448 MAREN MÖHRING
At the end of World War II, postwar Germany was a “hub” of inter-
national migration due to the almost seven million displaced persons
and approximately twelve million German refugees and expellees within
its borders.^3 Whereas a large number of the former prisoners of forced
labor camps and concentration camps left Germany for Great Britain,
the United States, or Israel, the huge numbers of German refugees who
remained within the territory of what would become East and West Ger-
many presented a great challenge to the two fl edgling states. By the
time the Berlin Wall had been put up, around nine hundred thousand
of the approximately 4.3 million expellees who were in the Soviet Oc-
cupation Zone as of 1948 had migrated to the Federal Republic.^4 At the
same time, the movement of migrants and refugees from East to West
Germany fueled an ongoing confl ict between the two states. It also aptly
refl ects the violent yet helpless way in which the GDR leadership re-
acted to practices that persisted despite prohibitions and were therefore
always interpreted as a critique against the system. Migration in both
directions, moreover, was an unparalleled politically loaded issue during
the Cold War.
Tourism and the freedom to travel were also very much a controver-
sial political topic within the context of the rivalry between the systems.
Travel has been quite popular among East and West Germans alike, both
before and after the collapse of Communism. Although Germans were
relatively immobile in terms of changing jobs or moving house for other
reasons well into the 1990s (apart from during the immediate postwar
years), they often spent short-term stays in diff erent places. In addition to
looking at domestic and foreign tourism, this chapter will also deal with
the touristic exchanges that took place between East and West Germany,
and especially family visits across the German-German border.
Whereas employers in West Germany often complained about the lack
of mobility among West German citizens, there was another group that
was highly mobile and fl exible, namely the foreign labor migrants.^5 Even
before the construction of the Wall put a stop to the infl ux of East Ger-
mans who came to work in West Germany, the West German government
had already begun eff orts to attract foreign workers in order to meet the
ever increasing demand for labor that accompanied the economic up-
swing. The GDR also tried to encourage foreign workers to come to the
country, but the infl uence of labor migrants on East German society and
culture remained very limited. By comparing the West German Gastarbei-
ter (guestworker) system and the East German Vertragsarbeiter (contract
worker) system, this chapter will examine mutual processes of demarca-
tion as well as commonalities in the way in which both countries dealt
with non-Germans. It will also touch on similarities and diff erences in