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Either German or Czech: Fixing Nationality in Bohemia and Moravia, 1939-1946

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Chad Bryant
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Abstract

In this article Chad Bryant examines how Nazi and postwar Czechoslovak officials defined and ascribed nationality in the Bohemian crownlands. Specifically, Bryant looks at how officials struggled to come to terms with so-called amphibians—people who could switch public nationality or whose nationality was unclear. Amphibians challenged officials to define what they meant by “Czech” or “German.” Although the definitions of what made a Czech or a German became increasingly absurd, confused, and contradictory from 1939 to 1946, officials continued to mark individuals as either Czechs or Germans, thus eliminating “amphibianism.” The state had now assumed the sole authority over the ascription of nationality in die Bohemian crownlands. The individual’s right to choose a public nationality—a fundamental aspect of prewar civil society—had been stripped away. The article ends with a glance at other European cases, and a suggestion for future studies of nationality politics in Europe during an era of unprecedented displacement and violence.

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Articles
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Slavic Review , Volume 61 , Issue 4 , Winter 2002 , pp. 683 - 706
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2002

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References

Research for this article was assisted in part by a grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board, with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the United States Department of Education, which administers the Title VI Program, as well as by funding provided by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fund. None of these organizations is responsible for the views expressed. Earlier versions were presented at the German Historical Institute’s Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar in Washington, D.C., and at a Humboldt University conference, “Voice or Exit: Comparative Perspectives on Ethnic Minorities in Twentieth-Century Europe,” in Berlin. My thanks go to all the participants for their stimulating comments. I would also like to thank William A. Bryant, John Connelly, James Patrick Daughton, Jennifer Glass, Kaarin Michaelson, Damani Partridge, Edith Replogle Scheffer, Jason Scott Smith, Lisa Fetheringill Swartout, Sarah Williarty, Daniel Ziblatt, and the two anonymous reviewers for their many helpful criticisms.

1 Statistická ročcenka Republiky československé (Prague, 1957), 42. The “Bohemian crownlands” is shorthand for the areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia that came under Habsburg rule in 1526. Most of this area, minus much of Silesia, constitutes today’s Czech Republic.

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7 Frommer, Benjamin, “Expulsion or Integration: Unmixing Interethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia,” East European Politics and Societies 14, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 387.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed Extrapolating from an examination of individual census records in several districts of die Sudetengau (the area of Czechoslovakia annexed by Germany after the Munich agreement), Maria Rhode has recently estimated diat 91,000 people in that area counted themselves as “Germans” in 1939 and later as “Czechs” in 1950. Rhode, Maria, “Der Wechsel des nationalen Bekenntnisses in der Tschechoslowakei 1930-1950 und seine Bedeutung für die Zahl der sudetendeutschen Vertreibungsopfer,” in Brandes, Dedef, Ivaničková, Edita, and Pešek, Jiři, eds., Erzwungene Trennung: Vertrdbungen und Aussiedlungen in und aus der Tschechoslowakei 1938-1947 im Vergleich mit Polen, Ungarn und Jugoslawien (Essen, 1999), 195.Google Scholar Frommer’s number would include diese people, along with the inhabitants of die Těšín region. Until 1938 this territory was part of die Czechoslovak Republic but was taken by Poland following die Munich agreement. After the Nazi invasion, all of its inhabitants were strong-armed into obtaining Reich citizenship.

8 King, “Loyalty,” 331. In the Protectorate, switching was most likely to occur along the Czech-German frontier or widiin German-speaking “language islands” centered around towns like české Budějovice, Olomouc, Jihlava, and Brno.

9 Rothkirchen, Livia, “The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia, 1938-1945,” in Dagan, Avigdor, Hirschler, Gertrude, and Weiner, Lewis, eds., The Jews of Czechoslovakia (Philadelphia, 1984), 3:37.Google Scholar

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11 In the United States, self-ascription was introduced only in 1960. Skerry, Peter, Counting on the Census? Race, Group Identity and the Evasion of Politics (Washington, D.C., 2000), 46.Google Scholar Although they could vote, married women in interwar Czechoslovakia were not accorded the choice of nationality at census time. The male head of the household determined the nationality of the entire family.

