Vocal German Minority Forced to Soften Tone : Silesian Refugees Reportedly Complicated Kohl’s Overtures Toward East Bloc

It has been almost 40 years since the Silesian region of Hitler’s defeated Third Reich became part of Poland, but those who fled westward and began their lives anew in West Germany have never given up hope that the area would one day return to German hands.

On Tuesday, however, amid a growing political commotion and mounting pressure from Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the country’s biggest organization of Silesian refugees was forced to soften a motto expressing these sentiments.

Although the emotional controversy is little more than a curiosity to most Westerners, it reflects the deep divisions that still exist among West Germans about such fundamental questions as the definition of any future, reunited Germany.

The demands of such refugee and expellee organizations have also seriously complicated Kohl’s efforts to improve relations with Eastern Europe. Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union--which now own such territory--all bridle at talk of Germans regaining lands lost after World War II.

Motto Sparked Debate This time, however, the motto selected for the annual rally of the Silesian League next June--”Forty years of banishment--Silesia remains ours”--sparked a major debate in West Germany as well.

Kohl, who last autumn stirred controversy by becoming the first chancellor in almost two decades to address an expellee group, reportedly found the motto provocative and said that he would not honor a commitment to address the Silesian rally unless it were changed.

The ensuing debate has dominated the headlines of leading newspapers for much of the past week.

Right-wing members of Kohl’s own Christian Democrats expressed understanding for the Silesian expellees, while opposition Social Democrats condemned the argument. Socialist parliamentary leader Hans-Jochen Vogel called the debate an “unseemly game” and expressed fears that the controversy would disturb the difficult process of West Germany’s reconciliation with East Bloc countries.

Last summer, Moscow launched a withering propaganda attack against West Germany, accusing Kohl of conspiring to win back Germany’s lost territories. Although the campaign was apparently orchestrated mainly to block the warming of relations between the two Germanys under way at the time, it continues to cloud Soviet-West German ties.

After a 30-minute meeting with Kohl on Monday, the Silesians backed off but only slightly. Their revised conference motto: “Forty years of banishment--Silesia remains our future in a Europe of free people.”

At a news conference Tuesday, Herbert Hupka, head of the Silesian League and a member of the West German Parliament, asserted that Kohl had accepted the new wording and would now address the gathering, expected to draw 150,000 people.

However, in an open letter to Kohl on Tuesday announcing the change, Hupka appeared unwavering in his hard line. “Silesia isn’t just the home of Silesians,” he wrote, “but the property of all Germans.”

Social Democrats said the text of the letter and the new wording left the Silesians’ position virtually unchanged. “Grotesque, shameful,” charged Horst Ehmke, the deputy parliamentary leader for the Social Democrats.

In its 1970 treaty with Poland, the West German government formally acknowledged the present Polish western frontier, including Silesia. This border--which Poland shares with East Germany, not West Germany--runs for much of its length along the Oder and Neisse rivers.

More recently, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher has repeatedly stated that West Germany considers the existing European borders inviolable.

However, the West German government also holds to an apparently contradictory view that at some point in the future, a peaceful realignment of Europe’s frontiers will somehow bring these lost areas back to German control.

Bonn Foreign Ministry officials admit the policy is confusing, but say privately that it would be politically difficult not to offer some hope to those West Germans who trace their origins back to the lost eastern territories.

An estimated 2 million German Silesians resettled in West Germany after World War II. They make up an important part of the 13 million Germans driven from the eastern territories of the defeated German Reich after the border realignments following World War II.

Roughly one in every four West Germans has origins in the eastern territories, and Kohl has often praised their contributions to the country’s development.

Silesia was conquered by Frederick the Great of Prussia in the 1740s, but its coal and steel-producing regions were ceded to Poland after World War I. Poland got the rest of the province after World War II, except for two small districts now part of East Germany.

Although many speakers of German remain in Silesia, few of them believe it will ever return to German control.

“There was a time when we hoped for something,” said an old, German-speaking farmer near the city of Opole, in an interview last summer. “But now it’s over and this land belongs to Poland. Our children are Polish and their children will be, too.”