German-Belarusian relations

German-Belarusian relations

Germany	Belarus

German-Belarusian relations are the foreign policy relations between Germany and Belarus . Germany has an embassy in Minsk . Belarus has an embassy in Berlin , a consulate general in Munich and two honorary consulates in Cottbus and Hamburg .

designation

In German , the term Belarus is traditionally common. The Belarusian official bodies as well as the German diplomacy use the name Belarus in official German-language texts . In former times the country was also called White Ruthenia and in parlance in the GDR Belorussia . During the Second World War , the term White Ruthenia was used, which reflected the efforts of the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Alfred Rosenberg , to differentiate the Belarusians as much as possible from the Great Russians .

history

Belarusian postage stamp on the occasion of the 600th anniversary (Belarusian regiments fought in the Lithuanian contingent)

In the Battle of Tannenberg (1410) , the Teutonic Order was defeated by the armed forces of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania . At that time, Lithuania comprised the Belarusian territories, so that the Lithuanian army also consisted of Belarusian contingents.

First World War

Since the partitions of Poland (1772, 1793 and 1795) and thus also during the First World War , the Belarusian territories were part of the Russian Empire , so that the Belarusians fought on the side of the Triple Entente . On February 25, 1918, German troops entered Minsk. On March 3, 1918 in the Belarusian city of Brest of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers signed.

Leon Trotsky with German officers in Brest

The signing of the ceasefire agreement

Thus, Soviet Russia withdrew from the war.

Under German protection, but without the consent of the occupying power, the independence of Belarus was proclaimed for the first time on March 25, 1918. The "Rada", the executive body of the 1st Belarusian People's Congress , declared the detachment from Soviet Russia and proclaimed the "Free and Independent Belarusian People's Republic " ("Belaruskaja Narodnaja Respublika"), which was neither recognized by the German Empire nor by the Western powers . However, the Rada BNR thanked Kaiser Wilhelm II in a telegram for the occupation of Belarus and emphasized that it would only see a good fate for its people in the future under the protectorate of the German state . The Belarusian People's Republic only existed for six months until autumn 1918, but historically and in the minds of the Belarusians it is considered the founding act of their own Belarusian statehood. The Rada BNR is still active as a government in exile.

In the course of the German November Revolution, the expiry of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the civil war in neighboring Russia, which also encroached on Belarus, the eastern part of the country came under the control of the communists . The western part of today's Belarusian territory formed the eastern part of what was then Poland .

Second World War

On September 17, 1939, Eastern Poland was occupied by the Red Army . In the secret additional protocol of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact , the areas between Slutsch and Bug (i.e. all of Belarus) were added to the Soviet sphere of interest . From 1940 the periodical Ranica - Der Morgen was published in Berlin . Belorussian newspaper in Germany , which was aimed specifically at Belarusian emigrants, published and sponsored by the SS . She addressed herself to Belarusians living in Germany and tried to recruit them for the Waffen SS. In the summer of 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union ( Operation Barbarossa ) and the German Wehrmacht conquered Belarus within a few weeks in the course of the Białystok and Minsk battle . During the invasion, the Red Army evacuated around 20% of the Belarusian population to Russia and destroyed the food supply.

German troops in Minsk in August 1941, the propaganda company joined

Departure of people marked as “Jews according to race” in Minsk, photo by Ernst Herrmann from the Federal Archives

