Refugees in Schleswig-Holstein after the Second World War

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Arrival of refugees in Meldorf

The refugees in Schleswig-Holstein had since 1945 one of the biggest problems of the History of Germany . In terms of population, the province of Schleswig-Holstein and the new state of Schleswig-Holstein took in the second most refugees and displaced persons from the eastern regions of the German Reich between 1944 and 1947 after Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . The " economic miracle " helped with their accommodation, care and integration .

refuge

Heath (1943)

Since 1943, more than 200,000 people had been brought from the bombed cities to the rural areas north of the Lower Elbe . Hamburg had been destroyed by Operation Gomorrah . When the Red Army reached the borders of the German Reich (1933–1945) in 1944 , millions of Germans fled west. During the transport of the wounded and refugees across the Baltic Sea , 700 ships of the Kriegsmarine brought over two million people to Mecklenburg and Schleswig-Holstein. After the British Army marched into Lower Saxony from the west , more and more soldiers and refugees pushed north to Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark . After the Wehrmacht surrendered , hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced persons reached towns and villages. From the beginning of March to the end of June alone there were almost 700,000.

In addition, over a million Wehrmacht soldiers were interned in two British restricted areas in northern Germany (G / Dithmarschen – Eiderstedt and F / Plön) . The internment camps were not completely closed until April 1946. Over 200,000 former so-called foreign workers and forced laborers remained in the camps . 365,000 refugees and displaced persons were added by the end of 1946.

In the first “all-German” census in October 1946, 2.6 million people lived in Schleswig-Holstein (excluding the displaced persons ), around one million more than before 1939. Excluding the war deaths, that meant three to four locals. In Lower Saxony the ratio was 1: 2, in Bavaria 1: 3. The lack of housing, food and jobs was overwhelming.

Accommodation and supplies

Barracks of the trampoline roof camp in Flensburg - Mürwik (2012)
ERP settlement Flensburg- Jürgensby 1951

Despite the air raid on Lübeck on March 29, 1942 and the air raids on Kiel , a relatively large amount of living space had been preserved in Schleswig-Holstein; the four independent cities of Flensburg , Kiel , Lübeck and Neumünster only accepted a fifth of the refugees in the first few years. In contrast, the population doubled in the Eckernförde and Stormarn districts . In Großhansdorf , 1,500 locals faced 3,500 refugees. In Rendsburg and on Eiderstedt the increase was 65%. Rooms and apartments had to be shared or given up, kitchens and toilets shared. Since many of the ceded rooms and emergency accommodations were unheated, burning witches were set up. Coal and wood were scarce and expensive. Wherever possible, peat was therefore used as heating material. On April 1, 1950 there were still 728 refugee camps with 127,756 people. Keeping the warehouse clean, access to the washroom and visits were regulated. When there was capital and building materials again at the beginning of the 1950s, housing construction got going. Pure refugee settlements such as Trappenkamp emerged and the first systematic, uniform and centrally controlled housing construction program in West Germany after the war, the ERP special program " Construction of 10,000 refugee apartments " under the leadership of the German trade unions , was implemented at 84 locations in 50 cities and communities in Schleswig-Holstein Foundation stone laid on March 5, 1950 in Neumünster. In many cities and municipalities, street names - Ostpreußenring, Pommernweg, Breslauer Straße and many others - still remember the origin of the people who moved there.

In the first years after the war, many people went hungry. In Schleswig-Holstein, refugees and displaced persons were particularly affected. The rationing on the ration cards was not enough. New allotments should help the refugees with self-sufficiency . The black market , harvest work and the "replenishing" of harvested fields offered the prospect of food. For warm clothing, wool was collected from the fences and spun. New suits and clothes were made from old uniforms, blankets and bedding.

Jobs

Paid work was scarce and in demand, it was often not what one had learned in East Prussia or Pomerania . Even overqualified people had to retrain and accept what was available. Agricultural occupations predominated among the 69,000 former self-employed. By 1949, only a fifth of this group had their own business again. The refugee settlement law of August 1949 and the so-called 30,000 hectare agreement, which obliged the large landowners to surrender land, provided relief . Nevertheless, in 1958 only 4,246 displaced persons ran their own agricultural or forestry operations. Only half of these farm sites were over 10 hectares. Craftsmen had it easier . With the repair of consumer goods, a wide field of activity opened up in times of need. In the area of ​​the Flensburg Chamber of Crafts, more than half of the 2,368 companies approved in 1946 were run by refugees or displaced persons. The fishermen who fled East Prussia were a gain for Kiel .