12 Cornwall, Mark, “The Struggle on the Czech-German Language Border, 1880- 1940,” English Historical Review 59, no. 433 (September 1994): 914–51, esp. 914, 919, 943nl.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Quoted in Bubeník, Jaroslav and Křest'an, jiří, “Zjišt'ování národnosti a židovská otázka,” in Krejčová, Helena and Svobodová, Jana, eds., Postavení osudy židovského obyvatelstva v čechách a na Moravě v letech 1939-1945 (Prague, 1998), 17.Google Scholar Or, as the German liberal newspaper Prager Tageblatt wrote in 1930, nationality was “a condition of subjective consciousness on the part of individual members of the nation” and “a feeling of membership to the national whole and its particular cultural community.” Quoted in Bubeník and Křest'an, “Zjišt'ování,” 22n67.

14 Verwaltungsbericht, Oberlandrat (OLR) Olomouc, April 1940, Státní ústřední archiv, (SÚA), fond Úřad říšského protektorátu (ÚŘ;P), box 287, sign M b 2000, 1939-1942.

15 The actual term was “member of the state of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.” In August this was changed to “member of the Protectorate” (hereafter “Protectorate national“). Officials hoped that by removing the idea that the Protectorate was its own state more Germans would opt for the more honorable citizenship. Generalreferent für politische Angelegenheiten to Gruppe I 3, 28 August 1939, SÚA, ÚŘP, box 90, sign. I-lb 2020, 1939-1942; Sobota, Emíl, Co byl Protektorát (Prague, 1946), 121;Google Scholar Alexandra Blodigová, “Státni příslušnost-úprava státního občanství v československu do roku 1942,“ in Krejčová and Svobodová, eds., Poslavení, 40-50.

16 Davidowicz, LucyS., The War against thejews, 1933-1945 (New York, 1975),376–77.Google Scholar

17 Reichsprotektor to Oberlandrate, 20 June 1939, SÚA, ÚŘP, box 90, sign. I-lb 2020, 1939-1942.

18 Verwaltungsbericht, OLR Brno, April 1940, SÚA, ÚŘP, box 287, sign. I-lb 2000, 1939-1942, p. 3.

19 “Deutschtumsprogram für das Jahr 1941,” OLR Zlín [no date], SÚA, ÚŘP, box 290, sign. I-lb 2029, 1939-1942, p. 1.

20 Bohman, Alfred, “Bevölkerung in Böhmen 1847-1947 mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Entwicklung der nationalen Verhältnisse,” Wissenschaftliche Materiellen zur Landeskunde der böhmischen Läandern 3 (1983): 238.Google Scholar

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22 Rhode, Gotthold, “The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia 1939-1945,” in Mamatey, Victor S. and Luža, Radomír, eds., The History of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1918-1948 (Princeton, 1973), 305;Google Scholar “Bilance dejineho roku 1939,” Hospodářský rozhled, 21 December 1939, 5.

23 In World War I, 34.5/1,000 of the German Bohemian population were killed in battle, compared with 27.7/1,000 in the Austrian half of the dual monarchy and 27.8/ 1,000 in Germany. Thompson, S. Harrison, “The Germans in Bohemia from Maria Theresa to 1918,” Journal of Central European Affairs 2 (1942): 178 Google Scholar, cited in Rothschild, Joseph, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars (Seattle, 1974), 81.Google Scholar

24 The complete breakdown is as follows: 10 years old and younger: 5 percent; 11 to 20 years old: 8.5 percent; 21 to 30 years old: 12 percent; 31 to 40 years old: 19.5 percent; 41 to 50 years old: 18 percent; 50 years old or older: 37 percent; Ševčík, Antonín, “Germanizační činnost brnenských nacistických úřadů v letech 1939-1945,” Brno v minulostia dnes: Sborník přispěvků k dějinám a výstavbě Brna (Brno, 1965), 7:28;Google Scholar Verwaltungsbericht, OLR Brno [no date], SÚA, ÚŘP, box 287, sign. I-lb 2000, 1939-1942, p. 4.

25 “Die politische Entwicklung im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren seit 15. März 1939,” SD (Sicherheitsdienst) report 15 March 1940, Vojenský historicky archiv (VHA), fond 74/5, box 7, sbirka č 74, jednotka 46, p. 20; “Monatsbericht: Die politische Entwicklung im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren ,” SD report May 1940, VHA, fond 74/5, box 7, sbirka č 74, jednotka 48, p. 4.

