‘To Live as Germans Among Germans.’ Immigration and Integration of ‘Ethnic Germans’ in the German Empire and the Weimar Republic

In 1950, in the aftermath of the Second World War and after flight and expulsion had come to an end, there were about four million Germans still living in East, East Central and Southeastern Europe.Between 1950 and 1975, a total of about 800,000 Aussiedler (immigrants who are recognised by the German authorities as being of German descent) passed through the Western German border transit camps, and 616,000 more arrived between 1976 and 1987.Then, with the opening of the Iron Curtain, mass immigration of the Aussiedler began.Against the background of 'glasnost' and 'perestroika' in the USSR, their numbers increased rapidly from 1987 onwards.During the next nearly two decades, three million Aussiedler entered the Federal Republic of Germany.In all, more than four million migrants of officially recognised German descent emigrated to Germany during the second half of the 20 th century. 1 In comparison, 'ethnic German' immigration during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic amounted to only several tens of thousands of people who, moreover, to a considerable extent returned to their countries of origin or continued to migrate overseas.The 'remigration' of 'Germans of foreign citizenship' since the late 19 th century constitutes the background of today's influx of Aussiedler, a phenomenon that, since the beginning of the 1990s, has been increasingly contentious. 2 The following comments will first discuss manifestations and structural patterns of 'ethnic German' immigration between the 1880s and 1930s.Then the focus will turn to the perception within Germany of 'ethnic German' immigration and to the integration -or, if applicable, non-integration -of the group under consideration, taking into account the fundamental changes occurring after the First World War in Germany's political and economic situation.'Remigration' of Russian-German Settlers in the Empire and Promotion of 'Germanness' in the Prussian East From the late 19 th century onwards, a large number of German settlers from East, East Central and Southeastern Europe had continued to migrate.Many of those German colonists, for example, who, during the late 18 th and early 19 th centuries, had settled in tsarist Russia since the 1870s, moved on to the United States, South America, Canada, and Australia.This was due to the Russian government's gradually withdrawal, since the 1860s, of important privileges and increasing the pressure on the German settlers to assimilate by pursuing a policy of Russification.Moreover, economic development was impeded by a lack of arable land.The first Russian census of 1897 registered a total ''German mother tongue'' population of 1.8 million people. 3 Between 1870 and 1914, Russian-German emigration to the US alone amounted to 116,000.The majority of emigrants left Russia after the turn of the century. 4 The exodus of 'ethnic Germans' from their settlements in East, East Central and Southeastern Europe to Germany began in the 1890s.The financially well endowed but politically contentious 'settlement law' (Ansiedlungsgesetz) of April 26, 1886, enabled the Prussian government to buy up Polish real estate in the Prussian provinces of Posen and West Prussia for the purpose of German peasant settlement.With the number of domestic applicants declining, the 'Royal Commission for Settlement in the Provinces of Posen and West Prussia' (Ko nigliche Ansiedlungskommission fu r die Provinzen Posen und Westpreuen), began, especially since the turn of the century, to win over German colonists from abroad, mainly from tsarist Russia.The result fell far short of the high expectations.Between 1888 and 1914, 21,683 families came to settle in the provinces, of which about one-quarter, 5,480 families, came from abroad.Of these foreign Germans, most of them came from Russia (4,900), and, to a lesser extent, from Galicia (500) and Hungary (80).Most of the settlers of German descent from Russia came from Russian Poland (3,540 families), the rest mainly from Volynia.As the Commission's efforts to attract 'ethnic German' colonists were most pronounced after 1900, 5 the percentage of foreign settlers continued to be disproportionately high throughout the one and a half decades preceding the First World War.Their proportion peaked in 1905, with 41.9%.Apart from the self-employed Russian-German peasant settlers, there was a larger group of colonists, namely, the farm workers called to work on the estates of the Prussian East.Again, the intention was to displace the Poles, but in this case the measure was not directed against Prussian citizens of Polish nationality, but against those Polish 'TO LIVE AS GERMANS AMONG GERMANS'

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