Expellee leadership’s political memory sway over ordinary expellees is exaggerated
Evidence
The supposed inl uence of the expellee leadership’s politics of memory has been exaggerated through the overreliance of previous scholarship on heavily published tracts distributed by politically motivated leaders. 69 By exploring a broader array of source material – private correspondence, diaries, obscure books, Heimat books, Heimatzeitungen (homeland papers), pastoral Rundbriefe (circular letters), documentation from surviving Heimat archives, and travel reports – I i nd that expellees embraced a diverse and apolitical understanding of the Lost German East. Politically active authors were even irked when readers failed to partake in the politics of memory; when reading his fan mail, Magnus Freiherr von Braun warned an admirer to remember the political goal of border revision rather than merely use his book to dwell on fond old memories. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 201
Categorization
- XREF: Directly serves the reader’s core question: mass publics did not internalize the leaders’ manufactured threat/politics of memory — diverging from leadership rhetoric, parallel to conviction-vs-measured-bias divergence literature. — connects to: Expellees’ apolitical memory work outweighed their leaders’ revanchist politics — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 201; Expellee leaders fabricated survey results to manufacture support for revisionism — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 598; Depoliticization can mask rather than end political influence — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 1020
Broader Connections
- Expellees’ apolitical memory work outweighed their leaders’ revanchist politics
#corroborates(0.95) — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 201 - Expellee leaders fabricated survey results to manufacture support for revisionism
#corroborates(0.85) — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 598 - Depoliticization can mask rather than end political influence
#qualifies(0.80) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 1020