German Territory Research Articles

An Unconcluded Microhistory of Compensation: The Unfinished Recognition of the Racial Discrimination Endured by Jewish Prisoners of War in the French Army During Their Captivity in Germany

Abstract During the Second World War, several thousands of Jews from France were detained on German territory as prisoners of war. Although many endured racial discrimination, they survived. This article will deal with this exceptional as well as largely unknown micro-history through the thorny issue of the recognition of their status as racial victims in the aftermath. On their return to the bloodless France of 1945, these survivors who had remained on the bangs of the genocide faced great material and moral difficulties. Although they were excluded from the legislation governing war victims in both France and the FRG, some of them tried to assert their rights on the grounds of antisemitic discrimination at the end of the 1950s. Their perseverance in the face of an initially hostile German administration enabled some prisoners of foreign origin to obtain compensation under the BEG Act. However, this recognition was not only imperfect, but also incomplete: their comrades of French origin remained excluded from French compensation legislation.

Demographic Data for the Pre-Statistical Age (Late Sixteenth Century to 1870)

Abstract The article provides an overview of the historical organization of data collection on vital events and population in German territories during the pre-statistical era and briefly presents about a dozen related datasets. Data can be divided into the two categories of aggregate data on population and vital rates at the national, regional and community levels, and of nominative data at individual and household levels. The latter type of data is typically available only for individual communities or parishes. We illustrate the use of the datasets in published studies and point to directions for future research. The most important recent development concerns the increasing availability of indexed church records and online village genealogies, which offer a vast and little exploited potential for analysing the demographic patterns that prevailed prior to the onset of the demographic transition.

Red star over the Baltic: the sovietisation of representative assemblies in Poland's ‘Recovered Territories’ via the ‘three times “Yes”’ referendum of 1946

ABSTRACT Based on Polish-language archive material and personal testimony, this article is a case study concerning the Sovietisation of Poland's representative democratic institutions in its Baltic provinces, a region which witnessed sweeping changes regarding its borders and population as formerly German territory was incorporated into a re-constituted Polish state following the Second World War. Although under-populated and geographically peripheral, these ‘Recovered Territories’ were central to the raison d’être of the post-war Polish state. However, due to a common desire to reclaim these lands for Poland, the Polish communist regime's policies of rapid ‘degermanisation’ and ‘repolonisation’ were supported by both the London-based Polish government-in-exile, as well as the anti-communist underground. Despite the Red Army's looting of the region, the regime engendered the fear of German revanchism among the settlers to justify its ‘protection’ by Soviet forces and gain political support in new local ‘democratic’ assemblies. This article uses official, semi-official and ‘unofficial’ primary material sources aiming to show that, although the ‘Three Times ‘‘Yes’” referendum of 1946 was held at a national level with aim of assessing the true level of support for communism in Poland, in the Recovered Territories it was employed as a propaganda campaign aimed at creating Homo Sovieticus, a new society and Soviet-dominated ‘representative’ institutions.

Play cards, salt, tobacco: trade restrictions of German Zollverein in 1833

Importance. The main objective of the study is to find the special regulations regarding some trade goods. The research is focused on the comprehensive study of restrictions of German Zollverein’s treaty, which had affected the local and foreign trade. The analysis has formed the complex of reasons which led to the special arrangements towards the important goods. The study of particular aspects of customs reforms shows the new perspectives in the research of this topic and fulfills the image of trade connections on German territories in 1820–30s.Materials and Methods. The main document for the research is “The treaty of customs unification” from March 22, 1833. There are also plenty of commercial press articles of that period studied, which overviewed the trade and customs changes and reforms. The analytics and synthesis methods give the possibility to have a full overview of the mentioned sources and to restore the main tendencies in trade restrictions of this epoch.Results and Discussion. The detailed analysis highlights the most important trade goods on the German area, which were the subjects of interests for many German governments. There were the monopoly goods or the sources of big custom duties, which filled the German treasuries for decades. The threat of losing this income due to established German Zollverein, which customs taxes were supposed to be summarized and parted, led to the compromise solution in regards to some goods. The play cards, salt, tobacco and alcohol production were supposed to stay under cautious control, the trade of them was specially mentioned on the extra conditions.Conclusion. Trade restrictions seemed to be the compromise arrangement in the customs treaty, which aimed to keep the state income safe. They were also based on law differences regarding mentioned goods and supposed to protect German industry from foreign competition.

