Changes in Politics, Changes in Ownership: Tracing the (Re)Settelment and Property of Ethnic Germans
In the East Central Europe, political borders as well as property relations went through rapid changes throughout the 20th century. The paper discusses the advantages of digital methods to study and communicate the settlement of ethnic Germans. Two case studies are discussed: first, the settelment of Germans in the Baltics, second, the resettelment of the Germans in the rural areas of the Warthegau in Poland and the expropriation of Poles around the period of the World War Two. Mapping and geospatial analysis helps to understand the patterns in the plethora of documents that the authorities created to coordinate the processes of resettelment.