Abstract
The Federation of Expellees—United Regional-Cultural Associations and
State Organizations represented the interests of the Federal Republic’s
nearly 8 million refugees and expellees. It was founded in 1957 after
the Federation of Expelled Germans [Bund
Vertriebener Deutscher] merged with the Union of Regional-Cultural
Associations [Verband der
Landsmannschaften]. On May 30, 1970, the Federation of Expellees
organized a demonstration to protest the
Ostpolitik of the social-liberal
coalition; the event drew 50,000 participants to Bonn’s market square.
By that time, the governments of the Federal Republic and Poland had
been engaged in negotiations in Warsaw for almost four months. These
talks, which had started on February 5, aimed to produce a treaty that
would ensure the mutual renunciation of violence and the regulation of
the Polish-German border, the overarching goal being the normalization
of relations between the two countries. Speaking at the demonstration,
Herbert Czaja, a CDU Bundestag representative and the chairman of the
Federation of Expellees, claimed that the Brandt government had no legal
right to recognize the Oder-Neiße Line. The photograph shows the event’s
main speaker, CSU chairman Franz Josef Strauß, at the podium. The banner
in the background reads, “Whoever recognizes violence, loses peace”; the
one in front of the podium quotes Herbert Wehner (1950): “The
recognition of the Oder-Neisse Line is a crime against Germany.” Three
small posters underneath it read: “Divided 3 times? Never!”