Ostdenkschrift

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The situation of displaced persons and the ratio of the German people to its eastern neighbors (usually as " Ostdenkschrift " hereinafter) is on 1 October 1965 by the EKD - Council President Kurt Scharf memorandum of the Evangelical Church in Germany, signed and includes a preface. It was drawn up by the EKD's Chamber for Public Responsibility, which was headed by Ludwig Raiser .

content

The memorandum took up the impulses of the Tübingen Memorandum, which was also jointly responsible for Raiser and published in 1962 . She warned that the German claim to the areas on the other side of the Oder-Neisse Line should be questioned in order to enable a chance for reconciliation between Germans and Poles and the establishment of a pan-European peace order. A clear demand for recognition of the Oder-Neisse border has not been made, but the tenor was to declare a legal renunciation of the former German eastern territories east of the Oder and Neisse in recognition of the German guilt for the sake of a new beginning.

Reactions

The memorandum sparked a passionate public discussion. It was fought vigorously by the associations of expellees, but was well received by many others. In retrospect, it was found that it represented a "turning point in the development of opinion" in the Federal Republic and thus prepared the ground for Willy Brandt's later new Ostpolitik .

literature

  • Erwin Wilkens : Expulsion and Reconciliation. The "Ostdenkschrift" as a contribution to German Ostpolitik . Lutherhaus-Verlag, Hannover 1986. ISBN 3-87502-264-5 .
  • Martin Greschat : Protestantism in the Federal Republic of Germany (1945–1989) (= church history in individual representations IV / 2). Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2010, pp. 85–90.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Bender : The "New Ostpolitik" and its consequences . 3. Edition. Munich 1995, p. 124.