The German national community living in the Czech lands enjoyed a prosperous history throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, one that, despite some tensions with the majority Czech population, featured cross-cultural cooperation in the economic, political, and social arenas. The Nazi German occupation and World War II, as well as the postwar expulsion of the Germans, turned neighbors into enemies and divided ethnic communities across the Czech lands.Footnote 1 The expulsion of three million Germans in 1945–46 bore consequences not only for those who were subject to expulsion, but also for those who received permission from the Czechoslovak state to remain behind. The status and stature of this remnant minority group shifted throughout the postwar period, but its significance as a bearer of German cultural life never waned. The state's immediate reaction to the quarter million Germans who remained behind was one of forced assimilation. Many thousands of Germans succumbed to the pressures of forced assimilation in the late 1940s and 1950s when the Czechoslovak state presented them with no other option than to become Czechs. Methods of forced assimilation included the stripping away of minority rights, such as linguistic and educational rights and the right to form independent cultural organizations, as well as the collective conferral of Czechoslovak citizenship upon the entire German population in 1953. Despite these pressures, a significant cohort of Germans who steadfastly clung to German national identification found means to resist the state's assimilative methods and succeeded in supporting German cultural life and identity into the 1960s.
The Constitution of 1960 was the first legal document to offer Germans recognition as a minority group since the Czechoslovak state had stripped them of such rights and attendant privileges in 1945. Progress in the realm of realizable rights in the 1960s nevertheless remained slow due to the attitudes of leaders like President and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) Antonín Novotný. In a speech he delivered in 1968, Novotný mentioned the importance of enabling “citizens from other nationalities [to] have the opportunity to live and develop their culture and traditions on equal principles.” Yet when Novotný went on to name those “other nationalities,” he omitted the Germans. In addition, he excluded the role of the German community in Czechoslovakia's path to socialism.Footnote 2 Rhetoric from the previous two decades indicated that Germans had been a critical element in building socialism in the Czech lands. More than two decades after the expulsion of three million of their conationals from Czechoslovakia in the immediate postwar period, their continued minority presence still did not warrant equal rights.
In the wake of Novotný’s speech, Hungarians, Poles, and Ukrainians—minority groups that were not subject to the same assimilative measures as Germans—sent representatives from their own existing cultural associations to lobby the government for adjustments in “the position of minorities as specific ethno-cultural and nationally political…subjects. The discussion expanded to the subject of the enactment of nationality statutes, the creation of social-political representation for minorities, and so on.”Footnote 3 The German community, without a representative cultural organization, found itself without a voice. This was significant, especially because Germans, who numbered about 80,000 or 0.8% of the population in the census of 1970, were numerically stronger than all the other minority groups in the Czech lands. Poles were close behind with 64,000 persons, or 0.7% of the population, while Hungarians (19,000, or 0.2%) and Ukrainians (16,000, or 0.2%) were significantly weaker in number.Footnote 4 The recognition of this uneven distribution of rights among minority groups set a fire under the German community, whose leaders worked feverishly over the course of the next two years to create the foundations and infrastructure to establish their own cultural organization. The very existence of the nascent organization aimed to prove that the assertion of national identity could coexist with a certain form of reform socialism; the two were not mutually or totally exclusive.
Earlier in the 1960s, the opening of the border with the West meant that many of the 135,000 Germans who remained in Czechoslovakia in the wake of the postwar expulsions had begun to flee in search of new opportunities.Footnote 5 Because most of the émigrés at this time were members of the younger generation, the older generation came to dominate the ranks of the German community in the Czech lands. Emigration patterns also had an impact on assimilation trends, demonstrating a direct correlation with national identification patterns. Many of those who continued their lives in Czechoslovakia and assimilated into Czech society became socioculturally Czech; those who left for one of the Germanies, in particular, became socioculturally German. The increasingly narrow window of those still unassimilated “Czech Germans” were largely members of the older generation. It became increasingly clear as the 1960s progressed that this dominant sector of the German community had become impatient with its unequal status.
This restless tone was palpable in the pages of German-language newspapers throughout the decade. In 1965, Revolutionary Trade Union Movement (ROH) publishing house Práce named Vojmír Šimonek as chief editor of Aufbau und Frieden (Construction and Freedom, 1951–66). Its editorial staff, which included seventeen editors in addition to Šimonek, remained stable when the Secretariat of the Central Council of Trade Unions (ÚRO) revised the newspaper's name to Volkszeitung (People's Newspaper, 1966–68) on 1 January 1966.Footnote 6 The paper changed names once again in mid-June 1968, becoming Prager Volkszeitung (Prague People's Newspaper, 1968–91). Despite modifications in name, the Ministry of Culture and Information reported that the newspaper's agenda was unchanged, that is “to explain political, national economic, cultural, and sports events and to systematically strengthen the consciousness of German citizens belonging to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.” According to the ministry, the purpose of the newspaper also included building on the tradition of cooperation between Czech and German workers, clarifying questions of international political relations, stimulating German interest in Czech and Slovak culture, and finally contributing to proletarian internationalism.Footnote 7 Czech historian Tomáš Staněk argues that the newspaper's name change to (Prager) Volkszeitung coincided with a period when the paper “began to dedicate more attention to some problems in the lives of the German national group (e.g., emigration, changes in the demographic characteristics of the minority) and to commentary on cultural events.”Footnote 8 These developments in (Prager) Volkszeitung presaged greater attention to minority groups in Czechoslovakia in the following years.
Older literature on the topic of the Prague Spring (1968) does not engage with the question of minorities. Several recent scholars of the postwar period and 1968, including David Gerlach, Eagle Glassheim, Matěj Spurný, Tomáš Staněk, and Kieran Williams, have looked more closely at the German minority but do not examine the role of social and cultural life in patterns of assimilation and national identification among Germans in Czechoslovakia. This article illuminates the German experience of the Prague Spring from the perspective of a national sociocultural organization, a perspective unlike that held by Czechs or the outside world.