East German-Jewish spaces in Berlin: Jewish heritage societies (Heimatvereine) and their diasporic milieu during the 1920s and 1930s

ABSTRACT Following the First World War and the loss of German territories in Posen, West Prussia and Silesia, many German Jews from those areas left their homes and settled either in Germany or moved to the USA, Latin America or Palestine. Quite a few of them came to Berlin. There and in other German cities as well they founded so called Heimatvereine, Jewish Heritage Societies. This article analyses the spaces those societies created – concrete spaces, in which people met, but also metaphorical spaces, in which a specific East-German-Jewish diasporic milieu was created and maintained that also transcended the borders of the Weimar Republic.

The Position of the Holy See on the Stabilization of Polish Church Structures after World War II in the So-Called Recovered Territories (Former German Territories), 1945–72

The Position of the Holy See on the Stabilization of Polish Church Structures after World War II in the So-Called Recovered Territories (Former German Territories), 1945–72

Капповский путч в Восточной Пруссии: политические последствия

Based on archival documents, materials from regional and national German press, and personal sources, the article examines the reactions in East Prussia to the Kapp Putsch of 1920, which aimed to overthrow the legitimate government of the Weimar Republic. Unlike most other German territories, the putschists in East Prussia were supported by many representatives of the regional political elite and bureaucracy. The article attempts to explain the reasons for this anomaly and to identify the consequences of the support for the putsch by part of the local political actors on the further development of the province. The article concludes that the putsch had a significant impact on East Prussia, serving as a manifestation of the growing conflict between the regional elite and the central authorities in Berlin. The defeat of the putschists and the changes in the composition of the East Prussian bureaucracy made by the republican government marked the beginning of a new phase in the relations between the state capital and the East Prussian province.

Adopted heritage: German objects in the Western Territories of Poland

The article focuses on the material culture of regions that underwent a shift in statehood when, post-World War II, formally German territories became Polish. It seeks to analyse how the heritage of post-conflict territories was integrated into everyday life and, in some instances, affirmed and appreciated by second and third-generation settlers. Through research conducted amongst contemporary city-dwellers, the authors scrutinise the relationships between people and pre-war German objects, identifying a form of relation referred to as ‘kinship’. By exploring the mechanisms through which objects are incorporated into individual and/or group history, they elaborate on the concept of ‘adopted heritage’, as demonstrated in various field research cases. This concept is derived from the idea of affinity and its application to material culture studies, and enhanced by theories that emphasise the role of emotions in heritage.

The Promise of Participation: European Reconstruction Work in Early Weimar Germany’s Political Culture

Abstract Material reconstruction after the First World War was closely linked to German reparations, yet it is curiously underrepresented in the historiography of the Treaty of Versailles as well as in studies on interwar Germany. In the Weimar Republic, political leaders, economic actors and large parts of the population supported the idea of sending building material and even labourers to neighbouring countries. This far-reaching planning process began before and continued after the signing of the peace treaty, as the Allies remained hesitant but not fully hostile to the German proposals. Material reparation potentially mobilized a wide range of goods and labour, and it was thus particularly prone to expectation, but also to disappointment in a broad segment of the population. Against the backdrop of war destruction and the international peace negotiations in 1919, this article investigates the way in which European reconstruction was discussed formally and informally in Weimar Germany. By focusing on the communicative channels and media that promoted German participation in building work abroad, it discusses how expectations were raised, managed and disappointed at the intersection of foreign and domestic policies. While there had only been minor destruction in German territory between 1914 and 1918, the republic’s political culture proved to be deeply affected by the material reconstruction on the European continent, even though most of the far-reaching plans did not result in building sites on the ground.

Der Stürmer in the work of Randall Bytwerk and the evolution of the german press

Der Stürmer was the most famous of all the newspapers connected to the National-Socialist Party. With its frequent use of image and its resorting to scandalous and antisemitic themes, this periodical evolved from a weekly regional paper to one of the most popular newspapers in the entire German territory. However, its characterization cannot be reduced to its anti-Jewish content and its graphic component. By using the work of many authors about that newspaper and Nazi propaganda, it is also possible to frame Der Stürmer as part of the general trends of the German press in the beginning of the Twentieth century, and as part of the propaganda system of Nazi Germany, albeit as a suis generis example.

