Eastern Germany
Eastern Germany
1. Definition
Before 1945, the term ‘East Germany’ generally referred to the regions east of the Elbe (Ostelbien) inhabited by Germans, as well as, more specifically, the Prussian eastern provinces east of the Oder. After the Second World War, the term came to have a dual meaning, in that ‘East Germany’ was also used to refer to the Soviet Occupation Zone/GDR, thereby increasingly replacing the term‘Central Germany’. From 1989/90 onwards, following the reunification of Germany, ‘East Germany’ was used almost exclusively by organisations representing displaced persons and their affiliated cultural institutions in its original sense, usually accompanied by clarifying qualifiers (‘historical’, ‘former’, etc. ‘East Germany’;‘Old East Germany’). Otherwise, the term came into common use as a designation for the new (eastern) Federal States of the enlarged Federal Republic of Germany.
Conveyors, usage, connotations
The terms ‘East Germany’ and ‘East German’ were never clearly defined in territorial terms. They each referred to the eastern part of the German-speaking area or of German territory, respectively, and related in particular to German history and culture, which had developed over the centuries in the regions in question. It is in this historical sense that they are used in this entry.
‘East Germany’ and the adjective ‘East German’ carry a number of connotations, particularly in relation to the 20th century: German-language chronicles in the East German regions had already been addressing the specific issues of interaction and demarcation between ethnic groups since the 16th century (Humanism, Renaissance). In the 19th century, local historiography in those regions took a heightened interest in the ethnic aspects of population history in the individual regions, often linked to anti-Slavic or anti-Polish stereotypes.
Alongside the enthusiasm for war, in the run-up to and at the start of the First World War, ideas of hegemony over the East and expansionist objectives emerged, with a view to extending a future East Germany far into Russia. In order to cast historical doubt on the post-1918 Versailles order, following the collapse of the great monarchies, an interdisciplinary academicfieldknown as‘Ostforschung’and a broadly based ‘Ostlandkunde’ were promoted; these were based on interpretations of East Germany and the whole of Eastern Central Europe in terms of ‘ethnic’ and ‘cultural’ roots, thereby postulating an ethnocentric standardisation of ‘East German history’. Through the attempt to construct a German ‘ethnic and cultural homeland’ inthe ‘German East’was intended to undermine the legitimacy of the national historical and state concepts of the peoples of Eastern Central Europe, whilst also demonstrating the historical groundlessness of the Versailles order and, in particular, the territorial cessions of 1920–22.
In this‘Ostforschung’(Eastern Research), newly applied to the history of East Germany, the German contribution to the past was frequently overestimated, and the history of German–Slavic relations was viewed primarily through a colonial lens. East Germany was understood as the result of a historical and cultural achievement of the German people, whereby the continuity of ‘East German’ history was propagandistically extended far back into ‘Germanic’ prehistory and early history, in order to be able to claim the right of first settlement (Indigenatsrecht) for vast territories.
Thus, the writing of history concerning East Germany was politically exploited. Some of its representatives even placed themselves at the service of the National Socialist regime and were largely absorbed by its rigid policies, which were geared towards preparing for and legitimising war. Academically, the study of East German history had scarcely any scope for further development and became increasingly isolated.
In the culture of remembrance in the Federal Republic of Germany, East Germany – the majority of which had been ceded to Poland – occupied a position that was difficult to define. Academic institutions were now situated outside Germany’s new borders, and research into the formerly East German regions had been discredited by the misuse of the term ‘East Germany’ in the context of National Socialist ‘Ostforschung ’. When, in 1950, a revival of interest took place – particularly with the founding of the Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council and the establishment of the Herder Institute – marking a ‘new beginning for Ostforschung’(Aubin), there was initially a lack of both a critical re-examination of tradition and methodological renewal, with the result that the term ‘East Germany’ continued to be associated in many cases with outdated perspectives on national history.
