Economic success did not erode expellees’ attachment to their lost homeland

Evidence

A wide range of studies have given valuable proof that rising prosperity helped expellees achieve some modicum of economic integration. 16 However, it is simply not the case that, by enjoying greater stability through the economic miracle, expellees lost interest in the old Heimat . 17 A further presumption – that economic integration proceeded at the expense of memory – threatens to overlook that this integration proved difi cult, and expellees continued to feel like outsiders in the native communities. 18 A glance at letters circulated by former Breslau schoolgirls reveals a consistent obsession to cope with loss by discussing prewar memories. Writing to her old classmates on August 15, 1958, Eva-Maria Schlaak shared memories of crying amid the ruins of Breslau in 1945. Because “everything beloved and precious had been annihilated,” she urged them to preserve what they had known: “beautiful in your recollection, as it resides in your memory.” 19 At the same time that Silesians struggled to ensure their economic survival, they selected consoling memories from the world they had lost to retain a sense of continuity. Uprooted and exiled, they chose to reside in memory. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 104

Categorization

• XREF: Directly speaks to the reader’s core question about what happens to group solidarity when material/integration pressures improve — economic integration does NOT dissolve memory-based identity. — connects to: Expellees neither forgot their Heimat through prosperity nor held genuine desire for physical return — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 86; Successful economic integration did not dissolve expellee political communities organized around lost-homeland grievance — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 33; Nostalgia and visits to the lost homelands weakened expellees’ own demand for return — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 193

Broader Connections

• Successful economic integration did not dissolve expellee political communities organized around lost-homeland grievance #corroborates (0.98) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 33
• Nostalgia and visits to the lost homelands weakened expellees’ own demand for return #contradicts (0.85) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 193