Swimming against Rip Currents. Paul Philippi and the Migration of the Romanian Germans in the Postwar Era (1950–1960)
Swimming against Rip Currents. Paul Philippi and the Migration of the Romanian Germans in the Postwar Era (1950–1960)
Author(s): Virgiliu ŢârăuSubject(s): Political history, Post-War period (1950 - 1989), History of Communism, Cold-War History, Asylum, Refugees, Migration as Policy-fields
Published by: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
Keywords: Romanian Germans migration; Landsmannschaften; Paul Philippi; German Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession; Securitate;
Summary/Abstract: In this article I seek to reassess the process of the migration of Romanian Germans into Germany. Based on various types of documents, generated or managed by the specialized structures of the former Securitate, I will try to add a new perspective to the complex picture of migration, one derived from the birth in the German community of the FRG, but also from Romania, in a transnational perspective. There was a conflict between two visions related to the future of the Germans in Romania: the one view, propagated by the organizations called Landsmannschaften of the Saxons and Swabians from West Germany, who initiated, pressed, stimulated and maintained the whole process of trans- or relocation; and the other one, formulated and argued by Paul Philippi with a policy formed inside the German-Lutheran Church in Romania by Bishop Friedrich Müller and developed by a network of German intellectuals in Germany and Romania, who wanted the Germans to stay in Romania.
Journal: Journal für Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen im östlichen Europa
- Issue Year: 3/2022
- Issue No: 1
- Page Range: 211-224
- Page Count: 14
- Language: English
