German identity abroad
German identity abroad
1. Brief description
The term ‘Auslandsdeutschtum’ was based on the notion of a collective linguistic, national and supposedly ‘German-descended’, yet non-state community outside the borders of the German Empire. Linked to this concept was the assumption that, regardless of diverse places of origin, migratory movements and ethnic-cultural influences, a relatively homogeneous, specifically German culture had been preserved outside the state.
Towards the end of the 19th century, figures within German nationalist and ‘völkisch’ associations and research circles began to increasingly call for solidarity with German-speaking groups beyond national borders. Particularly during the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era, the concept of ‘Germans abroad’ – extended to include the so-called ‘borderland Germans’ – attracted widespread attention both socially and politically. A wide range of interest groups appropriated it for their own ends, for example to establish closer economic ties with the German-speaking population abroad or to justify measures of religious and cultural protection. It also served to justify revisionist and far-reaching geopolitical demands and to legitimise research activities.
As part of a ‘ethnic’ and ‘racial’ interpretation of the term, Germans abroad became an integral part of Nazi war and expansionist policy. After the Second World War, the concept gradually lost its significance, as a large proportion of Germans in Eastern Europe had fled to the Allied occupation zones, been forcibly expelled or resettled. In the late 1980s, the issue returned to political and social debate in the Federal Republic of Germany. The focus was on questions of naturalisation for late repatriates from Eastern Europe and minority rights, though no longer on the overarching concept of so-called ‘German identity abroad’.
German and foreign-language equivalents
Synonyms, alternative terms and related concepts in German are: Germans abroad, Germans living abroad, Germans in border regions and abroad, the concept of ‘Germandom in border regions and abroad’, ethnic Germans, German minorities.
In English, ‘(border and) German identity abroad’ has been translated as ‘Germandom abroad’ or ‘Germandom in borderlands and abroad’; ‘Germans abroad’ has been adopted directly as a term or paraphrased as ‘German expatriates’, ‘Germans abroad’, ‘Germans living outside the Reich’ or ‘Germans living abroad’.
Translations or equivalents in other languages include: Czech Němci v zahraničí (= Germans abroad), pohraniční Němci (= borderland Germans); Polish: Niemcy za granicą (= Germans abroad); Russian: Zagraničnye Nemcy; Hungarian: külföldi németség; Romanian: germanii din străinătate.
2. Origins / Historical Overview
From around the mid-19th century, the terms ‘Germans abroad’ and ‘Germans living abroad’ began to appear in the literature. Interest in them had been aroused in educated middle-class circles in the wake of the unification movement within the German Confederation. In 1845, the doctor and librarian Wilhelm Stricker (1816–1891), who was concerned with issues of emigration and the geographical extent of the German-speaking world, published his first work on *The Spread of the German People Across the Globe* and, shortly afterwards, launched the journal *Germania. Archives for the Study of the German Element in All Countries of the World. They covered people of German origin overseas as well as the inhabitants of the border regions of German territories (prior to German unification) and the so-called‘language islands’in Eastern Europe. Stricker intended, in this way, to convey a ‘comprehensive picture of German national life and the most diverse aspects of the German character’[1], as well as to enhance and consolidate what was perceived as the Germans’ relatively weak sense of national identity.
Initially, however, public interest remained limited. Following the founding of the German Empire in 1871 and the ‘saturation’ of the state as a ‘Small German solution’ propagated by Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898), the subject appeared to be of little political significance. Within the framework of diaspora welfare, however, church organisations ensured that links with ‘Germans abroad’ were maintained. In 1881, the ‘Allgemeiner Deutscher Schulverein’ (General German School Association) was founded; this was renamedthe ‘Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland (VDA)’ in 1908 and made the preservation or ‘revival’ of German culture its fundamental aim. The local branches of this leading German nationalist organisation strove within the country to inspire enthusiasm amongst the population for ‘German identity abroad’. Outside the borders of the Reich, they mainly promoted the establishment of German-speaking schools. In parallel with the VDA, the ‘Allgemeiner Deutscher Verband’ was founded in 1891, which three years later took the name‘Alldeutscher Verband (ADV)’. Its members, the majority of whom held völkisch and anti-Semitic views, called for an expansionist colonial policy and the strengthening of German nationalist sentiment in the interests of the German Empire’s ‘position as a world power’. In the German Empire under Wilhelm II (1859–1941), these associations, along with other economic organisations, laid the foundations for a growing public interest in preserving ‘German identity abroad’. They criticised state authorities for their narrow definition of Germans abroad as primarily German citizens who had lived outside the German Empire for an extended period. Gradually, the term was reinterpreted in line with the views of the association representatives and, by the end of the 19th century, came to include emigrants from German states who had moved permanently abroad and taken on a different nationality, as well as their descendants.
