Friedland transit camp

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Accommodation in the Friedland camp

The border transit camp (GDL) Friedland is located in the Lower Saxony municipality of Friedland in the district of Göttingen . It was first used after the Second World War for expelled Germans from the formerly German eastern regions and the Sudetenland . The GDL was built by the British occupying forces on the site of the agricultural research institute of the University of Göttingen , which had been relocated to Friedland , and was put into operation on September 20, 1945. The Friedland transit camp is a location of the Lower Saxony State Reception Authority (LAB NI). It is also called the gateway to freedom .

Beginnings

Returnees in the Friedland camp, 1955
Camp barracks, 1958

The border transit camp consisted of former stable buildings of the University of Göttingen as well as barracks and Nissen huts . The location of Friedland at the border point of the British occupation zone (Lower Saxony), the American occupation zone ( Hesse ) and the Soviet occupation zone ( Thuringia ) as well as on the important railway line between Hanover and Kassel ( railway line Bebra-Göttingen ) predestined the location for a refugee camp. At the beginning, thousands of members of the armed forces came every day. They received the so-called D2-Schein as a document of their discharge from military service, their military pay and a discharge allowance, as well as civil clothing from donations from Caritas.

It was planned that refugees should only stay 24 hours if possible; they were medically examined and disinfected. Building materials were confiscated and prisoners of war were used to expand the camp. The camp was given a barbed wire fence and barriers at the entrances; Visitors needed passes. There were three types of barracks: for mothers with small children, for men and for women. A former German officer was soon appointed to head the camp. The refugees were entitled to the rations of the German civilian population. The arrival of groups of children was a particularly difficult situation for the employees; Attempts were made to locate the relatives and organized trips in cooperation with the German Red Cross (DRK) ; later it became customary to telegraph relatives to notify them to pick up their children. There were special tracing broadcasts on the radio and posters were put up.

In November 1945 a position of the German Caritas Association started its work in Friedland. The British Salvation Army and the YMCA were also represented. In 1957, the Friedlandhilfe association was founded to help the newcomers reintegrate. The aid organization was under the long-term management of Johanne Büchting and raised around 100 million DM in donations.

Refugee Origin

Homecoming memorial , erected in 1967/68
Road in the camp, 1988

In the years after the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of returnees from captivity were received in Friedland. Because of the large number, a branch office was temporarily set up in Dassel . After a trip to Moscow by the then Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer , the last prisoners of war were able to return from the Soviet Union in 1955 . To receive the returnees, the hymn Nun thank all God was sung as “Choral von Friedland” . For returnees and prisoners of war, the monumental homecoming memorial was erected on the elevation of the Hagenberg in Friedland in 1967/68 .

The camp was later used as a transitional camp for people emigrating from the GDR , today mainly as a reception facility for repatriates . Since October 1, 2000, the GDL Friedland has been the only federal initial reception facility for ethnic German repatriates in Germany. The border transit camp has been the official initial reception facility for asylum seekers in Lower Saxony since January 1, 2011.

In addition, people from other countries were accepted: in 1956, after the Hungarian uprising, refugees came from Hungary, in 1973 persecuted by the Pinochet regime came from Chile , in 1978 it was mostly boat people from Vietnam , in 1984 Tamils from Sri Lanka and in 1990 refugees from Albania . At the end of March 2009, the first 122 of a total of 2500 refugees from Iraq landed in a special plane from Damascus in Hanover and were taken to the Friedland transit camp. Almost all of them belong to the Christian minority persecuted in Iraq. In 2013, as a result of the Syrian civil war, the first of 5,000 contingent refugees arrived from Syria. Most came from a refugee camp in Lebanon and were selected there by UNHCR, Caritas and the International Organization for Migration , among others .

Friedland Museum

Reconstructed Nissen hut in the Friedland camp, exhibition site of the Friedland Museum

The Friedland Museum was opened on March 18, 2016 by Lower Saxony's Prime Minister Stephan Weil and Lower Saxony's Interior Minister Boris Pistorius . The museum is located near the warehouse in the former station building, which was redesigned for five million euros. It presents the history of the camp, contemporary history since 1945 and individual escape stories. The museum is to be expanded to include an information center and an international academy by 2020. The federal government and the state of Lower Saxony share the costs of 20 million euros.

Others

Until today (2018) the GDL Friedland had two plays as a theme. In 2009, Werkgruppe 2 brought the piece “Friedland” to the stage together with the Deutsches Theater Göttingen . In 2014, a play as a cooperation project between the University of Göttingen and the Jungem Theater , entitled “Nice that you are there”, premiered. The documentary film "Whiplash" was later released for this cooperation project.

