Former eastern territories of Germany
The former eastern territories of Germany are those provinces or regions east of the current eastern border of Germany which were lost by Germany after World War I and then World War II; having been parts of the German Empire from 1871, and previously, of Prussia and Austria. They include provinces that historically had been considered 'German', and others that only became 'German' in 1871.
The territories lost by Germany following World War I included areas with predominantly ethnically Polish population, especially the Province of Posen, most of the province of West Prussia, and East Upper Silesia reintegrated with Poland, following the country's independence, as well as the Lithuanian-populated Klaipėda Region, which became part of Lithuania. Further territories lost after World War II include East Prussia, Farther Pomerania, Neumark, West Upper Silesia, and almost all of Lower Silesia. The territories lost in both World Wars account for 33% of the pre-1914 German Empire, while land ceded by Germany after World War II constituted roughly 25% of its pre-war Weimar territory. In present-day Germany, the term 'Former eastern territories' usually refers only to those territories lost in World War II. Territories acquired by Poland after World War II were called there the Recovered Territories. These territories had been ruled as part of Poland by the Piast dynasty in or since the High Middle Ages, with the exception of Prussia which was inhabited by Old Prussians and came under Polish suzerainty in the Late Middle Ages, and had become predominantly German over the centuries. Part of historic Prussia became part of the Soviet Union as the Kaliningrad Oblast, now within Russia. The German population of the territories that had not fled in 1945 was expelled, forming the majority of the Germans expelled from Eastern Europe.
The post-war border between Germany and Poland along the Oder–Neisse line was formally recognized by East Germany in 1950, by the Treaty of Zgorzelec, under pressure from Stalin. In 1952, recognition of the Oder–Neisse line as a permanent boundary was one of Stalin's conditions for the Soviet Union to agree to a reunification of Germany. The offer was rejected by West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. The then official West German government position on the status of former eastern territories of Germany east of the Oder and Neisse rivers was that the areas were "temporarily under Polish administration." In official maps produced in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, the boundaries of Germany as at 31 December 1937 were stated as 'continuing to be valid in international law'.
In 1970, West Germany recognised the Oder-Neisse line as the de facto western boundary of Poland by the Treaty of Warsaw; and in 1973, the Federal Constitutional Court acknowledged the capability of East Germany to negotiate the Treaty of Zgorzelec as an international agreement binding as a legal definition of its boundaries. In signing the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, both West Germany and East Germany recognised the existing boundaries of post-war Europe, including the Oder-Neisse line, as valid in international law.
In 1990, as part of the reunification of Germany, West Germany accepted clauses in the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany whereby Germany renounced all claims to territory east of the Oder–Neisse line. Germany's recognition of the Oder–Neisse line as the border was formalised by the re-united Germany in the German–Polish Border Treaty on November 14, 1990; and by the repeal of Article 23 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany under which German states outside the Federal Republic could formerly apply for admission. With this repeal the post-1990 boundaries of Germany are closed to further expansion.
Usage
In the Potsdam Agreement the description of the territories transferred is "The former German territories east of the Oder–Neisse line", and permutations on this description are the most commonly used to describe any former territories of Germany east of the Oder–Neisse line.The name East Germany, a political term, used to be the common colloquial English name for the German Democratic Republic, and mirrored the common colloquial English term for the other German state of West Germany. When focusing on the period before World War II, "eastern Germany" is used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe, as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt, but because of the border changes in the 20th century, after World War II the term "East Germany" and eastern Germany in English has meant the territory of the German Democratic Republic.
In German there is only one usual term, Ostdeutschland, meaning East Germany or Eastern Germany. The rather ambiguous German term never gained prevailing use for the GDR as did the English term. Since reunification, Ostdeutschland has been commonly used to denote both the historic post-war German Democratic Republic, and its counterpart five successor states in the current reunited Germany. However, because people and institutions in the states traditionally considered as Middle Germany, like the three southern new states Saxony-Anhalt, the Free State of Saxony and the Free State of Thuringia, still use the term Middle Germany when referring to their area and its institutions, the term Ostdeutschland is still ambiguous.
