The Struggle on the Czech-German Language Border, 1880-1940
Author(s): Mark Cornwall
Source: The English Historical Review, Vol. 109, No. 433 (Sep., 1994), pp. 914-951
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/574538
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EnglishHistoricalReview
? 1994Longman Group UK Limited
0013-8266/ 94 / 2373/ 0914/ $03.00
TheStruggleon the Czech-GermanLanguageBorder,
I880-I940o
ON the eve of the First World War there appearedin a provincial newspaper in northern Bohemia a short article entitled 'A Great German
National Day on the Language Border'.1It told of a festive day, organized near Lovosice [Lobositz]2 on the estate of Baroness Luise von
Rausch, to celebrate the village of Pnetluky [Netluk] finally gaining its
own water supply. Present were Bohemian celebrities such as Dr J. W.
Titta, a vigorous champion of German rights on the Czech-German
'language border'; and a local MP, Franz Krepek, who was later to be
a prominent 'activist' politician - one prepared to co-operate with the
new regime in Czechoslovakia in the I920S. Krepek made a dramatic
speech in which he pointed to Bismarck's example in galvanizing the
economic strength of the German people, and went on to praiseBaroness
Rauschas an aristocrattaking the lead and standingup for her nationality.
To huge applausehe observedthat only through unity and through keeping a firm hold on their own economic existence would a people be
successfulin the 'strugglefor national territory':and this was particularly
vital on the 'languageborder'.
This episode, insignificant in itself, is entirely representative of the
thousands of such celebrations or demonstrations which occurred on
the Czech-German 'language border' or in 'languageislands' in central
Europe over a period of more than sixty years, from the late nineteenth
century until the Second World War. It can be said that for a large
number of Czechs or Germans living in the crownlands (Kronldnder)
of Bohemia-Moraviaduringthis period, the borderwhich most concerned
them in their everyday life was not the state boundary of the Habsburg
Empire or Czechoslovakia,but the languageborderwhich separatedthem
from their Czech or German neighbours. It became a mission for many
of those living in these mixed districtsto penetrateor uphold the existing
(German)orJazykovahranice(Czech).
languageborder- the Sprachgrenze
They themselves became labelled as Sprachgrenzleror Hranicari: 'frontiersmen' who were, allegedly, involved in a crusade to preserve, and
if possible expand,all 'national assets'for the benefit of future generations.
* The research for this article was made possible through an award from the British Academy
in MarchI992. A version of the paper was presentedat the Annual Meeting of the American Association
for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Phoenix, Arizona, 21 November 1992. I am most grateful
to Carolyn Bain for creating the maps out of my rough diagrams; and to Dr Jiri Janouskovec for
his help in the archivesat Stribro.
I. 'Ein Deutschnationaler Ehrentag an der Sprachgrenze',LeitmeritzerZeitung, Nr 49, I July 1914,
p. 5.
2. In the following pages the Czech form of place-names is employed, but on first mention its
German equivalentis given in brackets.
EHR Sept.94
THE CZECH-GERMAN
LANGUAGE
BORDER,
I880-1940
915
00oo
.-1
CN
ON
on
4
cS
hl
_
qJ
-ts
I
0
zt
EHR Sept.94
9I6
THE STRUGGLE
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
September
Although the idea of an almost concrete 'language frontier' running
through the Czech lands was for decadesfrom the I88osa part of many
Czechs' and Sudeten Germans' active consciousness, the significance of
this concept has received little attention in western historiography.Elizabeth Wiskemann's pioneering study, Czechsand Germans, mentioned
the subject in passing,' but more recent research on grass-rootsaspects
of the so-called Sudeten question has been limited and has also rarely
tried to examine the continuities in the conflict under both the Austrian
and Czechoslovak regimes.2 Often the research has concentrated on
the inter-warperiod and the internationalcontext, examining the CzechGerman conflict from the perspectiveof Hitler's foreign policy or British
appeasement.3Even in Czechoslovakia in the past fifty years (where
admittedly the Sudeten Germanswere something of a taboo subjectuntil
I989) little has been published to match the excitement generatedin the
first half of the century by the issue of the languageborder.4
Yet this border has a special importance. It was here, where the Czechs
and Germans rubbed against each other, that sparks could most easily
fly and extremist politics planted deep roots. Local frictions then had
a wider impact.For example,the Young Czech party in the late nineteenth
century gained special support from Czechs living near the language
border north of Prague; they appear to have successfully encouraged
the party to take up and defend the interests of Czechs in German or
ethnically mixed areas of Bohemia.5 Such a defence seemed vital in
the i89os, as German and Czech radical nationalists increasingly
challenged the old methods and assumptions of the German and Czech
Liberal leaders. The Austrian government in vain tried to mediate a
the Austrianminister-president
in
Czech-Germancompromise. ThusI890
Count Taaffesought in the 'Vienna Agreement' to assuageGermananxieties about Czech social and political advancement by dividing up Bohemia's administration along linguistic lines, a process which would have
left some Czech minorities firmly under German administration and
was thereforevehemently rejectedby the Young Czechs. In
I897 however,
I. Elizabeth Wiskemann, Czechsand Germans.A Study of the Strugglein the Historic Provincesof
Bohemiaand Moravia(Oxford,
I938).
2. Only one ethnically mixed area,the city of Prague,has benefitedfrom a reallythorough examination
in Gary Cohen's study of the declining German community: The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans
BruceGarver,in TheYoungCzechParty,1874-1901oi,and theEmergence
in Prague,
I86I1-194
(Princeton,
I98I).
of a Multi-partySystem (New Haven/London, 1978), hints, with some examples, at the importance
of local conditions in influencing the wider Czech-German conflict. For the later years of the Sudeten
question a notable recent addition is AndreasLuh, Der DeutscheTurnverbandin derErstenTschechoslowakzur volkspolitischenBewegung(Munich,
ischenRepublik.Vom v6lkischenVereinsbetrieb
I988).
I967), his
3. For instance, J. W. Briigel's semi-polemical Tschechenund Deutsche,1918-i938(Munich,
Czechoslovakia
before Munich.TheGermanMinorityProblemand BritishAppeasementPolicy(Cambridge,
provide
I964),
I933-48
(New York,
i973), and Radomir Luza's The Transferof the Sudeten Germans,
little insight into local mentalities; while Ronald Smelser's The SudetenProblem, 1933-38(Folkestone,
1975)generallytacklesthe problem from the angle of Nazi foreign policy.
4. The most recent general account in Czech of the Czech-German conflict (but still only covering
C esi a Nenci, 1780-1918(Prague,
I
the first half of our period) is Jan Kren, Konfliktnt'spolecenstvl'
990).
8I.
Czech
The
Garver,
Party,
Young
p.
5.
EHR Sept. 94
I994
LANGGUAGE
BO RD ER, i88o-i9I 40
917
Count Badeni as minister-presidentgave concessions in the other direction. He proposed that the Czech languageshould be used in BohemiaMoraviaon a far more equal basisto Germanthan hitherto. These Badeni
languageordinances produced a hysterical response from many German
politicians, splintered existing Czech and German 'national parties', and
intensified Czech-German tensions in the localities.1Not surprisingly,
it was on the language border and in language islands that any attempt
to tamper with the linguistic status quo or define new rules was likely
to provoke special friction and lead to political change. For instance,
it was precisely at this time that a forerunner of Hitler's Nazi party,
the German Workers' party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), was founded
(I903), gaining particularsupport in ethnically mixed parts of BohemiaMoraviawhere German workers felt threatened by Czech migrants.The
fear of many Germans, as we will see, intensified becausethey perceived
the languageborderto be advancingsteadily to the Czechs' advantage.
It is therefore crucial in understanding the rise of extreme German
and Czech nationalism in central Europe to examine the whole issue
of the 'moveable language border': when it moved, where and why it
moved, and what impact this had on local and wider political developments. Local case-studies,three of which are provided in this article,
supply some answers to these questions. It will be shown that localities
on the sensitive languageborder supplied much ammunition for extreme
nationalist politics during national and international crises: at the turn
of the century, in the wake of the Badeni crisis; after the First World
War, when the Germans suddenly found themselves in a Czechoslovak
state; and in the late I93os during the Sudeten crisis, when local Czech
agitators seem to have done much to sabotage the Czech government's
efforts to be conciliatory to its Sudeten minority and avoid outside interference in a 'domestic Czechoslovak affair'.The actual concept of a language border in central Europe does not seem to have arisen until the
second half of the nineteenth century. But the conditions necessary for
it had been present in the Czech lands for centuries, ever since Germanspeakersbegan to move into the region from the twelfth century, establishing themselves in the border zones of Bohemia and Moravia and
in certain towns ('islands') in the Czech interior such as Jihlava [Iglau]
and Olomouc [Olmiitz]. If the ethnic divide only became significantly
apparentfrom the I83oswith the upsurgein Czech national consciousness,
the Sprachgrenzlermentality surfaced from the I86os as a direct result
of the demographicchangeswhich occurredin tandem with the industrial
transformation of the Bohemian lands. Essentially these changes meant
a reversal of German medieval colonization: lower-class Czechs, under
I. See ibid. pp. 237ff. for a good general account using Czech and German sources; and Berthold
von I897 (2 vols., Graz I960-5), for a detailed study from
Sutter, Die BadenischenSprachenverordnungen
the German point of view. The effect on German political parties has been most recently re-examined
in Lothar H6belt, Kornblumeund Kaiseradler.Die deutschfreiheitlichen
ParteienAltosterreichs,1882-1918
(Vienna/Munich, I993).
EHR Sept.94
9I8
THE STRUGGLE
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
September
of
in
the
Czech
now
pressure over-population
countryside,
began to
cross the languageborder to find work in burgeoning German industrial
centres.
Before this time, as the leading German Bohemian demographerHeinrich Rauchbergobserved, keeping a 'national balance' in the region had
depended on the 'constancy of the agrarian language border' and on
a basic similarity of Czech and German economic development which
gave no cause for substantial migration.1But from the i86os, preserving
stability was to depend on the degree to which Czech immigrants to
German areascould be absorbedand assimilatedinto the native communities. Although Rauchbergat the turn of the century judgedoptimistically
that three-quartersof Czech migrants were being assimilated into their
new German environments,2 this was certainly not always the case.
For example, in the German 'language island' of Jihlava, where in the
1846 census 9 per cent of the town's population were immigrants, the
figure by the I869 census was 44 per cent, most of whom were probably
unassimilatedCzechs drawn from the surrounding countryside to work
in the new cloth factories and tobacco works.3 In western Bohemia,
as industrializationbegan, the demographicand ethnic results were even
more striking. Since German mine-ownerscould not gatherenough cheap
labour from their local populations, they welcomed the influx of Czech
workers from further afield:for instance,the population of Nyrany [Niirschau] west of Plzen [Pilsen], 245 in i8oo, grew to 5,I5i by I890 as Czechs
flooded to the coal-mines there and critically altered the ethnic composition of this part of the Sprachgrenze.4
Better known is the mass Czech
into
the
from
the
I87os
lignite mining areaaround Most [Briix]
migration
in north-west Bohemia:in the last two decadesof the century the German
population of this region grew by 60 per cent, but the Czech increase
was 300 per cent, thereby establishing a substantial Czech minority as
an 'island' in a previously 'German zone'.5 Some, like Rauchberg,might
try to arguethat this was a temporary phenomenon, born of short-lived
economic conditions: a workers' colony of limited duration which was
segregatedfrom its German environment and therefore had not followed
the usual pattern of assimilation.6 But Rauchberg had to admit that
elsewhere in Bohemia - notably around Plzen - industrialization and
I. Heinrich Rauchberg,Der nationaleBesitzstandin Bdhmen(3 vols., Leipzig, 1905),i. 682.
2.
Ibid. i. 69o.
3. Edmund Prusik, Die GemeindeIglauund ihr Wirkenin denJahrenI865-I890(Iglau,I890),p. 259.
okresuStri7brske1lo
(Plzeni,I929), p. Io.
4. Vaclav Tyr, Stlrbrsko.Ptspevek k monografiipolitickesho
5. Andrew GladdingWhiteside,AustrianNational Socialismbefore19I8 (The Hague, I962),p. 41.
6. Rauchberg,Der nationale Besitzstand,i. 666, 690. He compared the 'unusual' situation in northwestern Bohemia with that around Liberec [Reichenberg] to the north-east, where Czech immigrants
had tended to enter small businessesratherthan factories, had been more widely scattered,and therefore
were much more easily assimilated(ibid. 327-31).
EHR Sept.94
I994
LANGUAGE
BORDER,
I880-I940
919
Czech migration had indeed resulted in a movement of the language
border,something which could be dangerousto Germaninterestsif Czech
nationalistswere able to intervene and make political capital out of these
new Czech minorities.