In the end, the commitment that the Cultural Association of Citizens of Czechoslovakia of German Nationality (Kulturverband der deutschen Bürger der CSSR/Kulturní sdružení občanů německé národnosti ČSSR – KSONN) made to socialism overrode its commitment to the preservation of German culture. The Prague Spring of 1968 not only created new opportunities for Germans through changes in the legal code, but also set the ideological stage for the emergence of the Cultural Association, which was rooted in a particular brand of socialism. Although early normalization under Dubček facilitated the formal creation of the organization, the conditions of later normalization under Husák proved inauspicious for the preservation of its integrity. The Cultural Association, a promising beacon for the cultural rejuvenation of the German minority in the Czech lands during the reform period, became yet another victim of normalization and the Soviet-driven but Czechoslovak-executed attempt to squash radical political and cultural change in Czechoslovakia.
The origins of the Cultural Association fit into long-standing patterns of national identification among Germans in the Czech lands, and the creation of this organization demonstrates an ambivalent relationship toward assimilation. For a brief period in 1969, the Cultural Association brokered a different kind of assimilation with the Czechoslovak state for Germans who wanted to participate. This version of assimilation was not, as in the past, strict sociocultural assimilation or assimilation by means of identification with the state. Rather, progressive assimilation reflected the ideals of the Prague Spring and respected national minority rights while requiring allegiance to a reform socialist regime. In other words, it made room for the expression of German, culture, language, and education and permitted national associational life. The story of the Cultural Association's trajectory and German assimilation changed significantly after Husák's ascendancy, the purges of 1970, and the beginning of the later, more austere normalization period. Husák's normalization took away new liberties and that version of progressive assimilation. Strict Communist ideals and ideologues once again stood in their place. The period 1968–70 thus marked a narrow window in the history of Germans in the Czech lands when those who were steadfastly committed to German identification also professed allegiance to the Czechoslovak state. It was a moment of contradiction, but also one of compromise.
German Cultural and Associational Life in the Early Postwar Period
The Czechoslovak state expelled nearly three million native Germans from its territory between May 1945 and December 1946. When the expulsions ended, approximately a quarter million Germans remained behind in the Czech lands, or 8 percent of the prewar German population. Most of these Germans were so-called antifascists who possessed certificates of state/national reliability. Another group that remained behind comprised intermarried Czech-German families. Finally, the Czechoslovak state retained laborers, particularly experts and specialists, and their families as an essential part of the workforce. Aside from antifascists, the state subjected the remaining German population to its so-called dispersal campaign beginning in 1947, an initiative that aimed to remove Germans from the borderlands region and to deliberately scatter them throughout the interior in the name of state security interests and labor needs. The dispersal campaign also impacted the Germans’ ability to interact across different regions of the country. From the late 1940s through the mid-1960s, antifascists, laborers, and individuals in intermarried families participated in German cultural and associational life on the local scale. I define German cultural and associational life as formal or informal organizations or groups composed of German inhabitants who convened for the purposes of furthering German culture, language, or education. Antifascist organizations and cultural groups within labor unions existed in the early postwar period and had close ties to socialism. They would also both later contribute to the ideological and programmatic nature of the Cultural Association in the late 1960s.
Of the three groups of Germans—antifascists, intermarried, and laborers—who remained in Czechoslovakia in the postwar period, antifascists were the first to organize in any kind of structured way and to perform work on behalf of the German population. Although all Germans eventually needed to receive “certificates of reliability,” the state awarded the first parcel of such certificates to those grouped as antifascists in the early postwar months. Antifascists were also the first to receive temporary citizenship from District National Committees based on Presidential Decree No. 33 from 2 August 1945. To be grouped as an antifascist, one had to have “remained faithful to the Czechoslovak Republic, never committed offenses against the Czech and Slovak nation, and either actively participated in the struggle for its liberation or suffered under the Nazi or fascist terror.”Footnote 9 No central authority regulated the definition of this category, and many antifascists lost property in the process of acquiring antifascist certification. For this reason, beginning in 1947, most antifascists emigrated on “voluntary transports” to East Germany or elsewhere in the West. By 1949, only 6,080 Germans in the Czech lands, or no more than 6 percent of the total German population, could be grouped as antifascists.Footnote 10 Still, the Czechoslovak state targeted antifascists in its first postwar attempt to address the persistent German “problem” in the Czech lands. Methods of resolving this so-called problem had an impact on Germans’ territorially dispersed settlement pattern, the community's assimilative patterns, and cultural and associational life.
The Czechoslovak state first recognized German antifascist groups, Antifa, just weeks after the war ended. On 9 July 1945, three German Communists, Rudolf Appelet, Rudolf Dölling, and Bruno Köhler, submitted a proposal to the Borderlands Department of the Central Committee of the KSČ to request permission to pursue political activities in a “restricted framework” under the antifascist banner. The document argued for the “admission of German antifascists into certain political activities and, on the basis of the general situation, not in the public sphere but in a closed framework.” That “closed framework” was antifascist groups, which would facilitate political activities such as meetings and conferences; interactions with the government; and linguistic, cultural, and athletic clubs for members and their children. Antifa would admit members exclusively based on antifascist legitimation, and the organization would fall under the complete control and protection of state authorities. The authors of the proposal defended their interest and intentions quite simply: German antifascists needed a self-contained structure from which to advocate the specific needs of their community because their previous attempts to do so within the framework of Czech organizations had been insufficient.Footnote 11 The Interior Ministry signed Antifa into law on 24 August 1945, and the organization carried out its intended purposes until the end of 1951.Footnote 12 In practice, Antifa split its efforts between providing assistance and guidance to antifascists who wanted to stay in Czechoslovakia and, increasingly, to those who wanted to leave. Once authorities recognized in 1951 that Antifa’s activities had shifted from defending the legal rights of Germans to collective organizing, they dissolved the groups.
By this time, another cohort of Germans had already started to organize within the context of labor unions under the leadership of hardline Stalinist Josef Lenk. The labor union movement, including both the Revolutionary Trade Union Movement (Revoluční odborové hnutí—ROH) and Central Council of Trade Unions (Ústřední rada odborů—ÚRO), is important to the development of the Cultural Association in the late 1960s. German cultural groups within labor unions formed an integral part of the localized and somewhat fractured German cultural and associational life that existed in the Czech lands in the 1950s and early 1960s. These groups also constituted another stage in the development of German cultural and associational life. First, membership in these groups was not limited in scope as was the case with antifascist committees. Second, the first postwar German-language newspaper, Aufbau und Frieden, emerged from the labor union movement and, together with German involvement in labor unions, reinforced assimilative pressures, such as initiatives for Germans to adopt Czechoslovak state citizenship and even to learn the Czech language. Later iterations of the newspaper served as instrumental voices in the birth of the Cultural Association. Third, these groups espoused an agenda that, unlike Antifa, aligned with the state's goals for the German community. These groups, under the command of trained socialist ideologues, never purported to be ideologically neutral and professed strong socialist principles and goals. Their existence was not based on the notion of bolstering German culture in any particular way, but rather in making Czech notions of socialism more accessible to German people. Such an initiative required some compromises that bore significant consequences for the integrity of German national identity in the Czech lands.
