The centenary of the Great War has led to a deluge of books and chapters. It has also been accompanied by a new interest in the collapse of the European landbound empires and the emergence of their successor states. This volume, edited by the church historian at the University of Tübingen, Rainer Bendel, is part of this research trend. Nine, quite disparate chapters analyze various aspects of what followed the defeat of the Central Powers. Five of the chapters look at the situations of German minorities, or at religious affiliations in specific areas that were formerly part of the German or Austrian empires. This range of topics reflects the volume's editorial history. The chapters are based on papers presented at conferences or workshops by organizations and groups dedicated to the study of the culture and history of German minorities in eastern Europe. As Bendel points out, however, all of the chapters have one element in common: the attempts by the new postwar states to transform their often ethnically and religiously diverse populations into loyal citizens of their respective states. The intention behind these nationalizing efforts was to homogenize and assimilate minorities, but also to exclude those who did not want to fully assimilate as well as those persons whom the government thought would not fit into the new nation-state.

Some of the chapters are research papers, others are general overviews. Christof Schimsheimer's source-based chapter analyzes the debate about the eastern borderlands of the new Polish Republic, which was held in the Polish constituent assembly on April 3 and 4, 1919. Schimsheimer shows that Polish politicians from both the left and the right shared the view that Ukrainians and Belarusians were not ready to have a state of their own and that Vilnius/Wilna was a Polish city. While National Democratic politicians evoked the Polish “civilizing mission,” politicians of the center-left and left consented to “Polish territories” becoming part of Poland but hoped that the rights of minorities would be respected.

Tobias N. Körfer discusses the situation of Protestant and Catholic German parishes in the eastern part of Upper Silesia after the region became part of Poland. Under the Sanacja regime from 1926 onward, the pressure on Protestants to assimilate increased while German Catholic parishes were offered some protection by the Concordat between Poland and the Vatican. Because many German Catholic priests had emigrated, however, even German parishes were given a Polish priest. The Polish authorities put pressure on parishes to reduce the number of masses held in German, and Polish Catholic priests played an important role in the effort to assimilate German-speaking Catholics.

Jiří Friedl's chapter focuses on Polish-Czechoslovak relations in the contested Cieszyn region. Friedl offers a balanced discussion of this complicated and controversial topic. He resists the temptation to simply condemn Poland for its cynical land grab in the aftermath of the Munich Agreement of 1938 and places the issue in the context of the difficult relationship between Czechoslovakia and Poland in the interwar period. Although there had been early attempts by both sides to achieve a peaceful solution, on January 23, 1919, the Czechoslovak army began occupying the region. The smattering of Polish units in the area tried to resist, but after one week the fighting was over. (The chapter does contain an inadvertent error: it was not Czechoslovak but Polish troops who were tied down by the fight against Ukrainians in Lemberg.) The run-up to the agreed plebiscite fomented even more hatred. Events finally went the Czechoslovak way when Poland was forced to prioritize the battle against the Soviet army, which was advancing on Warsaw, an emergency that posed an existential threat to the Polish state. In the years that followed, attempts were made to reach a compromise, but the territorial conflict was not really resolved. The Polish minority in Cieszyn was dissatisfied with being part of Czechoslovakia, but nevertheless there were Polish schools in the region and the minority was represented in the Czechoslovak parliament. After the Munich Agreement, Poland used the weakness of Czechoslovakia to annex the region and put pressure on its Czech inhabitants. As Friedl states, nationalism on both sides prevented a compromise solution and reduced the chances of joining forces in the fight against the country that constituted an existential threat to both—National Socialist Germany.

The two following chapters deal with the relationship between Czechs and Slovaks. Jaroslav Šebek discusses the changes in the perception of Tomáš Masaryk in the Bohemian lands in the second half of the twentieth century. In the space of less than one hundred years, the image of Masaryk has come full circle. In the interwar period, he was celebrated as a democratic politician and the founder of the republic; after the war, the communist authorities did not know what to do with him, and views on Masaryk fluctuated between recognition of his democratic credentials and condemnation because of his critical attitude to the Russian Revolution. After the fall of communism, Tomáš Masaryk is now once again considered a hero and the “father of the nation.” Roman Holec's chapter discusses Czech-Slovak relations during the founding phase of the Czechoslovak Republic. Holec argues that one of the major problems of Czechoslovakia was that its two major nations did not know or understand each other. Integration was difficult and was further complicated by the existence of ethnic minorities and economic difficulties.

In a research paper, Péter Techet analyzes the relationship between nation and Catholicism in Hungary and Croatia. He discusses the close connection between the sacralization of the nation and the nationalization of religion. The chapter is based on his dissertation on intra-Catholic conflicts in rural areas of the Austro-Hungarian coastal region between 1890 and 1914. He shows that Catholicism could have different functions, depending on the context. In Croatia, Catholicism was closely connected to Croatian identity; in Hungary, Catholicism was etatist; in Austria-Hungary, it was supranational.

The final three chapters deal with the Danube Swabian minority in the Banat. Franz Metz discusses the negative impact of the First World War on the development of Danube Swabian music, when old connections were severed after the partition of the Banat. Caroline Mezger gives an overview of the history of the Danube Swabian school system from the nineteenth century to the Second World War and shows how education and schools reflected changing concepts of Germanness. The last contribution by Vatroslav Župančić shows how—after the collapse of Austria-Hungary—the Protestant Church (Augsburg Confession) split along national lines.

All in all, this is quite a heterogenous, but—at least in part—instructive collection of articles of varying quality, covering minority policies, ethno-political conflicts, and the relationship between religion and nation after the collapse of the central European land empires. Some of the chapters, for example the contributions by Péter Techet and Jiří Friedl, are of interest for all historians working on this region, whereas other articles are directed at audiences with more specialized interests.