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Germans in the Czech Republic

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German citizens in the Czech Republic (recent history)
YearPop.±%
19944,195—    
20004,968+18.4%
20057,187+44.7%
201013,871+93.0%
201520,464+47.5%
201821,267+3.9%
202020,861−1.9%
202114,792−29.1%
202214,032−5.1%
Source: [1][2][3][4]

There are various communities of Germans in the Czech Republic (Czech: Německá menšina v Česku, German: Deutschböhmen (historical), Deutsche in Tschechien). After the Czech Republic joined the European Union in the 2004 enlargement and was incorporated into the Schengen Area, migration between the two countries became relatively unrestricted. Both countries share a land border of 815 kilometers (506 mi).[5]

History

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Main article: Sudeten Germans

German Bohemians (German: Deutschböhmen und Deutschmährer, Czech: čeští Němci a moravští Němci, i.e. German Bohemians and German Moravians), later known as Sudeten Germans (German: Sudetendeutsche, Czech: sudetští Němci), were ethnic Germans living in the Czech lands of the Bohemian Crown, which later became an integral part of Czechoslovakia. Before 1945, over three million German Bohemians constituted[6] about 23% of the population of the whole country and about 29.5% of the population of Bohemia and Moravia.

There have been ethnic Germans living in the Bohemian crown lands since the Middle Ages.[7] In the late 12th and in the 13th century the Přemyslid rulers promoted the colonisation of certain areas of their lands by German settlers from the adjacent lands of Bavaria, Franconia, Upper Saxony and Austria during the Ostsiedlung migration. Under Austrian rule, much of what is now modern day Czech Republic was administered from Vienna, which promoted an influx of German settlers into the 19th century.

After the revolutions of 1848 and the rise of ethnic nationalism, nervousness about ethnic tensions in Austria-Hungary resulted in a prevailing equality between Czechs and German Bohemians.[8] Each ethnicity tried to retain, in regions in which it was the majority, sovereignty over its own affairs. Czechs and Germans generally maintained separate schools, churches and public institutions. Nevertheless, despite the separation, Germans often understood some Czech, and Czechs often spoke some German. Cities like Prague, however, saw more mixing between the ethnicities and also had large populations of Jews; Germans living with Czechs fluently spoke Czech and code-switched between German and Czech when talking to Czechs and other Germans. Jews in Bohemia often spoke German and sometimes Yiddish.[citation needed]

The end of World War One brought about the partition of the multiethnic Austria-Hungary into its historical components, one of them, the Bohemian Kingdom, forming the west of the newly created Czechoslovakia. Czech politicians insisted on the traditional boundaries of the Bohemian Crown according to the principle of uti possidetis juris. The new Czech state would thus have defensible mountain boundaries with Germany, but the highly industrialised settlement areas of three million Germans would now be separated from Austria and come under Czech control. Many Sudeten Germans were opposed to their inclusion into the new Czech State. After the Czechoslovak Republic was proclaimed on 28 October 1918, the German Bohemians, claiming the right to self-determination according to the tenth of US President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, demanded that their homeland areas remain with Austria, which by then had been reduced to the Republic of German Austria. The German Bohemians relied mostly on peaceful opposition to the occupation of their homeland by the Czech military, which started on 31 October 1918 and was completed on 28 January 1919. Fighting took place sporadically, resulting in the deaths of a few dozen Germans and Czechs.[citation needed]

On 13 March 1938, the Third Reich annexed Austria during the Anschluss. Sudeten Germans reacted with fear to the news of Austrian annexation, and the moderate wing of SdP grew in strength.[9] Hitherto pro-Henlein German newspaper Bohemia denounced the SdP leader, arguing that his call for Sudeten Anschluss goes against the wish of his voters and supporters: "His present call to irredentism saddles the Sudeten Germans with all the consequences of treason to the State; for such a challenge the electors gave him neither their votes nor their mandate".[10] On 22 March, the German Agrarian Party, led by Gustav Hacker, merged with the SdP. German Christian Socialists in Czechoslovakia suspended their activities on 24 March; their deputies and senators entered the SdP parliamentary club. However, the majority of Sudeten Germans did not support annexation into Germany.[11][verification needed][10] Contemporary reports of The Times found that there was a "large number of Sudetenlanders who actively opposed annexation", and that the pro-German policy was challenged by the moderates within the SdP as well; according to Wickham Steed, over 50 % of Henleinists favoured greater autonomy within Czechoslovakia over joining Germany.[12] P. E. Caquet argues that in case of a fair plebiscite, a majority of the Sudetenland population would have voted to remain in Czechoslovakia.[13] The municipal elections of May 1938 were marred with voter intimidation and street fighting - officially the SdP won about 90 percent of the Sudeten vote, but about a third of Sudeten Germans were prevented from casting a free vote.[14][15][16]

However, after the annexation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany, many Czech Germans joined the Nazi Germany's expansionism. As a result, the Czech Government in Exile as well as the Allied Powers agreed to the Expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia which resulted in the deportation of nearly 2.4 million Sudeten Germans into what is now modern Germany.

