At the end of World War II in 1945, at least 1.4 million displaced persons (DPs), refugees and
expellees were located in Austria. In order to provide accommodation, Allied forces
established various types of camps. Although initially planned as a simple, temporary
solution, the camps often became long-term institutions as a stopgap measure which in
fact lasted for a long time.
The Soviet zone of occupation in post-war Austria the present-day states of Lower Austria
and Burgenland, the northeastern part of Upper Austria, and several districts in Vienna was
no exception here. The provision of accommodation for DPs, refugees, and expellees remains
a largely unexplored research desideratum to this day. Different types of camps intended for
DPs, Soviet repatriates and German-speaking expellees emerged here. The official Soviet
plan saw these measures as strictly temporary all foreign-language DPs should be
repatriated as quickly as possible, and German-speaking expellees should be moved to post-
war Germany. Alternatives, such as emigration to a third country or staying in Austria, were
seen as being out of the question. Nonetheless, some of these facilities seem to have existed
far longer than expected.
The research project Encampment in the Soviet Occupation Zone in Austria aims to fill this
gap in existing research. By combining the fields of historiography of forced migrations
during and after World War II and historiography of the Soviet occupation zone, the project
will focus not on particular groups housed in camps, but on the places and practices of camp
accommodation itself as well as the subsequent use of camp infrastructure. A systematic
topographical survey of camps and barracks usage being documented will form the basis of
the project. This will be followed by a typological analysis of the characteristics, functions,
and social/(bio-)political order of the selected camps and an examination of processes and
procedures connected to these types of accommodation, as for example ways to and out of the
camps. In a third step, the traces left by these camps and their subsequent use in the local
memory of the places selected will be analyzed.
This study thus makes a key contribution to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the
empirical diversity of camp orders in the context of a transnationally entangled post-war
history, beyond prior thematic constructions and with a consistently interdisciplinary
orientation.
Barbara Stelzl-Marx, Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on
Consequences of War and Professor of European Contemporary History at the University of
Graz, is overseeing this project. Dieter Bacher (LBI for Research on Consequences of War) is
responsible for coordinating the project and collecting and analyzing Soviet materials in
particular. Anne Unterwurzacher (Ilse Arlt Institute for Social Inclusion Research) will
provide input from a social sciences perspective, focusing especially on commemorative
culture. Two more researchers will conduct studies on Austrian and international archival
documentation, as well as carrying out oral history interviews.
The three-year project is based at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on
Consequences of War, Graz Vienna Raabs. The Ilse Arlt Institute for Social Inclusion
Research of the FH Pölten and the University of Graz are national research partners.
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