Province of German Bohemia
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| Province of German Bohemia Provinz Deutschböhmen ( German Austria | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capital | Reichenberg | ||||||||
| Area | |||||||||
• 1918 | 14,496 km2 (5,597 sq mi) | ||||||||
| Population | |||||||||
• 1918 | 2,350,000 | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
• Established | 29 October 1918 | ||||||||
| 10 September 1919 | |||||||||
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| Today part of | Czech Republic | ||||||||
The Province of German Bohemia (German: Provinz Deutschböhmen [ˈdɔʏtʃbøːmən] ⓘ; Czech: Německé Čechy) was a province in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, established for a short period of time after the First World War, as part of the Republic of German-Austria.
It included parts of northern and western
History
Territories constituting modern German Bohemia were historically an integral part of the
As the Bohemian lands modernized, Czech nationalism grew, intellectually developed as a combination of noble provincial particularism and historical revivalism promoted by middle-class intellectuals. Political German nationalism in Austria did not exist on its own, but in a context of many competing nationalism. On the other hand, German liberals believed that their predominance had a universal basis in the values of constitutionalism, parliamentary government and rule of law. As Germans felt more marginalized in Bohemia, the Germans' views began shifting to alleged racial and cultural superiority. Czech nationalism eventually turned just as radical as German nationalism.[2]
Relatively calm coexistence began ending with outbreak of the 1848 Revolution, which also brought demands of German nationalists for unification of all German-speaking countries (i.e., in their conception, including Czech lands being then under the Habsburg rule) into one state – the demands which representatives of the Czech National Revival, although quite weak then, decisively refused. For their claim to all of Bohemia, the Czechs viewed indivisibility of Bohemia as a sacrosanct principle. The Czechs alleged that originally, all of Bohemia had been Czech-settled, and implied that this could justify a demand for restitution of these lands for the Czechs. German settlement and cultivation of the then mostly unsettled areas was portrayed as land grab.
The remaining 70 years of existence Austrian and Austro-Hungarian Empire were filled by increasing nationalist tensions and struggling between gradually strengthening Bohemian-Czechs (c. 2/3 of all inhabitants of the Czech lands) and Bohemian-Germans, but also with several attempts for striking a compromise. For example, the Kremsier Constitution provided for a solution in that the historical regions were to remain, but that they should be further subdivided along ethnic boundaries. Such an idea of ethnic subdivision of Bohemia was accepted by many German parties but was strongly opposed by the Czech.[3]
With the imminent collapse of Habsburg Austria-Hungary at the end of
At the Paris Peace Conference, Edvard Beneš demanded incorporation of the German-speaking lands, alleging that without these lands Czechia would not survive economically. The Czechs denied existence of a closed German language area and distorted demographic maps such that the area between Komotau and Teplitz appeared as Czech-settled. At the Paris Peace Conference proposed border correrctions of Bohemia such that Eger, Rumburg, Friedland, and Freiwaldau were to become part of Germany. [5] Notably, the German-Bohemian lands were the most industrialized regions in whole Austria-Hungary.
In 1919, the territory of the province was inhabited by 2.23 million ethnic Germans, and 116,275 ethnic Czechs.[6]
Three other sister provinces were formed alongside German Bohemia, also made up of predominantly German-speaking parts:
- Bohemia proper, northern Moravia and western Austrian Silesia) – this province had radically different (smaller) boundaries than later conceptions of the term "Sudetenland"
- German South Moravia (southern Moravia and southeastern Bohemia) – planned adjoining to Lower Austria
- Bohemian Forest Region (southwestern Bohemia) – planned adjoining to Upper Austria[4]
In 29 November 1918 the Czechoslovak army began an invasion of Province of German Bohemia and during December it occupied the whole region, with Reichenberg falling on 16 December and the last major city, Leitmeritz, falling on 27 December 1918. Other secessionist provinces faced the same fate.
The status of the German areas in Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia was finally settled by the 1919 peace treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which declared that the areas belong to solely to Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak government then granted amnesty for all activities against the new state. The region that had been German Bohemia was reintegrated into the Province of Bohemia (Země česká) of the Czechoslovak Republic. German Bohemians had however hoped that the new state would be built as a Swiss-type decentralized state, which had been implied by Czech officials to appease the Western Allies on the woeful status of the large minorities.[7]
Later development (1938–45)
According to the
After the war, all of this land was reincorporated into renewed
See also
- Republic of German-Austria
- Origins of Czechoslovakia
- Province of the Sudetenland
- German South Moravia
- Bohemian Forest Region
References
- ^ Wilhelm Weizsäcker (1959). Geschichte der Deutschen in Böhmen und Mähren. Holzner-Verlag. p. 5.
- ^ Marco Bresciani (2020). Conservatives and Right Radicals in Interwar Europe. Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 27–28.
- ^ Helmut Slapnica. "Die Stellungnahme des Deutschtums der Sudetenläner zum "Historischen Staatsrecht"". In Birke; Oberdorfer (eds.). Das böhmische Staatsrecht in den deutsch - tschechischen Auseinandersetzungen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Marburg / Lahn.
- ^ ISBN 3-88680-200-0. Retrieved 25 February 2013.
- ^ Rüdiger Goldmann (1971). Die sudetendeutsche Frage auf der Pariser Friedenskonferenz. Fides-Verlags-gesellschaft. pp. 75, 81, 87.
- ISBN 3-211-83188-6, S. 103.
- ^ Gerd Krumeich, Silke Fehlemann (2001). Versailles 1919: Ziele, Wirkung, Wahrnehmung. Klartext. p. 186.
Further reading
- de Zayas, Alfred M.: A terrible Revenge. Palgrave/Macmillan, New York, 1994. ISBN 1-4039-7308-3.
- de Zayas, Alfred M.: Nemesis at Potsdam. London, 1977. ISBN 0-8032-4910-1.
- Douglas, R.M.: Orderly and Humane. The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War. Yale University Press 2012. ISBN 978-0-30016-660-6.
- Franzel, Emil: Sudetendeutsche Geschichte. Mannheim, 1978. ISBN 3-8083-1141-X.
- Meixner, Rudolf: Geschichte der Sudetendeutschen. Nürnberg, 1988. ISBN 3-921332-97-4.
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