Foundation for Flight, Displacement, Reconciliation

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Foundation for Flight, Displacement, Reconciliation
Legal form: Foundation under public law
Purpose: Remembrance and commemoration of flight and displacement, especially in the 20th century in Europe and beyond
Chair: Gundula Bavendamm
Consist: since December 30, 2008
Founder: Federal Republic of Germany
Seat: Berlin GermanyGermany
Website: www.flucht-vertrieb-versoehnung.de
The Deutschlandhaus in Berlin: the location of the documentation center of the Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation

The Federal Foundation for Flight, Displacement, Reconciliation was brought into being by the German government under the working title Visible Sign .

For this purpose, the Documentation Center Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation was set up in the former Deutschlandhaus in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg . After the renovation of the federally owned building, exhibitions, a library and an archive of contemporary witnesses, education and mediation, events as well as a museum shop and a restaurant will be available to the public. The federal government bears the costs for the renovation of the building of almost 30 million euros. The building was handed over to the foundation as an empty house in spring 2020 and then furnished. The facility was opened on June 21, 2021 in the presence of Chancellor Angela Merkel and Minister of State Monika Grütters; The documentation center is open to the public from the 23rd.

occasion

In the coalition agreement of the governing parties CDU , CSU and SPD of November 2005, it was decided to set a “visible sign” in Berlin to “remind of the injustice of expulsions and to outlaw expulsion forever”. In addition, the contract contained a commitment “to the social and historical coming to terms with forced migration, flight and displacement”.

Location

In 2008 the German government selected the former Deutschlandhaus in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg as the location of the future documentation center. This is owned by the Federal Agency for Real Estate Tasks . The renovation was supervised by the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning. The foundation rents around half of the building.

In 2012, the renovation work began according to the plans of the architectural office Marte.Marte Architects .

Legal form and purpose of the foundation

According to the law establishing a foundation “German Historical Museum” (DHMG) , the dependent Foundation for Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation was set up in Berlin on December 30, 2008 . The sponsor is the German Historical Museum Foundation (Section 15 DHMG).

The purpose of the foundation is, according to Section 16 (1) DHMG, "in the spirit of reconciliation, to keep alive the memory and commemoration of flight and displacement in the 20th century in the historical context of the Second World War and the National Socialist expansion and extermination policy and its consequences" . According to § 16 Abs. 2 DHMG the fulfillment of this purpose serves in particular:

  1. The establishment, maintenance and further development of a permanent exhibition on flight and displacement in the 20th century, the historical background and context as well as European dimensions and consequences;
  2. The development of solo exhibitions on special aspects of the overall topic;
  3. The communication of research results and scientific knowledge;
  4. Collection, documentation and scientific evaluation of relevant documents and materials, in particular also of contemporary witness reports;
  5. Cooperation with German and international museums and research institutions.

Organs of the foundation

In the course of 2009, a board of trustees and a scientific advisory group were appointed for the first time (§§ 18 ff. DHMG). The Board of Trustees determines the main features of the program and decides on all fundamental matters. The advisory group advises the board of trustees and the director on technical issues in accordance with the purpose of the foundation. The historian and political scientist Manfred Kittel became the founding director .

The Board of Trustees consists of 21 members. By virtue of their office, the presidents of the German Historical Museum ( Raphael Gross ) and House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany ( Hans Walter Hütter ) foundations are members of the Board of Trustees. The remaining 19 members are initially appointed by various institutions and then appointed by the federal government for a period of five years. The current composition is as follows:

  1. four members for the German Bundestag ( Stephan Mayer , Eckhard Pols , Marianne Schieder ), one seat vacant,
  2. One member each for the Foreign Office ( Michael Roth ) and the Federal Ministry of the Interior (Michael Frehse) as well as the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media ( Monika Grütters , Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees),
  3. six members for the Federation of Expellees e. V. (BdV) ( Bernd Fabritius , Stephan Grigat , Christian Knauer , Iris Ripsam, Albrecht Schläger , Johannes Thießen, Editha Westmann),
  4. Two members each for the Evangelical Church in Germany ( Johann Hinrich Claussen , Katja Lembke), the Roman Catholic Church in Germany ( Reinhard Hauke , Jörg Lüer) and the Central Council of Jews in Germany (Mark Dainow, Barbara Traub).
  5. Members qua office: Hans Walter Hütter, President of the Foundation "House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany", Raphael Gross, President of the Foundation "German Historical Museum" as the supporting foundation

A new version of the law for the establishment of a German Historical Museum Foundation (DHMG) of June 14, 2010 enlarged both the board of trustees and the scientific advisory group. The members of the new, enlarged Board of Trustees were elected by the German Bundestag on July 8, 2010. For the time being, the BdV had not named a candidate for a seat to which he was entitled. The politician Erika Steinbach, who was designated by the BdV, was appointed by the Foreign Office as well as by the SPD and FDP, among others. not accepted due to multiple concerns from Poland.

