Germans in the First Czechoslovak Republic
The German minority in the First Czechoslovak Republic is the term used to describe the German minority who, since the proclamation of a Czechoslovak state in 1918, have lived within the state borders established in the Treaty of Saint-Germain in 1920.
After the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy, the German population lost their political role completely, as the victorious powers of the First World War did not take into account the ethnic composition of the affected regions when drawing the boundaries of the newly formed Czechoslovakia. At first there were numerous attempts at autonomy , but in the course of time these lost momentum and developed into demands for equal rights for Germans in politics and everyday life. An initial understanding between Germans and Czechoslovaks only came about after German ministers (see below) took part in the government (so-called "activists"), but the so-called "negativists" had a strong influence until the second half of the 1930s. But shortly afterwards, as a result of Hitler's aggression and the appeasement policy of the Western powers, the German settlement areas were incorporated into the German Empire .
Disintegration of Cisleithania
Even before the Austro-Italian armistice in the Villa Giusti near Padua on November 3, 1918, two republics with conflicting territorial claims were proclaimed in the western half of the Danube Monarchy: the Republic of German Austria on October 21, 1918 in Vienna and the Republic of German Austria on October 28 Prague the Czechoslovak Republic .
According to the census of December 31, 1880, a total of 2,927,684 Germans lived in the countries of the Bohemian Crown , which were fully claimed by the Czechoslovak Republic , which corresponded to 36.04% of the total population. In 1910, 6.33 million Czechs and 3.49 million Germans ( German Bohemians, German Moravians and German -Silesians , later often all combined as Sudeten Germans ) lived in the previous countries of the Bohemian Crown ( Bohemia , Moravia and Austrian Silesia ).
Since October 21, 1918, the members of the Reichsrat (Reichsrat) elected in 1911 from all German regions of Cisleithania formed the Provisional National Assembly for German Austria in Vienna . The German MPs from Bohemia and Moravia proclaimed the foundation of the German-Austrian provinces of German Bohemia and Sudetenland on October 29, 1918, the day after the proclamation of the Czechoslovak Republic, under the chairmanship of provincial governors. Other German settlement areas claimed by German Austria in the Bohemian Forest and in South Bohemia ("Böhmerwaldgau" under Kreishauptmann Friedrich Wichtl ) and in South Moravia ("German South Moravia" under Kreishauptmann Oskar Teufel ) were to be administered by Upper and Lower Austria.
On October 30, 1918, the German-Austrian State Council (the executive committee of the Provisional National Assembly) appointed the first republican government, the Renner I state government , whose state chancellor Karl Renner came from South Moravia. The state secretaries [= ministers] also came from the countries of the Bohemian Crown: Josef Mayer ( German national ), Ferdinand Hanusch (social democrat), Karl Urban ( Christian social ) and the governor of the German Bohemia Province, who had only been in office for a few days, Raphael Pacher (German national) and undersecretary of state Leopold Waber (German national).
The Provisional National Assembly of German Austria declared its territory to be part of the German Reich by law of October 30, 1918 , even before the republic was proclaimed there on November 9 . The claim to all German settlement areas and accession to the German Republic could not be realized in realpolitical terms as early as late autumn 1918, and much less later.
Military occupation of the German settlement areas
While the troops of the Habsburg Empire consisted of members of several nationalities and had capitulated, the Czechoslovak government had the Czechoslovak legions , which had fought on the side of the Entente , as the basis of a new Czechoslovak army . From November 13, 1918, she used this to militarily reaffirm her claim to the disputed areas. There was no blanket resistance. Armed groups opposed the military in only about eight places (for example, on November 27th in Brüx and on December 2nd in Kaplitz ).
The state government of German Bohemia requested US President Woodrow Wilson in a cable dispatch sent by the Swedish embassy to guarantee the peoples' right to self-determination that he had proclaimed. At the same time, the state government protested against "rape to which our national territory is exposed by troops of the Czecho-Slovak state".
