Migration category for East Germany / German Democratic Republic

Question

While preparing for our WikiTree Day presentation we discovered that the German Democratic Republic ("Deutsche Demokratische Republik", DDR) is barely represented in our category structure for migration categories (also in our Germany Location Field Guidelines, but that's a different topic).

How do we want to deal with this? My suggestion would be, to leave Category: Germany, Emigrants as is, in order to cover the Federal Republic of Germany ("Bundesrepublik Deutschland") since about "after World War II" until present-day. Its subcategories for the five "new states" Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt and Thüringen should be only used after the reunification of 1990.

I suggest to introduce a separate "Category:<the other Germany, Emigrants", which would receive the 14 districts as Emigrants subcategories (maybe without Berlin?).

Also splitting "Germany, Emigrants" into "before and after reunification", I do not recommend, since the eleven "old states" had the same names as today and we would then need to add suffixes like "(before 1990)", which would make the whole thing really clumsy. Also the name of the "Federal Republic of Germany" did not change during re-unification, so there would also a suffix be needed. Additionally I expect a lot more Emigrants from East Germany/GDR than from West Germany during those ca. 50 years. Also English Wikipedia has the country filed under East Germany.

As name for the new Emigrants category I suggest "East Germany, Emigrants", because it's a lot more handy than "German Democratic Republic, Emigrants". My assumption is, that foreigners also will more likely understand what is meant with "East Germany", than with the "German Democratic Republic".

What is your opinion about this approach - both in general and regarding the name for the category?

Comments

A different question.

I can understand that it was very important to migrate from East Germany to West Germany.

I am not so sure how this works in emigration categories to other countries around the world. In the emigration categories to other countries, how many folk wanted to identify as emigrating from "East Germany" rather than simply "Germany"?

Answer 1

For international comprehensibility purposes, I understand (and would support) the "East Germany" category title. However, as East Germany is a geographical description - there still is an East in Germany after 1990, as there was prior to 1949 -, we may need to include the time frame, e.g. "East Germany (1949-1990), Emigrants".

Comments

Oliver, "East Germany (GDR)" is easily understood.

Florian is asking a good question about migration categories. Inside Wikitree, is it a good idea to recognise East Germany as a distinct country, then have migration categories from "East Germany" to "West Germany"?
 I understand your answer "East Germany (1949-1990), Emigrants"

Answer 2

Is this separation even needed? 

The German Democratic Republic was not a separate country by standards of international law. Hence, we could simplify, and stick with just considering tagging "Emigrants from Germany". See also:

"Von der Bundesrepublik Deutschland wurde der DDR daher bis zum Ende lediglich die staatsrechtliche Anerkennung ausgesprochen, auch wenn ihr Status als Völkerrechtssubjekt vom Bundesverfassungsgericht bestätigt wurde. Die Bundesrepublik bekräftigte aber bereits im Moskauer und Warschauer Vertrag den Status quo und die staatliche Souveränität der DDR."

• https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%A4ambel_des_Grundgesetzes_f%C3%BCr_die_Bundesrepublik_Deutschland#Historischer_Wortlaut
• https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallstein-Doktrin
• https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grundlagenvertrag
• https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Wiedervereinigung
• https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einigungsvertrag

Given the socialist terror regime the GDR was - almost "by the Grace of Russia" - and the current influence Russia has in our nation's current political affairs, particularly in Eastern Germany, it will be a stronger statement to stick to such a simplified view. 

Comments

I only brought this point up because [https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Migration_Category_Structure Migration Category Structure] specifies:

(...) Notes:

1. While internal migration (within one geopolitical entity) is the dominant form globally (e.g. the general trend of movement from rural to urban areas)², it is not covered under the scope of this categorization structure. For internal migration that is important to genealogical research,Category: Regions or Template:Nonmigrating Ancestor should be used.
2. (...)

There was a half-Jew on TV (Markus Lanz) the other day, who said that his Jewish father was deported and killed by the Nazis and his mother with many children fled from where they lived in (now West-Germany) to East Prussia (now Poland) and settled there for a few years because the kids that were harrassed in school would not be identified as half-Jews in East Prussia. They returned only before the Russians came, which was when they marched back to Hamburg. We would not consider this migration, because it happened in one country at the time. We could add a non-migrating ancestor  sticker, highlighting that they flew/migrated from Westphalia to East Prussia and from East Prussia to Hamburg during WWII.

Also, the Germany project has specified:

"Germany-related migration categories in general follow the Migration Category Structure. But as opposed to the location categories, the categories for migration from location A to location B are in English and use historic names. That's what the subcategories of Category: German History are for."

Do we consider people migrating from East Berlin to West-Berlin in 1946 as having migrated? Do we consider people having migrated from Saxony to Lower-Saxony in 1948 as having migrated? 

Wouldn't we need to create separate historic migration categories for the "Bundesländer" under British, American, French and Russian occupation pre-Grundgesetz? They would have self-identified as "I am from the British zone" or "the Russian Sector in Berlin". What about Saarland, see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saarland_1947_bis_1956?

If we considered the "BRD" and "DDR" as two countries and not one nation, would they both need to be created under "German History", because East Germans might also have a legitimate claim for "Germany, Emigrants" / "Germany, Immigrants" during the GDR's existence. The GDR also had the ambition in its' constituation to create a unified socialist state. Assuming that "Germany, Emigrants" is for Western Germany might be seen negatively be Eastern Germans (Ossi-Wessi-Konflikt). Wouldn't we be better off having West Germany to separate the two?