The new version expanded the scientific advisory group from nine to 15 members. Previously, inter alia Kristina Kaiserová from the Czech Republic, Tomasz Szarota from Poland and Krisztián Ungvary from Hungary are members. Szarota withdrew from the committee because the director at the time, Kittel, did not focus on reconciliation with Poland, but rather on reconciliation between the expellees and the other Germans. Kristina Kaiserová and the journalist Helga Hirsch also resigned as members of the advisory board.

In December 2014 Manfred Kittel was relieved of his duties as director of the foundation. The Foundation Advisory Board elected Winfrid Halder as his successor in June 2015 . Thereupon Piotr Madajczyk, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz , Michael Schwartz , Stefan Troebst and Michael Wildt announced that they would end their work in the scientific advisory group. After Halder's decision to no longer be available for the post, the foundation was temporarily headed by Uwe Neumärker from November 2015 to April 2016 . Since February 2016, the historian and cultural manager Gundula Bavendamm has been the new director of the Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation.

On October 17, 2016, the Board of Trustees, chaired by Minister of State for Culture Grütters, appointed a new scientific advisory group with 12 members.

The historian Gundula Bavendamm has headed the Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation Foundation since April 2016

The current members of the Scientific Advisory Group are Peter Becher , Mathias Beer , Simone Blaschka , Monika Fenn , Mary Fulbrook , Hans-Lukas Kieser , Frank-Lothar Kroll , Stephan Lehnstaedt , Piotr Madajczyk, Ondřej Matějka, Norman Naimark , Jochen Oltmer , Miloš Vec .

Concept for the permanent exhibition

In a meeting on October 25, 2010, the foundation board unanimously welcomed the draft of a so-called key issues paper, which was presented by the foundation's director at the time, as a good basis for advice on developing an exhibition concept. The paper was forwarded to the Scientific Advisory Board at the time. He dealt with the paper in several meetings and developed it further. On June 25, 2012 the extended “Concept for the work of the foundation, flight, displacement, reconciliation and guidelines for the planned permanent exhibition” was adopted.

On June 20, 2017, under the new director Gundula Bavendamm , the foundation published an integrated concept for its future permanent exhibition, which the Board of Trustees had previously unanimously approved. The concept is based on the 2012 concept.

The future permanent exhibition follows a thematic-chronological structure. It will consist of three content-related parts that will extend over two floors.

On the first floor, the exhibition section “The Century of Refugees - Forced Migration in Europe” (working title) will provide a historical overview and highlight the importance of the topic of forced migration, especially for the history of the 20th century. In-depth thematic islands on causes and discourses will also broaden the horizon, raise universal questions and establish a relationship to the present. Current challenges of flight and displacement in the 21st century are also addressed.

On the second floor, the exhibition sections “Flight and displacement of Germans in a European context” (working title) and “Displaced persons and refugees in Germany since 1945” (working title) will be presented. In these two parts, in the European context of the history of the Second World War and the Nazi expansion, occupation and extermination policy, especially the flight and expulsion of the Germans as well as their subsequent integration in West and East Germany with aftermath to this day are presented.

As a whole, the exhibition will convey different levels of experience in a large narrative that - global, European and German - show the causes, processes and effects of displacement.

Disputes at home and abroad

There was disagreement with government representatives in Poland about the location of a documentation center on flight and displacement .

The then Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk took a more open-minded stance in December 2007 compared to the earlier statements made by the Kaczyński brothers . Instead of an institution in Berlin, he suggested the location Gdansk in order to set up a museum of the Second World War . So far, the Polish government has refused to cooperate directly on the issue of displacement and displacement . At home and abroad it is criticized that “the indiscriminate 'empathy' for the victims [...] levels out any difference between the act and the perpetrator”.

