Culture of History
October 24, 2007
Days after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she wanted a "visible symbol" in Berlin to mark the fate of millions of people displaced after World War Two, members of her government said they had come up with a concept for a controversial documentation center in Berlin towards that purpose.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper quoted Wolfgang Thierse, vice president of the lower house of parliament, as saying there were plans for setting up an independent foundation under the aegis of the German Historical Museum in Berlin. It would be financed by the federal government which has already earmarked 1.2 million euros ($1.7 million) for the project for 2008.
The newspaper said the center would include an historical exhibition, seminar rooms and an "artistic memorial element." It may be housed in the Deutsches Haus at Berlin's Anhalter Train Station, the standing remains of a former railway terminus near Potsdamer Platz.
It's estimated that some 15 million ethnic Germans were pushed out of their homes in Eastern Europe in 1945 by the Polish and Czech governments as retribution for Nazi aggression. Up to 2 million are thought to have died as a result of the expulsions.
"A visible symbol"
Germany's current coalition government headed by Merkel had made the creation of a "visible symbol" of the history of wartime expulsions a part of their coalition agreement when the government was formed, in 2005. According to the agreement, the center is meant to promote reconciliation and remind visitors of the injustice of expulsions and displacement worldwide.
Speaking this week on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the League of German Expellees (BdV), Chancellor Merkel said remembering the suffering of expellees is a "part of our German identity and a part of our culture of remembrance."
But the creation of the center remains highly controversial and has created tensions between Germany and its neighbors, Poland and the Czech Republic.
Both Warsaw and Prague have opposed the location of such a center in Berlin amid fears that some Germans would like to revise history and see themselves predominantly as victims rather than perpetrators. The two countries say the issue of expulsions should be highlighted in a joint European project.
Seemingly in an effort to assuage those fears, Merkel said she was confident her government could find an appropriate and dignified way to create the center, also by conducting a dialogue with Germany's Eastern European neighbors.
Sticking point: role of League of Expellees
Another sticking point in the long-discussed project has been the role of the controversial League of German Expellees (BdV), which first developed the plan for a memorial seven years ago. The BdV lobbies for compensation for ethnic Germans and their descendents who were displaced in the aftermath of World War II.
The group and its president, Erika Steinbach, is regarded with intense suspicion in Poland and the Czech Republic, where governments are wary of legal claims to restore property.
The role of the BdV in the creation and organization of the planned center remains unclear.
According to the newspaper report, the Social Democratic minority in the government would only agree to the project's creation if Erika Steinbach did not take a leading role in the conception and creation of the memorial.
While Thierse, a Social Democrat, said the League of German Expellees would not be involved in the project, Steinbach herself disputed the fact, saying that ethnic German expellees would be represented in the most important committees of the documentation center.
This week, Steinbach said the documentation center in Berlin was long overdue 60 years after the end of the war. But she also said the center should "paint a complete and true German and European picture of history."
The Anhalter station has an emotional connection to the whole topic of expulsion, and the standing fragment of the building's facade is "practically a symbol for arrival and displacement," she said.