Federal Expellees Act

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Basic data
Title: Law on the Affairs
of Displaced Persons and Refugees
Short title: Federal Expellees Act
Abbreviation: BVFG
Type: Federal law
Scope: Federal Republic of Germany
Legal matter: Special administrative law , social law
References : 240-1
Original version from: May 19, 1953
( BGBl. I p. 201 )
Entry into force on: 5th June 1953
New announcement from: August 10, 2007
( Federal Law Gazette I, p. 1902 )
Last change by: Art. 162 VO of June 19, 2020
( Federal Law Gazette I p. 1328, 1347 )
Effective date of the
last change: 		June 27, 2020
(Art. 361 of June 19, 2020)
Please note the note on the applicable legal version.

The Federal Displaced Persons Act ( BVFG ), in the long title law on the affairs of displaced persons and refugees , regulates the distribution, rights and benefits of German displaced persons , displaced persons and refugees from the Soviet zone in the Federal Republic of Germany .

The first version of the law of May 19, 1953 was promulgated in the Federal Law Gazette on May 22, 1953 . On December 21, 1992, it was adapted to the changed circumstances by the Consequences of War Adjustment Act. Repatriates who have moved to the Federal Republic since January 1, 1993 are referred to as late repatriates in Section 4 BVFG new version .

The law is supplemented by general administrative regulations of the Federal Ministry of the Interior .

The competent enforcement authority has been the Federal Administration Office since 1960 .

Origin context

Initially as a result of flight and “wild expulsions”, then as a consequence of the “orderly and humane evacuation ” decided at the Potsdam Conference , around 8 million displaced persons lived in what was then federal territory in 1950 . That corresponded to about 16.1% of the population. In individual federal states the proportions were initially higher. B. 1946 in Lower Saxony 23.4%, in Bavaria 18.9% or in Schleswig-Holstein 32.2%.

With the entry into force of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany on May 24, 1949, Article 116 (1) of the Basic Law equated refugees and displaced persons of German ethnicity who had found admission to the territory of the German Reich as of December 31, 1937 with German citizens . In order to also achieve economic and social equality, the Federal Expellees Act standardized the terms expellee and refugee nationwide. Differing state laws in the field of expellee and refugee law, such as the Refugee Act of the State of Württemberg-Baden of February 14, 1947, were repealed by the BVFG 1953, as was the Refugee Settlement Act of 1949. In addition, the BVFG established a special legal position for refugees and displaced persons vis-à-vis the resident Population and regulated material integration. Children born after the displacement also received displaced status.

In 1953, Hans Lukaschek called the Federal Expellees Act the Magna Charta of Expellees .

According to the law regulating the legal relationships of persons falling under Article 131 of the Basic Law of 1951 and the Burden Equalization Act and the Act on the Establishment of Expulsion Damage and War Damage of 1952, the BVFG of 1953 provisionally concluded the West German expellee legislation after the Second World War .

Version from 1953

construction

The BVFG in its version of May 19, 1953 was divided into seven sections.

  • First section (§§ 1 to 20): General provisions
  • Second section (§§ 21 to 25): Authorities and advisory boards
  • Third section (§§ 26 to 81): Integration of displaced persons and refugees
  • Fourth section (§§ 82 to 95): Individual legal relationships
  • Fifth section (§§ 96 to 97): Culture, research and statistics
  • Sixth section (§ 98 to § 99): Penal provisions
  • Seventh section (§§ 100 to 107): transitional and final provisions

Inclusion measures

The third section of the BVFG looked at the distribution of displaced persons and refugees to the individual federal states according to a certain key, housing construction measures for accommodation outside of emergency reception camps as well as integration into agriculture, business and the liberal professions, including through the granting of business start-up loans and subsidies from the ERP special fund and the load equalization bank . Sections 47 et seq. BVFG grant benefits in tax and duty law, states such as North Rhine-Westphalia also apply to real estate transfer tax. The Federal Youth Plan contained, besides special vocational training programs for young refugees up to 25 years and their civic education to the ideological influence of the Nazi youth organizations to overcome.

A prerequisite for the use of these rights and benefits was the issuance of an identity card in accordance with § 15 BVFG as proof of displaced or refugee status.

The Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims fulfilled the cultural-political mandate to maintain the cultural property of the displaced and refugees (Section 96 BVFG), for example by compiling a comprehensive documentation of the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Central Europe.