Statistics

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In the 2001 census, 39,106 Czech citizens, or around 0.4% of the Czech Republic's total population, declared German ethnicity.[17] In 2011 the census methodology changed and it was newly possible to declare multiple ethnicities or none at all: 25% of the citizens chose the option of not declaring ethnicity. In this census 18,658 citizens declared German as their sole ethnicity, while another 6,563 in combination with another ethnicity.[18] According to regional statistics the largest number of citizens with German ethnicity is 4,431 in Karlovy Vary Region (1.5% of total population in this region). On district level the largest share is in Sokolov District (2.3%) followed by Karlovy Vary District (1.2%), both in Karlovy Vary Region. Today's Germans in the Czech republic form a small minority, remaining after the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans who had formed a majority in several areas of Czechoslovakia.

The following municipalities had ethnic Germans at over 6% of the population in 2011:

Government statistics also showed 21,478 German citizens living in the CR as of December 31, 2019, with largest number of these in Ústí nad Labem Region (7,525) and Prague (4,146).[19]

Education

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Deutsche Schule Prag

The Deutsche Schule Prag is a German international school in Prague.

Media

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Notable people

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ http://www.czso.cz/csu/2013edicniplan.nsf/engt/2E003D965E/$File/141413_t1-01.pdf [bare URL PDF]
  2. ^ http://www.czso.cz/csu/2014edicniplan.nsf/engt/9A003F3BED/$File/29002714.pdf [bare URL PDF]
  3. ^ Statistical Yearbook of the Czech Republic - 2019
  4. ^ Statistical Yearbook of the Czech Republic - 2023, section 4-24
  5. ^ "CIA – The World Factbook – Germany". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. May 31, 2012. Retrieved 2016-08-14.
  6. ^ "Expellee 'Provocation': Prague Refuses Apology to Sudeten Germans". Der Spiegel. June 14, 2011.
  7. ^ Friedrich Prinz (Hrsg.): Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas: Böhmen und Mähren, Siedler, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-88680-773-8. (Teil eines zehnbändigen Gesamtwerks)
  8. ^ Nationalbibliothek, Österreichische. "ALEX – Historische Rechts- und Gesetzestexte". alex.onb.ac.at. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  9. ^ Ronald Smelser (2013). The Sudeten Problem, 1933–1938: Volkstumspolitik and the Formulation of Nazi Foreign Policy. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. p. 300. ISBN 978-0819540775.
  10. ^ a b P. E. Caquet (2018). The Bell of Treason: The 1938 Munich Agreement in Czechoslovakia. New York: Other Press. p. 93. ISBN 9781782832874.
  11. ^ Elizabeth Wiskemann (January 1939). "Czechs and Germans after Munich". Council on Foreign Relations. 17 (2): 291–304. doi:10.2307/20028918. JSTOR 20028918.
  12. ^ David J. Gossen (June 1994). Public Opinion, Appeasement, and The Times: Manipulating Consent in the 1930s (Thesis). Vancouver: The University of British Columbia. p. 63. doi:10.14288/1.0094711.
  13. ^ P. E. Caquet (2018). The Bell of Treason: The 1938 Munich Agreement in Czechoslovakia. New York: Other Press. p. 76. ISBN 9781782832874.
  14. ^ P. E. Caquet (2018). The Bell of Treason: The 1938 Munich Agreement in Czechoslovakia. New York: Other Press. p. 75. ISBN 9781782832874.
  15. ^ Claudia Breit Whiteus (2010). A Struggle for Existence: Explaining the Actions, Motives and Fall of German Social Democracy in the First Czechoslovak Republic. Budapest: CEU eTD Collection.
  16. ^ Michael Walsh Campbell (2003). "Keepers of Order? Strategic Legality in the 1935 Czechoslovak General Elections". Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity. 31 (3). Routledge: 295–308. doi:10.1080/0090599032000115501. S2CID 155757534.
  17. ^ "29-5. Population: by nationality and municipality size group", Basic results of the Population and Housing Census 2001, Czech Statistical Office, 2001-03-01, retrieved 2009-12-23[permanent dead link]
  18. ^ Tab. 614a Obyvatelstvo podle věku, národnosti a pohlaví, Czech Statistical Office, retrieved 2016-12-29
  19. ^ "R06 Foreigners - the most frequent citizenship by cohesion region, region and district in the years 2004–2019". Czech Statistical Office.

Further reading

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