Electoral competition for expellee votes fossilized symbolic irredentism that no longer meant return

Evidence

To this end they relied on an intensification of symbolic political gestures and organizational efforts. In the early 1950s, all parties used election posters depicting Germany with its 1937 borders, underlining the fact that they supported efforts to reclaim former German territories, and that expellees would be able to return to them. CDU party conferences likewise reflected this aim. Its 1950 national conference took place in Goslar, a border town near the Soviet Occupation Zone – a reminder of the aim of German unity – and had flags of former German eastern territories hanging at the event. In 1952, the conference was held in Berlin, where Adenauer visited a refugee transit camp and caught the eye of the media by handing out chocolates to children. And during the 1953 election campaign Adenauer made an appearance at the pilgrimage church in Werl, where 50,000 Silesians had gathered. … Political integration was supported by reforms within the party. In fact, both the CDU and the SPD established special organizations for expellees within their parties, such as the ‘Exile CDU’ for Christian Democrats from the GDR, or the ‘Oder–Neisse State Association’ for refugees from the East. Thus, though remaining a special interest group, expellees were nonetheless able to be active in both major parties. A key slogan of the Federation of Expellees, that the ‘right to the homeland is a human right [Heimatrecht ist Menschenrecht]’, was picked up by both parties. The struggle for the votes of expellees thus hindered the process of reconciliation with neighboring countries to the east. Nevertheless, by the 1950s the appeal to Heimatrecht hardly ever implied the demand anymore to actually return to the eastern territories; it was more about a symbolic recognition of the sense of belonging and the suffering arising from the experience of expulsion, coupled with demands for material compensation. — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 741

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s thesis on whether professed grievance claims predict or diverge from the actual material demand — here the claim of return diverges almost entirely from the real compensation demand. — connects to: Exposure to the transformed Heimat eroded expellee support for territorial revision. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 1328; Expellee political power eroded once generational change and border settlement removed grievances — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 403; Electoral courtship of immigrant voters dissolved the Republicans’ restrictionist role — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 733 (+5 more)
• ADDENDUM: Parallel to the planted-tree/threat framing: symbolic claims outliving their functional content resemble how symbolic decorum or ritual claims outlive their practical logic.