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The Saar is returning home! , Postage stamp from 1935

The slogan Heim ins Reich has been used as a political catchphrase for German national politics since the end of the First World War and during the time of National Socialism .

term

The claim that the watchword goes back to Konrad Henlein is erroneous. During the Sudeten crisis on September 15, 1938, he made an appeal that ended with the words:

“We want to live as free German people! We want peace and work in our homeland again! We want to go home to the Reich! God bless us and our just struggle. "

At that time the slogan Heim ins Reich had been in use for a long time. 1921/1922 was published in Düsseldorf by Dobler Heim ins Reich. Journal for the connection of German Austria and the right to self-determination of the other neighboring German areas of the former Austria-Hungary. 1923 appeared in Graz a carton in the United pad with the inscription Home to the Reich! Peace treaties are only the work of man! In 1924 a book was published by the Graz geographer Georg Alois Lukas, to whom this card “Heim ins Reich! Peace treaties are only the work of man! ”Was enclosed. Austria and Germany were colored red, the white color showed the lost areas. Historian Petra Svatek: "The maps were tolerated as propaganda works by the politicians."

The Oesterreichisch-Deutsche Volksbund in Berlin had had a home in the Reich publishing house since 1924 , which until autumn 1933 had published a monthly magazine under this motto, in which the unification of Austria with Germany was propagated. The German National Socialist Workers' Party (Austria) held its rally in Vienna in 1925 to unite Austria and Germany under this title.

The words appear, for example, in a letter from the Saarbrücken Confession Synod of April 17, 1934, which was addressed to Adolf Hitler . The slogan was also used in the run-up to the Saar vote on January 13, 1935. Similar catchphrases in the voting campaign were “German mother, home to you” and “Nix wie hemm” (Saarland for “nothing like home”).

The slogan became a catchphrase and was not limited to efforts to incorporate Austria and the Sudetenland into the Nazi state , as happened in 1938 with the Munich Agreement and the annexation of Austria .

Political implementation

Eastern Europe

Contemporary propaganda card (1940 or later) for the resettlement of ethnic Germans in the Wartheland .
Planning of German Volkstumsbrücken, 1940

The catchphrase was also used for the efforts to establish a Greater German Reich and to lead German minorities such as the Baltic Germans back to the borders of the Reich after 700 years and to settle there. This project became possible as a result of the German-Soviet non-aggression pact from 1939. The practical implementation was carried out by the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle , one of the main SS offices that was almost exclusively run by Baltic German resettlers. Between 1939 and 1940, organizing the settlement of ethnic Germans under the slogan Heim in the Reich was the main task of this main office. By 1940 VoMi settled around one million ethnic Germans, mainly in the annexed areas, in the Reichsgauen Wartheland (Posen) and Danzig-West Prussia (Danzig).

The resettlements affected, among others, the South Tyroleans from Italy, Baltic Germans from Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, Wolhynia Germans from the former eastern Poland and from 1940 Bessarabian Germans , Bukowina Germans , Dobrudscha Germans , Galicia Germans and Gottscheers . Some of these ethnic groups had - in some cases for centuries - inhabited areas in Eastern Europe that, according to the pact, were to fall to the Soviet Union . As compensation, the resettled people received expropriated land in Germany-occupied Poland , in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia or in the Lower Styria CdZ area , which was to serve as future living space in the east for Germans . The propaganda film Heimkehr (1941) by Gustav Ucicky with Paula Wessely , which was banned after 1945, set the mood for resettlements based on the motto Heim im Reich .

Luxembourg

Luxembourg was in the German Confederation until 1866 and remained in the German Customs Union after the German War (until 1919 as a result of the Versailles Treaty). During the Second World War , the Volksdeutsche movement in Luxembourg attempted to join the Grand Duchy with the German Empire under this motto; because one saw the Luxembourgers as ethnic Germans and members of the "Germanic race". However, this was strictly rejected by a large part of the population and led to severe sanctions and repression on the part of the occupiers, who now wanted to force “voluntary” integration into the empire. Heim ins Reich (film) dealt with this topic under the direction of Claude Lahr . The 2004 documentary is one of the most successful Luxembourgish productions.

See also

literature

  • Lars Bosse: ethnic German resettlers in the "Reichgau Wartheland" . Master's thesis Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel 1992.
  • Heinz Fieß: The "repatriation" of the ethnic Germans using the example of the Bessarabian Germans. Relocation in 1940, stay in the camps and settlement in Poland . Self-published, 2nd edition 2016. ISBN 978-3-00-050915-5 . Review by Manfred Bolte.
  • Alexander Graf: “Los von Rom” and “Heim ins Reich”. The German national academic milieu at the cisleithan universities of the Habsburg Monarchy 1859–1914 . History and Education, Vol. 3, Lit Verlag 2014. ISBN 978-3-643-12834-8 .
  • Isabel Heinemann: "Race, settlement, German blood". The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen 2003, ISBN 978-3-89244-623-1 .
  • Markus Leniger: National Socialist Volkstumsarbeit and Resettlement Policy 1933–1945. Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-86596-082-5 .
  • Günther Pallaver , Leopold Steurer (Ed.): Germans! Hitler is selling you! The legacy of option and world war in South Tyrol . Bolzano 2011.
  • Ute Schmidt: "Home to the Reich"? Propaganda and reality of the resettlements after the "Hitler-Stalin Pact" . Journal of the Research Association SED, ZdF 26/2009, pp. 43–60.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joachim Neander: "Heim ins Reich"? Volksdeutsche as political maneuvering mass 1938-46 Review by Markus Leniger: National Socialist "Volkstumsarbeit" and resettlement policy 1933–1945: From minority care to settler selection. Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2006. ISBN 978-3-86596-082-5 . h-net.org, accessed January 5, 2019.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Benz u. a. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism. dtv 33007 Munich 1997, ISBN 3-608-91805-1 , p. 505.
  3. ↑ The printing work produced in the Styrian State Printing House is available in the Austrian National Library .
  4. ^ Paris peace negotiations: Die Grenzzeichner von 1919 orf.at, May 10, 2019, accessed May 10, 2019.
  5. ↑ profilm / year 1924 ( accessed August 24, 2010).
  6. ↑ Home to the Empire! Follow-up rally, Tuesday, April 28, 1925 in the evening in Kells' room "Zum Auge Gottes" , poster, First Wiener Vereinbuchdruckerei, Vienna 1925, archived in: Image archive and graphics collection of the Austrian National Library, Vienna .
  7. ↑ Joachim Conrad:  Nold, Hubert Leopold Christian. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 24, Bautz, Nordhausen 2005, ISBN 3-88309-247-9 , Sp. 1132-1138.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  8. ↑ Hans-Jürgen John: 65 years ago: “Nix wie hemm.” In: Saarbrücker Zeitung of January 13, 2000.
  9. ^ In the nationalistic frenzy. In: Saarbrücker Zeitung from April 24, 2004.
  10. ^ Resettlement of the Baltic Germans: Home in the Reich Der Spiegel , October 22, 2007