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Deportation and the Failure of Foreigner Control in the Weimar Republic

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The Social, Political and Historical Contours of Deportation

Part of the book series: Immigrants and Minorities, Politics and Policy ((IMPP))

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Abstract

The first “total war” and the first “world revolution” created a European refugee crisis of unprecedented proportions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Looking at census figures, Gosewinkel states that the percentage of people with foreign citizenship and speaking foreign languages in 1925 was 2.1 % compared to 7.5 % in 1900. Gosewinkel, Einbürgern und Ausschliessen, 339. There was no census in Weimar Germany before 1925. According to these figures, the post-war German state was a much more homogeneous one than it had been prior to 1919. But leaving aside the fact that many immigrants probably tried to avoid the census altogether, this figure is misleading when used to look at the immediate post-war period, since the vast majority of refugees had moved on or been repatriated by 1925, due largely to the German hyperinflation of 1922–1923. While the limited inflation prior to that period created a situation that was relatively beneficial for foreigners who possessed hard currency and goods to sell, the breakdown of civil and economic order that took place with the hyperinflation caused many migrants to leave Germany. Furthermore, the Ostjuden were generally using Germany as a way station for the United States and Palestine, and their numbers decreased as well. The loss of the territories in the East, and the large number of Polish speakers who had lived there, further distorts this figure.

  2. 2.

    “Reichstag Denkschrift über die Ein-und Auswanderung nach bzw. aus Deutschland in den Jahren 1910 bis 1920,” 24–26. This figure included foreigners of every nationality, including Germans. The majority of immigrants was listed as originating in Poland (in particular former German areas such as Posen, East and West Prussia and Silesia) or Alsasce-Lorraine, and thus may be assumed to be of German origin. Of the Poles, 17,722 were listed as originating in “Russian Poland”.

  3. 3.

    Prussian Interior Ministry to the Reich Interior Ministry, March 8 1921. BA R 1501/113328, 307.

  4. 4.

    Skran, Refugees, 34.

  5. 5.

    Trude Maurer, Ostjuden in Deutschland: 1918–1933 (Hamburg: Christians, 1986), 65.

  6. 6.

    Ibid., 66.

  7. 7.

    Hans-Erich Volkmann, Die russische Emigration in Deutschland, 1919–1929 (Wurzburg: Holzner, 1966), 4. Claudena Skran posits a slightly different chronology. She describes a population with dramatic fluctuations during the period between 1920 and 1923. In the autumn of 1920, she says there may have been as many as 500,000 refugees in Germany, but that this number declined precipitously to a quarter of a million as many of them moved further west. During 1922, many refugees returned to Germany to take advantage of the inflation and the cheaper living costs this afforded to those with hard currency and then with the onset of hyperinflation and the ensuing instability, many of them left again for France. Skran, Refugees, 35. Volkmann’s chronology is convincing because of the range of factors he takes into account.

  8. 8.

    Volkmann, Russische Emigration, 10.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., 6.

  10. 10.

    Berliner Tageblatt, December 24, 1921.

  11. 11.

    “So geht es nicht weiter,” Berliner Lokal Anzeiger, March 29, 1922; “Russisches Flüchtlingsleben in Berlin,” Der Tag, April 6, 1922.

  12. 12.

    German Embassy in Copenhagen to the Auswärtiges Amt, June 19, 1923. AA R 83582, 50.

  13. 13.

    Bettina Dodenhoeft, “Laßt mich nach Rußland heim”: russische Emigranten in Deutschland von 1918 bis 1945 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1993), 9.

  14. 14.

    Volkmann, Russische Emigration, 4.

  15. 15.

    It is important to note here that part of the reason for the relatively open borders in Europe prior to World War I is that most migrants did not intend on settling permanently in Europe, but instead America operated as an “escape-valve” that absorbed the vast majority of migrants. Marrus, The Unwanted, 39.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., 92.

  17. 17.

    See Chap. 8 of The Impossible Border for brief discussions of other nations that housed Russian refugees.

