In an Unwanted State (Czech Germans and Interwar Czechoslovakia)

Lecture and moderated discussion.

Speaker: Pavel Kladiwa (University of Ostrava)
Moderator: Jiří Neminář (Museum of Hlučín Region)

The first lecture in a series of discussions on expulsion and resettlement examines the position of Germans in the First Czechoslovak Republic - their rights, opportunities, and how they felt in the new state. After World War I, Czech Germans became citizens of a republic they struggled to accept: from a formerly dominant ethnic group, they suddenly found themselves as a national minority with significantly weaker political, cultural, and economic influence.

The first part of the lecture recaps the development of Czech-German relations from Enlightenment-era state centralization through the final years of Austria-Hungary - this background is necessary to understand subsequent developments. The second part focuses on Germans in the First Republic and the problematic aspects of state policy toward the German minority, which had roots in the Czechs' Austro-Hungarian experience. To understand the later expulsion, we must look back in history many decades.

Historian Pavel Kladiwa's lecture will offer both facts and context. In the subsequent discussion with Jiří Neminář, both will attempt to answer the question of why coexistence between Czechs and Germans in the young republic, which offered possibilities for democratic governance, ultimately failed.