At the end of the Second World War, in August 1945, the Allies met at Potsdam and passed the decision to expel millions of people of German heritage living in Eastern Europe. Among some 3 million expelled from the Sudetenland in the Czechoslovak borderlands, were the violin makers of Schönbach. After the expulsion, German integration authorities attempted to resettle the Schönbach violin makers in Mittenwald, Bavaria. Though the village of Mittenwald was famous for its violin making industry, the integration of the two communities failed and the Schönbach masters were relocated a second time. The failure was due in large part to the two communities' inability to integrate their distinct violin making cultures. The study addresses the resettlement process from the perspective of government officials, local Germans and expellees and the debates among these groups in the postwar era. It is through these interacting perspectives that one comes to understand the culture of each community, the agency of its members, and the complexity of the resettlement process on a local level. Using Mittenwald as a case study, I argue that the process of integrating two German cultures was problematic, as each community sought to maintain their own local, cultural identity rather than subscribe to a shared German national identity. The failure of the Mittenwald plan demonstrates the pertinence of the local culture of each community and the limitations of a national imaginary in general processes of forced migration and resettlement.

At the end of the Second World War, in August 1945, the Allies met at Potsdam and passed the decision to expel millions of people of German heritage living in Eastern Europe. Among some 3 million expelled from the Sudetenland in the Czechoslovak borderlands, were the violin makers of Schönbach. After the expulsion, German integration authorities attempted to resettle the Schönbach violin makers in Mittenwald, Bavaria. Though the village of Mittenwald was famous for its violin making industry, the integration of the two communities failed and the Schönbach masters were relocated a second time. The failure was due in large part to the two communities' inability to integrate their distinct violin making cultures. The study addresses the resettlement process from the perspective of government officials, local Germans and expellees and the debates among these groups in the postwar era. It is through these interacting perspectives that one comes to understand the culture of each community, the agency of its members, and the complexity of the resettlement process on a local level. Using Mittenwald as a case study, I argue that the process of integrating two German cultures was problematic, as each community sought to maintain their own local, cultural identity rather than subscribe to a shared German national identity. The failure of the Mittenwald plan demonstrates the pertinence of the local culture of each community and the limitations of a national imaginary in general processes of forced migration and resettlement.

At the end of the Second World War, in August 1945, the Allies met at Potsdam and passed the decision to expel millions of people of German heritage living in Eastern Europe. Among some 3 million expelled from the Sudetenland in the Czechoslovak borderlands, were the violin makers of Schönbach. After the expulsion, German integration authorities attempted to resettle the Schönbach violin makers in Mittenwald, Bavaria. Though the village of Mittenwald was famous for its violin making industry, the integration of the two communities failed and the Schönbach masters were relocated a second time. The failure was due in large part to the two communities' inability to integrate their distinct violin making cultures. The study addresses the resettlement process from the perspective of government officials, local Germans and expellees and the debates among these groups in the postwar era. It is through these interacting perspectives that one comes to understand the culture of each community, the agency of its members, and the complexity of the resettlement process on a local level. Using Mittenwald as a case study, I argue that the process of integrating two German cultures was problematic, as each community sought to maintain their own local, cultural identity rather than subscribe to a shared German national identity. The failure of the Mittenwald plan demonstrates the pertinence of the local culture of each community and the limitations of a national imaginary in general processes of forced migration and resettlement. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

