Stáhnout PDF - Ostravská univerzita v Ostravě

SummaryTHE GERMAN MINORITY IN THE CZECH PUBLIC OPINION AFTER WORLD WAR II.A few notes about the ethnic climate in post-European timesBlanka SoukupováThe text analyzes the opinions, positions and behavior of the Czech public preceding and accompanyingthe displacement of the Czech Germans after World War II. Immediately after the war, still in a climateof optimism and great national unity, in a climate of illusion about the possibilities of unification of the democraticWest and the socialist East, the Czech public succumbed to a further illusion: belief in the fact that the displacementwould insure calm within the state. Generally the displacement was explained as absolutely necessary as a resultof disloyal behavior of the Czech-German minority in the state. But the displacement was also backed by historicalarguments: the Communists explained it as redress for Bilá Hora. In leftist retoric the term “fifth column” alsoappeared – a label for the extreme disloyalty of the Czech Germans. German stereotypes from the timesof the Czech National Revival were also activated. But in connection with party-power structuralization of Czechsociety there also appeared the first critical opinions of the reality of the dislocation. Only a few criticsof the displacement from the ranks of the democratic public pointed to the dismal conditions in the borderlands,the economic loss caused by the departure of the best experts and the non-use of assimilational potentialof the Czech nation, and the unsolved question of mixed marriages. The vast majority of the Czech public, however,accepted the ethnic homogeneity of the state as necessary and as a historic gift.293