Volksdeutsche

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Folk German was in the era of National Socialism a name for outside the German Reich in its 1937 borders and Austria living persons of German ethnicity and not German nationals , especially in Eastern and Southeastern Europe . Before that, it was customary to refer to them as “ Germans abroad ”.

After 1945, the Reich Citizenship Act of 1935 and the related ordinances that traced the National Socialist concept of ethnicity back to “ German and related blood ” were suspended. The Volksbund der Deutschen Abroad , which led the political organizations of the "Volksdeutsche" for the SS , was banned in 1945 by the Control Council Act No. 2 . In Article 116 of the Basic Law , the concept of German nationality was redefined and the question of German citizenship regulated.

Volkish movement

After the First World War , the ideology of the national community was dominant in the national movement . It aimed to smash the Weimar Republic and to dissolve the post-war agreements in Europe . There were ideological and personal overlaps with the young conservatives, the conservative revolution and the youth movement, as well as the German guild . One of the most important institutions was the “German Society for Nationality Law”, headed by Max Hildebert Boehm .

National Socialism

During the National Socialist regime , the Reich and Citizenship Act (RuStAG) of July 22, 1913, which was originally based on the right of descent of the ius sanguinis , was not formally changed with the help of a race criterion and those racial laws of 1935, but the "traditional concept of citizenship" was functionally reversed ”. Forced citizenship without involvement and against the will of the person concerned ( expatriations ) were possible and common. “German or related blood” should be kept clean and “foreigners eliminated from the German national body”. With the territorial expansion of the German Reich from 1938, the task arose of not only excluding Jews whose “blood affiliation” was replaced by the criterion “religion”, but also parts of the population of the areas annexed as German territory as “ethnic Germans” from Germany To include people.

In a circular of the Reich Ministry of the Interior of March 29, 1939 (RMBliV, p. 783), the term "German national" is defined as follows:

"A German national is someone who professes to be a member of the German people, provided that this belief is confirmed by certain facts such as language, education, culture, etc. People of foreign blood, especially Jews, are never members of the German people, even if they have previously identified themselves as such. "

Under National Socialism, the category “German ethnic group” is to be understood as the sum of German citizens or Reich citizens (consequently excluding “foreigners”) and all ethnic Germans regardless of their nationality (“Reichsdeutsche” and “Volksdeutsche”). Race affiliation and probation in the ethnic community should therefore be decisive for the granting of this civil legal capacity and civil rights . According to the Nuremberg Laws , only ethnic Germans could become “Reich Citizens”.

Who in the integrated areas of the rest of the Czechoslovak Republic and especially Poland was considered to be “alien” and who was considered to be “ethnic German” was no longer decided on the basis of ancestry alone. There would have been too few, especially since German rule in previously foreign territory was legitimized by the construct of “ethnic Germans”. That is why ethnic Germans were also determined by cultural factors, by language, upbringing, culture, by self-confession and behavior under Polish rule. Accordingly, the classification as ethnic German could be refused, who was of German descent, but too strongly “ Polonized ”.

The largest number of those referred to as “ethnic Germans” lived in Eastern and Southeastern Europe .

Austria in 1938 joined the South Tyrol Option Agreement should regulate the situation there.

In mid-1938, according to National Socialist criteria, around 8.6 million Germans lived outside the eastern borders of the Reich: in Czechoslovakia (mainly Sudetenland , 3.48 million Sudeten Germans ), in Poland ( Polish Corridor , East Upper Silesia , 1.15 million), Romania (0.75 Million), in Hungary (0.6 million), Yugoslavia (0.55 million) and in the Soviet Union (1.15 million) and another 0.6 million in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ( Memelland ) and in the Free City of Gdansk . Some of these states were temporarily allied with Germany or they were occupied by Germans in the course of the war, and resettlements were carried out with the “ Heim ins Reich ” campaign . As a result of the Second World War , the majority of these ethnic Germans became part of the group of expellees due to the flight and expulsion of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe in 1945–1950 .

Meeting of ethnic Germans in occupied Warsaw, 1940

On October 23, 1939, the governor of Posen ruled : "Anyone who is on the German People's List is a German."