Establishment of the new statehood
The election to the Constituent National Assembly of German Austria on February 16, 1919 could only take place in today's Austrian federal states (with the exception of Burgenland , which was then still part of Hungary). In the German areas in what is now the Czech Republic or what was then Czechoslovakia (!), The holding of this election was prevented by the Czechoslovak authorities. The consideration for those constituencies in which could not be elected deputies on the basis of party lists convene , few constituencies was realized on the southern border of Austria for some who were at least in part in today's territory. This practice was not applied to the constituencies of the German-Austrians in Czechoslovakia, so that they were no longer represented by German-Austrian politics.
On February 29, 1920, the Provisional National Assembly of the Czechoslovak Republic adopted its constitution. The Germans in Bohemia and Moravia had boycotted the National Assembly because of their rejection of this state and thus missed the opportunity to participate in shaping its rules.
On March 4, 1919, the day the newly elected National Assembly of German Austria met in Vienna, demonstrations for the right to self-determination and membership in German Austria took place in many places in the German settlement area . 54 Germans were shot and almost 200 people injured.
The first parliamentary elections for the Chamber of Deputies and Senate of the Czechoslovak Republic took place on April 18, 1920.
The Treaty of Saint-Germain , which came into force on July 16, 1920, confirmed the de facto balance of power and demarcation that had existed since November 1918. The Versailles Treaty also contained a ban on Austria and the predominantly German-populated areas of the Czech Republic to the German Reich until 1946. With the entry into force of the Treaty of Saint-Germain, the Germans in Czechoslovakia became Czechoslovak citizens. The German citizenship they claimed expired under Art. 76.
Continuation of the nationality conflict that has existed since 1848
The Treaty of Saint-Germain confirmed the Czech position on the unity of the countries of the Bohemian Crown . The nationality conflict that had been waged in these countries since the middle of the 19th century thus continued under the opposite direction.
This conflict with the Slav Congress of June 1848 became visible (→ Young Czechs ). This was based on the “national rebirth” of the Czechs. Stations of the awakening national consciousness in the 19th century were in particular the awakening of interest in the Czech language, literature and theater, the reflection on patriotism and historicism, and finally successful political and linguistic demands such as the decree of Czech as the second official language in 1880 and the division of the Charles University in Prague 1882.
The attempt of an Austro-Czech settlement based on the model of the Austro-Hungarian settlement of 1867 or even just an inner-Bohemian settlement between Czechs and Germans analogous to the Moravian settlement of 1905 had been blocked by the German Bohemians . Now, contrary to the promise of the Paris Note of May 20, 1919 , the Czechoslovak Republic did not become a second Switzerland. Among other things, they understood the Czechs and Slovaks together as the state people of the Czechoslovaks, although on the other hand a law came into force at the same time as the constitution stating Czech as the national language of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, and Slovak as the national language of Slovakia. Until the end of the First World War, Slovakia, as Upper Hungary, belonged to the Hungarian half of Austria-Hungary . The autonomy assured to her on May 30, 1918 in the Pittsburgh Treaty was not granted to her. The nationality question was finally internationalized and instrumentalized by Hitler in the Sudeten crisis in 1938 .
Czechization policy from 1918
With regard to the Germans, the ČSR pursued a policy of Czechization from the start. In addition, there was a Pro-Czech economic and labor market policy. In the German settlement areas, it decimated the German and promoted the Czech school system by closing 9 of the 19 teacher training institutions. Czech schools were opened when there were at least five Czech children (including those from post office or railroad administrators who had been transferred there); at the same time, the class divider was increased to 60 students in the other schools . In 1920 there were 495 Czech minority elementary and civic schools in the German settlement area, in 1930 over 1,400, of which 1153 were state minority elementary schools with a total of 2,559 classes. In the land reform, in turn, were z. For example, 30 percent of their forests were confiscated from German forest owners and only 4 percent from Czech forest owners.
The percentage of Czech residents in the 1910, 1921 and 1930 censuses increased in Eger from 0% to 3.2% to 7%, in Aussig / Elbe 5.6 - 17.4 - 20, in the village on the language border Bölten / North Moravia from 0.75% to 10.75%.
With regard to the labor market ((in which area?)) It is documented that in January 1936 there were 97.5 German and 47.3 Czech unemployed per 1000 inhabitants (2.06: 1), based on 1000 employed 192.4 Germans and 110 , 7 Czechs (1.74: 1).
