Of Hope & Heimatsrecht

To Germans, the word Heimat (homeland) has a deep sentimental significance. From political exiles such as Poet Heinrich Heine in 1831 (Ich hatte einst ein schones Vaterland) to modern-day emigres in the Americas whose eyes fill with tears at the memory of some sooty mill town in the Ruhrgebiet, Heimat is that distant place you came from--and forever recall over beers and tears. Last week all of West Germany was aroused over the Heimat issue as political reality clashed head-on with sentiment.

At the heart of the matter are the "lost territories" east of the Oder and Neisse rivers--a 44,130-sq.-mi. chunk of prewar Germany that was ceded to Poland in 1945 by the victors of World War II. In the process, nearly 12 million Germans were uprooted and sent streaming westward in an apocalyptic migration that took 2,000,000 lives. Some 8,000,000 "expellees" remain in West Germany today, and though many have lost much of their fierce irredentist zeal, their presence is a constant reminder to the German government of the need to regain the lost territories and thus reaffirm the hereditary German Heimatsrecht.

Right v. Right. Bonn's policy, from the early days of Konrad Adenauer through the present regime of Ludwig Erhard, has never publicly changed. Official West German maps label Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia Zurzeit unter Polnischer Verwaltung (temporarily under Polish administration), and Germans still refer wistfully to Wroclaw as Breslau. Bonn argues that until a reunited Germany negotiates its final World War II peace treaty with the Big Four (as called for in the 1945 Potsdam Agreement), Germany's boundaries remain those of 1937--the year before Adolf Hitler began his Gross Deutschland annexations.

Many West Germans see in the Oder-Neisse territories a high card that can be played in a deal with the Reds for reunification. The Bonn government, including Foreign Minister Gerhard Schroder, would like to use them as a bargaining lever for establishment of an all-German government and the convening of a peace conference. But the Poles--who have moved 8,500,000 migrants of their own into the lost territories--are equally adamant that formal recognition of the Oder-Neisse boundary must precede any settlement of the German question.

Last October the West German Evangelical Church, a 30 million-member amalgam of the nation's major Protestant churches, decided to blast the Oder-Neisse question off dead center. In a 44-page memorandum, the church argued that German legal claims to the lost territories were balanced by the "grave injustice" done to Poland by Nazi

Germany. After all, 6,000,000 Poles-half of them Jewish--were killed by Hitler. "Right stands against right," declared the memorandum, "or--still more dramatically--injustice against injustice." Nowhere did the memorandum demand a dropping of the expellees' claims, but it did ask for a "spirit of reconciliation." The response was far from conciliatory.

Beitz & Barks. The expellee Evangelical Bishop of Schleswig-Holstein resigned in protest; the Socialist chairman of the Expellees' Federation cried out against the offense to Heimatsrecht. Swastikas sprouted on walls in normally progressive Berlin. Evangelical Bishop Hanns Lilje of Hanover received scores of hate letters, and Berlin Editorialist Karl Silex (himself a native of Stettin, now Szczecin), who welcomed the memorandum as a departure from "taboos and legal claims," found the front door of his house in flames--the work of Hetmat-righteous zealots.

The violence and vituperation were doubtless the work of a lunatic fringe, but it made many politicians wonder if the time would ever be ripe for a realistic abandonment of the "lost territories." A poll by the authoritative Aliens-bach Institute this year showed that only 28% of West Germans still believe that Pomerania, Silesia and East Prussia will ever be returned to Germany--compared with 66% in 1953. But 23% is still a good-sized practical fragment to deal with.

Some take heart from the considerable increase in West German trade with the East, arguing that the way to bring the Berlin Wall tumbling down and to move toward reunification is to revitalize the incipient desire for goods and services behind the rusting Iron Curtain. It was with Bonn's tacit approval that Krupp General Manager Berthold Beitz began reconnoitering Eastern Europe in 1959. Beitz has since signed deals worth $72 million for everything from fishing-boat engines for Bulgaria to a cement factory for Yugoslavia. Other industrialists followed. All told, West German exports to the East have quintupled since 1955 to more than $500 million a year. West German trade missions are active in Russia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland.

It was not so easy for the flag to follow the trade. Just before last September's elections, Schroder hinted that he would like to see West German missions in East European countries elevated to embassies--and was quickly shouted down by Bavaria's Conservative Leader Franz Josef Strauss. Blessed with the backing of C.D.U. Chairman Konrad Adenauer, Strauss still has it in for Schroder for his role in the 1962 Spiegel affair, which cost Strauss his job as Defense Minister. Accused of being "soft" on the "Eastern question," Schroder quickly backed away.

To Strauss & Co., Schroder is also suspect for his views on Oder-Neisse, although his public words on the subject have been conventional enough. Recently, he expressed the government's view on the church memorandum: "We must not abandon or weaken our position in regard to the German eastern territories," he said, "unless there is a relation to the reunification problem." His colleague in the C.D.U., Hamburg Party Chairman Erik Blumenfeld, went a long step farther. "A solution of the border question," he said, "can only be reached by balancing the interests of the two parties involved. The overwhelming interest of Germany consists of the desire for reunification and the interest of Poland in stable borders." If at a peace conference it proved impossible for the German negotiators to break Polish opposition, Blumenfeld added, "one will have to accept the present Oder-Neisse border."

That drew sniffs of disdain from the C.D.U.'s right wing. But at least it brought the long-argued internal debate on reunification strategy out into the open. To that end, the Evangelical memorandum had served its purpose.

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