Lev Prchala

Lev Prchala

Lev Prchala (born March 23, 1892 in Silesian Ostrau ; † June 11, 1963 in Feldbach ) was Army General of the Czechoslovak Army and first winner of the European Charlemagne Prize of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft . He was a minister in a government in Carpathian Ukraine .

Life

Lev Prchala was born the son of a miner in Silesian Ostrava. After attending grammar school in Friedeck , he began studying theology at the Philosophical-Theological College of the Diocese of Breslau in Weidenau , Austria-Silesia , which he broke off and volunteered for the Austrian army.

As the commander of a machine gun division , he became a Russian prisoner of war in 1916 and joined the Czechoslovak legions in Russia that fought against Austria-Hungary . At the end of the war he was division commander there .

After the independence of Czechoslovakia , he studied at the Military Academy in St. Cyr . In 1938 he was the commander of the 4th Army in South Moravia . A year later he was charged with the evacuation of Carpathian Ukraine , which fell to Hungary through the Vienna arbitration . From March 6, 1939 to March 15, 1938 he was briefly Minister of Finance in the Avgustyn Voloshyn III government in Carpathian Ukraine.

After the Munich Agreement, Lev Prchala emigrated to neighboring Poland , where he offered the Polish army the establishment of a Czechoslovak Revolutionary Army (Legion) made up of Czechoslovak refugees. The first Czechoslovak units were set up in August 1939, but received no more weapons after the German Wehrmacht attacked Poland . Most of the units were interned by the Soviet army . Lev Prchala managed to move to Great Britain . Here the final break with the exile Prime Minister Edvard Beneš and the establishment of the Czech National Committee, which he chaired.

After 1945 he did not return to his homeland. Lev Prchala campaigned for reconciliation between Germans and Czechs. In 1950 he was one of the signatories of the Wiesbaden Agreement and in 1958 the first winner of the European Charlemagne Prize of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft.

Prchala died while relaxing in Feldbach (Styria). At the request of his family, he was buried on June 22, 1963 in the forest cemetery in Munich .

literature

• Marian Zgorniak : Europe on the Edge, 1938.
• Detlef Brandes : Great Britain and its Eastern European allies 1939–1943.
• Rudolf Grulich : Unused approaches and opportunities for German-Czech reconciliation.

Web links

• Lev Prachala's Königstein speech - a milestone in German-Czech reconciliation - a contribution by the church historian Rudolf Grulich
• Newspaper article about Lev Prchala in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• General Prchala and the Wiesbaden Agreement - Attempt at German-Czech Reconciliation - a contribution by the church historian Rudolf Grulich