German Refugees of 1945 and their Integration into West German Society A Study on the Process of Acculturation

Using methods from qualitative cultw·al analysis, the author has investigated aspects of social and cullili.ral integration of betwee11 12 and 15 million people who we.re forced in the years 1944 and 1945, to leave German . ettlements in middl , south-east and eastern Etll'ope and settle in West Germany and the later Gei·man Democratic Republic . He describes and ana ly. es acculturation: as a process whlcb is extended over three generations, inquires after the function of oral traditions the general significance of lost propertie and o~ject:.! ofmate1;a1 culture for the individual and collective memory, and the meaning of journeys back to the former settlements. Thereby are general questions raised that attend the present task of research into the processes of world-wide migration.


Folklore research and migration
In the 1950s, the twentieth century was already called the century of the refugees.An appropriate label.It is presently estimated that the number of people world-wide who have had to leave their homelands because of war, out of political, economic, ecological reasons, or because of religious persecution or ethnic conflict, to be over 50 million.In many parts of the world it has led to migration and the processes of acculturation.Migration and the movements of fleeing people, and the subsequent modes of acculturation, have occurred in all societies and in every historical period.However, the overpopulation in particular regions and the economic differences between Western industrial nations and other states, cast up into our time alone, because of the demographic dimensions, important social and cultural questions.As there are hardly any economic or political concepts to defeat the causes of migration and the flight of populaces, and when looked at realistically no satisfactory economic possibilities, the era of the refugee will stretch well into the 21st century.Today the expected numbers and the consequent socio-cultural problems are presented in the countries of western Europe as part of an apocalyptical canon .
In our present history the greatest forced migration was the exodus and expulsion of German citizens out of East Germany and the German settlements of south-east and east Europe from 1944 to 1946.At this time from 12 to 15 million people were forced against their will to leave their homes and settle in West Germany and areas of the later GDR.The reason for this enforced migration was primarily political in nature.Part ofit also had the character of "ethnic cleansing".In any case, they were the outcome of the war Germany had started.In the course of this war, German institutions had ordered forced settlements on a large scale in southern and eastern Europe (Rhode 1959).
In the following account I shall not look for the causes of these mobilisation processes.(Heberle 1972, Lee 1972, Lemberg/Edding 1959).Instead, I will focus on the cultural consequenses and discuss them in an ethno-and socio-historical context.In this report on historical acculturation I will proceed from the perspective of historical experience and a generation's transcending point of view.Within it the supposition has been that every accultural process is a new social and cultural situation and for these perplexed persons an important part of their life's history.Many who have experienced life in a new community will always remember for the rest of their lives particular events and incidents, which for the newly settled foreigner is bound up with the slow subjective processes of transformation in the new "home state".They vividly remember their regions of origin, the early phases of settlement and the following steps of acculturation; partly in concrete pictures and partly in "lively accounts", which change in the historical course of their lives.
A further step is taken when these experiences, patterns of thought and cultural pictures become part of the mode of communication between the dependents of the different families and other socio-cultural groups where different generations live together, it becomes part of the collective consciousness of the community.The central questions of my research, in which a few aspects have been gathered together here for an international audience, states (Lehmann 1993): what effects did the events of forced settlement at the end of the war have on individual and collective consciousness up to today?How did the refugees of the first generation carry their memories of their lost homelands in their thoughts?In which forms: stereotypes and patterns of explanation are to be found in the remembrances handed down by the parents of 1945 to their grown-up children of today and in the meantime adult grandchildren?What quality and what cultural consequences do these traditions of remembrances and storytellings have for the following refugees and for the collective consciousness in Germany?
To examine the flight and migration of Ger-126 mans after 1945 in a European perspective, the expulsion of approximately 400,000 Finns out of Karelia in March 1940 offers an obvious historical parallel (Kovalainen 197 4, Rohde 1959, Lehto/Timonen 1993).Finland at this time had -as a consequence of the Soviet Union's initiated declaration of war -to give up the Karelian isthmus and part of east Karelia -approx .12% of the land -as the Soviets cleared the populace from the region in an action of ethnic cleansing.In Finland the refugees, most of whom came as a rule from village communities that lived together, received new land from the authorities.Thus they were able to continue their agricultural way of life.In Germany, as much in West Germany as in East Germany, the problem of migration was solved through the industrial economy (Rhode 1959: 44) .My questions allow inspite of specific prerequisites in particular aspects, to benefit from a thorough comparison with earlier European migration processes (Cohn-Bendit 1992: 251-254).On the one hand from the point of view of the host community: the German refugees of 1945 were until their actual complete integration in the community and culture of West Germany confronted for a long time and in similar ways with ill feeling and rejection by the indigenous citizens .The same process occurred in the 1960s with the influx of individuals and families from the countries of Asia, southern and eastern Europe.On the other hand, can the integration of refugees since 1945 (seen from the point of view of the immigrant and his descendents) be clearly modelled as they adapt to life within a foreign culture and society; in addition, the modes of cultural adjustment to this development.This is valid inspite of the unmistakable difference between the historical suppositions and the ethnical circumstances of both migration processes, and also between the cause of migration of the different migrant groups which persists today.