German cultural groups within labor unions encountered several stumbling blocks in the late 1950s because of their strong socialist orientation and tendency to enforce sociocultural assimilation or assimilation by means of identification with the state. Many Germans were simply not interested in assimilating. By the end of the decade, only two or three cultural groups remained.Footnote 13 There was an attempt in the late 1950s to create a transregional center for directing cultural work among Germans, as well as an effort to connect with cultural groups in East Germany. The KSČ Party Secretariat, labor groups, and the leadership of educational institutions all turned down these initiatives to reinvigorate German cultural life. The new Constitution of 1960 was promising because it accorded “[a]ll citizens…equal rights and equal obligations” and guaranteed the “[e]quality of all citizens without regard to ethnicity or race.”Footnote 14 The document, in other words, gave minority rights to Czechoslovak citizens who qualified for them. Nevertheless, the Constitution failed to afford Germans any rights in the service of cultural development. By the mid-1960s, German cultural and associational life within the context of labor unions had reached a roadblock.
Changes Afoot in the Prague Spring
The accession of new First Secretary of the KSČ Alexander Dubček in early 1968 heralded key changes in Czechoslovak nationality policy and presaged important advances for the German community. Dubček indicated in discussion with other members of the Central Committee of the KSČ in late March that the basis of the equality of minorities was the equality of Czechs and Slovaks. Concerning the role of the Slovak National Council in the state, Dubček stated, “[I]t is a state of two equal nations.”Footnote 15 Equalizing Czechs and Slovaks was not a complete override of the Soviet system of nations and nationalities, which dictated one reigning nation. As Dubček announced a few weeks later in April, equalizing Czechs and Slovaks on the top meant the equalization of all other minorities, at least amongst each other on the bottom.Footnote 16
The seeds of change began for the German community with Dubček's Action Program, which the new first secretary delivered during the 1–5 April KSČ session. The Action Program was one of the first tangible products of the Prague Spring of 1968 and reflected the open, reformist spirit of political life. Most importantly for the German community, it recognized Germans as a minority next to Hungarians, Poles, and Ukrainians. “In order to strengthen the unity and solidarity of the national identity of all nationalities in Czechoslovakia—Hungarians, Poles, Germans, Ukrainians,” the Action Program stated, “it is necessary to draw up a statute governing the status and rights of the various nationalities, guaranteeing the possibility of their national life and development of their national individuality.” The Action Program also emphasized the need to guarantee the equality and participation of all nationalities in political, economic, and cultural life.Footnote 17 The Action Program thus equalized national minorities in Czechoslovakia at the bottom of the national hierarchy.
An article published in Rud é právo (Red Justice), the leading Czechoslovak Communist newspaper, on 25 April 1968 reported that the government was preparing a draft for political, economic, and cultural guarantees of equality for Hungarians, Poles, Ukrainians, and Germans. That draft was a Programmatic Declaration and was important to Germans for several reasons. First and foremost, it provided the final impetus for collaboration between the state and the German minority by recognizing Germans as a nationality. The Declaration announced that the Czech government, together with the Slovak National Council, was preparing “legal and other guarantees for the political, economic, and cultural equality of Hungarians, Poles, Ukrainians, and Germans, to ensure proportionally to the number and settlements such status and rights of individual nationalities that guarantees them a full national life and the development of national personality.”Footnote 18 The publication of the Action Program and the Programmatic Declaration roused many in the German community and galvanized a dialog about the necessity of founding a German cultural organization.
Leaders in the German community convened an assembly meeting in Sokolov, the district with the largest number of Germans, in April 1968 to solidify concrete efforts to create a German cultural organization.Footnote 19 There, they announced a plan to create subsidiary preparatory committees for the other cities and towns in districts that had sizeable German populations. The main goal of these bodies would be to conduct public meetings.Footnote 20 In May 1968, Volkszeitung published a conversation between Heribert Panster, the only German Member of Parliament at the time and a leading proponent of the German cultural organization, and Miloslav Vačik and Vladimír Šimok, two representatives of the Central Committee of the National Front. The conversation concerned the first steps that the German community would need to take to create a cultural organization. Panster noted, first and foremost, “In the Action Program, the Germans of the ČSSR are spoken of as a recognized nationality.” He further encouraged the German community to establish an organization that would provide for the needs of Germans in the spirit of the Action Program. Vačik suggested looking to the cultural organizations of other national groups living in Czechoslovakia as precedent: “I think that we can rely on some experiences that we already have with the organizations belonging to the National Front of the Hungarians—Csemadok [Csehszlovákiai Magyar Dolgozók Kultúregyesülete—Czechoslovak Hungarian Workers' Cultural Association], the Poles—PZKO [Polski Związek Kulturalno-Oświatowy—Polish Cultural and Education Union], and the Ukrainians—KSUP [Kulturní svaz ukrajinských pracujících—Cultural Union of Ukrainian Workers].”Footnote 21 Vačik explained that these organizations were necessarily voluntary and suggested that the German cultural organization follow in that tradition. Finally, he encouraged leading figures in the German community, mentioning both Panster and the Volkszeitung collective, to take the lead in the creation of preparatory committees for the cultural organization.Footnote 22
Thereafter, Germans present at an organizational meeting in Prague on 22 June elected a Central Preparatory Committee; Panster became the chairman, and fifteen other men and women hailing from districts across the country won seats in the body. In addition, those present at the meeting voted to formally adjoin Prager Volkszeitung’s editorial board to the Central Preparatory Committee as a collective member. The committee drafted a Program Statement from the Programmatic Declaration, therein reestablishing its commitment to the “existing socialist social order” and to the preservation of German national character.Footnote 23 Participating members planned for the creation of local and regional preparatory committees that would be necessary to educate local populations on the importance of the organization. The Central Preparatory Committee explained: “Deep was the rift created by Nazi crimes and their flock between the German and Czech populations of our country. That [this rift] began to close gradually is due more to the confidence that has grown slowly in the years of cooperation between the two populations, and less so the official nationality policy. The legacy of the past has led to the fact that the Germans in the ČSSR, more than the remaining national groups, were exposed to the faults of this policy.”Footnote 24 The Preparatory Committee was keenly aware of the past legacy of some Germans in Czechoslovakia and feared that that past might interfere with their plans for the future. The committee intended to combat any “incomprehension” that it encountered with a campaign to recruit each and every German to participate in the creation and development of the cultural organization.Footnote 25
