Wolhynian Germans

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wolhyniendeutsche (also Wolyniendeutsche or Wolhyniendeutsch Woliniendeitsche ) were German emigrants and their descendants who had settled in Wolhynia especially in the 19th century and stayed there until the Second World War .

19th century

The Russian Germans immigrated to the Russian Empire in several waves . In the course of the 19th century a particularly large number of Germans came to Volhynia, an area south of the Pripyat Marshes . This happened mainly in the years 1860 to 1895.

But as early as circa 1815 had West Prussian and originally from Switzerland, Palatine Mennonites began to settle in the area. Some of these Mennonite immigrants belonged to the strict community of the Amish Mennonites. In 1831 they were followed by Germans from Poland who did not take part in the November uprising and were therefore attacked by the Polish population. In contrast to the other groups of Russian Germans, the Volhynian Germans settled - without having been called into the country by the Tsar - not only as owners of large estates, but also often as tenants. They had their own parishes and schools. From 1880 the Germans were no longer allowed by the Russian government to build new Protestant parishes, and Russian senior teachers had to be appointed. In 1914 there were around 250,000 Germans in Volhynia in more than 300 German colonies.

World wars

Galicia and Volhynia in the interwar period

During the First World War , some of the Wolhynia Germans were resettled to Germany, while others were deported to the interior of the tsarist empire with high losses of human life . In order to avoid exile to Siberia, many marriages were concluded with Ukrainians. The World War II was followed by the Polish-Soviet War , and the settlement area of ​​the groups of Russian- Germans was divided between Poland and Soviet Russia in 1921 . Around 1924 the Wolhynia Germans still numbered around 120,000 people. The Wolhynien Germans of the Polish area were resettled in 1939 together with the Galicia Germans (around 45,000 in total) in the Warthegau .

The ethnic Germans (approx. 44,600) of the pre-1939 Soviet part of Volhynia (East Volhynia) were excluded from the resettlement agreements between the Soviet Union and the German Reich between 1939 and 1941 . From October 1943 to May 1944 they were resettled by SS agencies as administrative resettlers, first to Bjelostock, now Białystok, and then to the Warthegau.

Development after 1945

Some of those resettled to Germany in 1943/44 came back into the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union after the German defeat or were extradited to the Soviet military authorities as displaced persons by the Western Allies (British and US-Americans) , and if they met one of the five criteria of the conference of Yalta , they were forcibly repatriated regardless of their individual wishes . In the eyes of Stalin , all Soviet citizens who, for whatever reason, temporarily stayed outside the USSR during the Second World War were considered “traitors to the fatherland” and “closest collaborators of the Nazi regime” and should be treated accordingly.

Others could stay in Germany permanently. In Linstow there was a greater concentration of Wolhynian Germans. They maintain their history and have been operating there since 1992 with the Volhynian Resettled Museum, a unique cultural and meeting place. Along with the great wave of emigration since the late 1980s, many Wolhynian Germans came to the Federal Republic as repatriates. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, descendants of Wolhynia Germans live in Linstow , Neu Schloen and Dargun . The descendants have now spread across Germany.

See also

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ There were also other target regions for the forced returnee. A report on a church home of the community movement , Haus Zion (from 1937 Haus Friedensburg) in Rathen , Saxony, from November 1940 gives precise information about the seizure of the church home by the SS ( Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle ) as a place of residence for these "returnees" and the subsequent demolition. Mskr., Author. Rector Glöckner, Rathen, undated approx. 1947
  2. ↑ Administrative resettlers were around 228,000 ethnic Germans who, according to an order from the military and civil administration of the Third Reich in the occupied territories of the USSR (Reichskommissariat Ukraine, Romanian Transnistria), resettled in the Warthegau or the Old Reich in the years 1942-44 without an intergovernmental contract were. Almost all of them had been granted German citizenship by the end of the war.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Joseph S. Height: Homesteaders on the Steppe , ND HS of Germans from Russia, Bismarck, 1975, p. 404
  2. ↑ Der Spiegel: Treated like a third class pack , 32/1983
  3. ↑ Mirjam Seils: The Strange Half. Acceptance and integration of refugees and displaced persons in Mecklenburg after 1945. Thomas Helms Verlag Schwerin 2012.
  4. ^ Eva-Maria Brandstädter: New home Mecklenburg. In: Der Tagesspiegel, September 2, 2013 - http://www.tagesspiegel.de/weltspiegel/reise/deutsche-siedler-neue-heimat-mecklenburg/8720962.html