History
Antic, Medieval and early modern era
As various Germanic tribes settled in the region of central Europe, to the east several different West Slavic tribes inhabited most of the area of present-day Poland from the 6th century. Duke Mieszko I of the Polans, from his stronghold in the Gniezno area, united various neighboring tribes in the second half of the 10th century, forming the first Polish state and becoming the first historically recorded Piast duke. His realm bordered German state, and control over the borderlands would shift back and forth between the two polities over the centuries to come.Mieszko's son and successor, Duke Bolesław I Chrobry, upon the 1018 Peace of Bautzen expanded the southern part of the realm, but lost control over the lands of Western Pomerania on the Baltic coast. After pagan revolts and a Bohemian invasion in the 1030s, Duke Casimir I the Restorer again united most of the former Piast realm, including Silesia and Lubusz Land on both sides of the middle Oder River, but without Western Pomerania, which became part of the Polish state again under Bolesław III Wrymouth from 1116 until 1121, when the noble House of Griffins established the Duchy of Pomerania. On Bolesław's death in 1138, Poland for almost 200 years was subjected to fragmentation, being ruled by Bolesław's sons and by their successors, who were often in conflict with each other. Władysław I the Elbow-high, crowned king of Poland in 1320, achieved partial reunification, although the Silesian and Masovian duchies remained independent Piast holdings.
, 8th to 14th century adapted from Walter Kuhn
In the course of the 12th to 14th centuries, Germanic, Dutch and Flemish settlers moved into East Central and Eastern Europe in a migration process known as the Ostsiedlung''. In Pomerania, Brandenburg, Prussia and Silesia, the former West Slav or Balt population became minorities in the course of the following centuries, although substantial numbers of the original inhabitants remained in areas such as Upper Silesia. In Greater Poland and in Eastern Pomerania, German settlers formed a minority. Some of the territories reunited with Poland during the 15th and 16th centuries. Others became more firmly incorporated into German polities.
In 1815, the Congress of Vienna established The German Confederation as an association of 39 German-speaking states in Central Europe. This established the boundaries of Germany for much of the 19th century; as including Pomerania, East Brandenburg and Silesia, but excluding German-speaking lands in the eastern portion of the Kingdom of Prussia, as well as the German cantons of Switzerland, and the French region of Alsace..
Pomerania
The Pomeranian parts of the former eastern territories of Germany had been under Polish rule several times from the late 10th century on, when Mieszko I acquired at least significant parts of them. Mieszko's son Bolesław I established a bishopric in the Kołobrzeg area in 1000–1005/07, before the area was lost by Poland again to pagan Slavic tribes. Despite further attempts by Polish dukes to again control the Pomeranian tribes, this was only partly achieved by Bolesław III in several campaigns lasting from 1116 to 1121. Successful Christian missions ensued in 1124 and 1128; however, by the time of Bolesław's death in 1138, most of West Pomerania was no longer controlled by Poland. The easternmost part of later Western/Farther Pomerania in the 13th century was part of Gdańsk Pomerania and was re-integrated with Poland, and later on, in the 14th and 15th centuries formed a duchy, whose rulers were vassals of the Jagiellonian-ruled Kingdom of Poland, before it was integrated with Western/Farther Pomerania. Over the following centuries the area was largely Germanized, although a small Slavic or Polish minority remained. Indigenous Slavs and Poles faced discrimination from the arriving Germans, who on a local level since the 16th century imposed discriminatory regulations, such as bans on buying goods from Slavs/Poles or prohibiting them from becoming members of craft guilds. The Duchy of Pomerania under the native Griffin dynasty existed for over 500 years, before it was partitioned between Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia in the 17th century. The Swedish-controlled areas fell to the Kingdom of Prussia in the 18th and 19th century.At the turn of the 20th century there lived only about 14,200 persons of Polish mother-tongue in the Province of Pomerania, and 300 persons using the Kashubian language, the total population of the province consisting of almost 1.7 million inhabitants.
