But its a really great diary even if I'm not particularly supportive of your choice of political parties. (I dislike the PDS for its past and Lafontaine for his playing for the extreme right vote in the present)
Marek, you wrote elsewhere that the expellee issue is actually your work, so I feel confident to quibble for some more details:
One, do you have a number for expellees in East Germany?
Two, could have been there a large number of expellees who weren't in official statistics, say because they found a new home with relatives and didn't register for state help, or moved on to another country (I guess primarily the USA)? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Their distribution though was disproportionate: More people moved naturally to the rural and the Eastern parts, because these area were closer and less destroyed than the cities. I am from Lower Saxony where migration from Silesia was highly significant.
To this number I believe one has to as the refugees from the GDR which was at 2.7 million until 1961. Additionally, 1.4 million ethnic Germans migrated from the USSR into the FRG between 1951 and 1990.
Sources: [link] and [link]
In the early fifties the federal government strongly encouraged a better distribution of refugees and that combined with the pull of the Wirtschaftswunder created a large expellee population elsewhere, particularly NRW. They integrated quite quickly but remained at a socio-economic disadvantage to the 'natives' (einheimische) for quite some time and that disadvantage lived on in the next generation.
In political terms the expellees were and explosive group, subject of fears that they would turn radical left, or more likely radical right. When they were allowed to organize themselves politically in the early fifties they formed their own party the BHE which initially did quite well. It faded partly quickly because it accomplished some of its goals in the form of a massive compensation program, and because of the CDU's skill in gobbling up/destroying all other right wing parties. The BHE's leaders were a pretty nasty bunch,led by the long time Minister for Expellees, old guard Nazi, and war criminal Theodor Oberlaender (who was actually quite a competent minister).
Germany's policy towards them was contradictory, on the one hand seeking to integrate them socio-economically, preventing them from settling as coherent groups made up of former neighbours, and on the other hand pumping huge amounts of money into preserving their identity as Silesians, East Prussians, etc. so they would be ready to go back when the 1937 borders were restored.
In political terms they then were spread out across the spectrum until they started to turn sharply towards the CDU/CSU in the mid sixties as the SPD began to gingerly edge away from the hardline national consensus on the border issue, culminating in the de facto (but not de jure) recognition of the Oder-Neisse line by Brandt in 1970. They then became a key part of the CDU's base leading to the kind of absurdities like Kohl's reluctance to formally recognize the border in 1990. Anyways, I think I ran on a bit too much, as I sometimes do on this topic.
has your ph.d. been published? if yes, it would be great if you could send me the publishing information via email.
thanks.
And good luck with your thesis publication. My chances of being published were shot down because I got caught in a fight between two "churches" (ideological factions) in a long running economic debate, and one of the professors in my jury felt that I leaned too much to the other side (no matter that the other side thought the same) and, as he was the editor of the relevant collection where my thesis could have been published, he killed it (and also prevented me from receiving the unanimous "félicitations du jury").
So my PhD was only ever read by a dozen people. As I had decided to leave academia (too much petty infighting), it did not bother me too much, but it's a pity. I'm quite proud of what I wrote! In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes