Veranstaltung: Integration and Exclusion: Migrants in 1950s West Germany - guest lecture by Anna Holian (Arizona State University)

In her talk, Anna Holian (Arizona State University) will explore the experiences and treatment of migrants in the new West German state, including expellees and displaced persons. The event takes place in cooperation with Denkraum Ukraine, the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies, and the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS).

Abstract | This talk will examine the integration and exclusion of foreigners in West Germany during the 1950s. Integration is often seen as a German policy objective of recent provenance, linked to the end of the “guest worker” program and the growing recognition that many presumed temporary foreign workers had become permanent residents. However, integration was also a key aim during the early postwar period. This is evident when one looks at policies aimed at German refugees, but it was also central to policies directed towards former “displaced persons” and other so-called “international refugees." In my presentation, I will examine how both the West German government and international organizations sought to integrate refugees economically, focusing in particular on efforts to promote what we would now call economic “self-reliance.” I will also discuss how economic integration was paired with efforts to keep foreigners unintegrated in cultural terms.

Bio | Anna Holian is Associate Professor of at the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. She is a cultural and social historian of twentieth-century Europe, specializing in Germany and the reconstruction of Europe after World War II. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, DAAD, and the German Historical Institutes, among others. She teaches courses on modern German history, the Holocaust, fascism, migration, post-1945 Europe, and history and film.