Gdańsk, Lębork and Bytów
The region of Pomerelia/Gdańsk Pomerania at the eastern end of Pomerania, including Gdańsk, was part of Poland since its first ruler Mieszko I. As a result of the fragmentation of Poland, it was ruled in the 12th and 13th centuries by the Samborides, who were more closely tied to the Kingdom of Poland than were the Griffins. After the Treaty of Kępno in 1282, and the death of the last Samboride in 1294, the region was ruled by kings of Poland for a short period, although also claimed by Brandenburg. After the Teutonic takeover in 1308 the region was annexed to the monastic state of the Teutonic Knights. In the Second Peace of Thorn most of the region became part of Royal Prussia within the Kingdom of Poland, as it remained until being annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in the partitions of 1772 and 1793. A small area in the west of Pomerelia, the Lauenburg and Bütow Land was granted to the rulers of Pomerania as a Polish fief, before being reintegrated with Poland in 1637, and later on, again transformed into a Polish fief, which it remained until the First Partition of Poland. After Poland regained independence in 1918, a large part of Pomerelia was reintegrated with Poland as the so-called Polish Corridor, a part formed the Free City of Danzig in customs union with Poland, and small parts remained within Germany. The entire region was reintegrated with Poland in 1945.Lubusz Land
The medieval Lubusz Land on both sides of the Oder River up to the Spree in the west, including Lubusz itself, also formed part of Mieszko's realm. Poland lost Lubusz when the Silesian duke Bolesław II Rogatka sold it to the Ascanian margraves of Brandenburg in 1249. Brandenburg also acquired the castellany of Santok from Duke Przemysł I of Greater Poland and made it the nucleus of their Neumark region. The Bishopric of Lebus remained a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Gniezno until 1424, when it passed under the jurisdiction of the Archbishopric of Magdeburg. The Lubusz Land was part of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown from 1373 to 1415. The present-day Polish Lubusz Voivodeship comprises most of the former Brandenburgian Neumark territory east of the Oder.Parts of Greater Poland and Kuyavia
A portion of the former eastern territory east of the Lubusz Land had previously formed the western parts of the Polish provinces of Pomerelia and Greater Poland, being lost to Prussia in the First Partition and the Second Partition. During Napoleonic times the Greater Poland territories formed part of the Duchy of Warsaw, but after the Congress of Vienna Prussia reclaimed them as part of the Grand Duchy of Posen, later Province of Posen. After World War I, those parts of the former Province of Posen and of West Prussia that were not restored as part of the Second Polish Republic were administered as Grenzmark Posen-Westpreußen until 1939.Silesia
also formed part of Poland since Mieszko I of Poland and Piast dukes continued to rule Silesia following the 12th-century fragmentation of Poland. The Silesian Piasts retained power in most of the region until the early 16th century, the last dying in 1675. After the Piasts some Lower Silesian duchies were under the rule of Polish Jagiellons and Sobieskis, Czech Přemyslids and Poděbrads and part of Upper Silesia, the Duchy of Opole, found itself back under Polish rule in the mid-17th century, when the Habsburgs pawned the duchy to the Polish Vasas. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Wrocław, established in 1000 as one of Poland's oldest dioceses, remained a suffragan of the Archbishopric of Gniezno until 1821.The first German colonists arrived in the late 12th century, and large-scale German settlement started in the early 13th century during the reign of Henry I. After the era of German colonisation, the Polish language still predominated in Upper Silesia and in parts of Lower and Middle Silesia north of the Odra river. Here the Germans who arrived during the Middle Ages became mostly Polonized; Germans dominated in large cities and Poles mostly in rural areas. The Polish-speaking territories of Lower and Middle Silesia, commonly described until the end of the 19th century as the Polish side, were mostly Germanized in the 18th and 19th centuries, except for some areas along the northeastern frontier. The province came under the control of Kingdom of Bohemia in the 14th century and was briefly under Hungarian rule in the 15th century. Silesia passed to the Habsburg Monarchy of Austria in 1526, and Prussia's Frederick the Great conquered most of it in 1742. A part of Upper Silesia became part of Poland after World War I, but the bulk of Silesia formed part of the post-1945 Recovered Territories.