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L’expulsion des Allemands des Sudètes reste aujourd’hui encore un sujet sensible des deux côtés de la frontière germano-tchèque. En témoignent les polémiques liées à l’ouverture du « Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen » à Berlin ou les déclarations de Milos Zeman affirmant que les expulsions n’avaient pas été une punition assez sévère pour les Allemands. Dès 1945, les trois millions d’Allemands vivant encore sur le territoire de la future République tchèque furent expulsés vers l’Allemagne, transitant par des camps de travail, forcés de laisser derrière eux leur maison, leur ferme ou encore leur entreprise. Comment alors se reconstruire dans un pays qui n’est pas le sien ? Nombre d’entre eux considèrent dans un premier temps que cette expulsion est provisoire et entretiennent l’espoir d’un retour. Toutefois, ils seront rares à retrouver leur ancienne patrie. Ces événements sont violents, car sous le mot « expulsion » se cache en réalité des termes tels que « viol, expropriation, exploitation, déracinement ». La génération des parents expulsés, tout entière concentrée sur une reconstruction matérielle, fermera les yeux sur les souffrances des héritiers du non-dit. Aujourd’hui, ce sont eux qui prennent la parole, dans des œuvres romanesques que nous analyserons dans le présent travail. Le roman de Pavel Kohout, L’Heure étoilée du meurtrier, est un roman qui a manqué sa réception. Son message hautement politique a été masqué par l’appellation « Thriller » qui lui a été attribué, censure du régime communiste tchèque oblige. Toutefois, les personnages qui évoluent dans le récit, même s’ils enquêtent sur une série de meurtres, font plus que cela. Ils donnent à voir à quel point les relations germano-tchèques ont été détruites par la politique nationale-socialiste et l’occupation. Ainsi la rencontre entre les deux protagonistes, l’un allemand, l’autre tchèque, soulève la question de l’après. Alors que les expulsions sauvages débutent, leur amitié se renforce, leur questionnement face à l’avenir ouvre la voie de la réconciliation. Les personnages des Inachevés sont quant à eux les victimes des expulsions annoncées dans le roman de Pavel Kohout. Les quatre femmes de la famille Rosenbach vivront ce traumatisme dans le déni, l’opposition ou le silence, jusqu’à le transmettre au dernier-né, projeté dans un passé qui n’est pas le sien. Cet homme brisé par une histoire qui lui est étrangère pose alors la question de la transmission. Que s’échangent les personnages du roman de Pavel Kohout, lorsque Buback l’allemand reconnaît sa culpabilité ? Quel rôle le silence joue-t-il dans la transmission d’un traumatisme, lorsque même les générations actuelles souffrent des blessures de leurs aînés ? / The theme of my research is identity, the transmission of History into a family and the social deconstruction of the German expellees after World War II. The expulsion of the Sudeten Germans is the historical frame in which the novels of Reinhard Jirgl and Pavel Kohout evolve. The questions that are explored in this doctoral thesis are: How can literature be the medium of their suffering? Which part did the lost homeland play on their identity and how could they pass on the History to their children or grand-children without imprisoning them in a jail of silence? Pavel Kohout’s novel, Sternstunde der Mörder, embodies the interrogations of the allied forces in 1945: are German and Czech people able to live side by side? The expulsions, the violence and the loss of the homeland gave birth to a trauma that still isn’t healed. The Rosenbach family in Reinhard Jirgl’s novel Die Unvollendenten are the victims of those expulsions and pass their trauma on to the grandchild, sick of a wound that isn’t his own. The suffering of this generation is still present in today’s Germany: can literature be part of the healing process?

As the Second World War in Europe came to an end the Russians advanced from the east towards Berlin. German occupation of Poland and Czechoslovakia had been particularly brutal. Both of these countries, products of German defeat at the end of World War I contained millions of ethnic Germans, who had previously co-existed with their Slav neighbours, often for many centuries, but were now perceived by these neighbours as having encouraged and collaborated with Nazi Germany. Russians, Poles and Czechs now sought revenge triggering the largest forced expulsion in recorded history. Somewhere between 8 and 16.5 million ethnic Germans fled to the west, and between 2 and 3 million perished during flight. Expellee property was subsequently seized by the Poles and Czechs. In broad terms, until the 1990s these events were seen within Germany as part of a submerged collective memory, suppressed in part by their having lost the war. In the last 20 years with an increasingly powerful expellee organisation (the Bund der Vertriebenen, Federation of Expellees) influencing mainstream German politics, academia, and the German media, an attempt has been made to change historical memory, or rewrite what has been referred to as an 'unacceptable past'. This, in recent years has led to claims by former expellees against the Czech Republic, and Poland for restitution. This in itself has led to bitter accusations by these countries that the expellees have rewritten German history portraying themselves as victims of the Second World War. This thesis explores the methods employed by the expellee groups and their supporters in the restructuring of their historical memory by examining literature dating from the 1950s until the present day from primarily German and American sources, as well as German television documentaries from 2000. These sources are considered in relation to how collective and historical memory have evolved into a position that has allowed the expellees to create an 'acceptable past'.

