Stefan Wolff. The German Question since 1919: An Analysis with Key Documents. Westport: Praeger, 2003. xii + 227 pp. $67.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-275-97269-1.
Reviewed by Brenda D. Melendy (Department of History, Texas A&M University-Kingsville)
Published on H-German (March, 2004)
German Question Revisited?
German Question Revisited?
As German historians know, a central historical question in defining the German nation has been the disconnect between the boundaries of a German political entity or state as compared to the geographic reach of the German cultural nation. Briefly stated, this is the German question. The effort to align more closely German territorial boundaries with German national identity has figured prominently in twentieth-century German history. But did the unification of East and West Germany in 1990 solve this German Question? Has the sense of German national belonging been fully satisfied in the post-Cold War era? These questions lie at the heart of Stefan Wolff's work, The German Question since 1919: An Analysis with Key Documents. Indeed, the most dynamic aspect of the book is Wolff's analysis of the national identity dimensions of the German question in the post-1990 era; the rest of the book serves as synthesis of the twentieth-century history of the German question and prologue to the discussion of its implications in the twenty-first century.
While the book is arranged chronologically, it centers on two themes: the shifting borders of Germany during the twentieth century (the territorial dimension of the German question) and the role of German minorities in Europe during the same period. Indeed, the driving importance of the ethnic Germans in eastern Europe, descendants of German colonists of the twelfth century and later, recurs, fugue-like, as a subdominant theme. To get the most accurate sense of the flavor of this book one must recognize the "political-science perspective" Wolff applies throughout; his primary project, he states, is the "analysis of the behavior of politically relevant elites, of the decisions they made, and of the consequences that these decisions had" (p. 2). This, in a nutshell, describes the strengths and weaknesses of this book. The reader derives a strong understanding of the political elites involved with respect to changes in borders and citizenship, but these elites remain largely nameless, i.e. they are group elites, not individuals. While Wolff lays out a thorough presentation of the frequently shifting borders of the German state(s) since 1919, together with assessments of the changing definitions of German citizenship, historians interested in textured description in the form of personalized vignettes or illustrations will not find them; these lay outside the intended scope of the book.
Wolff uses the first chapter to define not just the German question, but rather a set of German questions. Aside from explaining for the general reader the complexity inherent in defining the German nation, Wolff suggests the centrality of the link "between domestic and international dimensions and between political and ethnic aspects" of the German question (p. 7). Where there are a set of German questions, there are a set of answers, also outlined in this introductory chapter: redrawing of borders in 1919 in the name of national self-determination and revision of those borders through 1938 to the benefit of ethnic Germans; expulsion of ethnic Germans from eastern Europe after 1945 and their concentration in the two German states; unification of the German states and regulation of immigration issues. Finally, Wolff defines here what he means by "politically relevant elites," namely elites within Germany, elites in European countries and in the United States, the leaderships of German minorities living outside Germany, and international government organizations (p. 17).
Wolff takes quite naturally the Versailles Treaty as the starting point for his analysis of the German question in the twentieth century. On a case-by-case basis, Wolff explains the provisions of the Versailles treaty as it affected either German borders or German minorities in Europe. Here, as elsewhere in the book, he provides an excellent foundation for those new to the story of twentieth-century German boundary shifts. Here Wolff also briefly assesses the impact of Versailles on the question of German citizenship. The Treaty created more German minorities by stripping some Germans, now living outside the Reich, of their German citizenship. But the power of German ethnicity remained; any German returning to the German state could automatically reclaim German citizenship. Chapter 3 mirrors chapter 2 with its dual emphasis on territorial changes and definitions of citizenship in an era of population transfers. Wolff takes his reader on a detailed journey through border revisions during and in the wake of World War II, culminating in a "Triple Partition of Germany" (p. 61): the creation of the two German States, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR), in addition to the loss of the German territories east of the Oder and Neisse Rivers to Poland, and of the Saar to France. Thus the opening chapters of the book define the German question in terms of borders and national belonging; provide map-like detail on the reordering of borders in the post-Versailles period, the Nazi period, and the period of Allied hegemony; and address the legal questions of citizenship as rearranged during these three periods. Chapter 4 sets prologue aside and addresses Wolff's central question, namely, how does the issue of German minorities, that most potent of "politically relevant elites," help reorient the German question in the post-1945 era?
