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Historic Eastern Germany or Ex-German Eastern Territories are the regions which had large settled German communities east of the Oder and Neisse rivers before World War II and had been part of an united Germany nation for a number of generations. It is not about the region in Germany of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) which in the English speaking world often called East Germany.
The news media in the English speaking world have continued to use the term "east Germany" to describe the five lander (provinces) that make up the old GDR
region of the reunited Germany. They have done this because of the need to have a short label which their viewers and readers understand when describing the economic and social problem which have beset the region since 1990.
However before World War II there were large settled German communities east of the Oder-Neisse rivers, which were included as part of the first modern political unified Germany, which was created in the second half of the 1800s. From that time until the end of World War II anywhere in Germany east of Berlin, would be described as east Germany. Before unification they would not normally have been referred to collectively but by the names of the principalities or Hanseatic port names.
The former territories to the east of the Oder-Neisse rivers included: East Brandenburg, Silesia, East Prussia, West Prussia, Pomerania, and Posen.
At the end of World War II the lands east of the Oder-Neisse rivers, on which the settled German communities lived, were removed from German jurisdiction and placed into the jurisdiction of other countries. Those of the German-speaking population which had not already been evacuated by German authorities, or fled from the advancing Red Army in the winter of 1944/1945, were expelled, without compensation, from theses areas when the borders were moved. Since that time to refer to these lands in any way as as "east Germany" has had political connotations, which means that any article which discusses this issue is likely to be contentious.
The contention has been somewhat dissipated over the last twenty years by three related phenomena:
- The passage of time means that there are fewer and fewer people alive who have firsthand experience of these regions under German jurisdiction.
- Until the Treaty on the Final Settlement, the official government German view of the status of areas vacated by settled German communities east of the Oder-Neisse rivers was that the areas were "temporarily under Polish [or Soviet] administration". To facilitate wide international acceptance of German re-unification in 1990 the German political establishment recognised the "facts on the ground" and accepted clauses in the Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany whereby Germany renounced all claims to territory east of the Oder-Neisse line. This allowed the treaty to be negotiated quickly and for German unification to go ahead quickly, which was seen as a priority by most sections of the German political establishment of the time.
- The expansion east of the European Union (EU), means that within a few years if any German wishes to live east of in the Oder-Neisse rivers, inside the EU, he or she will have the legal right to do so, but he or she will have to pay market prices to rent or purchase property (rather than being able to simply repossess any realty owned prior to the expulsion of Germans following World War II).
Until 1990 German irredentists, mainly from families expelled from this territory, but also to many other Germans, the terms "eastern Germany" and "east Germany" referred to the area east of Berlin which had been settled by German-speaking communities before World War II including those east of the Oder-Neisse rivers. The area from Berlin to the Elbe river, or possibly slightly further west, was called "middle Germany" (Mitteldeutschland). This could cause confusion when translated into English because, in English usage between 1949 and 1990, "East Germany" referred exclusively the area of Germany known as the GDR.
The problem with the status of settled German communities east of the Oder-Neisse rivers was that in 1945 the concluding document of the Potsdam Conference was not a legally binding treaty, but a memorandum. It regulated the issue of the eastern German border, which was to be the Oder-Neisse line, but the final article of the memorandum said that the final regulations concerning Germany were subject to a separate peace treaty. This treaty was not signed until 1990, with the "Treaty on the Final Settlement". This meant that for 45 years, people on both sides of the border (and issue) could not be sure that the settlement reached in 1945 would not be changed at some future date.
In the course of the German reunification process, Chancellor Kohl had to accept the perpetual loss of the territories where now Polish or Russian people lived who had no reason for going away. This caused outrage (and possibly cost some votes of this traditionally conservative grouping), especially among the Expellees who had hoped to get their land back. Many Poles were concerned about a possible revival of their 1939 trauma through a second German invasion, this time with money, the Germans buying all their land - which was cheaply available at the time. This happened, but on a smaller scale than many would have thought, and since the Baltic Sea coast in Poland has become popular with German tourists, Germans are now often welcome guests. The so-called "homesickness-tourism" which was often perceived as quite aggressive well into the 1990s now has the tendency to be a good-natured nostalgia tour rather than a source of anger and desire for reconquest of the lost territories.
According to the Federation of Expellees (Bund der Vertriebenen), 15 million people were displaced from their homes and over 2 million people were killed or died during the process. However, these numbers are sometimes disputed by revisionists.
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