Beim Blick auf die Migrationsgeschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland bzw. deren Vorgeschichte von 1945-49 lassen sich zwei große Zuwanderungsbewegungen von Deutschen aus dem Osten feststellen. Diese waren gekennzeichnet durch starke Zuwanderung in einem kurzen Zeitraum. Dabei handelte es sich zum einen um die aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg resultierende Zwangsmigration der Vertriebenen und zum anderen um die nach dem Fall des Eisernen Vorhangs Ende der 1980er Jahre schlagartig für einige Jahre zu einer Massenbewegung anwachsende Zuwanderung der Aussiedler (seit 1993 Spätaussiedler). Vertriebene und die ab Ende der 1980er Jahre einreisenden Aussiedler/Spätaussiedler gelangten zu unterschiedlichen Zeiten in den Westen und trafen somit vor dem Hintergrund unterschiedlicher wirtschaftlicher und sozialer, politischer und kultureller Rahmenbedingungen ein. Allerdings handelte es sich bei beiden Gruppen um deutsche Staatsangehörige bzw. als ´deutschstämmig´ anerkannte Zuwanderer, die sich in ihrer rechtlichen Behandlung gravierend von anderen Zuwanderergruppen unterschieden. Sie wurden unter Berufung auf ein Kriegsfolgenschicksal sofort bzw. unter erleichterten Bedingungen eingebürgert, sie erhielten einen erleichterten Zugang zu sozialstaatlichen Leistungen und vor allem zahlreiche spezielle, materielle Eingliederungshilfen. Im Vergleich zu anderen Migranten waren die beiden Gruppen von Deutschen aus dem Osten somit deutlich privilegiert. Die Arbeit fragt danach, ob und inwieweit es Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede in den Eingliederungsprozessen von Vertriebenen und den ab Ende der 1980er Jahre eingereisten Aussiedlern/Spätaussiedlern gibt und woraus diese resultieren.

Die Arbeit untersucht fünf nach dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs auf dem Gelände ehemaliger NS-Rüstungswerke gegründete Siedlungen von Flüchtlingen und Vertriebenen in Bayern. Die Werke waren zwar nach Kriegsende durch Reparationsentnahmen und partielle Sprengungen nicht vollumfänglich erhalten, im zerstörten Nachkriegsdeutschland jedoch willkommenes Siedlungsland. Zudem waren sie erst einige Jahre zuvor nach den Kriterien moderner Infrastrukturplanung gebaut worden. Entgegen der Verordnung der US-Militärregierung einer gestreuten Unterbringung der Flüchtlinge und Vertriebenen und der später üblichen Praxis der Niederlassung in bestehenden Städten, entstanden hier in der Folge aus unterschiedlichen Gründen neue, eigenständige Gemeinden (und später Städte): Geretsried, Neutraubling, Traunreut und Waldkraiburg. Einzig Neugablonz erhielt den Status eines Stadtteils von Kaufbeuren. Allerdings hatte hier die Idee der Neuansiedlung einer ganzen Stadt – des nordböhmischen Gablonz – den Ausschlag gegeben und zu einer in diesem Sinne geschlossenen Siedlungseinheit geführt. Da die genannten Ansiedlungen als Neugründungen aus der Praxis des bundesdeutschen Wiederaufbaus herausfielen und städtebaulich wie integrationsgeschichtlich eine Laborsituation darstellten, wurden sie in der vorliegenden Arbeit auf der Ebene der Raum- und Stadtplanung, der Architektur und des öffentlichen Raums in Bezug zum Wiederaufbau und zur Flüchtlings- und Vertriebenenintegration untersucht. Im Ergebnis ließen sich zentrale Facetten dieser beiden Kernthemen der frühen Bundesrepublik in den Vertriebenenstädten wie in einem Brennglas gebündelt identifizieren, bei denen gerade die Aspekte Kontinuität und Neuorientierung eine zentrale Rolle spielen. / This work examines five settlements of German refugees and displaced persons which were founded after the end of the Second World War on the site of former Nazi armament factories in Bavaria. Although the factories were not fully preserved due to reparations reclamation and partial demolition for demilitarization purposes, they were still a welcome opportunity for settlement in a shattered post-war Germany. They had, furthermore, only been built a few years earlier and adhered to the most up-to-date standards of infrastructure planning. Contrary to the US military government's decree that refugees and displaced persons should be distributed throughout the country and the later common practice of settlement in existing cities, for various reasons new, independent communities emerged: Geretsried, Neutraubling, Traunreut and Waldkraiburg. Neugablonz alone was incorporated as a district into the existing town of Kaufbeuren, nevertheless it had been the idea of resettling an entire town - Gablonz in North Bohemia– which had provided the impetus for this new community and which therefore had led to the creation of a self-contained settlement in this sense. As these settlements, being newly founded municipalities, were exceptions to typical reconstruction practice in West Germany and therefore represented, as it were, ‘laboratory conditions' for the study of city planning and integration, they were examined in terms of spatial and urban planning as well as architecture and public space in relation to the reconstruction and integration of refugees and displaced persons. As a result, this study brings some key themes of the former Federal Republic into sharp focus, of which the aspects of continuity and reorientation play a central role.