East flight

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Escape from the East is a term officially used for the first time when the Royal Prussian Settlement Commission was founded in 1886, referring to the steady emigration of large parts of the population from the economically weak eastern parts of Prussia in the second half of the 19th century.

background

The American economist Friedrich List was the first to think about the German overseas migration and wanted to accommodate the emigrants in the eastern provinces of Prussia or in settlements near the border along the Danube as far as the Black Sea , so that they would not enrich foreign economies , but would be preserved in the mother country . The problem of emigration was only reacted to when the politicians in Prussia realized that it was leading to a population shift, especially since there were many job seekers from the provinces of East Prussia , West Prussia , Silesia and Poznan , including many from the large Polish- speaking population of these areas. emigrated either overseas or to the up-and-coming industrial regions in the west of the empire (see Ruhr Poland ). In 1886 the Prussian government reacted by setting up the Prussian Settlement Commission, which was supposed to put a stop to the demographic growth of the Polish population, because the Poles were perceived as a threat to the Germanization intentions, especially since they also organized themselves politically and expressly since 1848 the establishment of their own national state Had watched (see History of Poland ). Among the activists who campaigned for a strengthening of “Germanness” in the eastern provinces were the statistician and member of the Reichstag, Ernst Hasse, or the members of the German Ostmarkenverein, founded in 1894 .

The "flight from the east" could not be stopped, however, so that it contributed to the concern of National Socialist Germany with regard to the declining population in Silesia .

In the Prussian official press, statistics have been published annually since the 1880s, which recorded emigration and emigration in figures, taking into account overall emigration via the German ports, including from Eastern Europe, especially from Russia. For example, in 1891 it was said:

“Of the total of 243,283 people transported, 74,820 came from Germany. According to their occupation, 11,678 people belonged to agriculture = 15.7%, industry 10,721 people = 14.3%, trade and transport 5,564 people = 7.4%, workers 19,450 people = 26.0%, others Occupation types ( liberal professions , public services ) 1,504 people = 2.0%, without occupation or If no occupation was given, there were 25,903 people = 34.6%, a total of 74,820 people = 100%. Around 69,000 people went to
the United States and around 3,000 people went to Brazil . Of the Prussian provinces, Poznan again provided the most emigrants with 10,000 people; it follows: West Prussia with 9,500, Pomerania with 6,000, Hanover with 5,400. "

On the term "Ostflucht"

The term " escape " has a negative meaning like the verb "flee". When used in "Ostflucht", the refugees are assumed to have reacted to a hazard where there was none. Because the counter-concept of settlement or colonization indicates that the will of the politically responsible should, on the contrary, be about future prospects in the East. This shows something similar to the public and official characterization of the emigrants overseas, who were regarded as “mentally ill”, who were incorrigibly addicted to “emigration addiction” or “America fever”. Because “it was difficult to allow the German subject to come of age. And the best way to relieve the responsibility for the conditions that left the emigrant expecting nothing from his old homeland and everything from the 'New World' when 'America' was declared to be a delusional image of the sick or primitive. "

The population shift from a Polish perspective

After the First World War , the demographic shift in Prussia, which was characterized as “flight from the east”, was interpreted in Polish research on the West as a German-Polish battle for displacement and became an important point of reference for historical and ideological arguments.
When it became clear towards the end of World War II for the Poles that they would be among the victors over Germany, reference was made to the growth of the Polish population to justify the fact that the Oder-Neisse border was Poland's natural western border . In 2003 Robert Brier gave a lecture on how the Polish point of view presented itself: The German colonization in the east was the result of the overpopulation of the west and the low population in the east. Since the 19th century, however, the German drive to the east has been reversed. The structurally weak Prussian eastern provinces have become a "region without a people", the former colonizers have emigrated because they have lost their "biological energy". In their place the Polish farmer had moved up and, as a farm worker, pushed the German population back further, which would also have been due to their self-assessment: “The German living here saw himself as everything: as a colonizer, as a 'cultural carrier' [German in the original], as the bearer of a great mission, etc., but never as an autochthon deeply connected to his earth ”(Kyrił Sosnowski). The Germans basically remained strangers who didn't have particularly deep roots. For the Polish farmer, however, it was always "mother earth", which he had been displaced since the Middle Ages. Following this logic, the "Ministry for the Reclaimed Areas" ( Ministerstwo Ziem Odzyskanych, MZO ) was set up between 1945 and 1949 for the areas up to the Oder-Neisse Line .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Ostflucht and Polengefahr , p. 15.
  2. ↑ Ulrich Eisele-Staib, England and industrial development in Germany , p. 192 f. In: City of Reutlingen (ed.): Friedrich List and his time. Economist , railway pioneer, politician, publicist , Reutlingen ²1989, pp. 184–197; ISBN 3-927228-19-2 .
  3. ↑ Cf. Thomas Nipperdey , Deutsche Geschichte 1866-1918 , Vol. 2: Power state before democracy , 3rd edition, CH Beck: Munich 1992, pp. 271 f. ISBN 978-3-406-34801-3 . See also Polish emigration .
  4. ↑ See Wojciech Wrzesiński: Emigration from Silesia .
  5. ↑ See year X. No. 15. Latest news. Responsible editor: Dr. jur. O. Hammann. Berlin, Tuesday, February 24, 1891. See information on total emigration
  6. ↑ Peter Assion, The Land of Promise. America in the horizon of German emigrants , p. 116. In: Hermann Bausinger (ed.), Reisekultur. From pilgrimage to modern tourism , CH Beck: Munich 1991, pp. 115–122. ISBN 3-406-35502-1 .
  7. ^ Robert Brier, The Polish "West Thought" after the Second World War 1944–1950 , Digital Eastern European Library: Geschichte 3 (2003), p. 57. (PDF; 828 kB)