  18. 18.

    RMI to the Reichzkanzlei, January 21, 1923. BA R 43 I/594, 76.

  19. 19.

    Deutsche Gesellschaft für Bevölkerungspolitik to the RMI, April 9, 1920. BA R 1501/114049, 135.

  20. 20.

    Zentralpolizeistelle Osten, Frankfurt Oder to the Landesgrenzpolizei on February 5, 1920 provides one representative list. BA R 1501/114049, 13. These stories ranged from the seemingly banal to the ridiculous. One story circulated in the Right-wing press that Jewish immigrants running a factory were using cats, dogs and garbage to create aspic. Maurer, Ostjuden, 134.

  21. 21.

    Deutschsoziale Partei poster, n.d. Landesarchiv Berlin [henceforth: LAB] Pr. Br. Rep. 30, Berlin C, Tit. 95, 21642, 151. The Deutschsoziale Partei was an anti-Semitic party founded in 1889 by the former army officer and agitator Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg.

  22. 22.

    Nr. 513 Anfrage Nr. 192, July 7, 1919 from the DNVP deputies D. Mumm, Biener, Deglerk, Knollmann, Laverrenz, Oberfohren, Traub and Wallbaum. BA R 1501/118392, 48. According to Maurer, this was a common tactic of nationalist deputies to discredit the German government’s ability to restrict, or they implied, even count, the numbers of Jewish immigrants. Maurer, Ostjuden, 233.

  23. 23.

    Nr. 924. August 14, 1919. BA R 1501/118392, 158.

  24. 24.

    Ibid.

  25. 25.

    A report of a meeting on May 17, 1919 at the RMI about the recall of German troops from Kurland and Lithuania and the expected migration of the population there to the German Eastern border refers to this Erlass. BA R 1501/118392, 15. References continued to be made to this Erlass and the need to close the border once and for all. For example, a letter from Carl Severing, the Prussian Minister of the Interior, to the presidents of local governments, including the president of police in Berlin. Severing makes clear that he wants both a better surveillance of the border and the railways and a more tightly enforced registration regulation. GStA PK, 1 HA, Rep. 77, Tit. 1814, Nr. 3, 207–208. It is unclear exactly how an immigrant’s German identity really would have been proven “beyond a doubt”.

  26. 26.

    Auswärtiges Amt on April 10, 1919. BA R 1501/114061, 47. Regarding the number of border guards, see: Report of a meeting held at the RMI with the RMI, PMI, Reichsjustizministerium, and AA in attendance, December 22, 1919. BA R 1501/114048, 192.

  27. 27.

    RWA to RMI February 8, 1920. BA R 1501/114049, 15.

  28. 28.

    Summary of the entry visas granted to Russian citizens during 1922. BA R 43 I/594, 19.

  29. 29.

    PMI to the Zentralpolizeistelle Osten February 13, 1920. BA R 1501/114049, 42.

  30. 30.

    Report of the Results of a meeting held on November 12, 1919 at the RMI about measures to take with regard to the stronger flow of refugees from the Baltics. GStA PK, 1. HA, Rep. 77, Tit. 1146, Nr. 74, Beiheft 4, Bd. III, 152. See also the grab bag of measures—ranging from internment to registration and from border control to railway surveillance and deportations—proposed by the Prussian government in February 1920. Prussian Government’s statement regarding deportation or internment of foreigners from the East, BA R 1501/114049, 120–132.

  31. 31.

    Königsberg Landesgrenzpolizei Ostpreuβen to the Landesgrenzpolizei Osten, Berlin, February 25, 1920. GStA PK, 1 HA, Rep. 77, Tit. 1814, Nr. 3, 29.

  32. 32.

    Zentral-Polizeistelle Osten (Frankfurt/Oder) to the Landesgrenzpolizei in Berlin, February 22, 1920. GStA PK, 1 HA, Rep. 77, Tit. 1814, Nr. 3, 36b.

  33. 33.