Destruction in Minsk, 1941

The German invasion brought severe damage. Although many areas of Belarus were initially happy about the Soviet defeat, the Germans quickly disappointed the local population. From 1941 to 1944, the Wehrmacht and SS murdered around two and a half million inhabitants of Belarus - more than a quarter of the population. The German soldiers waged a war of extermination against the civilian population . More than 200 cities and 9,000 villages were destroyed. The German soldiers often drove the villagers into barns and burned them down, as in 1943 in Chatyn (not to be confused with Katyn ). Today this place near Minsk is a memorial for the victims of the Second World War . In Minsk alone, the German occupying forces murdered more than 100,000 residents. The Jewish population of Belarus was almost completely murdered. About eight to nine percent of all European Jews killed came from Belarus. Almost all cities in the country were completely destroyed. The industrial enterprises had declined by 85 percent, the industrial capacity by 95 percent, the crop area by 40 to 50 percent, livestock by 80 percent. There were three million homeless after the end of the war . 25 percent of the Belarusian population perished. Furthermore, a large part of the ethnic Poles (around 300,000) were forcibly resettled in the eastern German territories that were annexed to Poland . Before the Second World War there were ten million people in Belarus. It was not until the end of the 1980s that Belarus' population had returned to pre-war levels.

During the Second World War , the term White Ruthenia was used, which reflected the efforts of the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Alfred Rosenberg , to differentiate the Belarusians as much as possible from the Great Russians .

During the German occupation, the “ Belarusian Central Council ” (Bielaruskaja Centralnaja Rada - BCR) was installed in Belarus , a puppet government that used historic Belarusian state emblems. The chairman of the BCR was Radasłaŭ Astroŭski . This "government" disappeared after the withdrawal of the German Eastern Front in 1944. On March 25, 1948, the Belarusian Central Council was re-established as a government in exile in Germany, which competed with the Rada BNR . Other institutions such as the Belarusian Home Guard , the Belarusian Self-Protection Corps , the Belarusian Auxiliary Police , the Belarusian Youth Organization or the Belarusian Self-Help Organization were founded. The Belarusian Independent Party (BNP) collaborated with the German occupiers with the aim of establishing a Belarusian nation-state.

The armed resistance movement in Belarus was one of the strongest in Europe . There were over 1000 partisan groups , most of which were communist but also nationalist. At the beginning of 1943, the repatriation of around 10,500 Germans from the area of ​​the so-called Central Army Group and from Belarus began. These ethnic Germans were resettled in the Warthegau (in occupied Poland) and what was then the German Empire. In the autumn of 1943 the Red Army recaptured the far east of the country, and in the summer of 1944 the entire country was recaptured.

post war period

The memorial to Belarusian prisoners of war in Mittenwald

After the Second World War, thousands of Belarusians came to Germany for various reasons. In 1945 there were an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 Belarusians on German or Austrian territory. Belarusian national committees were founded in Regensburg , Munich and Braunschweig. Belarusian DP camps were in Watenstedt , Osterhofen and in the suburb of Ganghofer in Regensburg. In the camp for displaced persons in Michelsdorf (Cham) in the Upper Palatinate, Belarusians were particularly culturally active. Between 1946 and 1950 the emigrants ran their own Belarusian-language grammar school in Michelsdorf, which at times had 122 pupils and was named after the national poet Janka Kupala . In 1949 the school was relocated to Backnang , where it existed until February 1950.

On December 29, 1947, at a meeting in a DP camp in Osterhofen, it was decided to reactivate the Rada of the Belarusian People's Republic under the leadership of Mikola Abramtschyk . At that time the Rada had 72 members.

In the Upper Bavarian Mittenwald east of the Luttensee barracks there is a memorial to Belarus prisoners of war . So that the former prisoners of war and displaced person honored in 1948 the participants of the uprising in Slutsk , an anti-Bolshevik uprising of the year 1920th

Independent Belarus

Disappearances of opposition activists: Demonstration in Warsaw in memory of the people Jury Sacharanka, Viktor Gonchar, Anatoly Krassowski and Dmitri Sawadski

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, relations between Belarus and Germany initially developed positively. Diplomatic relations were established in 1992. A turn for the worse was initiated in 1994 when Alexander Lukashenko was elected president. He immediately took action against the press, which was politically and economically oriented towards the West, and repeatedly denounced the financial transfers of political organizations - including the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation - to friendly organizations and the media in Belarus. As a result of human rights violations and dissonances regarding the opening of the country to the market economy, the administration of the European Union, with the participation of Germany, imposed an entry ban on the Belarusian government in 1997. On May 18, 2006, the European Union (including Germany again) decided to freeze the accounts of President Lukashenko and 35 other government officials.

