Suchergebnisse

This article traces the development of two post-communist parties -- the Czech KSCM & the German PDS -- illustrating how they may continue to shape hard left policy in an expanded European Union (EU). It analyses three policy areas in detail (security & defense policy, employment policy & policies towards the institutional reform of the EU) & argues that, providing the parties avoid internal ideological conflict, they may come to play significant roles in influencing hard left policy in future years. The PDS is likely to act as a bridge for other hard left groups with more conservative agendas while the much larger KSCM may attempt to shift the ideological balance back towards more structurally conservative anti-capitalist policies. 78 References. [Copyright 2004 The Regents of the University of California; published by Elsevier Ltd.]

For decades, the relationship between Czechs & Germans has been poisoned by the handling of the historical expulsion of Germans, though two years after admittance of the Czech Republic to the EU, this phase seems to have passed & the Collegium Bohemicum in Usti nad Labem/Aussig will soon cast a thorough look at the complex history of Germans in Bohemia. Today the past is no longer threatening, as both Germany & the Czech Republic face the common threat of globalization, & the Czechs have found inner peace through historical context & a focus on humanity, sympathy, & cultural service rather than war, valuing the services of a very industrious & cultured minority without denying their support of the NS regime. The museum seeks a picture language that will mediate this content believably to the Czech public. L. Reed

Considered in isolation, the experiences of the ethnic German minority of Slovakia hardly warrant more than a footnote in the history of East-Central Europe during the years of World War II. The wartime experiences of this numerically small German minority, known as the Carpathian Germans, do, however, stand out in vivid contrast to those of the other German minority group of Czechoslovakia, the much-publicized Sudeten Germans of Bohemia and Moravia. And it is this glaring contrast that lends significance to a study of the Slovakian German experiences, both with the Third Reich and with the ephemerally independent Slovak state. The juxtaposition of the estimated 130,000 Carpathian Germans of Slovakia and the more than 3,000,000 Sudeten Germans of central and western Czechoslovakia suggests a natural and dramatic comparison, which reveals that no blanket generalization can be offered regarding the wartime experiences of any of the German minorities of Europe.

The conflict of nationalities in Bohemia ceased to be a purely regional conflict during the nineteenth century. The rise of a unified Germany combined with the escalating conflict between the Czechs and the Germans in their common homeland of Bohemia caused many persons not directly concerned with the problems of the two peoples to take an interest in their quarrel. The struggle reached its peak during the period 1867-1914 with the introduction of many attempts to compromise the issues of dissension between the two nationalities. The widely disparate backgrounds of the Germans and the Czechs in Bohemia, as well as the emotions aroused by a Europe that was heading toward war, made an objective study of the issues difficult. Scholars tended to align themselves on the side of either the Czechs or the Germans. Those historians of the politically democratic west, especially those of England and the United States, generally aligned themselves with the Czech faction. The outbreak of World War I saw this partiality pushed to an extreme which was not moderated until after the defeat of Germany in 1918 and the break up of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The creation of an independent Czechoslovakia, which saw the Germans of Bohemia relegated to a minor role, had a moderating effect on the scholarship of the inter-war period. In spite of the re-emergence of Germany as a European force under Adolph Hitler after 1933, the historiography of the pre-World War I German-Czech conflict continued the trend toward historical objectivity with a growing emphasis on research into the causes and effects of the German-Czech conflict. This concern with causal factors and the attempts at solving the conflict between the two peoples represented the main effort of a growing number of historians and other scholars, and remains at this time a major concern of students of the conflict of nationalities between the Bohemian Germans and Czechs.

The ethnic problem had never before been such a pressing issue at the international level as it was in the initial post-war years, in particular, in the areas of Central and Southeast Europe. Based on post-war negotiations, the idea of international protection of national minorities was born, which was closely connected with the system of peace treaties concluded with defeated states. The submitted study uses unpublished sources of Czechoslovak (National Archives in Prague, Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Prague) and British (National Archives in Kew) provenance, published sources and specialist publications to look at the complaints of national minorities to the League of Nations during the 1930s; specifically — at the petition of the Sudeten German Party in Czechoslovakia in 1936, which concerned an instruction from the Ministry of National Defence to companies intending to apply for state contracts about the ethnic composition of their employees. It uses this example to demonstrate the instrumental nature of Sudeten German Party policy, showing that it did not represent a real attempt at improving the living conditions for the German minority in the First Czechoslovak Republic but rather was a deliberate effort to increase the visibility of the political entity and to internationalize the issue of the cohabitation of Czechs and Germans in interwar Czechoslovakia. The study also demonstrates that another objective of the Sudeten German Party was to attract attention from Great Britain, which had been avoiding significant engagement in Central Europe.

