Since its founding, the ISD has developed a number of educational projects; one of them was the traveling exhibition “Homestory Deutschland” and the publication that accompanied it. Most Germans still define “German” basically in ethnic-racial terms. It's not surprising, then, that until the end of the last century the principle “Germany is not a country of immigration” was widely accepted, although in reality it always has been a country of immigration, if only because of its position in the center of Europe. There has always been migration from neighboring countries, but also from the rest of the world, sometimes initiated by the Germans themselves. That was the case with “guest workers” who came in the 1960s and 1970s as well as with the Huguenots who were being persecuted in France and were invited in by the Prussian kings. There was no mass emigration or immigration like that in the New World, but immigrants did make up a noticeable part of the German population.

The largest influx resulted from the lost war, when millions of German-speaking people fled or were expelled from their home countries. They didn't leave of their own free will, and their reception was anything but enthusiastic. But after the war it was these people as a group that made a substantial contribution to the rise of the Federal Republic in Europe and the world.