Between the Federal Republic of Germany and Belarus there was a security policy cooperation between 2008 and at least 2011, during which Lukashenko's security forces were trained in Germany. Almost 400 border guards, senior militiamen and forensic technicians were also trained by German officials directly in Belarus, and in 2010 Belarusian security forces observed German police officers in action for several days during the Castor transport to Gorleben in Lower Saxony.

As the EU identified improvements in the country's human rights situation for 2015 and 2016, most of the sanctions were gradually lifted after the 2015 presidential election in Belarus . "The Federal Government supports rapprochement and advocates further steps to respect human rights, the development of democracy and the strengthening of civil society exchange between the two countries".

Aid after the Chernobyl disaster

Cesium-137 contamination in 1996 in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine in kilobecquerels per square meter

In 1986 the Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred in northern Ukraine near the Belarusian border. Large areas of Belarus were contaminated. In the course of the 1990s, a large number of Chernobyl aid organizations emerged in Germany ; one focus of her work is on Belarus. In the course of his anti-Western course, however, President Lukashenko repeatedly forbade radiation-damaged Belarusian children to go on vacation to Germany. These decrees were justified with the non-return of some children.

economy

In 2014, only trade with Russia and Ukraine was more important for Belarus than with Germany. This amounted to approximately 4 billion US dollars. In Minsk there is a representative office for the German economy in the Republic of Belarus (the Chamber of Commerce Abroad ). In 2015, Germany was only Belarus' fifth most important trading partner with a volume of 2.47 billion US dollars, with both imports and exports falling sharply. The most important German companies in Belarus include Carl Zeiss , Fenox Automotive GmbH, Fresenius Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, MAZ - MAN and Vicos Nahrungsmittel GmbH. Belarus is due to its location an important transit country between Central Europe and Russia : 50% of Russian oil flowing through the in Schwedt / Oder ending Druzhba pipeline , which on Belarusian territory by the company Gomel Transneft is supervised. Because of the political situation in Belarus, Russia is increasingly turning to Northern Europe . Construction of the Nord Stream pipeline through the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany began in 2005 and was completed in 2011. This made Russia's gas supplies to Western Europe more independent of Belarus.

culture and education

Several thousand young Belarusians study in Germany and a slightly larger number in Russia or countries in the West . The International Aid Fund of the EU and Germany has opened partnerships in the West with three Belarusian universities . The often lamented isolation was already painful for Belarus during the times of the Soviet Union . Since the country's independence, the universities have increased their hopes for cooperation, but this has hardly succeeded because of the authoritarian state policy. The only private university founded in 1992 , the "European Humanistic University", was closed in August 2004 due to government pressure. It had offered European studies, linguistics and political sciences, largely financed by Western funds. The Institute for German Studies was also located there. The college was reopened in June 2005 in exile in Vilnius (Lithuania). A cultural event in Belarus has been the “German Weeks” that have been taking place since the 2000s. There is also a Goethe Institute based in Minsk .

People

Walter Anderson

Barys kit

In 2015, 21,151 Belarusians lived in Germany and in 2012 around 2,500 Germans lived in Belarus.

