Eva Hahn / Hans Henning Hahn

What was the “Charter of the German Expellees “? And what is to be understood by “expulsion”? (…) There is indeed much to be clarified in connection with the forced migration of Germans in the wake of World War II and its aftermath. In particular, the authors aim to perform the complex task of bringing together the events and the remembrance. The oft-repeated wording of this aim by Eva and Hans Henning Hahn highlights what has been lacking for decades in the discourse on expulsion: it was not sufficiently founded on factual, source-based studies. Only after 1989 did the research situation improve, if only sluggishly, mainly thanks to a large number of studies by Eastern Central European historians. In Germany, the debate on and around the subject of the expellees was and remains both complex and confusing. The authors exaggerate in interpreting the public discussion of the subject of “mass resettlements” as a process where there has been no progress. It is the legends and myths that have obstinately kept on asserting themselves, for example about “German lands in the east”, that formed the basis of demands for “compensation” still being made today by expellee organisations.

K. Erik Franzen: „Welcher ´deutsche Osten´?“
© Frankfurter Rundschau, 19 March 2011