Odsun Němců z Československa : Historie, mýty, paměť
| Title in English | Expulsion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia : History, myths, memory |
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| Year of publication | 2025 |
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| Description | The post-war expulsion of German-speaking inhabitants from Czechoslovakia remains a topic that attracts attention for various reasons. This applies primarily to certain aspects of the issue. At the same time, however, it is a very complex topic that concerns not only the political but also the economic, social, and cultural history of Czechoslovakia. Some questions about events that happened 80 years ago are asked over and over again, while others, just as important, haven't even been asked yet. In this article, we'll try to recap them. A lot has been written and said about where the idea of displacement came from, who came up with it, and when it was implemented. What do we know from new research about the so-called wild expulsion in 1945? Who were its perpetrators and how many people were affected? When did the expulsion actually end and where did most of the expellees go? Is it more correct to speak of expulsion, expulsion, or resettlement? What does the expulsion have to do with the so-called Beneš decrees or the Potsdam Conference? These are some of the questions we will try to answer. The expulsion or deportation is also a topic around which a specific collective memory is forming, both among German expellees and Czech society. We classify such events as so-called places of memory. We will therefore also examine what place the expulsion has had and continues to have in the historical memory of Czech and German society. How has the evaluation, commemoration, and forgetting of post-war events changed from the time they took place to the present? Why did the showcase of the "national revolution" become taboo? The memory of the expulsion has also undergone an interesting development over the last thirty years. What role did politics or art play in this? |