German Reunification

Unfinished Business

Joyce E. Bromley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351987721
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

In 1945, German families with more than 100 hectares (247 acres) of land were forced from their homes in the eastern sector by the Soviets, now in control of that area. These families were brutally evicted from their property and had their land expropriated. In the next 45 years, the GDR government would come to control all of the agricultural land. At reunification in 1990, the earlier abuse of these farmers was compounded when the German government would not restore any of this expropriated land to these families. The German government falsely accused the Soviet Union of insisting on non-restitution as a condition of reunification. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev unequivocally denies this claim and insists that land issues are a German problem to resolve.

The temporary land-trust agency, established by the German government in 1990 to dispose of land it inherited from the GDR, continues to exist. After 25 years, this agency still holds almost 20 percentof this expropriated land. Its agents, most of whom were reared in GDR, decide who may (or may not) lease land, the conditions of the lease, and if and when a farmer may buy land – circumstances that remain deeply controversial. Joyce Bromley draws on extensive field research, and previously untapped sources, to explore the reliability of the government's version of these important events. Is the German government once again, without shame, discriminating against a group of its own citizens?

Part I

Chaos

1 The disaster of the peace

‘Enjoy the war, the peace will be much worse’ was part of the mentality at the end of the war. For many families this was prophetic. No one knew what was to come and this uncertainty caste a melancholy shadow over each celebration.¹

Countryside in chaos

At midnight, 8 May 1945, Germany as a sovereign nation ceased to exist. Over the next 45 years, Germany would be two nations before it sought to become one again. During this time people changed, landscapes were transformed, and family legacies were destroyed. The purpose of reunification on 3 October 1990 was to mend what had begun in 1945. That task remains both elusive and unfinished.

While war was still raging, allied leaders had met, on 4–11 February 1945, in Yalta in the Crimea. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin discussed the progress of the war, and plans for the final dispensation of post-war Germany. This would be Roosevelt’s last meeting of the war—he died on 12 April. Major points of contention at this meeting were the ultimate fate of Poland, and the final boundaries of a defeated Germany—as well as zones of future occupation. France, although not officially part of the western allied forces because it had only recently been liberated from Germany, was given an occupation zone carved out of the American zone in far southwestern Germany. It was agreed that Germany would be required to pay reparations to the Soviet Union for damages suffered during the German invasion. A commission would be established in Moscow to determine its nature and extent. These arrangements, when finally worked out, would largely destroy German industry in what would become East Germany. Entire German factories would be dismantled, loaded on rail cars, and transported east to the Soviet Union. The Yalta conference also affirmed earlier agreements enabling the Soviet Union to establish puppet governments in its zone of influence to the east and southeast of Germany. Stalin argued that these states were needed as a buffer between Germany and the Soviet Union.

By late February, Red Army scouts, confident of defeating Hitler, were making forays into eastern Germany to gain intelligence about the location and logistical arrangements of enemy troops. Soon, indiscriminate military skirmishes occurred throughout much of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the most direct route to Berlin. Cold and hungry soldiers began entering isolated farm houses in search of warm clothing and food. When the Red Army finally arrived, soldiers were merciless. Women and girls were raped, and family members were harassed and shot (Naimark, 1995). Daily life became decidedly perilous for women alone with their children in isolated homes throughout rural Germany. They had to weigh their family’s risk—to remain and suffer in the coming battles, or to leave and face hardship, perhaps even starvation, on a trek west to an unknown future. Danger was apparent either way. These women knew that the madness of war would soon be over and so the urgent imperative was to protect their family until they would be able to return. What they could not imagine was that once they left, they would be unable to return.

Even before the end of the war, women were leading their families to the west to escape the approaching Red Army. Many rural women along the various escape routes extended hospitality to thousands of such families fleeing to the west. Their homes became way-stations, and while hosts could offer warm hospitality, the accommodations were meagre. The shortage of beds meant that most people slept on floors piled high with straw for insulation and some semblance of comfort. Meat was extremely scarce—as was milk—and many babies were severely underweight. The German military had already requisitioned cows and pigs, leaving little for families to eat. Then, renegade soldiers—both from the Red Army and the German army—raided farms causing host families to rely upon illegal means to obtain food. The few elderly men on a farm, and a boy or two, would undertake hunting expeditions into the forest in a quest for wild boar or roe deer. With a shortage of salt to preserve meat, the warmer weather brought greater pressure to regularly obtain fresh meat. Frequent hunts were necessary, but such excursions put them at risk of encountering scouting soldiers who were also hungry.

