Expellee leaders shifted from demanding return to integrating within a few years

Evidence

Because they recorded a pastor’s mindset over time, Rundbriefe demonstrate particularly well how men with broadly differing personalities and backgrounds steadily moved from desire for physical return to resignation that the past could never be lived again as reality. In 1947, Josef Engelbert urged his l ock to pray and have patience that they might one day see St. Michael’s church in Breslau again; later that year, he urged them “to stand with both feet on the ground of reality,” to settle where they had landed, and move on with their professional lives “as if we would always have to stay here.” Even though western communities lacked cherished Silesian traditions, at least the most important sacramental elements remained the same. 80 By the time of his i nal letter two years later, he was cherishing his Heimat in memory and focusing on his new pastoral duties in Hannover. 81 In contrast, in 1949, Lektor Rauhut, the manager for a Protestant relief committee, was still promising his exiled l ocks that, because of their good behavior as suffering Christians, God was obligated to restore the Heimat ; return of the Heimat was not simply “in God’s hands,” but rather the experience of detaching from material goods meant that “perhaps, when we are really mature for it, then the Lord God would also give back what we both, you and I, yearn for with all our hearts, our beloved Silesian Heimat .” 82 Pastor G. R ö chling of Namslau kept using his Rundbrief as a platform for urging political action until arthritis i nally forced him to stop after 1966. 83 It is noteworthy, however, that pastors who retained a strongly revanchist stance tended to lose the support and interest of their congregations. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 933

Categorization

• XREF: This is the documentary evidence of how revisionist/return politics decayed through everyday integration — central to the reader’s question of what happens to solidarity when the manufactured enemy/threat fades. Connects to the reader’s other material on threat-hardened belief and its dissolution. — connects to: Pastors’ own recognition of Heimat’s transformation pushed expellees toward Western integration. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 856; Expellee organizations shifted from socioeconomic to foreign-policy demands as prosperity rose. — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 26; 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 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Return-homeland promises to expellees sapped their will to integrate economically #contradicts (0.80) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 382
• Expellee organizations shifted from socioeconomic to foreign-policy demands as prosperity rose. #qualifies (0.78) — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 26
• Expellee political power eroded once generational change and border settlement removed grievances #qualifies (0.72) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 403