The population in Poland was then divided into five groups:

  • Group A: “People who have actively distinguished themselves in the national struggle”;
  • Group B: “People who have not actively campaigned for Germanness, but have retained their Germanness”;
  • "Group C German descent to become who have taken to the Poles over the years bonds that carry but because of their behavior, the conditions contained, full members of the German national community";
  • Group D: "People of German origin who have absorbed into Poland but have not actively violated Germanism";
  • Group E: “People of German origin with Polish national consciousness and proven anti-German activities”.

Groups A, B and C received ID from the German People's List.

Monument to the Malgré-nous near Obernai

As ethnic Germans, Alsatians and Lothringers were forced to serve in the German Wehrmacht or SS by an ordinance of August 24, 1942, which was contrary to international law , although they were French citizens. 130,000 were thus drafted as Malgré-nous , of which 32,000 fell and 10,500 went missing.

The corresponding classifications were used by German courts after the BVFG came into force in disputes about the “German ethnicity” of ethnic repatriate families from Poland as the basis for their judgments.

The settlement areas of ethnic Germans today are largely history, as they were largely fled or deported, expelled or killed after the crimes in the countries of Eastern and Southeastern Europe occupied during the Second World War, in which ethnic Germans also participated. The majority of them settled in Germany within its present-day borders and in Austria , in some cases - according to the majority of Gottscheers - by giving up their ethnic identity in the USA .

Coordination of “ethnic German” organizations abroad

The National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) had its own district in addition to the individual districts (see structure of the NSDAP ) with its foreign organization, the NSDAP / AO , which was organized for both ethnic Germans and the " Reichsdeutsche " abroad .

The NSDAP / AO looked after the Reich Germans abroad, the main office Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle looked after the ethnic Germans abroad, who were often subordinate to locally established " ethnic group leaders ".

Volksdeutsche movement

The Volksdeutsche Jugend march past Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler in Halbstadt , October 31, 1942

In the course of the Germanization policy in Luxembourg after the invasion of the Wehrmacht on May 10, 1940 (see also Western Campaign in 1940 ), the Volksdeutsche movement was created from the previous National Socialist-oriented society for German literature and art, which aims to join the country to the German Reich made strong. A referendum on October 10, 1941, which was supposed to legitimize the Anschluss, failed because the Luxembourgers clung to their own regional identity and sovereignty .

Volksdeutsche in the Waffen SS

After recruiting volunteers for the Waffen SS in “ Aryan ” foreign countries (e.g. Norway ) was relatively unsuccessful, the leadership was forced to look for new personnel elsewhere to cover the ever increasing losses. This happened especially with the ethnic Germans in the Balkans , z. B. with the Danube Swabians . So it came about a. for the establishment of the 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division “Prinz Eugen” , whereby members of the German minority were in part compulsory. In addition, “Volksdeutsche” fought in the nominally Croatian-Bosnian 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS (“Handschar”).

German ethnicity after 1945

Today the term “Volksdeutscher” is often used in connection with the “ethnic” ideology of National Socialism . In history and social science, the non-technical term is still used in practice (sometimes in quotation marks) to describe the historical specifics of these "ethnic Germans" before 1945 in contrast to the Reich Germans , for example in research on the integration of repatriates and ethnic Germans .

However, the term “Volksdeutscher” is still in use at the German Federation of Expellees and the Association of the Volksdeutsche Landsmannschaften of Austria , temporarily it was also used by the Osijek- based “ Volksdeutsche Gemeinschaft - Landsmannschaft der Donauschwaben in Croatia ”, now only “Deutsche Gemeinschaft - Country team of Danube Swabians in Croatia ”.

