Expellees’ apolitical memory work outweighed their leaders’ revanchist politics
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. … 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 evidences the reader’s core question: whether professed/propagated conviction diverges from actual grassroots belief and measured behavior. — connects to: Elite revanchist propaganda failed to reverse expellees’ acceptance of loss — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 756; Exposure to the transformed Heimat eroded expellee support for territorial revision. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 1328; Expellees fixated on memory of home rather than the border propaganda war. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 114 (+2 more)
- SEED: Strong basis for an argument that mass movements’ leadership rhetoric systematically overstates adherents’ actual ideological commitment.
- QUESTION: Does the same divergence — leaders manufacturing an enemy narrative that rank-and-file not truly invested in — recur in other nationalist/identity movements?
Broader Connections
- Elite revanchist propaganda failed to reverse expellees’ acceptance of loss
#corroborates(0.95) — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 756 - Exposure to the transformed Heimat eroded expellee support for territorial revision.
#corroborates(0.80) — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 1328