Expellee lobby influence waned only after their core grievances were institutionally resolved

Evidence

Summarizing the brief survey of two German expellee policies and their societal effects, the systemic political differences of parliamentary democracy in the FRG versus party dictatorship in the GDR were significant. In the FRG institutionalized lobbyism with its pluralism of interests resulted in a long-term influence of expellee organizations and politicians regarding social policy (burden sharing), but also ‘homeland policy’ (border questions, revision of expulsion). This lobbyistic participation, which also exceeded the political influence of pied-noir associations in France, had rather ambivalent consequences – expellees could act as advocates of social change by means of institutionalizing innovative social policies, but also as veto players against a ‘New Eastern Policy’ (Neue Ostpolitik). … Paradoxically, when the second BDV president Wenzel Jaksch, a Sudeten German Social Democrat with strong anti-fascist credentials who had succeeded the failed ex-Nazi Hans Krüger, began to establish transnational cooperative contacts even to French right-wing politicians like Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour (who at that time tried to mobilize the Pieds-Noirs in his presidential campaign against de Gaulle) in the middle of the 1960s, the influence of expellee lobby organizations on West German politics was already significantly in decline. — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 399

Categorization

• QUESTION: The chapter names the BDV/BHE influence decline but doesn’t cover the BHE party’s electoral rise and collapse in detail — worth chasing in the fuller Bösch chapter this draws from.
• XREF: Parallel to Tixier-Vignancour and pied-noir mobilization in France — the mirror case of settler-descendant lobbyism whose grievances never resolved. — connects to: Expellee revisionism decayed internally through decades of reflection, not political pressure — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 1404; Adenauer weaponized expellee grievances to stall reunification and extract concessions — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 156; Expellee organizations lost all influence once the territorial goal became moot — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 384 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Expellee political power eroded once generational change and border settlement removed grievances #corroborates (1.00) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 403
• Once expellees integrated, their protests lost power to influence party loyalties #corroborates (0.90) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 760
• Expellees integrated into the SPD lost their group-based identity politics #corroborates (0.85) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 751
• Group solidarity persists only as long as grievance-driven mobilization continues #qualifies (0.80) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 833
• Expellee organizations enforced an orthodox policy line by punishing political deviation #complicates (0.75) — Pertti Ahonen, Domestic Constraints on West German…, 105