26 “Die politische Entwicklung im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren seit 15. Marz 1939,” SD report 15 March 1940, p. 68.

27 Verwaltungsbericht, OLR Prague [no date], SÚA, ÚŘP, box 287, sign. I-lb 2000, 1939-1942, p. 1.

28 SD report # 53, 14 February 1940, Boberach, Heinz, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich 1938-1945: Die geheimen Lageberichte des Sicherheitsdienstes derSS (Herrsching, 1984), 1:758.Google Scholar

29 The official name was die Fond zur Pflege des deutschen Volkstums (Fund for the Cultivation of the German Volkstum), Dorer, Gruppe XXI-Vortrag am Herrn Staatssekretars, 15 May 1940, SÚA, ÚŘP, box 292, sign. I-lb 2180, 1940-1942; Brandes, Die Tschechen unter deutschemProtektorat, 162-63; in 1942, however, the budget had dropped to 5.6 million Reichsmark. “Beauftragten der Reichskommissars für die Festigung des deutschen Volkstums,” 24 October 1942, SÚA, ÚŘP, box 292, sign. I-lb 2145, 1939-1945.

30 “Die politische Entwicklung im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren im Jahre 1940,“ SD report [no date], VHA, fond 74/5, box 8, sbirka č 74, jednotka 43,,p. 8.

31 “Monatsbericht,” SD report June 1940, VHA, fond 74/5, box 8, sign. 49, sbirka c 74, jednotka 71, pp. 16, 17.

32 “Lagebericht Nr. 14,” Der Befehlshaber der Ordnungspolizei beim Reichsprotektor Böhmen und Mähren, 28 March 1940, p. 1.

33 OLR Kolín to Reichsprotektor, June 1940, SÚA, ÚŘP, box 90, sign. 2020, p. 1.

34 “Monatsbericht,” SD report June 1940, p. 16.

35 “Die politische Entwicklung im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren im Jahre 1940,“ SD report [no date], p. 8.

36 Brandes, Die Tschechen unter deutschem Protektorat, 160

37 Ibid., 320ral 167.

38 Fuchs to Gruppe Mähren and Oberlandräte, 16 September 1940, SÚA, ÚŘP, box 90, sign. 1-1 2020, 1939-1942, pp. 1-2.

39 “Erfassung der deutschen Volkszugehörigen im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren ,” 30 November 1940, Reichsprotektor in Böhmen und Mähren, osobyi fond 1488, opis 1, folder 25, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum archive, RG 11.001.M 23, reel 91.

40 Verwaltungsbericht, OLR Olomouc, 22 August 1941, Státní archiv v Opavě, pobočka Olomouc, fond Oberlandrat Olomouc, box 5, inv č 5, p. 1.

41 Kárný, Miroslav and Milotová, Jaroslavá, eds., Protektorátní politika Reinharda Heydricha (Prague, 1991), doc. 9, 103.Google Scholar

42 Ibid., doc. 9, 103-4.

43 Czechoslovakia had inherited over half of the Austrian Habsburg lands’ industrial capacity and was the world’s tenth largest per capita producer of industrial goods; even more important for the Reich, it had been the seventh largest producer of armaments in the world (70 percent of the former Czechoslovakia’s industry lay in the Protectorate lands). By the end of 1940, the Protectorate’s valuable and productive economic structure had been integrated within the Reich and by 1943 it accounted for about 12 percent of the Reich’s industrial output. Geršlová, Jana, “Die wirtschaftliche Vergangenheit der böhmischen Ländern (1870-1914): Industrie, Handel und Banken,” Vierteljahreshefte für Sozial- und Wirlschaftsgeschichte 87, no. 3 (2000): 320;Google Scholar Teichová, Alice, “The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia: The Economic Dimension,” in Teich, Mikuláš, ed., Bohemia in History (Cambridge, Eng., 1998), 287, 283.Google Scholar Only about 2 million Germans lived in southeastern and northeastern Europe combined, few Germans could he enticed to move east, and even plans to give land to war veterans could not have replaced 7 million Czechs. Schechtman, Joseph B., European Population Transfers, 1939-1945 (New York, 1946), 38;Google Scholar Němec, Petr, “český národ a nacistické teorie germanizace prostoru,” český časopis historický 88, no. 4 (1990): 538.Google Scholar

44 Kárný and Milotová, eds., Protektorátní politika, doc. 9, 101.

45 Ibid., doc. 9,109.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid., doc. 19, 146.

48 Ibid., doc. 61, 218.

49 König-Beyer, “Denkschrift über die rassenpolitschen Verhältnis der Böhmisch- Mährischen Raumes und dessen Neugestaltung,” SÚA, ÚŘP dodatky II Rassenamt 3/3 (RuSHA),box 56.

