ABSTRACT
After a century dominated by flight, expulsion, and the genocide of ethnic minorities, it is difficult to make statements about the existence of minorities in Europe which do not narrate the history of minority-majority co-existence completely negatively. Twentieth-century history, which saw 30 to 50 million forced migrants (Fassmann and Münz 2000; see Chapters 5 and 6), refugees and expellees in Europe alone, shaped and politicized the picture and status of ethnic minorities significantly. Thus the history of minorities and minority existence in Central and Eastern Europe is usually told as a history of conflict, ethnic strife and, primarily, of failure. These characteristics have been reinforced since the collapse of communism and the renaissance of ethno-nationalism in these parts of Europe. In the 1990s, the image of minorities prevalent in the inter-war period with its abundant ethnic conflicts reappeared in the public sphere: namely, the dichotomous perception of minorities as clearly belonging to either one side or the other re-emerged. This image of ethnic minorities is most often associated either with the idea of friends vs. foes or victims vs. perpetrators, depending on the political and national standpoint of the commentator. Consequently, the interrelations that minorities developed with their host (and homeland) societies or even the fact that they had become part of the host society-acted and interacted with them-was emphasized less and less.1