For the five most important and largest Czech parties, the national state was at the forefront of politics in the new multi-ethnic state ČSR. In 1921 they formed a "Pětka" (committee of five) called and later expanded body, the all-national coalition , in which the most important discussions took place until 1926 and preliminary decisions were made before the government and parliament were involved. However, there were some good contacts between sister parties of Czech-Slovak and German nationality.
Democratic and undemocratic German parties
Two main political tendencies emerged among the Germans in Czechoslovakia, the "activists" and the "negativists" . The activists campaigned for the interests of the German minority through cooperation with the new state, the negativists set up an ideology of revenge in Germany and a revision of the state order created in the Parisian treaties from the start.
From 1926 several ministers from the German minority participated in the government of Prime Minister Antonín Švehla :
- from the German Christian Social People's Party (DCSVP) Robert Mayr-Harting , followed by his party friend Erwin Zajicek . One of the members of this party in the Czechoslovak Parliament was the chairman of the Association of German Christian Trade Unions in the Czech Republic, Hans Schütz (after the Second World War member of the German Bundestag and Bavarian Labor Minister)
- Minister Franz Spina from the Federation of Farmers (BdL) . The last chairman of the BdL was the later Hessian Agriculture Minister Gustav Hacker .
- The first congress of all social democratic parties in Czechoslovakia on 28/29. January 1928 paved the way for the German Social Democratic Workers' Party in the Czechoslovak Republic (DSAP) to belong to the government from 1929 to 1938 , until 1935 the largest German party in the Czechoslovak Republic. Its party leader was the Minister Ludwig Czech .
On October 1, 1933, Konrad Henlein founded the Sudeten German Home Front . In autumn 1934, in a large rally with around 25,000 participants in Bohemian Leipa, he offered the ČSR recognition of the state and its constitution, provided that the Germans' rights to life were secured. In doing so, he placed his party, which relied heavily on gymnastics leagues, on the one hand as “activist”, but on the other hand denied that Czechoslovakia also safeguarded the rights of the country's German citizens. He also explained this requirement to British personalities on visits to England. In the parliamentary elections in 1935, the SHF, then renamed the Sudeten German Party (SdP) , became the party with the largest number of votes in the ČSR. She received increasing support from the Nazi government of the German Reich.
Another “activist” party was the German Democratic Freedom Party (DDFP) , which only stood as a candidate in 1920. Later she stood for election in lists with Hungarian and Carpathian German parties. In 1935 this alliance had 9 members.
From 1934 a German national wing was formed in the SDAP, led by Wenzel Jaksch and Emil Franzel .
In 1936/37, Wenzel Jaksch, Hans Schütz and Gustav Hacker from the Farmers' Association, as so-called young activists in cooperation with Czech publicists, made the last attempt to mediate between Sudeten Germans and Czechs. Her advocacy of German concerns and the publication of her demands in two Czech magazines on May 13, 1936 led to "negotiations in the bosom of the government" of the new Prime Minister Milan Hodža and finally to the only agreement since 1918 on February 18, 1937 The Sudeten Germans' claim to proportionality in the public service and when awarding state contracts is recognized, promising full linguistic and cultural equality.
However, on March 22, 1938, Gustav Hacker arranged for his party and its representatives to be transferred to the Sudeten German Party. The members of the BdL also joined the SdP, which now had 55 members. In the same month there was a fundamental change of course in the DSAP, combined with a change in the party leadership from Czech to Jaksch. This ended the party's participation in government.
The leading figure of the "negativists" was Rudolf Lodgman von Auen , governor of the short-lived province of German Bohemia at the end of the war . His German National Party (DNP) existed until 1933. In addition, there was the German National Socialist Workers' Party (DNSAP) from 1919 to 1933 .
Munich Conference
Henlein and the SdP were at least outwardly oriented towards activism in the first few years, but from 1937 they turned quite openly to Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers' Party in Berlin and thus pioneered the connection of the Sudeten areas to the German Reich.
In April 1938, in Karlsbad, Henlein made his last demands, known as the Karlsbad Program , which led to the Sudeten crisis . It ended after a British-French-Czechoslovak agreement on 19/21. and 25 September 1938 on the assignment of predominantly German-populated areas (28,942 km² and 3,710 communities including Engerau and Thebes near Pressburg / Slovakia ) to the German Reich with the Munich Agreement (between GB, F, I. ) recommended by the British mediator Walter Runciman and D) of September 29, 1938 “on the conditions and modalities of the aforementioned agreement” (of September 19, 21 and 25). Czechoslovakia was not included in the negotiations. According to the contract, German troops marched in from October 1 to 10, 1938.