50 Mastny, The Czechs under Nazi Rule, 133.

51 Essner, Cornelia, “Im ‘Irrgarten der Rassenlogik’ oder nordische Rassenlehre und nationale Fragen (1919-1935)”, HistorischeMitteilungen 7, no. 1 (1994): 80–101.Google Scholar

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53 Stuckart, Wilhelm and Schiedermair, Rolf, Rassen-undErbpflege in der Gesetzgebung des Britten Retches (Leipzig, 1938), 9.Google Scholar

54 Connelly, “Nazis and Slavs,” 16-19.

55 Kárný and Milotová, eds., Protektorátní politika, doc. 52, 200-204. Emphasis in the original.

56 Ibid., doc. 14, 125.

57 Ibid., doc. 6, 218.

58 Browning, Christopher, “From ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ to Genocide to die ‘Final Solution': The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy,” Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers (Cambridge, Eng., 2000), 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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60 Kárný and Milotova, eds., Protektorátní politika, doc. 71, 233-34.

61 Ibid., doc. 79, 257, 252.

62 Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews, 2d ed. (New York, 1985), 1:63–80;Google Scholar Michael Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid: Die nationalsozialistische “Lösung der Zigeunerfrage” (Hamburg, 1996), 156-62.

63 Vilém Beneš, “Zprávy z Protektorátu,” 28 March 1944, VHA, fond 37, sign. 91/7, p. 8.

64 Netíka, “Zpráva z domova,” 5-8 February 1944, VHA, fond 37, sign. 91/7, p. 2.

65 [Anonymous informant], “Pro doktora Beneše,” 22 January 1944, VHA, fond 37, sign. 91/7, p. 2.

66 SD Tagesbericht, 25 August 1944, VHA, box 8, jednotka 73, p. 3.

67 Staněk, Tomáš, Odsun Něemců z československa 1945-1947 (Prague, 1991), 52.Google Scholar

68 Frommer, “National Purification,” 12.

69 Konfliktní spotečentsví, katastrofa, uvolnění: Náčrt výkladu německo-českých dějin od 19. Století (Prague, 1996), 29-30. See also Glassheim, Eagle, “National Mythologies and Ethnic Cleansing: The Expulsion of Czechoslovak Germans in 1945,” Central European History 33, no. 4 (2000): 463–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Staněk, Tomáš, Perzekuce 1945: Perzekuce tzv. státně nespohlivého obyvatelstua v českých zemích (mimo tábory a věznice) v květnu-srpnu 1945 (Prague, 1996).Google Scholar

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71 Vilém Beneš, “Zprávy z Protektorátu,” 28 March 1944, VHA; fond 37, sign. 91/7, p. 8.

72 Hartmannová, “'My’ a ‘oni,'” 101.

73 “Dekret presidenta republiky č 5/1945 Sb. ze dne 19. května 1945,” par. 6, 30-1, in Gronský, Ján, ed., Dokumenty k ústavnímu vý voji českosbvenska (1945-1968) (Prague, 1999), 38–49.Google Scholar

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75 King, “Loyalty,” 354, 362, 373.

76 Brod, Toman, československo a sovětský svaz 1939-1945 (Prague, 1992), 431.Google Scholar

77 In 1945, following Czechoslovakia’s ceding of Carpatho-Ukraine to the Soviet Union, the governments transferred thousands of Czechs and Slovaks in exchange for Ukrainian-Ruthenians and Russians. Martin, Terry, “The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,“ Journal of Modern History 70 (December 1998): 821.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Beneš also called for the thousands of Czechs in Vienna to be “repatriated,” although most declined. Thousands more undefined Czechs and Slovaks came from France, Belgium, and Hungary and were awarded Czechoslovak citizenship upon their arrival. See “Ústavní zákon č 74/1946 Sb. ze dne 12 dubna 1946” and “Ústavní zákon č 179/1946,” in Gronský, ed., Dokumenty, 135-36, 156-57.

