Expellees’ curiosity about changed homelands clashed with and deepened their memory-based grief.

Evidence

If the Heimat transformed was so painful and the Heimat of memory so consoling, why did expellees not simply pretend that the Heimat still looked as they imagined it in their memories? Why could they not resist exposing themselves to disturbing imagery from the Heimat transformed ? Above all, they were compelled by their strong curiosity to learn more: was the old homestead still standing; did the town hall really burn down; had the cherished neighborhood decayed into oblivion? Already in late 1949, the Breslauer Nachrichten reported that countless inquiries about the Heimat had already reached their ofi ce in the Bavarian … An exiled Silesian’s struggle to safeguard idealized memories clashed with his or her burning need to know precisely what had changed, even though this increased his or her depression that the Heimat of memory had dissipated from the physical spaces that he or she had once known. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 183

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Expellees fixated on memory of home rather than the border propaganda war. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 114; Expellees compulsively sought painful information about the transformed home — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 183

Broader Connections

• Expellees compulsively sought painful information about the transformed home #expands (0.85) — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 183