The previously dominant collective term ‘emigrants’ had at least accorded a certain degree of autonomy and mobility to people who had left their country of origin, mostly due to economic, religious or political discrimination. The new designation ‘Auslandsdeutsche’, by contrast, struck a passive and static note. It expressed a supposed ‘spiritual unity’ amongst Germans, as Bradley D. Naranch explains in his analysis *Inventing the Auslandsdeutsche* (2005), and also suggested that they were settled abroad. The identification of ‘Germans abroad’ was based on their countries of origin and the at least partial continued use of the German language. The German cultural associations pressed for the broadening of the term to be officially recognised. The new Nationality Act of 1913 ultimately made it easier for Germans abroad to claim citizenship of the German Empire even after a prolonged absence, or to reacquire it without undue difficulty. The Act thus promoted an ‘ethnicisation’ or a ‘nationalist conception of citizenship’.[2] The reinterpretation of emigrants as ‘Germans abroad’ was, in part, accompanied by the ‘Germanisation’ of the groups concerned. The attempt to declare them part of the‘German people’also encouraged their distancing from foreign-language population groups and from the countries of which they were citizens. It also facilitated the exclusion of those who were unwilling to submit to these homogenising notions of national identity.
At around the same time, geographers and travellers with an interest in folklore began to study German-speaking communities beyond the country’ s borders, whilst representatives of German nationalist organisations sought to establish the study of ‘Germans abroad’ as an independent academic discipline. They called for the establishment of a scholarly foundation and sought to present this as a potential resource for state policy by highlighting the need for action regarding Germans abroad. The VDA, which comprised its own academic groups, resolved in 1908 to establish a central office for research into German identity abroad, with a view to institutionalising academic activity in this field. Among the initiators were academics such as the Berlin-based economic and social historian Robert Hoeniger (1855–1929), who, in 1909–1910, delivered one of the first lectures at Humboldt University on ‘German identity abroad and its economic significance’[3]. Although the VDA’s central research centre, which he helped to initiate, initially existed only for a short time, the founding of the German Institute for Studies Abroad (DAI) in Stuttgart in 1917 marked the beginning of the establishment of a series of institutions—some of which were privately run—dedicated specifically to research into Germans abroad. These included (1) the Institute for German Communities in Border Regions and Abroad in Marburg, (2) the Academy for the Scientific Research and Preservation of German Culture / German Academy in Munich, (3) the Institute for Border and Overseas Studies e. V. in Berlin, (4) the Research Centre for Overseas German Culture and Overseas Studies e. V. in Münster, and (5) the Foundation for Research into German Ethnic and Cultural Heritage in Leipzig, with its affiliated editorial team for the Concise Dictionary of German Communities in Border Regions and Abroad, as well as (6) the Institute for Foreign Studies, Border Regions and German Communities Abroad, also based there.[4]
In 1919, nationalist-leaning, conservative circles – primarily associated with the Deutscher Schutzbund – extended the concept to the German-speaking population of the border regions, as is also evident from the names given to some Institutes. The adoption of the theme of so-called ‘Germans in border regions and abroad’ after the First World War, drawing on the territorial cessions under the Treaty of Versailles, was promoted by contemporaries as a new beginning and a reform in the fields of research, education and upbringing. Although the associations had already brought the subject of ‘Germans abroad’ to public attention previously, the political and territorial consequences of the war for both the German Empire and Austria-Hungary generated a significantly greater social resonance. In the political debates of the Weimar Republic, the issue was taken up across party lines. The notion of a nation that extended, at least ethnically or culturally, far beyond national borders was intended to compensate for the political weakness of the German state vis-à-vis colonial powers such as England or France. ‘Border and overseas German identity’ provided the conceptual backdrop for a quasi-colonial expansion of the sphere of influence of the governments of the German Empire, which found itself largely isolated internationally following its defeat in the war.
