Expellees cultivated a shared dream-Heimat that erased all wartime and interwar unpleasantness.

Evidence

In March 1949, Magdalena John confessed to her old Heimat priest that she was regularly committing a guilty pleasure: Over and over, she was dreaming that she had returned to the Heimat. Rather than scold her, the priest condoned her behavior by publishing it in his circular letter to the scattered l ock. … This imagery was based on a blend of real past experiences and the feathery abstractions of dream and desire, which in extreme cases left time and space altogether. … Other poets imagined Heimat as a dream that could only be encountered on a moonlit night, or a fairytale land from “once upon a time.” 28 Always fragile and l eeting, this static imagery of a quaint and perfect past offered escape from an alien and impersonal present. … Non- Silesians like Sudeten-German Franz F ü rst conducted similar memory tours via photos and brochures. 29 In the end, much as expellees dreamed 26 Magdelena John, letter in Das katholische Liegnitz , Seelsorgebrief, June/July 1949, BAK Z 18/222, 8. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 841

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Echoes of the immodesty/custom-shared identity pieces: collective memory deliberately scrubbed of the Nazi-era and 1920s inflation, analogous to how moral nostalgia selectively remembers the past.
• XREF: connects to: Privation in exile intensified idealized retrospection on the lost Heimat. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 778; Expellee memory journeys systematically scrubbed out political and economic hardships. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 841

Broader Connections

• Expellee memory journeys systematically scrubbed out political and economic hardships. #corroborates (0.90) — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 841