The Impossible Border

Germany and the East, 1914–1922

Annemarie H. Sammartino

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780801479465
• eBook ISBN: 9780801471186
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

Between 1914 and 1922, millions of Europeans left their homes as a result of war, postwar settlements, and revolution. After 1918, the immense movement of people across Germany's eastern border posed a sharp challenge to the new Weimar Republic. Ethnic Germans flooded over the border from the new Polish state, Russian émigrés poured into the German capital, and East European Jews sought protection in Germany from the upheaval in their homelands. Nor was the movement in one direction only: German Freikorps sought to found a soldiers' colony in Latvia, and a group of German socialists planned to settle in a Soviet factory town.

In The Impossible Border, Annemarie H. Sammartino explores these waves of migration and their consequences for Germany. Migration became a flashpoint for such controversies as the relative importance of ethnic and cultural belonging, the interaction of nationalism and political ideologies, and whether or not Germany could serve as a place of refuge for those seeking asylum. Sammartino shows the significance of migration for understanding the difficulties confronting the Weimar Republic and the growing appeal of political extremism.

Sammartino demonstrates that the moderation of the state in confronting migration was not merely by default, but also by design. However, the ability of a republican nation-state to control its borders became a barometer for its overall success or failure. Meanwhile, debates about migration were a forum for political extremists to develop increasingly radical understandings of the relationship between the state, its citizens, and its frontiers. The widespread conviction that the democratic republic could not control its "impossible" Eastern borders fostered the ideologies of those on the radical right who sought to resolve the issue by force and for all time.

1. “German Brothers”

War and Migration

On August 1, 1914, Germany declared war on Russia, and a week of public demonstrations—both for and against the war—culminated in hundreds of thousands of Germans’ marching to the palace of Kaiser Wilhelm II in the center of Berlin. The demonstration reached its emotional climax when the kaiser came to the balcony to speak to the crowd and proclaimed, “I no longer recognize parties or confessions. Today we are all German brothers, and only German brothers.”1 But which Germans did he mean? In the enthusiasm of the moment, most Germans in the crowd were probably not asking this question; however, in the ensuing years, as German troops “discovered” Germans in the Baltics, and as Germans from the Baltics and greater Russia began to immigrate to Germany, a series of related questions were increasingly posed: What did it mean to be German? How were true Germans to be recognized? What, for that matter, were the limits of Germany itself?

The outbreak of war in 1914 inspired an upsurge in nationalism and a temporary decrease in ethnic prejudice. German Jews and Poles believed that the civil peace (Burgfrieden) between the government and its socialist opposition would also allow them the opportunity to prove their loyalty to the Reich. As the war progressed, this brief moment of harmony collapsed amid mounting German casualties and suffering on the home front. As the situation on the home front appeared increasingly unmanageable and especially after massive strikes in 1917–1918 threatened the entire political and social structure of Wilhelmine Germany, the successes of Germany on its Eastern Front grew in importance for the government and its supporters. The possibility of large-scale annexations in the Baltics and the migration of Russian and Reich Germans to the region presented an opportunity for many German military and civilian planners to solve the problems of Germans on both sides of the now-swollen Reich frontiers. The increasingly besieged state encouraged German citizens to regard victory in the east as a reward for their suffering. German victory in the east was also seen as a boon to the large population of ethnic Germans inside the Russian Empire, who were then suffering under punitive anti-German policies pursued by the desperate tsarist regime. The voluntary migrations of ethnic Germans to the Baltic states and the forced migrations of people of other nationalities to make way for them would redeem German suffering while simultaneously enhancing the colonial prospects of Germany in its northeastern borderlands. The national Interior Ministry established the Reichswanderungsstelle (RWS) in May 1918 to advertise for and coordinate the migration of Russian Germans to Germany and the territories to be annexed in the Baltics. In preparation for a potential migration that many officials estimated could reach 1 million Russian Germans, the euphoria of conquest turned to the sober realities of administration. Nevertheless, objections were cast aside as the powerful vision of a remade Germandominated Baltics continued to entrance civilian and military planners up to the final days of the war.

Citizenship and Belonging before 1913

The notion of the German Volk as a cultural and ethnic group solidified in the early 1800s in response to the civic nationalism then developing in France.2 Whereas the French saw national identity as a product of the state (civic nationalism), over the first half of the nineteenth century, Prussian law increasingly elided national identity and belonging to the state. In 1842, Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV replaced the existing Prussian citizenship law (which had granted citizenship to those with a permanent residence in Prussia) with a jus sanguinis (law of blood, i.e., descent) policy granting citizenship only to those with German ethnic heritage.3 Despite some abortive efforts in 1848, there was no liberalization of Prussian citizenship law to make it easier for non-ethnic Germans to acquire citizenship.4 At the same time, the statist tradition, a legacy of Prussian absolutism, maintained that belonging was a consequence of one’s loyalty and service to the state.5 From 1871 onward, the German state both encompassed many non-ethnic Germans and excluded many who claimed German ethnic heritage; also Jews living on German territory were emancipated and granted citizenship when Germany was unified. According to Dietmar Schirmer, “the newly founded Reich oscillated between the Prussian statist and the German national ideas, unable to resolve the inherent tensions between them.”6