Initially, progress in building the German cultural organization was slow. As of November 1968, “There were so far 30 meetings with 2,000 participants, where 26 local preparatory committees and 66 delegates were elected.” The Central Preparatory Committee acknowledged that it still encountered many difficulties, including lack of participation among locals. Some local governments supported the organization's efforts, but the committee recognized that the resistance of others had to be overcome to realize its goals. Nevertheless, the committee and its local adjutants continued to cultivate relationships with other cultural organizations, public education committees, the Socialist Academy, trade unions, and so on, connections that “can, as soon as it exists, come in handy to the association” in its pursuit of cultural activity.Footnote 26
The local and Central Preparatory committees that had begun meeting in May 1968 remained cognizant of the need to impress the link between the German community and socialism upon the Czechoslovak state to gain proper recognition for the organization. In a statement published in a November 1968 issue of Prager Volkszeitung, the Central Preparatory Committee “unanimously declared that it will continue further work in this spirit—in the spirit of the post-January policies of the party—in the spirit of its Action Program, the government statement, and the Constitution for the unity of the entire people, for friendship between nations, against each anti-socialist and revanchist influence.”Footnote 27 Other preparatory committees argued that the cultural organization “stands clearly and unreservedly on the grounds of the socialist social order, and wants to actively enter its further development.” The committees envisioned that respect and tolerance for other national groups, as well as the development of national individuality, would lead not to segregation but to the participation of all nationalities in society.Footnote 28 The development of the German cultural organization as one that would further the socialist cause, not hamper it, was essential. Moreover, these Germans defined the kind of socialism that they stood behind. “Our citizens approve of the new policy that gives our socialism a human face. Their hopes are not in vain. The social and cultural life of the Germans of this country gained a new impetus. The rights, which the new constitutional law included, will be a further incentive probably for the near future.”Footnote 29 The German cultural organization would, thereby, represent “socialism with a human face,” not hardline Communism, and stand as a product of the reformist spirit of the Prague Spring of the year 1968. In this way, the organization took a step away from the way Josef Lenk and others had structured German cultural life in the 1950s and early 1960s.
The Cultural Association's emergence was part of a general revitalization of voluntary life during the Prague Spring, and it was a mass organization that was part of the National Front. The Front, in turn, functioned as the KSČ’s electoral façade, wielding control of all social and political activity on behalf of the party. The Cultural Association participated in the National Front alongside other Czech organizations, but it stood as one of a few organizations, like the Polish cultural organization, that focused on the rights and freedoms of a national minority group.Footnote 30 The obligation of joining the National Front, the editors of Volkszeitung pointed out, served to remove “reservations and misunderstandings” about the organization's relationship to the regime from the beginning. In other words, membership lent it legitimacy. The newspaper encouraged other media outlets to join it in explaining to the public that the cultural organization originated from the tenets of the Action Program, especially its assurance of the development of national life, and that this would serve as a mechanism for ensuring the active participation of Germans in socialist Czechoslovakia.Footnote 31 Vačik concurred, articulating that one benefit of the cultural organization would be the cooperation of all citizens and the strengthening of internationalism.Footnote 32 Panster followed up by publishing a statement in Volkszeitung “to assure the Central Committee of the National Front that the population of German nationality that is presently taking shape as an outline of the National Front will be fully valid members of our socialist society.”Footnote 33 Panster also demanded that Germans, as equal citizens contributing to socialist Czechoslovakia, be treated as equals in all respects, including their desire to form a cultural organization.
The Impact of Early Normalization: German Cultural Work after the Warsaw Pact Invasion
The August 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia brought forth a potential threat to the entire German venture of creating a cultural organization. Instead, the invasion created an opportunity for the promulgation of a government law, which allowed for the celebration of ethnic identity and preserved the integrity of the German endeavor. On the night of 20 August, armies from four Warsaw Pact countries—the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Poland, and Hungary— invaded Czechoslovakia after Soviet trust in Dubček waned and he violated a series of unwritten Soviet rules of conduct. The invasion was not, however, a formal “occupation,” and the Soviets informed Czech and Slovak conservatives, who had signaled their willingness to take control and fulfill Dubček's empty promises, of the arrival of troops. The Soviets arrested Dubček and Prime Minister Oldřich Černík and brought them to Moscow for several days of interrogations. Meanwhile, President Ludvík Svoboda and Slovak politician Gustáv Húsak traveled to Moscow to secure their release and to facilitate the signing of a mutually acceptable fifteen-point document, the “Moscow Protocol,” which spelled out the conditions of normalization. “As they prepared to return to Prague,” political scientist Kieran Williams writes, “the exhausted Czechoslovak leaders could at least promise that normalization would have a human face.”Footnote 34 As such, that meant that Dubček would remain in power, at least for the time being.
Czechs and Slovaks enjoyed a certain degree of liberty during the period of Dubček's normalization, which the Slovak leader implemented neither immediately nor forcibly. Normalization meant the restoration of normal political life; indirect, oligarchic governance; and relaxed censorship laws. Normalization under Dubček also meant the election of a new Central Committee that was split between reformists and conservatives, whose politics began to create waves among students, workers, and the intelligentsia. Dubček defined normalization more by what it was not than what it was; it was more of a lack than a presence. Ultimately, neither the August invasion nor the period of Dubček's normalization proved to be critical moments in the history of the German cultural organization because neither disrupted its course. While the Prague Spring had decisively ended, the lingering liberal and open spirit that Dubček tried to preserve gave Germans a window to continue making preparations for their cultural organization. In addition, the reform spirit left open the possibility of progressive assimilation among Germans.
