Moravian compensation

Moravian Compensation is the collective name for four state laws passed in 1905, which were intended to guarantee a solution to the nationality problems between Germans and Czechs in the Margraviate of Moravia and thus bring about an Austrian-Czech compensation .

Bohemian (Czech) and German electoral districts in the rural municipal electoral class according to the Moravian Provincial Law of November 27, 1905

As before in Bohemia , the School Compensation Act regulated that schools of the respective nationality should accept children of their own national affiliation, so that in future Czech children should only be sent to Czech and German children only to German schools.

The state order and the state election order were changed so that a German and a Czech curia were introduced in the Moravian state parliament . A German-Czech proportional representation was established for the entire area of ​​the state administration, the membership of those eligible to vote for the state elections to the German or Czech minority group was organized via national cadastres, whereby disputed cases could be resolved through legal action. The second national language should also be used in those communities where it was spoken by more than a fifth of the population.

In the curial system, however, the Czechs were still severely disadvantaged, regardless of the compensation. In contrast to Bohemia, civil servant positions were also mainly reserved for Germans, although they only made up around a quarter of the population of Moravia. The Czechs accepted the equalization because it at least improved their position somewhat, but viewed it only as an "intermediate stage".

The regulation could have served as a model for the solution of the nationality question in the whole of Austria-Hungary , but the representatives of the respective ethnic groups at the national level relied on confrontation - the Germans and Hungarians in order not to lose their primacy, the Slavs in order to achieve complete autonomy or Enforce independence - so that in particular the cisleithan Reichsrat was unable to work from 1907.

literature

• Lukáš Fasora (ed.): The Moravian Compensation of 1905. Possibilities and Limits for a National Compensation in Central Europe. Matice moravská, Brno 2006, ISBN 80-86488-36-5 (conference proceedings, contributions in German or Czech; table of contents ).
• Horst Glassl : The Moravian Compensation . Fides, Munich 1967 DNB 456760008 (also dissertation , University of Munich 1967 DNB 482279206 ).

Web links

Commons : Moravian Compensation  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• www.radio.cz/de 100 years of Moravian Compromise / conversation with Rudolf Grulich Radio Prague
• www.mitteleuropa.de Brief information about the "Moravian Compensation"

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Helmut Slapnicka: The impotence of parliamentarism. In: Ferdinand Seibt (Ed.): The chance of understanding. Intentions and approaches to supranational cooperation in the Bohemian countries 1848–1918 . Oldenbourg, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-486-53971-X , pp. 147-174, here p. 159.
2. ↑ Jan Křen : The conflict community. Czechs and Germans. 1780-1918 . Oldenbourg, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-486-56017-4 , pp. 232 and 263.