See also
- Sudetenland
- Countries of the Bohemian Crown
- First Czechoslovak Republic
- Bohemian areas of German Austria
- German Bohemia and German Moravians
- Postage stamps of the Sudetenland
- Expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia after the Second World War and this bilingual illustrated book "Zmizelé Sudety / The Lost Sudetenland" , published by the Association ANTI COMPLEX and his team of authors in the 5th edition with 727 pages in Domažlice 2007, ISBN 978-80-86125- 21-3 .
Web links
- Christian Unger about František Palacký: The Bohemian Dream , in: Zeit Online , 2009. See also the writing by Wolfgang Bruder under literature.
- Zdenek Beneš and Václav Kůral (editors for the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic): Understanding history. The Development of German-Czech Relations in the Bohemian Lands 1848–1948 . Prague, Gallery sro 2002, ISBN 80-86010-66X . In Chapter II u. a. the successful efforts of the Czechoslov. Politicians in exile about becoming a state and - p. 62/63 - the recognition achieved due to the participation in the war by čsl. military units depicted on the winning side.
- SZ timeline: Germans in the Czech Republic 1918–1938 and later; https://gfx.sueddeutsche.de/apps/55239b61a5cb12a658042aaf/mobile/#/0
literature
- Hermann Raschhofer (ed.): The Czechoslovak memoranda for the peace conference of Paris 1919/1920. In: Contributions to foreign public law and international law 24. Berlin 1937.
- Eugen Lemberg : History of Nationalism in Europe. Curt E. Schwab, Stuttgart 1950.
- Helmut Preidel (Ed.): The Germans in Bohemia and Moravia: A Historical Review. 2nd edition, Gans, Graefelfing near Munich 1952, DNB 450913074 .
- Jaroslav Šebek: Sudeten German Catholicism on the Way of the Cross - Political Activities of the Sudeten German Catholics in the First Czechoslovak Republic in the 1930s , LIT Verlag Münster, 2010 - 263 pages, ISBN 978-3-8258-9433-7
- Alfred Bohmann : The Sudeten Germanism in numbers. Edited by the Sudeten German Council, Munich 1959.
- Wenzel Jaksch : Europe's way to Potsdam. 2nd edition, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1959.
- Ackermann-Gemeinde (Ed.): 109 documents on the Sudeten German question 1918–1959. Munich undated [around 1959].
- Wilhelm Weizsäcker : Source book for the history of the Sudetenland. Edited by the Collegium Carolinum . Robert Lerche, Munich 1960.
- Seliger-Gemeinde (Ed.): Way. Power. Fate. History of the Sudeten German labor movement in words and pictures. Self-published, Stuttgart 1972.
- Emil Franzel : Sudeten German history. Mannheim 1978, ISBN 3-8083-1141-X .
- Fritz Peter Habel: The Sudeten German Question. Sudeten German Council, Munich 1985 (Czech edition Sudetoněmecká otázka , also in English and French).
- Sudetendeutscher Rat (Hrsg.): The Sudetendeutsche question 1985. A location determination. Steinmeier, Nördlingen 1986, DNB 890261725 (meeting of the Sudeten German Council in Kochel from November 29 to December 1, 1985).
- 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 .
- Hermann Raschhofer, Otto Kimminich : The Sudeten Question. Your development under international law from the First World War to the present. 2nd, supplemented edition, Olzog, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-7892-8120-4 .
- Jörg K. Hoensch : The German-Czechoslovakian Relations 1918 to 1939. In: Heinz Duchhardt (Hg.): In Europes Mitte. Germany and its neighbors. Europa Union Verlag, Bonn 1988, pp. 76-82.
- Felix Ermacora : The Sudeten German Questions. Langen-Müller Verlag, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-7844-2412-0 .
- Ferdinand Seibt: Germany and the Czechs. History of a neighborhood in the middle of Europe. 3rd edition, Piper, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-492-11632-9 .