According to Franziska Augstein , two of the six deputy BdV members of the enlarged foundation council elected on July 8, 2010 “expressed opinions that cast doubt on their commitment to the foundation's goal of reconciliation”. Arnold Tölg opposed the compensation of former slave laborers of the Nazi regime and made Hartmut Saenger responsible for Poland and Great Britain as the main culprits for the outbreak of the Second World War. Stephan Grigat , a lawyer representing the East Prussian Landsmannschaft, described a trip to East Prussia in 1987 as a “trip to occupied land”.

Thereupon the General Secretary of the Central Council of Jews Stephan Kramer informed the then Minister of State for Culture Bernd Neumann in a letter in September 2010 that he was a member of the Displaced Persons Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation in protest against the “revanchist positions” of Arnold Tölg, who had been appointed as deputy members and Hartmut Saenger to rest until further notice and to reserve the right to resign.

On September 9, 2010, historians from the German-Czech and German-Slovak Historians Commission , supported by historians from the German-Polish Textbook Commission , published an alternative draft for the planned permanent exhibition of the Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation. The background to the advance was the long-term lack of a concrete concept for the planned permanent exhibition as well as a public debate about the content of the foundation's plans. The draft became a first impulse for a scientific discussion about the planned exhibitions of the foundation.

The theater maker Ersan Mondtag took on the task of making an image film for the foundation and its future documentation center. He described the contracts, which were only submitted after the work began, as unacceptable and hostile to artists. According to the foundation, the right-wing extremism aspect should be left out. Mondtag speaks of censorship.

Foundation events

The foundation has been organizing regular panel discussions, book presentations and conferences since 2009. These included:

  • the International Symposium on Flight, Displacement and Ethnic Cleansing (September 16-18, 2010),
  • the panel discussion on Stalin's Genocide? Political opponents, ethnic cleansing and genocide in the Soviet Union until 1953 (May 5, 2011),
  • the series of events remembering undesirable - displaced persons in the GDR (October / November 2011),
  • the international conference "That was once our homeland ..." - Jewish history in the Prussian East (November 2-3, 2011),
  • the lecture Das neue Deutschlandhaus with Stefan Marte from the Vorarlberg architects Marte.Marte (the office that was awarded the contract for the design of the planned exhibition and documentation center of the Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation in the Deutschlandhaus ) (March 7, 2012),
  • the conference On the "Disappearance" of the German-speaking Minorities - A Difficult Chapter in the History of Yugoslavia 1941-1955 (March 21-23 , 2012),
  • the book presentation "Proper transfer" The expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War "by Ray M. Douglas (September 3, 2013),
  • the lecture Dersim 1937/1938. Displacements and massacres in Turkey (April 29, 2013) and
  • an event to mark the start of construction for the Documentation Center with Chancellor Angela Merkel and Minister of State Bernd Neumann (June 11, 2013)
  • the interview with contemporary witnesses An unbelievable journey. From East Prussia to New York with Jerry (Gerd) Lindenstraus (December 12, 2013)
  • the panel discussion focal point Crimea. Historical and ethnic backgrounds of a geopolitical conflict (April 29, 2014)
  • the conference The Forgotten War. War, Flight, Deportation in East Prussia and Eastern Europe (June 17, 2014)
  • the eyewitness interview Israel's first female police officer - a Jew from Königsberg with Rachel Dror and Gregor Gysi (February 25, 2016)
  • the eyewitness talk Danube Swabia (April 10, 2017)
  • the lecture Madagascar for the Jews - anti-Semitic ideas and plans for a "final territorial solution" (May 29, 2018)
  • The lecture and the eyewitness talk A forgotten chapter in post-war history - German refugees in Denmark 1945 to 1949 (February 28, 2019)
  • the book premiere Pontos - The Expulsion of the Greeks from the Black Sea. A search for traces (May 7, 2019)

Publications of the foundation

The Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation develops and plans various publication formats on the subject of expulsion, flight and forced migration:

  • German Historical Museum, International Association of Museums of History, Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation (Ed.): Flight, Expulsion, Ethnic Cleansing. A challenge for museum and exhibition work worldwide, proceedings for the Ninth International Symposium of the International Association of Museums of History, Berlin 2010.
  • Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation, Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (ed.): "That was once our homeland" - Jewish history in the Prussian East, accompanying volume for the international conference, Berlin 2013.
  • Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation, Danube Swabian Central Museum Ulm (ed.): On the "disappearance" of the German minority. A difficult chapter in the history of Yugoslavia 1941–1955, Berlin 2016.