Through their representation in the advisory boards for displaced and refugee issues set up at the Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons and the responsible state ministries , the displaced persons organizations also gained political influence (Section 22 (2) BVFG).

With full employment achieved since the mid-1950s , the loss of importance of the displaced parties in elections, such as the All-German Bloc, and the dissolution of the Federal Ministry for Expellees and Refugees in 1969, it was documented that around 25 years after the end of the Second World War, the economic and social integration of the Immigrants considered completed.

Legal position of the expellees after the establishment of German unity

With the accession of the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany on October 3, 1990, there was a population group in the form of the displaced persons living there who had not participated in the integration efforts of the old Federal Republic. By 1994 the Association of Displaced Persons gained 200,000 new members.

The Federal German War Consequences Acts such as the Federal Expellees Act should not be transferred to the accession area, as their purpose was largely considered to have been fulfilled in 1990. After the reunification of Germany , the BVFG was adapted to the new circumstances with the War Consequences Adjustment Act of December 21, 1992.

The Expellees Grant Act provided for a one-time grant of DM 4,000 for expellees within the meaning of Section 1 BVFG .

In the course of German reunification, the Treaty on Monetary, Economic and Social Union and the Unification Treaty created suitable legal bases.

Late repatriates

Up until the early 1980s, around 30,000 members of German ethnic groups from Eastern Bloc countries moved to Germany every year . The then Soviet government only changed its attitude towards those wishing to leave the country with Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost (1985) and perestroika (1986). The right to free exit from the Soviet Union (USSR), which came into force in 1987, was of particular importance to Soviet citizens . For the Germans from Russia , this made it possible to travel to the Federal Republic of Germany or the former GDR without any reference to family reunification .

Within a few years the number of repatriates from the USSR rose from 753 in 1987 to 147,950 in 1990. Since the opening of the Iron Curtain , the number of repatriates from Poland to around 134,000, from Romania to over 111,000 and that of asylum seekers to around 120,000, the German government began to introduce entry restrictions. After the law on the admission of repatriates came into force on June 28, 1990, immigration was only possible under the law on expellees if the admission permit from the receiving federal state was in place before leaving the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The notices of admission were issued relatively quickly, so that the number of emigrants in 1991 was over 147,000 and increased to over 195,000 in 1992. In these two years 445,198 and 356,233 people applied for membership respectively. That was half of the Germans still resident in the CIS.

In 1993 the reorganization of emigrant immigration came into effect in the course of the War Consequences Adjustment Act (KfbG), which laid the current foundations for emigrant admission and the integration of emigrants. In addition to measures to improve the living conditions of the German minorities living in the resettlement areas with the aim of keeping them there ( retention aid ), the new provisions in the BVFG followed the principle that all aid for integrating the repatriates into economic and social life in the Federal Republic of Germany was granted design that better positions compared to the local population in comparable social situations are avoided. Only in this way can a socially acceptable acceptance of emigrants in Germany be achieved.

The integration into professional, cultural and social life in the Federal Republic of Germany is made easier for ethnic repatriates and the disadvantages caused by the repatriation are alleviated ( Section 7 (1) BVFG new version). In addition, ethnic repatriates were granted a one-off bridging aid, a facility loan with a subsidy for household effects they left behind and compensation for the costs of resettlement, and professional qualifications acquired prior to resettlement were recognized and business start-up loans were granted. The ID card and thus the hereditary displaced person status were abolished. Ethnic repatriates receive a certificate as proof of their ethnic repatriation status ( Section 15 (1) BVFG new version). The spouses and descendants of a repatriate are certified that they have left the resettlement areas by means of the admission procedure (Section 15 (2) BVFG new version). Spätaussiedler and the family members included in the admission notice acquire German citizenship when the certificate is issued ( Section 7 Citizenship Act).

Section 94 BVFG new version enables first names and surnames to be Germanized. Finally, cultural funding was extended to the new federal states on the basis of Section 96 BVFG.

With the Immigration Act , since January 1, 2005, the law on expellees has, strictly speaking, become an immigration law, which in practice only requires German ancestry as a feature that cannot be influenced by the applicant.

Since people who were born after December 31, 1992 can no longer be repatriates according to the legal definition ( Section 4 (1) No. 3 BVFG), the corresponding provisions of the BVFG are de facto slowly expiring.