For with the upsurge of nationalist tensions at the end of the century
the Czechs had moved to protect those minorities, while the Germans
from I880began a largely defensive struggleto preservewhat they termed
their nationalerBesitzstand- their 'national assets' in terms of property,
land and population. It was Germans who were more obsessed with
upholding and delimitingpreciselywhat they now viewed as the centuriesold languageborder, using this as a markerwith which to define separate
administrative regions for themselves in Bohemia and so prevent their
swamping by the Czech majority of the crownland. In contrast, many
Czechs would tend to see the benefits of moving the language border
as far as possible up to the state boundaries,since their political solution
for Bohemia was to be one which always preserved the historic unity
of the Bohemian crownlands. These differentGerman and Czech perspectives remained largely the same for the next sixty years. Increasingly,
a range of methods were used by both sides to advancetheir cause. Societies which were established to promote German or Czech educational
facilities - such as the Deutscher Schulverein and the Ustredni Matice
Skolska(both i880)- were soon complemented by more aggressivepropaganda associations, the Bund der Deutschen in B6hmen (1894) on the
German side, the Narodnl Jednoty on the Czech.' But to this open
agitation were added more subtle methods, most notably at the time
of the decennial census. The number of people registering themselves
as 'Germans' or 'Czechs' were then counted, and on their numbers
depended both the languagerights for the local population and its claims
to Czech or German educational facilities. For this reason the census
itself became, especially in mixed language areas, the scene of a regular
struggle to gain more souls for the national cause. And the criterion
used for defining 'nationality' in the census also became a sensitive issue.
The Czechs always arguedthat the use of Umgangssprache
(the language
in daily use) as the criterion facilitated corruption of the results, since
Czechs of inferior social status could be 'persuaded'to inscribe 'German'
as their daily language; it became a regular Czech complaint that the
officialAustrian census resultswere misleading,concealingthe true demo-
I. The four Narodni Jednoty (national associations) were the Narodnl Jednota Severoceska (I885,
covering northern Bohemia) and the Narodni Jednota Posumavska (1884, covering south Bohemia);
and two others which served Czechs in Moravia:the Narodni Jednota pro Jihozapadni Moravu (1886,
based at Brno [Briinn] for south-west Moravia) and the Narodni Jednota pro Vychodnl Moravu (I885,
basedat Olomouc for easternMoravia).
EHR Sept.94
920
THE STRUGGLE
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
September
graphic realities which were allegedly uncovered whenever a private
Czech censuswas taken.'
In I905 Rauchberg,a professor at Prague'sGerman university, published
a seminalwork on demographicconditions in Bohemia. Relying on statistics from the Austrian censuses of I880, I890 and I900, he tried to reach
some conclusions on the real state of Czech and German 'national assets',
including the degree to which the languageborder had shifted from I880
to I900. Rauchbergarguedthat despite the vigorous strugglefor property
and territory carriedon for years by Czechs and Germanson the language
border, the actualresults achieved had been negligible. The local 'battles'
fought out on the border, though generating a great deal of noise and
publicity, were of little importance when placed in the context of the
broaderand more stabledevelopment of Germansand Czechs in Bohemia
as a whole.2 Although admitting, as we have seen, that the border west
of Plzen had shifted because of economic circumstances,Rauchbergportrayed this industrializing region as atypical of the border as a whole.
Most of the languageborder was a very narrow agrarianzone (containing
224 villages), which he felt to be a fairly clear ethnic line; as such it
could indeed serve, as German nationalistswished, as the basisfor demarcating new ethnically homogeneous administrativedistricts in Bohemia.3
This idea, that the language border was clear-cut in many areas,
seems to have some validity, if one excludes the old German islands
and the new Czech 'islanders'in north-western Bohemia. For example,
when an official from the League of Nations crossed western Bohemia
in I92I he discovered, after driving through 'pure German territory',
that 'suddenly everything changed:the countryside was entirely Czech.'4
It seems, moreover, to be the case that on these stretches of
the language border where mixed villages were scarce and the ethnic
divide quite rigid, the ethnic relationship was much calmer and there
was less local initiative to move the border. In contrast, in areaswhere
industrial or urban development caused Czech migration into German
zones, as in the region west of Plzen or in the languageisland of Jihlava,
a tense ethnic struggle developed if the immigrants were not assimilated,
or if they then received sufficient stimuli to their national consciousness
from Czech propagandasocieties. However, it would not be correct to
conclude from this that from the I87osthe border struggleonly emerged
i. See Z. A. B. Zeman, 'The Four Austrian Censuses and their Political Consequences', in The
Last YearsofAustria-Hungary,I908-I918, ed. Mark Cornwall (Exeter, I990), ch. 2; and Cohen, ThePolitics
of EthnicSurvival,pp. 88-9I.
2. Rauchberg,Der nationaleBesitzstand,i. 57, 94, 664.
3. Ibid. 89, 667. The language border did not correspond to the administrativedistricts in Bohemia
or Moravia, but in Bohemia in I900, only 17 political districts (out of 96) were ethnically 'mixed'
- i.e. a national minority numbered 20 per cent or more of the district's population; the figure for
the smallerjudicialdistrictswas 19out of 2I9.
4. Archives of the Leagueof Nations, Geneva:Minorities Section, Section Files, Box S 354/3, 'Rapport
de Voyage en Tchecho-Slovaquie,Autriche et Hongrie', by Helmer Rosting, I5 June I92I.
EHR Sept.94
I994
LANGGUA
GE BOORD ER,
i88o -i9404
921
in the wake of economic change and migration. As we will see, some
agrariansectors of the border, such as that around Lovosice, a zone with
many ethnically mixed villages - and lacking a clear-cut ethnic line witnessed a particularlysharp national clash in the hands of determined
local agitators.Here indeed, nationalist agitationin the borderzone seems
for some decades to have preceded economic change. It was the same
on the agrarianlanguage border, southwards towards Plzen, where the
very fact that the region was underpopulatedseems to have encouraged
German and Czech agitatorsto try to make gains at the other's expense.1
Yet as Rauchberg noted correctly, such agitation rarely had any success
in moving the border if it was not accompanied by economic pressure
- either through the influence of German industrial proprietors or
through the flood of Czech migrantworkers.
For Rauchberg, the final conclusion which he drew from his analysis
was that the struggle on the Sprachgrenzesince the I87os had been far
too much in the spotlight. What matteredfor the future balanceof Czechs
and Germans in central Europe was not the artificial type of agitation
pursued around the language border, a line which had remained largely
unchangedfor the past half-century.2Rather, their destiny would depend
on the profound economic and social developments taking place in the
solidly Czech and German hinterlands.Here he judgedthat the Germans,
despite the possible threat from those Czech economic migrants who
did not assimilate, could be reasonably optimistic because of their own
firm economic and cultural strength:this 'reality', which would be decisive in undermining the new Czech minorities, necessitatedthat Czechs
and Germans should begin to compromise in order to live peacefully
together in Bohemia.3 Not surprisingly, Rauchberg's conclusions were
not shared by Czech demographers or politicians. It was Rauchberg's
study which first led Antonln Bohac, a student of philology and later
the leading Czech demographer of the century, to turn his attention
to analysing the Czech-German demographic relationship. Although
Bohac always shared Rauchberg's view that Czech migration was due
to 'naturalforces' - the economic inequality of Czech and Germanregions
- he did not agree that the language border was stable.4 Indeed, he
not only questioned the reliability of official Austrian census data as
used by Rauchberg,5 but drew from his own statistical evidence an
I. F. Cajthaml,Severoceske
Bilancegermanisacea utiskuceskeholidu berhem
ndrodnostnz'pomezz'
pdldruhehostoletz'(Teplice-Sanov,
I927),p. 59.
2. He noted that earlier ethnic maps of Bohemia (for example those of J. Jirecek in I85o and Karl
von Cz6rnig in I855)revealeda languagebordervery similar to that which he had established(Rauchberg,
Der nationaleBesitzstand,i. 669).
3. Ibid. 697, 70I.
4. Alena Subrtova, 'Antonln Bohac - statistik a demograf. Zivot a dilo', in SbornikNdrodniho.Muzea
v Praze,ser. A, vol. xxxi (1977),c. 1-3,pp. 7, 9.
5. Bohac later praised one Czech demographic study of north-western Bohemia, based on a private
census, which appeared in I908 and which left a far less tidy picture of ethnic conditions than had
Rauchberg's study: see J. uubrtand V. Hosek, Ndrodnostn'mapa severozdpadn{chCech die skutecnyfch
pomeru(Most, I908).
EHR Sept. 94
922
THE STRUGGLE
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
September
opposite conclusion: namely that in German regions there were growing
Czech minorities which desperatelyneeded help in order to prevent their
assimilation.1Thus Bohac, like Rauchberg, was able to present rather
dangerous political conclusions from his analysis of the alleged demographic realities in Bohemia-Moravia.He, in fact, was drawing the more
logical conclusion, that Czech migration would require political concessions from the Germans,while Rauchbergstill hoped that the migrants
might be assimilatedand the existing ethnic balancepreserved.
Needless to say, Rauchberg'swork had no effect upon the perpetual
local struggles around the 'border', nor did it moderate the attention
which Czech or German agitators paid to the movement or stability
of the border in the following decades.Those who lived on the language
frontier or in language islands continued to be at the cutting-edge of
Czech-German relations, highly susceptible to nationalist trends; as a
result, life in this narrow zone often served as a touchstone for the relative
calm or turmoil of Czech-German relations as a whole. The agitation
on what Rauchberg termed the nationale Reibungsfldche2
of the border
both ebbed and flowed in response to developments in the wider CzechGerman relationship in Bohemia-Moravia,but life on the frontier also
createda state of mind which influencedthe wider context: most notably,
it was on the ethnically confused sections of the border that there arose
a nationalist extremism and a particular mentality which were at the
very root of the Sudeten question of the I930s.These sections were those
which seemed to be moving in the Czechs' favour after the First World
War. While Rauchberg had felt that movement of ethnic borders
dependedprimarily on economic circumstances,the establishmentof the
Czechoslovak state in I918showed how political power was also of crucial
importance:a new political environment could undermineexisting trends
(Czech assimilation),in this case by accentuatingthe political and national
dimension to Czech economic advancement at German expense. The
Czech migrants in north-westernBohemia, for example - far from being
a 'temporaryphenomenon' as Rauchberghad predicted- were now even
less easily absorbedinto the German communities; indeed, many Czechs
who had been partially assimilatedemerged after I918in their 'true colours'. Similarly, in German language islands such as Ceske Budejovice
[Budweis] in southern Bohemia (where in I91 Czechs and Germans had
concluded a local pact to try to formalize their relations in the town's
administrationand schools),3the Czech majority after I918was no longer
preparedto sharepolitical and economic power with a German minority.
I. Subrtova,'Antonin Bohac', p. I2.
Rauchberg,Der nationaleBesitzstand,i. 604.
3. See Antonin Bohac, 'Vyrovnani v Ceskych Budejovicich', MensinovaRevue, i (191-12), 416-32.
The German mayor of Ceske Budejovice had been induced to conclude the pact by steady Czech
economic and political advancementin the island as well as the disquieting census results of I9Io. (The
population of the town, half-Czech, half-Germanin 1880,consisted of two-thirds immigrants by I9I0,
80 per cent of whom were from pure Czech districts.)However, any such pact could only be a temporary
expedient so long as German dominance surpassedthe demographicrealities.
2.
EHR Sept.94
I994
LANGUAG
GE BOORD ER,
i88o -i9404
923
On the 'languageborderproper' it was the same story: the Czech hranicari
benefited in the new political climate from semi-official economic and
political backingfor their struggle.
In I935Bohac estimated that during the I920S the Germans had lost
202 square kilometres of their 'islands'.' Three years later, when preparing a memorandum for negotiations with the Nazis, he was far more
cautious: he judged that over fifty years, from I880to I930, the Germans
had lost to the Czechs a total of 425 square kilometres of land. First,
there had been major losses in the lignite area of north-west Bohemia
through Czech colonization, and in the major German languageislands
- Jihlava,Brno, Olomouc and Ceske Budejovice- where, he maintained,
it had been the 'natural result of sociological laws of the assimilation
of enclaves'. Second, he argued, the language border during this period
had shifted significantlyin the Czechs' favour in four areas:aroundLovosice in north-west Bohemia, west of Plzen, near Domazlice [Taus] in
south-west Bohemia, and in southern Moravia.2Bohac continued publicly to insist that these demographic shifts were 'natural' rather than
'artificial' - in other words they were not inspired by Czech political
or nationalist machinations, but solely the result of economic and demographic realities formerly concealed by German dominance. In fact it
seems clear that the Czech advanceat German expense, which had come
principally after 1918,was not simply due to the sudden disclosure of
their pre-war economic and demographic movement: it was also given
a powerful new political stimulus through closet support from the new
Czech regime in Prague. In private, Bohac himself implied that this was
the case. For example, in 1936he explained confidentially to President
EdvardBenes that in many sensitive regions of Bohemia-Moravia'natural
developments', such as the local economic situation, were not sufficient
to advance the Czech cause; only through 'artificial means', through
colonization and 'Czechification', could many German communities be
isolated and assimilated.3
The extent to which 1918was a watershed for the struggle on the language border is most clearly revealedby examining three of the localities
mentioned by Bohac in his 1938 memorandum: the language border
around Lovosice, a largely agrarianregion; and two burgeoningindustrial
districts: the border west of Plzen, and the language island of Jihlava.
Through this we will also assessthe role which economic developments
or 'artificialmethods' played in movement of the border,aswell as gaining
I. A[rchiv] N[irodniho] M[uzea] [Archive of the National Museum], Prague, Bohac papers, Karton
'Problem narodnostni. Statistikaa soucasny stav' [Oct. 1935],p. 12. This article was later published
as 'Narodnosti v Csl. republice. Statistika a soucasny stav', in Idea (eskoslovenskehosta'tu,ed. J. Kapras
20,
et al. (Prague, I936), pp. 302-16.
