Comparativ 26 (2016), 1

Title 
Comparativ 26 (2016), 1
Other title information 
Zwangsmigration im Europa der Moderne. Nationale Ursachen und transnationale Wirkungen

Published on
Frequency 
Erscheint fünfmal jährlich (mit einem Doppelheft) im Umfang von je ~140 Seiten.
Extent
141 S.
Price
Einzelheft EUR 12,00, Jahresabonnement EUR 50,-

 

Kontakt

Organization name
Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und Vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung
Country
Germany
c/o
Comparativ Universität Leipzig Leipzig Research Centre Global Dynamics IPF 348001 Ritterstrasse 24 04109 Leipzig GERMANY e-mail: comparativ@uni-leipzig.de
By
Matthias Middell

Zwangsmigration im Europa der Moderne. Nationale Ursachen und transnationale Wirkungen
Herausgegeben von Stefan Troebst und Michael Wildt

Politisch, ideologisch, ethnisch, religiös, militärisch oder anders begründete erzwungene Migrationen haben das Europa der Moderne maßgeblich geprägt. Die Vorstellung eines ethnisch homogenen Nationalstaates gewann mit dem Zusammenbruch der Imperien im Ersten Weltkrieg und dem Aufbau einer europäischen Nachkriegsordnung, die im Zeichen eines Selbstbestimmungsrechts der Völker stehen sollte, weite Zustimmung. In zahlreichen Kriegen wurden Zivilbevölkerungen im Zuge von Militäraktionen zur Flucht gezwungen – häufig ohne Rückkehrmöglichkeit – oder gezielt vertrieben. Und im Zuge von Nachkriegsregelungen wurden zwischenstaatliche Verträge über den „Austausch“ ganzer Bevölkerungsgruppen oder den „Transfer“ einer nationalen Minderheit aus dem einen in einen anderen Staat vereinbart. Der Übergang von Vertreibung und ethnischer Säuberung zu Massenmord und Genozid wurde im Europa der Moderne fließend.

Table of contents

Aufsätze

Stefan Troebst / Michael Wildt
Vorwort, S. 7

Norman Naimark
Zwangsmigration im Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts: Probleme und Verlaufsmuster, S. 11
This article reviews the various terminology used for “forced migration” and suggests that scholars and publicists employ language that reflects the level of violence frequently inherent in the process. Therefore terms like “forced deportation” and “ethnic cleansing” would be preferable. The piece also reviews the history of “forced migration” since the end of the 19th Century and suggests that the role of international factors, while clearly a part of the process, are frequently over-emphasized and that historians should focus on the motives, intentions, and actions of the states, political elites, and local actors that carry out the actions.

Michael Schwartz
Ethnische „Säuberungen“ in der Moderne: Globale Wechselwirkungen einer Politik der Gewalt, S. 28
Ethnic ‘Cleansing’ is a significant element of European and Global History. This contribution at first discusses problems of terminology and proceeds with integrating the phenomenon in contexts of ideological and structural patterns of Modernity. Central is the discussion of different models to define and explain modern Ethnic ‘Cleansings’, implying temporal or geographical limitations or emphases. Finally the question is focused if there are ‘rational’ goals and purposes of Ethnic ‘Cleansings’, and if permanent effects and intended “successes” could be assessed. The entanglement of ethnic and social conflicts in many examples of Ethnic “Cleansing” seems to contribute to possible answers, and also offers a key to explain some origins of implementing such violent policies.

Stefan Troebst
Ethnonationale Homogenisierungspolitik zwischen Vertreibung und Zwangsassimilierung. Schweden und Bulgarien als europäische Prototypen, S. 49
In their inherent strive for ethnic purification, nation-state actors have two means at their disposal: On the one hand the expulsion of citizens not belonging to the titular nation and on the other assimilation either by incentive or, more frequently, by force. Also territorial losses can contribute to ethnic homogenization—a side effect not intended, of course, by nation-state actors. The modern history of the Principality (later Kingdom, People’s Republic and Republic) of Bulgaria, founded in 1878 is shaped by all three phenomena: expulsion, forced assimilation of non-Bulgarian(speaker)s and territorial changes. 19th and 20th century Sweden on the other hand did not turn to expulsions, since the losses of Finland and Norway homogenized the population considerably. Still, until the 1970s the Swedish state pursued a policy to assimilate minor ethnic and social groups applying even forced sterilization.

