Herbert Czaja
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Dr. Herbert Czaja (November 5, 1914 - April 18, 1997) was a German politician (CDU) and expellee, born in Teschen, then Austria-Hungary. When he was 4 years old, when part of Cieszyn fell to Poland, he became a Polish citizen. Czaja studied Germanistics, History and Philosophy in Vienna and Krakow, and was active in political life of the autonomous Silesian Voivodship of Poland, working as a teacher and being member of the German Christian Democratic party. During the WW2, when the voivodship was annexed by Germany, he was granted German citizenship and served in the German Army 1943-1945. On the basis of alleged "high treason" committed during the war by military service in the army of the enemy state, Polish authorities expelled Czaja to Stuttgart in 1946. He was a member of the German parliament from 1953-1990, spokesman of the Landsmannschaft der Oberschlesier from 1969 and president of the Federation of Expellees (Bund der Vertriebenen) from 1970-1994. From 1948 he was also member of the Central Committee of German Catholics. By Polish communist propaganda he used to be public enemy #2. He voted - along with several conservative politicians - against the recognition of the Oder-Neisse line as Polish border in 1990, and claimed the reunification of the Federal Republic of Germany with the territory of the former German Democratic Republic was not a complete reunification according to the German constitution, as it did not include Eastern Germany. In the 1990s he was however active in Polish-German reconciliation, and worked for the authorities of Opole Voivodship in Poland. Herbert Czaja died in Stuttgart in 1997, he left a wife and 10 children. Dr.-Herbert–Czaja-Weg in Stuttgart was named in his honour the same year.
His oldest daughter, Christine Czaja, who is the current vice president of the Landsmannschaft der Oberschlesier, has recently published his biography.
Literature
- Czaja, Christine (2003): Herbert Czaja - Anwalt für Menschenrechte. Kulturstiftung der deutschen Vertriebenende:Herbert Czaja