2. ANM, Bohac papers, Karton 44, 'Rozklad o narodnostnich pomerech vypracovany pro vladu
k jednanis Nemci v lete a na podzim r. I938'.
3. Ibid., 'Memorandumo narodnostni otazce', I936.
EHR Sept. 94
924
THE STRUGGLE
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
September
a better idea of the 'border mentality' and its consequences in broader
terms.
Map2: TheLanguageBorderat LovosiceAccordingto the I92I Official
Census
The sector of the languageborderrunning through Lovosice and Litomerice [Leitmeritz]- the region termed Litomericko - was particularlysensitive for geographicaland strategic reasons. For some Czechs like Bohac
it could be seen as the start of a corridor running from 'pure Czech'
territory through to their islandsaroundMost and Chomutov [Komotau];
indeed, one notable hranicarlabelled this areathe 'Czech Thermopylae'
- a corridor which had to be expanded and which also implied a heroic
struggle.1For Germans, because of these Czech ambitions, it was vital
to uphold the Sprachgrenzein the region of Litomericko. Some Czechs
came to assert that the Germans themselves had firm aggressive goals.
Allegedly they were alwayshoping to use this advancedposition, achieved
only in the eighteenth century, as the basis from which to push forward
I. Hranicdar, C. 45, I Nov. 1930: quoting Dr Vaclav Parik.
EHR Sept.94
I994
LANG GUAGGE
BORD DER, i8808 -I9404
925
to the capital, Prague (itself a small German island in the 'Czech sea'),
and thereby 'undermine completely the border of the compact Czech
area'.1In fact such a view does not seem to have been widespreadamong
Germans: rather, those active in propagandasocieties such as the Bund
der Deutschen saw their work as primarily defensive, to maintain the
existing Sprachgrenze,and rightly perceived the Czech Narodni Jednoty
to have more offensive aims. There was always some substancein German
allegations - especially after 1918- that the Czechs wanted to advance
the languageborder right up to the state frontiers.
Along the border to the east of Litomericko lay the fertile agricultural
region known as Podripsko. In the late nineteenth century, as already
mentioned, Podripsko was one of the major centres of support for the
Young Czech party: just one example of how ethnic conditions on or
near the language frontier stimulated wider political developments in
Bohemia-Moravia.The Young Czech party, founded in 1874,gained particular support from small farmers living near this sector of the border
who both appreciated and encouraged the party's backing for Czech
minorities in German or ethnically mixed regions. Indeed, in Podripsko
itself Young Czech politicians appearto have actedalongsideother Czech
organizations in openly supporting Czechs who wished to buy up land;
and in this way they helped to push forward the language border there
from the i88os.2In Litomericko a similar development occurred:ethnic
tensions on the languageborder graduallyhad repercussionsfar beyond
their original vicinity. The most famous Czech-German confrontation
in Litomericko took place at the turn of the century in the small town
of Trebenice [Trebnitz], some seven miles south-west of Litomerice.3
The hilly region directly north of Trebenice(partof the centralBohemian
hills) had been repopulatedwith German speakersafter the Thirty Years
War, so that by the eighteenth century the ethnic divide passed through
Trebenice itself. Here the 'border' remained largely fixed for the next
two hundred years, but its location caused fluctuatingCzech or German
control of the town: whereas in the I75os there was a Czech majority,
by I790 German was the official language of the town hall. The precise
ethnic composition is difficult to establish, partly because the official
census did not enquire about nationality until I880, but also because bi-
I. J. R. Tesar, 'Zivot ceskych mensin', in Nasvjvoj v severnimh
chdch pod ochranouNdrodnt'Jednoty
Severoceske,i9Io-93f. Vol. II:KrajLitomericky(Prague,1936),p. 57.
2. Garver, The Young Czech Party, pp. 8i, I28ff.;Cajthaml, Severoceskenarodnostnipomez4,pp. 26,
31.Following Professor Garver'stantalizing comments, more researchis needed on the languageborder
at Podripsko; until then one might question his broad statement (p. iiS) that 'all Czechs residing along
the languagefrontier ... respondedreadily to the patriotic and liberal Young Czech appeals'.
3. A brief account of this struggle is given by Elizabeth Wiskemann in Czechsand Germans,p. 62,
but she misleadsin suggestingthat the Germanswere successful.
EHR Sept. 94
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THE STRUGGLE
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
September
lingualism clearly existed in much of this border zone, preventing any
rigid ethnic categorizationof the inhabitants.1
Czech nationalist agitators in the early twentieth century maintained
that the German settlement in Trebenice and those in the Bohemian
hills to the north formed part of a consciously planned Germanization
which had lasted from the eighteenth century right up to I9I8.2In fact
such an idea is undoubtedly anachronistic. For it was only with the
arrival of the doctor-philanthropist Vaclav Parik in Trebenice in i868
that a conscious effort began by one group of the population to dominate
the parish and 'return it to Czech hands' (by I887).As mayor for several
decades,Paik, according to a Czech encyclopaedia of I902, 'created out
of an insignificant town smothered by Germanization, a progressive
Czech town which is a firm bastion againstthe Germanization creeping
towards the centre of the kingdom [of Bohemia]'.3He set up a cultural
centre and a savings bank for the Czech population, helped establish
Czech schools in endangered Czech villages nearby, and - as one of
his most important measures- founded a fruit-processingfactory in this
'Garden of Bohemia', as Litomericko was called, thereby attractingmore
Czech labourers into the locality. Since other industries were springing
up, around Lovosice in particular, the German inhabitants were quite
right to view such developments as a real danger to what they now
It was a border which they wanted
perceived as the age-oldSprachgrenze.4
to see fixed: in 1890 they undoubtedly backed the Vienna Agreement
of Count Taaffeby which the borders of judicial districts in mixed areas
of Bohemia would have been redrawnalong ethnic lines. And not surprisingly, the Czechs of Litomericko under Parik's guidance were at the
forefront of those Czechs in 1891who publicly protested against any
such strict delimitation of the Sprachgrenzein this ethnically confused
region.5
Pailk, however, soon faced a worthy challengerto his own fanaticism.
In 1889Dr J. W. Titta, who had been brought up near Litomerice on
the languageborder, moved to the parish. He set up a German Protestant
church, a savings bank to ensure German economic independence, and
a society - Germania - with its own meeting-house; and he worked
vigorously to try to recover the Germans' lost position.6 After a decade
Titta's agitation seemed to be bearing fruit according to his own evaluI. Such bilingualismwas notorious in the villagesof Chrastany[Chrastiau]and Zelkovice for example:
J. Subrt, 'Narodnostni promeny v byvalem kraji litomerickem za poslednich ISo let', MensinovaRevue,
ii (i9I3), 333, 399.
2. See Cajthaml,Severoceskenadrodnostnt'pomez',
pp. 37-9; Cajthaml'ssketches of the languageborder
in 1787and 900o show in fact how little the border moved during the nineteenth century.
3. Ottuv slovnik naucny, vol. xix (Prague, I902), p. 225.
4. See, for example, the comments in LeitmeritzerZeitung,Nr 9, 29 Jan. I902, p. 6.
5. Garver, TheYoungCzechParty,p. 439, n. 6.
6. Titta had apparently been persuaded to take up a position as doctor in Trebenice by Franz
Schmeykal, the influential German Liberal leader in Prague, who knew of Titta's obsession with the
Sprachgrenze:see Erich Schmied, 'J. W. Titta und der Deutsche Volksrat fur B6hmen', Bohemia,xxvi
(1985), 3I0.
EHR Sept. 94
I994
LANGUAG
GE BOORD ER,
i88o -i9404
927
ation. In I899 a newspaper report on the tenth anniversary festival of
Germania summed up the decade as one of 'persistent, single-minded
and successfulwork on the Trebnitz languageborder';Titta had shown,
through his fight with 'civilized weapons', that 'the onslaught of the
Czechs is certainly not invincible'.1 When Parik died two years later,
the same paper judged that the Czech cause was already on the wane,
but its decline would now be accelerated.2The removal of Parik viewed as treacherousfor initially ingratiatinghimself with the German
community - certainly appears to have softened the tensions; by I905
Titta felt able to conclude that the national struggle had now passed
its climax and one could look forward to peaceful co-existence on this
sector of the Sprachgrenze.3In fact the fight was by no means over.
Titta had indeed done much to assert a public German presence in the
region and prevent movement of the languageborder: between i880 and
I9Io only one parish - Podsedice [Podseditz] - on the Lovosice language
border changed from a German to a Czech majority.4The Germania's
meeting-house in Trebenice had become a major cultural centre for the
area; Germania had financed local schools, which were expanding, and
organized regularnational demonstrations,such as 'languageborder festivals', which were usually timed to clash with Czech meetings held on
the same day. The proportion of those in Trebeniceregisteringthemselves
as German in the census rose strikingly from 26 per cent in I880 to
36 per cent by I9I0. Yet Titta himself had to admit that many of the
local Germans were still appallingly apatheticwhen it came to proclaiming their nationality. Furthermore,Trebeniceparishcouncil and the local
school council remained firmly in the hands of the Czechs, who were
under no legal requirement to provide for the German minority. Not
surprisingly, Titta was in favour of an administrative demarcation on
national lines for the regions of Bohemia in order to aid his own work;
but he intended Trebenice to be allotted to the German side of the Sprachgrenzeso that its Germanswould no longer be in a minority.5
The legendary struggle of Titta and PaIrk lived on into the inter-war
period, inspiring other frontiersmen in a similar environment. In particular the reputation of Titta soared, for he had drawn definite lessons not
simply from the struggle on the Sprachgrenze,but also from the Badeni
crisis at the end of the century, when Germans had been faced with
the awesome prospect of the Czech language being placed on a more
equal footing with their own throughout the Bohemian lands. As a result
I.
Leitmeritzer Zeitung, Nr 71, 13 Sept. 1899, p. 1361.
2.
Ibid., Nr 97, i Dec. I901,p. 7. The newspapereven belittled the number of mourners and wreaths
at Parik's funeral (Nr
Ioo,
2I
Dec. I9oI, p. 6).
3. J. W. Titta, Der nationaleKampfander TrebnitzerSprachgrenze
in denJahrenI9o3 und I904 (Trebnitz,
I905), pp. 54-5.
4. Podsedice's ethnic composition, according to the official census results, had fluctuatedconstantly,
causing a particularly tense atmosphere in the village. In the I88os Czechs had also gained a majority
in their island of Ploskovice [Ploschkowitz], north-eastof Litomerice.
5. Ibid., pp. Io, 53-4.
EHR Sept. 94
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THE STRUGGLE
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
September
of the tensions which this provoked, Titta in i903 founded a German
National Council (Volksrat)of Bohemia. Basedin Trebenice,the Council
was envisagedas an above-partyorganization which would act as a focus
for joint work by all German politicians and societies against Czech
encroachment across the Sprachgrenze.1In fact Titta, as chairman
throughout the Council's fifteen-year existence, found it impossible to
reconcile the mass of German political partiesunder his umbrellaorganization; therefore, although the Volksrat had branches on all sectors of
the language border in Bohemia, it was never fully representative of
all strands of the German population.2It did, however, develop particularly close links to Hans Knirsch, one of the organizers of the newlyformed German Workers' party (DAP). This party was created at Usti
nad Labem[Aussig]in northern Bohemia in November I903 by a number
of working-class leaders who strongly opposed Czech migration into
German 'living space' in the industrial areas of north-western Bohemia.
They admired the lead set by some Czech politicians, who in I898 had
founded a Czech National Socialist party, appealingto the national consciousness of Czech workers; in contrast they felt that in the charged
atmosphere following the Badeni Decrees neither the German Social
Democratic party nor the Germanbourgeoisiewere adequatelyrepresenting the national interests of German workers.3As Heinrich Rauchberg
was predicting at this very time, the demographic changes in Bohemia
would make German workers formulate their own specific view of the
national question.4
The DAP and Titta's Volksrat were two specific political initiatives
which resulted from Czech migration and the struggleover the language
border; both representeda new stage in the development of the Sudeten
question, a new extremism in the defence of national rights. While the
DAP became the first German National Socialist party in I918,Titta's
Council also almost received a new lease of life at this time with the
collapse of the Habsburg Empire. In October I918Titta vainly tried to
reactivatethe Council and use it as a rallying point, to unite the Sudeten
Germans in demanding self-determination and the right to join the
German Reich. However, it proved impossible to co-ordinatethe activities of local Volksrate within the territorially awkward shape of German
Bohemia, all the more so as Czech troops advanced in November to
I. Ibid., p. 56.
2. Schmied, 'Dr J. W. Titta', 314-I5. For example, Titta could never gain backing from the German
Social Democrat party and alienated the German Agrariansand Radicals;those who supported Georg
von Schonerer'sPan-German'party' also boycotted the Volksrat when the Christian Socialsjoined.
3. See the report on the DAP's first party conference at Trutnov [Trautenau]:TrautenauerZeitung,
Nr 34, 20 Aug. I904. The various strandswhich produced the DAP are analysed in Whiteside, Austrian
National Socialism,and a good summary is provided in Karl Dietrich Bracher, TheGermanDictatorship.
TheOrigins,Structureand Consequences
of National Socialism(London, I988),pp. 72ff.
