Immigration and emigration: this is the whole European history

An interview with Michael Dorrmann, the curator, and Manfred Kittel, the director of the Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation.

This interview was conducted by Daniel Miller.

Daniel Miller: What is the difference between the Bund der Vertriebenen, the Center Against Expulsions, and the Stiftung Flucht, Vertreibung, Versöhnung?

Manfred Kittel: The Center was a civil society project by mostly two persons: Erika Steinbach, the Chairman of the Bund der Vertriebenen (the Federation of Expellees) and a deputy of the Christian Democratic Union, and Peter Glotz, the former Secretary of the Social Democratic Party in Germany. So you had representatives from the two big “Volksparteien” in Germany; it was not only the project of one party. There were many prominent supporters, writers, intellectuals, from both sides of the political spectrum. But this is all pre-history. Because in 2008 the German parliament created our foundation “Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation”, as a Federal Foundation.

DM: Is Erika Steinbach on the board of your Foundation?

MK: She is not. There was a heated discussion about this theme. Six out of twenty-one representatives in our “Stiftungsrat” are members of the Bund der Vertriebenen. But not Erika Steinbach. Her membership was vetoed by the German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle in 2009 on the basis her participation would be damaging for German-Polish relations, because of some positions she has taken in the past, and still maintains.

DM: Why is so much controversy associated with this project?

MK: The problem concerns whether it is possible to remember the fourteen million ''expellees'' who had to be integrated into the two parts of Germany after the Second World War, without provoking German Polish or German Czech... discussions that might interfere with the process of reconciliation.

DM: You want to restore a part of German history which you believe has been omitted from the record?

MK: Yes. For many years, this topic of flight and expulsion has been hardly acknowledged in German memory culture. Now the question arises: ''How should we deal with this topic? How far it is possible to connect the memory of this part of German history with the general theme of displacement in the twentieth century?'' The expulsion of the Germans would not have come about without the actions of the Nazis, that is clear. But the millions of Germans who were expelled were also victims. These were 12 to 14 million displaced people, who were mostly women and children and who had little or no influence on the politics of the Third Reich, and certainly not at the leading level. No criteria were applied to distinguish between Nazis, who really killed Czechs, Poles, Jews and all of the other Germans which were displaced from Silesia, Pomerania and Czechoslovakia. It was more of a collective punishment for everyone identified as German. German anti-fascists in Czechoslovakia, for example, were also affected by this process of expulsion.

DM: Why do you believe this topic was omitted?

MK: It is a difficult topic. It demands that you think about the German victims and offenders simultaneously, and this is hard to do. There were some fears that memorializing the expulsion could change the historical picture, so that Germans would suddenly appear primarily as the victims of World War II. There were also fears that the crimes of the Third Reich could be relativized, according to the motto: "Yes, yes that's true, but the Germans were also victims." But we are convinced we can handle this topic responsibly.

DM: Do you agree this is different emphasis that you are giving to twentieth century German history?

MK: I don't agree. One needs only to take a look at the legal basis upon which our foundation was established in 2008. [Removes bulky folder] "The foundation's purpose is to provide the memories of flight and expulsion in the twentieth century in the historical context of World War II and in the context of the Nazi policy of expansion and destruction and its consequences." That is the purpose of the foundation, paragraph 1. You surely cannot speak of a paradigm shift...

DM: But this is what your enemies would claim?

MK: Exactly.

DM: What do you think is the source of the confusion that surrounds your project?

Michael Dorrmann: One reason is that we are mixed-up with the Center Against Expulsions, especially in Poland. Not in politics, but in the population, they don't make a distinction between our federal institution and the Center. As you know, the League of Expellees is an organization with many members and some of these members represent historico-political opinions that in Poland and Czech Republic  provoke incomprehension.

MK: In the 1970s, the Bund der Vertriebenen was a harsh enemy of the so-called German East treaties, the Warschauer Vertrag, Prager Vertrag, and the recognition of the Oder-Neiße-Line. So in some Eastern countries, there are still hostile reflexes to the words ''Bund der Vertriebenen.'' But this is not the whole truth because for some time many members of the Bund der Vertriebenen have been traveling in their former homelands and trying to support the reconstruction of these areas, in collaboration with the Polish and Czech people. Take Herbert Hupka, a very famous vice-chairman of the Bund der Vertriebenen since the 1970s, a man about whom Polish children once were taught, if you do not eat your soup, Herbert Hupka will eat you. This Herbert Hupka became, in the 1990s, a Citizen of Honor of his former home town in Silesa, and supported the community to get European money for building the communal... recycling plant.

MD: It is sometimes not easy for people in Poland or the Czech Republic to remember this part of their history, because the expulsion of the Germans is a difficult and violent part of their history?

MK: Indeed. For a long time in Polish and Czech society there were tendencies to say: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, they decided on this policy at Potsdam, and we were only a small nation and had to execute. But this is not the whole truth.

DM: Do you agree that the existence of this Stiftung is part of a renegotiation that Germans are having with their history after reunifications?

MK: Yes I would agree with you, certainly. A discussion in Germany, but also in the rest of Europe, on how to deal with our recent past. Eastern Europeans, of course, were the victims of two dictatorships. Not just of the Nazi dictatorship, but then of the Stalinist Soviet Union.

DM: Do you think the foundation could be seen in the context of a new German power mentality?

MK: For me, this is a quite remote discussion. In view of the comparatively fragile national identity in Germany, recently abolished military conscription, and above all, demography, I do not understand how one could be afraid of this country today.

DM: But you appreciate that once you start to talk about ancestral Germans lands you are talking about a certain history of a German-speaking people...

MD: If you are looking at regions like Bessarabia or parts of Romania there were not only Germans as a minority, but also Jews, and Ukrainians. Other parts, like Lower Silesia were completely German, but towns like Czernowitz had a very mixed population. So part of our project would be to look at Europe and to say that it was a very mixed population in a lot of areas, to show to this reality, and at the same time, to show conflicts.

MK: As you know, we live now in societies that are more and more colorful due to immigration, with all the opportunities and risks that this entails, in Germany and other European countries. So considering the past struggles, and the look at the coexistence of different ethnicities and cultures in the past, it is very interesting to re-examine this history.

DM: One conclusion you could draw from your research is that Germany has always been an Einwanderungsland.

MD: An immigration and emigration land!

MK: It was both. In the Medieval Period, many Germans emigrated East. In the 19th Century, the emigration was, often in the direction of the United States.

MD: The whole of European history is like that. People immigrating and emigrating, sometimes by force.

DM: Is there anything you'd like to add?

MK: Only that our motivation to cooperate with the Biennale was to inform and to destroy some of the prejudice and misunderstanding towards our project, and to clarify that our intention is purely to give an objective picture of the twentieth century and the problem of forced migration in the twentieth century.