The Lost German East

Forced Migration and the Politics of Memory, 1945-1970

Inbunden, Engelska, 2012

AvAndrew Demshuk

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A fifth of West Germany's post-1945 population consisted of ethnic German refugees expelled from Eastern Europe, a quarter of whom came from Silesia. As the richest territory lost inside Germany's interwar borders, Silesia was a leading objective for territorial revisionists, many of whom were themselves expellees. The Lost German East examines how and why millions of Silesian expellees came to terms with the loss of their homeland. Applying theories of memory and nostalgia, as well as recent studies on ethnic cleansing, Andrew Demshuk shows how, over time, most expellees came to recognize that the idealized world they mourned no longer existed. Revising the traditional view that most of those expelled sought a restoration of prewar borders so they could return to the east, Demshuk offers a new answer to the question of why, after decades of violent upheaval, peace and stability took root in West Germany during the tense early years of the Cold War.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2012-04-30
Mått152 x 231 x 28 mm
Vikt650 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor326
FörlagCambridge University Press
ISBN9781107020733

Tillhör följande kategorier

Europas historia inom Historia och arkeologi
Migration inom Samhälle och politik

1. From colonization to expulsion: a history of the Germans in Silesia; 2. The quest for the borders of 1937: expellee leaders and the 'right to the homeland'; 3. Homesick in the Heimat: Germans in postwar Silesia and the desire for expulsion; 4. Residing in memory: private confrontation with loss; 5. Heimat gatherings: recreating the lost East in West Germany; 6. Travel to the land of memory: homesick tourists in Polish Silesia; 7. 1970 and the expellee contribution to Ostpolitik; Epilogue: 8. The forgotten East.

'The millions of Silesians who fled their homes in the closing months of the Second World War or who were expelled in its aftermath have most often been remembered - if they have been remembered at all in the English-speaking world - as caricatures: symbols of either German victimization or German revanchism. Andrew Demshuk's book is among the first scholarly works to move beyond the statements of official expellee spokesmen and to explore, sympathetically but critically, the complicated processes through which flesh-and-blood individuals gradually came to terms with the loss of the former homeland. His nuanced analysis of this history is an important contribution not only to understanding West German politics and German-Polish relations in the Cold War era, but also to the comparative study of forced migration and its aftermath.' Jim Bjork, King's College London