, version without an
eagle The association consists of people who were
expelled or evacuated during
World War II or after, and their descendants, as well as people who emigrated in more recent times, exercising their right to
German citizenship, based on a 1913 German law. (See
Aussiedler, the
German Law of Return.) (The German nationality law was reformed in 1999 to, besides other matters, remove reference to
ethnic German ancestry from the law.) The current president is
Stephan Rauhut who is a
German Christian Democratic Union politician.{{cite web In 1985, the Landsmannschaft planned to hold a congress in
Stuttgart under the motto
40 Jahre Vertreibung - Schlesien bleibt unser ("40 years of expulsion - Silesia remains ours"). Chancellor
Helmut Kohl declined to attend unless the slogan was modified, which it was, to "Silesia remains our future in a Europe of free nations". At the 2001 congress held in
Nuremberg, Interior Minister
Otto Schily was booed when he said that the expulsions were the consequence of German aggression. There is also another Silesian Landsmannschaft, the
Landsmannschaft der Oberschlesier e.V. (Bundesverband) representing
Upper Silesians. == Presidents of the Federation ==