Abstract
It was not only the demographic patterns in West Germany which changed markedly because of the influx, but also the entire socio-cultural structure of that country. Though the spiritual and moral standards of the newcomers were generally neither better nor worse than those of the resident population, yet changes, and frequently for the better, came about in almost every respect. To put it in simple terms, the basically same Germanic blood, coming from the younger and more vigorous East, where life was harder and more dangerous, acted as a rejuvenating, fermenting force in the older and more sophisticated German West.
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Compare with Eugen Lemberg, Die Ausweisung als Schicksal and Aufgabe Zur Soziologie and Ideologie der Ostvertriebenen,München: 1949; also Eugen Lemberg and L. Krecker, Die Entstehung eines neuen Volkes aus Binnendeutschen and Ostvertriebenen,Marburg: 1950.
Professor Wil-Erich Peuckert pointed out to the author in Göttingen, “We Germans are now not writing, and we are not producing in creative arts because we live too well, we are suffocating in butter and fat…”
Due to this circumstance about “… 40% of the German Landkreise were once homogeneous from the viewpoint of denominations, I.E., the religious minorities were under 5%. Today (due to the influx of the refugees) there is not a single Landkreis or even village community with such a small religious minority group.” Peter Paul Nahm, Die sozialen, wirtschaftlichen and politischen Wirkungen der Vertreibung aui die Gemeinden der Bundesrepublik,Mannheim: Institut zur Förderung öffentlicher Angelegenheiten e. V., 1954, p. 37.
The percentage of Catholics in the Federal Republic is about the same.
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© 1962 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Paikert, G.C. (1962). The Impact of the Newcomers on West Germany’s Socio-Cultural Geography. 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_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-0957-2_6
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