Foreign home

Ten years after the end of the Second World War, there are still more than 1,900 residential camps in the Federal Republic. Over a quarter of a million refugees and displaced persons live in them. In every rural district and in almost every municipality there were residential camps after 1945 in which the Germans who had fled and were expelled from Central and Eastern Europe were housed makeshift.

The refugee camp on the Schlotwiese in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen with its more than 1200 inmates is one of these camps. The people are ethnic Germans from the border area between Yugoslavia, Croatia and Hungary. At the end of the Second World War they were evacuated, driven out or forced to flee. A functioning refugee community with craft businesses and shops, a kindergarten, a school and a church is emerging in the camp.

The exhibition was a walk through the history of the camp residents. They spoke audibly in the exhibition and told their integration story.