One monumental government ruling, in particular, helped to further the German cause considerably. Constitutional law No. 144 passed on 27 October 1968 recognized Germans as an independent ethnocultural entity and state-forming subject. Specifically, the law acknowledged that while the Constitution named the Hungarian, Polish, and Ukrainian minorities as “nationalities” and accorded them “the capabilities and resources to [provide] education in the mother tongue and cultural development,” it had excluded the Germans. Thus, law No. 144 ruled that “[t]he principle contained in Article 25 of the Constitution extended the proposed draft of the constitutional law to members of German nationality.”Footnote 35 Even though law No. 144 now included Germans among the “nationalities” of Czechoslovakia, one prominent ethnic group, the Roma, never entered the equation. Nevertheless, this ruling was progressive not only in expanding the definition of who counted as a “nationality,” but also in its definition of the term “nationality.” To this end, it identified nationality in both individual and group, or total, terms. “Such a conception of nationality status,” the law said, “leads to a fuller and deeper ensuring of civil rights and freedoms of members of nationalities and forms as well effective guarantees for their implementation and observance.”Footnote 36 Finally, law No. 144 spelled out specific rights and privileges accorded to those included as “nationalities,” in this case Germans, Hungarians, Poles, and Ukrainians. In particular, it provided “the right to education in their language; the right to all-around cultural development; the right to use their language in official communications in areas inhabited by the respective nationalities; the right to band together in a national cultural social organization; and the right to the press and information in their own language.”Footnote 37 The conferral of these rights honored Soviet nationality policy, which placed all groups besides the leading one(s) in a subordinate but equal position. All the elements of law No. 144 were clearly boons to the German community and its fight for self-preservation. The right to congregate in a national cultural social organization was the green light that they needed to move forward with their plans.
The media had much to say about these recent developments. Rudé pravo, among others, reported that Minister of Justice Dr. Bohulav Kučera maintained that the resolution of “the nationality question includes the need to respect the definite peculiarities inherent in the fact that they enshrined not only individual rights of citizens but rights of nationalities as a whole.”Footnote 38 The KSČ regarded these collective rights as relics of interwar minority rights policies and aimed to resurrect them in that spirit. Husák led a subcommittee on constitutional law and acknowledged the need for some improvement in the position and rights of national minorities. Political scientist Galia Golan argues that Husák “defended these rights against infringements by the nine-tenths Czech-Slovak majority of the country.”Footnote 39 Ultimately, most of rights enshrined in law No. 144 were only realized at the regional and local levels, but they would still become key elements of the German cultural organization's agenda.
These minority rights were also, in essence, the cultural-linguistic elements of Soviet nationality policy, whose formula “nationalist in form, socialist in content” dictated that socialist meaning could be inscribed in all forms of minority languages, local customs and traditions, and ways of life.Footnote 40 In other words, political scientist Dmitry Gorenburg argues, the Soviets pursued a multifaceted nationality policy that enacted assimilationist policies while reifying ethnic identities.Footnote 41 Law No. 144 represents Czechoslovakia's interpretation of Soviet policy in its institution of national rights within the framework of assimilationist policy.
A Programmatic Declaration published in Prager Volkszeitung in early November 1968 set forth the German cultural organization's administrative and strategic goals within the context of its commitment to reform socialism. The Declaration began by addressing the fact that the cultural needs of the German inhabitants of Czechoslovakia remained unmet for two reasons. First, “Too many things were stamped as separatist or nationalist in advance.” One of the main tasks of the German cultural organization, the Declaration stated, would be “its work in the spirit of freedom and tolerance…against the influence of nationalism and revenge-seeking, in the spirit of the program and the idea of democratic and humanistic socialism, respect for the constitutional rights and obligations of all citizens and to represent together with them in the framework of the National Front, to which it is committed.”Footnote 42 Second, Germans in Czechoslovakia were dispersed throughout the territory of the country unlike the other national minorities. They, more than any other minority group, therefore needed an umbrella organization under which to assemble. The Declaration outlined eight main objectives to meet German cultural needs and wishes, which included, among other things, access to media and education in the German language; the revival of amateur theater; cooperation with trade unions and other social organizations; and opportunities for exposure to Czech and Slovak culture. It also emphasized that the development of German culture would not amount to the segregation of Germans from other nationalities. Rather, the Declaration addressed the issue of separatism by maintaining that German cultural life would occur in agreement with the policies of proletarian internationalism.Footnote 43 The leaders of the cultural organization thus described its mission in the spirit of reform socialism. Nowhere here did they envisage an insular German community that maintained strong nationalist or separatist persuasions. Instead, theirs was a minority group that was trying to preserve the last vestiges of its legacy and its culture but was also willing to assimilate to a progressive socialist state.
Prager Volkszeitung was instrumental in bolstering the German cultural organization not only by publishing articles for public consumption, but also by acting as a key player organizationally and structurally. Josef Horák, Cultural Inspector and Secretary of the Commission for Work among German Citizens at the District National Committee in Sokolov, credited Prager Volkszeitung with stirring initial interest among the German populace in a cultural organization.Footnote 44 In the end, however, Horák's appeals for a true grassroots organization fell short, and the initiative did not come from below, but rather from higher-ranking members of the German community.
Several of those individuals who played critical roles in the establishment of the cultural organization came from Prager Volkszeitung’s editorial board. Fritz Schalek, who assumed the duties of chief editor after Šimonek fled in the wake of the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968, and his fellow editors “stood on the side of the reformers of the Communist party during the Prague Spring” and served as representatives on the board of the cultural organization upon its founding in 1969.Footnote 45 Gretl Bauer, another individual involved in the early phases of the German cultural organization but not connected to Prager Volkszeitung, credited the newspaper and its editorial board as being critical elements in the organization's establishment. “I was one of those who helped establish the Kulturverband,” she said in 2014, “and Prager Volkszeitung helped us very much … We got reports into it. We tried to get people across trade unions who simply dared to say, ‘I am German.’ That was very hard then, but we managed it in 68 and…Kulturverband was like a child of Prague Spring.”Footnote 46 The newspaper, Bauer maintained, helped bring people together. The mobilization and consolidation of the German community was an important task, as Germans remained dispersed throughout the Czech lands.
