and 1948 its population doubled. This predominately agrarian area underwent severe strains in accommodating these newcomers, and its handling of the expellee problem provided a bench mark for the evaluation of the assimilation process throughout the Federal Republic. While the tracing of the assimilation of the expellees into the West German polity and society has been voluminously documented l at the national level, much less research into the process has been conducted at the state and local levels. The principal reason for this seems to lie in the belief that the process has been success­ fully completed at these lower levels and may be considered a 1 The classic treatment of the first decade and a half of the assimilation process from the national level is Eugen Lemberg and Friedrich Edding, eds.