4. Rauchberg,Der nationaleBesitzstand,i. 700.
EHR Sept.94
I994
LANGUAG
GE BORD DER, i8808 -I9404
929
occupy the whole of Bohemia and Moravia.' The Germans now could
only pin their hopes on the Paris Peace Conference - that the Allied
peacemakers would implement their demand for an ethnic division of
the region. In fact in Parisin I919 the Czechs' industriousforeign minister,
Edvard Benes, played down the existence of any clear ethnic border,
describingthe Sudetenlandas 'a mixed region' littered with Czech minorities.2 This was a blatant distortion of the facts. But with the Peace
Conference's decision to leave the state frontiers between Germany and
Czechoslovakia largely intact, Benes's meticulous propagandaseemed to
have borne fruit. The way was set for more active Czech penetration
of the German border zone; from I919 the battle over the languageborder
was increasinglytaken into the 'German interior'.3
A series of developments, largely backed by the new Czech state authorities, ensured that the language border began to be rolled back in some
regions, one of which was Litomericko. Some towns and villages had
of course been artificially maintained as 'German' in the past: thus, for
example, the fortress of Terezin [Theresienstadt]fell to the Czechs as
soon as its German garrisondepartedin I918.Other towns had, through
the nature of the Austrian local electoral system, retained a German
political administration at variance with the actual ethnic character of
the locality. But it was now a combination of 'artificial' and 'natural'
developments which ensured the Czechs' advance.In the forefront were
the Czech propagandasocieties - particularlythe Narodnl Jednoty which
in old Austria had struggledto protect Czech minorities living in enclaves
or on the languageborder. Their activities, ratherthan diminishing, were
now stepped up with a vengeance. They strove not simply to ensure
free development for all Czech minorities, but also to reconquer areas
supposedly 'Germanized' from the seventeenth century: the Germans
were to be made to see that the Sudeten frontier zone was part of a
Czechoslovak national state. Although the Narodnl Jednoty always had
a semi-official status in the new Republic,4 the support they obtained
from the authoritieswas, nevertheless,often deemed inadequateby those
on the Czech nationalist Right. Already in 1922, 386 delegatesfrom Narodni Jednoty and the 'mixed regions' gatheredin Prague- in the presence
of ministerial representatives- to complain about the insufficient state
I. See the account of conditions around Litomerice: Jaroslav Macek, 'Litomericko v roce I918',in
Vznik samostatnehoCeskoslovenskaa Severnz'Cechy, ed. Antonln Faltys et al. (Usti nad Labem, I968),
pp. 79ff. Titta was finally arrested in Lovosice in June I919 and almost executed (he was saved by
two Czechs from Trebenice who recognized him); in October he was able to return to Trebenice
and died in August I923.
2. See Mark Cornwall, 'Dr Edvard Benes and Czechoslovakia's German Minority, II98-I943', in
TheCzechand SlovakExperience,ed. John Morison (London, 1992), pp. I72-5.
3. The view of Dr Josef Rauscher: 'Der Elbegau als deutsches Grenzland', in 60 JahreLeitmeritzer
Zeitung, i87I-i931
(Leitmeritz, i93i).
4. A critical discussion of their activitiesby a Czech is provided in Emanuel Radl, Der Kampfzwischen
Tschechenund Deutschen(Reichenberg,I928),pp. I38ff.
EHR Sept. 94
930
THE STRUGGLE
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
September
support provided for winning back 'Germanized areas'.A delegatefrom
Lovosice, Marie Tippmanova, warned that if the Czechs failed to retake
Germanized land, the Germans themselves would move in and try as
in 1918-I9 to form a 'German Bohemian' state. She continued: 'Today
our situation in the mixed regions is no better than under Austria. Indeed,
I would even say that today our region is more in jeopardythan then.'1
Such sentiments contributed to the founding of two Czech newspapers,
LitomerickeListy and Hranicar, in the town of Litomerice in I922.While
the German LeitmeritzerZeitunghad long been propagatingthe German
viewpoint on this part of the Sprachgrenze,the Czech newspapers were
now even more unabashedin their outlook. The first edition of Litomericke Listy, besides publishing a poem by the leader of the local Narodni
Jednota entitled 'Be on your guard with a proud flag', noted that the
German majority in the town of Litomerice was 'artificial' and would
soon be toppled. This was a fallacy - the town had had a secure German
character from the mid-eighteenth century.2 But the newspaper could
be happier about Trebenice, where Czech activists were now working
doggedly to undermine Titta's achievements.3By the time that Anton'n
Bohac made a study of this part of the languageborder in the mid-I92os
he could recordwith satisfactionthat the I92Icensushad revealeda definite
shift in the border to the Czechs' advantage.4Czech majorities were
now registered in half a dozen more parishes, while the percentage of
German inhabitants was sharply reduced in a whole range of villages
and towns, including Lovosice, where the Czech population since I910
had almost doubled.
For Czech nationalist agitators the concept of 'hranica'ri'now meant
any Czechs in the Sudetenfrontier zone; and within an allegedly'Czechoslovak national state' they claimed a new moral right to advance the
Czech cause. For the Germans, with their hopes dashed of unity with
Austria and Germany, the best solution became that which Rauchberg
and others had advocated before I914: territorial autonomy in Bohemia
with a clearly defined Sprachgrenze.In the first years of the Republic
ethnic tensions were the main focus of politics on the language border.
But in the late I920S, the spirit of Czech-German compromise, demonstrated from 1926by the entry of several German political parties into
the central government, tended also to be reflected in local 'border poliI. GenerdlnizsnemNarodnichJednota Matic i zastupcdCeskoslov.lidu z krajin narodnostnesmi'senych
v (Ceskoslov.republicev Praze, dne i a 2 dubna I922 (Prague, 1922), p. 13. The same feelings were being
expressedin the 1930s: see Josef Laube, 'Dynamika obyvatelstva na Litomericku', in Nadvyvojv severnich
dechach, pp. 43-4.
2. Moreover, as one local Czech expert on the region has recently stressed,the movement of Germanspeakingpeople into Litomerice in the late seventeenthcentury had not been a caseof conscious 'Germanization', but of repopulation of an area seriously damaged in the Thirty Years War (58 per cent of
houses had been completely destroyed):information from a lecture by Dr JaroslavMacek in Litomerice,
25 March I992.
3. LitomeickeListy,
C. I, 22 July I922; C. 5,2 Feb. I924, p. 4.
4. Antonln Bohac, Narodnostn mapa RepublikyceskoslovenskePodrobnypopis narodnostnichhranic,
ostrovua mensin(Prague,I926),p. 37.
EHR Sept. 94
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LANGGUA
GE BO0RD ER,
i88o-i9I 940
93I
tics', calmingtensions in the mixed communities andpossibly diminishing
the previously very active 'consciousness' of a language border. There
were always those like the German Agrarian 'activist' politician Franz
Krepek, mayor of Litomerice from I933 to 1936, who tried to build a
bridge between the German and Czech communities.1 That a 'border
mentality' still existed, however, was soon apparent.For example, when
in 1931one German inhabitant of Litomerice reviewed the recent history
of this 'German border zone', he warned of the danger of Czechs eventually taking over Lovosice and Litomerice: it was vital, he wrote, to
organize a united German movement (Volksbewegung)to call a halt to
threatening 'Czechification'.2This idea, that non-socialist Sudeten German parties and organizationsshould unite together under one umbrella,
had been gaining ground from the late
I920S;
it was reflected in I933
in the tentative efforts to relaunch Titta's old Volksrat as a new Sudeten
German Volksrat.3But it only fully materializedwhen Konrad Henlein,
the Fiihrer of the Sudeten German Gymnastics Association, decided in
September I933to launch a broad political Sudeten movement (the Sudetendeutsche Heimatfront). With the background of economic distress
in the Sudetenland and Hitler's accession to power in Germany, but
also of a latent border mentality among German Sprachgrenzler,
Henlein
found a natural response in areas such as Litomericko to his message
that the language border must be secured as the Volksgrenze,separating
two peoples within one Czechoslovak state. As he explainedin one speech
in Litomerice (the scene of a succession of Sudeten nationalist rallies
in the I930s)4, it was crucialto halt Czech efforts to move the Volksgrenze
up to the state boundary.5
From about I935the stark reality of the moving language border was
being constantly placed before the 'frontiersmen' of both nationalities.
The local Czech press warned their hranicarinot to be complacent about
the 'natural' Czech advance. They should remember that the Germans
were still artificially maintaining themselves (as before I914)and seeking
to make Litomerice the Henleinist centre from which to advance on
I. See Krepek'sinauguralspeech in LeitmeritzerZeitung,Nr 3, Jan. I934:'Die Antrittsrededes Buirgermeisters Frz. Krepek';and also the praisefrom local Czechs on Krepek'seightieth birthday:Litomericke
Listy, c. 3, I9 Jan. 1935:'Purkmistr Frant. Krepek'. Krepek had in fact been imposed on Litomerice
by the Czech central authorities in I933 when fourteen German nationalist politicians were forced
to resign from the council; but when he died, in rather suspicious circumstancesin a hunting accident
in April I936, the LeitmeritzerZeitung still extolled him as 'one of the striking personalities of Sudeten
German and Czechoslovak politics' (Nr 50, 30 Apr. I936,p. 3: 'Franz Krepektot').
2. Rauscher,'Der Elbegauals deutsches Grenzland'.
3. For these efforts to launch a concrete Sudeten movement, see Luh, Der DeutscheTurnverband,
pp. 2o5ff.
4. Litomerice was, most interestingly,the centre for severalmeetingsin the early 1930Sof the Kameradschaftsbund, the elite Sudeten organization founded by Othmar Spann, which played such a key role
in Henlein's own movement: see ibid., pp. 232, 269.
5. See, for example, Henlein's speech at Litomerice on Io October I937: 'Das LeitmeritzerKreiserntedankfestder SudetendeutschenPartei', in LeitmeritzerZeitung,Nr II8,II Oct. 1937.
EHR Sept.94
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THE STRUGGLE
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
September
to the Czech plains.' The local German press had an even more alarmist
messagefor its readers.In May 1936,for example,the LeitmeritzerZeitung,
with the aid of a map, drew attention to the steady German retreat
over the decades, calculating that in the Lovosice judicial district from
I900 to 1930 the number of Germans had decreased by 5,ooo while the
Czech population increased by 7,5oo.2 In practical terms, and despite
the efforts of those like Titta, this had meant a steady advance of the
Czech languageborder. The reasonsfor this, accordingto the newspaper,
depended on both 'natural'and 'artificial'stimulants. For example, there
had been a general decline in the birth-rate, worse for Germans than
Czechs, while a steady growth of local industries in Litomericko especially around Lovosice - had encouragedan influx of Czech workers.
But the paper also acknowledged that in the new political climate after
1918some people who had previously declared themselves as German
had changed back to Czech in the censuses of I921 and 1930; this was,
of course, something which Czech sources, citing the unreliability of
the Austrian censuses, had always emphasized to justify the Czech
advance.3Lastly - as evidence of underhand activity - the paper alleged
that there had been a systematic exchange of Czech for German officials
in the region. And it correctly assertedthat the Czech land reform begun
in 1919had transferredever more German Besitzstandinto Czech hands:
the parcelling out of great estates, such as those of the Schwarzenbergs
at Brezno [Priesen] and Sulejovice [Sullowitz], had certainly benefited
the Czechs, while the settling of new Czech colonists, for instance in
the parish of Male Zernoseky [Klein-Czernosek],had paved the way for
furtherpenetration of 'German areas'.4
The LeitmeritzerZeitung's summary of reasons for German decline
in Litomericko seems to be accurate.For while some Czechs after I918
returned to their Czech nationality and many continued to move into
local German industries, others - even if only a small number - now
migrated or benefited as a result of intensified activity by the Czech
propagandasocieties in acquiringland and founding schools.5 An example of this multiple causation could be found in the village of Cizkovice
[Tschischkowitz], 90 per cent German in I9Io, but already under some
threat becauseof a local cement factory which employed Czech workers.
After the First World War, under the land reform, nine Czech families
i. Lovosicky Kraj, c. 21, 29 May 1937: '(esky
narodni den v Lovosicich';
and c. 14, io Apr. 1937:
'Litomericesidlem odbojneho a nepokojneho henleinismu'.
2. 'Der Lobositzer Bezirk in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart', LeitmeritzerZeitung, Nr 63, 29 May
1936, p. I2.
3. For example, Cajthaml in Severoceskdndrodnostnipomez', p. 43, alleges that in the
900o
census
2,254 Czechs had been incorrectly registered as German; Josef Laube in 'Dynamika obyvatelstva na
Litomericku', p. 5, alleges that a private census of I900 recorded 471 more Czechs in Litomerice than
the officialcensus.
4. See the comments in Wiskemann, Czechsand Germans,p. I57.
5. For examples of activity by the Narodni Jednota Severoceska in aiding Czech minorities, see
Cechach,pp. 6off.