The continued use in West Germany after 1945 of the term ‘East Germany’ to refer to the (former) Prussian eastern provinces beyond the Oder and the Lusatian Neisse, and the use of‘Central Germany’to refer to the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ)/GDR also had implications under constitutional and international law: the border changes agreed at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences were not yet regarded as final, either legally or socially, and the use of the official designation ‘GDR’ was avoided in order to emphasise its non-recognition. In the course of the annexation of the territories acquired in the west and north, historical scholarship in Poland after 1945 – with its pre-existing interest in the history of the Prussian eastern provinces – was actively harnessed in the service of state policy in order to legitimise the de facto political changes from a historical perspective. Central to this was the construction of a narrative of continuity in Polish history, culminating in the return of the ‘Western and Northern Territories’ (Ziemie Zachodnie i Północne) to the ‘Piast homeland’. In both historiographies, the trend towards academic objectivity, de-ideologisation and objectification gradually gained ground from the 1970s onwards, when, on the one hand, the pressure to legitimise the new Ostpolitik eased and, with the waning of political confrontation, questions of national history could increasingly be addressed within the international dialogue.
With the political upheaval of 1989–90, the question of the historical concept of ‘East Germany’ and the significance of ‘East German’ history was raised by the historians Hartmut Boockmann and Klaus Zernack. This was prompted by the observation that engagement with the subject in Germany was no longer taking place in an appropriate manner and required ‘revitalisation’. Conversely, the historical Prussian eastern provinces had become the domain of Polish historical scholarship (Boockmann). At the time, there was concern that, with the accession of the GDR, the culture and history of historical East Germany would vanish from the collective memory. The appeals made at the time called for a balanced approach to the German-Polish border regions, geared towards international dialogue, and were committed to the evolving methodological understanding of East Central European studies. In fact, supported by ongoing European integration, a paradigm shift has since taken place towards emphasising the history of relations and interconnections, whilst refraining from the uncritical use of the term ‘East Germany’.
Equivalents in other languages
Polish: Niemcy Wschodnie; English: East Germany; French: Allemagne de l’Est; Czech: Východní Německo.
Middle Ages
Opinions differ as to whether the modern terms ‘German’ and ‘Germany’ are applicable to the Middle Ages and the early modern period.[1] In any case, it is only with the emergence of the Regnum Teutonicorum from the East Frankish region of the former Frankish Empire in the 10th century – which, on the basis of cultural and linguistic (rather than constitutional) characteristics is often referred to as medieval Germany, can one also speak of ‘East German’ territories. These earliest East German territories roughly encompassed the eastern edge of the ‘Mark’ belt (Mark = border region), which the Ottonian Empire had taken possession of in the 10th century in the area inhabited by Slavs east of the rivers Elbe and Saale. The structural interconnection between the politics of the German Empire and its eastern neighbours, as well as between German history and culture and Slavic or Polish history and culture – which was already evident at the time of the emergence of this early East Germany – remained a defining feature over the centuries. Thus, from its very beginnings, the history of eastern Germany was in many respects also the history of western Poland. Beginning in the 12th century and ending in the 15th, further parts of the Slavic settlement area – now also east of the Oder and the Lusatian Neisse – as well as Baltic territories, were colonised and modernised through predominantly German settlement (medieval land development/eastern settlement) and, in conjunction with the Christian missionary mandate, were also occupied by force of arms, resulting in heavy losses amongst the local population. Numerous East German towns were founded under German law (Lübeck Law, Magdeburg Law) and settled by Germans; they acquired a German population or, as in the case of Königsberg/Kaliningrad, Danzig/Gdańsk, Thorn/Toruń or Breslau/Wrocław, a predominantly German linguistic and cultural orientation. Irrespective of administrative boundaries, ethnic ‘overlap zones’ (Boockmann) emerged, whose inhabitants were designated as Brandenburgers, Upper Saxons, Pomeranians, Prussians or Silesians, depending on their political affiliation. For this ethnogenesis, the term‘formation of new tribes’[2] – which is closely associated with the ‘Volkstum’ paradigm and is therefore problematic – has been and continues to be widely used. In the literature, ‘new tribes’ are often described as a ‘typically East German’ phenomenon.[3]
Modern times
In the 16th century, the regions of eastern Germany were divided amongst several early modern states (monarchies), including Poland, Saxony, Brandenburg, Bohemia and Hungary. It was only with the rise of Brandenburg-Prussia to the status of a great power in the 18th century – in particular through the conquest of Silesia – that the lands east of the Elbe increasingly gained weight and standing as ‘East Germany’ within the Brandenburg-Prussian monarchy. These must be distinguished from the other, older East German regions that did not belong to Prussia, particularly those within the Habsburg Monarchy. Following the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (1806), Prussia, together with its ‘possessions formerly belonging to the Empire’, joined the German Confederation founded in 1815, including Silesia, which had not previously been part of the Holy Roman Empire. The Province of Prussia, established in 1824 (‘Kingdom of Prussia’, comprising East and West Prussia), and the Grand Duchy of Posen did not become federal territories, but were nevertheless regarded as East German regions. It was only with the formation of the German Empire (1871), whose eastern provinces were now explicitly designated as ‘East Germany’, that this term became more concretely definable.