Warmia and Masuria
The northern territories of Warmia and Masuria form the areas of the former eastern territories of Germany that had been Polish fiefs. Originally inhabited by pagan Old Prussians, these regions became were conquered and incorporated into the state of the Teutonic Knights in the 13th and 14th centuries. By the Second Peace of Thorn, Warmia was awarded to the Polish Crown as part of Royal Prussia, though with considerable autonomy, while Masuria became part of a Polish fief, first as part of the Teutonic state, and from 1525 as part of the secular Ducal Prussia. Prussia took direct control of the region in the First Partition of Poland and in 1773 included the area in the newly formed province of East Prussia. It formed the southern part of the province after World War I, becoming part of Poland after World War II, with northern East Prussia going to the Soviet Union to form the Kaliningrad Oblast.Foundation of German Empire, 1871
At the time of the foundation of the German Empire in 1871, the Kingdom of Prussia was the largest and dominant part of the empire. Prussian territory east of the Oder–Neisse line included West Prussia and Posen, also Silesia, East Brandenburg, and Pomerania. Later, these territories would come to be called in Germany "Ostgebiete des deutschen Reiches". After 1871, the boundaries of 'Germany' came to be understood as having been extended to include the whole of Prussian territory.Treaty of Versailles, 1919
The Treaty of Versailles of 1919 that ended World War I restored the independence of Poland, known as the Second Polish Republic, and Germany was compelled to cede territories to it, most of which were taken by Prussia in the three Partitions of Poland, and had been part of the Kingdom of Prussia and later the German Empire for over 100 years. The territories ceded to Poland in 1919 were those with an apparent Polish majority, such as the Province of Posen, the east-southern part of Upper Silesia and the so-called Polish Corridor.Division of Germany's eastern provinces after 1918
German annexation of Hultschin Area and the Memel Territory
In October 1938 Hlučín Area of Moravian-Silesian Region which had been ceded to Czechoslovakia under the Treaty of Versailles was annexed by the Third Reich as a part of areas lost by Czechoslovakia in accordance with the Munich agreement. However, as distinct from other lost Czechoslovakian domains, it was not attached to Sudetengau but to Prussia.By late 1938, Lithuania had lost control over the situation in the Memel Territory. In the early hours of 23 March 1939, after a political ultimatum caused a Lithuanian delegation to travel to Berlin, the Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Juozas Urbšys and his German counterpart Joachim von Ribbentrop signed the Treaty of the Cession of the Memel Territory to Germany in exchange for a Lithuanian Free Zone in the port of Memel, using the facilities erected in previous years.
In the interwar period the German administration, both Weimar and Nazi, conducted a massive campaign of renaming of thousands of placenames, to remove traces of Polish, Lithuanian and Old Prussian origin.
German occupation of Poland in World War II, 1939–1945
Between the two world wars, many in Germany claimed that the territory ceded to Poland in 1919–1922 should be returned to Germany. This claim was one of the justifications for the German invasion of Poland in 1939, heralding the start of the Second World War. The Third Reich annexed the former German lands, comprising the "Polish Corridor", West Prussia, the Province of Posen, and parts of eastern Upper Silesia. The council of the Free City of Danzig voted to become a part of Germany again, although Poles and Jews were deprived of their voting rights and all non-Nazi political parties were banned. In addition to taking territories lost in 1919, Germany also took additional land that had never been German.Two decrees by Adolf Hitler divided the annexed areas of Poland into administrative units:
- Reichsgau Wartheland, which included the entire Poznań Voivodeship, most of the Łódź Voivodeship, five counties of the Pomeranian Voivodeship, and one county of the Warszawa Voivodeship;
- Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia, which consisted of the remaining area of the Pomeranian Voivodeship and the Free City of Danzig;
- Ciechanów District, consisting of the five northern counties of Warszawa Voivodeship, which became a part of East Prussia;
- Katowice District, or East Upper Silesia, which included Sosnowiec, Będzin, Chrzanów, and Zawiercie Counties, and parts of Olkusz and Żywiec Counties.