J. R. Tesar, '2ivot ceskych mensin', in Na'vyvoj v severnmch
EHR Sept.94
I994
LANGUAGE
BORD ER, i88o0-I940
933
were moved into the parish; Czech schools were then founded and by
I930 the Czechs had a small majority. Since local Germans retaliated
(and there was a hung parish council) this village on the languageborder
was the scene from I918of a twenty-year 'tenacious and often exhausting
struggle'.' It was this kind of experience, with the clear evidence that
they were losing the border struggle, which made Sprachgrenzlerflock
into the Henlein movement when the political climate seemedpropitious
from the mid-I930s.In the sensitive parish of Cizkovice in the local elections of May 1938,the German Social Democrats, ratherthan siding with
the Czechs as was normal in most parishes, actually voted for Henlein's
party to maximize the German vote.2
The Germans' Besitzstandseemed assuredonly in October 1938when,
under the Munich agreement signed between the Great Powers, Hitler's
troops advancedinto the Sudetenlandup to the ethnic borderas calculated
by the Austrian census of I9I0. Cizkovice and Lovosice thereby fell into
the new Sudetengauof the Reich.3 But for the same reason the disputed
town of Trebenice remained in the rump Czech state and, from March
I939, in the German Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. Here indeed,
where the ethnic clash had been so vigorous, a new type of borderstruggle
continued from I939. In the inter-warperiod, although its German population was reducedto I5per cent, Trebenice had continued to be a vibrant
German nationalist centre, so much so that in 1933 Germania had been
banned because of its links to nationalist political parties. In 1938 the
town again became the centre of attention, when minor Czech-German
friction was exaggeratedout of all proportion.4But a year later Trebenice
returned to its late nineteenth-century status as a 'Czech bastion' in the
border zone. Already in early I939the Nazi authoritiesin Usti nad Labem
were complaining that Czech propagandawas being smuggled from Trebenice across the new Reich border by, for instance, Czech workmen
who still journeyed daily to the cement factory at Cizkovice.5 In other
words, the Sudetenland,which had now become a Grenzlandgauof the
German Reich, was still subject to Czech immigration: ironically, an
influx of Czech workers from acrossthe borderwas necessaryto maintain
the region's economy, and this became ever more urgent as the war
progressed and more Sudeten manpower was required to fight on the
eastern front. As for the Sprachgrenzearound Litomericko, its sensitivity
as part of the new Reich border remained. The Nazi authorities at Usti
continued to single out Trebenice as a trouble-spot, one official observing
I. 'Der Sprachgrenzkampfin Tschischkowitz', LeitmeritzerZeitung,Nr 2, 5Jan. 1940,p. 6.
Ibid., Nr 65, 3 June 1938, p. 17.
3. See for example the reports ibid. (Nr 117, I2 Oct. 1938) of the rapturouswelcome given to German
2.
troops entering Litomerice and Lovosice: the new mayor of Litomerice, Eduard Breuer, greeted them
as 'liberatorsfrom twenty years of slavery'.
4. Ibid., Nr 59, 20 May I938,p. 7: one of the Czechs who attacked some visiting German Turner
(gymnasts)lost seven teeth.
5. Statni Oblastnl Archiv [State District Archive], Litomerice: Vlad. President Usti nad Labem I938I945,PS/29, Lageberichtfur den RegierungsbezirkAussig, 3IJan. I939,Anlage I.
EHR Sept.94
934
THE STRUGGLE
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
September
in February I940 that 'the Czech population there is so schooled in the
long-standing border struggle, that [the town] is a spiritual focus for
Czechs living in the border zone of the Reich, maintaining constant
links with them, and thus acting as the radiating centre for subversive
propaganda'.' The very nature of the Nazi occupation of BohemiaMoravia had preserved a border along the line of the old Sprachgrenze,
and this would only be removed after I945 with the expulsion of the
SudetenGermansfrom Czechoslovakia.
The study of the languageborder at Lovosice revealsa prolonged struggle in a zone which, though largelyagrarianin the late nineteenth century,
was also very ethnically confused. Until I918the Germans, through vigilance and their privileged social and economic position, seemed able to
maintaintheir Besitzstand.But afterI918the bordermoved forward.Partly
this was due to 'natural' economic factors, yet it also owed much to
the fact that local Czechs under the new regime receivedextra sustenance
in their efforts to undermine the German position. The ways in which
the Czechs now advanced the language border were just as 'artificial'
as those employed by Germansbefore the war to uphold their beleaguered
Besitzstand.
The continuity evident in Litomericko of a sixty-year battle on the language border was not unusual, even if the struggle in that region was
at times peculiarly fierce. To the south-west, in the region neighbouring
the city of Plzen, a similar conflict took place from the I870s. While
Plzen had had a German majority in the mid-nineteenth century, an
influx of Czechs from the countryside to work in the Skoda armaments
industry quickly transformedthe town's Germansinto a linguistic minority. The ethnic border began to advance westwards as Czechs migrated
to work in the newly opened coal-mines west of Plzen. The struggle
in this mixed and industrializing region essentially became one fought
out in Stirbrsko - a territory between Plzen in the east and the solidly
German town of Stribro [Mies] in the west. The Germans of Stribro
viewed their town as a 'German bulwark for western Bohemia', a centre
from which to aid ailing German communities in the undulatingcountryside to the east; for Czechs it was Plzen which became the 'mother of
the western minorities', the focal point for help to its Czech islands
around Stiibrsko. Since, as Rauchbergacknowledged,the industrialrevolution in this region was advancing the language border to the Czechs'
advantage,local Germans were determined to integrate Czech migrants
into their own environment. Thus, Czech miners often found it impossible to gain adequate schools or cultural facilities (for instance, there
was no Czech school for the large mining community at Zbuch [Zwug]),
while the few islands close to Stribro itself were particularlyendangered,
subject as they were to economic and then cultural dependence on the
I. Ibid., 7 Feb. I940.
EHR Sept.94
LANGUAGE
I994
BORDER,
935
I880-I940
0
Malesice
0
Oi
( 0Sulislov
PLZEN
oo
0
0
0
0
0
C O?o
o0_
0I
(
-"
NYRANY
,
) 0
0
0
0
0
'LINE
IN
A L
0
CHOTSOV
'
'
.
o 0
0
.
*
ZBUCH
0
(0
DOBRANY
Robice
/
Honezovice
0
O
CD
or0
0
_OD
//
,(D5.
O
O
1930
c
PARISHSIZE
ETHNICCOMPOSITIONOF PARISH
0
over 80% German
(
50-80%
Czech
a)
50-80%
*
over 80%
Czech
German
O
0
O
--
-
1880 LanguageBorder
-
-
1 2 3 4 5K
0
1910 Language Border
-
Under 500
500-2000
over
2000
-
1930 Language Border
inhabitants
Map3: TheLanguageBorderWestof Plzen Accordingto the OfficialCensus
(I880/I930)
EHR Sept.94
936
THE STRUGGLE
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
September
Strlbro Germans.' Yet despite their economic control, many Germans
still developed a type of siege mentality which was quite evident by
the turn of the century: the very title of Stribro's newspaper, Deutsche
Wachtan der Miesa [German Guard on the river Mies], was testimony
to it. It meant extreme vigilance about the slightest advance by the
'enemy'. In 9I0o,for example, the prospect of Czechs buying up land
in the village of Malovice [Mallowitz], a few miles from Stribro, conjured
up the nightmare of a Czech bridge extending from Plzen to the Czech
islands near Stribro.2And even when one Czech was appointed as an
official at Stribro railway station, the DeutscheWachtexclaimed that 'the
principle of maintaining national assets' was being 'disgracefully violated'.3
Furthereast at this time, Germansin the beleagueredparishof Dobrany
[Dobrzan], numbering only 56per cent of the population, were appealing
to Titta's Volksrat to help them prevent the 'Czechification' of the area.
In September I9Io the mayor of Dobrany spoke to a visiting German
youth group (in the presence of the Volksrat's secretary)about 'pressure
on Dobrzan from the Hussite flood of Czechs'.4It was a vain cry because
of the economic realities of the region. Like much of this area,the town
of Dobrany had been owned by the monastery of Chotesov [Chotieschau]
from the thirteenth century, and when it sufferedheavily in the Thirty
Years War, the abbot invited relatives from Saxony and other families
from Bavaria to populate the district; these German farmers were to
maintaintheir political dominance until I918and their economic influence
well into the inter-war period.5 But from the I870s they were under
threat numerically. The coal-mines and china-clay works begun at that
time, together with the opening of the notorious Dobrany asylum which
chiefly employed Czechs,6 brought a massive increase in the Czech
population of the Dobrany district (by I70 per cent in the i88os).7In
I. See the useful account of the Czech islands near Strlbro by Vladimlr Bystricky5:'Narodnostnf
Kraje, i (Plzein, I962), I74-I80.
vyvoj mesta Stribra a jeho nejblizsiho okoli', Minulosti'Zdpado6eskeho
Until i88o there had been a Czech majority in five parisheseast of Str{bro,but by I9I8 only the village
of Sulislav [Solislau] remained in Czech hands as a focal point for Czech-German tensions. The other
parisheshad succumbedto German economic pressureemanatingfrom Strlbro.For example, the Czechs
had lost political and demographic control of Vranov [Wranowa] by I893 when, after a great fire,
thirty Germans from Stirbro were made honorary parishionersand allowed voting rights as 'payment'
for the German material assistanceprovided for fire victims. The Germans, through their economic
dominance, were also able to block most Czech efforts to found their own schools or industries in
this region until afterI918.
2. DeutscheWachtanderMiesa,Nr 960, 5 Oct. I9IO, p. 3.
3. Ibid., Nr 956, I7 Sept. I91O,p. 2.
4. Ibid., Nr 953,3 Sept. 191, p. 4.
5. Franz Andreas, Geschichteder Stadt 'Dobrzan'(Tachov, I901), pp. I6-I9; Karl Hlawaty, Adress-Buch
und Fuhrerfu'r den polit. Bezirk Mies (Mies, i912), p. 96. A Czech history of Dobrany confirms this
account of a major German migration in the mid-seventeenthcentury: see Ferdi Vlcka, MestoDobrany
v historii a v dobep?'tomnd(Dobrany,
I932),
pp. i6, 63.
6. For the mining developments, see ibid., pp. 8off.; for the asylum, see ibid, pp. io6ff.: 'to go to
Dobrany' soon became(and still is) local parlancefor being sent to an asylum.
7. The figure represents the increase in the eleven parishes which later formed the judicial district
of Dobrany (createdonly in I906).
EHR Sept. 94
I994
LANG GUAGGE
BORD DER,
i88o -i9404
937
contrast, German numbers in the following decades were only slightly
increasing or were dropping through migration to Vienna.' From I9I0
to I92I the Czech population increased yet again by 26 per cent, but
the Germans declined by 21 per cent, so that for the first time the district
gained a Czech majority. In political terms, aided of course by Czech
military occupation and imposition of officials in I918-I9, this meant
an increasein Czech-dominatedparishcouncils - in the parishof Dobrany
itself for instance. In terms of the sacred 'national assets' as a whole,
it meant that from I918the language border could be pushed forward
more swiftly, linking up Czech island communities to the 'mainland',
while creating new German enclaves such as Slovice [Schlowitz] in the
latter.
As in Litomericko, the I92Icensus for Stribrskorecordedsome dramatic
shifts in the language border, especially around Dobrany, where losses
in the war had undoubtedly addedto the German decline. Germanpropagandasocieties like the B6hmerwaldbundnow bewailed the loss of Robcice [Hrobschitz], but grieved even more about Czech political control
over the border parish of Malesice [Malesitz] near Touskov [Tuschkau];
describingthis as 'the most serious national loss' in the region, the society
explained that the Czechs had been successful largely through intermarriage and economic penetration.2 Yet it should be emphasized that in contrast to developments on the Lovosice Sprachgrenze- much of
the Czech demographic advance in Stribrsko had already been officially
registered in censuses before the First World War. The sheer number
of Czech migrants to the mining communities near Nyrany and Zbuch
had thwarted German hopes of assimilatingthese workers even though,
through economic pressure,they tried to limit both the number of Czech
schools and the degree of Czech political influence;in Nyrany, for example, the Czechs formed over 60 per cent of the population by I9Io but,
because of the Austrian curial system for local elections, they had no
representation on the town council until after I9I8.3 The Germans had
counter-attacked most successfully in parishes where their economic
dominance was secure; by I9Io, for example, the islands near Stribro
were fast being Germanized, while the south-western parish of Honezovice [Honositz] had already been lost by the Czechs in the I89os, apparently through intermarriagecoupled with strong political pressurefrom
the Stribro Germans.4This trend therefore seemed to prove Heinrich
Rauchberg'stheory about the primacy of economic strength in determining the ethnic balance, but as we have seen it was a different story on
the language border itself, where the Germans before I914 were failing
to absorb the large Czech mining communities which then received
renewed encouragement from Plzen after I918.The picture of Stribrsko
I. Andreas, Geschichte
der Stadt 'Dobrzan',p. 46.
Mieser Zeitung, Nr 119, 3 Sept. I92I.
2.
3. Tyr, Str'ZSrsko,p. II.
4. Ibid., p. 163.
EHR Sept.94
938
THE STRUGGLE
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
September
after the First World War was one of a region where those Czechs who
lived near the languageborder suddenly gained political and educational
power to match the pre-wardemographicrealities.But economic control
still rested largely in German hands; Germans continued to own most
of the land, industries and mines, retaining thereby a crucial weapon
with which to staunch further Czech penetration of their Besitzstand.
