Andreas Gestrich, Marita Krauss. Zurückbleiben: Der vernachlässigte Teil der Migrationsgeschichte. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007. 219 S. EUR 40.00 (paper), ISBN 978-3-515-08940-1.

Reviewed by Eric H. Limbach (Department of History, Michigan State University)
Published on H-German (April, 2008)

Studying Those Left Behind: More Interesting than Previously Thought?

"Migration means separation" (p. 9). Thus Andreas Gestrich and Marita Krauss introduce their edited volume, while asserting that scholars of historical migration have overwhelmingly focused on only half of that separation: migrants. The eight essays in this volume investigate the other side: individuals and social groups that stayed behind. While this approach is common among anthropologists and sociologists studying contemporary migrations (the editors cite Paul Stirling, Bianka Ralle, Sylvia Hahn, and Dorothea Schnell, among others), the editors argue that it has not yet had a significant influence on historians of earlier population movements. They challenge assumptions that only migrants are changed by their experiences; they contend that those left behind are also affected in significant ways, whether by the act of saying goodbye or by the realities of separation. This is an important point; the editors are justified in bringing it to historians' attention; and they have assembled a wide-ranging set of articles to back up their argument.

Beyond the topic, perhaps the most notable aspect of the volume is its broad temporal scope, with essay subjects ranging from late republican Rome through twentieth-century Germany. Such inclusiveness is encouraging: in works like this, the history of migration stands on its own as a thematic field of study. While many researchers have worked to incorporate ideas of interdisciplinarity and transnationalism into collaborative scholarship, it is still rare to find compilations that seek to transcend widely disparate periods and geographic areas at the same time. This is a beneficial trend for scholars of migration (and, undoubtedly, many other thematic fields), and the work of Krauss, Gestrich, and their contributors provides an excellent blueprint for interested editors and writers.

The articles are divided into three sections: "Taking Leave," "Wives and Families Left Behind," and "Migration and Change in Communities." In the introduction, the editors connect all three to their initial evocation of "separation." The action of taking leave (Abschiednehmen) occurs at the beginning of the separation; those who do not migrate must cope with the departure of the migrants in both real and symbolic terms. This interesting idea is somewhat ill defined, but the editors work to justify its equal status with the other two sections. They are helped by the two articles chosen for this section, particularly Ortwin Pelc's essay on visual representations of these moments of departure, which provides a visual basis for this rather hard-to-define concept. The second section, which includes four of the volume's eight articles, focuses on the individuals (primarily relatives) left behind. The articles in this section support the contention that the study of those left behind is vital to the history of migration, and that applicable sources are not as rare as previously thought. The final section builds on the idea of the change engendered by separation at the group/community level. Both articles discuss the unavoidable effect of migration on other community members, even those without ties to individual migrants. Perhaps the only glaring weakness in these articles is that both consider situations of permanent emigration, so no discussion is made of benefits to groups or communities from migrants returning with wealth or experience.

The first section begins with an article by Marita Krauss on those left behind by emigrants from Germany during the Nazi period. Working with autobiographical sources, she takes the concept of "left behind" literally, as she is concerned with every single person with any relationship to the emigrants, many (but not all) of whom were of Jewish background. Her typology considers first employees, acquaintances, and neighbors who supported the emigrants' decisions and mourned their departure, but who were themselves in no danger from the regime. The second group includes relatives and friends who were endangered by the regime, yet still decided not to emigrate, while the third group consists of those who welcomed the emigration and stood to profit from the property and possessions left behind. Krauss's main argument is that the experiences and perspectives of those who remained in Germany during this period are just as informative for historians as those of the migrants themselves. The rituals associated with departures of acquaintances and family members could, at times, suggest a symbolic death (an ironic comparison, given that emigrants were more likely to survive the war). Those staying behind felt their losses just as acutely as the migrants, especially as memories of pre-Nazi Germany receded into the past.

In the second article, Ortwin Pelc takes a visual approach to migrants' moments of departure. Using engravings, lithographs, paintings, and photos from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, Pelc analyzes visual representations of the moment of separation, analyzing composition of groups, locations of departure, and suggested symbolism in each image. He focuses on changes over time in visual representations of several significant migrations, from the mid-eighteenth-century departure of Protestants from Salzburg to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century overseas emigration. Taking the Salzburgers as an example, Pelc notes that the images from the time of the migration emphasized religious concepts like martyrdom, while those of a century later focused more on the emotional departure of the migrants from their homeland (represented by the Hohensalzburg in the background). This theme of leaving a Heimat or family recurs often in other nineteenth-century depictions Pelc includes in the article. Familiar surroundings are shown in stark contrast to the crowded and impersonal harbor cities and docks that served as intermediate destinations for overseas immigrants. In these, the figures of those left behind are either omitted or lost in the crowd, a departure from the more formal scenes of separation depicted in earlier sources.

The second section, on family members who stayed behind, opens with Sabine Geldsetzer's article on female relatives of eleventh- through thirteenth-century medieval crusaders (roughly the first through the fifth Crusades) from England and Wales. More so than most medieval military service, crusading was a dangerous activity; many of those who set off died of disease or in battle, and those who returned often did so only after a lengthy absence. Most historians argue that wives enthusiastically supported and encouraged their husbands' crusading. However, Geldsetzer's research on non-elite women has led her to conclude that these women only supported crusading when they had the resources to survive a long-term, possibly permanent separation. Otherwise, wives' reactions ranged from ambivalence to outright opposition, particularly when participation in the Crusades required a significant outlay of family resources or when underage children were left behind.

