2. Housing Estate: Beginning of the Federal Republic (1949 – 1960)

From barracks camps to satellite city
Construction of the Langwasser satellite city, planned on the drawing board, begins in 1957. Since 1949, a housing estate of wooden and stone barracks has been home to three thousand Germans expelled from Silesia and the Sudetenland.

Adjacent to the housing estate is the “Federal Collection Camp,” surrounded by a wall. It is the nucleus of the later Federal Office for Migration and is responsible for all foreigners seeking asylum in the Federal Republic. In 1953, it replaces the “Government Camp” operated by the Free State of Bavaria since 1949, which had been overcrowded with more than five thousand people from over thirty nations.

In 1960, the “Federal Collection Camp” is relocated to Zirndorf. Like all foreigner camps in Langwasser, it is colloquially called the “Valkalager.”