Centre Against Expulsions
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
documentation centre for expulsions and ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
, particularly the expulsion of Germans after World War II
Expulsion of Germans after World War II
The later stages of World War II, and the period after the end of that war, saw the forced migration of millions of German nationals and ethnic Germans from various European states and territories, mostly into the areas which would become post-war Germany and post-war Austria...
. Since March 19, 2008 the name of the project is Sichtbares Zeichen gegen Flucht und Vertreibung . The centre will open in the Deutschlandhaus building, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
-Kreuzberg
Kreuzberg
Kreuzberg, a part of the combined Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Mitte since 2001, is one of the best-known areas of Berlin...
.
The project was initiated by the Federation of Expellees
Federation of Expellees
The Federation of Expellees or Bund der Vertriebenen is a non-profit organization formed to represent the interests of Germans who either fled their homes in parts of Central and Eastern Europe, or were expelled following World War II....
, who dedicated a "Foundation Centre Against Expulsions" to the centre. This foundation is based in Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
, and headed by CDU
Christian Democratic Union (Germany)
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. It is regarded as on the centre-right of the German political spectrum...
politician and president of the Federation of Expellees, Erika Steinbach
Erika Steinbach
' is a German conservative politician and president of the Federation of Expellees. She has been representing the Christian Democratic Union and the state of Hesse as a member of the Parliament of Germany, the Bundestag, since 1990...
. The other head of the foundation was SPD
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
politician Peter Glotz
Peter Glotz
Peter Glotz was a German social democratic politician and social scientist.Glotz was born in Eger, Sudetenland , to a German father and a Czech mother. His father, an insurance-clerk and member of the Nazi party, worked for an "aryanized" Jewish factory in Prague...
who died in 2005.
Since late 2008, the project is forwarded by the Federal Republic of Germany, when the federal government and parliament passed a law calling for the constitution of a Foundation German Historical Museum subordinate to the federal government, which in turn shall hold a Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation which shall take on the actual documentation in Berlin. The project has been subject to criticism, especially in Poland.
"Foundation Centre Against Expulsions" of the Federation of Expellees
The Federation of ExpelleesFederation of Expellees
The Federation of Expellees or Bund der Vertriebenen is a non-profit organization formed to represent the interests of Germans who either fled their homes in parts of Central and Eastern Europe, or were expelled following World War II....
( is the German non-governmental head organization of various organized groups of German refugees and expellees. The federation is committed to document the post- World War II flight and expulsion of Germans
Expulsion of Germans after World War II
The later stages of World War II, and the period after the end of that war, saw the forced migration of millions of German nationals and ethnic Germans from various European states and territories, mostly into the areas which would become post-war Germany and post-war Austria...
as well as other forced displacements, and maintains an exhibition for this purpose shown in changing locations of Germany. To expand this exhibition and to find a permanent place for it, the Federation of Expellees set up the "Foundation Centre Against Expulsions" on 6 September 2000.
Objectives
The foundation Centre Against Expulsions defines four objectives:- To document the history of settlementHistory of German settlement in Eastern EuropeThe presence of German-speaking populations in Central and Eastern Europe is rooted in centuries of history, with the settling in northeastern Europe of Germanic peoples predating even the founding of the Roman Empire...
, culture, post-World War II deportation and expulsionExpulsion of Germans after World War IIThe later stages of World War II, and the period after the end of that war, saw the forced migration of millions of German nationals and ethnic Germans from various European states and territories, mostly into the areas which would become post-war Germany and post-war Austria...
, forced labour, torture, and later emigration of Germans from various countries of CentralCentral EuropeCentral Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
, EasternEastern EuropeEastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
and Southeastern EuropeSoutheast EuropeSoutheast Europe or Southeastern Europe is a relatively recent political designation for the states of the Balkans. Writers such as Maria Todorova and Vesna Goldsworthy have suggested the use of the term Southeastern Europe to replace the word Balkans for the region, to minimize potential...
, in a modern museum. The museum shall provide room for the documentation and "additional space for sadness, sympathy and forgiveness" in a requiem rotunda. - To document and to evaluate the impact of the integration of millions of uprooted Germans into the post-World War II German society.
- To document the "expulsion and genocide of other peoples, especially in Europe", arguing that "displacement, expulsion and genocide can never be justified, [...] are always a crime, contradicting human rights and carried out by following the archaic thinking of the bloody vendetta."
- To donate a Franz Werfel Human Rights AwardFranz Werfel Human Rights AwardThe Franz Werfel Human Rights Award is an international human rights award in Europe. It is awarded to individuals or groups who, through political, artistic, philosophical or practical work, have opposed breaches of human rights by genocide, ethnic cleansing and the deliberate destruction of...
to people who "sharpen the sense of responsibility through their actions is one of the foundation's tasks".
"Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation"
On 11 November 2005, the largest German political parties SPDSocial Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
and CDU
Christian Democratic Union (Germany)
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. It is regarded as on the centre-right of the German political spectrum...
signed a coalition. One stated goal of the coalition is the establishment of a centre termed "Visible Sign" .
On 3 September 2008 the German federal government passed a law calling for the establishment of a center against expulsions in the Deutschlandhaus building of the Anhalter Bahnhof site in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
-Kreuzberg
Kreuzberg
Kreuzberg, a part of the combined Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg borough located south of Mitte since 2001, is one of the best-known areas of Berlin...
. The law passed the German parliament
Bundestag
The Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...
and was enacted on 29 December 2008. The center is to be run by a "Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation" subordinate to the governmental "Foundation German Historical Museum" .
"Foundation German Historical Museum" of the German federal government
The purpose of this foundation is stated in §16 of the above mentioned law as follows:(1) The purpose of the non-autonomous foundation is to ensure in the spirit of reconciliation the remembrance of flight and expulsion in the 20th century in the historical context of the Second World War and the Nazi expansion and extermination policy and their aftermaths.
(2) This purpose shall be fulfilled especially by the following measures:
- (2.1) Establishment, maintenance and expansion of a permanent exhibition documenting flight and expulsion in the 20th century, the historical background and contexts as well as the European dimension and effects.
- (2.2) Development of singular exhibitions for special aspects of the overall context.
- (2.3) Distribution of research results and scientific findings.
- (2.4) Gathering, documentation and scientific evaluation of respective sources and materials, also and especially eyewitness accounts.
- (2.5) Cooperation with German and international museums and research centers.
- (1) Zweck der unselbständigen Stiftung ist es, im Geiste der Versöhnung die Erinnerung und das Gedenken an Flucht und Vertreibung im 20. Jahrhundert im historischen Kontext des Zweiten Weltkrieges und der nationalsozialistischen Expansions- und Vernichtungspolitik und ihrer Folgen wachzuhalten.
- (2) Der Erfüllung dieses Zweckes dienen insbesondere:
- 1. Errichtung, Unterhaltung und Weiterentwicklung einer Dauerausstellung zu Flucht und Vertreibung im 20. Jahrhundert, den historischen Hintergründen und Zusammenhängen sowie europäischen Dimensionen und Folgen;
- 2. Erarbeitung von Einzelausstellungen zu speziellen Aspekten der Gesamtthematik;
- 3. Vermittlung von Forschungsergebnissen und wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen;
- 4. Sammlung, Dokumentation und wissenschaftliche Auswertung einschlägiger Unterlagen und Materialien, insbesondere auch von Zeitzeugenberichten;
- 5. Zusammenarbeit mit deutschen und internationalen Museen und Forschungseinrichtungen
People and supporters
The scientific advisory board includes or included Jörg Baberowski, Arnulf BaringArnulf Baring
Arnulf Baring is a German lawyer, journalist, political scientist, contemporary historian and author. He is a member of the German-British Baring family of bankers.He earned a doctorate at the Free University of Berlin in 1958...
, Peter Becher, Lothar Gall, Bernhard Graf, Helga Hirsch, Walter Homolka
Walter Homolka
Prof. Walter Homolka is a German rabbi.He studied in Munich, London, Lampeter and Leipzig and has a PhD from King's College London...
, Eckart Klein, Hilmar Kopper
Hilmar Kopper
Hilmar Kopper is a German banker and former Chairman of the Board of Deutsche Bank .Kopper was born in Osłonino to a Mennonite family, he was expelled after World War II He was employed as a trainee in Deutsche Bank in 1954 and spent his whole career there...
, Rudolf Kucera, Otto Graf Lambsdorff
Otto Graf Lambsdorff
Otto Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von der Wenge Graf Lambsdorff, known as Otto Graf Lambsdorff, was a German politician of the Free Democratic Party.- Biography :...
, Horst Möller
Horst Möller
Horst Möller is a German contemporary historian. He is Professor of Modern History at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and, from 1992 to 2011, Director of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte....
, Christoph Pan, Rüdiger Safranski
Rüdiger Safranski
Rüdiger Safranski is a German philosopher and author.- Life :...
, Christoph Stölzl, Christian Tomuschat
Christian Tomuschat
Christian Tomuschat Christian Tomuschat Christian Tomuschat (born 23 July 1936, in Stettin (Szczecin) is a German jurist. He is emeritus professor of public international law and European law at the Humboldt University in Berlin and is a former member of the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN's...
, Krisztián Ungváry
Krisztián Ungváry
Krisztián Ungváry , Hungarian historian of 20th century political and military history, best known for his definitive work on the siege of Budapest in World War II and his research of the work of the secret service under the communist period of Hungary.- Biography :Son of Rudolf Ungváry, a...
, Georg Wildmann, Michael Wolffsohn
Michael Wolffsohn
Michael Wolffsohn is an Israeli-born German historian. Wolffsohn was born in Tel Aviv, in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine and today is Israel. His parents were German Jews who fled in 1939....
, Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
Alfred-Maurice de Zayas is an American lawyer, writer, historian, a leading expert in the field of human rights, as well as a former high-ranking United Nations official...
and Zoran Ziletic.
The United Nations' first High Commissioner for Human Rights
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is a United Nations agency that works to promote and protect the human rights that are guaranteed under international law and stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948...
Dr. José Ayala Lasso
Jose Ayala Lasso
José Ayala Lasso is a retired Ecuadorian lawyer and diplomat, currently residing in Quito. He served as Foreign Minister of Ecuador on three occasions.- Career :...
, German chancellor Angela Merkel
Angela Merkel
Angela Dorothea Merkel is the current Chancellor of Germany . Merkel, elected to the Bundestag from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, has been the chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union since 2000, and chairwoman of the CDU-CSU parliamentary coalition from 2002 to 2005.From 2005 to 2009 she led a...
, Nobel literature laureate
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
and Holocaust survivor Imre Kertész
Imre Kertész
Imre Kertész is a Hungarian Jewish author, Holocaust concentration camp survivor, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002 "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history"....
, Joachim Gauck
Joachim Gauck
Joachim Gauck is a German politician, journalist and theologian. After a brief political career during Die Wende in Eastern Germany, the co-founder of the New Forum was elected member of the People's Chamber for the Alliance 90 in 1990...
, Milan Horáček
Milan Horácek
Milan Horáček , is a Czech-born German politician, a founding member of the German Green Party, a former member of the Bundestag and a former Member of the European Parliament .From 1965 to 1967 his political activism got him into trouble with the Czechoslovak communist regime, and he was arrested...
, former Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n crown prince Otto von Habsburg
Otto von Habsburg
Otto von Habsburg , also known by his royal name as Archduke Otto of Austria, was the last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary from 1916 until the dissolution of the empire in 1918, a realm which comprised modern-day Austria, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia,...
, and historians such as Guido Knopp
Guido Knopp
Guido Knopp is a German journalist and author. He is well known in Germany, mainly because he has produced a great number of TV documentaries, predominantly about the "Third Reich" and National Socialism, but also about other topics, such as Stalinism.- Life and work :After gaining his doctorate...
, Hungarian novelist György Konrád
György Konrád
György Konrád is a Hungarian novelist and essayist, known as an advocate of individual freedom. He was a dissident under the communist regime.- Life :...
, and Christian Tomuschat
Christian Tomuschat
Christian Tomuschat Christian Tomuschat Christian Tomuschat (born 23 July 1936, in Stettin (Szczecin) is a German jurist. He is emeritus professor of public international law and European law at the Humboldt University in Berlin and is a former member of the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN's...
, have also voiced their support for the centre.
Criticism
In a petition initiated by Hans Henning Hahn, Eva Hahn, Alexandra Kurth, Samuel Salzborn and Tobias Weger in 2003, signed by several hundred people, primarily German, Czech, and Polish historians, opponents of the proposed form of Centre expressed concerns the centre would "establish and popularize a one-sided image of the past, without historical context", and see the dangers of "de-contexualizing the past" and "ethnification of social conflicts". German-Jewish writer Ralph GiordanoRalph Giordano (writer)
Ralph Giordano is a German writer and publicist.Giordano was born to a Sicilian father and a Jewish mother....
withdrew his initial support for the same reason, but defended Steinbach against the latest personal accusations from Poland, which he called defamation. Former German Foreign minister Joschka Fischer
Joschka Fischer
Joseph Martin "Joschka" Fischer is a German politician of the Alliance '90/The Greens. He served as Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany in the cabinet of Gerhard Schröder from 1998 to 2005...
said "This can't be a museum of German war victims. Germans can't point fingers at others".
Criticism in Poland
Critics in Poland oppose the idea of the centre claiming that it would equate German suffering with that of the Jews and Poles and will suggest a moral equivalence between the victims of war and their oppressors. Marek EdelmanMarek Edelman
Marek Edelman was a Jewish-Polish political and social activist and cardiologist.Before World War II, he was a General Jewish Labour Bund activist. During the war he co-founded the Jewish Combat Organization. He took part in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, becoming its leader after the death of...
, the last living leader of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German occupied Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany's effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Treblinka extermination camp....
, criticized the project as nationalistic, arrogant and serving to realize political ambitions of the backers of the project. According to Edelman other nations subject to German expulsions didn't establish any comparable monuments, even as they faced harsher fate then Germans.
The Polish government opposes the involvement of Erika Steinbach
Erika Steinbach
' is a German conservative politician and president of the Federation of Expellees. She has been representing the Christian Democratic Union and the state of Hesse as a member of the Parliament of Germany, the Bundestag, since 1990...
in any issues related to Polish-German history and at the same time supports an international net of centers dedicated to remembrance of totalitarian regimes and their victims called "Memory and Solidarity".