Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims (BMVt)
Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims (BMVt)
1. Brief description
The BMVt, established in 1949 and also known as the ‘Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons’, was one of the very first supreme authorities to be set up. Its establishment was a political response by the West German government to the consequences of flight and expulsion at the end of the Second World War and in the period that followed. Formally, its core task was the integration of over eight (out of a total of around 12.5) million displaced persons and refugees who had fled , been resettled or expelled from the former eastern territories of the German Reich,from a number of states in Eastern Central Europe, and from theSoviet Occupation Zone/GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany .
The BMVt’s remit was not structured along the lines of a clearly defined area of responsibility, but was geared towards the various groups of people who fell within its remit. As there was virtually no political experience of the (compulsory) reception of such a large number of immigrants, the Ministry was granted only a few and not clearly defined powers. It carried little weight within the Federal Government, meaning that – particularly in its dealings with the Ministry of Finance (BMF) and the Ministry for Pan-German Affairs (BMG) – it was usually only able to assert itself in conjunction with other ministries. On the other hand, it was precisely this vaguely defined, broad and therefore open to interpretation mandate that enabled it – particularly in the fields of media, science and, to some extent, foreign policy – to pursue courses of action that were likely unique for a federal ministry in the early post-war period. For this reason, the BMVt is also described as a ‘special ministry in a traditional guise’. Its existence as an independent authority came to an end in 1969. However, it continued to exert an influence both as a main department within the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), into which it was incorporated, and through legislation that it had played a key role in drafting and which, in some cases, remains in force to this day.
2. Tasks
Originally established in 1949 as the ‘Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons’ Affairs’, it was not until 1954 that it was given its final name, ‘Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims’. This reflects the gradual expansion of its remit to encompass ever wider sections of the population. In 1954, the BMVt was responsible for the affairs of displaced persons, refugees from theSoviet Occupation Zone/GDR, and various groups of people who had suffered material losses as a result of the war. Furthermore, it included non-Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs), referred to as ‘stateless foreigners’ since 1950, as well as those returning home after the war. The Ministry’s remit was correspondingly diverse and wide-ranging. In particular, this included oversight of the ‘federal resettlement’ programmes for displaced persons and refugees, which were designed to ensure their more even distribution across all the states of West Germany, supervision of the federal refugee and displaced persons’ camps, the tracing service, and also the Federal Government’s temporary emigration policy. The BMVt reached the peak of its expanded remit in 1957 when it assumed administrative supervision of the Federal Compensation Office, thereby sharing responsibility for burden-sharing with the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) from that point onwards.
The Ministry was involved in the preparation of a number of draft bills and took thelead on the Federal Displaced Persons Act (BVFG), which was passed in 1953. The Act, which has been amended several times and remains in force to this day, defined for the first time the terms ‘displaced person’, ‘person displaced from their homeland’, ‘refugee’ and ‘repatriate’ (since 1993, ‘late repatriate’), set out the time-limited support measures for various occupational groups and, in Section 96, obliges the Federal Government and the Länder to the present day to ‘preserve the cultural heritage of displaced persons and refugees and to promote academic research’. Furthermore, between 1949 and 1952, the BMVt exerted influence on the negotiations in the US Congress concerning the United States Displaced Persons Act of 1948.
In reality, the Ministry’s remit and structure were completely out of proportion to these tasks, which touched upon the areas of responsibility of several federal ministries and were the focus of various interest groups. As Article 74 of the Basic Law establishes concurrent legislative powers between the Federal Government and the Länder in the field of refugee affairs and assigns the specific measures for the integration process of displaced persons and refugees to the Länder, the Ministry largely lacked a subordinate administrative infrastructure and a budget adequate for carrying out its tasks.