Another individual who helped propel the creation of the cultural organization was Heribert Panster. A forester from Kraslice in the Sokolov district, Panster was first elected to the National Assembly as a representative of the KSČ for the West Bohemia region in 1968. Panster became involved in the creation of the cultural organization at the levels of both high politics and the grassroots, advocating on behalf of the German community in the National Assembly and attending local meetings in his home district, Sokolov. Ultimately, Panster used his position to try to bring the German community together.
In the months leading up to the cultural organization's founding congress, readers continued to send submissions in to Prager Volkszeitung to voice their opinions about the organization's structure and its activities. The newspaper started a new section specifically dedicated to this topic called “Opinions on the Cultural Association.” The discussions in this particular column focused on what role the organization would play in life and society. Some readers pondered attendance numbers at meetings and questioned why participation lagged among Germans. Low attendance numbers demonstrated low interest, thus reflecting the fact that the cultural organization was not only voluntary, but also one in which many Germans clearly chose not to participate.
The most impassioned submissions in the “Opinions on the Cultural Association” column focused on the colliding spheres of education, the German language, and German youth. Many aptly viewed access to education in the German language through the lens of assimilation or, conversely, the preservation of German culture. Entries frequently lamented the fact that German youth lacked enthusiasm or even interest in learning German. One submission from Loučná complained, “More often you experience it, unfortunately, that the children of Germans decided to reject their mother tongue, yes they even deny it. Such youth cannot have any interest in German culture.”Footnote 47 Assimilative trends were nearly ubiquitous among members of the younger generation of Germans because they attended Czech schools and learned the language. Suggestions for bolstering educational opportunities in the German language included the influence of the parents, schooling, and special summer camps. Sociocultural assimilation among members of the younger generation was, of course, not a new phenomenon in the 1960s. The older generation nevertheless viewed the Cultural Association as a favorable opportunity to revive German culture and language among youth.
A Different Kind of Normalization: The Founding and Quashing of the Cultural Association
The long-anticipated establishment of the Cultural Association officially took place on 25 April 1969. On 19 May, the organization submitted its application to become a member of the National Front. The application addressed many important issues. First, the Cultural Association made it clear that its members espoused socialism. The application stated, “Our cultural organization stands unequivocally and without reservation on the ground of the existing socialist social order, whose further development it wants to actively pursue.”Footnote 48 This socialist order, the Cultural Association claimed, best served the interests of the free cultural lives of German citizens and offered the best opportunity for the preservation of German national identity. At the same time, it declared that the development of Germans’ national identity did not amount to a nationalist or separatist act. Rather, the Cultural Association argued that respect for the peculiarities of each national group would lead to greater tolerance and understanding.
Second, the application to the National Front clarified the purpose of the Cultural Association. The goal of the organization, it stated, was “to strengthen good relations among all citizens of the ČSSR and to satisfy the cultural needs of German citizens of the ČSSR.”Footnote 49 To this end, the Cultural Association set out to satisfy several objectives. In the long term, it sought to help Germans explore their own cultural heritage and contemporary socialist society, as well as the cultural traditions of Czechs and Slovaks. In addition, it aimed to promote amateur theater groups and dancing and singing circles and to create a professional theater ensemble that would tour northern and western Bohemian stages and other areas of the Czech lands where Germans lived. Further, the Cultural Association sought control over German language media and intended to promote German-language publishing, libraries, and schooling. It also prepared for cooperation with the ROH, the Socialist Academy, and other social and scientific organizations to organize lectures, courses, circles, and meetings in the German language in the spirit of humanism and socialism.Footnote 50
Finally, the Cultural Association's application detailed its organizational structure. The organization, unlike previous German cultural endeavors, was highly centralized. The leadership included a central body composed of twenty-five elected members; a Presidium, including a chairman, two vice chairmen, a secretary, a treasurer, and two other members; and a three-member audit committee. The central leadership elected a congress of delegates from local and area groups, which met once every two years. Local organizations would exist in places where there were at least ten members, and each local group had its own three-member committee that maintained connections with the Presidium and organized the group's activities. District or area groups could be established where there were representatives from at least ten local groups.Footnote 51
Despite much anticipation, the founding congress of the Cultural Association, which took place in Prague on 14 June 1969, was rather anticlimactic because the organization did not receive much outside recognition. One hundred and thirty of 135 invited delegates attended the meeting, including all twenty-five members of the central leadership. Of the attendees, approximately 21 percent were laborers, 38 percent were staffers and members of the intelligentsia, and 41 percent were pensioners. Of the twenty-five members of the central leadership, fourteen were members of the KSČ, while the remainder was not politically organized. Further present were twenty-eight visiting guests, mostly German labor functionaries, and representatives from fifteen different organizations and institutions including Hungarian, Polish, and Ukrainian cultural associations. Secretary-elect Gerhard Hünigen's evaluation of the congress nonetheless lamented that both the Central Committee of the KSČ and its executive committee turned down invitations to attend.Footnote 52
Newspaper coverage of the event, Hünigen reported, was likewise lacking, but Prager Volkszeitung’s presence could not go unnoticed. The weekly had, after all, five representatives in the central leadership including Hünigen, Walter Piverka, Fritz Schalek, Artur Ulbrich, and Emil Peuker; Hünigen, Piverka, and Schalek were also members of the Presidium. Prager Volkszeitung, of course, also reported on the event, indicating “[t]he special atmosphere of this meeting was probably due to the fact that, for the first time in decades, such a body could meet. Some delegates considered this event ‘as the biggest day’ since 1945.”Footnote 53 Chairman-elect Hans Nygrin, a language teacher from Josefov Dolů in the Jablonec district, spoke to the audience about the importance of the German community's role as a mediator of cultural life throughout the entire German-speaking world, in both the East and the West.