국경간(國境間) 표현의 자유에 관한 비교법적 연구

While technological developments are rapidly facilitating the cross-border exchange of ideas and information, the Korean legal system continues to differentiate the treatment of domestic speech and cross-border speech. Various restrictions on grounds of expression are imposed regarding the physical movement of people and objects as well as internet speech that transcend borders. The Korean Constitutional Court has yet to explicitly acknowledge the constitutional status of cross-border expression, and the gap between protection of domestic and cross-border speech remains unaddressed. In contrast, the US Supreme Court ruling Lamont v. Postmaster General(1965) acknowledged the right to receive foreign mail under the First Amendment. Also, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project(2020) acknowledged that content-based restrictions of speech under the direction of, or in coordination with foreign groups are subject to heightened scrutiny. The German Constitutional Court ruling of the case Leipziger Volkszeitung(1961) acknowledged the right to receive foreign information under Article 5 of the Basic Law, and in the case Ausland-Ausland-Fernmeldeaufklärung(2020), the German Constitutional Court clarified that fundamental rights vis-à-vis the German state authority is not restricted to German territory - the German state authority is bound by fundamental rights even when acting against foreigners in foreign territory. This article analyses the above decisions along with others from the US Supreme Court, the German Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights with the aim of extracting lessons that may be applicable in establishing the constitutional status of cross-border speech under the Korean Constitution. Similarly to the foreign examples, the Korean Constitutional Court may be able to justify the constitutional protection of cross-border speech based on its former justification theories regarding domestic speech, and also considering international human rights standards. This can serve as a starting point for a broader and more substantial perspective of the freedom of speech that will be able to address its increasingly international aspects.

Agrarrechtsgeschichte – ein konstitutiver Gegenstand der Erforschung landschaftsbezogener Rechtsgemeinschaften

Summary Ever since regional history has developed as an independent discipline alongside national/state history, the historical landscape has been seen independent of the boundaries of the 19th century. By elaborating the legal phenomena of a historical landscape, legal historians can also contribute substantially to the goals of historical regional studies. With his dissertation discussed here, Esser takes up the problem of the so-called ground release as part of the agrarian reforms or peasants’ liberation at the beginning of the 19th century, which, however, he examines only within the boundaries of one West German territory, the Duchy of Julich. Thus, he misses the opportunity to embed his subject in the larger framework of the landscape-based legal community of the Rhineland. Nevertheless, his account makes an important contribution to the study of land release as part of the agrarian reforms in Germany.

The Staff Question in German Plantations in the British Cameroons during World War II: The Employment of Staff from Jamaica and Malaya

Unlike the British and French territories in West Africa, the German territories of Cameroons and Togoland witnessed massive investment in plantations. These properties were taken over by the British and French during the First World War, 1914-1918. In the interwar years, 1919-1939, a good number of them were purchased and repossessed by the Germans who returned to West Africa after the war. Thus, the internment of German subjects in the Cameroons under the British mandate during the Second World War, 1939-1945, had implications for these German plantations. Earlier studies on the history of Cameroons and on the impact of World War II on West Africa have omitted this phenomenon. This paper is, therefore, designed to examine the staff question in the management of the German plantations in the British sphere of the Cameroons during the Second World War. Primary archival sources provided data for this historical reconstruction. It is a contribution to knowledge in the areas of impact of the global conflict on the periphery economy.

Cold War Narcotics Trafficking, the Global War on Drugs, and East Germany's Illicit Transnational Entanglements

AbstractAlthough it lacked a significant domestic market for internationally trafficked drugs, East Germany emerged as an important corridor for narcotics smugglers in the 1970s due to its position between supply countries in Asia and consumer countries in the West. The unique geography of West Berlin created a large market of consumers surrounded by East German territory, forcing traffickers to pass through the GDR border. Efforts by officials in both Germanys and the United States to cooperate on the problem of narcotics trafficking revealed conflicts between the geography of the Cold War—where the GDR border was the front line in the ideological conflict between East and West—and the international drug prohibition system, which sought global interstate collaboration in the name of a “universal international society,” against the common threat of crime. As Cold War tensions declined in the 1980s, border enforcement cooperation between East and West became increasingly viable as both sides reoriented toward the view that Europe had to defend itself from the threats posed by mobilities of those in the global south.

Conflicted Afterlives: Managing Wehrmacht Fallen Soldiers in the Soviet Occupation Zone and GDR

In the last months of the Second World War, as the Red Army approached Berlin, the Wehrmacht suffered catastrophic losses, resulting in thousands of war graves on East German soil. In the aftermath of the war, the Soviet Occupation Zone (1945–9) and the German Democratic Republic (1949–90) committed to a socialist ‘politics of history’ which centred on the liberation of Germany by the Red Army, disowning the German fallen. This article, based on my PhD research and current British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, outlines how the central authorities of the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR managed the thousands of German Wehrmacht war burials on East German territory. I focus, in particular, on how Wehrmacht war burials came to constitute political and ideological liabilities, prompting concerns about their appropriations by the German Lutheran Church and West Germany. In doing so, I uncover a little-known yet highly significant dimension of the transition between the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic.