The Germans of Stribro now had to tolerate occupation by a Czech
garrison, but in 1919 they fervently hoped that the peacemakersin Paris
would concede their wish to unite with Germany. When this failed they
felt betrayedby President Wilson and pictured themselves as in the front
line of the Czech advance: for besides the garrison, Stribro possessed
a Czech minority of over io per cent, and a new Czech head of the
Stnbro political district,Oldrich Kozlansky. For the Germans,Kozlansky
became 'Czechification' personified, a man who seemed to be working
in league with Czech nationalist societies,1 and whose allegedly heavyhanded methods - closing German schools and banning German demonstrations - soon earned the Stnibro district the label from one German
MP of being a 'political Golgotha'.2 The Stribro Germans' struggle
against Czech influence in the early 1920s dominated the pages of the
local newspaper(now renamedMieserZeitung).It provided regularreports
of German national festivals and Czech efforts to undermine what it
termed 'our town threatenedin its nationality [Volkstum]'.For example,
in I92I Stribrowitnessed rival festivals. In May a Czech Sokol celebration
attractedtwo thousand Czechs to the town in what the MieserZeitung
termed the first great Czech effort to conquer Stnibro;even Karel Baxa,
the virulently nationalist mayor of Prague, was present to announce his
support for the local Czech minorities and affirm confidently that the
languageborder would be pushed back.3A few weeks later the regional
German gymnastics [Turner]festival was held in Stirbro, and German
Reich flags could be observed on certain houses. The Czech and German
press bitterly attackedeach other. A Czech newspaperscornedthe festival
as a typical example of treasonablepan-Germanirredentism, but alleged
that it had not been well attended: the only non-native Germans, ad
been those from Dobrany, and they had been drunk. The Germans,
in turn, complained that the Czech railway authorities had deliberately
cut the number of carriageson trains to Stribro in order to limit the
number of Germanswho could attend.4
This national chauvinism was to be less noticeable after a few years.
I. There was some substance to this: see the correspondence of the Czech National Council at
Plzein:Archiv Mesta Plzne [PlzeniCity Archives], Narodni Vybor v Plzni z r. I918-I919,XVI Mensiny
1919, c. 944, I074.
2. Bezirks-Bote,Nr 1103, 19 Mar. 192I: quoting Ottokar Schubert, a German Agrarian deputy. For
a Czech view that Kozlansky was not particularly pro-Czech, but simply a megalomaniac, see the
article 'MinisterialratKozlansky' (quoting the Czech Agrarian organ PlzedskyKraj) in MieserZeitung,
Nr I35 (I535), 24 Dec. I921.
3. 'Auf nach Mies!', Mieser Zeitung, Nr 107, II June I92I.
4. Cesky Denik (22 June), quoted in Mieser Zeitung, Nr no, 2 July I921.
EHR Sept.94
I994
LANG GUAGGE
BORD DER,
i88o -i9404
939
The festivalsbecameless pronounced:Germaninhabitantssimply boycotted a Czech legionaries' celebration in July 1924.1 The census of I930,
despite its possible dangers for those on the Sprachgrenzein Stribrsko,
seems to have attracted far less attention than that of I92I, which had
been portrayed by the Germans as a plebiscite for independence.2Certainly, tensions were relaxing because of some German acceptance of
the new state of affairs and because of the behaviour of Kozlansky's
successor from I927, who was a far more conciliatory figure.3Yet as
in Litomericko, so even more on the Stribro language border, German
resentments were only dampened down, not extinguished. The latent
fears remained on both sides and could be whipped up when necessary
in the border communities. It seems to have been the Czech propaganda
societies which were most consistently active in this regardin the interwar period. Their agitationin the Stribrskoregion was personifiednotably
in the National Democrat deputy, FrantisekLukavsky.Lukavskyproved
that, like Titta or Parik in Litomericko, one energetic individual could
dramatically sustain public consciousness of a language border. From
his base in Plzen, Lukavsky worked tirelessly in the I92os through the
local branch of the Ustredni Matice Skolskato protect the Czech minorities by standing 'at the cradle of all new schools in the Czech West'.4
The Matice in ten years provided three and a half million crowns for
minority schools and helped ensure that the Stribro political district,
which lacked any Czech secondary schools before I918,had eleven by
I928. Lukavsky was also the major figure in the Plzen branch of the
Narodni Jednota Posumavska (NJP), caring for the cultural, social and
economic needs of Czechs in the 'border zone'. By I928 there were fortyone NJP branches in the area between Stribro and Plzen, forming a
network for Czech cultural and social activity. But Lukavsky viewed
the economic aid which he offered as the truly vital aspect, in view of
pre-war Czech economic subservience to the Germans. Thus the NJP
tried to influence land-reformschemes to the Czechs' advantage,buying
up land in order to keep it out of German hands, or going so far as
to help in the construction of accommodationfor Czechs in key minority
areas. Although the NJP could not always influence the Czech Land
Office as it wished, it had some notable successeson the Stribrskolanguage
border: as Lukavsky himself noted, as a result of the NJP's building
184houses (288 flats) in sensitive locations, 'there grew up Czech quarters,
which fundamentally altered the national and economic environment
of Czech inhabitantsof these parishes.'5
How far this kind of activity was supported by a broad consensus
of the Czech public is difficult to say. Lukavsky, who wrote a regular
I. Ibid., Nr I669, I9 July 1924.
2. Ibid., Nr 90 (1490), 12 Feb. I92I; cf. the lack of information about the census in November
3. See ibid., Nr 2I98, I Sept. 1934, for a favourableGerman account of OberratAlois Sala.
4. CeskyDentk, c. 280, 10 Oct. I924.
I930.
5. FrantisekLukavsky,Pro za'chranuCechuna znemcenemceskemzapade(Plzen, 1928),pp. 6Iff., 85ff.
EHR Sept.94
THE STRUGGLE
940
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
September
column in one Plzen right-wing newspaper,complained that the further
'inland' one went from the languageborder, the less understandingthere
was for the national struggle which was taking place there.' Certainly
some lone Czech voices did criticize the Narodnf Jednoty's activity2
- and quite rightly, for the latter's behaviour undoubtedly contributed
to perpetuatingethnic tensions at a local level and then heightening them
during the Sudeten crisis of I935-8. But by this time, as on the Lovosice
Sprachgrenze,the Germans' siege mentality had also resurfaced under
the impact of the Henlein movement. Stribro's newspaper again carried
reports about German excursions into the countryside to boost morale
on the 'border', and about the inadequateGerman birthratethere, which
was ascribedto local farmers selfishly limiting the number of their children when they ought to realize that large German families produced
great people (Goethe, Wagner, Bismarck, for example).3It also began
to present summaries of the Czechs' demographic advance over the
decades:how, for example, in the neighbouring judicial district of Touskov (almost totally German in I880), Czechs now occupied all official
state posts and had seized 4,000 hectares of land through land reform
and the machinations of the local NJP.4 The 1930 census had indeed
revealeda furtherslight movement in Stribrskoto the Czechs' advantage.
They had now taken the crucial parish of Chotikov [Kottiken] and
increasedtheir proportion in many parishes beyond the 'border'. Moreover, statistics on profession for the judicialdistrict of Dobrany revealed
that, even if the Germans seemed to be holding their own economically,
in Dobrany as in Touskov the Czechs were over-representedin state
employment and had reassertedthemselves particularlyin the teaching
profession to the Germans'detriment.5
Not surprisingly,by 1938,with this evidence before them, the Germans
of Stirbro, most of whom had never reconciled themselves to living in
the Czechoslovak state, easily readjusted their horizons to events in
Hitler's Germany; some local agitators of the early I920Sre-emergedto
demand that the existing state borders should be transformed into
administrativeboundariesof the GreaterGerman Reich.6Most Germans
on this part of the languageborderwere now putting their faith in Henlein
and Hitler, as was shown by the mass influx into the Sudeten movement
I. Ibid., p. 37. Lukavsky regularlycontributed a 'Minority Column' to the National Democrat paper
6eskyDenzk, but it changedto 'FrontiersmenColumn' in i930.
und Deutschen,
2. See, most notably, the controversial views of Radl, Der KampfzwischenTschechen
pp. I38ff.
Rundschau,Nr 2343, 2 June I937,p. 3.
3. Westbdhmische
4. Ibid., Nr 2407, 3 Sept. I938:'Die Verluste des Bezirkes Tuschkau'. The percentage of Czechs
in this judicialdistrict was 5.2 in I880but 23.8in I930.
5. This conclusion is based on a comparison of the statistics in Ceskoslovenskastatistika-svazek
20 (radaVI), ii dil, i cast (Prague, I925), pp. 544-5; and ibid., svazek In6 (rada VI) ii dil, iii cast (Prague,
1935),pp. I96, I98. However, the same type of information was appearing in Mieser Zeitung:see Nr
229I,
13June I936.
6. See 'Zum deutsch-tschechischen Ausgleichsproblem', by Fritz Hassold (a former MP), Westb6hmischeRundschau,Nr 2389,29 Apr. 1938,p. 2.
EHR Sept.94
I994
LANGGUA
GE BOORD ER,
i88o -i9404
941
after the Anschlussof March 1938.1In possessing such trust they were
not to be disappointed: in September, when harvest celebrations took
place in Stribro, the local MP was able to announce that 'this autumn
another harvest has ripened as well, that which Konrad Henlein sowed
in our hearts five years ago'.2A month later the Nazi occupation, which
was supposed to extend to the Sprachgrenzeof 9I0o, in fact exceeded
even that boundary and brought into the Reich many of the old Czech
mining communities in the zone between Strfbroand Plzen.3 The Czech
ethnic islands and outposts which had slowly been growing together
over the past half-centurywere now abruptly cut off from their motherland. Many who had worked for, or benefited from, Lukavsky's causes
fled eastwards into the rump Czech state, leaving behind deserted NJP
property in the new Grenzland.4
To achieve territorial links to their islands had been a major aim of
Czech nationalist societies from the late nineteenth century; and through
pushing the language border forward, the Czech advance had had the
effect of creating small German islands, as at Plzen, in its wake. The
German enclaves in Plzen, Prague and Ceske Budejovicewere, however,
an unusual phenomenon in Bohemia. Most German languageislands lay
not in Bohemia, but in Moravia, and there they were home for almost
a third of Germans living in that crownland. In Moravia, unlike the
recently establishedCzech islandersof Bohemia, the German settlements
were largelyof medievalorigin, causedby migrationto such urbantrading
or mining centresas Olomouc, Brno andJihlavain the thirteenth century.
From the i86os at least, these German enclaves began to be swamped
with Czech migrants from the surrounding countryside who only partially assimilated. For some decades the Germans managed to preserve
both their political and economic predominance. But, as on the Sprachgrenze proper, the steady Czech advance into German communities
slowly began to foster a German siege-mentality which encouraged
extremist politics. To quote one disturbing metaphor employed by a
German islander,the authorities used every possible antitoxin to neutralize this attack by Czech bacteria on the healthy blood cells of the
islands.5
Apart from the area around Svitavy [Zwittau], which was almost not
an island, being separatedfrom the German mass of northern Moravia
I. Ibid., Nr 2387,I6 Apr. I938.
2. Ibid., Nr 2408, Io Sept. I938, p. 2.
3. ANM, Bohac papers, Karton 44, memorandum by Bohac [Nov. I938?]- 'Zduvodneni ceskych
pozadavku na revizi hranic po okupaci nemeckymi a polskymi vojsky'.
4. Archiv Mesta Plzne, Mistni odbor Narodni Jednoty Posumavske v Liticich 1926-1939,Karton
97, Report of the NJP local committee in Litice, i8 Jan. I939.
5. Anton Altrichter, Heimatbuchder Iglauer Volksinsel.Ein StuckdeutscherErde und seine Geschichte
(Iglau, I940), p. 239.
EHR Sept.94
THE STRUGGLE
942
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
PARISH SIZE
ETHNICCOMPOSITIONOF PARISH
0
over 80% German
3
50-80%
Czech
()
50-80%
German
*
over 80%
Czech
0
0
O
-
_
Crownland Boundary
-
-
September
Language Island Boundary
Under 500
Over 500
over
20,000
inhabitants
Road
Map4: TheJihlavaLanguageIslandAccordingto the OfficialCensus(I88o/
I930)
by only two Czech parishes,1the enclave of Jihlava was the most extensive German language island in the Czech lands.2 The compactness
of the Jihlava island was, however, always threatened. It was not only
split by the Bohemia-Moraviacrownland boundary (so that before I918
various parts of the island had different language rights), but was also
divided between three separatejudicial districts. Moreover, even in i880
most parishes of the enclave contained a Czech minority - few were
pure German - so that a Czech influx would be even harderto staunch
I. For the behaviour of the Svitavy Germans in the face of Czech encroachment, see Josef Bartos
et al., Svitavy. Dijiny a soucasnostmesta (Hradec Kralove, I987). The Svitavy Germans displayed the
same vigilance as those in Jihlavaand were more successfulin the long run.
2. In evaluatingthe extent of the island I have followed the basis used by Robert Turka who allotted
to the island those parisheswhere the Germans formed at least Io per cent of the population: 'Jihlavsk'y
nemecky ostrov', Mensinova'Revue,i (I9II-I2), 353ff.and 409ff.
