Center against evictions

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Center against Expulsion
(ZGV)
logo
legal form Foundation, endowment
founding 2000
founder Federation of Displaced Persons
Seat Wiesbaden
main emphasis Documentation of expulsions in Europe in the 20th century
Chair Christean Wagner
Website zgv.de

The Center against Expulsions is a project presented in mid-1999 by the Association of Expellees (BdV) to document expulsions in the 20th century, which was to be set up in Berlin. In 2000, the BdV established a foundation of the same name based in Wiesbaden . The chairman of the foundation was the former BdV president Erika Steinbach . In 2018 she handed over the office to Christean Wagner .

The project met with criticism in Germany and abroad, especially in Poland and the Czech Republic. Its concept was not adopted by the German federal government . In return, following a decision by the federal government in Berlin, the Foundation for Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation was set up in 2008 to commemorate the 15 million Germans who were expelled from Eastern and Central Europe after the Second World War , but also to many millions of refugees elsewhere.

Goal setting

The center against evictions is supposed to

  • document the flight and displacement of more than 15 million Germans as well as the displacement of other peoples, especially in Europe in the 20th century
  • Bring together oral and written reports from contemporary witnesses from all expulsion and resettlement areas
  • Make the culture, fate and history of the European, including German, displaced persons and their respective homeland tangible in context
  • to remember the integration of the displaced and their social reception in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic
  • deal with current evictions in changing exhibitions
  • a Requiem - Rotunda should invite the memory of the victims to their senses and devotion
  • the regular awarding of the Franz Werfel human rights award is also one of the tasks of the foundation.

According to the previous concept, exhibitions are planned for:

  • the fate of the Armenians in 1915/16,
  • the expulsions of Greeks and Turks under the Lausanne Treaty of 1923,
  • the expulsion of European Jews from 1933 as part of the Holocaust,
  • the expulsions, forced resettlements and deportations of Poles, Balts and Ukrainians between 1939 and 1949,
  • the expulsion, forced resettlement and deportation of Germans between 1941 and 1949,
  • the expulsion of the West Karelians in 1939/40 and 1944 to 1947
  • the expulsion of the Italians from Yugoslavia in 1945/46,
  • the expulsions as a result of the Cyprus conflict after 1974 and
  • the expulsions in the former Yugoslavia using the example of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s.

Peter Glotz ( SPD ), who together with Erika Steinbach formed the board of directors of the foundation until his death in 2005, declared in 2001: “It [the center against expulsions] should not primarily maintain our memories, it should contribute to expulsions worldwide to ostracize, to sensitize the international community and to deal systematically with ethnonationalism and the idea of ​​the ethnically homogeneous nation state. In this respect, this center will be a contribution to the fight against right-wing radicalism and right-wing populism. "

Traveling exhibition "Forced Paths"

The traveling exhibition "Forced Paths - Flight and Expulsion in Europe of the 20th Century" was shown to the public for the first time from August 11th to October 29th, 2006 in the Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin. After that, the exhibition could be viewed in a modified and expanded form since June 2007 in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt am Main, in Nuremberg, Erfurt, Recklinghausen and Hanover. The expulsion of Hungarians from the former Czechoslovakia as well as the expulsion of the Germans from Hungary and the expulsion of the Germans from the former Yugoslavia were newly included. In addition, the revised version of the exhibition has been expanded to include a local section showing the admission of displaced persons to individual German cities after 1945.

The exhibition was politically highly controversial in advance. Polish museums and victims' associations that participated in the exhibition withdrew their exhibits. The fears of the skeptics remained unfounded, however. The exhibition placed the fate of the German expellees in world history. Germans, the largest group of displaced persons with 15 million, took up no more space than Armenians or Poles.

Traveling exhibition "The Called"

The follow-up exhibition of the “Forced Paths” was “The Called. German Life in Central and Eastern Europe ”. The focus of “The Called” is the history of German migration between the Middle Ages and the modern era. The exhibition was shown for the first time in the Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin from July 16 to August 30, 2009.

Traveling exhibition "Arrived"

In 2011 the Center Against Expulsion presented the exhibition “Arrived. The integration of displaced persons in Germany ”in the German Bundestag . The exhibition was dedicated to the process of the integration of the displaced persons in Germany after 1945. The opening ceremony in the Paul-Löbe-Haus was taken over by the President of the Bundestag Norbert Lammert .