I was only trying to keep it simple, but as I said, I am also very interested in looking at the migration from East to West (and the other way around), but then wouldn't we need to look at 1945-1949 and then 1949 - 1990 separately?

How would the substructure look like? Was your suggestion to add under "East Germany, Emigrants" categories for "Migrants from Saxony to Lower-Saxony" and these would hang off "East Germany, Emigrants to Germany" and "Germany, Immigrants from East Germany"? Is that understanding correct? We would also have to create "East Germany, Immigrants from Cuba", and "East Germany, Immigrants from Mosambik" and "East Germany, Immigrants from Vietnam", etc.?

I hope the discussion is helpful?!

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I also saw the Markus Lanz show with Ivar Buterfas-Frankenthal, Hanna Veiler and Mehmet Can - more evidence for the complexity of the issues discussed, just like inner-German migration!

I‘ve come to the conclusion that differentiating East and West Germany in the category structure is not helpful - thanks, Sven, for your detailed arguments!

For migration pre-1806, there is only one country, viz. „Holy Roman Empire“ but various subregions, resulting in categories like „Principality of Nassau-Siegen, Emigrants to Colonial America“. Maybe, that could work for post-1945 as well, i.e. creating categories for the four zones 1945-1949 and the 14 Bezirke 1952-1990. In which case we wouldn‘t categorize inner-German migration but „only“ cross-border migration like e.g. British Zone to Belgium, Bezirk Halle to Cuba or Poland to Bezirk Dresden. (The category „Deutsche Demokratische Republik“ could possibly be used as an intermediate category.) Would that be a „simple“ solution that is in agreement with WikiTree’s migration category guidelines and that most if not all Germany Project members could agree on?

I still agree that a category for persons fleeing East Germany between 1949 and 1990 would be desirable. Finding a term that is agreeable to all will be a challenge („Republikflüchtlinge“ definitely won’t work!).

Pity I wasn’t able to join the Stammtisch last night …

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Trying to summarize the Stammtisch discussion from yesterday (my perception):

• We pretty much agreed, that having a separate category for people migrating from GDR might be a good idea. In my opinion there are so many fates of people fleeing which contributes to them having some kind of common identity as "GDR refugees". I'm not aware that there's such a strong thing for people moving from French occupation zone to the British one or from Saarland to West Germany.
• We couldn't come to an agreement, if that category should be "German Democratic Republic" or "East Germany", while we acknowledged that most of the US better know "East Germany"
• "East Germany" was considered "wrong" without having a "West Germany". Having "West Germany" on the other would be complicated or useless, since 11 of the state categories would be identical and would need both parents ("Germany" and "West Germany"), leading to an even bigger mess than we already have with German Empire and German Confederation and multiple states being in both of them.
• We agreed that the subcategories of that GDR migration category would ne named "Magdeburg District" etc.
• After having slept on it, my favorite category name might even be "German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Emigrants", in order for the Americans to also find it. I would assume that one can assign a district category to most people anyway, so the category would mostly only server as a parent for the district categories, without containing too many actual profiles.

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@Sven:

I was only trying to keep it simple, but as I said, I am also very interested in looking at the migration from East to West (and the other way around), but then wouldn't we need to look at 1945-1949 and then 1949 - 1990 separately?

We could, but I'm worried of the exponential explosion of the "Immigrants from .." categories for the other regions. I think those almost 50 years are somehow a bit more historically important, than the few in-between years.

How would the substructure look like? Was your suggestion to add under "East Germany, Emigrants" categories for "Migrants from Saxony to Lower-Saxony" and these would hang off "East Germany, Emigrants to Germany" and "Germany, Immigrants from East Germany"? Is that understanding correct? We would also have to create "East Germany, Immigrants from Cuba", and "East Germany, Immigrants from Mosambik" and "East Germany, Immigrants from Vietnam", etc.?

That would pretty much be the plan, yes. I didn't have those on the map explicitly, but it might even be of additional benefit, to be able to separate the West from the East German Cuba immigrants and to see that both might have existed.

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Thanks, Captain Flo, for the helpful summary!

I could live with "German Democratic Republic (East Germany)" as the English equivalent of "Deutsche Demokratische Republik", and then subcategory "..., Emigrants".

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Good discussion. Helped clarify a few questions I had.

Thanks for the feedback/input esp. also around the implications for teams working on other geographies.

Agree - the post WWII Germany migration categories should cover 1945-1990.

If we split out the migration categories for the two states, we might consider an abbreviated version "GDR (East Germany)" as that is a bit shorter in English?!

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The country category name is not going to appear often. I prefer the long version "German Democratic Republic (East Germany)" to avoid any misunderstanding.

Most profiles will be placed in the sub-categories, for example "Magdeburg, Emigrants".

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Well, we have to start somewhere, so I created the appropriate migrant category for my maternal grandmother: Migrants from Erfurt District to Lower Saxony

As I‘m not part of the categorization project and don’t want to produce any wrong intermediate categories, I haven’t created any of those yet but left them as red links. Hopefully, someone else will be happy to create them.

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Thanks for creating a bit of pressure, Oliver

I filled the parent categories (after Margaret had created them and put them into Category: Pending German Categories. Migration Category Helper from the WikiTree Browser Extension will also support those categories in the next preview version (probably it will also be part of the next stable version).

Our Categorization Guidelines have also been updated.

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Oh great, thanks!!!

Now I can at least continue with those relatives who migrated from Erfurt District. :)