• The German Baltic Walter Anderson (born October 10, 1885 in Minsk , Belarus, † August 23, 1962 in Kiel ) was one of the most important folklorists of the 20th century and the programmer of the folkloric geographic-historical method ( Finnish school ).
• Robert Wartenberg (born June 7, ^jul. / 19th June  1886 ^greg. 19th June 1886 in the garden of old (German name for Grodno), Russian Empire ; † 16th November 1956 in San Francisco , United States ) was a German American neurologist .
• Jury Sabaleuski (1889–1957), Belarusian publicist, politician, activist, died in Munich.
• Georg von Reutern (1906–1945), a German-Baltic philologist, is a son of the city of Vitebsk.
• Nadseja Abramawa (1907–1979), Belarusian politician, activist and publicist and chairwoman of the girls' organizations of the Belarusian Youth Office , lived in Germany from 1944, died on February 18, 1979 in Munich.
• Dzmitryj Kasmowitsch (1909–1991), Belarusian political activist, police chief in Smolensk under German occupation, lived in Stuttgart until his death .
• Barys Kit (born April 6, 1910 in Saint Petersburg , Russian Empire ; † February 1, 2018 in Frankfurt am Main ), Belarusian mathematician, physicist and chemist, lived in Frankfurt am Main since 1972.
• Andrej Klimovets , born in Gomel in 1974, was a handball player in Belarus and Germany and is now a German handball trainer .
• Stanislav Anischenko (* 1983 ) is a Belarusian double bass player. Since September 2009 he has been solo bassist with the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne .
• Alesia Graf (born October 14, 1980 in Gomel , Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic , Soviet Union as Alessja Klimowitsch ( Belarusian Алеся Клімовіч )) is a German boxer of Belarusian origin in super bantamweight .
• Alexej Dmitriev ( Russian Алексей Дмитриев / Alexei Dmitrijew, Belarusian Аляксей Дзмітрыеў / Aljaksej Dsmitryjeu; born December 24, 1985 in Minsk , Belarusian SSR ) is a German - Belarusian ice hockey player
• Barbara Prakopenka (born April 29, 1992 in Gomel , Belarus) is a German actress of Belarusian descent.

Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall , an artist from Vitebsk in Belarus , spent part of his life in Germany. In 1922, Chagall and his family left Russia for Berlin . Reasons for leaving were, in addition to his financial problems, the lack of future prospects. The First Russian Art Exhibition in Berlin in 1922 showed some of his paintings. In Berlin, Chagall also met the locally known society photographer Frieda Riess . Their studio was known for exclusive meetings of Berlin high society. In the same year Chagall began etchings for a book edition of "Mein Leben" on behalf of the Berlin art dealer Paul Cassirer . On September 1, 1923, Chagall and his family moved to Paris . In 1937, 59 works by Chagall were confiscated at the “Degenerate Art” exhibition in Germany .

Memorial plaque Varian Fry , Potsdamer Strasse 1, in Berlin-Tiergarten

During Chagall's stay in Marseille , he was arrested in 1941 during a police raid. The threat of extradition to the Germans was barely prevented by US intervention. The Vichy regime no longer offered Chagall any protection. With the help of Varian Fry , the head of the Emergency Rescue Committee , he left France with his family, with an invitation from the Museum of Modern Art in his pocket, on May 7, 1941, and set off for America by ship. After the Second World War, Chagall returned to Europe. In Kassel , Chagall took part in documenta three times : documenta 1 (1955), documenta II (1959) and documenta III (1964). From 1978 Chagall created a total of nine windows for the parish church of St. Stephan in Mainz . This order came about through the mediation of the local pastor Klaus Mayer . The church windows in Mainz, where there were already violent persecutions of the Jews in the Middle Ages, are intended to represent a permanent symbol of Jewish-Christian solidarity and international understanding. Chagall was able to complete a total of nine church windows by his death. He has been an honorary citizen of the city since 1981.

Town twinning

Since 1989 there has been a joint partnership between Brest and the German cities of Ravensburg , Weingarten , Baienfurt , Baindt and Berg ( Germany ). Dobrusch maintains a town partnership with Ittigen . Helmstedt has had a partnership with Swetlahorsk since 1991 . Hrodna has been a twin town of Minden ( North Rhine-Westphalia ) since 1991 . Minsk is the twin city of Bonn . The Minsk districts "Partisan" and "Oktjabr" maintain partnerships with the Berlin district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf . The city of Esslingen am Neckar has had a partnership with Molodetschno since 1988 .