EHR Sept.94
I994
LANGUAGE
BORDER,
i88o-i940
943
or absorb. The town of Jihlavaitself, containing o5 per cent of the island's
Germans, tried to play a similar role to Strlbro as a German bastion
againstthe Czech invaders. But unlike Stribro or Litomerice, which had
'ethnic hinterlands' to support them, Jihlava was eventually to share
the fate of its fellow-enclaves at Brno, Olomouc and Ostrava [Ostrau]:
the German majority was transformedinto a minority as Czech migrants
dominated the towns first demographically and then politically. At the
i880 census, those who gave Czech as their language of daily use
numbered 17.2 per cent of the Jihlava island's popula(Umgangssprache)
tion. In the next half-century - but particularly after the First World
War - the number of Czechs was to increase to 54.6 per cent, toppling
the Germans from their overall dominance in the enclave.1By contrast
with urban immigration in other parts of the Habsburg Empire - the
Slovene migration into Klagenfurtfor example - many of the migrants
into Jihlavahad not been assimilatedinto the existing Germancommunity
and had maintained a separate Czech consciousness;2as in Stribrsko,
their absorption had been hinderedthrough their sheer numbers,through
their concentration of employment in large factories (for example cloth
and tobacco), through the supportive Czech environment which they
increasinglyfound on arrival,and through their sheerproximity to Czech
ethnic areas.But they also gained an incentive for proclaiming their 'true
identity' by the Czech revolution of I918.
As a result of this migration two parts of the Jihlavaisland in particular
witnessed a striking ethnic transformation. Firstly, in the north, Czech
immigration and German losses caused the judicial district of Stoky
[Stecken] to be the only district in the Bohemian lands which from I880
to I930 changed from being 'pure German' (over 80 per cent) to 'mixed
Czech' (50-80 per cent). Secondly, the industrialtown of Jihlavacontained
3,000 Czechs in I880, but i8,ooo in I930, while its German inhabitants
dropped from I9,000 to I2,000 over the same period. The real Czech
advance had, as in Litomericko, come between the Austrian census of
I9I0 and the Czech census of I92I. And a major effect of these changes
was to cut the island in two north of Jihlava, thereby paving the way
for an ever easierswamping of scatteredGerman minorities. Not surprisingly the Germanislanders,even more than Germanson the Sprachgrenze,
quickly developed a sharp sense of their own identity and a language
and politics to accompany their almost ghetto-like mentality. Like fronI. Calculating the percentage of Germans (G) and Czechs (C) in the Jihlava island, according to
data from the published census material, gives the following figures: I880: 82.8 (G), I7.2 (C); I890: 79.4
(G), I9.4 (C); 900o: 82 (G), i8 (C); I9Io: 78.3 (G), 21.7 (C); 1921: 53.8 (G), 46.2 (C); I930: 45.4 (G), 54.6
(C).
2. See Andreas Moritsch, '"Slovenes" and "Germans" in Klagenfurtand Ferlach in Southern Carinthia, 1850-I940',in Ethnic Identity in Urban Europe,ed. M. Engman (Aldershot/New York, I992), pp.
160-71. The greater degree of industrialization in the towns of Bohemia-Moraviaand the tenser ethnic
environment appearto be majortouchstones when we are contrastingthe Slovene and Czech experience;
in 1910,32 per cent of Klagenfurt'spopulation came from Slovene-speakingareas, but only 6 per cent
gave Slovene as their principal language.
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THE STRUGGLE
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
September
tiersmen they were said to possess special characteristicswhich were vital
for their own survival: as one prominent Iglauer observed, 'the noble
qualities of men of the language island are evinced by their loyalty,
efficiency, stability and spirit of sacrificeas well as their steadfastattitude
towards their nationality.'1 In Jihlava itself the German middle-class
elite were by the turn of the century thoroughly conscious of their isolation and their historic role: 'Iglau is and remains a German bulwark'
was the inscription on a special coin minted at the time of the town's
I,Iooth jubilee celebrations in i899.2 When Fritz Popelak, the longserving mayor, celebrated his sixtieth birthday in I900, his colleagues
eagerly wished him many more years of protecting 'our German Volkstum'; when he died suddenly four years later, he was eulogized by his
successor as 'a true son of his people, filled with a passionate love for
his nationality, who alwaysstood up openly and unreservedlyfor Deutschtum and for the preservation of the German characterof our town and
the languageisland'.3
To achieve this latter goal the German elite did all they could to stop
the growth of Czech schools and obstructedany Czech political influence
in the town, while openly protecting German property and subsidizing
all Germannationalistclubs and societies. The presenceof these voluntary
societies ('an achievement of our age', as one Iglauer termed them4),
divided strictly along ethnic lines, was all the more important in an
enclave like Jihlava. For the Germans, the societies were closely interlinked with their political dominance, underliningtheir separateidentity
against the Czech immigrants;for the Czechs, on the other hand, who
had no places on the town council until after the First World War,
societies such asthe BesedaJihlavskaandthe local Ustredni Matice Skolska
were a special arena where they could express their growing national
and political consciousness.5Quite naturally, the tensions arising from
Czech frustration, at their social advancement but political exclusion,
began to surface around 900o (in the wake of the Badeni crisis) and ugly
clashesoccurredwhenever there were German or Czech demonstrations:
these appear to have been far worse than any seen at that time on the
a reflection of the more claustrophobicethnic environment
Sprachgrenze,
I. Ignaz Goth, foJahre Volkszdhlungin derIglauerSprachinsel(Iglau,1935),p. I.
2. Die Gemeinde-VerwaltungderkoniglichenStadtIglau in denJahren1895-1899 (Iglau,I902),
p. 57.
3. Die Gemeinde-Verwaltungder Stadt Iglau in den Jahren I900-I904 (Iglau, I906), pp. 12, 43ff. Cf.
the similar praise heaped on Franz Schmeykal in Prague on his sixtieth birthday: Cohen, The Politics
of EthnicSurvival,p. 183.
4. Edmund Prusik, Die Gemeinde Iglau und ihr Wirken in den Jahren 186f-1890 (Iglau, I890), pp.
237ff.:by I889there were about ten Czech societies and over fifty German.
5. In this way the Czech societies in Jihlava, like those of the German middle classes in Prague,
acted as a substitute for their exclusion from local government. See the discussion of this widespread
central European phenomenon as it applied to Prague in Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival,
pp. 52ff.
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LANG GUAGGE
BOORDER,
i88o -i9404
945
in Jihlava.' Already by I900 the national polarization in Jihlava was
embodied in its two leading newspapers, the German MdhrischerGrenzbote (subsidized by the council) and the Czech JihlavskeListy, which
were to stand glowering at one another for the next forty years. It was
a tense atmosphere which radicalized many of those who grew up in
it. These included outspoken Czech Agrarian politicians like Isidor
Zahradnik, ejected from Jihlava in I898after 'provocative agitation', and
Frantisek Stanek, who like Zahradnik was to be a member of the first
Czechoslovak government. On the German side there were the novelists
KarlHans Strobl and Robert Hohlbaum, both of whom becameNazis.2
Indeed,Jihlavawas an ideal breeding-groundfor Nazism. For example,
Arthur Seyss-Inquart,Hitler's later deputy in Vienna, describedgrowing
up on the 'eternally bleeding border of our nationality', having spent
much of his childhood in the village of Stonarov [Stannern], a pure
German and extremely nationalistic settlement in the southern tip of
the island.3 Two other German National Socialists, Rudolf Jung and
Hans Krebs, were permanently marked in their youth by experiencing
the Czechs' advancement into Jihlava - 'their quiet, dogged creeping
into German positions according to a well thought-out plan', as Jung
later described it.4 Jung and Krebs quickly became leading figures in
the new German Workers' party [DAP] which, as wd have seen, was
founded in Ustl nad Labem in 1903. Already by I906 it had gained some
electoral success in Jihlava, as well as influencing a number of the town's
nationalist societies and new nationalist labour unions.5In the Reichsrat
elections of I911 the local DAP vote amounted to a third of the party's
vote in the whole country. Indeed, it was doubtless a measure of the
vigour of Jihlava's National Socialists that the DAP congress for 1913
was held there. The party programme drawn up at that time, partly
by Jung and Krebs, dramaticallyenumeratedthe lessons learnt from life
in the languageislands and border zones:
Labourhasa specialinterestin the maintenance
andincreaseof the living-space
of its own nationality.... Foreignworkersof lower culture
[Lebensraum]
[have]often squeezedout the old establishedinhabitants.... Our loyalty to
I. A notable example was in August I902 when, during Czech celebrationsto mark the tenth anniversary of the Sokol organization in Jihlava, local Germans turned out to jeer and attack the procession.
See the reports about this incident in the papers of Jihlava's long-serving deputy to the Reichsrat,
Dr GustavGross (Haus-Hof- und Staatsarchiv[hereafterHHStA], Vienna):for example, Vinzenz Inderka
(mayor)to Gross,I9 Aug. I902; Lidovenoviny,c. 190, 20 Aug. 1902. I thankDr LotharH6beltfor
alerting me to these sources.
2. See Strobl's memoirs of his youth in Jihlava: VerloreneHeimat.Jugenderinnerungen
aus deutschem
Ostland(Stuttgart,
1920).
3. H. J. Neuman, Arthur Seyf-Inquart(Graz/Vienna/Cologne, 1970), p. Io. The Stonarov Germans'
paranoiadid not diminish, for by I192ICzech migrantswere beginning to make inroadseven here.
4. Rudolf Jung, Die Tschechen.TausendJahredeutsch-tschechischer
Kampf(2ndedn., Berlin, I937), p. II.
5. Here the DAP competed for working-class support against the older Social Democrat unions,
as well as drawing members away to join the DAP club, the Deutsch-politischer Arbeiterbund. The
local Social Democrats were, however, still able narrowly to defeat the DAP in the Reichsratelections
of 1911.
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THE STRUGGLE
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
September
our Volkmakesus stand apartform the hate-riddenclass conflict,for we
recognizethat in the multinationalAustrianstatethe securityof the German
people dependsprimarilyon their making common cause againstother
nationalities.
946
At the core of the new programme was the obsession with preserving
German Besitzstandand a Czech-German apartheid in the Bohemian
lands: the old crownlands of Austria were to be dissolved and replaced
by 'nationally defined self-governingdistricts'.1
This was a messagewhich the old German liberal elite of Jihlava could
equally accept, since many of the fears expressedwere their own. During
and after the Badeni crisis, Jihlava'scouncil had fully supported the path
trod by their Reichsrat representative, Gustav Gross, who had helped
found the German Progressiveparty [Deutsche Fortschrittspartei]during
the tempestuous Badeni era. In the following years most of the council
stayed loyal to Gross, welcoming his efforts to promote German political
unity in Vienna, and urging him to continue acting on behalf of 'hardpressed nationals on the language borders'.2But the council found its
own political position increasingly challenged after I900 by those in Jihlavawho were turning, through new nationalistsocieties as well as during
elections, to the more radical-nationalistline of Karl Hermann Wolf.3
In the face of the German Radicals and the DAP, the council elite by
I9Io had compromised and conceded to both partiessome limited political
influence in Jihlava. This compromise to some extent mirrored events
on the wider political stage,for in Vienna in 191otheir GermanProgressive
and Radical mentors had finally joined in a 'National Union' [Nationalverband] with Gustav Gross as its president. However, it is also clear
that Jihlava's liberal elite, more so than their counterparts in Prague,4
were increasinglyinclined to do deals with the emerging German radicalnationalist elements who challengedtheir political hegemony. In the light
of a rising number of Czech excesses and gloomy demographicevidence
from the censuses, the old councillors fully agreed with local Radicals
who in I909 lamented the lack of German unity: 'It is precisely in our
languageisland, aroundwhich a greedy Czech flood surges,that intensive
national defence is vital to prevent German soil [Sprachboden]
crumbling
I. Whiteside, Austrian National Socialism,pp. 99-o10; Hans Krebs, Kampf in Bohmen(Berlin, 1938),
p. 40.
2. After protesting at the Badeni decrees, Gross was feted on his return to Jihlava and awarded
the town's highest honour of 'honorary citizenship': Die Gemeinde-Verwaltung,895-I899, pp. 27, 6off.,
Die Gemeinde-Verwaltung,I900-1904, pp. 57-8, 62. For a fuller picture of Gross, see Brigitte Deschka,
Dr Gustav Grof (Ph.D. thesis, Vienna, I966); Hobelt, Kornblumeund Kaiseradler,and, for his later
attitude to language rights, Diethild Harrington-Miiller,Der Fortschrittsklubim Abgeordnetenhausdes
6sterreichischen
Reichsrats,I873-I9Io (Vienna/Cologne/Graz, 1972), pp. I28-9.
3. The elite's main society, the Deutscher Verein fur Iglau und Umgebung, now faced direct competition from the more radicalDeutschnationalerVerein fur Iglau und Umgebung, which also established
its own organ, the DeutscheWacht,to trade insults with the MahrischerGrenzbote.
4. See Cohen, ThePoliticsof EthnicSurvival,ch. 6.
EHR Sept.94
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LANGUAG
GE BOORD ER,
i88o -i9404
947
away.'1What the old elite were bound to resist were the social arguments
proclaimed by the DAP: in I915,for instance, they barred the volatile
RudolfJung from speakingin the town and arousingworking-classdiscontent at food shortages.2
Jihlava's council might well boast in I914 that it had managedto 'preserve national assetsin endangeredlocal parishes of the languageisland'.3
But four years later the German predicament was of course far worse.
With the establishmentof the Czechoslovak Republic, the council vainly
announced the enclave's adhesion to Austria (and Germany), a striking
example of the naivety of suggestingthat state boundariescould be equated
with ethnic frontiersin centralEurope. Most of the islandersundoubtedly
realized after a few months that this was utopian and that the alternative
must be to acceleratetheir vigilance in the face of Czech encroachments.
