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Table of Content

  I The  Village…………………………………………….3

  II The Mutual Celebration 4  

  III The Ruin as a Memorial for Many 5  

  IV Mutually Remembered History 7  

  V The Continued Existence of the Community 10  

  VI The Leaving of the  Village…………………………...12

  VII The Reality Shock of  1990…………………………...13

  VIII Mutual Mourning 14  

  IX Report about the conference 15  

  X Endnotes Literature 22  

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I. The Village

In the 20 th century no decisive event left its mark on the people of Central Europe as much as the time of the Second World War. War, death, and the separation of families were sources of suffering that had—and have—to be integrated, to be repressed, to be understood, and to be remembered. I would like to make the focus of my discussion a village, its people, and their fates and memories. The pictures you will see, uncommented, in the next half hour are being shown with the ex- press permission of the surviving villagers and their Czech friends. I am compro- mising to a certain extent the usual standards of scholarship because my mother’s family forms a part of the community about which I am reporting.

Here I want to examine two questions: How is the past of the village re- membered and how are these memories connected with the expulsion of its in- habitants and the village’s subsequent fate? And how was memory constructed after 1990, and what forms does it take today?

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To establish different levels of discourse, I’d like to diferentiate beetween the usage of the name Maiersgrün as a memory-designator and Vysokà, its official contemporary name. The village was a little spot on the border between Bohemia and Bavaria, the Sudetenland and the German Reich, between the Federal Repub- lic of Germany and Czechoslovakia. As a result of the Benes decree in the year 1946, all of its 700 inhabitants, as Sudeten Germans, were forced to leave and settled for the most part in the Western zones. 2 Over the course of the decades the buildings in the village, located as it was in a restricted border area, became di- lapidated, so that today exactly five of the former 120 houses are still standing. The village no longer exists. On the basis of this village, which has a special status due to its exposed geographical location, I would like in a case study to attempt to trace the history of German suffering and German memory up to the present day.

The study is based on numerous conversations with some of the surviving inhabitants of this village who voluntarily told me their view of things. 3 In what follows, I shall be arguing from two ends in order to answer both of the questions I’ve just raised: The one starting point will be the history of the village as de-

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scribed and remembered by its inhabitants; I’m going to show how the remaining Maiersgrün inhabitants and their family are currently dealing with this heritage. What did it mean to live in Maiersgrün before 1946; how does the view of history remembered today present itself and is it coherent? Starting from the present – the other starting point – I will try to portray the evolution of the village community. What terms were employed to express their own status as “victims”; what forms were taken by mourning, reconciliation, forgiveness and the confession of their own guilt? Besides memory, hope is another central concept, since Ernst Bloch’s “principle of hope,” one can ask about the utopias that the memories, the con- structions of the past possess. 4

II. The Mutual Celebration

Last year an unusual family celebration took place in Vysokà 5 : For a few days children frolicked through the forest-like area, the bell rang in the crumbling ruins of the village church; one could see cars with German and Czech license plates driving into the area. A member of the Maier family from Maiersgrün was cele- brating her golden wedding anniversary in Vysokà, together with her family— most of the children and grandchildren had never before set foot in the place, but had been invited by their grandparents to celebrate this family reunion in this par- ticular place. The guests came from far away, from all parts of Germany; the fam- ily ties held them together. Some of the guests were even neighbors of the family from the time before 1946. At the same time this celebration was no self-confident demonstration vis-à-vis the Czechs, no announcement of revisionist claims, but a gesture of bidding the place farewell in a mood of composed cheerfulness.

This family, which was allowed to celebrate such a unique experience there, obtained the permission of the local Czech authorities for this celebration: many of the Czechs living in the vicinity had even interceded on their behalf, and had also come. It was a mutual celebration. And it happend in a special place that is listed today as a national monument in a guidebook to the sights of the Czech Republic. 6 Not because the church in Vysokà is so important from an art- historical point of view, but because here something unique was created through

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private initiative. A memorial for which many thousands of euros were donated, which relied as little on—German or Czech—governmental subsidies as on the lobbying groups of those who were expelled, the Landsmannschaften. The Catho- lic Church in Vysokà was no longer used and became dilapidated after 1946 due to its status in the restricted zone. In 1978 the roof-truss was carried away for use in construction or as firewood, and the church, which was the pride of the village, became a ruin. Each year since 1991 a part of the ruin has been conserved—in its fabric as a ruin—for the most part through the work of private individuals.

III. The Ruin as a Memorial for Many

Thanks to this church ruin there is a place, which for the former inhabitants of Vysokà is a place for remembering, mourning and celebration. Services are jointly conducted on the feast of Corpus Christi by the Bishop of Pilsen and by a Bavar- ian priest. In general the Catholic creed is a very important tie of the former in- habitants and the Czechs as well as memory is centered around the former church and it’s church yard. The frame of the ceremonies and conventions is a religious one because it offers familiar ways of mourning and filling the gap of silence. The ruin has become a destination for cyclists and hikers, 7 who for years have moved freely in the area that for decades was the demarcation line between the superpowers and thus a restricted zone. It is a special kind of memorial site: Without supervision, individuals have set up notice boards with pictures to re- member, for example, the parish priests, individual houses. In a joint effort the labeling has been done in German and Czech. There is no explicite didactic prin- ciple behind this documentation; much more it has been left up to private initia- tive to determine where a new point of memory is created within this ruined space. The ruin after all is not only a romantic subject, but is practically predes- tined to recall something past that cannot be reconstructed, as an adequately felt symbol of grief and suffering. In general the tendencie of memory is in my poit of view a conservative one orientated to traditional values and without a critical re- flexion.

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For over ten years a guest book has lain in the makeshift altar piled up in the open-air church; this year it is the fourth of its kind. An analysis of the entries reveals that above all praise for the commitment of the participating helpers pre- dominates. Only two out of hundreds of entries consider this form of remem- brance as negative; they criticize the collaboration with the Czechs and the use of the language for the notice boards. Personal memories of former inhabitants are mixed in with the impressions of passing tourists and hikers, those of astonish- ment at the curiosity. The guest books constitute a whole choir of associations, wishes, thanks, memories. 8 The appeal of writing something down appears to be great at this place. In my opinion, there a memorial has been formed that is of a type of its own: The ruin is the center of this village, which one can scour for traces of the past. It is a grassroots interest group that has grown up out of per- sonal ties, friendships that this place has connected over the decades. 9 And the suffering about which we are concerned? It is not expressed in words: there are no accusations, no loud regrets, but the word Vertreibung is spo- ken; those affected cannot see it otherwise and even the Czechs have translated it in their language. Those affected are at a loss for words, as if not wanting to commit themselves to judgments besides political correctness. What is reported on the notice boards is the history of this village, a history that is identity-creating and where the interpretive sovereignty seems clear. That was.