The National Socialists gave the postulate of an ethnic-cultural affiliation of all Germans to the German people a ‘racial’ basis. The National Socialist government introduced the term‘Volksdeutsche’(ethnicGermans), which had been in use since the 1920s, as an official designation and guaranteed military protection to the groups defined in this way. The organisations representing German-speaking populations abroad became an instrument of Nazi foreign and war policy. Coordination of these efforts was undertaken by the Central Office for Ethnic Germans. Involved in this were the Ethnic German Research Associations, which operated in the service of Nazi policy, and some of the aforementioned research centres that had already been established during the Weimar Republic. Ultimately, the‘ethnic Germans’served as a pretext for Germany’s demand that Czechoslovakia cede territories, and for the invasion of Poland in September 1939, thereby marking the start of the war. They, or rather their (cultural) political organisations, were regarded in both countries as the so-called ‘Fifth Column’ in Hitler’s war of aggression. After the end of the war, this perspective legitimised, amongst other things, the expulsion or – in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement – the deportation of the German-speaking population from Eastern Europe. As early as the Second World War, on the orders of the German government, some German-speaking population groups had been resettled from the states of Eastern Europe to territories occupied by the German Reich. As the Soviet army advanced towards the end of the war, these and other inhabitants of those regions fled westwards.
These events meant that a significant proportion of the population formerly defined as ‘Germans living abroad and in border regions’ became what were known as ‘displaced persons’ in the Allied occupation zones and later citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR. From 1950 onwards, the German-speaking inhabitants still remaining in Eastern Europe were given the opportunity to come to the Federal Republic as ‘privileged immigrants’ or as (late) repatriates. Consequently, after the war, the concept increasingly lost its demographic basis. Nevertheless, the DAI was re-established in 1949 under the name‘Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IfA)’ and, in the mid-1950s, the VDA was re-established in the Federal Republic on the basis of this now-outdated concept. It was not until the late 1960s that a fundamental international reorientation became apparent within the IfA and in the Federal Government’s foreign policy, when a broader concept of culture was established as the basis for political action and cultural exchange and co-operation took centre stage in place of national self-promotion.
Following the political upheavals in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, there was a growing return to the concept of minorities, and in the wake of EU enlargements, the German (and other) minorities remaining in those regions were increasingly recognised once more. The concept of ‘Germans abroad’, on the other hand, had become a site of remembrance, as Rainer Münz and Rainer Ohliger (2001) explain, and symbolised the historical presence of German population groups primarily in Eastern Europe. More recently, it has also come to be regarded as a potential subject for transnational, global-historical research (Penny/Rinke 2015).
3. Discourses/Controversies
Since the late 19th century, various representatives of organisations and researchers have attempted to provide a clear academic definition of ‘Germans abroad’ or ‘Germans in border regions and abroad’. However, the very existence of such a concept is fundamentally called into question. The historian Dirk Hoerder concludes that the term, in its generality, fails to do justice to the highly diverse migration patterns. Rather, he argues, it reflects a simplistic view within Germany of demographic developments beyond the political borders of the German Empire.[5]
After the Second World War, the role attributed to ‘Germans abroad’ during the Nazi era was subject to varying interpretations. In studies conducted in the GDR and Poland on the Weimar Republic’s Ostpolitik and the German protection associations, which were described as ‘revanchist organisations’[6], they were regarded as sympathisers of the National Socialists who had been co-opted for political, military and expansionist aims. Particularly in the Federal Republic, the notion persisted of German minorities formerly living in Eastern Europe who required the protection of the German state. They remained present in the collective memory of the Federal Republic, for example due to the political activities of the associations of displaced persons.
In contrast, the West German historian Norbert Krekeler, amongst others, criticised the revisionist-oriented state and non-state ethnic policies of the Weimar Republic in the early 1970s, describing them as “a necessary prerequisite”[7] for Nazi policy regarding ‘Germans abroad’. However, historians Carole Fink (1972) and John Hiden (1977) doubted that the foreign cultural policy of the 1920s, as it related to Germans abroad, was merely a prologue to the manipulative tactics of the National Socialists. They rejected the idea of projecting Nazi policies back onto developments in the Weimar Republic. For alongside institutional and personnel continuities in the 1930s, there were also breaks, for instance with regard to minority policy and in certain areas of research into ‘border and overseas German identity’. Whilst the patterns of argumentation popularised during the Weimar period did provide the starting point for national-ideological activities by both‘Reich German’and ‘German abroad’ protagonists, these differed from the far-reaching instrumentalisation carried out by right-wing conservative and National Socialist actors.
