‘Aid committee’ is the general term for a committee (i.e. a committee) entrusted by the members of a group with the implementation and/or management of an aid initiative or campaign. Aid committees have been (and continue to be) formed to carry out tasks in various social, church-related, political or specialist contexts (e.g. the Red Cross Aid Committee; the Lithuania–Belarus Aid Committee). The refugees and displaced persons who arrived in Germany at the end of and following the Second World War often initially organised themselves into Evangelical Lutheran aid committees structured according to their regions of origin; these thus represented an early form of organisations for displaced persons.

The primary tasks and activities of the Protestant aid committees were to provide pastoral and diaconal care for displaced persons and refugees, and to preserve the religious and cultural heritage of their regions of origin in their new places of residence.^[1] Initially, ^{the aid committees} also set up, amongst other things, services and registers to trace missing persons and facilitate family reunification; they provided material support, helped with finding accommodation and employment, and assisted with submitting applications for financial compensation or obtaining replacement documents. Furthermore, they organised reunions for people from the same region, published press materials (hometown newsletters, bulletins, circulars), dedicated themselves to preserving traditions and set up care homes for the elderly.

From the 1970s onwards, and increasingly after 1989/1990, the establishment and maintenance of contacts with institutions and people in the regions of origin were added to these activities.^[2] This included, amongst other things, providing material and spiritual support to local believers through the establishment of diaconal and social welfare centres, the preservation of local cultural heritage – in particular churches and cemeteries – and the creation of memorial sites. Furthermore, the aid committees remain actively involved to this day in church events (church congresses), organise church services and devotions, and assist with the renovation of church buildings or the implementation of humanitarian projects. They continue to publish periodicals (e.g. *Schlesischer Gottesfreund*; *Weg und Ziel*) and organise social and educational events, regional meetings, holidays for the elderly and trips to the respective regions they serve.

The precursors to the aid committees were, in particular, various self-help initiatives launched by clergy from spring 1945 onwards in their new places of residence, aimed at reuniting displaced or refugee members of the congregations from their regions of origin and providing them with pastoral care – the regional church affiliations of the displaced persons already shaped these early initiatives (as they did the regional associations founded later). The Aid and Support Centre for South-East Germans, established in August 1945 as part of the Bavarian Red Cross in Munich^[3], developed, for example, into the Aid Committee for the Transylvanian Saxons, founded in 1946. In August 1945, a group of 30–40 pastors from Hinterpommern gathered in Rendsburg (Schleswig-Holstein) for the first ‘Convention of Pomeranian Pastors’^[4]; Towards the end of 1945, Silesian pastors began to organise themselves into regional ‘support committees’^[5], each of which developed into aid committees for the Evangelical Lutheran Protestants from Pomerania and Silesia. The ban on coalitions imposed by the Allied military governments, which remained in force until 1948, initially made it impossible for displaced persons and refugees to form political advocacy groups. This did not apply to the formation of aid associations recognised by the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), which served to facilitate the social integration of displaced persons. On the Catholic side, too, a differentiated organisational structure developed between 1946 and the mid-1950s, comprising organisations at diocesan level, group-oriented associations and youth organisations.^[6]

At the Church Conference in Treysa (27–31 August 1945), it was decided to establish a ‘Charitable Organisation of the Evangelical Church in Germany’, which was to ensure the care of displaced persons. With the approval of the occupying powers, the Church Chancellery and the EKD Relief Organisation implemented the resolutions of Treysa and sought to achieve a unified church-based organisation of aid for displaced persons: From 29 to 31 July 1946, an initial meeting took place in Frankfurt am Main with representatives from 15 formerly German ‘Eastern Churches’. At a further meeting, the EKD and the EKD Relief Organisation (Frankfurt, 14 August 1946) resolved to form aid committees within the framework of the Relief Organisation. The aim of this measure is explained in a circular from the Relief Organisation dated 14 August 1946, entitled ‘Re: Formation of aid committees for the former German churches in Eastern Europe’:

It was envisaged that, for each former German Eastern Church, a representative body recognised by the EKD Council would be established. The leadership of such a refugee church will comprise several clergy and laity from various (occupying) zones, brought together in a body which will act as an aid committee for the respective church community within the framework of the EKD’s relief organisation. These aid committees will carry out their work in all zones in conjunction with the Central Office of the Relief Organisation […]. The formation of the aid committees creates the conditions for the refugees themselves to play a shared role in resolving refugee issues and, in particular, in their integration into the local population. Above all, their tasks include providing advice and arranging assistance, but not the provision of charitable support for the refugees (food, clothing, money).^[7]

Following this resolution, 18 aid committees were established, predominantly within the following two months, and were successively formally recognised by the EKD by 1947; the aid committees operated across regional boundaries, maintaining their own regional offices (‘regional conventions’). From 1949 onwards, coordination of the aid committees’ work was the responsibility of the EKD’s Committee for the Eastern Churches.