Because it was thus, de jure and de facto, virtually impossible for the BMVt to fulfil its mandate using the executive instruments of a traditional ministry, it undertook activities that were rather unusual for a supreme federal authority. As an ‘unconventional form of administration’[1] , the Ministry’s focus was on collaboration, coordination, providing information and networking in matters relating to displaced persons and refugees. In particular, these included large-scale research and documentation projects such as the ‘Documentation of the Expulsion of Germans from East-Central Europe’, ‘Displaced Persons in West Germany’, the ‘Documents on German War Damage’ and the ‘Documentation of the Fate of German Prisoners of War’. In the first half of the 1950s, together with the Federal Government’s Press and Information Office (BPA) and the Federal Foreign Office (AA), it endeavoured to bring the issue of German displaced persons and refugees to the fore in international discourse and to link it to the Federal Republic’s pro-Western orientation.
3. Organisation
The ministry, which had been established by Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967, in office 1949–1963) had insisted on establishing, was initially housed in 1949 in the premises of the Ermekeil Barracks in Bonn, which it shared with other federal authorities. It took on a large proportion of its staff from its predecessor within the Frankfurt Economic Administration, the ‘Office for Matters Relating to Displaced Persons’. In 1950, the Ministry then moved to the barracks on Husarenstraße in the former federal capital, where it remained based until its dissolution in 1969. Apart from a few smaller offices, the Ministry had no subordinate structure; it merely helped to administer the emergency reception camps in Berlin, Gießen and Uelzen, which had been set up to accommodate refugees from the Soviet zone, as well as the emergency youth reception camps in Sandbostel and Westertimke. In addition, the Ministry maintained a representative office in Berlin.
The Ministry’s internal structure underwent several changes between 1949 and 1954 as a result of new areas of responsibility and a reorganisation of its departments. Between 1949 and 1969, the BMVt was headed by a total of nine ministers: from 1949 to 1953 by Hans Lukaschek (1885–1960), from 1953 to 1960 by Theodor Oberländer (1905–1998), from 1960 to 1961 Hans-Joachim von Merkatz (1905–1982), from 1961 to 1963 Wolfgang Mischnik (1921–2002), from 1963 to 1964 Hans Krüger (1902–1971), from 1964 to 1965 Ernst Lemmer (1898–1970), from 1965 to 1966 Johann Baptist Gradl (1904–1988), from 1966 to 1969 Kai-Uwe von Hassel (1913–1997) and, in 1969, Heinrich Windelen (1921–2015). Only Lukaschek and Oberländer remained in office for one and just under two parliamentary terms respectively, and were thus able to help shape the ministry’s political work – a point that applies particularly to Oberländer. Subsequent ministers were sometimes appointed to the post as a secondary portfolio, often with a view to party proportional representation, questions of loyalty or as a concession to influential interest groups. With the exception of the term of office of the FDP member Mischnik, the BMVt remained a CDU ministry – Oberländer defected from the Federation of Expellees andDisenfranchised Persons/All-German Block (BHE/GB) to the CDU in 1954.
The continuity in the position of State Secretary provided a counterpoint to the frequent changes of minister. From 1949 to 1953, this role was initially held by the independent Ottomar Schreiber (1889–1955), head of the Frankfurt Office for Displaced Persons, on the recommendation of the first minister, Lukaschek. Peter-Paul Nahm (1901–1981), a member of the CDU who had previously served as State Commissioner for Resettlement in Hesse, then took over the role in 1953 and held it for 17 years, until 1970. Behind this appointment was Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who thereby successfully blocked the intention of the displaced persons’ organisations to assume a leading role within the Ministry.
In general, the influence of the displaced persons’ associations on the Ministry – whose task was not to represent the associations’ interests but to channelling them in line with federal policy – remained limited. Association members at the head of the Ministry – Schreiber, Lukaschek, Oberländer, and later, for a short time, Hans Krüger – primarily acted as government representatives in relation to the organisations’ interests. Partly for this reason, and in view of overlapping ministerial remit boundaries, the displaced persons’ associations began addressing their concerns not only to the BMVt but also, increasingly, to the BMG as early as the 1950s.