Heribert Panster, Chairman of the Central Preparatory Committee, delivered the keynote address. Panster thanked the Preparatory Committee for its hard work in the recent months but also warned of the dissenting German voices of those who did not support the Cultural Association. Panster also challenged assimilationist trends, pointing out that assimilation was not a uniquely German struggle. Further, Panster professed the Cultural Association's allegiance to the socialist system and affirmed that its activities would “contribute mainly to the fact that people feel at home in the country in which they were born, in which they grew up.” In conclusion, he reiterated many of the points elaborated in the Cultural Association's application to the National Front, emphasizing sociocultural initiatives.Footnote 54
The actual founding of the Cultural Association did not eliminate all barriers in the process of forming local groups, but early participation numbers and activity offered initial promise. At the time of the founding congress in June 1969, there were a total of fifty-eight local organizations, with Liberec (11), Děčín (10), and Sokolov (8) producing the highest number per district.Footnote 55 By December 1969, there were seventy-two local organizations and altogether 4,961 persons, or approximately 6.8 percent of the adult German population in the Czech lands. The North Bohemia region boasted a total of forty-seven local organizations of the Cultural Association with 4,141 members, while the West Bohemia region had fifteen local organizations with 603 members.Footnote 56 Specifically, there were eight organizations in Sokolov with 448 members and five in Karlovy Vary with 155 members.Footnote 57 Comparing these numbers to the census of 1970 shows how meager participation numbers really were. This census recorded a total of 21,664 Germans in the West Bohemia region with 8,318 in Sokolov and 6,039 in Karlovy Vary.Footnote 58 The percentage of Germans participating in the Cultural Association was thus quite small: Sokolov, 5 percent and Karlovy Vary, 2.5 percent.
The organization encountered other problems besides membership and participation. For one, financial troubles plagued the Cultural Association, which impeded its progress. In particular, the headquarters was unable to launch constituent meetings in all targeted locations in the first year, and local preparatory committees were left without further instructions. The Cultural Association's development also proceeded slowly in places where National Committees and committees of the National Front blocked the creation of organizations because they had yet to be informed of the organization's lawful status. Finally, distrust of the Cultural Association among Czech inhabitants hindered growth in some places. A report that the Cultural Association's Presidium submitted to the Central Committee of the National Front in January 1970 indicated, “Print, radio, and television communicated the founding of our congress only slightly and in scant news. The Czechoslovak public is still today only meagerly informed about our union,” which contributed to “misunderstandings and doubts.”Footnote 59 The reliability of these reports is not clear, but violent encounters between Czechs and Germans through the mid-1950s leave open the possibility that “misunderstanding and doubts” on behalf of the Czech population may have been due to lack of information or residual nationalist tensions.Footnote 60
Despite these problems, the Cultural Association moved forward and focused primarily on the education of children of German nationality, amateur artistic activities, and coordinating with National Committees, organs of the National Front, cultural-educational institutions, and social organizations. The Cultural Association, however, continued to suffer from a lack of involvement of German youth.Footnote 61 Members of the organization like Bauer nevertheless appreciated its existence, and she once again credited Prager Volkszeitung with the preparatory committees’ success in establishing local chapters. “Without those papers,” she said, “it probably wouldn't have worked for us and here we could always…give a newspaper, introduce those people there how it could be, and when it did last, Kulturverband was like some reservoir, simply, of our identity.”Footnote 62 Prager Volkszeitung stood behind the Cultural Association by addressing the nationality problem in print. An analysis carried out by the Basic Organization of the KSČ revealed that the majority of its articles focused on the nationality problem during this period.Footnote 63
The Cultural Association and Prager Volkszeitung soon faced even larger problems. The transition of political power from Dubček to Husák and the subsequent shift in the tone of normalization threatened the operation of both German organizations. Although many believed that Dubček would remain in power and reform would slowly continue, Jan Palach's self-immolation in January 1969 and public outcries against normalization in the spring proved sufficient to displace Dubček in favor of Soviet-sponsored Husák. Unlike his predecessor, Husák pledged full commitment to normalization and set out to wipe clear the Prague Spring and its residue and replace them with a more appropriate, but as yet undetermined, set of values. Husák's normalization, or a new version of Communism that was decidedly rid of reformist influence, had already hit most sectors of Czechoslovak society in the months prior to the establishment of the Cultural Association. Husák's purges, which began in the summer of 1969, specifically targeted reformists and the media with the goal of “set[ting] the path toward normalization, lining it with the detritus of the Prague Spring, and along the way refram[ing] the paradigmatic ‘us-versus-them’ by which citizens defined their relationship to the state.” It was during these months that the state shuttered many newspapers, journals, and magazines, and those that remained afloat underwent “drastic personnel changes, particularly among editorial staff.”Footnote 64
Although the government did not target the Cultural Association and Prager Volkszeitung for overhaul in the summer of 1969, both German organizations felt the impact of normalization during late 1969 and 1970. It was at this late stage of the purges that state organs ousted the Cultural Association's leadership and the newspaper's editorial board in favor of older Communists who supported a clearer “‘Marxist-Leninist stance,’ more ‘moderate class partisanship,’ and ‘closer cooperation with the GDR,’” the preferred German neighbor from the Czech perspective.Footnote 65 Even though the leaders of the Cultural Association had professed their aversion to nationalism and separatism, an investigation by the National Front revealed otherwise. The National Front's assessment of Prager Volkszeitung’s editorial board and the Cultural Association's central leadership made no uncertain note of the alleged nationalistic and right-wing orientation of both groups. “All necessary preparations to create the organization, the meeting campaign, materials, and so on,” the report read, “were marked by a distinct nationalistic spirit.” The report indicated the presence of other so-called hostile elements in the Cultural Association as well. “Strong nationalism, political liberalism, a permanent retreat from the class position, right-wing, even extreme, tendencies, chauvinism and sometimes even hostile tendencies against our system were generally manifest from the first day in all the activities of the organization.”Footnote 66 The National Front also cited the Cultural Association and Prager Volkszeitung for lack of true engagement with political activity, despite claims to the contrary. Examples of alleged apoliticism included the Cultural Association's sociable—not political— celebrations of the one hundredth anniversary of Lenin's birth in Karlovy Vary, Nejdek, and elsewhere. Finally, the National Front report faulted Germans for lagging participation in their own Cultural Association when, it reflected, “The fundamental goal of the activities of the organization was the attempt to create from the Cultural Association the only political representation of all Germans living in the ČSSR.” This, the National Front judged, it was clearly failing to do.Footnote 67
The National Front concluded its report by stating that the Cultural Association was unviable in its current state. It determined to take “concrete action,” which included the recruitment of so-called healthy forces, namely individuals committed to Marxism-Leninism who would strengthen new cadres of loyal German citizens and reconstruct the Cultural Association along those lines. All of this amounted to political consolidation, or “the processing of political analysis of past activities, the rejection and distancing from formerly received incorrect outlooks, resolutions and directives, the deployment of the fight against the right, particularly the exposure and isolation of inspirators and bearers of the right-wing.”Footnote 68 Germans harboring such right-wing tendencies allegedly disseminated them “orally at meetings.” A report from the National Front cited Piverka, Hünigen, and Nygrin as propagators of right-wing ideas and “concluded that there must be a swift and severe intervention since the Association does not fulfill its function as a social-cultural organization—[as a] member of the National Front.”Footnote 69 Despite the fact that none of these allegations had any bearing in reality, the National Front announced its intention to conduct a cleansing of the central leadership of the Cultural Association and its Presidium and to establish a new leadership, including the positions of chairman and secretary, without delay.
