The international research project about evacuations in the French-German border region

Streszcz. ang.

In July 2012 the international French-German research project treating about the evacuations in the French-German border region during World War II was started up. The initiative is scheduled for the years 2012-2015 and realized by Université Paris Sorbonne - Paris IV, Universität des Saarlandes, Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Eberhard Karls Universität in Tübingen. The coordinators of the reseach team are: Prof. Olivier Forcade (Paris), Prof. Rainer Hudemann (Saarbrücken), Juniorprof. Fabian Lemmes (Bochum) and Juniorprof. Johannes Großmann (Tübingen). The project has obtained funding from the French Agence nationale de la Recherche and the German Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The members of the both sides (French and German) research the processes of evacuations of civilian populations by the French Third Republic - from Alsace and Moselle, and by the totalitarian Nazi regime in Germany - from Saarland, Palatinate and Baden. The “management” of refugee populations from these border regions in the areas of their reception (particularly the French departments: Vienne, Haute-Vienne, Dordogne and Charente and the German states: Francony, Hesse, Lower Saxony and Thuringia) is also examined. The role of the NGOs, the International Red Cross and his national committees and of the local churches and religious associations is studied in the comparative aspect. The comparative perspective refers to the research in the French and German cases but also to the larger perspective of the comparison of the evacuations in the western and middle-eastern Europe, especially in German-Polish border regions. The investigations of members of the project team result in one or two post-doctoral works, four PhD dissertations, a few M.A. thesis prepared under the supervision of the coordinators of this research project and in a number of research articles of all the members of project group. Furthermore, two expositions will be organized: in 2014 in Saarbrücken and probably in 2015 in Paris.