As Wolff reminds the reader, close to twelve million ethnic Germans were ordered transferred from eastern Europe after 1945 as part of the Potsdam Agreement. Language is important here. Largely termed "expellees" in western Germany (and Wolff provides exact legal definitions), the Soviet Zone of occupation, and subsequently the German Democratic Republic, named the expellees Umsiedler (literally, re-settlers), thus downplaying the involuntary and at times violent nature of their forced transfer. Unlike the Federal Republic of Germany, the GDR did not legislate for expellees a separate, special identity. Instead Umsiedler were swept up in the attempted social, political, and economic reformation of the eastern zone of Germany. Ethnic Germans from eastern Europe either stayed and conformed like East Germans, or left for the west, like other East Germans. The primary focus of the chapter is the political and economic integration of the expellees in West Germany, seemingly designated here as the normative expellee experience. Using employment and political participation statistics to document solid expellee integration, Wolff rather uncritically adopts the prevailing success story of expellee integration in the FRG after 1949. While he does note that recent scholarship indicates that social assimilation of expellees was not as rapid as initially assumed, the parameters of this work do not permit him to explore that in any detail (p. 77). Wolff moves beyond synthesis in his treatment of Aussiedler and Spaetaussiedler, terms designating ethnic Germans relocating to the FRG from 1950 to 1987 and after 1987, respectively. He offers an informative analysis of the post-1990 shift in government policy. Until borders to eastern Europe became more permeable after 1990, West Germany could both afford and benefit politically from a very open immigration policy for ethnic Germans living in eastern Europe. As Wolff points out, "any Aussiedler who arrived in the Federal Republic was proof of the undemocratic nature of the communist bloc" (p. 86). The ease of integrating the Aussiedler was due largely to their low arrival density, namely 1.4 million arriving between 1950 and 1987. But as numbers climbed to 2.5 million in the 1990s, with 97 percent of Spaetaussiedler coming from the Soviet Union, many of whom spoke little or no German and lacked cultural characteristics in common with west Germans, German immigration policy became much more restrictive. Wolff focuses here on government policy (political elites) rather than citing studies of renewed hostility between natives and recent ethnic German immigrants (hostility shared by, ironically enough, post-1945 expellees). Wolff does suggest, however, that this shift in policy indicates a shift in the German question itself, namely that the answer is no longer to achieve a "German nation unified by common descent and culture" (pp. 92-93) but rather to acknowledge that Germany must now seek new definitions of nationhood.
Chapter 5 returns the reader to another dissection of border revisions. The chapter details two successful reunifications, that of the Saar to West Germany in 1957, and of West and East Germany in 1990, along with one failure, namely the non-unification of the eastern territories to Germany. The juxtaposition of these three unification narratives serves well as a tool of analysis. Wolff highlights the Saar question as a precedent for German-German unification, as well as for its value as a false parallel for potential reunification of the eastern territories. Wolff recounts these stories in the context of an analysis of "a complex set of interest and opportunity structures" (pp. 95 and 97). In other words, the protagonists here were German and French political parties, economic interests like the European Coal and Steel Community, and international interests such as the European Council and the Allied High Commissioners. The chapter provides a succinct recapitulation of the road to the 1957 Saar agreement, as well as a fifteen-page synthesis of German-German relations from 1949-1990. The limitations of the focus on elite behavior is perhaps best illustrated by the notable absence of any mention of the Leipzig Monday night demonstrations in the description of the German unification process. But the chapter fulfills its purpose of analyzing structural processes that led to successful reunifications in the case of the Saar and East-West Germany as a contrast to the failed unification of the eastern German territories with unified Germany.
Having answered the territorial dimension of the German question in chapter 5, Wolff moves to answer the national belonging dimension in the final two chapters of the book. Chapter 6 covers in abbreviated form some of the content from the 2001 book edited by Wolff, German Minorities in Europe: Ethnic Identity and Cultural Belonging. Wolff's synthesis here evaluates the situation of Germans living in western European countries since 1945 before directing the focus to eastern European countries. The German question continues to exist in terms of German minorities living outside Germany. As Wolff ascertains, the German question no longer carries the threat of European instability that it once did earlier in the twentieth century (p. 150). But it still carries political import, most currently revolving around the role of ethnic minorities in eastern Europe.
Neither the expulsion of twelve million ethnic Germans immediately after World War II, nor the subsequent migration to Germany of another four million, has definitively solved the national belonging question. As Wolff notes, "a lost homeland is a powerful source of political mobilization" (p. 153). Even though the territorial dimension of the German question ceased to exist in 1990 when unified Germany recognized the eastern border of Germany (p. 122), this question of national belonging persists. There are questions that remain unresolved; most notably, some Sudeten Germans still cling to assertions of territorial rights within their lost homeland, a position serious enough to threaten the planned entry of the Czech Republic into the European Union.
This sturdy book will serve upper-division classes in German politics and history well. It is a handy reference guide to the frequent border shifts in central Europe in the twentieth century, and provides a glimpse of the negotiating process for making those border changes. The appropriateness of the use of this book in the classroom is reinforced by Wolff's inclusion of designated key documents in an appendix. Wolff has edited his selections to pertain almost exclusively to territorial issues; hence, the Treaty of Versailles, the Munich Agreement, the Yalta Conference Protocol, for example, primarily include just those sections pertinent to border issues. The appendix also includes excerpts of treaties and protocols of the 1990s recognizing current German boundaries in Europe. The central and most effective analysis, however, remains Wolff's assessment of the role and impact of German minorities in Europe throughout the twentieth century, and his restatement of the German question in the post-1990 era.
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Citation:
Brenda D. Melendy. Review of Wolff, Stefan, The German Question since 1919: An Analysis with Key Documents.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
March, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=8973
Copyright © 2004 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.