Nationalism on the Margins - Brendan Karch

of national difference played no discernible role in politics. Rulers, for example, introduced
Germanic law codes, which were implemented in Oppeln/Opole in the late thirteenth
century. 5 The one major institution with any unifying power over Silesia was the Breslau
Diocese, founded in 1000 – but even this proved at best a weak centripetal force in the pre-
modern era. The division of Silesian territories into over a dozen small feuding principalities
by the fourteenth century precipitated its external weakness, which allowed the Bohemian
crown to take possession of Silesian lands starting in 1335. As the various branches of the
Piast dynasty died out, Silesia passed slowly into Bohemian control, a process finalized by
1532.
With the Habsburg acquisition of Bohemia in 1526, Silesia came under the Austrian
crown, and it was under external rule that Silesia’s self-identification as a unified province
took concrete form. Silesian lords and elites defined their lands as tied to, but also distinct
from, their Habsburg rulers. Separated from Bohemia by the Sudetes mountain range, the
lords of the Silesian lands banded together to defend their powers over tax collection and
local military defense. 6 Moreover, Silesians defined themselves in the pre-Reformation era
increasingly against the popular Hussite movements in the Bohemian crownlands. Silesia fit
into Bohemia and later the Habsburg Reich not as a good son, but rather as a distant relative
who fulfilled family obligations but preferred to rule over its own house.
The banding together of Silesian lords to protect regional interests, without any
reference to national solidarity, consolidated regional self-conceptions of Silesia as an
independent unit, several centuries after the Piast era celebrated by Polish nationalists had
5 Franz Idzikowski, Geschichte der Stadt Oppeln (Oppeln: Clar, 1863), 54.
6 Norbert Conrads, “Schlesiens frühe Neuzeit (1469-1740)” in: Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas, Bd. 3:
Schlesien, 222.
40