Elisabeth von Barsewisch, who lived close to the allied zone on the western front, opened her home as a way-station before she too fled. While she hosted large numbers of people on a trek, she was planning her own family’s escape. She had been meticulously redeeming her ration coupons to stock up on canned (instead of fresh) meat, along with an abundance of jars of prepared fruits or vegetables. Since January she had prepared a small hand wagon packed with food that she could pull on skis, but the bitter winter forced her to delay her departure. Meanwhile, her husband who was still in the German army, arranged a trek for his wife and their three children. A friend from WWI would take his trek by her house and would have a wagon available for her. Communication was always guarded because they knew their telephones were being tapped. They were aware that if these plans were discovered, she and their children would be taken to a prison camp. When the fateful call came from this friend—despite the obtuse message—she understood that he was telling her to be ready. One daughter and her son Bernhard, then nine, joined the trek. Bernhard still recalls the bitter cold, the short days, and the slow pace of their travel.

The eldest daughter had left earlier to secure a job with a farmer who might be willing to take in the entire family. In the deep cold of February she had bicycled over 225 km (135 miles) from Groß Pankow to Hildesheim where she was able to secure a job inside the British zone. A farmer was pleased to hire someone with her rye-breeding experience. Once hired, she warned the farmer that many refugees would soon be coming and asked if he would be willing to take in her mother and two siblings. The farmer generously agreed.²

The von Wedels, out of fear of what was coming, made arrangements to flee with several neighbours. Their farms were in the probable path of a Red Army assault from the northeast and they quickly formed a well-planned trek. Together they had two wagons and six horses. A neighbour intending to protect the family’s silver collected it from the church chancel where she had hidden it earlier. Just as they were prepared to leave, German troops arrived and took four of their six horses. Left with just two horses, they could only take a single wagon laden with food. Everything else was left behind, including the family’s silver. The trek to safety in the west took three months. They stayed where they could—often with acquaintances or family members. They finally arrived near the anticipated border with the western zone and used their remaining ham to pay for passage across the Elbe River.

Meanwhile, rural women who were struggling to accommodate the daily flood of refugees were facing a dilemma of their own. Quite soon, most of them instinctively chose to protect their families instead of trying to secure their farm. Despite the cold winter, most women decided to join one of the many treks passing through their area. Popular routes were filled with thousands of refugees moving west, and travel was slow. Trekkers would start each morning and walk or ride until early afternoon when they would search for a place to rest that night—this pattern was repeated a second day. On the third day they had to find two-night accommodations to rest their animals. The burden to provision these travellers and their animals fell to host families along the way. Most of the large houses were continually full, but not with the same guests, as the many treks slowly moved west.

Gunild von Alvensleben was desperate to escape with her six children. Her home was east of Berlin which placed her in the likely path of the approaching Red Army, but she was also at a great distance from the allied zone in the west. She decided to escape the probable assault and go to the home of friends in the forested Harz Mountains. The eldest daughter, who was 20 years old, drove the carriage with the mother and children. The road was hazardous—ruts could easily tip the carriage, ice provided little traction for the horses, and they had little more than 6–7 hours of daylight for travel. When they finally arrived, the home was already full of families—children, mothers, and grandmothers. Reimar, only five, found the entire experience to be an adventure without a hint of risk. He got to sleep on straw and the house was full of children. He asked his mother where they could ‘flee next year’. For these women, this was not a holiday. They worried about having enough milk for the children, and enough food for everyone. While each family had managed to bring some food, which they shared, food was scarce in the first few months of winter.³

By early March, the countryside had dramatically changed. Instead of the dormant snow-covered landscape reflecting the low light of winter, there were now hundreds of thousands of hunched figures moving slowly along narrow lanes and highways. Horses, oxen, women, children, and the elderly pushed and pulled carts large and small, always piled high with personal belongings. Young children struggled under the weight of bulging rucksacks. Often, the ground remained frozen—always the March wind lashed those on the move. Behind them, as if physically pushing them forward, was the formidable Red Army.⁴ The trek was also an ‘information super-highway’. News of the war and the imminent Soviet invasion was more reliable than the steady blather from Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Göbbels. There was little doubt that the Red Army had crossed the Vistula in central Poland. And there were rumours that Stalin’s hordes were now on the east bank of the Oder—just behind the thousands of anxious trekkers. By the end of March, word spread that Germany’s futile advances in Hungary had failed and that the German army was now in retreat. In constant motion between January and April 1945 were columns of 80,000 prisoners-of-war, held by the German military, who were forced to march across Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany in an effort to delay their liberation by the advancing Red Army.

