Pómulos:

Religion und native tongue

Ministry for Displaced Persons as well as Regional School

Administrations

Bavaria 110 Ukrainian, Polish, and _Lithuanian Native language and _history No state support, private funding

North Rhine- Westphalia 392 Polish, Latvian, Ukrainian, Estonian, and Hungarian Native language, social studies, and Religion

State Minister for Social Affairs’ subsidy

Lower

Saxony 143 Polish and Ukrainian

Native language and social studies

City of Braunsweig Social Services Office Schleswig Holstein 137 Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian (as of 1958)

Native language and

social studies No state support, private funding

93 _{KMK and Schulausschuß, “18. Nationaler Ergänzungsunterricht für Kinder heimatloser Ausländer,” Auszug aus}

der Niederschrift die 73. Sitzung des Schulausschusses der KMK am 19./20. 10. 1961 in Berlin (Berlin, October 20, 1961), B 304/2058/2, Bundesarchiv Koblenz. Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Rhineland-Pfalz, and Saarland were not offering any Ergänzungsunterricht at that time. For information on the financing, see KMK and Schulausschuß, “17. Nationaler Ergänzungsunterricht für Kinder heimatloser Ausländer: Beteiligung der Länder an der Finanzierung,” Auszug aus der Niederschrift über die 75. Sitzung des Schulausschusses am 8./9. 2. 1962 in Bremen (Bremen: KMK, February 9, 1962), B 304/2058/2, Bundesarchiv Koblenz.

94 _{Kultusminister des Landes Schleswig-Holstein and Grothusen to Sekretariat, “Nationaler Ergänzungsunterricht}

From the mid-1950s through the end of the decade, the members of the

Kultusministerkonferenz would claim that, in general, problems with minorities and education “only existed in Schleswig-Holstein,” and then only in regards to an ethnic Danish minority group with West German citizenship. The group had special rights regarding schooling and language acquisition because of their long history in Schleswig-Holstein, but they still explicitly needed to be “German,” as they were most decidedly staying in the FRG.95 Part of the issue with this group, then, was the continued difference between their schooling and the standard West German system. It was unclear where they were supposed to fit.

Through the end of the decade, the Education Administrations reported that all other groups integrated well and easily. The different Länder Administrations claimed that, even without the requisite German language knowledge, children usually participated in West German classrooms without problems. The “foreign children” were reported to typically master sufficient German language skills for participation in public schools within a year. Some local school boards claimed that the presence of “foreign children” actually added to the school atmosphere and encouraged a healthy learning environment.

Part of the Education Administrations’ lack of concern and perceived success related to the continued smaller sizes of most newly arriving migrant groups. Länder initiatives for

“foreign children’s” care were designed with the idea that there were not (and would not be) that many of them in most schools. Furthermore, educational success in general was seen in the enrollment in school, the acquisition of passable German language skills, and the demonstration

95 _{KMK, “Verhütung der Diskrimierung,” 7–8. Because of the historical relationship between the local government}

and the Danish speaking minorities of the region, the minority group had some special rights in regards to schooling. The Ministry of Education in Schleswig-Holstein sent out a decree on 7 March 1950 establishing the conditions of the establishment of private schools for the Danish minority. For this group, after the first year of establishment, these schools received a yearly allowance of up to 80 percent of the personnel and extraneous costs. This grant went far beyond what Schleswig-Holstein could grant other West German private schools.95

of frictionless participation in the classroom. As with migrant German children, the Länder

Education Administrations were not concerned about whether or not children with foreign citizenship could complete secondary schooling or enroll in vocational programs. Any worries over vocational schools that did exist tended to focus on the right of the children to attend at all.

The Länder Education Administrations’ lingering concerns focused on the degree of difference between local and foreign groups and how that influenced state responsibility. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the Ministry of Education treated Austrians as locals, the Dutch as foreigners too culturally similar to warrant acknowledgement of cultural difference, and the Polish as foreign others despite long-term ties. Furthermore, the Austrian and Dutch

communities usually arrived during this period as spontaneous or labor migrants, while the Polish communities were frequently refugees and exiles. Non-European minority groups were generally too small to take active note of and were therefore considered less problematic than those groups from Eastern Europe.

