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Tethered to Socialism: The Cultural Work of the German Minority in the Czech Lands around the Time of the Prague Spring, 1968–70

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2018

B. Payson Croy
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Extract

The German national community living in the Czech lands enjoyed a prosperous history throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, one that, despite some tensions with the majority Czech population, featured cross-cultural cooperation in the economic, political, and social arenas. The Nazi German occupation and World War II, as well as the postwar expulsion of the Germans, turned neighbors into enemies and divided ethnic communities across the Czech lands. The expulsion of three million Germans in 1945–46 bore consequences not only for those who were subject to expulsion, but also for those who received permission from the Czechoslovak state to remain behind. The status and stature of this remnant minority group shifted throughout the postwar period, but its significance as a bearer of German cultural life never waned. The state's immediate reaction to the quarter million Germans who remained behind was one of forced assimilation. Many thousands of Germans succumbed to the pressures of forced assimilation in the late 1940s and 1950s when the Czechoslovak state presented them with no other option than to become Czechs. Methods of forced assimilation included the stripping away of minority rights, such as linguistic and educational rights and the right to form independent cultural organizations, as well as the collective conferral of Czechoslovak citizenship upon the entire German population in 1953. Despite these pressures, a significant cohort of Germans who steadfastly clung to German national identification found means to resist the state's assimilative methods and succeeded in supporting German cultural life and identity into the 1960s.

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Articles
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 49 , April 2018 , pp. 238 - 257
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2018 

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References

1 On Czech-German relations and German national identity in Habsburg Bohemia, see Cohen, Gary, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914 (West Lafayette, 2006)Google Scholar; Wingfield, Nancy, Flag Wars and Stone Saints: How the Bohemian Lands Became Czech (Cambridge, MA, 2007)Google Scholar. On Czech-German relations from World War I to the Nazi German occupation and World War II, see Zahra, Tara, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca, 2008)Google Scholar; Bryant, Chad, Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism (Cambridge, MA, 2009)Google Scholar. On the postwar expulsion of the Germans, see Staněk, Tomáš, Odsun Němců z Československa, 1945–1947 [The Expulsion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia, 1945–1947] (Prague, 1991)Google Scholar; Douglas, R.M., Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War (New Haven, 2013)Google Scholar.

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6 National Archive, Prague (NA), collection Ministry of Culture, 1968–92, carton 57A, reg. 3559, 4.1.1966.

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13 NA, collection Central Committee of the National Front of Czechoslovakia (ÚV NF ČSR), KSONN, carton 1, 1969, no. 4.

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19 The Sokolov district (okres Sokolov) recorded the highest number of Germans, proportionally, in the entire country in the census in both 1950 (26.9%) and 1970 (9.3%). See Fialová, Ludmila, “Národnostní skladba obyvatelstva České republiky podle okresu v letech 1950–1990” [National composition of the inhabitants of the Czech Republic according to district in the years 1950–1990], Slezský sborník 52, no. 3–4 (1994): 254–69Google Scholar.

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21 “Grünes Licht,” Volkszeitung, 17 May 1968.

22 Ibid.

23 “Der erste Schritt des Kulturverbands,” Prager Volkszeitung, 28 June 1968.

24 “Für die sozialistische Heimat,” Prager Volkszeitung, 8 Nov. 1968.

25 Ibid.

26 “Der zweite Schritt,” Prager Volkszeitung, 15 Nov. 1968.

27 Ibid.

28 “Für die sozialistische Heimat.”

29 “Wir erhoffen uns viel,” Prager Volkszeitung, 1 Nov. 1968.

30 The majority of the organizations in the National Front focused on labor relations. The only other group that focused on national minority rights was the Polský svaz kulturně osvětový v ČSSR (Polish Union of Cultural Education in Czechoslovakia).

31 “Grünes Licht,” Volkszeitung, 17 May 1968.

32 Ibid.

33 “Die Nationale Front und wir,” Volkszeitung, 14 June 1968.

