German DP camps after World War II and Ukrainian publishing

Millions of Ukrainian refugees found themselves in Europe due to the war. The story of our lives? Not necessarily. In 1945 post-war West Germany, there were displaced-persons camps, or DP camps. Former prisoners, forced laborers, and refugees from different countries dwelled there, including about 3 million Ukrainians. They did not let the grass grow under their feet, but assembled choirs, built schools, created artistic and cultural circles, and established publishing houses.

What were the working conditions of the publishing houses?

The largest Ukrainian DP camps were located in Munich, Augsburg, Mittenwald, Regensburg, and Bayreuth (American zone of occupation), in Hanover and Heidenau (British zone) and in Stuttgart (French zone). Experts estimate that in less than five years — between 1945 and 1949 — about 800 titles of fiction were published. Only 20% of them were reprints of pre-war books, while all the rest were new publications.

Ink and proper book paper were in short supply, so books were printed on newsprint. The cost of one cigarette was five German marks, and one could buy a book for one or two cigarettes. The publication of books was coordinated with the camp guards because they made sure none contained Nazi propaganda or communist ideas. This was not the case for Ukrainian publications, the Ukrainian historian, journalist, and the head of the Museum-Archive of the Press Vakhtang Kipiani said.

“At the time, Germany was probably the best place for publishing Ukrainian literature: books for children, books on political, scientific, and professional topics, and books for entertainment. Despite poverty and a collapsed economy, the society here enjoyed relative freedoms which did not exist in the Ukrainian SSR. Ukrainian emigration, politically and culturally, took full advantage of this,” Kipiani added.

Publishing activities in the West Germany DP camps varied by genre and type. In addition to newspapers and scientific books, children’s literature, textbooks, memoirs, and humorous works were published. A large number of scholars, writers, and statesmen from the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR), the Ukrainian Derzhava (UD), and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) were gathered in DP camps, as they would not have survived in the communist authoritarian regime.

What did Ukrainians manage to publish in the German camps?

In the suburbs of Nuremberg, books were published under the Golden Gate label. Many were written by members of the Artistic Ukrainian Movement (MUR), founded in 1945. These members included writers Yurii Shevelov, Victor Petrov, Ivan Bahriany, Ihor Kostetskyi, Leonid Poltava, and Ivan Maistrenko. Between 1945 and 1949, the landmark works of Ukrainian literature were published here: “Tiger Trappers” by Ivan Bahriany; “Doctor Seraphicus” and “Without Soil” by Viktor Petrov (Domontovych); “Children of the Milky Way” by Dokiia Humenna; “Memories of Neoclassics” and “Ashes of Empires” by Yurii Klen; “The Story of the Winners” by Ihor Kostetskyi; “Where the Miracle Begins,” “The Play about Yuriy the Conqueror,” and “Aeneas and the Lives of Others” by Yurii Kosach; “Senior Boyar,” “The Poet” by Todos Osmachka; “Ost,” “The Youth of Vasyl Sheremeta” and “Five After Twelve” by Ulas Samchuk; collections of poems by Vasyl Barka; “I Want to Live” by Oles Dansky; and many others.

The Artistic Ukrainian Movement (MUR), collection of works by various authors

Formally, the organization ceased to exist in the summer of 1948. According to Sherekh, it had nothing to do with literature itself. There was a currency reform in Germany that not only made the publication of books and magazines impossible — it also limited the financial resources of emigrants. Additionally, most people from DP camps resettled in other countries, with the United States as the most common destination.

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Another renowned publishing house in Germany was Ukrainian Word, founded in Regensburg in 1947 as a publishing association. Its head and founder was Julian Tarnovych. The association published the weekly newspapers Ukrainske Slovo (Ukrainian Word) and Slovo (Word), as well as various bulletins, posters, and books, translations of classics into Ukrainian, and Ukrainian classics such as the works by Ukrainian poet and artist Taras Shevchenko, and poet and activist Ivan Franko.

Dniprova Khvylya (Dnipro Wave) publishing house was founded in 1953 in Munich by Oleksa Vintoniak, a man who endured a difficult fate. In 1942, Vintoniak was arrested by the Nazis for being a member of OUN and imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp. After his release in 1945, Vintoniak moved to Munich, where he founded both a publishing house and a printing house. Dniprova Khvylya published works of fiction, politics, science, collections, and memoirs. In the first 20 years of its existence, Dniprova Khvylya published 77 Ukrainian books. Among the most valuable publications are: the reprints of “My Memories of the Recent Past” by Dmytro Doroshenko, a statesman of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, historian and researcher; his “Outline of the History of Ukraine;” and “History of Ukraine” by Nataliia Polonska-Vasylenko. 