Generally speaking, ‘East Germany’ had been, since the 19th century – much like ‘South’ or ‘West Germany’ – a widely used term employed in a wide variety of contexts: in the names of industrial and commercial enterprises (‘Ostdeutsche Kleinbahn AG’, Bromberg/Bydgoszcz 1893, from 1899 ‘Ostdeutsche Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft’), by social clubs and associations (‘Ostdeutscher Jünglingsbund’, 1856), and in the titles of newspapers and periodicals (Ostdeutsche Post, Vienna, 1849; *Ostdeutscher Lokal-Anzeiger*, Bromberg, 1889; *Ostdeutsche Bau-Zeitung*, Breslau, 1905; Ostdeutsche illustrierte Funkstunde, Breslau, 1927) and in academic publications (Herbert Ludat: Die ostdeutschen Kietze, 1936).
In the 20th century, the term ‘East German’ took on a new, increasingly political connotation: in 1911, the ‘East German Exhibition of Industry, Trade and Agriculture’ took place in Posen/Poznań, featuring over 1,100 exhibitors. This first and only joint exhibition of the then German eastern provinces was intended as a ‘showcase’ to counteract the widespread stereotype of the backward East, as well as to serve the ‘cultural advancement of the eastern provinces’ and, at the same time, national self-promotion.[4] The city’s Polish majority population was excluded from participation.
Particularly as a result of the territorial cessions that accompanied the end of the First World War, East Germany was frequently portrayed in the press of the time as a region engaged in a defensive struggle against Poland, whose ‘German identity’ needed to be strengthened and which required the solidarity of the German Empire. In the leading ‘cultural journal of the East’, the periodical *Ostdeutsche Monatshefte*, published in Danzig from 1920 to 1939, it states:
The *Ostdeutsche Monatshefte* have set themselves the aim of forging a link between the East German regions and the Reich […]. They convey the beauty of East German landscapes to the wider world in words and pictures, and East German art and intellectual life find significant expression within them.[5]
Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the criminal occupation and the subsequent military defeat of the German Reich, most East Germans were forced to flee or were expelled. The East German (Prussian) provinces east of the Oder and the Lusatian Neisse, or parts thereof – namely southern East Prussia, Hinterpommern, East Brandenburg and Silesia, as well as Danzig – became part of Poland as a result of the Second World War, whilst the northern part of East Prussia became part of the Soviet Union. This gradually led, in West German discourse, to a ‘shift westwards’ of the political term ‘East Germany’, which from then on increasingly referred to the territory of the GDR.
4. Controversies
After 1990, the term ‘East Germany’ was generally, and in political discourse, scarcely used any longer as a collective term for the eastern Prussian provinces, but increasingly only for the new (eastern) Federal States of the enlarged Federal Republic of Germany. The resulting widespread replacement of the term‘Central Germany’with ‘East Germany’ was criticised in particular by associations representing displaced persons.
Furthermore, the historical term ‘East Germany’, which seemed to suggest a non-existent cultural uniformity amongst ‘East Germans’, was increasingly at odds with the rapidly diversifying, internationalising and multi-perspective academic view of these regions. It was emphasised that Germans in Eastern Europe – particularly when including the German settlement areas in Eastern Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe – belonged to different religious, political, state and social structures, possessed different group identities and by no means shared a common East German identity – circumstances which the term ‘East Germany’ did not adequately reflect.[6] In official government discourse, the phrase ‘Germans in Eastern Europe’[7] was now increasingly used as a new collective term.
