12)
Richard Wagner
`Alone in a crowd': The Figure of the `Aussiedler' in the Work of Richard Wagner	157	(14)
Graham Jackman
A Romanian German in Germany: The Challenge of Ethnic and Ideological Identity in Herta Muller's Literary Work	171	(17)
John J. White
Gunter Grass: `The man who migrated across history'	188	(11)
Julian Preece
From `Sudetendeutsche' to `Adlergebirgler': Gudrun Pausewang's Rosinkawiese Trilogy	199	(14)
Kati Tonkin
'...for an artist, home will be wherever he can freely practise his art'	213	(8)
Walter Grill
David Rock
Conclusion Coming Home to Germany? Ethnic German Migrants in the federal Republic after 1945	221	(7)
Stefan Wolff
Notes on Contributors	228	(1)
Index	229