The remainder of Polish territory was annexed by the Soviet Union or made into the German-controlled General Government occupation zone.
After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the district of Białystok, which included the Białystok, Bielsk Podlaski, Grajewo, Łomża, Sokółka, Volkovysk, and Grodno Counties, was "attached to" East Prussia, whilst Eastern Galicia, which included the cities of Lwów, Stanislawów and Tarnopol, was made part of the General Government.
The Yalta Conference
The final decision to move Poland's boundary westward was made by the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, shortly before the end of the war. The precise location of the border was left open; the western Allies also accepted in general the principle of the Oder River as the future western border of Poland and of population transfer as the way to prevent future border disputes. The open question was whether the border should follow the Eastern or Lusatian Neisse rivers, and whether Stettin, the traditional seaport of Berlin, should remain German or be included in Poland.Originally, Germany was to retain Stettin while the Poles were to annex East Prussia with Königsberg. Eventually, however, Stalin decided that he wanted Königsberg as a year-round warm water port for the Soviet Navy and argued that the Poles should receive Stettin instead. The wartime Polish government in exile had little to say in these decisions.
At the Yalta Conference, it was agreed to split Germany into four occupation zones after the war, with a quadripartite occupation of Berlin as well, prior to unification of Germany. The status of Poland was discussed, but was complicated by the fact that Poland was at this time under the control of the Red Army. It was agreed to reorganize the Provisionary Polish Government that had been set up by the Red Army through the inclusion of other groups such as the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity and to have democratic elections. This effectively excluded the Polish government-in-exile that had evacuated in 1939. It was agreed that the Polish eastern border would follow the Curzon Line, and Poland would receive substantial territorial compensation in the west from Germany, although the exact border was to be determined at a later time. A "Committee on Dismemberment of Germany" was to be set up. The purpose was to decide whether Germany was to be divided into six nations, and if so, what borders and inter-relationships the new German states were to have.
Potsdam Agreement, 1945
Germany subsequently lost territories east of the Oder–Neisse Line at the end of the War in 1945, when international recognition of its right to jurisdiction over any of these territories was conditionally withdrawn. The "condition" mentioned was the Final German Peace Treaty, which was to set the actual border line, which might or might not deviate from the rivers Oder and Neisse. At Potsdam, the assumption by many was that a Final German Peace Treaty was imminent, but this turned out to be incorrect.After World War II, as agreed at the Potsdam Conference, all of the areas east of the Oder–Neisse line, whether recognised by the international community as part of Germany until 1939 or occupied by Germany during World War II, were placed under the jurisdiction of other countries.The relevant paragraphs in the Potsdam Agreement are:
The Allies also agreed that:
because in the words of Winston Churchill
The problem with the status of these territories was that the Potsdam Agreement was not a legally binding treaty, but a memorandum between the USSR, the US and the UK. It regulated the issue of the eastern German border, which was confirmed as being along the Oder–Neisse line, but the final article of the memorandum said that the final decisions concerning Germany, and hence the detailed alignment of Germany's eastern boundaries, would be subject to a separate peace treaty; at which the three Allied signatories committed themselves to respect the terms of the Potsdam memorandum. Hence, so long as these Allied Powers remained committed to the Potsdam protocols, without German agreement to an Oder–Neisse line boundary there could be no Peace Treaty and no German Reunification. This treaty was signed in 1990 as the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany.
Post World War II
After the War, the so-called "German question" was an important factor of post-war German and European history and politics. The debate affected Cold War politics and diplomacy and played an important role in the negotiations leading up to the reunification of Germany in 1990. In 1990 Germany officially recognized its present eastern border at the time of its reunification in the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, ending any residual claims to sovereignty that Germany may have had over any territory east of the Oder–Neisse line.Between 1945 and the 1970s the government of West Germany referred to these territories as "former German territories temporarily under Polish and Soviet administration". This terminology was used in relation to territories of eastern Germany within the 1937 Germany border, and was based on the terminology used in the Potsdam Agreement. It was used only by the Federal Republic of Germany; but the Polish and Soviet governments objected to the obvious implication that these territories should someday revert to Germany. The Polish government preferred to use the phrase Recovered Territories, asserting a sort of continuity because parts of these territories had centuries previously been ruled by ethnic Poles.
