Abstract
The turbulent period immediately following the war was — as indicated in the previous chapter — a time of chaos, uncertainty and trial for the Swabians. This period may be divided into three phases. The first one consisted of deportations to the Soviet Union by the Red Army, at once the land was taken. The second was marked by the expropriation, internment and dispersion of the Swabians by the Soviet-controlled new Hungarian regime. The third and heaviest blow to Hungary’s Germandom was the so-called “final settlement of the German problem” — the wholesale expulsion of the Swabians from Hungary.
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References
Stephen Kertész, “The Expulsion of the Germans from Hungary: A Study in Postwar Diplomacy,” Review of Politics, XV, No. 2 (Notre Dame, Ind.), pp. 179–208.
Schechtman, Postwar Population Transfers ... p. 278.
Kertész, Postwar Population Transfers ..., pp. 179–208.
On the Potsdam Agreement, its background, its motivating forces, the legal and other aspects of the protocol, etc., see Paikert, Postwar Population Transfers ..., pp. 8–22.
According to Kertész: “At the Potsdam Conference, in a surprise move, the Soviet delegation proposed that the provision for the expulsion of the Germans from Hungary should be inserted into Article XIII, which dealt with the expulsion of the Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia. Thus, the Soviet policy maker had obtained Western endorsement of the expulsion ....” Kertész, Postwar Population Transfers ..., pp. 185, 186.
See also Paikert, At the Potsdam Conference, in a surprise move, the Soviet delegation proposed that the provision for the expulsion of the Germans from Hungary should be inserted into Article XIII, which dealt with the expulsion of the Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia. Thus, the Soviet policy maker had obtained Western endorsement of the expulsion ....” Kertész, Postwar Population Transfers ...,, pp. 10 ff.
Czechoslovakia was, before its partition, the nationally most heterogeneous successor state of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. According to the official census of 1930, of its total population of 14,479,565 some 4,005,348 were non-Slavic: 3,231,688 were Germans; 691,923 were Magyars and 186,642 Jews, the rest miscellaneous. Statistisches Jahrbuch der Cechoslovakischen Republik (Prag: Statistisches Staatsamt, 1934), p. 11. Figures produced by German and Magyar sources are, of course, quite different: 3.5 million is given as the total of Germans, and 750,000 as Magyars.
On this population exchange and the ensuing expulsion of Magyars from Czechoslovakia see the monograph of the Research Institute for Minority Studies of Hungarians Attached to Czechoslovakia and Carpatho-Ruthenia, Inc., “Hungarians in Czechoslovakia” (New York: 1959).
According to this agreement, 53,000 Hungarian residents of Slovakia were resettled in Hungary in exchange for 60,000 Slovak residents of Hungary during the years 1947 and 1948. In addition, 39,000 more Hungarians came to Hungary, who were either expelled from or had to escape persecution in Slovakia. (Data from a report of 1949 by the East European Research Institute).
Kertész, op. cit., pp. 201, 202. The statement of Vysinshky is quoted from Hungary and the Peace Conference of Paris, Vol. IV (Budapest, 1947). Footnote of Kertész: “The peace delegation of Hungary opposed, and after a hard struggle defeated the Czechoslovak proposal aiming at the expulsion of 200,000 Hungarians. This was the only instance at the Paris Conference in which a state under the occupation of the Red Army openly opposed a move sponsored by the USSR and asked for Western political support. This opposition, however, would have been futile without the energetic support of the United States delegation.”
In emphasizing the fact that the initiative came not from the Hungarian government but from the Allies, the decree began with this introduction: “The Ministerium, in executing the decision of the Allied Control Council of November 20 ... ordains the following ....” Ibid., p. 197.
In the year 1947 there were two more government decrees issued on the matter, 12.200/1947 M.E. and 84.350/1947 B.M. These contained further conditions under which Volksdeutsche whose work was indispensable to the national economy were to be exempted from deportation.
Of this number 228,100 settled in West and East Germany and some 12,000 in Austria. Matthias Annabring, “Das Ungarländische Deutschtum,” in Südost Stimmen, II, Jahrgang Nr. 2 (March, 1952), p. 61. The U.S. Bureau of Census sets the total figure at 260,000. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, The Population of Hungary, International Population Statistics Reports, Series p. 90, No. 9, Washington, D.C., 1958, p. 38.
Lucius D. Clay, Decision in Germany (New York, 1950). pp. 313–14.
Kertész, Decision in Germany (New York, 1950)., p. 203.
It was, of course, the same Cardinal Mindszenty who was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment by the Communist regime of Hungary in 1948. The Cardinal’s stand on this matter was widely known and (clandestinely) discussed in Hungary at that time.
Schechtman, Postwar Population Transfers in Europe, 1945–1955, p. 283. See also Chapter XIII.
The Csángós, the most humble branch of the Magyar race, lived completely-isolated from their kin, in the greatly underdeveloped area of the Bukovina in Rumania. Being neglected by their host nation, Rumania, and having no contact with Hungary, their general education and methods of farming were, in the main, on a primitive level. They were transferred to Hungary in 1941 to the then Hungarian Bácska. With the Bácska restored to Yugoslavia in 1945 the greater part of them moved to the Transdanubian part of Hungary in the so-called “Swabian Turkey” to replace the Swabians, expelled by then. The total number of the removed Csángós from the Bukovina was 15,593 (3,906 families), from the Moldava (Rumania) 1,631 (408 families). Because of the Czechoslovak-Hungarian population exchange of 1945–1949, 53,000 Hungarians were transferred and 39,000 expelled from Czechoslovakia. The bulk of these people were settled in places vacated by the Swabians.
Kis Ujság, February 7, 1946.
Spokesmen for the Swabian expellees and refugees in West Germany, of course, set the figure much higher.
“This went so far that in the Hungarian census of January 1, 1949 only 22,453 persons (0.2 per cent of the total population) dared to give German as their mother tongue; the overwhelming majority found it safer to identify themselves with the majority language (Magyar).” Schechtman, Postwar Population Transfers ..., p. 283.
As a curious exception, a very small number, only a dozen or so German families settled in Hungary during the great flight and expulsion of 1944–1946. These were Volksdeutsche from the Volga region and Bukovina who broke loose for some reason from the convoys while en route to the Germanies and were unable to follow the treks.
A Büntetö Perrendtartásról (1954 évi V. TV.); A Polgári Perrendtartásról (1954 évi VI. Tv.).
Schechtman, Postwar Population Transfers ..., p. 284.
Müvelödésügyi Minisztérium Nemzetiségi Osztálya, Tájékoztató a nemzetiségek politikai és kulturális helyzetéröl a Magyar N épköztársaságban, (Budapest: 1964), p. 3.
On May 30, 1965 on the tenth aniversary of the foundation of the Democratic Association of the German Workers of Hungary, its secretary general, F. Wild, delivered a commemorative speech on the Hungarian Radio in Budapest. According to him, there were 220,000 German nationalities living in Hungary in 1965. The first (post World II) German cultural association was established as early as 1950 and the DAGWH by 1955. In the course of the last ten years the DAGWH has succeeded in organizing 76 cultural missions (Kulturkörút) in 217 communities. In addition the DAGWH organized 279 events such as peace meetings, the days of the nationalities, Hungarian-German friendship meetings, lectures and balls of the Swabians. More than half a million people attended these events. FEC, Vol. XI., No. 22.
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© 1967 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Paikert, G.C. (1967). Expulsion — The Swabians in Present Day Hungary. In: The Danube Swabians. Studies in Social Life, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9717-5_15
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