Basic Law since 1949 and Displaced Persons Act

In today's legal literature, “Volksdeutscher” is still sometimes used when interpreting certain standards . The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany uses the concept of German nationality ( Article 116, Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law) for Germans who are not to be treated as foreigners when they are admitted to the federal territory despite their lack of German citizenship . In § 6  , para. 1 of the Federal Law (BVFG d,. I. Law on the affairs of displaced persons and refugees ) there is a further determination. According to this, a German national is a person who “has committed to the German ethnicity in their (non-German) homeland, provided this commitment is confirmed by certain characteristics such as origin, language, upbringing, culture”. According to § 5 BVFG, anyone who “has exercised a function that was usually considered to be important for the maintenance of the communist system of rule or was due to the circumstances of the individual case” can not successfully claim having been subjected to persecution as a German national nor are they entitled to be recognized as ethnic German repatriates. Likewise, those who “have significantly encouraged National Socialist or other tyranny in the resettlement areas” have no legal right to recognition as ethnic repatriates. In an administrative regulation it says: “A considerable advance bar requires the development of personal initiative and activities that were intended and suitable to consolidate the claim to rule of the respective totalitarian system or to suppress resistance to this system.” For the communist system the USSR is defined in more detail: “With full-time party functionaries of the CPSU , a system-preserving function can be assumed. On the other hand, neither from simple party membership nor from the fact that the exercise of a function was usually linked to party membership, the importance of the function for maintaining the communist system of rule can be inferred. "

The correspondence of § 6 Abs. 1 BVFG with the above mentioned. Circular decree of the Reich Ministry of the Interior from 1939, in which the passages about the "alien blood" were removed, can be explained by the fact that at the time the BVFG was passed, the former Ministerialrat in the Reich Ministry of the Interior, Hans Globke , was ministerial director or state secretary in the Federal Chancellery .

In a letter to the Reich Ministry of the Interior dated March 15, 1934, Hans Globke tried to justify the later policy of including non-Germans in the category of “German people” despite Adolf Hitler's rejection of a policy of “Germanization” :

“In my opinion, Germanization does not exist if a non-German part of the population or some of its members, for example because of their conviction of the superiority of German culture, voluntarily join the German nationality and want to absorb its culture. [...] So [...] the German nationality is to be regarded as so strong that it can absorb parts of foreign nationality Aryan races who profess their beliefs without harm. "

In the criminal proceedings against him in 1963, the Supreme Court of the GDR accused Globke of having pursued a policy of Germanization in the areas occupied by National Socialist Germany from 1938 onwards , despite assertions to the contrary. Many of those for whom Globke had campaigned as early as 1934 and who only became “members of the German people” because of their convictions were also recognized as such after the BVFG came into force.

Demarcation: "German national" and "German of origin"

The term "German nationality" was and is not legally applied to former German citizens and their descendants who voluntarily emigrated from their homeland to countries that were not governed by communism between 1945 and 1990 and who are citizens of theirs new homeland. A German-American is therefore not considered to be a “German national” if he has lost his German citizenship and is legally treated in Germany like any non- EU foreigner. The background to the distinction between the receiving countries is the assumption that the “commitment to German nationality” only led to persecution for ethnic reasons in communist-ruled countries, which requires German state organs to accept the persecuted (the “ expellees ”) in Germany Result.

Danish citizens of German ethnicity represent a special case : In the German-Danish agreement of March 29, 1955, the Danish government declares: "The commitment to German nationality and German culture is free and may not be disputed or checked ex officio." This regulation anticipates provisions on the status of German minorities that were agreed in the 1990s on the basis of the “Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities” of the Council of Europe with various real socialist states, primarily those of the former Eastern Bloc . The agreement with Denmark stipulates that, firstly , there is no pressure to assimilate from the country whose citizens are German nationals , secondly there is no expectation that German nationals will (can or should) become German citizens at some point, and thirdly, those affected decide alone whether they are considered Germans.

War Consequences Adjustment Act

In 1992 the War Consequences Adjustment Act (KfbG) was passed, according to which applicants in the Eastern European countries have to make credible the pressure of expulsion that weighs on them because of their German ethnicity. These disadvantages due to the consequences of the war were very difficult to prove for applicants from countries such as Poland , Romania or the Czech Republic after the fall of the east-west borders (“ Iron Curtain ”). In the case of ethnic repatriates from the successor states of the former Soviet Union, on the other hand, they are generally assumed by law.

