Vol. 22 · No. 2 · Issue 70 · Summer 2004

Henning Süssner, Ethnic Studies, Linköping University, Campus Norrköping, Sweden

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Abstract

Today, it is no longer controversial to define Germans as victims of war. The destiny of the expellees has not been forgotten; there even seems to be a new obsession with the fate of the expellees in contemporary Germany. Popular history books on ethnic German expellees top bestseller lists; major television networks broadcast impressive documentary series on the topic; and school classes are engaged in oral history projects about the fate of their grandparents. In this respect, the new mainstream view on World War II-the new "memory regime" of contemporary Germany-and the perspective of the expellee communities seem compatible. Still, to classify huge parts of Eastern and Central Europe as essentially "German" is most certainly a controversial thing to do. And the still ongoing debate about the establishment in Berlin of a so-called National Memorial Center of Expulsions shows that the memory regime of universal suffering is still contested. In light of the struggle of expellee organizations against the general public's "forgetfulness," it may be interesting to analyze the parallels between the expellees' images of the past and the new German "memory regime." In this context, such an analysis could shed light on the expellee organizations' role within the context of contemporary German society.