History Still Plays a Role in Election Politics

Political debates on touchy topics are often strung out for years, if not decades, in Germany. Consider, for instance, the discussion surrounding a proposed Holocaust memorial.

The idea for building a Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was raised by journalist Lea Rosh in 1988. Fourteen years later, the construction is poised to begin in late August or early September. The 27.6 million euro ($26.65 million) project, designed by American architect Peter Eisenman, is scheduled for completion in late 2004.

It was a long and difficult journey that busied parliamentarians from across the political spectrum for the better part of a decade. Now, with federal elections just six weeks away, German candidates are staking out their territory on another issue that also deals with repercussions from Germany’s troubled past – the expulsion of 13 to 15 million ethnic Germans from the Czech Republic and Poland.

Schröder cancelled trip to Prague

The issue came to the forefront early this year when Chancellor Gerhard Schröder cancelled a planned trip to Prague because of a “heated debate” that made “rational discussion” impossible.

Schröder's decision followed a suggestion from the Speaker of the Czech Parliament, Vaclav Klaus, that his government negotiate an agreement with the European Union to leave ethnic laws passed by the Czech Republic after World War II untouched until after the country joins the 15-nation EU bloc by 2004.

The so-called Benes Decrees, named for former Czech President Eduard Benes, ordered the expulsion of millions of ethnic Germans and many Hungarians from the Sudeten region that stretches along German-Czech border.

Benes Decrees and EU candidacy

In May, the discussion heated up once again when opposition candidate Edmund Stoiber, whose home state of Bavaria borders on the Czech Republic, called for the Czechs to repeal the Benes decrees or be barred from EU admission.

The EU commissioner responsible for EU enlargement said the decrees will not be a factor in EU accession talks. But meanwhile, many Czechs fear that if the decrees are cancelled, Germans might return to claim confiscated property.

Research center, meeting place, museum

Now the issue has been raised once again, this time in the context of a Center Against Expulsions proposed by the League of Expellees that would serve as a research center, meeting place and museum. Two years ago, the plans seemed all but doomed when the Schröder-led government said it was “reserved” about the idea – a reaction that was interpreted as an official “no” at the time.

But last year, both of the two major public TV stations in Germany broadcast documentaries about the expelled Germans. And the nobel prize winner Günther Grass’s most recent novel, Im Krebsgang, which deals with the historically unacknowledged misery of these displaced Germans, has soared to the best-seller list.

Thus the topic has been revisited with a discussion in the Bundestag and public discussion about whether such a center for expellees belongs in Berlin or across the Polish border in Wroclaw – the suggestion of one Social Democratic parliamentarian that was then taken up by several German-Polish journalists.

Meanwhile, the conservative opposition bloc of CDU and CSU have backed the project as part of its election program, saying: “with a Center Against Expulsions in Berlin we want to make a statement about the injustice of expulsion and to hold it in our memory.”

Reaction from the Greens

All this sounds well and good on the surface. But Erika Steinbach, a CDU politician who co-chairs the Center with SPD politician Peter Glotz, has made some inflamatory statements that have drawn ire from the Greens, among others.

In the context of the Expulsions Center possibly being established in the vicinity of the Berlin Holocaust memorial, Steinbach was quoted by the Newsletter for German and International Politics as saying that “the themes of Jews and the expelled (Germans) complement each other. These inhuman race delusions here as well as there should also be a subject for our center.”

“It’s understandable and legitimate that a nation honor its own victims,” she told die tageszeitung.

Steinbach noted that the center would address expelled people from throughout Europe, but that a separate area would be dedicated to telling the stories of expelled Germans. She wants 11,000 square meters (118,400 square feet) for the center, and estimates that it will cost 80 million euro.

An editorial in die tageszeitung, considered to be close to the Greens, said: “The entire preparations of the League of Expellees have done more to destroy than support the relationship of Germany to Poland and the Czech Republic. Our eastern neighbors rightly complain that the League ripped the expulsions out of their context and didn’t take into consideration the fact that Germans had expelled Poles from their homes beforehand.”