Critics point out that in the late 1990s one could hardly " speak of ' Russian Germans ' as an existing ethnic group ". For after “ Stalin abolished the Volga German Republic (1924–1941), the Soviet Germans never fully recovered as a people . They lived on it as a scattered, non-territorial Soviet nationality , whose number had already been decimated by war, famine and deportation and whose cultural institutions almost did not exist. The amnesty and rehabilitation decrees of the Soviet regime of 1955 and 1964 failed to restore the former official status of the Germans as a semi-autonomous nationality group. Almost 1.5 million of the more than 2 million Soviet Germans who were listed in the 1989 Soviet census have since emigrated to their new 'homeland', Germany. Much more important, the 'Russification' will continue almost unreservedly with those who have chosen to stay. "

In recent times, therefore, there has been a tendency to avoid the term “German nationality” even when it comes to people in the former Soviet Union. The Federal Agency for Civic Education reports in its issue “Aussiedlermigration in Deutschland” that “only one in five travelers [from the successor states of the Soviet Union ] has a command of German” and that the reference group still living there is considered to be “Germans of origin “Must denote. Since one reckons with "several hundred thousand people of German origin", "who still live in the states of the former Soviet Union but want to come to the Federal Republic", the category of German ethnicity must be dealt with restrictively. According to the migration report (on behalf of the German federal government ), 1817 people, mainly from the Russian Federation , were recognized as ethnic German repatriates, so it is now a relatively small segment among immigrants to Germany. Non-German family members could, analogous to the principle of family reunification, travel to the Federal Republic with their relatives if necessary.

Representatives of the German ethnic group in Transylvania, on the other hand, resist the designation of those who remained in Romania as "German-Romanians" and the withdrawal of the status of "German nationals".

Legal definition of the term "German nationality"

Since people from East Central Europe since 1993, i. H. After the end of communist rule , they can hardly be recognized as repatriates, the term “German ethnicity” now only plays a role in legal terms when people from the territory of the former Soviet Union are recognized as so-called late repatriates. Official reports such as the Migration Report 2012 by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees assume that the German-Russian repatriates (who were deported by Stalin to Siberia in 1941 for forced labor ) “suffered from the fate of the war”. In this context , Section 6 of the Federal Expellees Act was amended as follows through a resolution on the Act to Clarify Spätaussiedlerstatus (Spätaussiedlerstatusgesetz) of August 30, 2001:

(1) German Folk Associated for the purposes of this Act, who is in his home to German folklore has known this commitment provided by certain characteristics such as ancestry, language, education, culture is confirmed.
(2) Anyone born after December 31, 1923 is a German national if he or she is of a German national or German national and until leaving the resettlement areas has only known or followed the German nationality through a corresponding declaration of nationality or in a comparable way belongs to the law of the country of origin regarding German nationality. The commitment to the German nationality or the legal assignment to the German nationality must be confirmed by the family teaching of the German language. This is only established if someone can have at least one simple conversation in German at the time of resettlement due to this mediation. It is not determined if the family placement was not possible or unreasonable due to the circumstances in the respective resettlement area. A commitment to the German nationality is assumed if it has not been done because it was associated with danger to life and limb or serious professional or economic disadvantages, but due to the overall circumstances the will is undoubtedly to belong to the German ethnic group and no other.

This clarification was justified as follows during the deliberations in the German Bundestag : “Spätaussiedler would hardly be perceived as (former) ethnic Germans if they could be recognized as such without knowledge of German; in addition, their integration would be made even more difficult. In particular, a lack of knowledge of German is increasingly turning out to be a major obstacle for the German repatriate families to integrate into Germany. This creates burdens for the social budget , which will be difficult to explain, especially if recognition as a repatriate is to be possible despite a lack of knowledge of German. "

See also

literature

  • Walter Fr. Schleser : The citizenship of German people according to German law. In: The German citizenship , 4th edition, Verlag für Standesamtwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-8019-5603-2 , pp. 75–118. (With a map supplement and an overview of the number of German people in their former settlement areas)
  • Paul Milata : Between Hitler, Stalin and Antonescu: Romanian Germans in the Waffen SS. Böhlau, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3412-13806-6 .
  • Doris L. Bergen: The Nazi Concept of 'Volksdeutsche' and the Exacerbation of Anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, 1939–1945. In: Journal of Contemporary History , Volume 29, Issue 4 (October 1994), pp. 569-582.
  • Thomas Casagrande : The Volksdeutsche SS-Division “Prinz Eugen”: The Banat Swabians and the National Socialist war crimes. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2003, ISBN 3-593-37234-7 .
  • Jochen Oltmer: "Homecoming"? “Ethnic Germans of foreign nationality” from Eastern, Central Eastern and Southeastern Europe in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic . European History Online , ed. from the Institute for European History (Mainz) , 2011 ( PDF ).
  • Samuel Salzborn , Heribert Schiedel : “Nation Europe” - Ethno-federal concepts and continental networking of the extreme right ( PDF ).
  • Georg Hansen: The ethnicization of German citizenship and its suitability in the EU ( PDF ).

