At the beginning of 1945 the family fled from Königsberg to Dittmansried in the Allgäu. The eastern German territories fell to Poland and the USSR, the Albertus University of Königsberg ceased to exist, my grandfather was unemployed. My grandmother, a qualified teacher, temporarily supported the family.

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The German population who had not yet fled the areas beyond the Oder and Neisse rivers were expelled and, ironically, for the first time there was the clear territorial separation of the ethnic groups that my grandfather had advocated – with the difference that the border now ran much further west than he had recommended.