Commemorating vanished ‘homelands’: Displaced Germans and their Heimat Europa

The ideological foundation for that policy was the country’s experience of integrating millions of ethnic German expellees and refugees from Central and Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War. The settlement of German-speaking people in Central and Eastern European regions was extensive and varied. Emphasis on historically ‘German’ territories has been crucial for the Landsmannschaften although the boundaries of these territories were often historically fuzzy, making them ethnic frontiers rather than discrete territories. ‘Europe’ has been a salient figure of internal discourse and external self-projection for the Landsmannschaft, which, through its youth organisation, the Sudetendeutsche Jugend, has shaped the Deutsche Jugend des Ostens (DJO) significantly. Like the DJO, both the Landsmannschaft and the Sudetendeutsche Jugend have always comprised elements of a very broad spectrum of political orientations. ‘Europe’ appears in all the performances more in the convivial ‘multi-cultural’ version championed by the Paneuropa-Union, which resembles the loosely structured Holy Roman Empire rather than European Union.