Abstract
At the beginning there was not — nor could there be, under the circumstances — any organized system or machinery for the reception and settlement of the newcomers. The rather inade quate directives of the Allied authorities (then in charge of the military government in occupied Germany) concerning the distribution of these people into the different parts of West Germany were never really carried out; to do so was simply impossible under the conditions of the day. Most of the refugees and expellees settled with little or no official guidance or assistance in locations where they were able to find some kind of shelter. As a result, the refugee stream tended to jam the easiest lands to reach (Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony, and Bavaria) which, because of their agrarian character, were for the time being in the best position to take in and to feed these masses of people. Only after the establishment of the Land Refugee Administration at the end of 1945 was some definite system begun for the equal distribution of the newcomers. By 1959 nearly one million expellees had been transferred from their initial locations to places with better employment opportunities.1
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By the end of 1960, at which time the entire share of the expellees and refugees in the West German resident population amounted to 24.7 per cent, the largest expellee population share can still be found in the West German State of Schleswig-Holstein where it amounts to 28 per cent. Next follow the states Lower Saxony with 25.6 per cent and Bavaria with 19 per cent. Nearly 43 per cent of the total of the expellees in West Germany are living in these three states, which, however, only comprise 35 per cent of the total West German population. These figures show that in spite of the expellee redistribution program within \Vest Germany the said states still have to bear the largest part of the expellee burden and are particularly involved in the measures for the solution of the expellee problem.
Also in the West German state of Hesse the expellee share is above the federal average, amounting to 18.7 per cent. In Baden Wurttemberg it amounts to 18.1 per cent; in North-Rhine-Westfalia to 16.2 per cent; in Bremen to 15.8 per cent; in Hamburg to 14.1 per cent; and in Rhineland-Palatinate to only 9 per cent. German News Munich, June, 1960.
Compiled from: Dr. Hans Lukaschek, The German Expellees, A German Focal Problem, Bonn: 1952.
The mandate of the High Commissioner covers only the foreign refugees (some 230,000 by 1960, of which some 15,000 are still living in camps) in the Federal Republic. To help the latter he has been able to provide legal assistance and from 1953 to 1959 about $4 million in financial contributions for the construction of housing, counselling and other related activities. From 1951 to 1960 the Federal Republic spent another 500 million D.M. from federal and state funds (and from funds of the German voluntary agencies) on behalf of this group.
The United States had poured into (Germany) more than $4,000,000,000 in aid, in the form of gifts and loans, and the effects had been prodigious, equaled in no other European country, although Germany got only a relatively small proportion of Marshall Plan aid. Europe received in all $20,000,000,000 from the United States; in 1954 the figures per capita had amounted to $29 for Germany as against $72 for France, $77 for England, $33 for Italy, and $104 for Austria. But in Germany the help came at precisely the right time, when the accumulated pressures for both physical and psychological reconstruction had reached a bursting-point.” Davidson, op. cit,pp. 382-383.
Since 1945 it had been the policy of the West German states and since 1949 of the Federal Republic to integrate all groups of refugees, socially and culturally, and to offer a political harbor to them. The German refugees and expellees were granted certain benefits and privileges, limited in time, to enable them to start anew on equal conditions with their local competitors. This was intended to reactivate their will to help themselves. When in 1950 the responsibility for foreign refugees was transferred from the Allied authorities to the West German administration an analogous policy for this group was developed. On Apr. 25, 1951, Bonn enacted a special “Law on the Legal Status of Homeless Foreigners.” The body of this law has been enacted into the “International Convention on Refugees” of July 28, 1951. Accordingly, they were practically granted legal equality with the local German citizens since they were entitled to receive public assistance, to draw unemployment compensation, and to benefit from the states’ employment services. They obtained, inter alia, the right to work and were allowed to practice liberal professions, since the diplomas obtained in foreign (also East German) universities were recognized. For the German refugees and expellees, who were granted immediately full citizenship, a multitude of laws, ordinances and regulations has been set up by the federal as well as by the states parliaments and governments. (Compiled from Werner Middelman_i’s address delivered at the International Convention of World Refugee Year, Geneva, Nov. 9, 1959 ).
Though the number of camp inmates has been reduced to 50 per cent compared with the situation in 1949, there were by the end of 1959 still 1234 camps existing in West Germany in which 191,000 German expellees lived. In another 800 camps there were 126,000 German refugees from East Germany, and furthermore there were 57 camps which housed some 16,000 foreign refugees. Many hundred thousands of newly built apparteì nts are still shockingly overcrowded by all groups of refugees who left the camps duriiug the past years. W. Middelmanm op. cit
Professor Lemberg’s conversation with the author in Wiesbaden, summer 1958.
Prior to the expulsion a total of 908, 410 expellees had been working in their old Heimaten in agricultural enterprises, I.E., 302,040 as self-employed persons; 408,633 as helping family members; 3,412 as civil servants; 24,548 as white-collar workers; and 169,777 as laborers. It is significant that at the present time a total of only
Expellees are again working in West Germany’s agricultural sector. (Data condensed from the Expellee Press Servici,Göttingen, May 8, 1959).
By the end of 1958, a total of 931,131 persons were unemployed in the Federal Republic, of whom 185,779 were expellees. Within the last quarter of 1958, the number of unemployed expellees had risen by 190.4 per cent, whereas the total of unemployed persons increased by only 184.3 per cent. These figures (otherwise of no great significance) show that with regard to job security, expellee employees, as yet, do not enjoy the sanie kind of stability as do the West German indigenous employees. op. cit.. March 20, 1959.
Note in this connection that in 1960 the gross national product expressed in United States dollars per head of population amounted to $1,047 in the Federal Republic of Germany and $2,527 in the United States. Private consumption per head was $705 in the Federal Republic, $1,773 in the United States.
In this connection note the fact that the first and second generation of the Greek transferees, who came to Greece from Turkey under the Greco-Turkish compulsory population exchange agreement of 1923 (and also from Bulgaria and the Soviet Union), played a disproportionately extensive role in the Communist camp during the Greek civil war which took place in the wake of World War II. (The Times of London commented on this situation on December 15, 1945). This is all the more significant because the influx of these refugees into Greece, initially interpreted as a source of grave troubles, was later generally considered an asset, as it proved to be a source of economic and demographic strength.
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Paikert, G.C. (1962). Fundamentals Concerning the Settlement of the Newcomers, Their Socio-Economic Integration in West Germany. In: The German exodus. Publications of the Research Group for European Migration Problems, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-0957-2_4
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