Here, however, they were now at a distinct disadvantage. They just
managed to hold on to political control of the town for a few years,
and in the toughly contested censusof I92I - the 'statisticalBartholomew's
Night' as the MdhrischerGrenzbote called it4 - they still had a small
lead over the Czechs in Jihlava and in the island as a whole. However,
the number of people who recorded themselves as 'Germans' in Jihlava
had dropped by 7,000 (35per cent) since I9io: their position had suffered
from a combination of factors, including losses in the war, emigration,
and change of nationality as previously assimilatedCzechs rediscovered
their Czech identity. But to this were addedas usualsome specific'Czechification' techniques. Local Czech politicians as well as visiting dignitaries
to the enclave were quite blatant in their aim of conquering this last
German bastion. The Czech Agrarian politician Frantisek Stanek, for
example, visiting Jihlava in I923, assured his audience that 'the Czech
circle around the German island of Jihlava is contracting and our next
task is to breakthrough completely and gain this town which is controlled
by foreigners. Work not for the Czechification but for the re-Czechification of Jihlava.'5
One way of acceleratingthis process was, as at Brno and Olomouc,
to incorporate more Czech parishes into the town. Thus in 1923,to wild
German protests, the suburb of Drevene Mlyny [Holzmiihl] was annexed
to Jihlava, adding another 2,000 Czechs to the population. At the same
time the elected council was replaced by a government commissioner,
Josef Vyborny, who soon aroused emotions similar to Kozlansky in
Str'bro. He proceeded arbitrarily to dismiss all German officials who
failed to pass a Czech languageexamination, insisted on bilingual public
I. HHStA, Nachlafi Gustav Gross, letter from DeutschnationalerVerein to Deutscher Verein, 7 May
I909. That the 'crumbling' was continuing was shown in the I9I0 census results when, for example,
the parishof Pohled [Frauenthal]in the north of the island was lost for good to the Czechs.
2. Alois Simka,Prvn'svetova valka aJihlavsko(Jihlava,1964),p. 15.
3. Die Gemeinde-Verwaltungder StadtIglau in denJahrenI9of-90o9 (Iglau,1914),p. I.
4. Mdhrischer Grenzbote, Nr 20, I7 Feb. 192I, p. 4.
5. JihlavskdListy, . 44,3 Nov. 1923,p. I.
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THE STRUGGLE
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September
signs, and renamed streets in a manner which would never have been
possible under the old system.1 Vyborny undoubtedly fulfilled his mission, earning from Karl Hans Strobl the withering remark that he possessedthe 'ruthlessness,determinationand political adroitnessof a despot
of the Age of Enlightenment'.2The result was that in the local elections
of March I925 the Czechs for the first time gained a narrow majority.
While the Germans insisted that Jihlava had been artificiallyconquered,
JihlavskeListy was ecstatic, proclaiming: 'The last firm and obdurate bastion of Jihlava's German characterhas fallen and we are their absolute
masters! 3
Not surprisingly, this course of events in a town of 30,000 people
had a greater and more sustained impact than similar Czech advances
in scatteredvillages on the Sprachgrenze.
Although the first Czech mayor,
Rudolf Veverka, proved a conciliatory figure - and was even welcomed
by the MdhrischerGrenzbote- the effects of Vyborny's rule were never
forgotten by Jihlava'sGerman community. Indeed,by 1930 older German
politicians, some of whom had been preparedto compromise, had been
fully replacedby a more radicalgeneration- for instance, the Nazi Franz
Brummer and his father-in-lawWenzel Sedlak (detested by Czechs as
a renegade who, having been born of Czech parentage, later adopted
German nationality).4In the following years, when unemployment and
Henlein's movement began to make their impact on the island, the Germans were not allowed to forget their precariousdemographicposition.
The censusof I930 revealedthat the districtof Stoky had a Czech majority;
in I938 Stoky town council was finally captured from the Germans, a
result which seems to have owed a great deal to the agitation of the
Narodni Jednota over local schools and land reform.5 In Jihlava itself
it was clear that Czechs were increasing in the suburbs (by 300 per cent
in the I920s in the northern suburb of Stare Hory [Altenberg]), while
the Germans were literally 'dying out'. JihlavskeListy, although by the
I930Sless confrontationalthan previously, did not shrink from trumpeting
the fact that, with youth on the side of the Czechs, Jihlava would be
a single-languagetown in a few decades.6Experts like Antonln Bohac
also shared this view, that the enclave was shrinking largely through
I. For example, a squarenamed after the late mayor Dr Fritz Popelak was rechristenedStefanikovo
namesti after the co-founder of the Czechoslovak state, Milan Stefanik;and the main squareand public
gardens were named after President Masaryk and Bedrich Smetana respectively (MdhrischerGrenzbote,
Nr 8, I7 Jan. I924, pp. s-6). Jihlava could here be contrasted with Litomerice, where there was no
government commissioner imposed and, for example, the German-dominatedcouncil procrastinated
endlessly about renamingstreets.
2. 'Die Wahl in Iglau',Mdhrischer
Grenzbote,Nr 38, 2 Apr. I925, p. I.
3. 'Nesmirn5 uispechtechu jihlavskych!',JihlavskeListy, c. 17, 23 Mar. I925 [special edition], p. 2;
'Zur EroberungIglaus',MdhrischerGrenzbote,Nr 38,3 Mar. I925,p. I.
4. 'Jihlavstinem. nacionalove a cesky jazyk',JihiavskdListy,c. 45, 8 Nov. I930, p. I.
5. MdhrischerGrenzbote,Nr 64, 3 May I938,p. I.
6. 'Vymirajicinemectvi v Jihlave',JihlavskeListy,I3July I935,p. I.
EHR Sept.94
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LANG UAGE BORD ER, i88o0-I940
949
'natural forces' rather than through Czechification; according to their
argument it was principally before 1918- not under the Republic - that
the ethnic proportions of the island had been artificially bolstered, with
the Germans trying to dominate and assimilate Czech migrants.1That
was only half the truth, for the contraction of German islands after
I918was quite openly pursued as an objective by many Czech authorities
and - most importantly - this was accepted as a fact by both Czech
and German residents of the islands. It added an extra edge to the fears
of the 'Iglau Germans' - all the more so because by 1938,although they
had declined demographically and politically, they still controlled twothirds of Jihlava's economic life.2 They therefore retained enough of
their Besitzstandto hope for its preservation with the help of Henlein
or Hitler.
In Jihlava, as in Strbro, the Sudeten crisis of the I930s witnessed a
rapid return to the local Czech-German tensions of I919, but it was
now Czechs who were on the defensive. As in 1919, so in 1938,some
extreme German nationalists immediately envisaged joining the Jihlava
enclave to Austria and the Reich; and even after the Munich agreement
there was the possibility of a plebiscite in Jihlavadespite the geographical
absurdityof such a suggestion. Ironically, the Nazi take-over of southern
Moravia in October 1938resulted in a fresh flood of Czech migrants
(refugees)to Jihlava;but the Germansthere, far from becoming dispirited,
now adopted a pronounced Nazi orientation and became an open fifth
column for the Reich.3 When the Protectorate was created and some
like Seyss-Inquartand Krebs had returned victoriously to their roots
(March I939),there rather naturally arose suggestions that great swathes
of territory around Jihlava should be Germanized in order to link the
enclave to German regions to the north and south and protect it for
the future. In fact such a precise reversal of a half-century of ethnic development never materialized.But during the war German land reform
and educationalpolicy around the island clearly pointed in this direction
and was only inhibited by the number of local Germans who had to
leave the region to fight at the front.4 By the I940s, decades of ethnic
struggle over the Jihlava language island had driven both Germans and
Czechs to the same conclusion. Neither of them were preparedany longer
to leave the island's fate to what they might term 'natural forces'. For
both, the ethnic borders were something to be consciously eliminated:
this took the form, under German control from 1939,of mass German
i. Antonln Bohac, 'Narodni vyvoj vJihlave', StatistickyZpravodaj,c. 8, Aug. I938, pp. 259-62.
Pavel Kypr, 'Nebudeme trpeti li', JihlavskLeisty,c. 13,I Apr. I938,p. I.
3. Alois Simka, Narodneosvobozeneckybojna ihlavsku(Brno, 1963),pp. ioff.
4. Ibid., pp. 38ff.
2.
EHR Sept.94
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THE STRUGGLE
ON THE CZECH-GERMAN
September
immigration; while under Czech control from 1945 it took the form
of mass German expulsion.
The case studies of Lovosice, Stribro and Jihlava show clearly how
between the I870s and I940SCzech migration acrossthe languageborder
in Bohemia and Moravia dramatically stirred up tensions which were
at the very root of the Sudeten problem in the I930s. Many Germans
who lived on this border or in language islands felt on the defensive
for sixty years:they confronted a Czech demographicadvanceinto their
communities, a movement usually causedinitially by the divergent economic development in German and Czech regions, but then reinforced
by Czech nationalist agitation. The movement was greatest in urban
or industrializing areas, but the border struggle could be equally fierce
in an agrarianregion like Litomericko where the ethnic settlement was
particularlyconfused. Some experts, like Heinrich Rauchbergat the turn
of the century, expected that major ethnic clashes would be avoided
through the Germans using their superior economic strength to absorb
Czech migrants into their communities; this did seem to be happening
in some areas where there was no large-scaleindustrial development.
But there were always, as Antonin Bohac emphasized,a rangeof examples
- Jihlava, Ceske Budejovice, Stribrsko - where Czechs were failing to
assimilate;here the Germans might come to be seen as artificially maintaining political control (with the aid of Austria's curial system for local
elections) against new demographic realities. Without some kind of
compromise based on these realities - such as that temporarily agreed
at Ceske Budejovice in 1910 - ethnic tensions were bound to increase.
By the eve of the First World War it might still be argued that, with
the exception of Stribrsko, the Germans were successfully upholding
their Besitzstandand preserving the old language borders. Yet in most
ethnically mixed zones their privileged position was seriously under
threat. Moreover, the long ethnic struggle had become ever more radical
in the wake of the Badeni crisis and was now taking more extreme forms
in both the Czech and German camps: one notable example was the
emergence of the DAP which, with its obsessive defence of German
livelihood and living space, was a direct forerunner of Hitler's National
Socialist party. Yet real movement of the languageborder in many areas
still required a political catalyst in the shape of the Czech revolution
of I918.This tipped the border struggle in the Czechs' favour. Although
many Czechs arguedthat advancementof the border in the I920s simply
reflected the undoing of forced assimilation of Czechs before the war,
it is clear that what was generally perceived as a Sudeten German retreat
in the inter-war period was not a purely natural phenomenon: there
were a number of 'artificial'stimulants - such as the Czech land reform,
the imposing of state officials,the alteringof parishboundaries,the violent
agitation by the Narodni Jednoty - which reinforced the realities of
a low German birth-rateor continued Czech migration. Czech advanceEHR Sept.94
I994
LANG GUAGGE
BOORD ER,
i88o -i9404
95I
ment of the border from 1918 to 1938can thus be seen to be just as
artificialas German attempts forcibly to assimilate migrants before I914;
the difference between the two was not in methods, but in the degree
of state backingwhich the Czechs received after 1918.
Still it might be judged that the ethnic border as a whole moved only
marginally even in the inter-war period, and that it did so chiefly, as
before I914, where economic conditions made such migration highly
likely. Certainly, in some regions the slightest Czech advance tended
to acquire an exaggeratedimportance in the charged atmosphere of the
I930s. Nevertheless,
it was a fact that in other areas - in the German
languageislandsfor example - the German population found their established position, both demographicallyand politically, increasinglyunder
threat. KonradHenlein could thus speakwith some justificationof endangered German communities. He himself finally put his trust in the German Reich, hoping vainly to achieve there the Sudeten autonomy which
had been refusedto him in Czechoslovakia.1In the end, with the formation of the Protectorate in March 1939,a proper Volksgrenzewas indeed
created, but ironically Czech immigrant labour was still requiredduring
the war to replacethe Sudeten men fighting at the front: the Sprachgrenze
therefore continued to be penetrated,by Czechs moving into the Sudetengau and by Germans entering the area of the Protectorate. Only after
the Second World War, with the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans
from the region, did the languageborder in the Czech lands completely
disappear. Those Germans who remained behind (I65,000 in the 195o
census) were dispersedfor easier assimilation into the rest of the population.2 Although the issue of the language border was finally resolved
after the violent experiences of war, for many Czechs and Germans it
had been a struggle during war and peace for several generations, with
both sides using the same belligerent language and employing methods
which rangedfrom subtle assimilationto full 'ethnic cleansing'.
University of Dundee
MARK CORNWALL
I. See Luh, Der DeutscheTurnverband,Teil VI.
2. According to the Czechoslovak census for I950, the number of Germans remaining in the newly
defined administrativedistricts of Litomerice, Lovosice, Stribro and Jihlava was respectively: 665, 524,
853, 653. Only 312 Germans still remained in the town of Jihlava (in contrast to 12,095 in I930).
3. Despite the expulsion, sensitivity over the issue of ethnic borders in the Czech lands has survived
the decades of Communist rule. In Stribro in March I992, for example, there was still some alarm
at the treaty signed between Czechoslovakia and the new Germany; a small number of Czechs, who
moved into Stribro from I945, protested at the treaty's wording. For it did not speak specifically of
'state boundaries' and therefore - according to the Stribro Czechs - could still leave the way clear
for Germany to advanceup to the old extinct languageborder.
EHR Sept.94