The study focuses on the chronological development of the ethnography of Germans living in the Czech Lands. The emphasis is put on its institutionalization and association with ideological concepts of the time. The ethnographical interest in Germans living in the Czech Lands dates back to the beginning of the 19th century. It focused on the lifestyle of the geographically and linguistically divided population. The disappearing traditions maintained in village communities were considered the most appropriate subject of study. After the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic, German ethnographers concentrated on topics related to the strengthening of identity of the new German society which became part of the Republic. This development enhanced the prestige of ethnography, which facilitated its institutionalization in the academic environment. During the interwar years, ethnography was considered an appropriate academic discipline that could legitimize many politically-related claims, and was, therefore, expected to solve many societal isssues. In the years 1938–1945, the ideological instrumentalization of ethnography in the Czech-German environment reached a qualitatively new level. This was reflected in the focus of research of the newly established academic institutions, which were supposed to — with the help of ethnographic methods — contribute to the "scientific" legitimacy of the expansion plans of the Nazi regime already implemented or being prepared at that time. A strong inclination towards ideologically formulated "applied" science led to and in the first half of the 1940s eventually resulted in the explicitly racist research on the issue of "blood mixing" and the active participation of many ethnographers in the preparation, and partly also in the realization of the Nazi idea of a "new Europe". The history of Sudeten-German ethnography was terminated by the displacement of the German population from what is now the Czech Republic in the second half of the 1940s.

Článek popisuje restituční proces, který proběhl po roce 1945 v Československu v souvislosti s majetkem okupovaným v letech 1939-1945 v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava pro vytvoření německých vojenských cvičných prostor Ta se rozkládala zhruba na 1 % rozlohy dnešní České republiky a stala se majetekem Třetí říše. Do budoucna měla být využita pro germanizaci českých zemí. Restituční proces, který po roce 1945 na tomto území podléhal, nebyl přímo upraven zákonem, nýbrž zvláštní směrnicí Osidlovacího řadu a Fond národní obnovy ze dne 2. prosince 1947. Ta obecně vycházela ze zásad obsažených v zákoně který byl v zásadě založen na zásadách obsažených v zákoně č. 128/1946 Sb., o neplatnosti některých majetkově-právních jednání z doby nesvobody a o nárocích z této neplatnosti a z jiných zásahů do majetku vzcházejících, ve znění zákona č. 79/1948 Sb. Tato směrnice byla do značné míry vůči restituentům příznivější než analogická zákonná právní úprava, která se týkala jiných území než bývalých německých vojenských cvičišť. Pozornost je věnována nejen obsahu směrnice ze dne 2. prosince 1947 a souvisejících právních předpisů, ale také jejímu uplatňování od konce druhé světové války do současnosti. ; The article describes the restitution process that took place after 1945 in Czechoslovakia in relation to the property occupied in 1939-1945 in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia for the creation of German military exercise areas. They were supposed to be used for the Germanization of the Czech lands. To create these spaces, the Nazis abused the legal order of the Czechoslovak Republic from 1918 to 1938. The restitution process subject to this territory after 1945 was governed by the separate Directive of the Settlement Office and the National Renewal Fund of 2 December 1947. It was generally based on the principles contained in the Act No. 128/1946 Coll., on the invalidity of certain property-right acts from the time of oppression and of some other intervention into property-rights, as amended by the Act No. 79/1948 Coll. This directive was, generally speaking, more favorable to restituents than analogous legal regulations. Attention is paid not only to the content of the Directive of 2 December 1947 and related legislation, but also to its application from the end of World War II to the present. The article also refers to the professional literature, which was devoted to the topic.