Exhibition “HeimatWEH. A trilogy "

From March 2012, all three exhibitions were presented as a unit under the title "HeimatWEH. A Trilogy" in the Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin . With this exhibition, the Foundation Center Against Expulsions combined the three exhibitions into a trilogy that it had developed over a five-year period since 2006 and presented individually. The trilogy outlined the largely unknown homeland of the German ethnic groups outside the Reich with their settlement history, flight and expulsion in Europe in the 20th century as well as the integration of the German expellees and resettlers since 1945. On the occasion of the opening ceremony in the Kronprinzenpalais, Chancellor Angela paid tribute to Angela Merkel described the achievements of the expellees and resettlers and underlined their role as bridge builders in Europe.

Prominent supporters

The supporters include or were:

On another page of the ZgV some of these supporters are presented with brief statements about their motivation.

Ralph Giordano was one of the supporters until November 2007 . He changed his mind on the grounds that the "German-induced murder universe of World War II and its [r] occupation policy" was still "notoriously neglected". It would not do "to spread the story of the expulsions rich in pictures, but to hide the bloodbath of the prehistory in marginal subordinate clauses".

Until September 2010, Julius H. Schoeps , historian and director of the Moses Mendelssohn Center, was one of the supporters. He ended his support because of derogatory remarks by Erika Steinbach about the Polish politician Władysław Bartoszewski .

debate

Both in Germany and abroad, especially in Poland and the Czech Republic , the project and Berlin as a location met with criticism or rejection. Critics accuse the Association of Expellees that such an institution in Berlin would be misunderstood to the effect that it was intended to be revisionist and that the actual goal was to expel the Poles and Czechs who are now living in the former German territories.

The project has also been criticized for the fact that the Association of Expelled Germans is using it to appropriate the commemorative interests of other expelled peoples or ethnic groups without being asked or authorized. The purpose of this appropriation is to largely exclude the main cause for the expulsion of the Germans from Eastern and Central Europe, the war of subjugation and annihilation of the National Socialist German Reich , from the contents of a German expellee memorial.

In contrast, proponents argue that the Center against Expulsions includes expellees from all European peoples in order to prevent a one-sided focus on the German expellees. Representatives of other displaced ethnic groups would be involved in the design of the center. An appropriate processing of the topic has so far not taken place. Many expulsions were based on a “nationalist way of thinking” because it was not personal guilt, but ethnicity alone that made the difference. The expulsions of the twentieth century were only partly out of revenge or retribution. Personal striving for power or property, (pseudo) historical ideologies and the goal of eliminating ethnic minorities also played a role.

Alternative proposals from home and abroad (controversially discussed across party lines) are Wroclaw , Sarajevo , Sweden or Pristina . The former GDR politician and SPD member of the Bundestag Markus Meckel initiated the counter-project of a European Center against Expulsions. Meckel wants to entrust the specific design of the center to an international commission.

Position of the German Federal Government

The federal government decided to found a Berlin exhibition and information center to commemorate the expulsion of millions of Germans from Eastern and Central Europe. This was under the provisional title Visible Sign . This was recorded in the coalition agreements between the Union and the SPD . Since 2008, the concepts for this institution have been developed under the leadership of the State Minister for Culture and Media Bernd Neumann . Minister of State for Culture Monika Grütters took over the office in 2013 . On December 30, 2008, the dependent Foundation Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation was set up within the German Historical Museum to fulfill this task.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Center against Displacement: Erika Steinbach is chairing the Displacement Foundation , zeit.de, article from February 28, 2018.
  2. ↑ Statement by Prime Minister Topolanek on the planned center against evictions in Berlin ( Memento from December 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Speech by Peter Glotz
  4. ^ Exhibition "Arrived": An exhibition by the Center against Expulsions Foundation October 26 to November 18, 2011. bundestag.de, accessed on December 12, 2019 .
  5. ↑ bundesregierung.de ( Memento of the original dated November 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Speech by Chancellor Angela Merkel at the annual reception of the Association of Expellees  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bundesregierung.de
  6. ↑ siebenbuerger.de , Transylvanian newspaper, Rainer Lehni: Chancellor recognizes repatriates and displaced as a bridge builder
  7. ↑ People by our side
  8. ↑ zgv.de/aktuelles ( Memento from May 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), supporters
  9. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: "Displaced persons lose Giordano"@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.faz.net
  10. ↑ Handelsblatt online from September 18, 2010
  11. ↑ Töne und Misstöne , article from September 7, 2003 by Deike Diening on tagesspiegel.de
  12. ↑ Federal Government | The Minister of State and her office. Retrieved June 21, 2017 .