The international understanding among European states’ Educational Administrations during the 1950s shifted from stressing general human rights that would somehow mysteriously be extended to every individual to the idea that it was in the state’s best interest to extend compulsory schooling to all children, regardless of their country of citizenship. The Council of Europe and the European Community wrote about the issue in terms of world peace, mutual exchange, and economic development, while the European Community considered the problem in view of labor exchange and equality. These international bodies discussed the issue usually in regards to smaller forms of exchange, looking at refugee populations or spontaneous migrants.96

96 _{Spontaneous migrants are those individuals who only apply for residence permits and/or visas after migration. See}

Ahmet Akgündüz, Labour Migration from Turkey to Western Europe, 1960-1974: A Multidisciplinary Analysis

They were not exploring education for long-established minorities, but rather recent and new minority or migrant groups.

Conclusion

At the beginning of the 1950s, public schooling in West Germany was predominately about teaching citizenship and basic literacy. As the decade progressed, however, changes within the international community meant that schooling became a fundamental human right necessary for the realization of personhood, integration, and increasingly vocational opportunity. As the emphasis within the concept of schooling changed, so too did the perception of the state’s responsible for ensuring non-citizens access to education as well as what that education was supposed to entail.

As long as schooling was about citizenship first and foremost, a state could argue that its responsibility – and its resource expenditure – was solely towards and for its citizens. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its emphasis on education for all was focused on equality between citizens, regardless of minority status, gender, or otherwise. In West Germany, that commitment was particular important given the Nazi past atrocities, and because of the material deficits in what the state could provide. Fighting an uphill battle to teach its citizens democracy, West Germany did not want to accommodate non-citizens and their particular concerns as well.

The Länder Education Administrations could not, however, entirely ignore their minority populations without German citizenship. These groups, predominately Displaced Persons, were there as a result of the Nazi past and German atrocities. Consequently, despite their status as

Netherlands: Between National Policies and Local Implementation,” in Immigration Policy in Europe: The Politics

stateless and homeless, West Germany had a responsibility for their welfare – including their education. Yet, again, the situation was different for minority groups with citizenship (like the Danish minority in Northern Germany). Those minorities needed to learn to be German, even as they retained their ethnic identity. For the Displaced Persons, the nature of Nazi oppression meant that the West German state needed to provide these groups with access to cultural and language instruction. But their presumed residence was to be merely temporary.

As the various Displaced Persons from the Second World War integrated into society, new immigration did not stop, although the reason for such migration shifted. During the mid- 1950s, the majority of new migration included ethnic Germans leaving various eastern states as well as spontaneous migrants from across the European continent. These spontaneous migrants moved with increasing frequency across state boundaries in search of jobs. International pressure – including the Council of Europe’s emphasis on collaboration and equality combined with the development of the European Community – meant that there was increased importance placed on treating these migrants the same as local host country nationals.

Equal treatment and education did not necessary mean inclusion in compulsory schooling and certainly did not guarantee cultural instruction. These migrants remained foreign others, even as the international community pushed equality and equivalency. Nonetheless, state governments in countries like West Germany judged and weighed their needs differently based on their citizenship status. Based on their judgement, each of the West German Länder would develop their own programs.

CHAPTER 2: COMPULSORY SCHOOLING AND EXTRA PROGRAMS FOR THE CHILDREN OF "GUEST WORKERS" (1960-1966)

In 1960, during initial bilateral discussions about the schooling of children with Italian citizenship living in West Germany, the Italian Consul in Cologne, Giovanni Mayr, laid out the Italian government’s aims. First and foremost, the Italian government wanted all Italian citizens in the Federal Republic to receive a German education, partly with an eye toward integration into West German society through the schools.1 As part of a second set of goals, the Consul hoped that the North Rhine-Westphalian government would work with him to set up supplementary language and cultural classes. Mayr wanted teachers (both male and female) chosen by the “Italian side” to provide instruction while the West German authorities footed the bill. Finally, he suggested that these “consular classes” could be required for the children of Italian workers in West German public schools, but also made available to ethnic German schoolchildren as an elective.2

Mayr’s suggestions were a response to the development in the last five years. In 1955, West Germany and Italy had signed a bilateral labor agreement for the recruitment of migrant workers with Italian citizenship. The West German economy was flourishing while Italy, particularly in the south, was plagued by unemployment. In order to alleviate that pressure, the

1 _{In contrast, the parents of Spanish children in North Rhine-Westphalia would express hesitation to enroll their}

children in West German schools as they expected to return to Spain. See Kultusministerium NRW and Rürup to Herrn Gemeindedirektor der Gemeinde Hückelhoven-Rathe, “Einschulung von Kinder ausländischer Arbeitskräfte,” August 15, 1963, Landesarchiv NRW.

