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The „Niemands“ – Heimatlose Ausländer in Mannheim

in: Journal of Migration History, 7(3), 220-243.

Authors

Maria Alexopoulou

Abstract

Heimatloser Ausländer (homeless foreigner) was a status granted to Displaced Persons, who were mostly slave or foreign workers during the Third Reich. How did local authorities and the population in Mannheim – an industrial ‘migration-city’– deal with these first ‘Ausländer’ of the Federal Republic of Germany? This article outlines how local authorities managed housing for dp s and later homeless foreigners and how their concerns were treated with at the Ausländerbehörde (foreigners office). It also looks into the reactions and attitudes of the population mirrored in local/regional administrative files and press coverage. The self-denomination as Niemands (nobodies), originating from sociologist and Mannheim based son of dp s, Stanislaus Stepień, expresses the history of a group of migrants who have been mostly forgotten after serving as projection surfaces and transmission objects for racial knowledge about the ‘migrant Other’ and ‘the German’.

Sources

Alexopoulou, Maria. 2021. The „Niemands“ – Heimatlose Ausländer in Mannheim. In: Journal of Migration History 7, Nr. 3: 220–243. doi: 10.1163/23519924-00703002.

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