The Czechs in a Nutshell

„Fate has left us to clash and to co-operate with the Germans.” This is how František Palacký, the founder of history as a scientific discipline in Bohemia and one of the spiritual leaders of the nineteenth century Czech national revival once characterized the Czechs’ relations with their great Western neighbour.

However contradictory and ambivalent this may sound, it’s actually a very apt description. On the one hand, the Germans have played a totally irreplaceable part in the cultural and economic development of the Czech nation. On the other, no other country has caused the Czechs greater trauma.

Take a look at a map of Central Europe, and you’ll immediately understand what Palacký had in mind. Today, the Czech Republic’s border with Germany accounts for about 800 kilometres of its 2,300 kilometres of borders. But when you also remember that most of Polish Silesia until 1945 was a part of Germany (Prussia before 1918), and then recall that the Czechs’ southern neighbours, the Austrians, also belong to the Germanic culture, you realize that the Czechs have formed a Slavonic wedge in German territory for almost a millennium.

As some Czech cynics prefer to depict the situation: “We are like the birds that sit in the crocodile’s open jaws!” However wild this parallel might occur to you, it pinpoints some significant differences between the two nations.

Firstly, while the Germans are Central Europe’s largest ethnic group and by far its largest economy, one of the basic ingredients in the Czechs’ national identity is their self-perception as one of the continent’s smaller nations. To use Biblical terms, this is a story about a David who for one thousand years has been living next door to Goliath, and who, at times, has problems with curbing his feeling of inferiority.

Secondly, there is the language barrier, which originally was so insurmountable that the Czech word denoting a German — Němec — derives from the adjective němý, which actually means mute. Thirdly, the justified fear of being politically dominated — and during Second Word War liquidated — by the Germans has repeatedly driven Czech politicians to seek support and comfort from the Russians. The last attempt to team up with their big Slavonic fellows in the East cost the Czechs 40 years of stagnation, decay and thousands of lost lives (see: Communism).

Yet it would be wrong to describe the Czechs’ relations to the Germans merely as a somewhat troubled neighbourliness. Actually, this is a story about co-habitation. From the thirteenth century onwards, Bohemia and Moravia saw a constant influx of German settlers. Some of them were merchants invited by the Czech kings, while others were craftsmen offering their services. After the Battle of White Mountain, in 1620, there was also a significant influx of farmers, who took over estates left by exiled Czech Protestants (see: Foreigners). Even an invention as ultra-Czech as Pilsner beer should in reality be credited to Josef Groll, a Bavarian brewer who was headhunted to Western Bohemian Plzeň in 1842.

By 1918, when Czechoslovakia was founded, approximately three million ethnic Germans — more than one third of the population in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia — were living in the country’s Sudeten region. The capital Prague had at that time approximately 30,000 German inhabitants, most of them living in the area near Old Town Square. In addition to the Sudeten Germans, the majority of pre-war Bohemia and Moravia’s 100,000 Jews were either German speaking or bi-lingual, thus forming a natural bridge between Czech and German culture.

Take, for instance, Max Brod. This Prague-born, German-speaking Jew didn’t only do world literature a tremendous favour by saving and publishing his friend Franz Kafka’s manuscripts. Thanks to his German contacts and personal influence, Brod persuaded the Berliner Opera to stage the composer Leoš Janáček’s Jenufa, and he was also instrumental in presenting Jaroslav Hašek’s Good Soldier Švejk to German readers. In both instances, a smashing success in Germany paved the way to global fame.

Photo © Terje B. Englund

During their 700 year presence in Bohemia and Moravia, the Germans have left so many traces that it’s hard today to say what’s originally Czech and what’s German.

Just look at Bohemia’s cities. Nobody doubts that Prague and the Hussite stronghold Tábor were founded by Slavs. But names like Nymburg (Neuenburg), Šumperk (Schönberg), Kolín (Köln) and Varnsdorf reveal that these cities’ first inhabitants almost certainly were of Germanic origin. It’s not that clear who the first settlers in Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad), Liberec (Reichenberg), Cheb (Eger) and Domažlice (Tauss) was, but it’s unquestionable that these cities were completely dominated by Germans right up until 1945 (see: Munich Agreement).