Into this mayhem soon arrived an estimated 14–16 million desperate refugees in this historic deluge of the innocent. After two major wars, ethnic Germans were no longer welcome in bordering countries to the east. They slowly moved across Germany ahead of the Red Army in hopes of reaching the safety of the western allied zone (Roberts, 2006). Those who were farming, regardless of how large or small their farm, were evicted and forced into what would become the Soviet Occupation Zone. Poland, once part of the Prussian Empire, had the largest ethnic German population in the adjacent countries. Before 1937, one-quarter of the arable land in Poland was part of Germany. In 1945, Poland reclaimed all of the land held by ethnic Germans and forced them to leave. Romania was one of the few countries that allowed ethnic German farmers to remain. However, they lost their land if they owned more than 50 hectares.

With the Red Army approaching Germany from the east, and as the western Allies were approaching from the west, the tenor of German propaganda underwent a subtle change. Rather than trumpeting victory, the new message was that families must remain in their homes to defend the ‘fatherland’. By that time, most of the women knew that the end was very near—and they had no idea what they might do to defend the fatherland against the Red Army or the western Allies. They had seen millions of refugees and ethnic Germans from further east clogging roads and country lanes seeking safety in the west. And they could not have failed to notice the rapid movement of German troops rushing back to the east—away from the western front—to help in the final defence of Berlin. By this time, the Red Army was camped on the east bank of the Oder River, preparing for the final assault on the German capital. Almost 4 million Red Army soldiers along a 60-mile stretch of the Oder River were hard to hide. They were now merely 40 miles from Berlin. This formidable mass of soldiers and firepower on the east Bank of the Oder River represented the largest military force ever assembled (Davies, 2006, p. 123). Hitler’s famed military was, by now, no impediment. Though doomed, Hitler was unable to acknowledge the inevitable. He was practically alone in his delusions.

Meanwhile, treks to the west continued. Ruth von Engelbrechten, who lived relatively close to the western zone, had witnessed thousands of trekkers, and she had hosted as many as she could. Like so many others, Ruth’s farm was constantly overcrowded as new treks arrived every day—each group larger than the one before. Although the Red Army in the east was a distant threat, she was exposed to advancing American and British troops coming from the west.

In the autumn of 1944, while pregnant with twins, Ruth heeded her husband’s advice and—with the help of the farm’s wheelwright—con structed a subterranean and well-camouflaged Waldhütte in the abundant forest nearby their home. There she could hide her family from whomever arrived first—the Red Army or American and British troops. Dense dark forests have provided Germans with protection for centuries and figure prominently in history and literature—they have always been safe places to hide. Even in modern times, forests continue to be a first line of defence. Unfortunately for her, when the Waldhütte was finished, the wheelwright moved his own family into it and would not leave. Her only recourse was to remain in her home. By spring of 1945, Ruth could hear the American and German armies in the heat of battle in her nearby forest. For the first time since relinquishing her Waldhütte, Ruth was grateful that she was not out in the woods with her children while the battle was raging overhead.

American troops were the first to arrive on 13 April 1945 and they secured the area around Ruth’s family farm. She immediately fell under suspicion merely by living next to the last forest before the Elbe River—that final barrier as the western allied armies made their hurried push east toward Berlin. American soldiers accused her of provisioning German troops believed to be hiding in the forest. She was unable to convince them that soldiers had been stealing food from her. She was arrested and imprisoned in an open barn along with captured German soldiers. Ruth pleaded with the American guard to allow her to go home so that she could nurse her infant twin daughters—but to no avail. However, the guard gave her an extra wool blanket, a small consolation, but this blanket kept her warm for the six weeks she was interned.⁵

Charlotte von Bronsart—in Reimershagen just south of Rostock on the Baltic Sea—was determined to flee. As a Dutch citizen, she was able to obtain the necessary official permit. She regretted leaving the home that had been in her husband’s family for generations, but she was anxious to escape to save her family. She booked passage on one of the few trains available, which she considered her best option to protect their four children. Her husband, still in the German army, urged her not to take the train. He was aware that both German and Allied forces were bombing rail corridors—he urged her to join a trek instead.⁶ He was right—and she was fortunate. The expediency of the train over the arduous trek took them safely to Holland. Within a few weeks only ten percent of the railroad tracks were functional (Judt, 2006).

The Runge family is a testament to the risks of remaining. Johannes Runge was one of the young boys who, along with his high school classmates, had been drafted in 1944. He was on home-leave in January 1945 and in his village near Rostock. The family embraced his return and life seemed to take on an air of normalcy as they eagerly planned the March wedding of his eldest sister. But war once again disrupted this momentary peace. Johannes received new orders but fortunately he was not called to report until late March—which allowed him to be present for his sister’s wedding. Despite the war, the wedding was a festive affair with a house full of relatives. His maternal aunt was living at the house with her three daughters who had...