Expulsion of Germans and resettlement
With the rapid advance of the Red Army in the winter of 1944-1945, German authorities desperately evacuated many Germans westwards. The majority of the remaining German-speaking population in the territory of former Czechoslovakia and east of the Oder-Neisse line, that had not already been evacuated, was expelled by the new Czech and Polish administrations. Although in the post-war period earlier German sources often cited the number of evacuated and expelled Germans at 16 million and the death toll at between 1.7 and 2.5 million, today, the numbers are considered by some historians to be exaggerated and the death toll more likely in a range between 400,000 and 600,000. Some present-day estimates place the numbers of German refugees at 14 million of which about half a million died during the evacuations and expulsions.At the same time, Poles from central Poland, expelled Poles from former eastern Poland, Polish returnees from internment and forced labour, Ukrainians forcibly resettled in Operation Vistula, and Jewish Holocaust survivors were settled in German territories gained by Poland, whereas the north of former East Prussia was turned into a military zone and subsequently settled with Russians.
Origins of post-war inhabitants of areas annexed by Poland
During the Polish post-war census of December 1950, data about the pre-war places of residence of the inhabitants as of August 1939 was collected. In case of children born between September 1939 and December 1950, their place of residence was reported based on the pre-war places of residence of their mothers. Thanks to this data it is possible to reconstruct the pre-war geographical origin of the post-war population in the Recovered Territories of Poland. Many areas located near the pre-war German border were resettled by people from neighbouring borderland areas of pre-war Poland. For example, Kashubians from pre-war Polish Corridor settled in nearby areas of German Pomerania adjacent to Polish Pomerania. People from Poznań region of pre-war Poland settled in East Brandenburg. People from East Upper Silesia moved into the rest of Silesia. And people from Masovia and from Sudovia moved into adjacent Masuria. Poles expelled from former Polish territories in the east settled in large numbers everywhere in the Recovered Territories.| Region : | West Upper Silesia | Lower Silesia | East Brandenburg | West Pomerania | Free City Danzig | South East Prussia | Total |
| Autochthons | 789,716 | 120,885 | 14,809 | 70,209 | 35,311 | 134,702 | 1,165,632 |
| Polish expellees from Kresy | 232,785 | 696,739 | 187,298 | 250,091 | 55,599 | 172,480 | 1,594,992 |
| Poles from abroad except the USSR | 24,772 | 91,395 | 10,943 | 18,607 | 2,213 | 5,734 | 153,664 |
| Resettlers from the City of Warsaw | 11,333 | 61,862 | 8,600 | 37,285 | 19,322 | 22,418 | 160,820 |
| From Warsaw region | 7,019 | 69,120 | 16,926 | 73,936 | 22,574 | 158,953 | 348,528 |
| From Białystok region and Sudovia | 2,229 | 23,515 | 3,772 | 16,081 | 7,638 | 102,634 | 155,869 |
| From pre-war Polish Pomerania | 5,444 | 54,564 | 19,191 | 145,854 | 72,847 | 83,921 | 381,821 |
| Resettlers from Poznań region | 8,936 | 172,163 | 88,427 | 81,215 | 10,371 | 7,371 | 368,483 |
| Katowice region | 91,011 | 66,362 | 4,725 | 11,869 | 2,982 | 2,536 | 179,485 |
| Resettlers from the City of Łódź | 1,250 | 16,483 | 2,377 | 8,344 | 2,850 | 1,666 | 32,970 |
| Resettlers from Łódź region | 13,046 | 96,185 | 22,954 | 76,128 | 7,465 | 6,919 | 222,697 |
| Resettlers from Kielce region | 16,707 | 141,748 | 14,203 | 78,340 | 16,252 | 20,878 | 288,128 |
| Resettlers from Lublin region | 7,600 | 70,622 | 19,250 | 81,167 | 19,002 | 60,313 | 257,954 |
| Resettlers from Kraków region | 60,987 | 156,920 | 12,587 | 18,237 | 5,278 | 5,515 | 259,524 |
| Resettlers from Rzeszów region | 23,577 | 110,188 | 13,147 | 57,965 | 6,200 | 47,626 | 258,703 |
| place of residence in 1939 unknown | 36,834 | 26,586 | 5,720 | 17,891 | 6,559 | 13,629 | 107,219 |
| Total pop. in December 1950 | 1,333,246 | 1,975,337 | 444,929 | 1,043,219 | 292,463 | 847,295 | 5,936,489 |
Ostpolitik
