Divided Nations and European Integration

9. Germany and German Minorities in Europe

CHAPTER 9 Germany and German Minorities in Europe Stefan Wolff Introduction Before the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany, Germans constituted the largest divided nation in Europe by far, a position today occupied by Russians. After 1990 seventeen million citizens of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) accounted for more than 20 percent of the enlarged population in reunited Germany. Nonetheless large numbers of ethnic Germans across Central, Eastern, and Western Europe are still resident outside the borders of the expanded Federal Republic, a legacy of history and conflict that remains a factor in European politics. Occupying a problematic position in the geopolitical center of Europe (the so-called Mittellage), latecomer Germany divided itself in the process of nation-state formation. The three wars of German unification in the nineteenth century—Austria and Prussia against Denmark (1864), Austria against Prussia (1866–67), and the Prussian-led alliance against France (1870–71)— led to territorial expansions and contraction: there were gains in Schleswig (1864–66) and Alsace-Lorraine (1870–71) but also the exclusion of Austria (1866–67) from the unification project. Thus in the twentieth century the territorial losses and divisions of 1919 and 1945 affected a nation already divided. Moreover during several hundred years of imperialism, Germans had been sent to conquer and colonize vast and distant lands. Following the collapse of empires in 1919, their descendants suddenly saw their fate changed from that of a dominant minority to Germans 277 a population resented, hated, and often collectively victimized across various (re)constituted successor states. Then in 1945 the restoration of preexisting borders and the imposition of new frontiers went hand in hand with mass flight and expulsion, as well as subsequent mass emigration. As a result the German people remain a nation divided in the twenty-first century, though the degree of division is much diminished after two world wars, the Cold War, and German reunification. This chapter considers the various causes, consequences, and responses to the “German question.” Demographically and geographically complex, the dynamics of the divided German nation are now apparent in the context of European integration. Following a brief historical account of German minorities in Europe, the first section develops a model of what constitutes a German national identity. The second section examines the impact of European integration on the status of German minorities, focusing primarily on the situation in Central and Eastern Europe. The third section discusses the role of Germany as a kin-state and its varying policies toward external minorities and their host states through the past century. The concluding section provides a broad-brush summary assessment of the status of German minorities in contemporary Europe. There are four things this chapter does not do. First, there is no discussion of German populations outside Europe, such as the significant numbers in South America. Second, Germans in Switzerland are excluded from the examination. While one could easily make an argument about cultural affinity , Swiss Germans have developed a distinct community since 1291 and, as part of the Swiss confederation, a political identity that ranks Swiss first and German second. Third, the chapter makes only passing reference to Austria. Until 1867 Germans in Austria (the House of Habsburg) were an integral, and at times the dominant, part of the German nation. Austria’s exclusion from the Norddeutscher Bund (1866–71) and then from the German Reich marked the beginning of diverging identities, heightened by a post-1945 historiography that painted Austria and Austrians as the first victims of the Nazis. To the extent that many of today’s German minorities trace their origins back to the Habsburg and Austro-Hungarian Empires, this chapter considers Austria and its predecessors as an important dimension of the “German question,” but for the post-1919 period the focus is essentially on the various incarnations of Germany proper. Fourth, the issue of German reunification post-1945 does not feature as part of this analysis: neither in the sense of the reunifications that did happen (Saarland in 1957; 278 Chapter 9 former East Germany in 1990) nor in the reunification that did not happen with the Ostgebiete, that is, onetime German territories that were placed under provisional Polish and Soviet administration in 1945 and remained in legal limbo until the 2+4 (Unification) Treaty and the German-Polish border treaty of 1990. The Relevant Nation How to define the German nation is a cultural and political...