My work on the qualitative cultural-scientific migrations and acculturation research at the Hamburg Institut for Volkskunde (Lehmann 1993: 12-13) is based on a number of different sources.Most important for my ethn-ologic research were the life-history interviews.They initially referred to different scientific approaches (Lehmann 1983, 1986, Schroder 1985, 1992).Within the framework of a special questionnaire on the subject of refugees, 120 men and women from three generations related in detail their experiences, the culture of remembrance within their families, and their own assessment of the relevant cultural developments.Tape recordings were made during repeated appointments with members of the different generations of a family: with the generation that had directly experienced the event, with members of the following generation, and with the grandchildren .Moreover, personal documents were used along with notes in travel journals and diaries, together with scientific publications from folklore and ethnological research, history, psychology, sociology and law.
One cannot carry out qualitative research on migration without it being based on the experience and development of individual consciousness , as every migration has incisive consequences for the persons concerned.They are always distinct individuals or small related groups who after lengthy consideration, or "spontaneously" leave their social backgrounds and have to orientate themselves in new socio-cultural circumstances.Research on the subjective side of the process of migration is also urgently needed to complement the prevalent studies on migTation (Bade 1987).These surveys have described and analysed the quantitative dimensions of migration using an extensive base of massed data to evaluate the social and economic consequences of demographic development.This quantitative demographic approach to migration research is necessary for an understanding of social developments.It provides prognoses for regional and national planning authorities of the social state, and assists the officials responsible for planning future accommodation and work.With this form of research however , important questions on the cultural development of the individuals involved are neglected.Personal destinies disappear in tables, statistical computations and analyses.The collective consciousness of a people in a culture is an ex-tremely differentiated historical development and a genuinely qualitative process.Certainly, qualitative developments can be weighed up and illustrated with the means of quantitative procedures if they are sufficiently described and explained with reference to society as a whole.But quantitative methodology alone will never enable us to understand causality and the diverse range of relationships.

Generations and storytelling traditions a. Arrival
As I stated earlier, the arrival of refugees in the past parallels in distinct episodes the arrival of present day immigrants.Like todays millions of refugees, the millions of refugees of 1945 had to live in camps and emergency accommodation.In the state of Bavaria by the end of 1946 there were 1,365 camps holding 146,000 refugees (Bauer 1985: 166).The last camps were closed only at the beginning of the 1960s (Havrehed 1989: 314, Lehmann 1993: 57).The inmates of these camps remained largely isolated from the native population.Discrimination, like today, was a regular event.Those who were not sent to a camp by the authorities but were given quarters as lodgers (Kornrumpf 1979) usually did not find them any better .The conflicts of coexistence between new and old citizens which were current at the time are up to today for both sides part of family-lore.This is particularly the case for the situation in villages .As in Finland, where the Karelians felt treated like "second class gypsies" (Sallinen-Gimpl 1991: 370), the refugees in Germany view ed themselves as outsiders, as strangers; they were in some cases sweepingly perceived as criminals (Neuhold 1948).These experiences of the first generation still have an effect in many of today's families.Village environments can be described as "simple social systems" (Luhmann 1972).These social systems instil a cultural memory that is effective for a long time; that is, historical events and experiences remain present over many generations as a living past.In most German villages the majority of the inhabitants today can still name refugees from 1945 and their offspring amongst the local population.
For the local population the appearance of refugees in villages meant the first permanent confrontation with people of another religion.Formerly homogeneous catholic or protestant German villages were dissolved through these changes.The migration, moreover, helped further the modernisation and industrialisation of many rural regions .Often many of the migrants had formerly worked as labourers and tradesmen in developed industrial areas of Bohemia and Silesia before they were resettled in mainly agricultural areas.During the formative years of West Germany many of these migrants founded modern production plants in their new home regions (Broszat a.o. 1988).