On 21 September 1950, at a conference in Königswinter, the aid committees joined together to form the ‘Convention of the Dispersed Former Home Churches’ (shortly afterwards renamed the ‘Convention of the Dispersed Protestant Eastern Churches’). According to its rules of procedure of 1951, the Convention, in which the aid committees were now represented, had the task of ‘bringing together key representatives involved in the ecclesiastical, social and political work of the displaced persons for the purpose of establishing contact and consultation’.^[8] At annual conferences (‘conventions’), representatives of the aid committees, representatives of regional parish conventions of the ‘home churches’, and prominent figures from the church, academia and society came together, in particular to formulate common positions. The association, ^renamed the ‘Convention of the Former Protestant Churches of the East’^[9] in 2003, continues to function to this day as the umbrella organisation for the aid committees.

The impact and significance of the aid committees – for which there is generally no published data on membership figures, but in which a large number of Protestant displaced persons were organised or played an active role – cannot be quantified or measured.^[11] Through their church-based and pastoral work, which was specifically tailored to the concerns, circumstances and needs of Protestant-Lutheran displaced persons and refugees, they contributed to their social integration. The aid committees also acted as representatives of the displaced persons’ interests within the EKD, but – unlike the regional associations – they were scarcely involved in political activities. In connection with the aid committees or through their support, a large number of accounts of the history of individual churches were produced, in addition to the aforementioned press publications, as well as richly documented commemorative volumes, bibliographies and memorial books, which constitute a wealth of sources. Through contacts at both an individual and an institutional church level with people and organisations in the regions of origin and neighbouring states, they have contributed – and continue to contribute to the present day – to mutual understanding and transnational exchange.

Listed below are the auxiliary committees (established in 1946 and 1947) referred to as members in the Rules of Procedure of the ‘Convention of the Dispersed Former Home Churches’ of 1951;^[12] renamings of the aid committees that have taken place in the meantime, in particular to ‘Community of Evangelical [details of regional affiliation]’:

• Aid Committee for the Protestant Germans from Bessarabia
• Aid Committee for Resettlers from Bukovina
• Aid Committee for Protestants from Danzig-West Prussia
• Aid Committee for the Evangelical Lutheran Germans of the Baltic States
• Aid Committee for the Galician Germans of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire
• Help for the Regional Church from Yugoslavia
• H. The Community of Protestant Silesians
• H. for the Protestant Sudeten Germans
• Parish for the Evangelical Germans from Lithuania
• Association for the Protestant Germans from East Prussia
• H. for the Protestant Germans from Poland
• H. for members of the Protestant Church in Poznań
• H. The Convention of Evangelical Germans from Pomerania
• H. for the Protestant Black Sea Germans
• H. for the Transylvanian Saxons and Banat Swabians
• H. for the Protestant Germans in Slovakia
• H. for the German Protestants from Hungary.

• History of the Aid Committee for the Germans of Galicia. URL: www.galizien-deutsche.de/hochgeladen/dateien/Geschichte_Hilfskomitee.pdf.
• EKD Church Office (ed.): Aid Committees, Foundations, Associations, Initiatives (Overview, as at 31 May 2010). URL: www.ev-ostkirchen.de/resources/Hilfskomitees.pdf.
• Joseph Pilvousek, Elisabeth Preuß (eds.): Reception, Integration, Settlement. Refugees, Displaced Persons and the ‘Reception Society’. Berlin, Münster 2009 (Studies in Contemporary Church History. Studies in Contemporary Church History 3).
• The Minutes of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany. Vol. 1–8. Göttingen 1995–2012 (Works on Contemporary Church History, Series A: Sources).
• Hartmut Rudolph: The Evangelical Church and Displaced Persons 1945 to 1972. Vol. 1: Churches without a Country. The Reception of Pastors and Parishioners from the East in Post-War West Germany: Emergency Aid, Pastoral Care, Ecclesiastical Integration. Göttingen 1984 (Studies in Contemporary Church History, Series B: Monographs 11), esp. pp. 52–98 and 390–411.
• Hartmut Rudolph: The Protestant Church and Displaced Persons 1945 to 1972. Vol. 2: The Church in the New Homeland. Göttingen 1985 (Studies in Contemporary Church History, Series B: Monographs 12).
• Christian-Erdmann Schott (ed.): Living Within Borders – Overcoming Borders. On the History of the Church in 20th-Century East-Central Europe. Münster 2008 (Contributions to Theology, Church and Society in the 20th Century 16).
• 50 Years of the Aid Committee for the Evangelical-Lutheran Slovak Germans. Stuttgart 1996.
• 60 Years of the Aid Committee for the Evangelical-Lutheran Slovak Germans. The Years Following the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Stuttgart 2006.