2 _{Consolato d’Italia, Colonia to Kultusministerium NRW, “No. 24583,” November 14, 1960, NW 141-111,}

Italian state requested the agreement. For the Italian government, the agreement went toward furthering their goal of European integration. For that integration to fully benefit the state, the growing number of families with Italian citizenship in West Germany needed to integrate and be capable of getting jobs.

Working with the Italian legations in the Federal Republic, the Länder Education Administrations debated internally and among themselves what kind of school initiatives they should develop for the children of Italian workers. These new migrant groups were not refugees, stateless persons, or expellees, nor were they spontaneous migrants. Consequently, none of the programs in place for those groups (discussed in Chapter 1) applied. New guidelines were needed, outlining what “integration and cultural maintenance” should entail for this group. Determining best practices and legal obligations toward these diverse new, European Italian so- called guest worker groups, three issues framed the Länder Education Administrations’

considerations. First, the children of Italian workers living in West Germany were there at the invitation of West German businesses. Consequently, the West German governments – including the Education Administrations – felt that the Länder governments had some responsibility for their welfare. As a part of that status as so-called “guest worker children,” however, the permanency of their residence in West Germany was unclear.3 Second, children with Italian citizenship were, according to the Länder Education Administrations, culturally different from the German ethno-national majority. As such, they were theoretically eligible for cultural classes as the ethnic-Polish minority had been in the 1950s. Third, the Italian state was a member of the European Community. Consequently, the Länder Education Administrations had to weigh their

3 _{Christoph Rass, “Temporary Labour Migration and State-Run Recruitment of Foreign Workers in Europe, 1919-}

1975: A New Migration Regime?,” International Review of Social History 57, no. S20 (December 2012): 191–224; and Johannes-Dieter Steinert, “Migration and Migration Policy: West Germany and the Recruitment of Foreign Labour, 1945–61,” Journal of Contemporary History 49, no. 1 (January 1, 2014): 9–27.

actions and regulations regarding this group within the context of their work within the European Community. That membership also meant it was likely that Italian citizens would remain in West Germany. Such possible long-term residency thus necessitated integration.

With other guest worker states’ requests following the Italian’s, the Italian governments’ demands shaped early West German policy regarding the care of children with non-German citizenship who entered the country as “the children of foreign workers.”4 Each of the policies regarding integration and cultural maintenance which the Länder Education Administrations developed for “Italian children” would – in the name of equality – be extended to all children with citizenship from a state with a bilateral labor agreement with West Germany. In 1960, however, when the Italian delegation made its first official request for inclusive compulsory schooling and cultural instruction, the West German delegation viewed the issue as a matter of friendly state relations, hardly a pressing matter.

International Advocacy and Italian Language Instruction in West Germany

The Italian government first raised the question of Italian instruction for its citizens in West Germany in 1960 during a meeting of the West German-Italian Joint Cultural Commission. During that meeting, the Italian delegations expressed interest in setting up cultural and language classes for Italian citizens, as it had already done in Belgium. These classes were, however, to be provided in conjunction with regular West German schools. The Italian government assumed that children “would remain in West Germany permanently” as residents and therefore needed to

4_{Wanderarbeiter (migrant workers), ausländische Arbeitnehmer (foreign workers),or Gastarbeiter (guest workers).} Fremdarbeiter (foreign worker) was off the table as it was the term the Nazi’s used for their foreign and forced labor during the Third Reich. See Ulrich Herbert, “Immigration, Integration, Foreignness: Foreign Workers in Germany since the Turn of the Century,” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 48 (Fall 1995): 91–93; and Robert Sala, “Vom ‘Fremdarbeiter’ zum ‘Gastarbeiter’: Die anwerbung italienischer Arbeitskräfte für die deutsche Wirtschaft (1938-1973),” Vierteljahrshefte Fur Zeitgeschichte 55, no. 1 (January 2007): 93–120.

