Tamás Szalay. The Flagship of Remembrance: Interview with the Director of the Danube Swabian Central Museum
The Danube Swabian Central Museum (Donauschwäbisches Zentralmuseum DZM) in Ulm is the only institution in Germany that presents the history of the Danube Swabians in a scientifically sound and comprehensive manner. The DZM understands the Danube region as a unified cultural and natural area. We spoke with the Hungarian director of the institution, Tamás Szalay, about the 80th anniversary of the expulsion of the Hungarian Germans, the changing role of the museum, and the dialogue between generations.
In 2013, the Hungarian Parliament declared January 19 the official day of remembrance for the expulsion of the Hungarian Germans. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the start of the deportations. How is your museum preparing for this date?
The museum looks back on an intense year, as we celebrated our 25th anniversary in 2025. But already in the course of this anniversary, we began to actively prepare for the commemoration of the events of 80 years ago.
For us, this commemoration encompasses much more than just the act of resettlement; we consider the entire process of uprooting.
This includes the so-called “Malenki Robot” – the years of forced labor in the Soviet Union to which innocent men and women from Hungary were deported. It also encompasses the Soviet deportations in general and the fate of the Banat Swabians, who were deported to the Bărăgan Steppe by the Romanian regime. All these events marked the beginning of a massive wave of expulsions that scattered the Danube Swabian community to the four winds.
Last year, we curated a special exhibition dedicated to this critical turning point. We wanted to show how a culture that had grown over 300 years and its firmly established social structures were destroyed within a very short time. To make this history tangible, we have included biographies of Hungarian Germans, Yugoslav Germans, Banat Swabians (Banat Swabians are a German ethnic group with roots in Banat, a region between the Danube, Tisza, Maros, and the foothills of the Southern Carpathians – editor’s note) and Sathmar Swabians (Sathmar Swabians are a German ethnic group mainly settled in northwestern Romania, in the district of Satu Mare – editor’s note). The basis for this was personal exhibits from our archive, which we linked to the individual life stories of those affected. This enabled us to show visitors how major historical events impacted the private lives of individuals.
What role do these physical objects play in your museum work?
Our philosophy is: We do not collect mere objects, but stories. We only accept objects that are linked to a personal narrative.
An example of this approach was the exhibition “Heavy Fabric – Women, Traditional Costume, Life Stories,” that was created in cooperation with the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest. As part of this show in the Hungarian capital, we presented the human destinies that can lie behind items of clothing. We also pursue this approach here in Ulm.
After already showing a biographical exhibition last year, how does the museum plan to celebrate its anniversary this year?
Since it has been 80 years since the expulsion of the Hungarian Germans, we deliberately did not want to design another exhibition with a similar form or theme. Instead, we decided to give the performing arts the leading role in 2026.
This was all the more appropriate since the Danube Festival takes place every two years in Ulm, i.e., in every even-numbered year. This is a ten-day international festival that attracts around 400,000 visitors and focuses on arts and crafts and the culinary culture of the Danube region. We were convinced that this festival would be a worthy setting for a commemoration on stage, making history visible in the public sphere.
What exactly can the audience expect during this festival?
We are bringing the play Bündeltanz by the Hungarian ensemble Oberon to Ulm.
The play deals with the expulsion of the Swabians and was often performed in a very intimate setting in southern Hungary, e.g. on the verandas of old Swabian farmhouses.
We have now had it translated and will be showing it on July 11 at a worthy venue in the Ulm Theater. We are also coordinating our activities closely with the Liszt Institute in Stuttgart, the Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Ungarn (“Homeland Association of Germans from Hungary”), and other actors in Baden-Württemberg. It is important to us to show that after their expulsion, the Swabians put down roots in many places in Baden-Württemberg and helped shape the state.
Is your program also aimed at those who have returned to Hungary?
Absolutely. The Danube connects the old and new homelands. It is a single, coherent story: settlement in Hungary, integration into Hungarian culture, and finally the dramatic return to Germany. It is not a “happy ending,” but it is a shared narrative. That is why we always talk about “those who were expelled from their homeland and those who remained” in the same breath. The network still exists today.
How has the museum’s audience changed over the last 25 years?
We are currently experiencing a generational change. The “experience generation,” i.e., the eyewitnesses themselves, is slowly disappearing. In the past, visiting the museum was often an act of redemption for them—a place that officially recognized their life stories. Today, we have to retell the story for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Does this approach work with the younger generation?
Yes, and in an amazing way.
We often observe the phenomenon that the second generation tends to focus on integration, while the third generation asks questions about their origins again.
Many young visitors are deeply moved emotionally. It happens that after guided tours, half of the group is in tears because the universal themes of loss and new beginnings speak directly to them.
Do these themes also reach people without a German or Swabian background?
It is extremely interesting to observe that these fates no longer affect only the descendants of the Swabians.
We have found that this is a universal human story. We have many Ukrainian refugees as visitors to the museum—some come in organized groups, others visit us spontaneously.
We also see many mixed school classes with students from completely different migration backgrounds, often with roots in the Middle East. They, too, are often deeply moved. We have heard from teachers that visiting us is sometimes almost a “miracle.” Students who were often traumatized and never talked about their own experiences suddenly began to open up after visiting our exhibition on the displaced Swabians. They said things like, “Yes, I know that feeling too.” In this respect, the museum’s target audience has expanded greatly and now includes people from a wide variety of backgrounds.
Could one say that the museum functions as a central anchor point that holds the community of displaced persons and their descendants together across generations?
Of course, I would be delighted if one could say that in absolute terms. But I think that would be underestimating the importance of the other important memorial sites here.
In Ulm, we form a kind of unity of different places of remembrance.
On the one hand, there is the riverside area on the Danube, the so-called “Donauschwaben-Ufer,” and the Emigrant Memorial on the Danube Swabian Bank—both of which are historically very powerful places. Then there is the city wall, on which bronze plaques commemorating the former settlement areas and numerous Swabian towns are affixed. These physical signs in the cityscape cannot be ignored. They are indispensable to the identity of the community.
Furthermore, our museum is part of a larger, state-run system. As early as 1953, the federal government passed the Federal Expellees Act. Paragraph 96 of this law stipulates that the German state is obliged to preserve and develop the cultural assets of expelled Germans both in Germany and in their original areas of origin. Our museum was established on this legal basis.
There are, of course, other important institutions that work on this basis, such as the “House of the Danube Swabians” in Sindelfingen that is an important meeting place for displaced persons from the former Yugoslavia. But we would like to believe that we are a kind of flagship in this landscape, that is already expressed by our name as the “Central Museum.”