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In the aftermath of World War Two, approximately three million Sudeten-Germans were expelled from their homes in the former Czechoslovakia because of their part in the dismemberment of the Czechoslovak Republic by Nazi Germany in 1938-39. For many years their representatives, the Sudeten-German Association, attempted in vain to redress the wrong done to their people. However, the end of the Cold War has given a new impetus to their campaign. Currently they attempt to block Czech entry into the EU unless there is restitution of confiscated properties. Jürgen Tampke tells the story of the Sudeten-Germans from the beginning of their settlement seven hundred years ago in what is now the Czech Republic to current times.
No region of the world has been more affected by the various movements of the twentieth century than East Central Europe. Broadly defined as comprising the historic territories of the Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, and Slovaks, East Central Europe has been shaped by the interaction of politics, ideology, and diplomacy, especially by the policies of the Great Powers towards the east of Europe. This book addresses Czech politics in Moravia and Czech politics in Bohemia in the nineteenth century, the international politics of relief during World War I, the Morgenthau Mission and the Polish Pogroms of 1919, the Hitler-Stalin Pact and its influence on Poland in 1939, Hungarian-Americans during World War II, and Polish-East German relations after World War II. Contributors: Bruce Garver, M. B. B. Biskupski, Neal Pease, William L. Blackwood, Anna M. Cienciala, Steven Bela Vardy, and Douglas Selvage. M. B. B. Biskupski is Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University.
The phenomenon of national identities, always a key issue in the modern history of Bohemian Jewry, was particularly complex because of the marginal differences that existed between the available choices. Considerable overlap was evident in the programs of the various national movements and it was possible to change one's national identity or even to opt for more than one such identity without necessarily experiencing any far-reaching consequences in everyday life. Based on many hitherto unknown archival sources from the Czech Republic, Israel and Austria, the author's research reveals the inner dynamic of each of the national movements and maps out the three most important constructions of national identity within Bohemian Jewry - the German-Jewish, the Czech-Jewish and the Zionist. This book provides a needed framework for understanding the rich history of German- and Czech-Jewish politics and culture in Bohemia and is a notable contribution to the historiography of Bohemian, Czechoslovak and central European Jewry.
Vaclav Hou vi ka describes the development of the Czech-German national controversies from the mid-19th century, through the establishing of the CzechoslovakRepublic in 1918, to the beginning of the 21st century. He focuses mainly on the tragic end of the nations' coexistence in 1938-1945 and the following development of different Czech and German reflections on the reasons for the removal of Germans from the CzechoslovakRepublic after 1945 in the latter part of the 20th century. A detailed explanation of Czech, German and Sudeten-German concepts is rendered in detail and coherently within the international and social-economic context of the 20th century. "
Presenting a thorough examination of critical aspects of twentieth century history this book explores how the events of the twentieth century still cast a shadow over relations between Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic.
The region between the Baltic and the Black Sea was marked by a set of crises and conflicts in the 1920s and 1930s, demonstrating the diplomatic, military, economic or cultural engagement of France, Germany, Russia, Britain, Italy and Japan in this highly volatile region, and critically damaging the fragile post-Versailles political arrangement. The editors, in naming this region as "Middle Europe" seek to revive the symbolic geography of the time and accentuate its position, situated between Big Powers and two World Wars. The ten case studies in this book combine traditional diplomatic history with a broader emphasis on the geopolitical aspects of Big-Power rivalry to understand the interwar period. The essays claim that the European Big Powers played a key role in regional affairs by keeping the local conflicts and national movements under control and by exploiting the region's natural resources and military dependencies, while at the same time strengthening their prestige through cultural penetration and the cultivation of client networks. The authors, however, want to avoid the simplistic view that the Big Powers fully dominated the lesser players on the European stage. The relationship was indeed hierarchical, but the essays also reveal how the "small states" manipulated Big-Power disagreements, highlighting the limits of the latters' leverage throughout the 1920s and the 1930s.
This history of a single town in Bohemia casts new light on nationalism in Central Europe between the Springtime of Nations in 1848 and the Cold War. Jeremy King tells the story of both German and Czech-speaking Budweis/Budæjovice, which belonged to the Habsburg Monarchy until 1918, and then to Czechoslovakia, Hitler's Third Reich, and Czechoslovakia again. Residents, at first simply "Budweisers," or Habsburg subjects with mostly local loyalties, gradually became Czechs or Germans. Who became Czech, though, and who German? What did it mean to be one or the other? In answering these questions, King shows how an epochal, region-wide contest for power found expression in Budweis/Budæjovice not only through elections but through clubs, schools, boycotts, breweries, a remarkable constitutional experiment, a couple of riots, and much more. In tracing the nationalization of politics from small and sometimes comic beginnings to the genocide and mass expulsions of the 1940s, he also rejects traditional interpretive frameworks. Writing not a national history but a history of nationhood, both Czech and German, King recovers a nonnational dimension to the past. Embodied locally by Budweisers and more generally by the Habsburg state, that dimension has long been blocked from view by a national rhetoric of race and ethnicity. King's Czech-Habsburg-German narrative, in addition to capturing the dynamism and complexity of Bohemian politics, participates in broader scholarly discussions concerning the nature of nationalism.
How did political power function in the communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe after 1945? Making Sense of Dictatorship addresses this question with a particular focus on the acquiescent behavior of the majority of the population until, at the end of the 1980s, their rejection of state socialism and its authoritarian world. The authors refer to the concept of Sinnwelt, the way in which groups and individuals made sense of the world around them. The essays focus on the dynamics of everyday life and the extent to which the relationship between citizens and the state was collaborative or antagonistic. Each chapter addresses a different aspect of life in this period, including modernization, consumption and leisure, and the everyday experiences of “ordinary people,” single mothers, or those adopting alternative lifestyles. Empirically rich and conceptually original, the essays in this volume suggest new ways to understand how people make sense of everyday life under dictatorial regimes.
In this book, scholars and practitioners from both sides of the divide, Czech and Slovak, as well as experts from the United States and France, seek to explain why, after the collapse of the communist regime, Czechoslovakia split into two separate states. In trying to interpret the causes and processes of a modern state's peaceful disintegration, the authors, though addressing the subject from their own viewpoints, have used an analytical, non-evaluative approach. The study also seeks to fulfil other objectives--both theoretical and practical. On the one hand, the Czechoslovak experience is used to explore the concepts and instruments of European integration as a whole, and the theory of contemporary nationalisms; on the other, it could well have some practical policy implications for those countries facing similar problems.
Presentations of National Cultures. Fifty-one texts illustrate the evolution of modernism in the east-European region. Essays, articles, poems, or excerpts from longer works offer new opportunities of possible comparisons of the respective national cultures, from the different ideological approaches and finessing projects of how to create the modern state liberal, conservative, socialist and others to the literary and scientific attempts at squaring the circle of individual and collective identities.