For the integration of the migrant newcomers from the east, the appearance of foreign migrant workers had had a positive effect.From the 1960s on Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs and Turks came to Germany.The position of "strangers" in the village communities was now taken over by other "new citizens ".
In the memories of the people who nearly 50 years ago arrived in West Germany their first impressions of arrival in the new surroundings are still effective.They influence to this day their behaviour in their place of abode.This is especially true for families who have remained in the same village community or region since their arrival in 1945.Many of our informants stated that their families have lived disliking, or in clear conflict with other indigenous families of the region.Others explained their amiable relationships with their neighbours clearly by the helpfulness of individuals and families upon their arrival in the West almost 50 years ago.

b. Possession and the formation of tradition
With regard to the integration of the newcomers the following can be stated: individuals and families, who before the necessity to flee were in possession of seizable properties, especially agricultural holdings, usually had far greater problems with acculturation than members of the mobile social lower and middle classes from industry and administration.
128 They had lost their farms and livelihoods and thus without preparation had to embark upon a new professional existence.For labourers, civil servants and employees, members of "modern" professions of the industrial age "the forced migration" from east to west in many cases was perceived as a "removal" and change of profession which they had already been planning.These were changes that they wanted to tackle voluntarily, in spite of the political developments, at some later stage of their lives.
The quality of the lost possessions has an effect, that transcends the generations, on the group consciousness and family-lore.Those who lost many possessions of long standing material value, a seizable house, a large farm, think a lot about this loss and often talk about it with their children and grandchildren.The German word Heimat stems originally from the legal sphere of society.It referred directly to the material possession of house and farm (Bausinger 1984).It was only after the period of Romanticism that the term Heimat came to be understood in poetry and everyday consciousness as a spiritual and material space usually lost in the historical process (Greverus 1972: 93).Consequently, referred to as a place of yearning.The older meaning with reference to one's own possession has once again recaptured its formative power along side the younger idealised meaning.Here the effect of the economic situation on the memory is recognisable mainly on the culture of memory within the family and their social surroundings.Encircling the lost property develops and is maintained a tradition of stories.Possessions have an integrating effect on the family even though it has been long forefeited.

~-Objects of memory
European ethnology investigates as a cultural science objects of daily life and their functions for the people who own and use them (Fel/ Hofer 1972, Meiners 1987, Mohrmann 1988).It questions the cultural meaning of furniture, tools and clothes.For the cultural scientific analysis of consciousness, consumer and lux-ury items of daily life can become important indicators for an economic history "from below ", for a history of mentality, of economical and consumer behaviour .The usage, the price, the origin of things, above all the sequence and particulars of the purchases or inheritance, form an important line of orientation for the narrator: a "guiding line for the storyteller ".I have pointed this out in another situation using the car as example.There are people whose life stories ar e told through the succession of cars they hav e had (Lehmann 1983).The cars become bigger, the holiday trips more comfortable and increasing in distance.As an example, these objects document the material success story of West Germany and often an integrations story within the milieu of the refugees.Talking about the things of daily life, like all talking and relating, is subjected to cultural patterns .Folkloristic genus analysis should pay more attention to these patterns than it has done (Schapp 1976: 11-82).
When Germans were forced to leave their homes and property, there was especially from the Polish occupying forces -detailed legislation on the type and weight of admissable luggage .Often individual hand baggage was limited, not to be heavier than 10 or 20 kilograms (Schieder 1954, Vol. 2: 785).What the refugees finally took with them as their "property" to the new environment was chosen, under the pressure of a coming loss of the old home, for their future symbolic character and as valuable objects of remembrance.This is particularly true of contemporary research (Karasek-Langer 1955) into attachment to one's home or for objects of devotion, for example images of saints and crucifixs.People from farming backgrounds sometim es carried, apart from a few selected work tools, seeds in their baggage that would be planted in a garden in the West.Many of the items, that after years became part of the cult of memory in families, had originally served as household objects such as cutlery and crockery.