Personnel investigations of the leadership of both the Cultural Association and Prager Volkszeitung thus began. State organs removed Presidium member Piverka not only from the Cultural Association, but also from the Czech National Council. Josef Pötzl, KSČ Member of Parliament from Karlovy Vary, replaced Hünigen as the organization's secretary, and Panster became chairman. Of the original seven members of the Cultural Association's Presidium, only Gretl Bauer and Panster remained. Josef Altrichter, Alfred Bienart, Rudolf Herkommer, Josef Lenk, and Josef Pötzl now occupied seats on the Presidium; most of them had already been members of the twenty-five-member central leadership.
The Central Committee of the National Front welcomed the Cultural Association's new leadership, including both the Presidium and the central leadership, at two separate meetings at the Hotel Belvedere in Prague on 19 November 1970. The National Front promised to help the Cultural Association in its “development of cultural work with…citizens of German nationality living in our state since this is the cardinal mission of your organization.” The aim of cultural work, the National Front articulated, was to make German citizens as happy as all other citizens in “our beautiful homeland.” The National Front wished the Cultural Association success in its further work, but also warned that it “will be in no way light; on the contrary, it will require great effort and energy of each of your members, particularly functionaries.”Footnote 70
Changes were afoot at Prager Volkszeitung as well. The Basic Organization of the KSČ offered an overall positive review of Fritz Schalek, stating that he “acted deliberately and realistically in the troubled months of 1968/69. His work positives far outweigh some errors, which he committed and have been rightly criticized (editorial “Není cesty zpět” [There is no way back]). Comrade Schalek today has the full trust of the editorial collective.”Footnote 71 In the end, even Schalek's good standing and long-term membership in the KSČ did not guarantee his survival during the purges of 1970. Hardline Stalinist Josef Lenk returned to the forefront of the German community to replace Schalek as Prager Volkszeitung’s chief editor. Meanwhile, four other editors, including Karel Forster, Alžběta Rohanová, Petr Grimm, and Anneta Burgerová, emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1968. The editorial board criticized Forster in the fall of 1968 for his overemphasis of the role of the Social Democratic Party in Germany and commentary about the resolution of the so-called Czechoslovak crisis. Forster voluntarily left the country for West Germany with his entire family in October 1968 without the knowledge of the editorial board. The KSČ subsequently expelled him from the party in December 1968. The party also excluded Petr Grimm in November 1968 when it was clear that he would never return to Czechoslovakia from a vacation in Switzerland. Rohanová and Burgerová likewise never returned from vacations with their husbands in France and West Germany, respectively.Footnote 72 Once they had fled the border, they presumably did not—and could not—look back.
Conclusion
The period 1968–70 marked a formative moment for understanding the role of national identity in Czechoslovakia. National identity was a key piece of the country's civic structure because it determined the hierarchy of relations among national groups. It was during this period that Slovaks gained parity with Czechs at the top, and Germans with Hungarians, Poles, and Ukrainians at the bottom. While the supreme Soviets were willing to preserve national distinctions within their sphere of influence, the Czechoslovak government sought to assimilate its minority populations into the Czech and Slovak fold. This would, theoretically, lead to an equalization of all peoples. Yet minority groups, including Germans, were unwilling to give up their national peculiarities and instead demanded special rights, which guaranteed their preservation. The origins of the German Cultural Association fit into the trend of resisting assimilation. While its founding leaders professed allegiance to socialism, they had a particular kind of socialism in mind, namely that reflected in the government's initiatives around the time of the Prague Spring. Reform socialism was conducive to progressive assimilation, a form of assimilation that allowed its adherents to make some concessions to assimilative pressures while retaining a minority identity.
Ultimately, the birth of the Cultural Association and the emergence of progressive assimilation within the context of reform socialism represent a positive outcome for a remnant population such as the Czech German minority that remained behind in the wake of a forced population transfer. Members of populations that remain behind are, as documented, unlikely to resist forced assimilation, especially if the state's goal is explicitly to assimilate them. However, if some members of that population can resist these pressures, they are likely to do so within the context of a national cultural association like the German Cultural Association. Around the time of the Prague Spring, individuals who still retained German national identification made some concessions to assimilative pressures, such as allegiance to the reform socialist regime, while preserving national particularities. Notably, the majority of Germans who succeeded in sustaining German national identification through this period, including the leadership of the Cultural Association, were members of the older generation. Many members of the younger generation had already succumbed to the pressures of assimilation, especially in the context of the educational system. This generational divide in the German community is another trend that is characteristic of populations that remain behind in the wake of forced population transfers.
Even though generational differences threatened the cohesion of the German community, they did not endanger the stability of its national cultural project. Instead, it was the German Cultural Association's dependence on the state that rendered the organization untenable. The German community found support and even constitutional sanction for its project during the period of the Prague Spring and Dubček's normalization, but the Cultural Association's aspirations to revive the German community ultimately floundered under Husák's brand of normalization. The fact that the Cultural Association fell under the purview of the National Front meant that it was not autonomous from an assimilating state and it could not, therefore, sustain German national life and identity. National cultural associations cannot, in general, preserve the national life and identities of remnant populations if they are not independent from the state. Following the purges, Prager Volkszeitung’s publications and the Cultural Association's activities trended toward the banal. Both had become victims of normalization, and the last remaining hopes for the revival of the German community as the Cultural Association's original leadership had envisioned disappeared. The German commitment to socialism, a tradition that spanned the entire postwar period, ultimately proved an insufficient bulwark against the dynamic misgivings of the Czechoslovak Communist leadership under Husák. The new leadership of the Cultural Association, however, did not see its accession to power as a negative consequence of Husák's normalization at all, but rather as an opportunity to demonstrate the German community's allegiance to socialism and the socialist regime.
