Unerwünscht

Book launch with Stefanie Schüler-Springorum and Mirjam Zadoff

In her new book Unwanted. Die westdeutsche Demokratie und die Verfolgten des NS-Regimes (S. Fischer Verlage, 2025), the renowned historian Stefanie Schüler-Springorum presents West German post-war society for the first time from the perspective of the people who were persecuted under National Socialism. In doing so, she tells a story that has been largely ignored until now. She describes the experiences of surviving Jews, Sinti*zze and Roma*nja, former forced laborers and homosexuals in the western part of Germany in the first post-war decades. After 1945, there was no less anti-Semitism and racism, no less hatred of homosexuals than during the Nazi era, but probably even more. There was talk of 'marauding' liberated Eastern Europeans when it came to former forced laborers, or of 'haggling' Jewish displaced persons on the Munich black market. Sinti*zze and Rom*nja had been fully registered during National Socialism. The 30,000-name register continued to be used for police measures in the Federal Republic. Homosexuals also continued to be prosecuted, until 1969 on the basis of § 175 in the 1935 version.

The common image of the successful democratization of the Federal Republic is torn apart by these stories. The experiences of those formerly persecuted show that the hatred and resentment against them did not simply disappear; they were deeply rooted in people's minds and in some cases still are today. The reasons and functions of these attitudes may be very different, but they have one thing in common: the desire of the majority society that the people affected should not be there .