Michael Wildt
„Völkische Flurbereinigung“ – Vertreibungen im Nationalsozialismus, S. 63
This essay focuses on the Nazi ethnic and racist policy in Eastern and Western Europe. From the beginning on the Nazi plans for the war against Poland intended to transform huge parts of Polish territory into areas of German settlement – the realization of the Nazi project of Lebensraum in Eastern Europe. Germanization of these areas meant racist differentiation of the local people and different practices of inclusion and exclusion, whether they were classified as German or of German origin, as friendly or hostile Poles or as Jewish. These racist measures had been practiced in Western Europe, too. The context of Nazi ethnic politics was a conceptual shift from nation to Volk, from demos to ethnos since the end of nineteenth century. The coincidence of the definition of people not only an ensemble of citizens but as a cultural, ethnic unit and the rise of biology as a dominant pattern of interpreting human nature made ‘biopolicy’ (Foucault) a common political practice not only in Nazi Germany but all over Europe. What made Nazi ethnic politics unique was the unalterable, exclusionary Anti-Semitism which lead to systematic mass murder and the violent eagerness of the Nazi regime to realize its vision of an ethnically structured ‘New Europe’ in which Germans should rule as a superior race.

Raphael Gross
Novemberpogrom 1938 – Vertreibung, Attentat, Terror. Die Geschichte und Nachgeschichte von Herschel Grynszpan, S. 77
On November 7, 1938 Herschel Grynszpan, a young Jewish refugee, shot and killed Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris. The Nazi regime took this assassination as a pretext for unleashing extreme violence against hundreds of thousands of German Jews, their dwellings, shops, and synagogues, a process that culminated in the so-called ‘Reichskristallnacht’ of November 9, 1938. Grynszpan belonged to a Jewish family from Hanover that had been deported to Poland by the Nazi authorities days before - together with some 15,000 to 17,000 other German Jews. The article offers a detailed account of the situation stateless Jews faced at the end of the 1930s, in the context of a growing refugee crisis caused by Nazi racial policies. The article also describes Herschel Grynszpan’s ordeal in French and German custody and the postwar European aftermath of his case.

Marina Cattaruzza / Egidio Ivetić
Der „Exodus“ der Italiener aus Istrien: Kollektive Entscheidung oder Zwangsmigration?, S. 95
The subject of the article is the mass exodus of the Italian speaking or Italian oriented population of Istria, a peninsula on the north-eastern Adria occupied by the Yugoslav Army of Marshall Tito at the end of WW2 and attributed to Yugoslavia with the peace treaty between Italy and the United Nations in 1947. The ‘exodus’ involved some 270.000-300.000 people, corresponding to 85-100% of those who understood themselves as ‘Italians’. Therefore, although no official measures were taken to carry out an ‘ethnic simplification’ of the territory, the result was the disappearance of a substantial ethnic component, leading to an unchallenged Croatian predominance in ‘socialist Istria’. The authors assert that a crucial factor for the ethnic-national struggle in Istria and the subsequent abandonment of the peninsula by the ‘Italians’ was the uncertain attribution of the territory after WW2. The area was deeply fragmented; some sectors were occupied by the Yugoslavs and others by British-American troops. Both Italy and Yugoslavia claimed the territory for themselves. People rallied to the Italian or the Yugoslav cause and waged relentless battles. Of course the Yugoslavs were in a stronger position thanks to the Army, the secret police, the Communist administration and Communist networks. Therefore, the struggle between Communists and anti-Communists which also affected the rest of Yugoslavia, did on the Italo-Yugoslav border take on the character of an ethnic–national clash between ‘Italians’ and ‘Slavs’.

Piotr Madajczyk
Nationale Homogenisierung durch ethnische Säuberung? Zur Formierung der polnischen Nationalstaatsidee im Ersten Weltkrieg, S. 109
How did the idea of the Polish nation-state and the idea of a homogeneous Polish nation develop in the era of the World War I? And is there a connection with what today is known as ethnic cleansing? The importance of the Great War on both on politics, economy and society can hardly be overestimated. What influence did it have on the population in the areas which after 1918 formed the Polish state? Was there an impact of conflicts of national interests during the Great War on the post-war situation? And to what extent was the idea of a Polish nation-state connected with the concept of ethnic ‘purity’? The author claims that there are continuities which under specific historical circumstances resulted in ethnic cleansing.

Krzysztof Ruchniewicz
Zwangsmigration als Instrument deutscher und sowjetischer Besatzungs- und Annexionspolitik in Polen 1939–1941/45, S. 125
From 1939 to 1945, Poles were forced to live under two regimes of occupation which both turned to mass expulsion in exercising political control. Still, however, there were significant differences between Soviet and German rule. Stalin was suspicious of Poles and Jews, but he did not plan to change the ethnonational structure of the newly annexed territories. After the liquidation of unwanted social strata a reeducation of the remaining population, no matter of which ethnic or religious background, into ‘class-conscious’ Soviet citizens was planned. The German occupation regime on the other hand aimed from the very beginning at radically changing the occupied and annexed part of Poland. Here, ethnicity determined the relationship between occupiers and occupied and, in particular, the latter’s living condition and thus their chances for survival.

Autorinnen und Autoren, S.141

Other issues ⇓
Editors Information
Published on
10.04.2016
Classification
Additional Informations
rda_languageOfExpression_z6ann
Holdings 0940-3566