Around the objects from the former homelands, stories ("Erziihlgeschichten", Schroder 1992) would unfold within the families which would recapture time and again the shared past experiences and the diverse stations of 9 Ethnologi a Europaea 23:2 the laborious journey through time and space.In this manner, emotions and information were handed down.Above all the stories h elped to stabilise the group contexts and enabled the family to find an identity in the new surroundings .However, only in exceptional cases did a tradition of stories survive beyond the death of the generation and their immediate families who had gone through the experiences.The refugees and their children were still connected through shared life experiences and remembrances with objects from the old homelands .These are the items which help recall the weeks of flight and the years of hunger in Post War Germany.For members of the generation of gTandchildren who live today as young adults in West Germany, the objects have usually lost their family historical significance.The cause of the end of this tradition lies in the historical situation.The economic and social development in West Germany took a very dynamic course.In the first 40 years after the war German society was offered, as everywhere in western Europe , extraordinarily favourable economic possibilities.The classical theory of cultural fixation of Europ ean ethnology (Erixon 1966) put forward the well founded thesis that growing economic development can engender processes of change in the field of the culture of objects, especially where luxury goods are concerned.From the individual's point of view, the generalised observation of an extensive or regionally occurring cultural development implies that things of modest outer appearance and low material value are taken out of circulation during prosperous phases of the economy .Thus in the consciousness of those families who are prospe r ing these items come to be perceiv ed as cheap junk.The emotions which are connected with them m ay for some time r etain its n_ ostalgic character which is abstracted from the material valu e and aesthetical quality of th e objects .As time goes on the relationship becomes more objective, more matter of fact .The ideal quality loses its function within the group.Instead the low material value becomes the mark of the item.It no longer symbolises anymore the beautiful side of the history of the family, instead it signifies their temporary pe-riod of poverty and the backwardness of an epoch.Nostalgia becomes an embarrassment.
The problem in Germany was that many of the items in its history were sometimes reminiscent of the Nazi years.This increased shame and led on occasions to a taboo (Kuntz 1989, Lehmann 1991).This multi faceted development, which is here briefly outlined concerned in West Germany an obviously major part of Post War culture.As a consequence of the political history, the relationship that developed between the generations (Lehmann 1989), with its disparities and continuities, was full of conflict .Because of the favourable economic developments it turned out to be an economic success story.It would be worth researching for folklore throughout Europe the mutual relationship between storytelling (not only storytelling that is connected with material objects) and the economic development within a culture.Presumably nostalgic memories and stories prosper particularly well under states of slow social momentum and stagnating economic conditions.Seen from the point of view of the subject this means: if the situation leaves the individual few chances for his own economic improvement and social ascent they will often reflect on a happy past.If the economic conditions are prosperous, they orientate themselves to a future full of new possibilities.In the use of this generalised observation for cultural analysis the behaviour of underprivileged minorities should be given thorough attention, for they have only a negligible share of the economic success.
Furthermore, many of the immigrants within Europe behave very much like the refugees of the Post War period.Most of all among political refugees who have been deprived of the right to visit their home country, there are objects of memory to be found and a close identification with the cultural achievements of the former homeland (Hesse-Lehmann 1993).This in terms of the individual and collective memory and the storytelling play a similar role as the objects of reminiscence function in the milieu of the German migrants of 1945.

d. The journeys of remembrance
Up to the 1960s many of the refugees believed that they would return to their former homelands.On the one hand they furthered for themselves and their children their integration into West German society, while on the other hand they planned their return to their original homes.This individual and collective conflict of consciousness was a result of the ambiguous West German politics during the Adenauer era (Foschepoth 1985).
As one of the most important steps on the path to integration, folkloristic research has identified the marriage between refugees and native residents, ownership of property and shared group activities above all in clubs (Schwedt 1969).All these are steps on the way to a new life in the "second homeland" which called into question the desire to return to the region of origin.
From the late 1950s on, it was possible for the refugees to travel to their former homelands.Initially application procedures were complicated.But with the advance of time, mainly after the opening up of German foreign policy to the East, and following the German-Polish treaty (7 December 1970) in the Brandt era, freedom to travel improved.Since the 1980s an unequivocal "remembrance tourism" has been flourishing (Tolksdorf 1987, Lehto/ Timonen 1993) -"pilgrim tours to the old homelands".In the meantime hundreds of thousands of the first generation and their children and grandchildren have taken part in these journeys and participated in intercultural contacts.Furthermore, many of those who travel do not come from the East.The fact that so many "remembrance tourists" come from the later generations is significant for the science of culture.Evident here are the behavioural determinants of living communication relationships and storytelling traditions.