Bibliography
- Nikolaus Barbian: Foreign Cultural Policy and ‘Germans Abroad’ in Latin America 1949–1973. Wiesbaden 2014 (Foreign Cultural Policy).
- Michael Fahlbusch: ‘Wherever the German … is, there is Germany!’: The Foundation for Research into German Folk and Cultural Heritage in Leipzig, 1920–1933. Bochum 1994 (Essays on the History of the Geosciences and Religion-Environment Research 6).
- Carole Fink: ‘Defender of minorities: Germany in the League of Nations, 1926–1933’. In: Central European History 5 (1972), no. 4, pp. 330–357.
- John Hiden: The Weimar Republic and the problem of the Auslandsdeutsche. In: Journal of Contemporary History 12 (1977), No. 2, pp. 273–289.
- Rudolf Jaworski: The Concept of Germans Abroad in the Weimar Republic. In: Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento IV (1978), pp. 369–386.
- Rainer Münz, Rainer Ohliger: Germans Abroad. In: Étienne François, Hagen Schulze (eds.): German Places of Remembrance. Vol. 1. Munich 2001, pp. 370–388.
- Bradley D. Naranch: Inventing the Auslandsdeutsche. Emigration, colonial fantasy, and German national identity, 1848–71. In: Eric Ames, Marcia Klotz, Lora Wildenthal (eds.): Germany’s colonial past. Lincoln et al. 2005, pp. 21–40 (Texts and Contexts).
- H. Glenn Penny, Stefan Rinke: Germans Abroad. Respatialising Historical Narrative. In: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 41 (2015), pp. 173–196.
- Gerhard Weidenfeller: VDA, Association for German Culture Abroad. General German School Association (1881–1918). A contribution to the history of German nationalism and imperialism in the German Empire. Bern et al. 1976 (European University Publications: Series 3, History and its Auxiliary Sciences 66).
Web links
- www.reichstagsprotokolle.de/Sach_bsb00000113_000069 (Entry on ‘Germans abroad’, in: Bavarian State Library: Reichstag Minutes 1867–1942)
- digital.tessmann.it/tessmannDigital/Buch/18841//listViewMode-on.html (Digital copy from the Dr Friedrich Teßmann State Library, Bolzano: Robert Sieger: German Identity from the Adige to the Danube. Munich 1925 [The German Community in Border Regions and Abroad 6].)
Notes
[1] Wilhelm Stricker: Preface. In: *Germania. Archive on the German Element in All Countries of the World* 1 (1847), pp. V–VI, here p. VI.
[2] Dieter Gosewinkel: Citizenship in Germany and France in the 19th and 20th Centuries. In: Christoph Conrad, Jürgen Kocka (eds.): Citizenship in Europe: Historical Experiences and Current Debates. Hamburg 2001, pp. 48–62, here p. 58.
[3] Calendar of events in: History of Economic Sciences at Humboldt University of Berlin: hicks.wiwi.hu-berlin.de/history/ (accessed 5 February 2015).
[4] The names of the institutes are given as they appear in the original documents from the time of their foundation.
[5] Cf. Dirk Hoerder: A History of German Migration. From the Middle Ages to the Present Day. Munich 2010 (Beck’sche Reihe 2494: C. H. Beck Wissen).
[6] Kurt Possekel: Studies on the Politics of the Association for German Culture Abroad (VDA) in the Weimar Republic. Rostock 1967, p. I.
[7] Norbert Krekeler: The Right to Revision and the Secret Ostpolitik of the Weimar Republic. The Subsidisation of the German Minority in Poland 1919–1933. Stuttgart 1973 (Quarterly Journal of Contemporary History / Series 27), p. 150.
Citation
Cornelia Eisler: Germans Abroad. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2015. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32850 (accessed 13 July 2021).
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