Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Forehall (University of Glasgow)
This paper is a part of a larger project on the relationship between group identity and ideology. The main aim of the project is to demonstrate the contextual relationship between ethnicity and political preferences. This paper focuses on the Czech Germans in Czechoslovakia during the interwar period. It demonstrates how Czech Germans supported liberal democratic principles in the context of being an ethnic minority in a multinational state. These preferences were, however, altered by international circumstances. During the first Czechoslovak Republic, Czech Germans had a parallel party system, spanning from the left-wing Social Democratic party, to right-wing Christian-Social and Farmer's parties on the center right, and to nationalist parties on the right-wing fringe. While Czech Germans remained locked in the Czechoslovak state by virtue of the Versailles system, vast majority of their representatives engaged in liberal democratic practices seeking effective representation of and rights for the German-speaking population. However, the rise of Nazism in Germany with its pan-Germanic aspirations altered the international balance of power, increasing the potential for German irredentism. In this context, a large proportion of the German-speaking population of Czechoslovakia turn to radical ethno-national representatives seeking the breakup of the state.