All employees and workers suffered from the job shortage in the first few years; but the refugees and displaced persons were hit harder by unemployment than the locals. It was not until the economic miracle that the number of unemployed refugees fell from 135,144 to 22,143 between 1951 and 1957. The number of inhabitants continued to rise in the first few years; In 1949 it exceeded 2.7 million. The state government of Schleswig-Holstein had already recognized in 1948 that half a million refugees could only find wages and bread in other countries . A plan to relocate to the former western zones was therefore one of the first measures taken by the German government . By 1960, 400,000 refugees and displaced persons from Schleswig-Holstein had moved mainly to North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg .

fears

Given the catastrophic situation, Otto Hoevermann warned in October 1945 of the gap between the refugees and the resident population. In addition to the material hardship, friction and open hatred made coexistence difficult. Some feared that Low Prussian and East Pomeranian dialect would displace Low German , while others complained about weddings between the residents and those who were accepted. With denazification , the refugees were able to exonerate themselves more easily than the locals without certificates and papers.

politics

Meeting of the Prime Ministers of the British Zone in Flensburg in November 1947 on refugee and agricultural issues.

In southern Schleswig , locals turned to the Danish minority in large numbers . The number of its members organized in the Südschleswigschen Verein rose from 2,700 to 62,000 from the end of the Nazi era until 1946. The so-called New Danes, who were often disparagingly called Speckdänes , relied on the separation of South Schleswig from the newly emerging Germany and the expulsion of the refugees.

In order to counter the widespread discontent and not create a forum for potential conflict, the refugees should be involved in the development of the country. This policy should also prevent the emergence of refugee and displaced parties. The ban issued by the British military government in 1945 was lifted in 1948. The higher German authorities and later the appointed and elected state governments had to take into account the will of the British - albeit with a decreasing tendency. The orientation of German politics in this area of ​​tension has not yet been researched.

In 1950 the all-German bloc / federation of expellees and disenfranchised persons was formed . In the state election in Schleswig-Holstein in 1950 , the BHE won 23.4% of the vote. Fear of being ruled by refugees spread. But both the BHE and the opposing party Schleswig-Holsteinische Gemeinschaft (SHE) soon became part of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany . They found themselves in an "emergency community" that Otto Hoevermann had described in September 1945 as hope for the country.

memory

In 2011, the Center against Expulsions curated the exhibition Arrived - The Integration of Expellees in Germany . In 2013, the exhibition Foreign Home - Refugees and Displaced Persons in Schleswig-Holstein after 1945 remembered those years. The trampoline roof warehouse in the former Mürwik special area is to be converted into a museum.

literature

  • Manfred Jessen-Klingenberg : “This people opposes us in everything.” Racist and xenophobic judgments about the expellees and refugees in Schleswig-Holstein 1945–46. In: Karl Heinrich Pohl (Ed.): Regional history today. The refugee problem in Schleswig-Holstein after 1945. Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, Bielefeld 1997, ISBN 3-89534-252-1 , pp. 81-95.
  • Willy Diercks, Anke Joldrichsen and Martin Gietzelt (ed.): Refugee Land Schleswig-Holstein - Experience reports from the new beginning . Boyens, Heide (Holstein) 1998. ISBN 3-8042-0802-9 .
  • Ulrich Lange, Ingwer E. Momsen, Eckhart Dege and Hermann Achenbach (eds.): Historical Atlas Schleswig-Holstein since 1945 , Vol. 1. Wachholtz Verlag , Neumünster 1999. ISBN 978-3529024450 .
  • Hermann Heidrich and Ilka E. Hillenstedt: Foreign home. Refugees and displaced persons in Schleswig-Holstein after 1945 . Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2009. ISBN 978-3529028007 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Schleswig-Holstein - The way to the Federal Republic. In: schleswig-holstein.de. Retrieved December 21, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Restricted area F
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Martin Gietzelt: Refugees. In the beginning there was need. In: Schleswig-Holstein from A to Z. Society for Schleswig-Holstein History, accessed on December 21, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Working group for contemporary building eV (Ed.): Johannes Scharre, Ulrich Haake: "The construction of 10,000 refugee apartments in Schleswig-Holstein (ERP special program 1950) - result, method, experiences and conclusions", / Working group for productive refugee aid eV; (Research report on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Housing No. 148 (2404/05)); Building research report of the Working Group for Contemporary Building eV No. 2, Kiel 1952, p. 10
  5. ^ The land reform of 1945 in Schleswig-Holstein (Bauernblatt Schleswig-Holstein of March 16, 2012) ( Memento of April 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Carina Werner: The birth of the Federal Republic. Flows of refugees and "New Denmark": Schleswig-Holstein. In: ndr.de. April 14, 2009, archived from the original on August 16, 2016 ; accessed on December 21, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Martin Gietzelt (2014)
  8. ↑ Arrived
  9. ^ Museums North