    Eberhardt Jäckel and Axel Kuhn, Hitlers Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen: 1905–1924 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlans-Anstalt, 1980), 119.

  34. 34.

    David Clay Large, “‘Out with the Ostjuden’: The Scheunenviertel Riots in Berlin, November 1923,” in Chirsthard Hoffmann, Werner Iegermann & Helmut Walser Smith, eds., Exclusionary Violence: Antisemitic Riots in Modern German History, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 128.

  35. 35.

    Protokoll der Sitzung über die jüdischen Ausweisungen im Auswärtigen Amt am 10 April 1919, AA R 78705, L348582–348706.

  36. 36.

    Heine to Staatsministerium, February 23, 1920. AA R 70705, L348721–348232.

  37. 37.

    Rainer Pommerin, “Die Ausweisung von Ostjuden aus Bayern 1923—Ein Beitrag zum Krisenjahr der Weimarer Republik,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 34 (1986): 320.

  38. 38.

    “Besprechung über die vom PMI vorgelegte Denkschrift über die in Deutschland befindlichen Ostausländer, 10 Januar 1923.” AA R 78705, L348516–L348517.

  39. 39.

    Christiane Reinecke, “Riskante Wanderungen: Illegale Migration im britischen und deutschen Migrationsregime der 1920er Jahre,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 35 (2009): 89.

  40. 40.

    See Sammartino, The Impossible Border, Chap. 8 for more on this tenuous right to asylum.

  41. 41.

    Oltmer, Migration und Politik, 65–67. See for example the Prussian Ministry of the Interior’s May 6, 1919 Richtlinien für Ausweisung, which largely exempted employed foreigners from deportation. BAL R1501/114061, 79.

  42. 42.

    Verhandlung des Reichstages, 1. Wahlperiod 1920, 21. Sitzung, October 20, 1920, 755–756.

  43. 43.

    Landesgrenzpolizei Ostpreuβen in Königsberg to Landesgrenzpolizei Osten in Berlin, February 25, 1920. GStA PK, 1 HA, Rep. 77, Tit. 1814, Nr. 3, p. 29.

  44. 44.

    Prussian Erlass. November 17, 1920 GStA PK, 1 HA, Rep. 77, Tit. 1814, Nr. 4, p. 119.

  45. 45.

    Pommerin, “Ausweisung von Ostjuden,” 332.

  46. 46.

    Jack Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers: East European Jews in Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 36 and 40. For more on the Polish expulsions in the 1880s, see: Richard Blanke, Prussian Poland in the German Empire (1871-1900) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981); Joachim Mai, Die preussisch-deutsche Polenpolitik, 1885/87: Eine Studie zur Herausbildung des Imperialismus in Deutschland (Berlin: Rütten & Loening, 1962); Oswald Hauser, “Polen und Dänen im Deutschen Reich,” in Reichsgründung 1870/71: Tatsachen, Kontroversen, Interpretationen, eds. Theodor Schneider and Ernst Deuerlein (Stuttgart: Seewald, 1970), 291–318; Wehler, “Polenpolitik”.

  47. 47.

    Pommerin, “Ausweisung von Ostjuden,” 315.

  48. 48.

    Ibid., 326.

  49. 49.

    Saxon Interior Ministry internal report, April 30, 1920. SächsHStA Miniserium des Innern [henceforth: MI] 11718, 82. The fact that these concerns were not solely felt in Saxony is confirmed by the panicked correspondence of Bavaria’s other neighbors with the national Interior Ministry during the 1923 deportations. Pommerin, “Ausweisung von Ostjuden,” 326.

  50. 50.

    Christoph Rass, “The ‘Removal of Foreigners’ from the German Empire (1871–1918) and its Implications for the Practice of Expulsion in the Federal Republic between 1951 and 2009,” presented at Living on the Margins Conference at the German Historical Institute (Washington, DC), February 2012.

  51. 51.

    Pommerin, “Ausweisung von Ostjuden,” 333.

  52. 52.

