Media Representation of Post-War Forced Migration of Germans from Czech Lands in Journals of this Group, on Example of Magazines Aussiger Bote and Brünner Heimatbote

The study deals with the post-war forced migration of German-speaking inhabitants from Czechoslovakia, and its reception in magazines which the forcibly-displaced Germans began to issue in “West Germany” (Federal Republic of Germany) in the late 1940s. The authors analyse two patriotic magazines (Heimatzeitschrift) from the beginning of their publishing until the end of the twentieth century. The patriotic magazines are understood as media of collective memory of the social group of those forcibly displaced. Based on the study of empiric material, the representations of the forced displacement can be analytically divided into three groups. The “expulsion” is represented as: 1) loss of home; 2) new start, and 3) historical grievance. The authors show that the forced displacement in connection with the loss of the (old) home country is a basic theme for the above-mentioned magazines. In the magazines, the representations thereof are closely associated with the memory politics of patriotic organizations with their exactly defined interpretation of history, claiming the right for the motherland, and enforcement of the victimization discourse.