Austausch, Vol. 2, Issue 1, July 2013

Introduction

Experiences of Germanness abroad

Patricia Hogwood (University of Westminster, [email protected])

In common with émigrés and exiles from other nations, the experiences of abroad have influenced both private and collective understandings of Germanness. As immigrants in a foreign land, German diasporas have faced choices over how much to retain of their cultural heritage and how far to adapt to the social expectations of their host culture. Successive generations of Germans abroad have had to renegotiate this equation, treading a path between the cultural expectations of their parents and a host nation itself undergoing complex processes of social and economic transformation. Selective memories of Heimat are constructed, challenged and reconstructed. In common with diasporas worldwide, Germans abroad have faced obstacles over access to educational and economic opportunities and the civic life of their new home state. However, for the , these experiences have been intensified and distorted by a politicisation of emigration processes through the impacts of the National Socialist regime of the interwar period and the Second World War. For Germans leaving their homes during this period, the emigration experience was heavily defined by victim/perpetrator discourses and strategies. This was reflected in the academic literature by a preoccupation with politically oriented analyses, marked by ‘taboo’ areas. Only relatively recently has academic research moved beyond these constraints to address wider analytical questions of the German diaspora and its relationship with German national identity (see, for example, Wolff 2000; O’Donnell, Bridenthal and Reagin 2005; Kossert 2008; Schulze et al. 2008, Langenbacher, Niven and Wittlinger 2013). This has opened up the field on the one hand to ethnographic studies of the Alltag of the German diaspora, many of which highlight experiences common to immigrant communities worldwide, and, on the other hand, to distinctive and even unique features of the German diaspora, such as those framed by the legal anomaly of the ‘ethnic German’ (Hogwood 2000) and the return, east-west migration of hundreds of thousands of unassimilated ethnic Germans as the process of German unification unfolded (Green 2007: 91-2). This third edition of the German Studies journal Austausch features contributions on the ways in which, since the Second World War, German communities outside the borders of the German state(s) have identified with Germany as place of origin and how they have constructed their own sense of Germanness. Each community – the Germans of the South Tyrol, the North Schleswig Germans in and the Yekkes in Israel, have constructed a different Germanness from their own unique experiences and in the context of their host community. Interestingly, in these contributions, collective memories of the Holocaust and the Second World War serve to define host-diaspora relations less directly than ethnic, religious and cultural identities and practices. The exception is in the immediate aftermath of the war, when the North Schleswig German minority was briefly the target of legal retribution for wartime collaboration.

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Nóra de Buiteléir examines developments in identity politics in the South Tyrol through Joseph Zoderer’s contentious novel ‘die Walsche’ (1982). The novel represents the difficult ethnic relations between the 300,000-strong German- speaking minority and their Italian host state since the territorial transfer of the region from Austria to Italy in 1919. The initial trauma of the forced incorporation of an unwilling population was compounded by oppressive measures by the Fascist state, combining a resettlement drive with attempts to eradicate all vestiges of and culture. As a result of these brutal policies, the two rival ethnolinguistic groups of Germans and Italians - apparently defined by zero-sum interests - became deeply embedded. The Autonomy Statute of 1972 established linguistic parity and a high degree of political autonomy for the German-speaking diaspora, but institutionally and culturally entrenched inter-ethnic tensions continue to mark the region. The author notes how these tensions provide the context for die Walsche and also explain the controversy the novel generated. The novel deals with issues such as the impact of ethnic segregation and the policy of forced ethnic labelling of individuals (which effectively disenfranchised those with a mixed ethnic background). However, it also challenges received notions of Germanness, calling into question supposedly German virtues; community solidarity; and the romantic rural nostalgia, the mainstay of South Tyrolean identity. After analysing these strands, Nóra de Buiteléir takes stock of die Walsche’s portrayal of the ethnopolitical conflicts of the South Tyrol by contrasting the work with Francesca Melandri’s recent Eva Dorme (2010), a novel that alludes to the potential for peaceful coexistence and even a measure of reconciliation for the divided communities. Peter Thaler traces the history and politics of the North Schleswig German minority in Denmark. The legacy of the interwar years and the Second World War inevitably led to conflict between the German community and their Danish hosts. However, the Germans were far less harshly treated than in other countries. Retribution against Germans was conducted largely through the justice system rather than through outright violence, with around 3000 of the German population imprisoned for a short term for collaboration. Calls for the expulsion of the German minority were not realised. German property was confiscated, including school buildings, but these were later reestablished alongside a German newspaper and political party. In spite of the initial hostilities, the post-war period has seen a gradual constitutionalisation and normalisation of host-diaspora relations, marked by the Declaration of Loyalty in 1945, in which the German minority accepted their position by declaring its recognition of the German-Danish border of 1920 and of the Danish constitution. As Thaler describes, the Bonn-Copenhagen declarations of 1955 further eased relations by acknowledging the right of the German minority in Denmark and the Danish minority in German to select their own citizenship. In stark contrast to the provocative policies and hostile relations defining the early years of the South Tyrolean diaspora described by Nóra de Buiteléir, in the Danish case, concerted diplomatic efforts between the German and Danish states, constructive domestic policies and a programme of regional grants in Denmark, and the efforts of German diaspora organisations to act as a bridge between the immigrant and host communities, have together achieved a more open and relaxed relationship. In an ethnographic study of three generations of ‘Yekkes’ - German Jews forcefully displaced from Germany - Dani Kranz eschews a traditional focus on trauma and loss in favour of positive identification of these displaced people with their German heritage. The author investigates the intergenerational transmission of Germanness amongst the community of German Jews who fled Germany during the Nazi terror to

2 Austausch, Vol. 2, Issue 1, July 2013 make a home in the British mandate for Palestine, and later Israel. As German Jewish refugees rather than political Zionists, this group initially struggled for recognition of their Germanness in a host community which perceived them as ‘Asiatic’. They consciously set out to imbue their children with a sense of their Yekke heritage. Kranz traces the intergenerational tensions and compromises over identity transmission through such channels as language, food, German citizenship, and personal and social values. To conclude the edition, James Koranyi offers a review of Andrew Demshuk’s The Lost German East: Forced Migration and the Politics of Memory, 1945-1970 (Cambridge: CUP, 2012).

References:

S. Green (2007) ‘Immigration, asylum and citizenship in Germany: The impact of unification and the Berlin Republic’ West European Politics 24(4): 82-104.

P. Hogwood (2000) 'Citizenship Controversies in Germany: The Twin Legacy of Völkisch Nationalism and the Alleinvertretungsanspruch', German Politics 9(3): 125- 44.

A. Kossert (2008) Kalte Heimat: Die Geschichte der deutschen Vertriebenen nach 1945 (München: Siedler Verlag).

E. Langenbacher, B. Niven, and R. Wittlinger (eds) (2013) Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe (New York, Oxford: Berghahn).

K. O’Donnell, R. Bridenthal and N. Reagin (eds) (2005) The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press).

R. Schulze, with P. Ahonen, G. Corni, J. Kochanowski, T. Stark and B. Stelzl-Marx (2008) People on the Move: Forced Population Movements in Europe in the Second World War and its Aftermath (Oxford: Berg).

S. Wolff (ed.) (2000) German Minorities in Europe: Ethnic Identity and Cultural Belonging (New York, Oxford: Berghahn).

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