Encampment in the Soviet Occupation Zone in Austria

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. www.bik.ac.at