West Germany preserved expellee cultural identity where East Germany and France sought swift assimilation

Evidence

The chapters demonstrate that different concepts of integration prevailed in each of the three cases. While the Allied powers, the GDR, and France wished to ‘assimilate’ the migrants as quickly and thoroughly as possible, the FRG developed a different policy of ‘incorporation’ (Eingliederung) with the intention of combining the necessities of economic integration with the political wish to preserve the cultural peculiarities of the expellees and to promise them a right to return to their ‘homeland’ (Heimatrecht). Thus, while the GDR had already recognized the Oder–Neisse line in 1950, the Social–Liberal government under Willy Brandt only did so twenty years later. The Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) continued to support the expellees’ ‘right to the homeland’ until 1991. Despite these different approaches – and the extremely different socio-economic settings in Germany in 1945 and in France in 1962 – a common emphasis was put on economic integration. — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 72

Categorization

• XREF: Relevant to the reader’s question about what sustains group solidarity: the FRG policy of preserving ‘peculiarity’ and promising a homeland right deliberately maintained an expellee identity that East Germany’s assimilation erased — connects to: Citizenship and economic boom eased postwar expellee integration in West Germany — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 196; Germany defined expellee status broadly while France narrowly restricted repatriate status — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 60; Imperial ethnic citizenship survived in West Germany long after empire’s end — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 68 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• West German expellee institutions outlived East German ones by decades #corroborates (0.90) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 402
• Expellee memory culture aimed to transmit identity against assimilation #expands (0.82) — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East, 807
• Expellee organizations sustained West German revanchism by reinforcing refusal to accept the postwar border #expands (0.80) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 190
• West German expellee policy was effectively modernizing despite restorative rhetoric #qualifies (0.75) — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 394