See also

literature

  • Dagmar Kleineke: Origin and development of the Friedland camp 1945–1955 . Dissertation University of Göttingen, Göttingen 1992, 281 (II) pp.
  • Jürgen Gückel: 60 years of Friedland camp. Contemporary witnesses report . (Extended special print of the series 60 years of Friedland camp , which appeared in the Göttinger Tageblatt in 2005. ) Göttinger Tageblatt, Göttingen 2005, 96 pp.
  • Wilhelm Tomm: Eventful years, told history. Evangelical Diakonie in the Friedland transit camp 1945–1985 . Published by the Inner Mission and the Evangelical Relief Organization in the Friedland transit camp e. V. 2nd edition. Bremer, Friedland 2005, 322 pages, ISBN 3-9803783-5-7
  • Author collective: Friedland transit camp. 1945-2000 . Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior , Department for Press and Public Relations, Hanover 2001, 23 pp.
  • Jürgen Asch (edit.): Finding aid for the selection inventory Nds. 386. Friedland transit camp, acc. 67/85, 1951-1973 . Publications of the Lower Saxony archive administration: inventories and smaller publications of the main state archive in Hanover (issue 3). Hahn, Hannover 1992, 431 (XVII) p.
  • Josef Reding : Friedland. Chronicle of the great homecoming. This book was written in the winter of 1955/56 in barrack C3 of the Friedland camp . Arena, Würzburg 1989, 214 pages, ISBN 3-401-02510-4
  • Regina Löneke, Ira Spieker: Hort der Freiheit: Ethnographic approaches to the Friedland transit camp . Schnelldruckerei Rambow, Göttingen 2014, 212 pages, ISBN 978-3-00-047513-9
  • Dirk Lange, Sven Rößler: Representations of the migration society. The Friedland transit camp in a historical-political textbook. 2012, ISBN 978-3-8340-1134-3
  • Joachim Baur and Lorraine Bluche (eds.), Fluchtpunkt Friedland, About the border transit camp 1945 to today , Göttingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-8353-3012-2
  • Sascha Schießl, “The Gate to Freedom”, the consequences of war, politics of remembrance and humanitarian demands in the Friedland camp (1945-1970) , Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-8353-1845-8
  • Sascha Schießl: The Friedland camp as a gateway to freedom. From a place of remembrance to a symbol of German humanity , in: Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte, 84 (2012), pp. 97–122
  • Dagmar Kleineke: Origin and development of the Friedland camp 1945-1955 , Dramfeld 1994
  • Regina Löneke / Ira Spieker (ed.): Hort der Freiheit. Ethnographic approaches to the Friedland transit camp , Göttingen 2014
  • Derek John Holmgren: "Gateway to Freedom" and Instrument of Order. The Friedland Transit Camp. 1945-1955 , Chapel Hill 2010

Web links

Commons : Lager Friedland  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Friedland community: border transit camp ( Memento from December 5, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ a b The history of the border transit camp on the homepage of the state of Lower Saxony
  3. ↑ Friedland - the "gateway to freedom"
  4. ↑ The "Gateway to Freedom"
  5. ^ NDR: "Gate to Freedom": Friedland transit camp. Retrieved May 3, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Dagmar Kleineke: formation and development of the camp Friedland 1945-1955 . Dissertation University of Göttingen, Göttingen 1992, here p. 111.
  7. ↑ Kleineke 127
  8. ↑ Kleineke 132
  9. ↑ Kleineke 21
  10. ↑ Kleineke 33
  11. ↑ Kleineke 35
  12. ↑ Kleineke 36
  13. ↑ Kleineke 43
  14. ↑ Kleineke 88
  15. ↑ Kleineke 91 f.
  16. ^ The Caritas office in the Friedland transit camp
  17. ↑ Kleineke 220
  18. ^ The homepage of the Friedlandhilfe Association ( Memento from February 12, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  19. ^ History of the transit camp and initial reception facility in Friedland. Federal Office of Administration , accessed on January 23, 2019 .
  20. ↑ Friedland transit camps and Iraqis find asylum in Germany in “Mainzer Rhein-Zeitung”, March 20, 2009, pages 2 and 4
  21. ↑ 30 years later Boat People in Germany ( memento from February 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on drk.de
  22. ↑ Der Tagesspiegel: First Iraqis in the Friedland Camp
  23. ↑ Gauck promises the Syrian refugees Respekt welt.de of November 21, 2013
  24. ^ Lee Hielscher, Mathias Fiedler: The humanitarian exception program. Hinterland Magazin, accessed on August 14, 2016 .
  25. ^ NDR: Border transit camp: Weil inaugurates new museum. In: www.ndr.de. Retrieved August 14, 2016 .
  26. ^ "Museum Friedland Border Transit Camp " museum-friedland.de
  27. ↑ Museum Friedland is open: everyone can travel back in time. March 18, 2016, accessed August 14, 2016 .
  28. ^ Friedland - a staged warehouse installation at werkgruppe2.de
  29. ^ Preview of the Junge Theater in the border transit camp in Göttinger Tageblatt on October 27, 2014
  30. ↑ Tina Fibiger on the premiere on November 1, 2014 in the Göttingen Young Theater
  31. ↑ Becker, Oliver; Näser Torsten: Whiplash: Research-based learning at the interface between science and art. In: Working together. Practices of coordination and cooperation in collaborative processes. Groth, Stefan; Ritter, Christian, 2019, accessed May 2, 2020 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 25 ′ 22 ″  N , 9 ° 54 ′ 40 ″  E