Temporary exhibitions of the foundation

  • As part of the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, the foundation presented the first 100 objects in its collection under the motto Politics and Cultures of Remembrance . These private mementos from those affected or their descendants, reminding of flight, displacement and loss of home, were shown in the Deutschlandhaus until July 1, 2012.
  • Under the title Spotlights on the future permanent exhibition of the Flight, Displacement, Reconciliation Foundation, the foundation showed an open-air exhibition on the fence around the Deutschlandhaus at Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin until 2018, which provided insights into the thematic spectrum of the future permanent exhibition there.

Web links

Commons : Deutschlandhaus (Berlin-Kreuzberg)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Merkel opens the Center for Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation. Retrieved June 22, 2021 .
  2. ^ Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation: Annual Report 2009-2012 , Berlin 2013, p. 14.
  3. ↑ Law establishing a foundation "German Historical Museum" (DHMG) of December 21, 2008 ( Federal Law Gazette I p. 2891 )
  4. ↑ a b c dhm.de , Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation (SFVV)
  5. ↑ dhm.de: Board of Trustees
  6. ↑ SFVV - About us. Retrieved June 23, 2021 .
  7. ↑ Expulsion from life, interview with the Polish historian Tomasz Szarota, in: DER SPIEGEL, No. 1/2010, p. 15
  8. ↑ pressrelations.de Angelica Schwall, Wolfgang Thierse: Foundation Flight, Displacement, Reconciliation, free from dominance of the BdV
  9. ↑ FAZ: Invisible Sign
  10. ↑ Director of the Expulsion Foundation goes. Retrieved June 22, 2021 .
  11. ↑ Germany: Federal Foundation for Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation has a new director. In: Zeit Online. June 29, 2015. Retrieved June 29, 2015 .
  12. ^ Klaus Wiegrefe: Foundation for Displaced People: Polish scientists stop work in protest. In: Spiegel Online . June 30, 2015, accessed June 9, 2018 .
  13. ↑ New head of the Flight and Displacement Foundation . In: Berliner Morgenpost from February 22, 2016, accessed on February 22, 2016.
  14. ↑ SFVV - About us. Retrieved June 23, 2021 .
  15. ↑ Concept 2012 | Foundation for Flight, Displacement, Reconciliation. Retrieved February 9, 2018 .
  16. ↑ Vincent Regente: Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation. In: Online encyclopedia on the culture and history of Germans in Eastern Europe. March 15, 2018, accessed July 11, 2018 .
  17. ↑ Concept for the permanent exhibition 2017 | Foundation for Flight, Displacement, Reconciliation. Retrieved February 9, 2018 .
  18. ^ Tusk suggests war museum in Gdansk . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , December 10, 2007.
  19. ↑ Dirk Burczyk, New Paths of Reconciliation - The Path to the "Visible Sign Against Displacement". In: Jan Korte , Gerd Wiegel (ed.): Visible signs. The new German history policy - from the perpetrator story to the victim's memory. Cologne 2009, pp. 14–29, here p. 29.
  20. ↑ Franziska Augstein: Reconciling or mocking In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , No. 174 of July 31, 2010, p. 7.
  21. ↑ Heimatbrücke 2/1989, p. 22 ff.
  22. ↑ welt.de : Central Council stops working in the Foundation for Displaced People from September 6, 2010
  23. ↑ sueddeutsche.de : Central Council of Jews leaves the Foundation for Displaced Persons ( memento from September 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) from September 6, 2010
  24. ↑ Martin Schulze Wessel, K. Erik Franzen, Claudia Kraft, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum , Tim Völkering, Volker Zimmermann, Martin Zückert: Conceptual considerations for the exhibitions of the "Escape, Expulsion, Reconciliation Foundation" . September 9, 2010.
  25. ↑ The scientific debate and the accompanying press reports are documented at H-Soz-u-Kult ( memento of November 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
  26. ↑ A mockery. Ersan Mondtag against the Foundation for Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation , New Germany , February 10, 2021
  27. ↑ cducsu.de , CDU / CSU parliamentary group : Federal Expellees Foundation shows first exhibition

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 18.2 ″  N , 13 ° 22 ′ 55.2 ″  E