- Tomáš Krystlík: Zamlčené dějiny , Prague 2008, ISBN 978-80-87197-06-6 (in German under the title Geschwiegene Geschichte 1918-1938-1948-1968 published in Dinkelsbühl 2009, ISBN 978-3-9812414-3-3 ).
- Jörg K. Hoensch: History of Bohemia. 4th edition, CH Beck, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-65015-4 .
- Wolfgang Bruder et al. Named in: "The dream of the Czech nation" and the national icon Frantisek Palacky from Hotzendorf im Kuhländchen, publication by the Alte Heimat Kuhländchen association, Wiesloch 2018, 50 pages, ISBN 978-3-87336-635-0 , http: // d-nb.info/1171380186
Individual evidence
- ^ Alfred Bohmann: The Sudeten Germanism in Numbers. Edited by the Sudetendeutschen Rat, Munich 1959, p. 16.
- ↑ Law, StGBl. No. 40 and State Declaration, StGBl. No. 41/1918 . With regard to the district chief Oskar Teufel in South Moravia, see the biography of Oskar Teufel (website of the Parliamentary Directorate Republic of Austria) .
- ↑ Wiener Zeitung of December 10, 1918, No. 285, p. 6 (under “Telegramme, Reichenberg, December 9”, online ). These and other newspapers with articles from the post-war period (1918) that are worth reading are available online.
- ^ Walter Franz Schleser : The German citizenship. 4th edition, Verlag für Standesamtwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-8019-5603-2 , p. 87.
- ↑ Historical original texts on the Slavs Congress in Prague 1848, University of Klagenfurt (PDF file; 189 kB)
- ↑ For more information, see Prague Minos Guide: The National Revival. Bohemian Movement in the 18th and 19th Centuries , Digital Urban Legends, 2009 and by Jörg K. Hoensch : History of Bohemia. 4th edition, CH Beck, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-65015-4 , p. 305 ff.
- ^ Emil Franzel : Sudeten German History. Mannheim 1978, p. 338 ff. See also "Denationalization policy against the Sudeten Germans" on sudeten.de ( Memento from July 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Alfred Bohmann: The Sudeten Germanism in Numbers. Ed. By the Sudetendeutschen Rat, Munich 1959, p. 69, with regard to the effects of the land reform p. 61–65. On land reform, starting with the “Seizure Act” of April 16, 1919, see also: Jaromír Balcar, Instrument in the People's Struggle? The beginnings of the land reform in Czechoslovakia in 1919/20 , as a summary of the results of the master’s thesis at the University of Munich from 1995, which was supervised by Prof. Krieger, published in the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (VfZ), vol. 46 (1998), volume 3, p 391-428 ( PDF ).
- ^ Alfred Bohmann: The Sudeten Germanism in Numbers. Edited by the Sudeten German Council, Munich 1959, p. 25.
- ^ Alfred Bohmann: The Sudeten Germanism in Numbers. Edited by the Sudetendeutschen Rat, Munich 1959, p. 98.
- ↑ Rudolf Hilf (Lodgmann's foreign policy advisor as spokesman for the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft): Germans and Czechs, Symbiosis - Catastrophe - New Ways , p. 84, Sudeten Germans "Negativists" and "Activists"
- ^ Wenzel Jaksch : Europe's way to Potsdam. 2nd edition, DVA, Stuttgart 1959, p. 277 ff. See also the summary The Sudeten question after constitutional and international law in Emil Franzel: Sudetendeutsche Geschichte. Mannheim 1978, p. 423 ff. (Model Switzerland: p. 424).
- ↑ see the magazine Přítomnost under Archive ročník 1936 ( Memento of 21 September 2016 Internet Archive )
- ^ Wenzel Jaksch : Europe's way to Potsdam. 2nd edition, DVA, Stuttgart 1959, p. 282.
- ↑ Lodgman, adviser to the German-Austrian delegation in Saint Germain in 1919, made a legal declaration on behalf of the 72 German deputies at the end of May 1920 when the first CSR parliament met in Prague. This was reprinted by the “Sudetenpost” (page 14 in episode 7 of July 3, 2014) ( PDF ).
- ^ Final report by Runcimans on his mediation activities in the ČSR in August / September 1938