The Province of German Bohemia (German: Provinz Deutschböhmen [ˈdɔʏtʃbøːmən] ⓘ; Czech: Německé Čechy) was a province in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, established for a short period of time after the First World War, as part of the Republic of German-Austria.
It included parts of northern and western Bohemia, at that time primarily populated by ethnic Germans. Important population centers were Reichenberg (now Liberec), Aussig (Ústí nad Labem), Teplitz-Schönau (Teplice), Dux (Duchcov), Eger (Cheb), Marienbad (Mariánské Lázně), Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary), Gablonz an der Neiße (Jablonec nad Nisou), Leitmeritz (Litoměřice), Brüx (Most) and Saaz (Žatec). The land that comprised the province would later form an integral part of the territory later known as the "Sudetenland".
History
Territories constituting modern German Bohemia were historically an integral part of the Duchy and Kingdom of Bohemia (itself part of the Holy Roman Empire from 1102), although with different ethnic development. After the Migration Period, German tribes had largely left the Bohemian areas and the region had become home of a Slavic population. [1] Since the second half of the 13th century German settlers had been invited by the Bohemian kings and the nobility to develop sparsely populated border regions of Bohemia with skills acquired from the comparable landscapes of German states. For the subsequent seven centuries, the Czech lands were characterized by close relationship as well as contentment (F. Palacký) between Slavic-Czech majority and substantial German minority.
As the Bohemian lands modernized, Czech nationalism grew, intellectually developed as a combination of noble provincial particularism and historical revivalism promoted by middle-class intellectuals. Political German nationalism in Austria did not exist on its own, but in a
context of many competing nationalism. On the other hand, German liberals believed that their predominance had a universal basis in the values of constitutionalism, parliamentary government and rule of law. As Germans felt more marginalized in Bohemia, the Germans' views began shifting to alleged racial and cultural superiority. Czech nationalism eventually turned just as radical as German nationalism.[2]
Relatively calm coexistence began ending with outbreak of the 1848 Revolution, which also brought demands of German nationalists for unification of all German-speaking countries (i.e., in their conception, including Czech lands being then under the Habsburg rule) into one state – the demands which representatives of the Czech National Revival, although quite weak then, decisively refused. For their claim to all of Bohemia, the Czechs viewed indivisibility of Bohemia as a sacrosanct principle. The Czechs alleged that originally, all of Bohemia had been Czech-settled, and implied that this could justify a demand for restitution of these lands for the Czechs. German settlement and cultivation of the then mostly unsettled areas was portrayed as land grab.
The remaining 70 years of existence Austrian and Austro-Hungarian Empire were filled by increasing nationalist tensions and struggling between gradually strengthening Bohemian-Czechs (c. 2/3 of all inhabitants of the Czech lands) and Bohemian-Germans, but also with several attempts for striking a compromise. For example, the Kremsier Constitution provided for a solution in that the historical regions were to remain, but that they should be further subdivided along ethnic boundaries. Such an idea of ethnic subdivision of Bohemia was accepted by many German parties but was strongly opposed by the Czech.[3]
With the imminent collapse of Habsburg Austria-Hungary at the end of First World War, Germans in areas of Bohemia with an ethnic German majority declared that they did not want to break away from Austria as the Czechs intended. On 27 October 1918, the Egerland declared independence from Bohemia and a day later the independence of Czechoslovak Republic was proclaimed in the Bohemian capital of Prague.[4] On 11 November 1918, Emperor Charles I of Austria relinquished power and, on 12 November, ethnic German areas of the empire were declared to be part of new the Republic of German Austria, with the intent of unifying with the German Reich. Appealing to the principle of self-determination the Province of German Bohemia was formed from the part of Bohemia that contained primarily ethnic Germans. The capital of the province was at Reichenberg.
At the Paris Peace Conference, Edvard Beneš demanded incorporation of the German-speaking lands, alleging that without these lands Czechia would not survive economically. The Czechs denied existence of a closed German language area and distorted demographic maps such that the area between Komotau and Teplitz appeared as Czech-settled. At the Paris Peace Conference proposed border correrctions of Bohemia such that Eger, Rumburg, Friedland, and Freiwaldau were to become part of Germany. [5] Notably, the German-Bohemian lands were the most industrialized regions in whole Austria-Hungary.
In 1919, the territory of the province was inhabited by 2.23 million ethnic Germans, and 116,275 ethnic Czechs.[6]
Three other sister provinces were formed alongside German Bohemia, also made up of predominantly German-speaking parts:
In 29 November 1918 the Czechoslovak army began an invasion of Province of German Bohemia and during December it occupied the whole region, with Reichenberg falling on 16 December and the last major city, Leitmeritz, falling on 27 December 1918. Other secessionist provinces faced the same fate.
The status of the German areas in Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia was finally settled by the 1919 peace treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which declared that the areas belong to solely to Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak government then granted amnesty for all activities against the new state. The region that had been German Bohemia was reintegrated into the Province of Bohemia (Země česká) of the Czechoslovak Republic. German Bohemians had however hoped that the new state would be built as a Swiss-type decentralized state, which had been implied by Czech officials to appease the Western Allies on the woeful status of the large minorities.[7]
Later development (1938–45)
According to the Munich Agreement Czechoslovakia was forced to give up the German-inhabited areas of its domain, at the behest of Nazi Germany. The Nazis would incorporate the former German Bohemia into the Reichsgau Sudetenland, a new administrative unit that contained northern parts of German-speaking areas of the former Bohemian Crown.[4] Around 165,000 Czechs who lived in these areas quickly fled (or were forced to flee) in fear of reprisals by the Sudetendeutsches Freikorps, a Nazi-sponsored militia. A half year later, however, Germany invaded the remaining parts of the Czech lands (in German called Rest-Tschechei, "Remaining Czechia"), and carved out new puppet state from the formerly independent country.
After the war, all of this land was reincorporated into renewed Czechoslovak Republic. The vast majority of the German population (more than 94%) were expelled from Czechoslovak territory: many were killed or died during their flight from both Czech and Soviet attackers.[4]