“My Memories of the Recent Past” and “Outline of the History of Ukraine” by Dmytro Doroshenko

“History of Ukraine” by Nataliia Polonska-Vasylenko

“The transfer of the Ukrainian Free University and the Ukrainian Technical and Economic Institute in 1945 from Prague to Munich is an important moment in our history, and it actually became possible with the support of the German authorities. This is where their publishing, information, research, and educational activities unfold,” said Oleh Bohuslavsky, founder of the electronic library of diaspora publications Diasporiana and professor of journalism, advertising, and PR at the Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University.

As an educational and research institution, the university required scientific literature, lecture materials, research, and academic papers. To address this need, they began to publish semester syllabi, research papers of Ukrainian Free University professors, and scripts, the simplified textbooks and notes for students.

Were Ukrainian works translated into German and published?

The vast majority of publications were aimed at the Ukrainian audience interested in events in their homeland under Soviet Union rule. Political bulletins were primarily published in German. There were two works published by German publishing houses that gained relative prominence: an essay on the experimental Ukrainian theater by Yurii Shevelov, one of Ukraine’s greatest intellectuals, and an essay on Ukrainian literature by the writer Yurii Kosach. These works were later cited by German scholars.

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Journalistic texts and essays were written in Germany — genres that were not developed in the Soviet Union. In particular, there is a pamphlet by Ivan Bahriany: “Why I Am Not Going Back to Soviet Union.” It reflected the stance of many refugees from Ukraine who refused to return to a servile Ukraine, de facto under Russian occupation. 

In Germany, some of the most important texts of Ukrainian literature were written, and those texts are now part of the school curriculum. They are the classics. In the USSR, these works would never have been allowed to be printed. They were simply banned. One could not only be arrested for doing so, but also murdered. Even Ukrainians were late in learning about many of these works after Ukraine gained its independence in 1991. That’s when they began to be republished. 

“Tiger Trappers” by Ivan Bahriany

There is one novel that has already been published in Germany and was extensively praised by German readers — an adventure novel called “Tiger Trappers” (also known as “The Hunters and the Hunted”) by Ivan Bahriany, about a Ukrainian who escapes from the Gulag. The protagonist, Hryhoriy Mnohohrishny, has numerous adventures, meets a family of Ukrainian immigrants who hunt tigers, and even finds love. It has already been published in Germany and was even included in the school curriculum. In 1962, this novel won the German Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature Arbeitskreis für Jugendliteratur e.V.

 The landmark journal Arka

Almost every DP camp had its own newspaper, published in small numbers. Some circulated several thousand copies, while others only around 100. These included political and social weeklies, magazines for children, and even a humor magazine.

One of the most important magazines of that time was the periodical of literature, art, and criticism named Arka (Arc), published between 1948 and 1949. These were the golden years of Ukrainians’ lives in Germany — a cultural boom, so to say. Some of the refugees still lived in apartments. They had adapted, established their lives; cultural life was flourishing. Reproductions, reflections on civilizational and cultural topics, book reviews, and critical materials were published in Arka. The best Ukrainian illustrators and intellectuals of the time worked for the magazine, publishing their stories and novels and showcasing their works of art. Ukrainian literary critic Yevhen Stasinevych believes that one of the best Ukrainian magazines in the history of Ukrainian culture was created in Germany during less than two years. 

“At the end of every issue, there was a chronicle that included a lot of German context. Even today, I believe, it would be interesting for Germans to look through it. If you translate the magazine’s articles, you can get a very good sense of German cultural life after the war, particularly with a focus on theater. Additionally, there were reviews of German books, articles about cinema, and critiques of performances across Europe at the time,” Stasinevych explained.

Ukrainian emigrants were immersed in the context of European culture, and so the publication featured articles about the intersection of Ukrainian with French, German, and American contexts. This provides a key for understanding the Ukrainian cultural realities of the late 1940s.

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Ukraine is working to publish replicas of all 11 issues of the Arka magazine, as its features remain valuable today. The content is of interest not only to historians but also to students and others seeking a modern, engaging intellectual read. The magazine was free from communist censorship, allowing artists to express themselves freely.

“We dream of eventually presenting the publication in Munich,” Stasinevych added, “where the magazine was published and where these people lived — the backbone of Ukrainian intellectuals of the time. There is an address where this magazine was published … This is an episode in Ukrainian-German cultural relations. Yes, mainly because it took place in Germany, but also because our artists were part of the German cultural context at the time. They read books, and many of them knew German because they had received a classical interwar education.”

Oleksandr Savchuk plans to publish facsimile editions of Arka.

The article was published with the support of European journalistic network n-ost.

Translation: Iryna Savyuk

Copy editing: Sheri Liguori