The term ‘refugee settlements’ refers to settlements built after the end of the Second World War to alleviate the housing shortage caused by the war and its aftermath, and which were inhabited, either exclusively or predominantly, by refugees and displaced persons from the former German imperial and settlement territories in Eastern Europe.

Housing the refugees and displaced persons posed a challenge for the occupying powers and the German authorities, given the large number of people and the destruction of housing^[1] caused by the hostilities. Temporary accommodation was therefore provided not only through lodgings with local residents but also through refugee camps, some of which were newly built, but most of which were former collective accommodation facilities used by Nazi organisations or the military, or had previously served as prisoner-of-war camps, forced-labour camps and even concentration camps. These were predominantly barracks camps on the outskirts of towns and villages. It almost always took several years before the refugees and displaced persons were able to move into their own permanent, rather than makeshift, accommodation.^[2] This housing was also created through the construction of housing estates from the late 1940s onwards, with a surge from the mid-1950s through to the 1960s. In West Germany, the general economic growth following the currency reform and state and local authority financial assistance – as introduced by the first Housing Construction Act of 1950 and numerous subsequent local government support measures for social housing – created the necessary conditions for this. In addition to the local authorities, the developers were often non-profit co-operatives, many of whose housing estates still exist today. Various forms of self-help by residents (such as setting up their own co-operatives or contributing their own labour to the construction) were also practised.

Family in front of a new farmhouse in Wurschen/Upper Lusatia
(circa 1950) [Photo: Private collection]

In the Soviet Occupation Zone/GDR, too, efforts were made to alleviate the housing shortage, for instance in the context of land reform through state subsidies for the construction of residential and farm buildings for new farmers, approximately 43 per cent of whom were refugees and displaced persons. The new farms were mostly established where the so-called resettlers had previously been housed on a temporary basis, for example on manor estates, or as extensions to existing villages in order to make use of their infrastructure.

A distinction must be made between 1. smaller refugee settlements within existing city or town districts and 2. settlements which themselves formed a new district and, in the larger cases, had their own shopping facilities, public infrastructure (schools, swimming pools, libraries, etc.) and churches; and 3. independent municipalities (see below). Dependent settlements arose primarily on the outskirts of larger towns and cities, as well as in small towns and villages from which people could commute to work in the towns and cities. In remote rural areas, on the other hand, apart from the aforementioned new-farmer settlements, one finds hardly any self-contained refugee settlements.

The so-called ‘refugee communities’ represent a special case among refugee settlements; these are entire towns founded through the settlement of refugees and displaced persons, usually on land that had previously served military purposes. This is how Waldkraiburg, Geretsried, Neugablonz, Traunreut and – the only new urban settlement in northern Germany – Espelkamp-Mittwald came into being, each on the sites of munitions factories with associated (forced) labour camps. The establishment or further development of these settlements, which arose outside existing towns, went hand in hand with the establishment of industry and commerce, often drawing on the industrial and commercial traditions of the regions of origin; for example, glass production and finishing in Neugablonz drew on the tradition of Gablonz/Jablonec nad Nisou in Bohemia. In addition, existing industrial buildings and facilities were utilised, and former workforces were brought together in their new place of residence to rebuild old businesses.

Block of flats built by the non-profit housing co-operative ‘Gemeinnützige Baugenossenschaft der Ostvertriebenen zu Oldenburg’ (Olbg.),
, on the corner of Goten- and Widukindstraße, completed between
1952 and 1955 [Photo: 2013, private collection].

Not only in terms of financing through state aid and construction by non-profit housing developers, but also architecturally, the housing estates in West Germany after 1945 followed models that had been developed in the context of the housing shortage of the early 1920s and revived during the Nazi era. Modelled on the so-called ‘Heimatstil’ – a style reduced to a few stylistic elements (gabled roof, dormers, etc.) – and planned and built as standardised houses to save costs, these developments comprised detached and terraced houses with a maximum of three storeys. The floor plans followed the minimalist solutions that had been developed in social housing during the Weimar Republic. In the case of detached houses, provision was often made for (partial) self-sufficiency through gardens and small-scale livestock farming; moreover, home ownership was regarded as particularly effective in binding people to their new place of residence. Less commonly, and primarily in major cities, modernist architectural forms from the interwar period were also adopted, as in the Stuttgart-Rot housing estate with high-rise designs by the architects Hans Scharoun and Wilhelm Frank.

