The establishment and observance of commemorative days and anniversaries is one of the oldest mnemonic techniques. The memory of a specific event is linked to the cyclical rhythm of the calendar by being tied to a date that recurs throughout the year. The ‘calendar’s mnemonic apparatus’^[1] henceforth automatically ensures the periodic recurrence of a specific trigger for remembrance. However, in order for the commemorative day to fulfil its function of remembrance, it requires a continuous or regularly recurring attribution of significance by those involved in the act of remembrance. This is expressed through the organised observance of the commemorative day, usually in ritualised forms involving speeches, musical elements, performative presentations and symbolic acts. Commemorative days serve to forge and reinforce the collective identity of a group, which may vary in size.

For displaced persons from a shared place of origin, days of remembrance can play an important role in preserving memory by maintaining a sense of belonging. It is not uncommon for the loss of one’s homeland to be commemorated on a specific day of remembrance. For Germans from Leobschütz/Głubczyce in Silesia, for example, 16 March is regarded as ‘Expulsion Day’. On this day in 1945, the first Soviet attacks on the town took place, followed the next day by the evacuation ordered by the Nazi authorities. In the 1950s and 1960s, this day of remembrance held commemorative significance that extended beyond the community of Leobschütz. In the twin town of Oldenburg, the fate of the people of Leobschütz was publicly commemorated on this day as a symbol representing the displaced population as a whole.

As early as the year the Federal Republic was founded, the two rival organisations that were the precursors to the Federation of Expellees (BdV) – the Central Association of Expelled Germans (ZvD) and the Association of East German Regional Organisations (VdL) – to hold a joint day of remembrance annually on 20 November 1949. The rally organised by the Charter of the Displaced Persons in front of Stuttgart Palace on 6 August 1950 is regarded as the first public implementation of this decision. The day of remembrance was deliberately set for the first Sunday in August so that it would take place in close proximity to the anniversary of the Potsdam Agreement of 2 August 1945, thereby serving as a ‘living protest against Potsdam’.^[2]

As early as 1955, at the request of the Federal Government, the day of remembrance was moved to the second Sunday in September to avoid any potential disruption to the negotiations taking place in August between Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967) in Moscow/Moskva, which were taking place in August and concerned, amongst other things, the release of the last German prisoners of war. The date has remained in September ever since.

A distinctive feature of ‘Day of the Homeland’ is its decentralised organisation, which aims to achieve the highest possible level of participation. Following a central opening event in Berlin on the first Sunday in September, the associations of displaced persons organise commemorative events and rallies at local level throughout the Federal Republic in the weeks that follow. The BdV Federal Association issues an annual theme, which changes each year, as well as guidelines for organising the events. The local associations also cooperate closely with local authorities and state governments. The events usually take place in large halls or public squares and consist of lengthy speeches, folk performances and musical interludes. On ‘Day of the Homeland’, participants often visit a memorial to displaced persons, where a remembrance service is held.

Until 1990, ‘Day of the Homeland’ was regarded primarily as a political ‘declaration of loyalty to a united Germany’,^[3] which also included the former German territories in the East. Following reunification, historical and political aspects came to the fore, in particular the demand for the recognition of displaced persons as a key group of victims, as well as the call to condemn expulsions as human rights violations and to establish a‘right to a homeland’.

Whilst ‘Homeland Day’ has hitherto been organised by the BdV, since the turn of the millennium the organisation has also been striving to establish a national day of remembrance that would place the annual commemoration of German forced migration under state auspices. The aim was to ensure that the practice of public remembrance would continue in future, independently of the BdV’s existence, and be guaranteed by the state. Furthermore, the BdV sought to use a national day of remembrance to further underpin and have the state recognise the historical significance of flight and expulsion as a central event in German history.

