Andrea Schmelz

East-West Migration from the Federal Republic of Germany into the German Democratic Republic, 1949-1961

Between 1949 and 1961 migration from West to East Germany on the whole decreased, with the exception of the most important phase in the years 1954-57. At the same time increasingly fewer representatives of qualified professions immigrated from west to east. Taken as a whole the SED was ambivalent vis-à-vis west-east migration up till the building of the wall; it followed a policy both of recruitment and of keeping them at arm's length. The politics had two faces, which moved between paternalism (a liberal politics of acceptance) and "paranoia" (vigilant mistrust). A program supporting those immigrating or returning to the East German Republic began in 1952/53 as a reaction to the immigration crisis caused by those going from east to west, and was clothed in the form of a classical politics of recruitment. The advertising was unsuccessful largely because those who were politically responsible had completely unrealistic expectations and because the groups being addressed lacked trust in the socialist society. In the second half of the 1950s, as the German-German discussion became increasingly serious, the East Germans followed a more restrictive politics of acceptance. Especially during the Berlin crisis the bureaucracy involved with immigration placed the state's security interests at the forefront of its politics. In the early 1960s a surveillance apparatus was developed which controlled the immigrants both individually and as a group. The immigration bureaucracy in the German Democratic Republic was consistently fighting with the problem of how to integrate these immigrants, how to make them a permanent part of Eastern Germany. Because of initial difficulties many immigrants returned to West Germany after a short time. According to the official concept of integration the western immigrants were not supposed to form a special social category. In the give and take of society, however, they brought forth hefty social and political tensions, which only made more clear their position as a fringe group.