Since the granting of housing loans or the allocation of flats in the new housing estates built with state funds in the Federal Republic of Germany was not solely contingent on refugee status,^[3] long-established residents, newcomers from other parts of the Federal Republic of Germany and refugees from the GDR also lived there, with refugees and displaced persons often constituting a large group, but rarely the absolute majority.^[4] Statements regarding the course of integration of their residents are difficult to make due to the “versatility, diversity, complexity and interdependence of social relationships^[5] within the housing estates and beyond cannot be summarised concisely. However, eyewitness accounts consistently indicate that moving into a ‘proper’ flat of one’s own – that is, one occupied solely by oneself and not a makeshift (housing estate) flat – represented a significant step towards integration.

Many former refugee settlements can still be recognised today by their street names, which were chosen to reflect places in their ‘old homeland’, such as Gleiwitzer or Danziger Straße. In some cases, disputes arose between the authorities and residents over the naming of these streets.^[6] When naming entire estates, preference was given to drawing on local features such as old field names. Derogatory nicknames such as “Paprikasiedlung” or “Kittelweiberdorf” have also been handed down, which referred in a discriminatory or self-deprecating manner to the residents’ origins and their customs.

• Hermann Bausinger, Markus Braun, Herbert Schwedt: New Settlements. Folkloristic and sociological studies by the Ludwig Uhland Institute, Tübingen. Stuttgart 1959.
• Andreas Dix: ‘Freies Land’. Settlement planning in rural areas of the Soviet Occupation Zone and early GDR, 1945–1955. Cologne et al. 2002.
• Elisabeth Fendl: Stories of Reconstruction. A Biography of the Neutraubling Community of Displaced Persons. (Series of Publications by the Commission for German and Eastern European Folklore within the German Society for Folklore e.V. 91) Marburg 2006.
• Alfred Karasek-Langer: Resettlement in Bavaria after 1945. A Turning Point in Our Folk History. In: Yearbook of Folklore of the Displaced Persons 2 (1956), pp. 24–102.
• Elisabeth Pfeil: The Founding of New Towns. In: Friedrich Edding, Eugen Lemberg (eds.): Displaced Persons in West Germany. Vol. 1. Kiel 1959, pp. 500–520.
• Günther Schulz: Reconstruction in Germany. Housing Policy in the Western Zones and in the Federal Republic from 1945 to 1957. Düsseldorf 1994.

[1] In West Germany, 21 per cent of the housing units that had existed in 1939 were missing; see Günter Schmölders: ‘Financing Problems in Connection with the Economic Integration of Displaced Persons’. Berlin 1955 (Publications of the Association for Social Policy, New Series 6/II), p. 41; in the Soviet Occupation Zone/GDR, the loss was smaller at 10 per cent of the pre-war stock, yet there was still a shortfall of 1.9 million dwellings (excluding Berlin, as at 1 October 1946), cf. Alexander von Plato, Wolfgang Meinicke: Old Homeland – New Era. Refugees, Resettlers and Displaced Persons in the Soviet Occupation Zone and in the GDR. Berlin 1991, p. 47.

[2] Many camps remained in existence – albeit with declining occupancy – well into the 1960s, and some until the early 1970s; for example, the Julienlust camp in Kiel, whose last residents moved out in 1972. See Uwe Carstens: The Refugee Camps of the City of Kiel. Collective Accommodation as a Disintegrating Factor in Refugee Policy. Marburg 1992, pp. 199ff.

[3] According to Section 1, the First Housing Construction Act of 1950 served the purpose of ‘social housing’ and was intended to create housing ‘for displaced persons and other sections of the population […] who had lost their homes as a result of the war’. Federal Law Gazette I, No. 16, 26 April 1950, p. 83.

[4] The proportion of refugees and displaced persons living in the Federal Republic in 1953 in dwellings built with funds from the Emergency Aid Act (SHG) is estimated at 60 per cent. See Schmölders (as in note 1), p. 44.

[5] Bausinger, Braun, Schwedt: Neue Siedlungen, p. 141.

[6] In Stuttgart-Giebel, for example, residents protested against street names featuring amphibian names. Bausinger, Braun, Schwedt: Neue Siedlungen, p. 153.

Heinke M. Kalinke: Refugee settlements. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2013. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32810 (accessed 19 August 2013).