integrate into the West German school system. Italian maintenance was only supposed to be a bonus.5

Neither the West German nor Italian governments saw the schooling of Italian citizens in West Germany as solely an issue of the children’s education. For the Italian government, their citizens’ education was important, particularly in light of continued illiteracy in Italy. In addition, however, for both the West German and Italian governments the children’s education was a tool to promote their own international political goals at a bilateral level, as well as at the level of the expanding European Community. For both the Italian and the West German governments, their views of European Community integration and local agendas shaped what school initiatives they were willing to permit and develop and, eventually, what programs the children had access to.

For the Italian government during the end of the 1950s and early 1960s, one of its major goals was to promote European integration, partly in order to improve its international reputation and alleviate unemployment. In the immediate post-1945 period, the Italian state had to recover international reputation, because of its Fascist past, its alliance with Nazi Germany and the devastation that World War II had caused. The Italian peace treaty stipulated the loss of significant territory and required the Italian state to pay reparations to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Hoping for an alteration to that treaty and in order to be again recognized as an important international player, the pro-Western government threw itself into international developments. Under Christian Democratic Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi (1945 to 1953) the Italian state supported the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Marshall

5 _{“1. Sitzung der deutsch-italienischen Gemischten Kommission zur Durchführung des am 8. Februar 1956 in Bonn}

unterzeichneten Kulturabkommens zwischen Italien und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Rom, 9. bis 11. Dezember 1958,” Protokoll, (December 11, 1958), B 90, Bd. 815, PA AA; and “2. Sitzung der deutsch-italienischen Gemischten Kommission zur Durchführung des am 8. Februar 1956 in Bonn unterzeichneten Kulturabkommens zwischen Italien und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Unkel/am Rhein von 4. bis 6. Oktober 1960,” Protokoll (Unkel/am Rhein, October 6, 1960), B 90, Bd. 732, PA AA.

Plan, the European Recovery Program initiated by the United States.6 Nonetheless, while

interested in a strong Atlantic connection, the Italian state’s position remained weak, leading it to push for further European cooperation in the hopes of increasing its international standing, particularly in the Mediterranean. That hope led the state’s involvement in the founding of the Council of Europe and the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC).7

After De Gasperi, under successive Christian Democratic Prime Ministers, the Italian state played a central, if often ignored, role in the “re-launching of Europe.” The Italian state also had a long Europeanist tradition it hoped to profit from. The new generation of Italian politicians promoted the European Economic Community as an opportunity for igniting the Italian economy and for social modernization. It was partly Italy, then, in various discussions with the members of the ECSC and later the European Economic Community (both of which were later folded into the European Community) that pushed for the development of a European social policy as well as freedom of movement for Community Member State nationals.8

The Italian delegation’s successes in the European sphere led to access to the West German labor market.9 The Italian state suffered from high unemployment, which it hoped to alleviate through labor migration. For Italy, there was a long tradition of labor emigration beginning with the founding of the state in the 1860s.10 The young state initially tried to stem emigration, but finding that goal impossible, developed programs for encouraging their cultural

6 _{Antonio Varsori, “Italy’s European Policy1,” UNISCI Discussion Papers, no. 25 (January 2011): 41–64. Alcide De}

Gasperi (1881–1954) served as Prime Minister from December 1945 through August 1953.

7 _{Ibid., 42–45.} 8 _{Ibid., 50–51.} 9 _{Ibid., 51.}

maintenance instead. In the post-1945 era, the Italian state resumed those efforts, partly to alleviate high unemployment, particularly in southern Italy.11 Only with expanded European cooperation, however, was it able to send significant numbers of workers abroad.

For migrant workers, West Germany was a particularly attractive destination on account of its booming economy. In the 1950s, all across Western and Central Europe, the various European economies were recovering from the war. The Federal Republic’s economy exploded, growing fast enough that it needed additional workers.12 Until the construction of the Berlin Wall by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1961, the majority of the country’s labor needs