Ostflucht

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The Ostflucht (flight from the East) was a movement by residents of the historically eastern German regions, such as East Prussia, West Prussia, Silesia and Province of Posen beginning around 1850, to the more industrialized western German Rhine and Ruhr provinces. Along with ethnic Germans, many of those migrating to the Ruhr were originally of Polish ethnicity or of mixed German-Slavic ancestry, so-called Ruhrpolen.

At the same time, increased immigration into the eastern German regions by Poles from western Russia caused imbalances and upheavals there, especially in Upper Silesia.

The emigration of Germans, and the higher Polish birth rate in these areas caused concern among German nationalists, leading to special laws:

limiting sale of estates to Germans only,
encouraging Germans to immigrate to the Prussian state,
creating an Ansiedlungskommision, ("Settlement Commission") funded by the state, that aimed at buying land from ethnic Poles and selling it to Germans,
instituting rules which required an ethnic Pole to apply for approval (rarely given) to build a new house on a newly acquired farm, see also Drzymala car.

The sociologist Max Weber first came to public attention in Germany as a result of his study of the Ostflucht and of methods of combatting it, carried out on behalf of the Verein für Socialpolitik.