Abstract
The Holocaust and the flight and initial expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe happened in the same world war. To a degree they were contemporaneous. They both represented human tragedies on an enormous scale, before one even begins to consider the differences between them. Undoubtedly they were linked, even if we might disagree as to exactly how. Their long-term psychological effects were considerable, reaching into the third and fourth generation to the extent that the grandchildren of Holocaust victims and of those who endured flight and expulsion share comparable inherited traumas. Israel is unthinkable without the Holocaust and the postwar integration of Jewish survivors; Germany, in its shrunken form after 1945, is unthinkable without the Potsdam Treaty and the absorption of millions of refugees into the two postwar Germanies. It will not be easy to find a German family tree that is without an uncle, aunt, grandmother, or another relative who fled or was expelled from Silesia, East Prussia, Yugoslavia, or another part of Eastern Europe. Whether originally from areas that used to belong to the German Empire in its pre-1937 borders, or from one of the many German-speaking enclaves in Eastern European countries, they are now part of families that are simply deutsch—German. If there are two things Germans know about the war, then it is the Holocaust, and flight and expulsion.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Pierre Bourdieu, “Die Zensur,” in Soziologische Fragen, trans. Hella Beister and Bernd Schwibs (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1993), 131–34, here 131.
Karl Wilds, “Identity Creation and the Culture of Contrition: Recasting ‘Normality’ in the Berlin Republic,” German Politics 9, no. 1 (2000): 83–102.
Norbert Frei, “1945 und wir,” in 1945 und wir: Das Dritte Reich im Bewußtsein der Deutschen (Beck: Munich, 2005), 7–22, here 21.
Hans-Ulrich Wehler, “Vom Tätervolk zum Opferkult,” in Land ohne Unterschichten: Neue Essays zur deutschen Geschichte (Munich: Beck, 2010), 18–23, here 23.
Aleida Assmann, “On the (In)compatibility of Guilt and Suffering in German Memory,” German Life and Letters 59, no. 2 (April 2006): 187–200.
Micha Brumlik, Wer Sturm sät. Die Vertreibung der Deutschen (Berlin: Aufbau, 2005),
quoted in Stefan Berger, “On Taboos, Traumas and Other Myths,” in Germans as Victims, ed. Bill Niven (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 210–24, here 221.
Astrid von Friesen, Der lange Abschied: Psychische Spätfolgen für die 2. Generation deutscher Vertriebener (Giessen: Psychosozial-Verlag, 2000), 10. (Translations throughout by Bill Niven.)
Manfred Kittel, Vertreibung der Vertriebenen? Der historische deutsche Osten in der Erinnerungskultur der Bundesrepublik (1961–1982) (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007).
Andreas Kossert, Kalte Heimat: Die Geschichte der deutschen Vertriebenen nach 1945 (Munich: Siedler, 2008).
See Günter Grass, Im Krebsgang (Göttingen: Steidl-Verlag, 2002),
and Winfried Georg Sebald, Luftkrieg und Literatur (Munich: Hanser, 1999).
Karl-Heinz Janssen, “Für das Leben gezeichnet,” Die Zeit, February 20, 1981.
Nikolaus von Festenberg, “Adel verdichtet,” Der Spiegel 9 (2007): 192–93.
“Wiedersehen mit der alten Heimat: Bernhard Grzimek berichtet über seine Reise durch Schlesien,” October 14, 1960, Hessischer Rundfunk; “Hand aufs Herz, Hans Graf von Lehndorff,” July 21, 1962, Norddeutscher Rundfunk.
For more on this, see Bill Niven, “On a Supposed Taboo: Flight and Refugees from the East in GDR Film and Television,” German Life and Letters 65, no. 2 (April 2012): 216–36.
Jeffrey K. Olick and Daniel Levy, “Collective Memory and Cultural Constraint: Holocaust Myth and Rationality in German Politics,” American Sociological Review 62, no. 6 (1997): 921–36.
Harald Welzer, Sabine Moller, and Karoline Tschuggnall, “Opa war kein Nazi”: Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2002).
Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).
See Gernot Facius, “Die Vertreibung soll in den Schulbüchern ‘Transfer’ heißen,” Die Welt, April 6, 1977.
Alfred Schickel, “Aus Vertreibung soll Transfer werden,” FAZ, November 19, 1976.
See Stephan Scholz, “‘Dem Vergessen entrissen’? Vertriebenendenkmäler als Medien konkurrierender Erinnerungskulturen in der Bundesrepublik,” in Medien zwischen Fiction-Making und Realitätsanspruch. Konstruktionen historischer Erinnerungen, ed. Monika Heinemann, Hanna Maischein, Monika Flacke, and Peter Haslinger (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2011), 327–52.
See Theodor Schieder (ed.), Die Vertreibung der deutschen Bevölkerung aus den Gebieten östlich der Oder-Neiße (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2004), I:1E–8E; unchanged reprint of the volume first published in 1954.
See Matthias Beer, “Im Spannungsfeld von Politik und Zeitgeschichte. Das Großforschungsprojekt ‘Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa,’” Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 46, no. 3 (1998): 345–90, here 379–80.
It was eventually published by the German Expellees’ Culture Foundation, see Kulturstiftung der deutschen Vertriebenen (ed.), Vertreibung und Vertreibungsverbrechen 1945–1948 (Meckenheim: DCM Druck, 1989).
Lamsdorf—now Łambinowice—in Upper Silesia was the site of a postwar, Polish-run internment camp for Germans. The brutal treatment of German internees led to at least 1,000 deaths. See Edmund Nowak, Obozy w Lamsdorf Lambinowicach 1870–1946 (Opole: Centralne Muzeum Jeńców Wojennych, 2006).
Kittel, Vertreibung der Vertriebenen? 157. See also Heinz Rudolf Fritsche, “Vertreibung als Fernsehthema,” Deutscher Ostdienst 23, no. 1 (January 8, 1981): 2–3.
Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses, “Editors’ Introduction: Changing Themes in the Study of Genocide,” in The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, ed. Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 1–15, here 4.
Eva Hahn and Hans Henning Hahn, “Die ‘Holocaustisierung des Flucht- und Vertreibungsdiskurses’: Historischer Revisionismus oder alter Wein in neuen Schläuchen?” Deutsch-Tschechische Nachrichten 8 (May 2008). See http://www.flink-m.de/uploads/media/200805_dtn_dossier_08_A5.pdf (accessed September 12, 2012).
Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, “Memories of Universal Victimhood: The Case of Ethnic German Expellees,” German Politics and Society 23, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 1–27.
Norman Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Philipp Ther, Die dunkle Seite der Nationalstaaten: “Ethnische Säuberungen” im modernen Europa (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), 161.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 Marc Silberman and Florence Vatan
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Niven, B. (2013). Reactive Memory: The Holocaust and the Flight and Expulsion of Germans. In: Silberman, M., Vatan, F. (eds) Memory and Postwar Memorials. Studies in European Culture and History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137343529_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137343529_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46574-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-34352-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)