For the members of the first migrant-generation, that is for those persons who had lived as adults or youths in regions of East Germany before 1945, the renewed contact with the old home 20 or 30 years after its loss, was an event of great emotional weight.In these memory trips the effect of possessions on the consciousness is once again evident.It is clear that per-sons whose families had once owned sizeable estates or farms in the East, encountered a mental crisis through their yearnings and their expectations.Some of our informers (Lehmann 1993: 124) had made the journey in order to visit their former homes and of greatest importance their birthplace.Upon arrival many would lack the courage to actually go and see their old home.It was different for people who returned to visit former urban dwellings.In these cases the new encounter with the old property and house sometimes took on the character of a "normal" holiday trip.This applies in particular for those people whose life in the new environment had been materially successful.Some who were very young when they left their place of birth were unable to find their former rented appartment.However, in my research I have never come across an instance where someone failed to find a house that had been a family possession.Those who had established a new life in the West and managed to afford a house of their own were unlikely to view a small rented appartment from former times with too many regrets.What seemed to the individual 30 or 40 years ago as expulsion and duress, turns out in retrospect to be the departure into a new world, and an element of an economically successful career.With regards to the group consciousness of the family and the tales of remembrance between th _ e different cohabiting generations (Lehmann 1989) a corrective function of the journeys into the family's past is of some significance.Through many visits parental tales of remembrance have been put into perspective by the following generation.Time and again parents have nostalgically described to their Western born children the beauty of the old home and the size of the lost estate and property.In contrast the young people found the backwardness of the East in Pomerania and Silesia.In industrialised Western Germany they had become used to a "modern" urban life.In the home of their parents they were driven along pot holed roads and were confronted with a modest ancestral home.Eastern trips that left such impressions could become journeys into time, a journey into the backwardness of village life in the first half of 9* the twentieth century.Trips of this type are reminiscent of the usual tourist journeys from the wealthy regions of industrial societies into underdeveloped areas.
The journeys of the Germans who were forced out of their homes in Post War period back into their former areas of residence in todays Poland, are in some respects very similar to those trips home taken by recent migrants and their children who are residents in Europe.
From my research I have been able to construct three types of statement from the autobiographical stories which relate journeys into former German areas from the perspective of individual life or family histories.These categories of statement are likely to have corresponding forms of actual behaviour : 1.I shall never go there.2. I have travelled there once (or at most twice), that is quite enough .3. I will always go again.
The refusal to make a journey (type 1) was generally a result of the fear not to be up to confronting the former homeland that had been left involuntarily.This fearful avoidance of a remembrance journey was only noted amongst members of the first generation.For example: in 1973 a trip to the old homeland was planned.A travel guide (Lehmann 1993: 113) approached several prospective participants.Some declined in writing: "I believe, I would not survive such a journey emotionally -I'm afraid of seeing the place again."-"I want to keep the memory of my home in my mind the way it used to be." Statements of this kind allow the following conclusions.The old home has fixated itself as a firm picture in the memory.The loss (Greverus 1972) has by now been accepted.These individuals do not want to confront their nostalgic memories of earlier times and a lost region with a tangible social reality.People who talk and act in this manner actually have two homelands: the Eastern home in the memory and a second one in the social spatial reality of the West.The refusal of a journey for these reasons was rarely found with members of the educated classes.People who used these arguments were predominantly from the lower social classes .Most of them had had no sizeable possessions in the East.He who had lost a lot is not contented with the picture of memory.
For those individuals interviewed who after decades in the West had only returned once, or were only planning one trip to their earlier place of childhood and youth, the plan of action served a quasi-therapeutical purpose.In this way they wanted to finally consummate a painful mental separation: to see once again the forests and place of childhood, to breathe once again the air and the smells of childhood.Smell is the "sense of memory" (Schopenhauer 1977 Vol. X: 662).
The relearning of an area that had been left decades earlier must necessarily present problems of orientation.The "natural" surroundings have changed.In the case of the West-East traveller one has to realise that the outer state of houses in the East was as a rule less attractive than those of the rich West.Apart from this , the streets and places had been given new names by the inhabitants.Moreover, there were different people living there (Treinen 1965).In many of the remembrances of these journeys a change in consciousness becomes clearly evident when the storytellers related that they, or one of their relations while visiting the former home, suddenly had the feeling that it was time "to return home".Home was now perceived as the new place of residence and the social environment of the West.
