Multilateralism, German Foreign Policy and Central Europe by Claus Hofhansel

Author:Claus Hofhansel [Hofhansel, Claus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781134225781
Google: Wf0xm3XezDIC
Goodreads: 17482121
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2005-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

German minority policy after World War II

Czechoslovakia

In 1945 and 1946 close to 3 million ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia. Only about 200,000 ethnic Germans, including those with Czech marriage partners, specialists who were deemed essential for economic purposes and anti-fascists, were allowed to stay. A significant number of the remaining ethnic Germans were forced to work in the interior of the country so that after 1947 there were few communities with significant numbers of ethnic Germans in the traditional areas of German settlement.

Particularly in the early post-World War II years, members of the German minority were in a very vulnerable position.18 Legally they were stateless as one of the so-called Beneš decrees had stripped them of their Czechoslovak citizenship. In 1948 the Czechoslovak government allowed Germans who permanently resided in Czechoslovakia to reapply for citizenship. Not many ethnic Germans availed themselves of this opportunity, though, and in 1953 the government collectively granted all ethnic Germans in the country Czechoslovak citizenship. At around the same time restrictions on the cultural life of the minority were loosened, German theater and music groups were formed, the Communist trade unions began publishing a German language weekly, and on a limited scale German was taught again in schools. In another twist of Czechoslovak nationality policy toward ethnic Germans, the new constitution of 1960 mentioned the Hungarian, Polish and Ukrainian minorities but not the German one. This did have practical consequences as German cultural groups were dissolved and German language instruction in schools ended.

In the context of liberalization in Czechoslovakia in 1966/67 and the “Prague Spring” of 1968 the situation of the German minority again changed. Censorship of the press essentially ended in March 1968, and the German language Prager Volkszeitung published articles which were critical of past government policy. Beginning in February 1968, East German authorities stopped the distribution and confiscated copies of the Volkszeitung in East Germany. In June 1968 a preparatory commission for the establishment of a cultural association of Germans in the ČSSR was formed. After the invasion of Czechoslovakia by “allied” Warsaw Pact troops and the crushing of the Prague Spring, the Volkszeitung again became a mouthpiece of the official party line. Nonetheless, in June 1969 the cultural association of Germans in the ČSSR was formally established, and constitutional amendments, which went into effect in 1969, turned Czechoslovakia into a federated state and, among other things, referred not only to the rights of ethnic Poles, Hungarians and Ukrainians but mentioned ethnic Germans as well.

The most important development, though, affecting the German minority was emigration. Czechoslovak policy in this area underwent significant changes over time. In 1950 and 1951 Czechoslovak authorities let a relatively large number of ethnic Germans emigrate, but in the following years the numbers dropped to a slow trickle and those who applied for emigration faced various repressive measures, such as being fired from their jobs. Between 1966 and 1970 policy changed again and emigration levels reached their highest levels during the Cold War. In the years after

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