    Maurer, Ostjuden, 416–435. See Inquiry from September 27, 1921. Verhandlungen, Bd. 369, 2667. This is one particular example, but internment was suggested off and on by nationalists from 1919 onwards.

  53. 53.

    Dirk Walter, Antisemitische Kriminalität und Gewalt: Judenfeindschaft in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn: Dietz, 1999), 70.

  54. 54.

    Yfatt Weiss, “Homeland as Shelter or as Refuge? Repatriation in the Jewish Context,” Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte 27 (1988): 205–206. What criticism there was of the camp came from SPD, USPD and KPD delegates. Maurer, Ostjuden, 427–431. As a result of this criticism, in July 1921, only those Jews who were to be deported because of crimes they had committed could be interned in the Stargard camp. The camp remained in existence in this limited capacity until 1923. Maurer, Ostjuden, 432–433.

  55. 55.

    Prussia enacted such a registration policy January 31, 1919. Baden followed with its policy of May 22, 1919 and Bavaria on May 23, 1919. The Saxon “Meldepflicht der Ausländer und Staatenlose” followed on July 1, 1919. SächsHStA, MdI 11718, 4, 21, 15, n.p.

  56. 56.

    Letter from the Saxon Interior Ministry to the Dresden Police Headquarters, March 6, 1919. SächsHStA, MI 11718, 6.

  57. 57.

    The ineffectiveness of the threat of fines and imprisonment is referred to in a letter from the Saxon Interior Ministry to the Reichskommissar für Zivilgefangene und Flüchtlinge, February 22, 1921. SächsHStA, MI 11718, 102. The resentments of German–Austrians in a letter from the Saxon Interior Ministry to the Government of Aue relaxing the registration requirement for the Austrian Germans is referred to in SächsHStA, MI 11718, 31.

  58. 58.

    The Bavarians had established their own central agency by April 1920. SMI, April 30, 1920. SächsHStA, MdI 11718, 82. For a sample of Bavarian pride in their agency, see the Bavarian Report from August 23, 1920 on the efficacy of foreigner control. SächsHStA, MI 11718, 85–89. For more on this attempt to improve registration practices, see the notes from a meeting held in the RMI about police measures to handle the immigration of foreigners held on February 16, 1920 (continuation of a meeting from December 22, 1919). BA R 1501/114049, 44.

  59. 59.

    The agency remained in existence until October 31, 1924, when it was deemed no longer necessary because the tide of migration had subsided. For more see the records of the agency collected in BA R1501/18401.

  60. 60.

    Reichskommissar für Zivilgefangene und Flüchtlinge, Denkschrift betr. Abänderung der Bestimmungen über die Meldepflicht und die Behandlung der Ausländer, October 30, 1920. SächsHStA MI 11718, 91.

  61. 61.

    Ibid., 96–97.

  62. 62.

    Ibid., 95–96.

  63. 63.

    Ibid., 99.

  64. 64.

    SMI to Reichskommissar für Zivilgefangene und Flüchtlinge, February 22, 1921. SächsHStA, MI 11718, 101.

  65. 65.

    As I discussed earlier, it is very difficult to ascertain the actual numbers of immigrants, but evidence suggests that 1919 was the year of the highest number of refugee immigration. According to Ludger Heid, anti-Semitic agitation against the Ostjuden reached a fever pitch in late 1920. Ludger Heid, Maloche–nicht Mildtätigkeit: Ostjüdische Arbeiter in Deutschland 1914–1923 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1995), 158.

  66. 66.

    Maurer, Ostjuden, 161–166. Paul Weindling, Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, 1890–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) has sought to explore this connection more systematically.

  67. 67.

    To get to this 15 % figure, I divided 70,000 (Maurer’s estimate for the number of Ostjuden that immigrated to Germany after 1914) by 500,000 (Raeff’s estimate for the number of Russians in Germany). Denkschrift from the Reichskommissar für Zivilgefangene und Flüchtlinge, October 30, 1920. BA R 43 I/594, 3. RWA to RMI from February 8, 1920 provides the completely exaggerated number of one million Ostjuden that had immigrated to Germany. BA R 1501/114049, 19.