From the 1880s onward, Germany found itself confronting growing numbers of migrants—especially Poles and Jews—and both national and Prussian authorities began to operate with an increasingly ethnic definition of belonging. The Poles were the largest ethnic minority in Germany. The Poles living in the German Polish territories were German citizens, equaling up to 10 percent of the total Prussian population, but they were “second-class citizens,” discriminated against in matters of schooling, jobs, and cultural institutions.7 After the 1886 Settlement Law (Ansiedlungsgesetz), the German state bought Polish-owned land to settle approximately 120,000 Germans in the eastern territories with the dual purpose of preventing their migration overseas and providing a greater demographic claim to the region.8 Seasonal Polish workers from Russia and Austria-Hungary were imported to work as farm labor on Junker estates in the east. Germans developed an extensive system of measures to keep track of and maintain control over these workers.9 The German ambivalence toward the Polish borderlands as well as toward both the Poles who were German citizens and these seasonal workers anticipated the impossible border of the war and postwar periods. Often the very same agricultural barons who lobbied for an increase in Polish migrant labor also expressed anxiety about the possibility of the “Polonization” of the German frontier regions. Meanwhile, German socialists were split on whether to welcome Polish seasonal labors as potential agitators or to reject them as unfair competition.10

In addition, the late nineteenth century brought the large-scale immigration of Eastern European Jews. The German government sought to limit Jewish immigration and, indeed, managed briefly to seal its eastern border several times, but once it decided to import Polish seasonal labor, separating desirable and undesirable eastern immigrants became a practical impossibility. At one time, as much as 10 percent of all Prussian gendarmes were stationed on the German-Russian frontier, rules were established requiring identity cards for all immigrants, and 1,000 mark fines were imposed on smugglers who helped immigrants cross the border. Yet even such drastic measures failed to halt the immigration of Eastern European Jews to Germany.11 Mass expulsions of Jews and Poles took place in Prussia in 1884–1885 and 1904–1906, but restrictionist campaigns foundered on fears that harsh treatment of Jewish immigrants could negatively affect the image of Germany in the world.12 The Wilhelmine state proved itself incapable of limiting migration to the categories of immigrants it found necessary—namely Polish seasonal workers imported to work on the large Prussian estates. Although xenophobic rhetoric waxed and waned during the Kaiserreich depending largely on economic imperatives, public discourse generally presented Jews and Poles alike as “products of the backward East, speakers of inferior languages and elements of subversion.”13

The ascendency of German ethnonationalism of the later Kaiserreich was itself in part a response to this mobility.14 Founded in 1891, the Pan-German League was symptomatic of this ethnicism; it was dedicated both to extending German power on the international stage and combating what its members saw as “Un-German” elements, such as Slavs and Jews, within Germany itself.15 For the pan-Germans, the project of German national awakening would be incomplete as long as millions of Germans continued to live outside of the borders of the German state. Germany had, after all, been a land of emigration; millions of Germans had emigrated during the nineteenth century, with the United States as the most common destination.16 The pan-Germans were not alone in their desire to connect overseas Germans to the metropole; one of the central arguments for German colonialism was the need to direct German emigrants to locations where they could retain a connection to Germany.17 The pan-Germans were, however, especially interested in the connections between the German state and the Auslandsdeutsche in Eastern Europe. According to the pan-Germans, the Germans in Eastern Europe were vital to the Reich; as pioneers in the expansive and dangerous territory of Slaventum, they deserved its protection and support.18 Under Ernst Hasse, president of the Pan-German League and National Liberal deputy in the Reichstag, the pan-Germans introduced a proposal to the Reichstag in December 1894 to impose more restrictions on foreigners attempting to gain German citizenship and simultaneously make it easier for Germans to retain their German citizenship while living abroad. Although it was defeated by labor-hungry agricultural barons loath to discourage immigration, they continued to make similar proposals in the ensuing two decades.19

These initiatives culminated in the citizenship law of July 22, 1913, which echoed in key ways the demands of the pan-Germans. During the fractious debates about this law, delegates from the radical right and the socialist left clashed over both the rights of people of German descent living outside of Germany and the rights of Jews who had lived their entire lives on German soil.20 Those on the right who pushed for the liberalization of laws governing the maintenance and retrieval of German citizenship often referred to the Auslandsdeutsche, especially those living in Russia. These foreign Germans, they argued, were a vital part of the German nation and deserved the right to obtain German citizenship.21 Hazy, but no less potent, fears of a Slavic onslaught that had their origin in the Middle Ages played a role in motivating legislators to enshrine the principle of jus sanguinis into law. The very real increase in immigration (especially of Poles and Ostjuden) during...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: The Crisis of Sovereignty
• 1. “German Brothers”: War and Migration
• 2. “Now We Were the Border”: The Freikorps Baltic Campaign
• 3. Socialist Pioneers on the Soviet Frontier: Ansiedlung Ost
• 4. “We Who Suffered Most”: The Immigration of Germans from Poland
• 5. “A Flooding of the Reich with Foreigners”: The Frustrations of Border Control
• 6. Anti-Bolshevism and the Bolshevik Prisoners of War
• 7. “A Firm Inner Connection to Germany”: Naturalization Policy
• 8. Tolerance and Its Limits: Russians, Jews, and Asylum
• Conclusion: The Legacy of Crisis
• Appendix: Maps
• Bibliography