4. History
The history of the Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons cannot be understood without considering the struggles over interpretation and the frameworks of the pre-history and early history of the Federal Republic of Germany . A key to this lies in the specific understanding at the time of the term‘integration’, which was the Ministry’s ‘overarching mandate’.[2] On the one hand,‘integration’referred to an administrative process. This was intended to create and implement all the necessary conditions to place displaced persons and refugees – but not DPs – on an equal footing with the local population in West Germany in economic, societal and social terms. On the other hand,‘integration’described a political and academic programme whose contours were rooted in concepts of social order from the first half of the 20th century. . In the 1920s, guiding principles of ‘order, balance, harmony’ (Ariane Leendertz) had been formulated to govern the relationship between territory and population. The Ministry used these concepts as tools for diagnosing and resolving the imbalance that appeared to have arisen as a result of the reception of displaced persons and refugees, as well as the loss of the eastern territories . Only in this way, according to the contemporary understanding, could a slide into a supposedly looming ‘chaos’ of ‘massification’ be prevented. After 1945, this meant gearing all measures towards preserving a displaced population according to cultural and social characteristics, in order to maintain the visibility of this population group and to use it as an argument for the claim to the now-lost eastern territories . This was an official component of West German state policy until 1990. Thus,‘integration’was always also a building block in the inter-German systemic conflict, intended to legitimise the West German concept of integration as opposed to the GDR’s concept of assimilation. In the official understanding of the term, the process and the concept merged – and the BMVt itself was a visible symbol of that policy of‘integration’, which aimed, on the one hand, to integrate the displaced persons and, on the other, to maintain their willingness to return to their regions of origin. This contradictory approach, which was nevertheless deliberately championed in political and public discourse, meant that the ‘right to return’ remained a demand not only of the displaced persons’ organisations – which maintained their claim to the former eastern territories right up until reunification in 1990 – even beyond the 1970 Treaties with the Eastern Bloc, particularly as the continued existence of the German Reich had not been conclusively settled under international law.
Former members of the National Socialist ruling elite , as well as people with a displaced person’s background, made up a significant proportion of the staff at the BMVt. At the same time, however, apart from the ministers, there were people in key positions within the ministry who had neither a Nazi past nor were displaced persons. Examples of this included staff members such as Otto Siebke, who spent his entire civil service career at the BMVt, as well as State Secretary Nahm and the head of department Werner Middelmann. Whilst the importance of networks should not be underestimated, they had no decisive influence on the BMVt’s actions. Thus, in 1950, just under 60 per cent of the BMVt’s senior civil service had been members of the NSDAP, which was roughly in line with the average in the highest federal authorities in the early Federal Republic.
The concept of‘integration’gave rise to a recruitment practice based on the principle of continuity of expertise, which consequently contributed to the ministry’s existing Nazi legacy. This was because the specific interpretation of the integration of displaced persons as a demographic problem led the BMVt to frequently draw upon civil servants who had already been active in the Nazi state, as well as demographers who had worked for the ministry on a temporary basis, as specialists. Thus, political and academic concepts of territory and population – which had already been tested prior to 1945 and 1933 respectively in Weimar-era borderland research, research into ‘Volks- und Kulturboden’ and ‘Ostforschung’, shaped , for example, the visualisation practices of the Planning Department or the methodological approach of statisticians and ‘Volkstum’ experts in the implementation of large-scale scientific projects. Both an opponent of the National Socialists such as Hans Lukaschek and the heavily implicated Theodor Oberländer bore responsibility for this during their terms of office, because at the time those approaches and procedures were viewed as separate from any political implications.
Furthermore, over 80 per cent of the staff – an above-average figure given that displaced persons and refugees accounted for around 20 per cent of the total population – consisted of displaced persons, no doubt partly because there was no predecessor ministry for which the existing staff could have been utilised. Although the political organisations representing displaced persons were able to place individual representatives within the ministry on a regular basis, the rules of bureaucracy and the ministry’s role as a buffer between lobby groups and the government effectively prevented the interests of these organisations from being directly incorporated into the ministry’s actions. Instead, the scope for action, which was restricted by bureaucracy, often alienated association members from their organisations. In collaboration with other ministries and the Federal Chancellery, the BMVt continued, for instance in the arena of media policy, to thwart or weaken the displaced persons’ organisations’ foreign-policy demands for return whenever these ran counter to the interests of the Federal Government. Smaller organisations, on the other hand, were certainly supported by the Ministry, provided their activities were geared towards promoting integration.