34 Williams, Kieran, The Prague Spring and its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics 1968–1970 (Cambridge, 1997), 143CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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36 “Ústavní zákon č. 144/1968 Sb.: Ústavní zákon o postavení národností v Československé socialistické republice,” Zákony pro lidi, accessed 16 Nov. 2016, http://www.zakonyprolidi.cz/cs/1968-144.

37 “Ústavní zákon č. 144/196 Sb.: Ústavní zákon o postavení národností v Československé socialistické republice,” Zákony pro lidi, accessed 16 Nov. 2016, http://www.zakonyprolidi.cz/cs/1968-144.

38 “K zákonu o postavení národností v ČSSR” [The Law on the Status of Nationalities in the CSSR], Rud é právo, 28 Oct. 1968, p. 2.

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42 “Für die sozialistische Heimat.”

43 Ibid.

44 “Die initiative müss von unten kommen,” Prager Volkszeitung, 28 June 1968.

45 Ralf Pasch and Marco Zimmermann, “Fritz Schalek—als Verbliebener im Dienste der Minderheit,” presented at the Seventeenth Münchner Bohemisten-Treffen, 8 Mar. 2013.

46 Gretl Bauer in discussion with the author, Apr. 2014

47 “Meinungen zum Kulturverband,” Prager Volkszeitung, 24 Jan. 1969.

48 NA, collection ÚV NF ČSR, KSONN, carton 1, years 1969–1972, 1969, no. 4.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid.

52 NA, collection ÚV NF ČSR, KSONN, carton 1, years 1969–1972, 1969, no. 6.

53 Herget, Toni, Die Deutschen in der Tschechoslowakei seit 1945 (Vienna, 1979), 69–70Google Scholar.

54 NA, collection ÚV NF ČSR, KSONN, carton 1, years 1969–1972, 1969, no. 6.

55 Ibid.

56 Staněk, Německá menšina, 169; 173. These statistics regarding adult Germans define “adult” as fifteen years of age and over.

57 NA, collection ÚV NF ČSR, KSONN, carton 1, years 1969–1972, 1970, no. 1.

58 Hernova, “Němci v ČSR,” 266.

59 NA, collection ÚV NF ČSR, KSONN, carton 1, years 1969–1972, 1970, no. 1.

60 Documented evidence of violence between Czechs and Germans continued into the mid-1950s. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported on nationalist animosity in the 1950s and blamed Czech citizens as the instigators. The report cited bans on German cultural events, the need for security at German cultural events, and the smashing of windows by Czech educational workers in retaliation for a German theater performance. Another report written by Josef Lenk described a pub brawl between Czechs and Germans that had political roots. Animosity undoubtedly continued into the 1960s, but there were no documented incidents of Czech-German violence at this time. See “Osvěta jinonárodním skupiny, r. 1955” [The education of non-national groups, year 1955], NA, collection Ministry of Culture, 1953–56, carton 231; General Labor Union Archive—Central Council of Trade Unions (VOA ÚRO), Prague, collection Political-education (cultural) department (PVK) 1945–1959, carton 198, inventory unit no. 132, 6.8.1955.

61 Staněk, Německá menšina, 168.

62 Gretl Bauer in discussion with the author, Apr. 2014

63 NA, collection ÚV NF ČSR, KSONN, carton 1, years 1969–1972, 1970, no. 3.

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66 NA, collection ÚV NF ČSR, KSONN, carton 1, years 1969–1972, 1970, no. 14.

67 Ibid.

68 Ibid.

69 NA, collection ÚV NF ČSR, KSONN, carton 1, years 1969–1972, 1970, no. 12.

70 NA, collection ÚV NF ČSR, KSONN, carton 1, years 1969–1972, 1970, no. 16

71 NA, collection ÚV NF ČSR, KSONN, carton 1, years 1969–1972, 1970, no. 3.

72 Ibid.