Expellee reporting grew more negative over time while remembered Heimat grew more idealized.

Evidence

Reports about the Heimat transformed were usually slanted so that everything out of keeping with the impossibly wonderful Heimat of memory received a negative portrayal. If reports before 1949 depicted Silesia as a destroyed and neglected land, where Germans were abused in a foreign environment, reports thereafter tended to convey that matters had grown worse with time. … Thus the two images of Heimat drew apart over time: While the Heimat of memory steadily became more idealized, the Heimat transformed became all the more wretched. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 185

Categorization

• QUESTION: Whether the radicalization of both images was self-reinforcing — a feedback loop — is worth checking against later chapters’ accounts of how the two representations interacted.
• XREF: connects to: Privation in exile intensified idealized retrospection on the lost Heimat. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 778

Broader Connections

• Privation in exile intensified idealized retrospection on the lost Heimat. #expands (0.85) — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 778