Politicians initially reacted with caution. Representatives of various parties declared a national day of remembrance to be superfluous, pointing to the collective commemoration of all victims of the war on Remembrance Day. Critics argued that this would single out the displaced persons as the only group, apart from the victims of National Socialism – for whom a separate day of remembrance has existed on 27 January since 1996 – from the wider circle of war victims. Following a Bundesrat resolution in 2003 to introduce a day of remembrance, the Bundestag did not address the issue until 2011. The date of 5 August, proposed by the BdV, was the subject of particularly heated debate, not only because of the controversial nature of the Expellees’ Charter – the anniversary of whose proclamation falls on that day – but also because of its proximity to the anniversary of the Potsdam Agreement. In June 2013, the CDU/CSU–FDP coalition finally decided to extend World Refugee Day on 20 to apply to the United Nations to include a commemoration of German displaced persons and subsequently to observe this day as a national day of remembrance for German displaced persons. Following the Bundestag elections in September 2013, the SPD also agreed to the introduction of a national day of remembrance and stipulated in the coalition agreement with the CDU/CSU that it would “keep alive the solemn memory of flight and expulsion through a day of remembrance”.^[4] On 27 August 2014, the Federal Cabinet consequently resolved to extend World Refugee Day on 20 June to become a national “Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Flight and Expulsion”, on which, from 2015 onwards, German displaced persons in particular are to be commemorated. In the months leading up to this, the Federal States of Bavaria, Hesse and Saxony had already decided to introduce a central, state-organised day of remembrance on the second Sunday in September, which was held for the first time on 14 September 2014.

Public remembrance of the forced migration of Germans from the East will therefore continue in future through a state-organised national day of remembrance, irrespective of the continued institutional existence of the associations of displaced persons. This state-sanctioned national day of remembrance embodies a high degree of commitment to remembrance, fostering a shared and transgenerational historical consciousness across the entire nation, and not merely amongst displaced persons as a subgroup. The first national day of remembrance was observed on 20 June 2015 in Berlin with a central commemorative event in the Schlüterhof of the German Historical Museum, whose centre was occupied by a speech by Federal President Joachim Gauck.

• Aleida Assmann: ‘Anniversaries – Monuments in Time’. In: Paul Münch (ed.): *Jubiläum, Jubiläum... On the History of Public and Private Memory*. Essen 2005, pp. 305–314.
• Klaus Bergmann: Commemoration Days, Commemoration Years and Historical Reason. In: Sabine Horn, Michael Sauer (eds.): History and the Public Sphere. Places – Media – Institutions. Göttingen 2009, pp. 24–31.
• Karl Braun: 4 March 1919. On the Formation of Sudeten German Identity. In: Bohemia 37 (1996), pp. 353–380.
• Marco Dräger: ‘A Toast to Flight and Expulsion?’ On the Introduction of the New Day of Remembrance on 20 June. In: *Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte* 25 (2015), pp. 49–54.
• Jeffrey Luppes: The Commemorative Ceremonies of the Expellees: Tag der Heimat and Volkstrauertag. In: German Politics & Society 30 (2012), No. 2, pp. 1–20.
• Thomas Schmidt: Calendars and Memory. Remembering in the Rhythm of Time. Göttingen 2000.
• Stephan Scholz: Days of Remembrance. In: Ibid., Maren Röger, Bill Niven (eds.): The Memory of Flight and Expulsion. A Handbook of Media and Practices. Paderborn 2015, pp. 168–179.
• Stephan Scholz: ‘For the Victims of Flight and Expulsion’. The Origins and Shaping of a New National Day of Remembrance. In: Historie. Yearbook of the Centre for Historical Research in Berlin of the Polish Academy of Sciences 10 (2016), pp. 64–77 (online: http://www.cbh.pan.pl/sites/default/files/contents/Scholz.pdf).
• David Zolldan: (Re-)Capitulation. 20 June as a day of remembrance for victims and an instrument of the culture of remembrance. In: Yearbook for Politics and History 7 (2016–2019), pp. 189–202.

[1] Schmidt: *Calendars and Memory*, p. 9.

[2] As stated in 1956 by Jakob Kaiser, Federal Minister for Pan-German Affairs, quoted here from Eva Hahn and Hans Henning Hahn: The Expulsion in German Memory: Legends, Myths, History. Paderborn et al. 2010, p. 480.

[3] Gustl Huber: ‘Homeland Day – Day of the Germans’. Edited by the Federation of Expellees – United Regional Associations and State Associations. 3rd, revised edition. Bonn 1998, p. 9.

[4] Shaping Germany’s Future. Coalition Agreement between the CDU, CSU and SPD. 18th legislative period, p. 113. URL: https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/194886/696f36f795961df200fb27fb6803d83e/koalitionsvertrag-data.pdf (Accessed on 15 April 2026).

Stephan Scholz: Days of Remembrance. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2014. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32880 (accessed 1 December 2020).