• www.ev-ostkirchen.de/ (Convention of the Former Protestant Churches of the East; central directory and information on the aid committees, including links to their websites)

[1] For a fundamental account of the origins, history and context of the aid committees, see Rudolph: The Protestant Church. Volumes 1 and 2.

[2] For more recent examples, see Rita Scheller: ‘Partnerships of the EKMOE – illustrated by the example of Poland’. In: The Beginnings of Diakonia in Eastern Europe. Münster 2002 (Contributions to East German Church History 5), pp. 220–230; Arnulf Baumann: ‘Partners of the Aid Committees in their Regions of Origin’. In: ibid., pp. 230–235.

[3] Immo Eberl: Associations of Displaced Persons: Origins, Function, Change. In: Mathias Beer (ed.): On the Integration of Refugees and Displaced Persons in South-West Germany after 1945. Current State of Research and Future Prospects. Sigmaringen 1994 (Publications of the Institute of History and Regional Studies for Danube Swabians 3), pp. 211–234, here p. 225.

[4] Rudolph: The Protestant Church. Vol. 1, p. 85; Rita Scheller: The Convention of Protestant Congregations from Pomerania. In: Schott (ed.): Living Within Borders, pp. 189–203, here p. 190.

[5] Joachim Köhler, Rainer Bendel (eds.): History of Christian Life in the Silesian Region. Münster, Hamburg, London 2002 (Religious and Cultural History in East-Central and South-Eastern Europe 1). Vol. 2, p. 825.

[6] See Sabine Voßkamp: The Catholic Church and Displaced Persons in West Germany. Integration, Identity and the Discourse on East German Policy 1945–1972. Stuttgart 2007 (Denomination and Society 40); Catholic organisations for displaced persons include, for example, the Sudeten German Ackermann Community, the Working Group of Diocesan Organisations for Displaced Catholics, the Working Group for Displaced Catholic Youth, the Silesian Catholic ‘Eichendorffgilde’ Home Association, St. Hedwig’s Works, and Adalbert’s Work e. V.

[7] Quoted from Rudolph: Evangelical Church. Vol. 1, pp. 66ff.

[8] Rules of Procedure of the ‘Convention of the Dispersed Former Home Churches’, Ratzeburg, 28 August 1951, reprinted in: The Minutes of the Council of the Evangelical Church. Vol. 5: 1951, p. 401.

[9] Christian-Erdmann Schott: The Expert Committee for Church Historical Work of the Protestant Commission for Central and Eastern Europe (EKMOE) under the chairmanship of Peter Maser. In: Ibid. (ed.): Living Within Borders, pp. 159–171, here p. 160.

[10] Schott: The Expert Committee (note 9), pp. 159ff.

[11] On the significance of the aid committees, see Christian-Erdmann Schott: ‘Alternatives to the Territorial Principle? Questions concerning the integration of displaced persons into the Protestant Church’. In: Pilvousek, Preuß (eds.): Reception, Integration, Settling In, pp. 105–116, here p. 112.

[12] Rules of Procedure 1951 (note 8), p. 403; listed here among the aid committees are also ‘The Church Representative for Parishioners from Eastern Brandenburg’ and ‘Church Service East’; on the specific issue of establishing an aid committee for Russian Germans (‘Aid Committee for Resettlers from the East’) and on the aid committee for the Protestant Church from Dobruja, formed in 1952, see Rudolph: Evangelische Kirche. Vol. 1, pp. 68 and 78; for a current overview, see www.ev-ostkirchen.de.

Matthias Weber: Aid Committees. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2015. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32815 (accessed 29 April 2015).