Threats and Premonitions: German Intellectual Debates on Antisemitism in 1932

This article evaluates intellectual debates on antisemitism in Germany in 1932, the last year before the establishment of Nazi dictatorship. The focus is on understudied cases of journals and books, in which both Jewish and National Socialist authors published right next to each other and on the same pages. In this context, the article makes three arguments: first, it analyses apologetic themes by right-wing authors and shows that a significant number of National Socialists still pretended that they were not actually antisemitic in 1932. Second, it reflects on the problem that Jewish intellectuals often disagreed on how to respond to the rise of antisemitism and thus entered into very different forms of debate with the German right. Finally, and perhaps paradoxically, the article also demonstrates that Weimar media had simultaneously developed an acute awareness of future threats and the possibility of large-scale atrocities on German territory.

Francuskie homobiografie w cieniu swastyki

The article presents the plight of homosexuals in the Nazi occupied France. The provision discriminating against homosexual people was introduced into French penal code in 1942. It was put forward by the collaborative Vichy government promoting moral improvement and the cult of procreation. However, as the article claims, homosexuality was not a considerable obstacle in the professional career or politics, which applied both to the collaborators as well as members of the resistance. Such writers as Jean Genet, Henry de Montherlant or Jean Cocteau would hide their sexuality behind literary fiction. The most known French victim of that discriminating law was Pierre Seel, a prisoner of concentration camp who was from Alsace incorporated into German territory. The anti-homosexual discriminatory provision was annulled as late as in 1982.

УКРАЇНСЬКА ЕМІГРАЦІЯ В НІМЕЧЧИНІ (2014 – 2023 РР.)

The article, based on journalistic materials of the mass media, examines the situation of Ukrainian emigration to Germany in the period from 2014 to September 2023.The relevance refers to the fact that the demographic issue in Ukraine has become acute, and Germany is the second EU country with the largest number of Ukrainian refugees. There has been determined an approximate number of Ukrainians living in German territories in September 2023, whose contribution to the further development of both states is enormous. There are a few interesting aspects for research such as socio-cultural, economic, political etc. They provide insight into further trends of Ukrainian emigration in Germany. The purpose of the article is to represent comprehensive coverage of the key aspects and trends of Ukrainian emigration to Germany in the period from 2014 to September 2023. In result, nowadays Germany is a priority country for Ukrainian citizens seeking asylum because of Russian-Ukrainian war. There are several reasons for this, the most important of which is good social security. It is emphasized that Germany continues to enjoy popularity among the Ukrainian emigration, even despite a number of obstacles, such as language barrier, bureaucratization of many routine processes, housing rent, etc. Given the challenges faced by the author in this research, it was decided to use general scientific (analysis, induction) and special historical (systemic, comparative, retrospective, etc.) methods. Finally, the article analyzes and systematizes materials related to Ukrainian emigration to Germany in the period from 2014 to September 2023. It also identifies the peculiarities of the development of migration processes, represents the conditions offered to the Ukrainian refugees by the German government and clarifies Ukrainian emigrants’ attitudes towards their further stay in Germany.

Futurists from the MZO: Self-Organisation of the Ministry of the Recovered Territories in Time and Space

Among the tasks of the Ministry of the Recovered Territories, which existed in the years 1945–1949, was planning the development of former German territories incorporated into the post-war borders of Poland. In our article, we critically read the documents of the Ministry, concerning both the spatial organisation of settlement in the Recovered Territories – normative documents and reports of the Department for Settlement, as well as the efforts to acquire a building for the headquarters of the Ministry in Warsaw. We look at how the Ministry located itself in the space of Warsaw and we read this as a reflection of the process of the settlement in the Recovered Territories. We propose an intellectual game of reading how the legal and administrative order of formerly German territories was created and we show it as a strategy for designing a new socio-political reality in vein of science fiction thinking. By using such a category, we bring out the entangled temporalities of the project of the “Recovered Territories” and the Ministry itself, as well as the scale of social and political constructivism of the post-war transition period.

The Myth of the Great Patriotic War in Kaliningrad Oblast’

This article addresses the myth-making narratives of the Great Patriotic War in Kaliningrad Oblast’ in the Russian Federation. The myth of the war became one of the key elements of Russia’s politics of memory, serving as a tool of legitimisation for the authoritarian regime and a source of Russian national pride and patriotism. However, the regional version of this discourse is more than merely a historical narrative imposed by central power structures. The war serves as a foundational myth of Soviet Kaliningrad, which replaced German Königsberg in 1946. As such, it validates the presence of the postwar migrant community on the formerly German territory and frames the identity formation process.