With the appointment of a Federal Government Commissioner for issues relating to repatriates in 1988 and the establishment of an advisory board for repatriate issues at the Federal Ministry of the Interior in 2005, the repatriate group still has a particular political influence despite the repeal of the regulations on authorities and advisory boards in the BVFG.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ General administrative regulation for the Federal Displacement Act (BVFG-VwV) of January 1, 2016, GMBl. 2016 No. 6, p. 118.
  2. ↑ Law No. 303 on the Admission and Integration of German Refugees (Refugee Law) of February 14, 1947, in: verfassungen.de, accessed on November 11, 2017.
  3. ↑ Act to promote the integration of displaced persons into agriculture (Refugee Settlement Act) of 10 August 1949 (WiGBl. P. 231).
  4. ↑ a b Measures for Inclusion , FES-Netz-Quelle Forced Migrations and Expulsions in Europe of the 20th Century , accessed on October 19, 2017.
  5. ^ Robert Strobel: The Displaced Persons Act , Die Zeit , April 2, 1953.
  6. ↑ BFH, judgment of August 30, 1972 - II R 79/72
  7. ^ Wolfgang Kessler : East German cultural assets in the Federal Republic of Germany. A handbook of the collections, associations and institutions with their holdings. Munich 1989
  8. ^ Hans Lemberg : Stories and History. The memory of the expellees in Germany after 1945 , Archive for Social History 2004, pp. 509–523; FES-Netz-Quelle Forced Migrations and Expulsions in Europe of the 20th Century , accessed on October 20, 2017.
  9. ^ Paul Lüttinger: The myth of rapid integration. An empirical study on the integration of displaced persons and refugees in the Federal Republic of Germany up to 1971 , Zeitschrift für Soziologie 1986, pp. 20–36.
  10. ^ Matthias Stickler : Integration of Expellees in Germany after 1945 - Considerations on the Occasion of 60 Years of the Federal Expellees Act , May 5, 2013, p. 9.
  11. ↑ Explanations of the annexes to the contract between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic on the establishment of the unity of Germany from August 31, 1990 - Unification Treaty , information from the Federal Government, BT-Drs. 11/7817 of September 10, 1990, p. 4.
  12. ↑ Law on a one-off grant to displaced persons living in the accession area (Expellees Grant Act - Contract ZuwG) of September 27, 1994 ( Federal Law Gazette I pp. 2624, 2635).
  13. ↑ Admission of Germans according to the BVFG , website Bund der Vertrieben , accessed on October 22, 2017.
  14. ^ Alfred Eisfeld : Nationality Policy towards the German Minority in the Soviet Union from 1917 to Perestroika , Federal Center for Civic Education / bpb, July 18, 2017.
  15. ↑ Federal Law Gazette I 1247
  16. ↑ (Spät-) Aussiedler in Germany , bpb, 2013.
  17. ↑ Law on the Adjustment of Consequences of War Laws (War Consequences Adjustment Act - KfbG) of December 21, 1992, Federal Law Gazette I 2094.
  18. ↑ Brigitta Gaa-Unterpaul: The War Consequences Adjustment Act and the amendment for the law on expellees , NJW 1993, pp. 2080-2082.
  19. ^ Aussiedlermigration in Deutschland , Grundlagendossier Migration, bpb, March 15, 2005.
  20. ^ Susanne Worbs, Eva Bund, Martin Kohls, Christian Babka von Gostomski: (Spät-) Aussiedler in Deutschland. An analysis of current data and research results , BAMF , Research Report 20, 2013.
  21. ↑ Bertolt Hunger, Christina Elmer: Historical responsibility for 19.14 euros , Der Spiegel , November 17, 2013.
  22. ↑ Aussiedler Migration in Germany , bpb, March 15, 2005.
  23. ^ Draft of a law for the adjustment of war consequences laws (War Consequences Adjustment Act - KfbG) , BT-Drs. 12/3212 of September 7, 1992, p. 19 f.
  24. ^ Benjamin Bidder: Aussiedler in Deutschland: Your name is now Eugen , Der Spiegel, November 24, 2013.
  25. ↑ Changes for repatriates and their family members through the Immigration Act , website of the Federation of Displaced Persons , accessed on November 10, 2017.
  26. ^ Decree of the Federal Ministry of the Interior of May 3, 2005 on the establishment of an advisory board for ethnic repatriate issues , GMBl. 2005, No. 37, p. 782.
  27. ↑ Sections 21-25 BVFG