There is currently controversy over whether the history of East Germany, including flight and expulsion, was treated as a taboo subject in the former Federal Republic (Kittel) and whether there is therefore a need to catch up today, or whether, on the contrary, it was part of the research topics and broad-based cultural initiatives (Hahn/Hahn).
5. Bibliographical references
- German Historical Museum (ed.): Germans in the East: History, Culture, Memories. Berlin 1994.
- Hartmut Boockmann: ‘German History and the History of East Germany in School Teaching’. In: Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 9 (1991), pp. 563–574.
- Hartmut Boockmann: ‘Where is East Germany? The Germans and their history in Eastern Central Europe’. In: *Nordost-Archiv* 1 (1992), no. 1, pp. 7–19.
- Hans Henning Hahn, Eva Hahn: Expulsion in German Memory. Legends, Myths, History. Paderborn 2010.
- Hans-Jürgen Karp (ed.): German History and Culture in Present-Day Poland. Questions of Subject Matter and Methodology. Marburg 1997 (Conferences on East Central European Research 2).
- Wolfgang Kessler: Aspects of East German Regional History. Lüneburg 1989 (Lüneburg Lectures on the History of East Germany and the Germans in Eastern Europe 1).
- Manfred Kittel: The Expulsion of the Expellees? The Historical German East in the Culture of Remembrance of the Federal Republic (1961–1982). Munich 2007 (Series of the *Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte*).
- Matthias Weber (ed.): Germany’s East – Poland’s West. Comparative Studies in Regional History. Frankfurt am Main 2001 (Central Europe – Eastern Europe. Oldenburg Contributions to the Culture and History of Eastern Central Europe 2).
- Klaus Zernack: The Historical Concept of ‘East Germany’ and German Regional History. In: Nordost-Archiv 1 (1992), No. 1, pp. 157–173.
- Klaus Zernack: The End of Prussia and East German History. Lectures at the Georg Eckert Institute. Braunschweig 1989.
Notes
[1] See Alexander Demandt: ‘Borders in German History’. In: Ibid. (ed.): *Germany’s Borders throughout History*. Munich 1990, pp. 9–31, here pp. 14–18.
[2] Hans-Werner Goetz: ‘The “Germanic Tribes” as a Research Problem’. In: Heinrich Beck, Dieter Geuenich, Heiko Steuer, Dietrich Hakelberg (eds.): On the History of the Equation ‘Germanic – German’. Berlin 2004, pp. 229–253.
[3] Klaus Zernack: The Historical Concept of ‘East Germany’ and German Regional History. In: Nordost-Archiv 1 (1992), No. 1, pp. 157–173, here p. 161.
[4] Beate Störtkuhl: Exhibition architecture as a means of national self-representation. The ‘East German Exhibition’ of 1911 and the ‘Powszechna Wystawa Krajowa’ of 1929 in Posen/Poznań. In: Jacek Purchla, Wolf Tegethoff (eds.): Nation, Style, Modernism. Kraków, Munich 2006 (CIHA Conference Papers 1), pp. 237–255, here p. 240.
[5] Publisher’s advertisement, 1926. Quoted from: Jens Stüben: The cultural-political journal *Ostdeutsche Monatshefte* and its ‘struggle’ for the ‘German East’ (1920–1939). In: Weber: Germany’s East, pp. 299–346, here p. 299.
[6] The complex discussion is documented in Karp (ed.): Deutsche Geschichte, in particular the articles by Joachim Bahlcke: ‘German History in Eastern Europe’ – A Comparison of Three Academic Projects, pp. 27–50, and by Hans Lemberg: On the Development of the Debate in the Federal Republic of Germany on ‘German Cultural Heritage in the East’, pp. 73–88 (including the respective discussions).
[7] In 2000, the ‘Federal Institute for East German Culture and History’ was renamed the ‘Federal Institute for the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe’.
Citation
Matthias Weber: East Germany. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2014. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32797 (accessed 29 November 2021).
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