A young woman narrates: "And my father and grandfather were on their old farm.And there is in our family a family mythology, that they, you know after they had looked at everything, somehow found, , how much the landscape and all had changed, simply through the forests that had grown up.Then my grandfather suddenly turned around and said to my father 'come let's go home now'.-Really they were so to speak at home, but he was talking about Bielefeld or what ever.For us this was an important thought."(Lehmann 1993: 115).
Naturally you cannot say with absolute certainty that people who today state the inten-132 tion to travel only once to their birthplace, will not succumb to the temptation to repeat the journey a few months later.Intentions are not a reliable guide to action.The class of statement "once and never again" in particular aspects has undoubtedly a parallel in the planning and course of action among many of today's immigrants who left their country of origin because of the social conditions.For instance, some Iranian men and several Iranian women in a recent piece of Hamburg research (Hesse-Lehmann 1993) explained that they decided after a long inner struggle to travel once again to the land of their birth.The experience was to finally help answer the question where their home would be for the rest of their lives.Women especially who had become accustomed to the comparatively free public life in Europe found the living conditions in traditionalistic Iranian society by this time unacceptable.The routine German travellers who regularly return back to their former homelands (type 3), show a form of behaviour not uncommon from the travel form of conduct displayed by foreigners in Germany.Many of those who came to Germany from countries such as Poland, Turkey and Greece as working migrants or as permanent immigrants often travel several times a year back to their land of origin.Thereby they maintain contact with the people and the landscape of their native homes.In this way they develop a dual awareness of home that keeps open the option of two cultures for them in later life.For the regular German tourist, the wish to resettle in a comparatively underdeveloped area of Eastern Europe, however, is neither advantageous nor, for political reasons, realistic or desirable.Nonetheless, they sustain contact with the land of their forebears through their regular visits.Concurrently many have created personal acquaintances or friendships with the now resident families.This form of travel is particularly widespread amongst families who once held sizeable estates in the East.The older generation travel with their children and grandchildren and proudly present to them the former family property.The first home that the family had to abandon almost fifty years ago has now become a second home and a favourite place of holiday .

Final Considerations
Every immigration is tantamount to a proc es s ofintercultural communication which influences the culture and society into which the migrants hav e come.The course, the contents and the cultural consequences of this exchange transaction touches upon central questions of European ethnology.Another question that is raised addr ess es the effects and processes of migration on the collectiv e memory of a society.To this end I have investigated th e contents and functions from the recollections of refugees in the migrant milieu .Folklor e research that utilises the recollected memories as an important source worthy of examin a tion, can contribute substantially to the study of mentality and mobility.In this cont ext we need to bear in mind that the analysis of the stories proceeds from the pre sent situation of the storyt ellers and their surroundings.Tales from memor y are not a reliable historical source.This question of truth in historic al research is of crucial importance for example in oral history; inevitably it is placed in the background in folklore research .From a story that has been orally related one cannot verify how the narrat ed event actually happened, wh at development it had and how it was experienced by th e people concerned .These questions have to be consistently eliminated if no contemporary documents are available, or th e approach does not allow their use.As to the recollecting individual, it can never be established in an epistemologically reliable way what the objects of his consciousness might be, not even if th ey exist at all; we can only unfold how they hav e been given to the consciousn ess (Bahrdt 1974: 58, Heidegger 1976: 27-34), how they are perc eived, process ed, suffered and experienced through an activ e influence.
European ethnology and folklore research are confront ed with the socially important task of investigating cont emporary migration processes .It is a state of affairs which is reminiscent of the research into "Immigrant Folklore" (Dorson 1959: 135-165, Glassie 1985, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1983) in the pSA.Parallel to this research on the continuity of cultural forms from the culture of origin in the new environment, r esearch must also be done into the function of stories and material goods within the acculturation process.In this context the functions of the stories in everyday life have to be investig ate d as well as their internal effect within the family and milieu; also the significance of objects for the story telling and r em embrance culture of the group.Furthermore, the behaviour determining function of the memories and cultural images has to be taken into account.Stories can influence life concepts and everyday behaviour, this was pointed out in th e example of the remembranc e journeys.
Perhaps my considerations and results presented here about a completed and important migration and int egra tion process in Europe, with its continuities and further repercussions on the storytelling milieu and the effects on the collective memor y, can offer stimulation inspite of all historical particularities for further research on th e migration developments that are ongoing in Europe today.
Tran slated by Dr. John Hetet.