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Thementexttyp
Background article
Russian-German history as migration history
Russian Germans are a global minority. Their history is often characterized by migration within and outside the Russian Empire spanning several generations. In the last third of the 19th century, popular migration destinations included North and South America as well as new settlement areas in Siberia and Kazakhstan. It was here that all Russian Germans were then exiled during and after the Second World War. Since the latest period of resettlement in the 1980s and 1990s, most Russian Germans have settled in Germany.
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Spoon Stories
What do you take with you when you are forced to flee your home empty-handed? Which object will be indispensable in everyday life and vital for emergencies? An exhibition project by the consultant for cultural affairs Magdalena Oxfort shows the role that spoons, of all things, can play in people's lives when they face exceptional circumstances and also in their memory of these events.
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Summer 1941: Jews from the Baltic States flee for their lives
The long shadow of the past. Only a few Jews from Lithuania and Latvia managed to escape the Holocaust in the Baltics. Here are some of their accounts and the reasons for their difficult escape.
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Object story
Swimming to Freedom
On the night of May 22-23, 1979, 36-year-old Gernot Eamandi swims across the heavily guarded Danube from Romania to Yugoslavia. His destination: the Federal Republic of Germany. With him: a backpack from his army days.
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Symbols of enduring hope
When they fled, many refugees hoped that they would be able to return later. A bunch of keys from Marienburg, which has been preserved in the West Prussian State Museum, bears witness to this hope.
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Biography
The Four Lehndorff Daughters
"I lost my home," Vera von Lehndorff once said, "but lost childhood is a better description." When her father was executed on September 4, 1944, she was five years old. Her sister Eleonore, "Nona," was six and a half, and Gabriele was two. Catharina was only 19 days old; she was born in the Torgau prison hospital. The Nazis had taken the girls and their mother Gottliebe into custody, a practice known in German as "Sippenhaft” or “kin liability". It was a traumatic time and was by no means over when the war ended in 1945.
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The History of the German-speaking Volhynians as Part of a Global Migration History
From the mid-nineteenth century onward, innovations such as steam navigation and the advent of the railroad led to a sharp increase in global migration movements. The German-speaking Volhynians were part of this development, which moved between the ideal-typical poles of voluntary and forced migration and was significantly influenced by the enforcement of the ethnonational principle. This article focuses on the emigration movements of this group from the Russian governorate of Volhynia in the period between the 1860s and the First World War. The subsequent forced migrations of the German-speaking Volhynians are also briefly discussed.
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The Uprooted Ones – Lemkos in Galicia and abroad
The small, private Museum of Lemko Culture in Zyndranowa is situated on the far periphery of southeastern Poland, yet it is a destination for many travelers, mainly from western and northern Poland, but also from other parts of the country and from abroad. For many, a visit here is connected with questions of identity and with the search for traces of family history. At the open-air museum, visitors can experience, among other things, the farm of the Gocz family and learn a great deal about the life of the villagers.
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Biography
Two German-Baltic noblemen and a Polish coachman fleeing from Wartheland to Hesse, early 1945
A typewritten report from the refugee journey, several letters and a general map give an insight into how the noblewomen Irmela von Manteuffel, Adline von Campenhausen and their coachman Johann Borowczyk fled westward from the Soviet Army in early 1945.
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With Grandma's Laundry Basket, Running for our Lives
A nondescript woven wicker basket stands in the storeroom of the Martin Opitz Library in Herne. The handles on either side indicate that it might once have served as a laundry basket. With its four rather makeshift wheels, however, the basket tells more than just a family story; it also tells of local history and a story of escape.