Abstract (eng)
Uninhabitable apartments, the infrastructure hit by hail of bombs and the food and care supply more than inadequate – given the destructions after World War II, Vienna was not a good place to be for children. Vienna’s children were undernourished and suffered from deficiency symptoms and resultant diseases. Relief was provided in a large-scale program by sending 315 000 children to host families across Europe through aid agencies. The exile of these children and the resulting experiences are the subject of this qualitative scientific work. By means of seven touching narrative interviews based on Fritz Schütze, the biographical stories were recorded and underwent an interpretative analysis method. The extracted children’s experiences range from saying goodbye to their own family, cultural experiences, insecurities and fear, experiencing humanity and solidarity, identity formation, developing resilience to changing languages. Often, lifelong friendships were developed with the host family as well as deep longings for the host country and the impressions gained back then. The sequence analysis carried out hermeneutically generated experiences that still have an impact today and have shaped the further biography of the children at the time. The methodological peculiarities of scientific work in biographical research as well as the theoretical position in the context of the social construction of reality according to Berger and Luckmann are dealt with elaborately.