In the 1970s, West Germany adopted Ostpolitik in foreign relations, which strove to normalise relations with its neighbours by recognising the realities of the European order of the time, and abandoning elements of the Hallstein Doctrine. West Germany also abandoned for the time being its claims with respect to German self-determination and reunification, recognising the existence of the German Democratic Republic ; and the validity of the Oder–Neisse line in international law." As part of this new approach, West Germany concluded friendship treaties with the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia ; and participated in the Helsinki Final Act. Nevertheless, West Germany continued its long term objective of achieving a reunification of East Germany, West Germany and Berlin; and maintained that its formal recognition of the post-war boundaries of Germany would need to be confirmed by a united Germany in the context of a Final Settlement of the Second World War. Some West German commentators continued to maintain that neither the Treaty of Zgorzelec nor the Treaty of Warsaw should be considered as binding on a future united Germany; albeit that these reservations were intended for domestic political consumption, and the arguments advanced in support of them had no substance in international law.Present status
Over time, the "German question" has been muted by a number of related phenomena:- The passage of time resulted in fewer people being left who have firsthand experience of living in these regions under German jurisdiction.
- In the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany, Germany renounced all claims to territory east of the Oder–Neisse line. Germany's recognition of the border was repeated in the German–Polish Border Treaty on November 14, 1990. The treaties were made by both German states and ratified in 1991 by a united Germany.
- The expansion of the European Union towards east in 2004 enabled any German wishing to live and work in Poland, and thus east of the Oder–Neisse line, to do so without requiring a permit. German expellees and refugees became free to visit their former homes and set up residence, though some restrictions remained on the purchase of land and buildings.
- Poland entered the Schengen Area on December 21, 2007, removing all border controls on its border with Germany.
In the course of the German reunification, Chancellor Helmut Kohl accepted the territorial changes made after World War II, creating some outrage among the Federation of Expellees, while some Poles were concerned about a possible revival of their 1939 trauma through a "second German invasion", this time with the Germans buying back their land, which was cheaply available at the time. This happened on a smaller scale than many Poles expected, and the Baltic Sea coast of Poland has become a popular German tourist destination. The so-called "homesickness-tourism" which was often perceived as quite aggressive well into the 1990s now tends to be viewed as a good-natured nostalgia tour rather than an expression of anger and desire for the return of the lost territories.
Some organisations in Germany continue to claim the territories for Germany or property there for German citizens. The Prussian Trust, that probably has less than a hundred members, re-opened the old dispute when in December 2006, it submitted 23 individual claims against the Polish government to the European Court of Human Rights asking for compensation or return of property appropriated from its members at the end of World War II. An expert report jointly commissioned by the German and Polish governments from specialists in international law have confirmed that the proposed complaints by the Prussian Trust had little hope of success. But the German government cannot prevent such requests being made and the Polish government has felt that the submissions warranted a comment by Anna Fotyga, the Polish Minister of the Foreign Affairs to "express deepest concern upon receiving the information about a claim against Poland submitted by the Prussian Trust to the European Court of Human Rights". On 9 October 2008 the European Court of Human Rights declared the case of Preussische Treuhand v. Poland inadmissible, because the European Convention on Human Rights does not impose any obligations on the Contracting States to return property which was transferred to them before they ratified the Convention.
After the National Democratic Party of Germany, described as a neo-Nazi organisation, won six seats in the parliament of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in September 2006, the leader of the party, Udo Voigt, declared that his party demands Germany in "historical borders" and questioned the current border treaties.