See also

• List of German ambassadors in Belarus
• Foreign policy of the Federal Republic of Germany

literature

• Bernhard Chiari : Everyday life behind the front. Occupation, collaboration and resistance in Belarus 1941–1944. Droste, Düsseldorf 1998, ISBN 3-7700-1607-6 , (= writings of the Federal Archives, Volume 53, also dissertation at the University of Tübingen 1997 under the title: German occupation in Belarus 1941-1944).
• Wolfgang Curilla: The German Ordnungspolizei and the Holocaust in the Baltic States and in Belarus 1941-1944. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, ISBN 3-506-71787-1 .
• Christian Gerlach: Calculated murders. The German economic and extermination policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Hamburger Edition , Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-930908-54-9 .
• Dimitri Romanowski: Belarus and Weimar Germany: economic, scientific-technical and cultural relations. diserta-Verlag 2015, ISBN 9783959350402

Web links

Commons : Belarusian-German Relations  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• The Foreign Office on bilateral relations with Belarus
• German Embassy in Minsk (German, Russian and Belarusian)
• Embassy in Republic of Belarus Berlin (German, Russian and Belarusian)
• Official website of the German-Belarusian Society

Individual evidence

1. ↑ German Embassy Minsk ( Memento of the original from November 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ^ Embassy of the Republic of Belarus in the Federal Republic of Germany
3. ↑ Belarus on the website of the Federal Foreign Office
4. ↑ Alexander Brakel: Under Red Star and Swastika. Baranowicze 1939 to 1944. Western Belarus under Soviet and German occupation . (= Age of World Wars. Volume 5). Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn u. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-506-76784-4 , p. 31.
5. ^ Rainer Lindner: Historians and rule: nation building and history politics in Belarus in the 19th and 20th centuries. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999. p. 393
6. ↑ John Loftus : America's Nazi Secret. TrineDay LCC 2010, ISBN 978-1-936296-04-0 , p. 98
7. ↑ Mark Alexander: Nazi Collaborators, American Intelligence, and the Cold War. 2015, p. 74.
8. ↑ Eugeniusz Mironowicz: Białoruś. Trio, Warsaw 1999, ISBN 83-85660-82-8 , p. 136.
9. ↑ Alexander Brakel: Under Red Star and Swastika. Baranowicze 1939 to 1944. Western Belarus under Soviet and German occupation . (= Age of World Wars. Volume 5). Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-506-76784-4 , p. 31.
10. ^ Wojciech Roszkowski , Jan Kofman (Ed.): Biographical Dictionary of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century. Routledge, Abingdon et al. 2015, ISBN 978-0-7656-1027-0 , pp. 39f.
11. ↑ Belarusian emigration on europe-direct-cham.de ( Memento from December 30, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
12. ^ Assembly of the Rada BNR in Osterhofen (Belarusian)
13. ↑ Foreign Office: Relations with Germany
14. ↑ German police trained Lukashenko's security forces in sueddeutsche.de, 23 August 2012
15. ↑ Foreign Office: Relations with Germany
16. ^ Departure ban for Chernobyl children
17. ↑ ntv: View of Belarus directed "German economy still hesitant"
18. ↑ Foreign Office: Economy
19. ↑ Projects -International Aid Fund e. V.
20. ↑ German Embassy Minsk: German Weeks 2016 ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
21. ↑ Welcome to the Goethe Institute in Belarus
22. ↑ Federal Office. Number of foreigners in Germany by country of origin in 2014 and 2015 . In Statista - the statistics portal. Accessed October 9, 2016
23. ↑ Кто в Беларуси живет ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 9, 2016  
24. ↑ Portrait of the WDR Symphony Orchestra [1]
25. ^ Honorary citizen of the city of Mainz
26. ↑ Partnership with the municipality of Dobrusch (Belarus)
27. ↑ http://www.esslingen.de/,Lde/start/es_themen/Molodetschno.html