  68. 68.

    Jack Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers, 24.

  69. 69.

    Ibid., 25. Regarding the connection of Jews and disease, see Weindling, Epidemics and Genocide for an account of German epidemiology and the associations that both scientists and politicians made regarding the susceptibility of Jews to disease and their role as carriers of epidemics to the German people. For the pre-World War I period, see pp. 3–72.

  70. 70.

    Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers, 35.

  71. 71.

    Denkschrift of the Reichskommissariat für Zivilgefangene und Flüchtlinge regarding Abandoning Regulation Restrictions for Foreigners, October 30, 1920. AA R 83812, 10. The term lästige Ausländer appears throughout discourse on foreigners in the Weimar Republic. For a few examples of the use of this term by a wide variety of officials, see: the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior’s letter to the RMI’s Abwicklungsstelle für russ. Kriegsgefangenen und Zivi-Interniertenlager, December 28, 1921. BayHStA MInn 71624, np. Letter from Landrat Wiedenbrück to Severing, April 21, 1920. GStA PK, Rep. 77, Tit. 1814, Nr. 3, Bd. 1, 45. Reichstag Inquiry, January 24, 1922. Verhandlungen, Bd. 370, 3336. Protocol of a meeting held at the RMI regarding the treatment of Russian POWs who did not want to return to Soviet Russia, January 10, 1921. R 1501/112383, 262. The term lästige Ausländer was so widespread that the Rote Fahne published an article saying that instead of the Ostjuden, the true “burdensome foreigners” were German capitalists. “Der lästige Ausländer (Eine aktuelle Legende),” Rote Fahne, September 22, 1920.

  72. 72.

    “Protokoll der Sitzung über die jüdischen Ausweisungen im Auswärtigen Amt am 10 April 1919.” BA R 1501/114061, 47.

  73. 73.

    As I have discussed in The Impossible Border, the Russian émigrés were by no means all rich, but this image was pervasive in public discourse.

  74. 74.

    Explanation of the Prussian government regarding the deportation or internment of Eastern immigrants, February 26, 1920. BA R 1501/114049, 126.

  75. 75.

    Ibid., 125.

  76. 76.

    Ibid., 122–123.

  77. 77.

    Ibid., 125 and 129.

  78. 78.

    Reichskommissar für Zivilgefangene und Flüchtlinge Denkschrift, October 30, 1920, 92.

  79. 79.

    Sächsisches MI to the Reichskommissar für Zivilgefangene und Flüchtlinge, February 22, 1921. SächsHStA 11718, 101. An interesting evolution in the Sächsisches MI’s stance towards foreigners is also suggestive. When the Saxons initially enacted a registration law in early 1919, officials complaining of the dangers posed by foreigners singled out one group for special mention, the Czechs. As Saxony lay just over the border from the new Czechoslovak state, the Polizeidirektion in Dresden warned that Dresden and other cities near the borders could become “the capital of Czechoslovak agitation in Germany.” Polizeidirektion Dresden to SMI, March 18, 1919. SächsHStA 11718, 7. The Interior Ministry’s letter on the same topic from March 6, 1919 did not include any references to a specific ethnic group. SächsHStA 11718, 6. When this topic was address in 1921, it was clear that the suspect group of foreigners were Jewish, and Czech agitators did not warrant any mention.

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  1. Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, USA

    Annemarie Sammartino

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  1. , Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford, 58 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX26QS, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

    Bridget Anderson

  2. , Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX13TB, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

    Matthew J. Gibney

  3. Somerville College, University of Oxford, Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX26HD, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

    Emanuela Paoletti

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Sammartino, A. (2012). Deportation and the Failure of Foreigner Control in the Weimar Republic. In: Anderson, B., Gibney, M., Paoletti, E. (eds) The Social, Political and Historical Contours of Deportation. Immigrants and Minorities, Politics and Policy. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5864-7_3

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