78 The concern was especially rife among professional statisticians. See, for example, Brož, V., “Rozvody a rozluky za okupace,” Statistický zpravodaj 9, no. 6 (1 June 1946): 181–83.Google Scholar

79 Andrei Villen Bell, “The Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans: A Breakdown of Ethnic Boundary Maintenance Mechanisms” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1997), 294-95.

80 SD Tagesbericht, 15 September 1944, VHA, box 8, no. 80, p. 7.

81 Frommer, “Expulsion or Integration,” 392-93; Frommer, “National Purification,” 28-31, 200, 273; King, “Loyalty,” 372.

82 Helena Krejčová, “český a slovenský antisemitismus 1945-1948,” in Jech, ed., Stránkádmi soudoubých dějin, 162.

83 Frommer, “National Purification,” 258.

84 Ibid., 212.

85 Staněk, Odsun, 367.

86 For works on die role tiiat boundary conflicts play in die creation of identity, see Barth, Fredrik, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Boston, 1969);Google Scholar and Grillo, R., “Nation” and “State” in Europe: Anthropological Perspectives (London, 1980).Google Scholar For important works of history, see Armstrong, J., Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill, 1982);Google Scholar Cohen, A. P., Symbolizing Boundaries: Identity and Diversity in British Cultures (Manchester, 1986);Google Scholar and Sahlins, Peter, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley, 1989).Google Scholar

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88 Douglas, Mary, Purity andDanger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York, 1966), 121,CrossRefGoogle Scholar cited in Torpey, John, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and State (Cambridge, Eng., 2000), 12.Google Scholar

89 Renan, Ernest, “What Is a Nation?” (1882), Poetry of the Celtic Races and Other Essays (London, 1896), 81.Google Scholar

90 The most complete pan-European surveys of population movements during World War II and the immediate postwar period remain Schechtman, European Population Transfers, and Schechtman, Postwar Population Transfers in Europe, 1945-1955 (Philadelphia, 1963). An important recent study that takes a pan-European perspective on Nazi population policies in western and eastern Europe is Isabel Heinemann’s dissertation, '“Deutsches Blut': Das Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt SS und die nationalsozialistische Rassenpolitik 1939-1945” (Ph.D. diss., Universität Freiburg, 2002). For a recent comparison of twentieth-century ethnic cleansings, see Naimark, Norman, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansingin Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 2001).Google Scholar

91 Connelly, “Nazis and Slavs,” 33.

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93 Schechtman, European Population Transfers, 38.

94 Koehl, RKFDV, 77-82. As historian Wolfgang Benz writes, the common Nazi mantra that the Germans were a Volk without its space (Volk ohne Raum) became more difficult to justify once new territories were annexed to the Reich. In fact, the opposite soon proved to be true. The Reich now began to include much space and not enough (German) Volk. Benz, “Der Generalplan Ost,” 79. The phrase comes from the infamous pamphlet by Grimm, Hans, Volk ohne Raum (Munich, 1926).Google Scholar

95 Viscount Chilton, “The Occupied Countries in Western Europe,” Toynbee and Toynbee, eds., Hitler’s Europe, 517.

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109 Slavenka Drakulic wrote of the recent conflict in the Balkans: “Being a Croat has become my destiny…. Along with millions of other Croats, I was pinned to the wall of nationhood— not only by outside pressure from Serbia and the Federal Army but by national homogenization within Croatia itself. That is what the war is doing to us, reducing us to the one dimension: the Nation. The trouble with this nationhood, however, is that whereas before, I was defined by my education, my job, my ideas, my character—and, yes, my nationality too—now I feel stripped of all that. I am nobody because I am not a person any more. I am one of 4.5 million Croats…. I am not in a position to choose any longer…. So right now, in die new state of Croatia, no one is allowed not to be a Croat.” Drakulic, , The Balkan Express: Fragments from the Other Side of War (New York, 1993), 50–52,Google Scholar cited in Brubaker, Rogers, “Rethinking Nationhood: Nation as Institutionalized Form, Practical Category, Contingent Event,” Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge, Eng., 1996), 20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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