Brigitte Kasten also focuses on this era, although her research is limited to the period of the Fifth Crusade (1217-21). Unlike Geldsetzer, however, Kasten is also interested in the motivation of the men faced with the dilemma of crusading or reneging on vows, and she argues that concern for property rights and family well-being were often the most important considerations. Kasten offers the case of Gottfried von Arnsberg as an example. Arnsberg was involved in a long-running property dispute with the archbishop of Cologne, and he knew that, despite his vows to accompany the crusade, the Archbishop, as legal protector of crusaders' property, could lay claim to his lands while he was away. Only after securing his family's financial security was he able to depart. Others found themselves in similar situations, including Heinrich von Isenburg and Bernhold von Gesmold. Kasten ties these situations to the decree Ad liberandam (1215), a catalog of crusader instructions, rights, and privileges proclaimed by Pope Innocent III. Both Kasten and Geldsetzer suggest that the decision to crusade was made within the context of medieval social and political relations, and that ambivalence was far more common than religious fervor. However, while Geldsetzer argues based on non-elites as opposed to elites, Kasten comes to her similar conclusions entirely through her research on elites.

Claus Rech's article on wives who remained at home while their husbands sought work elsewhere is the only article in the collection to consider labor migration (although Pelc features several groups of labor migrants, the primary focus of his research falls elsewhere). Given that labor migration is the predominant concern of most historians or social scientists, this is somewhat surprising. Focusing on the nineteenth-century/early industrial period, Rech looks at wives left behind by ironworkers leaving the Eifel for seasonal work in the foundries of Aachen and the Ruhr. As Rech points out in the title of his article, this migration was referenced by Clara Viebig in her novel, Das Weiberdorf (1900). Rech argues that women's lives in the real Eisenschmitt were far different from the disruption and apathy depicted by Viebig. Only 5 to 10 percent of the town's men were ever absent at any time, and their wives tended to see their experiences as comparable to others in the town.

Like Krauss's adult emigrants, the Jewish children who left Nazi Germany for Great Britain with the Kindertransport left behind friends and family members. Annette Puckheber's article discusses the experience of these childrens' parents, a group overlooked in popular and academic accounts of this migration (beyond the all-too-common remark that many of these family members did not survive the Holocaust). Puckheber is interested in several aspects of these parents' experiences: their motivation for sending unaccompanied children to a foreign country, the association between this decision and their eventual departures, exchanges of letters between children and parents living separate lives, and postwar reunification between children and the few parents who did survive. She finds that, for many parents, the difficult decision to send their children away was caused by their recognition of its necessity, and there was a great deal of interest in the limited number of places allotted by the British (a congressional effort to allow a further twenty thousand children into the United States ultimately failed). After the war, the few families that were reunited had to find ways to understand their widely varying experiences: the parents having survived forced labor or concentration camps, and the children having lived for years uncertain that they would ever see their parents again.

The final section looks at the effects of migration beyond the immediate family and personal relationships. Elisabeth Herrmann-Otto argues that the focus on imperial expansion during the last half of the Roman Republic obscures the history of those Romans, Italians, and other associated groups who remained in Italy rather than moving to the newly conquered provinces. Veterans were typically granted agricultural land throughout the Mediterranean area, from Spain and Northern Africa to Syria, Anatolia and Greece. In Italy, however, this policy led to the impoverishment of agrarian communities, a shortage of agricultural labor, and even depopulation in some areas. As a result, many members of the Roman upper classes (the senatorial and equestrian) acquired or consolidated large agricultural estates throughout the peninsula. While her thesis is not new, Herrmann-Otto's interest in the importance of the migration/colonization process highlights an aspect of this process that many other scholars, who have tended to focus on the Roman elite, have missed.

Finally, noted historian of science Reinhard Buthmann writes on the reactions of the colleagues left behind when scientists fled the GDR. His article centers on Werner Hartmann, a physicist and electronics expert known for not cooperating with the GDR leadership. Buthmann argues that Hartmann's actions must be considered in the context of those by colleagues (like Heinz Barwich) who chose emigration over advancement in the GDR, as well as other scientists who were tasked by the Stasi with discouraging and hindering emigration. In particular, Hartmann's comments to the regime on the emigration of some former colleagues played a major role in the MfS investigation "Molekül," which led in 1974 to his demotion from directorship of the microelectronics development center to the status of a basic technician. Finally, Buthmann notes that the MfS investigation records about those who did not migrate, but knew someone who had, constitute a promising source for future migration research.

Taken together, the eight articles included in this volume address a single important theme in the historical study of migration, the changes and experiences of those left behind when their relatives and friends chose to migrate. The temporal breadth of this volume's contributions also serves as a reminder that migration is all but unavoidable throughout history, especially in Europe. As such, this work should be of interest to historians whose research might touch on migrating populations, even if migrants are not a specific focus. Other scholars might be interested in individual articles. For example, the articles by Geldsetzer and Kasten help to flesh out an aspect of the Crusades that is not often considered, while Rech's article suggests that scholars of literature might also find demography a useful skill. As with any edited volume, the work has its holes, particularly the relative absence of labor migration, arguably the most familiar type of migration among non-specialists. However, this is somewhat surprising, given the editors' citation of recent sociological and anthropological research into this phenomenon in the contemporary world, where subjects are most often labor migrants. One hopes that the field will see future collaborations along these lines.

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Citation: Eric H. Limbach. Review of Gestrich, Andreas; Krauss, Marita, Zurückbleiben: Der vernachlässigte Teil der Migrationsgeschichte. H-German, H-Net Reviews. April, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14448

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