By Maik Ullmann

"We expellees renounce revenge and retaliation" says the Charter of the German Expellees. This was signed on August 5, 1950 by 30 representatives of the individual Landsmannschaften and interest groups of the expellees. It was intended to serve as a symbol of peace and at the same time to express acceptance of the Oder-Neisse line established at the Potsdam Conference in August 1945. Just one year later, on August 5, 1951, the Federal Republic of Germany celebrated the first official Homeland Day. On the occasion of this day, the Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung printed a foreword by the first chairman of the Central Association of Expelled Germans (ZvD) of the district association Gifhorn e.V., Dr. Ohly. In it it says strikingly: "To the 'Day of Potsdam', the day on which the greatest crime against humanity was sanctioned according to the will of the victors, we expellees consciously oppose the 'Day of the Homeland'."-__-0000-__- If Ohly here eloquently denounces a supposed victor's justice, then he formulates at the end of his letter the revisionist hope that "once the dawn of a day shines, on which it is said: Ostland is ours again!" On that Day of the Homeland, on the initiative of the ZvD local group Fallersleben and the United East German Landsmannschaften, the memorial "For the Dead of the Eastern Expellees" was inaugurated on the Schlossplatz Fallersleben.-__-0001-__-.

The celebration had been preceded by about a year of discussion and planning between the parish church council, the town of Fallersleben and the board of the local ZvD, at the end of which the following resolution went to the parish church council in Fallersleben in June 1950: "The board of the local chapter of the Central Association of Expelled Germans has decided, in agreement with the members of the Z.v.D., to erect a memorial which is to be dedicated on the Day of the Homeland in October. This memorial is intended to commemorate the dead of the expellees, both those killed in action and those still buried in the old homeland and the 2 ½ million Germans who, having fled and been expelled from the old homeland, have not arrived here and have disappeared."-__-0002-__- Of the approximately 5,000 inhabitants of the town of Fallersleben, a little more than 2,000 were expellees in 1947.-__-0002-__- Of the approximately 5,000 inhabitants of the town of Fallersleben, a little more than 2,000 were expellees in 1947.__-0003-__- Accordingly, the desire was present within the community to create a memorial site that would absorb the collective grief of the displaced and also serve as a substitute for a cemetery. "-__-0004-__-m sight of the church", on the centrally located Schlossplatz, a wooden cross was to be erected for this purpose according to the wishes of the ZvD.-__-0005-__-.

As a place of silent remembrance, the erection of memorials to displaced persons near churches or directly on church grounds is not uncommon.-__-0000-__- The choice of location and the form of the memorial are first and foremost an expression of the faith of the displaced persons; moreover, they manifest the associations' intention to erect both a memorial sign and a representative tomb. It was intended to commemorate the former German territories east of the Oder-Neisse line, which it was hoped would one day be re-located within the German borders. It was also intended to commemorate the dead whose graves now lay in the state of Poland and, as was often said, had allegedly been turned into "potato fields and building lots."-__-0001-__- Both levels find written manifestation in the inscriptions on the monument: Thus, on the crossbeam of the oak cross, in gold-leaf block letters, it reads: "The expellees to your dead." In addition, the four sides of the natural stone block enumerate four former German provinces: East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia and West Prussia.

As the minutes of the Fallersleben council meeting of August 22, 1950 at first lead one to believe,-__-0002-__- Mayor Karl Heise, the building committee as well as the refugee representation had unawares agreed to move the "oldest Waterlood memorial in the province of Hanover"-__-0003-__- rebuilt in 1932 in favor of the "Totenehrenmal-__-0004-__-" to the Kanonenplatz -__-0005-__- on Hoffmannstraße.-.__-0006-__- However, concerns were then raised within the Council, as can be seen from the minutes of a meeting of the Building, Finance and Administration Committee of September 1, 1950: After Councilman Böllhoff had spoken out in favor of the monument remaining in its place, Mayor Heise initially decided to postpone the decision until September 4, in order to allow the meeting participants to view the castle park beforehand.-__-0007-__- That inspection commission, consisting of some councilmen and "refugee representatives", decided unanimously after this appointment to erect the memorial on the "church square between the copper beech and the plane tree".-__-0008-__- But even this decision was to be revised three weeks later. Because the Fallersleber Superintendent of the Evangelical Lutheran St. Michaelis Church expressed due to "the importance of the memorial" -__-0009-__- concerns and tried to prevent the installation on the church square. What concerns these were in detail is not clear from the letter. Whether this decision was due to confessional motives, since the cross as a form of the expellee memorial was widely used among Catholic expellees, cannot be said with certainty.-__-0010-__-

The former mayor and at that time acting city director of Fallersleben, Otto Wolgast, was the one who finally knew how to end the planning phase with a specific suggestion: in order to "avoid further time-consuming negotiations", he proposed to erect "the cross on city-__-0011-__- ground u-__-0012-__- ground" west of the Waterloodenkmal.-.__-0013-__- After about a month of deliberation, the ZvD agreed to the administration's proposal and at the same time asked for an "immediate start" to the construction project.-__-0014-__- With the help of own funds provided by the association as well as donations from the Fallersleber Aktien-Zuckerfabrik -__-0015-__- and the city administration -__-0016-__- the construction of the memorial could finally be realized according to the specifications of the architect Alfred Hinderlich of the Braunschweig construction company Zierreis in the summer of 1951.