Web links

Wiktionary: Volksdeutscher  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johann Böhm : The German ethnic groups in the independent state of Croatia and in the Serbian Banat: their relationship to the Third Reich 1941–1944. Peter Lang, 2012, ISBN 3-63163-323-8 , p. 19.
  2. ↑ Quoted from Dieter Gosewinkel, in: von Münch , The German Citizenship: Past - Present - Future , Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-89949-433-4 , pp. 66 , 149 f.
  3. ^ Ingo von Münch : The German citizenship: past - present - future , Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-89949-433-4 , p. 271 f.
  4. ↑ On the term see also Ingo von Münch, Die deutsche Staatsangerschaftigkeit , de Gruyter, Berlin 2007, p. 150 .
  5. ↑ Georg Hansen: The ethnicization of German citizenship law and its suitability in the EU , p. 12 (PDF; 192 kB).
  6. ↑ For more information, Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism . Reprint of the 1998 edition, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2000, ISBN 3-11-013379-2 , p. 651 .
  7. ↑ Georg Hansen: The ethnicization of German citizenship and its suitability in the EU , p. 13 (PDF; 192 kB).
  8. ↑ Ursula Floßmann : Österreichische Privatrechtsgeschichte , 6th edition, Springer, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-211-74414-7 , p. 32 .
  9. ↑ Dieter Gosewinkel: Naturalization and Exclusion (=  Critical Studies in History , Vol. 150), 2nd edition, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-525-35165-8 , p. 404 .
  10. ↑ Detlef Brandes , Holm Sundhaussen , Stefan Troebst : Lexicon of expulsions. Deportation, Forced Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in 20th Century Europe. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2010, ISBN 978-3-205-78407-4 , p. 710 f.
  11. ^ OG of the GDR. The judgment against Hans Josef Maria Globke of July 23, 1963 , p. 152 ( Memento of April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 811 kB).
  12. ^ OG of the GDR. The judgment against Hans Josef Maria Globke of July 23, 1963 , p. 153 ( Memento of April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 811 kB).
  13. ↑ Unsuitable as an SS bride , Der Spiegel No. 43/1989, October 23, 1989.
  14. ↑ vdg.hr, accessed in 2007, no longer available
  15. ↑ FUEN: German minority in Croatia ( Memento from November 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  16. ^ Ingo von Münch, The German Citizenship: Past - Present - Future , Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-89949-433-4 , p. 110 .
  17. ^ History of the Russian Germans. German ethnicity.
  18. ↑ Federal Ministry of the Interior: General administrative regulation for the Federal Expellees Act (BVFG-VwV) . November 19, 2004 (GMBl p. 1059) .
  19. ^ OG of the GDR. The judgment against Hans Josef Maria Globke of July 23, 1963 , p. 136 (138) ( Memento of April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 811 kB).
  20. ^ German-Danish agreement of March 29, 1955 . Section II / 1, p. 4 ( PDF ).
  21. ^ A b Federal Agency for Civic Education: Aussiedlermigration in Deutschland , 2005 .
  22. ^ Gerd Stricker: German history in Eastern Europe: Russia , 1997 .
  23. ↑ a b Migration Report 2012 (PDF)
  24. ↑ Readers' feedback: Germans - Germans - German Romanians , Siebenbürgische Zeitung of August 26, 2006.
  25. ↑ BGBl. I p. 2266; see. BVerwG , judgment of September 13, 2007 - 5 C 38.06 - .
  26. ↑ Georg Hansen: The ethnicization of German citizenship and its suitability in the EU , p. 17 (PDF; 192 kB).
  27. ↑ German Bundestag: Report by the MPs Günter Graf (Friesoythe), Hartmut Koschyk, Marieluise Beck (Bremen), Dr. Max Stadler and Ulla Jelpke , printed matter 14/6573 (PDF; 86 kB).