Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of ...

Nationhood in German legislation 259
and used expellees’ resilience during the 1950s as exemplary for the new
spirit in Germany. Once again, albeit under changed circumstances and
mediated through periods of oblivion and differential memories, the postwar
history of ethnic Germans became relevant for the reordering of the
German nation. But this time it did not have the same resonance as during
the 1950s. Memories of the expellee fate were no longer uncontested.
A central aspect of reviving the memory of ethnic Germans consisted
of Kohl’s symbolic endorsement of expellee organisations. As discussed
earlier, Brandt had ended the standard political practice of attending the
annual meetings of expellees. Kohl decided to revive this long-forgotten
tradition and he started publicly addressing expellee organisations in
1984. His decision in June 1985 to attend the annualmeeting of Silesians –
by far the largest expellee organisation in Germany – reflected the continuous
effort to present the experience of German suffering as a legitimate
trope for Germany’s national self-understanding. Or, as Der Spiegel noted
in January 1985, ‘Without any hesitation Kohl courted the expellees with
the result that their annual meeting, which had long become a marginal
folkloristic event, again assumes significance.’ 33 In contrast to the 1950s,
Kohl’s interest in and acknowledgment of these groups had little to do
with their substantial political claims and foreign policy concerns, most
of which conflicted with Kohl’s continuation of Brandt’s Ostpolitik. The
GDR was long recognised, and cooperation between the two German
states was shaped by economic and political considerations that left little
room for the heated ideological battles that characterised their relationship
throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. Ultimately, it was clear that
Kohl rejected the expellees’ political demands, but his public endorsement
of their symbolic status as victims stood firm. 34
However, Kohl’s decision to make a public appearance at the expellee
meeting created controversy. Both the decision itself and its timing – one
month after the Bitburg scandal (which erupted after the decision of US
President Ronald Reagan to visit a military cemetery in Germany where
members of the Nazi SS and SA were buried alongside regular soldiers of
the German army) – caused negative reactions across the political spectrum.
The publicised portrayal of expellee organisations positioned them
at the far right of German politics. Kohl’s embrace of their concerns was
33 Spiegel, 7 Jan. 1985.
34 Kohl perceived the expellees as one of the few authentic agents for the ethno-cultural
conceptions he was trying to reintroduce into public discourse. The history and fate of
the expellees in the aftermath of the Second World War provided Kohl with concrete examples
of a German tradition that he thought were immune to the imperatives and codes
of the ‘Holocaust nation’ and in several ways could serve as a symbolic counterweight
to the centrality of the suffering of victims of Germans.