However, placed in the immediate vicinity of such monuments dedicated to German victories, the "Cross of the East" acquires a certain unbalance: if the Waterloo Monument commemorates a historic victory inspiring the awakening German national consciousness, the Germania is a stone expression of German unity and greatness after the victory over France in 1871. The "Cross of the East" on Schlossplatz, on the other hand, undeniably evokes a German defeat; a defeat of which the population was aware, but whose consequences it did not know how to accept, at least in part.

Sources:

-__-0000-__- "Kriegsvertriebene gedenken der Heimat," in: Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, August 4/5, 1951. The Wolfsburger Nachrichten printed the foreword without the revisionist passage: "The homeland demands loyalty!" In: Wolfsburger Nachrichten, August 4/5, 1951.
-__-0001-__- StadtA WOB, HA 10843, vol. 1, "Zur Weihe des Ehrenmals," July 1951.
-__-0002-__- StadtA WOB, HA 10843, vol. 1, "Der Zentralverband vertriebener Deutscher an den Gemeindekirchenrat in Fallersleben," dated June 21, 1950.
-__-0003-__- Christian Schröder, "'...also got away quite well' - From the End of the War into the Economic Miracle," in: Stadt Wolfsburg (ed.), Hoffmannstadt Fallersleben. Time Travel through a Millennium. Braunschweig 2010, pp. 306-325, here p. 306.
-__-0004-__- StadtA WOB, HA 10843, vol. 1, The Central Association of Expelled Germans to the Community Church Council in Fallersleben dated June 21, 1950.
-__-0005-__- Stephan Scholz, Vertriebenendenkmäler. Topography of a German Landscape of Remembrance. Paderborn 2015, p. 63.
-__-0006-__- StadtA WOB, HA 10843, vol. 1, The Central Association of Displaced Germans to the Parish Church Council in Fallersleben dated June 21, 1950.
-__-0007-__- StadtA WOB, HA 10843, vol. 1, Minutes, Re: Cemetery of Honor and Monument of Honor, dated August 22, 1950.
-__-0008-__- Otto Heinrichs, "Das älteste Waterloodenkmal in der Provinz Hannover," in: Paul Ahrens (ed.), Kreiskalender für Gifhorn-Isenhagen. A local history book for the year 1934. Wittingen 1934, pp. 69-72, here p. 69.
-__-0009-__- A so-called "booty cannon" from World War I was displayed here until April 1947. It arrived in Fallersleben from Liège, Belgium, as early as 1915, was restored during the Second World War, and finally had to be removed in March 1947 by order No. 30 of the Allied Control Council.
-__-0010-__- StadtA WOB, HA 10843, Vol. 1, Minutes, Re: Cemetery of Honor and Monument of Honor dated August 22, 1950.
-__-0011-__- StadtA WOB, HA 10843, vol. 1, Joint meeting of the Administration and Finance Committee and the Building Committee, September 1, 1950.
-__-0012-__- StadtA WOB, HA 10843, Bd. 1, Note No. 73, Joint inspection of the Administrative and Finance Committee and the Building Committee concerning the memorial to the dead of the refugees, September 4, 1950.
-__-0013-__- StadtA WOB, HA 10843, vol. 1, Superintendent's Office Fallersleben to the Fallersleben city administration dated September 25, 1950.
-__-0014-__- On this, Scholz, Vertriebenendenkmäler (as note 6), pp. 77f.
-__-0015-__- StadtA WOB, HA 10843, vol. 1, submission to the meeting of the Administration and Finance Committee of September 19, 1950.
-__-0016-__- StadtA WOB, HA 10843, Bd. 1, Zentralverband der vertriebenen Deutschen, Kreisverband Gifhorn e.V., Ortsgruppe Fallersleben to the Fallersleben town council, October 26, 1950.
-__-0017-__- StadtA WOB, HA 10843, vol. 1, Aktien-Zuckerfabrik Fallersleben to the Fallersleben town administration, June 18, 1951.
-__-0018-__- StadtA WOB, HA 10843, vol. 1, submission to the meeting of the Administration and Finance Committee of May 25, 1951.


Published on 7.11.2018