This ambivalent stance towards the displaced persons’ organisations, the interpretation of the displaced persons’ problem using demographic conceptual frameworks, and the first peak of the East-West conflict characterised the BMVt’s modest foreign policy activities during the 1950s, which were primarily directed towards the USA. To this end, the Ministry – often operating below the diplomatic level – maintained a dialogue with representatives of civil society, academia, the media and the churches in the USA. Information and lecture tours took BMVt officials to Western Europe and the USA to discuss the process of integrating displaced persons. Through books, press articles, maps, charts, intelligence reports and political pamphlets, demographic concepts and, consequently, the concept of‘integration’found their way abroad. Together with other authorities, in particular the Federal Government’s Press and Information Office, the Ministry linked‘integration’to the policy of Western orientation: firstly,‘integration’was intended to justify continued financial aid from the USA to the Federal Republic. Secondly, it was regarded as necessary to strengthen the West German state on the front line of the East-West conflict. Thirdly, it served as a building block for the re-conceptualisation of the Federal Republic as a state of the political and democratic ‘West’.
By the early 1960s, the German ‘displaced persons issue’ appeared to have stabilised. Although the BMVt remained its symbol, the political reasons for its existence were increasingly being eroded: on the one hand, the expansion of the border fortifications by the GDR in 1961 meant that the imminent fulfilment of the ‘right to a homeland’ receded into the distant future. On the other hand, the social, political and societal integration of the displaced persons continued to progress. In the final years of its existence, the BMVt once again emphasised the cultural-political aspect of‘integration’before it was dissolved as an independent supreme authority in 1969. However, through its support for emigrants and late repatriates, as well as through cultural funding in accordance with the ‘culture clause’ ( § 96) of the BVFG , the ‘Special Ministry’ continues to have an impact to this day.
Bibliography
- Pertti Ahonen: After the Expulsion. West Germany and Eastern Europe 1945–1990. Oxford et al. 2003.
- Mathias Beer: Symbolic politics? The origins, remit and function of the Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims, in: Jochen Oltmer (ed.): Managing and administering migration. Germany from the late 19th century to the present day, Göttingen 2003, pp.295–322.
- Ibid.: Flight and Displacement. Prerequisites, Course, Consequences. Munich 2011.
- Ibid. (ed.): Communication and Consensus-Building. Networks of the Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons. Berlin 2025.
- Wolfgang Fischer: ‘Homeland Politicians?’ Self-Conception and Political Action of Displaced Persons as Members of the German Bundestag from 1949 to 1974. Düsseldorf 2010.
- Manfred Kittel: The ‘Stepchildren’ of the Economic Miracle? German Displaced Persons from the East and the Policy of Burden-Sharing (1952 to 1975). Düsseldorf 2020.
- Michael Parak: From the ‘Culture of the Displacement Areas’ to General Cultural Policy. Cultural Funding under Section 96 of the Federal Displaced Persons Act. In: Ronald Lambrecht/Ulf Morgenstern (eds.): ‘Vigorously Pursued Detailed Research’. Essays for Ulrich von Hehl on his 65th birthday, Leipzig 2012, pp. 422–453.
- Jan Ruhkopf: Institutionalised Ambiguity. Concepts of Order and Political Administration in the Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons. 2nd ed. Göttingen 2023.
- Michael Schwartz: Displaced Persons and ‘Resettlement Policy’. Integration Conflicts in Post-War German Societies and Assimilation Strategies in the Soviet Occupation Zone/GDR1945–1961. Munich 2004.
- Lothar Wieland: The Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims. Frankfurt am Main 1968.
Citation
Mathias Beer, Jan Ruhkopf: Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims (BMVt). In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2024. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32862(as at 10 July 2024).
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