Changing Places: Society, Culture, and Territory in the Saxon-Bohemian Borderlands, 1870-1946

Introduction

Contents Preface ix Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 chapter 1 Birth of a Borderland 17 chapter 2 A Region on the Move: Labor Migration and the Rethinking of Space, 1870–1914 33 chapter 3 “Every reason to be on their guard!” German Nationalism across the Frontier, 1880–1914 57 chapter 4 What’s in a State? Citizens, Sovereignty, and Territory in the Great War, 1914–19 81 chapter 5 The Ties That Bind: Economic Mobility, Economic Crisis, and Geographies of Instability, 1919–29 112 chapter 6 Connecting People to Places: Foreigners and Citizens in Frontier Society, 1919–32 131 chapter 7 Borderlands in Crisis, 1929–33 158 chapter 8 “No border is eternal”: The Road to Dissolution, 1933–38 181 Epilogue: Occupation, Expulsion, and Resurrection 202 Notes 213 Selected Bibliography 253 Index 265 viii Preface I ‹rst encountered the Saxon-Bohemian borderlands as a Fulbright fellow sent to Chemnitz, shortly after it ceased to be called Karl-Marx-Stadt. People in the United States and even the host family that collected me at the Chemnitz train station asked me what on earth I was doing there. Surely, they suggested, there were better places to be. But in retrospect, few places were more interesting at the time. Soon after my arrival, I joined some friends on a trip to the Czech Republic. It was Tag der Deutschen Einheit (German Unity Day), the new holiday to celebrate the 1990 uni‹cation. Stores in Germany were closed, and we joined a long line of cars—Trabis, Wartburgs, and Westautos—to do some discount shopping across the border. I was in Chemnitz to work on a project unrelated to the fall of communism , to Bohemia, or to borderlands. Yet as I dug around in libraries and archives, I found Bohemians everywhere. When I read historians’ accounts of Saxon history, the Bohemians vanished. I began to have a sense that there was a story here that no one was telling. This place that was considered the back of beyond by many people in the 1990s—West Germans, the Fulbright of‹ce, academics—had played a vibrant part in the modern Central European story. I quickly learned that people crossing the border to shop, work, and hike were not a peculiarly postcommunist phenomenon . Rather, they were reviving a pattern of frontier life that had ›ourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, only to vanish from of‹cial historical memory after World War II. The pages that follow aim to restore some part of that story and to show that Saxons’ and Bohemians’ impulse to explore one another’s towns, hiking trails, shops, and museums is but the continuation of a long European borderland tradition. This project that began when I ‹rst alighted in the Chemnitz train station has culminated as a book because of the generosity and support of numerous people and institutions. Research and writing was made possible by ‹nancial support from the Council for European Studies at Columbia University, Stanford University, the Center for Russian and East European Studies at Stanford, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Mellon Foundation, the Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fund, the American Council of Learned Societies, and California State University, Long Beach. I am grateful for the help of the staff of the Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv and of the Sächsische Landesbibliothek in Dresden, where I became known as “Frau Murdock of the many book orders.” The archivists in the National Archives of the Czech Republic—in whose canteen I learned the Czech word for liver—provided invaluable assistance. So, too, did the staff of libraries and archives in Decín, Chemnitz, Bautzen, Leipzig, Berlin, and Prague. Most important of all have been the mentors, friends, and colleagues who have guided, encouraged, and challenged me along the way. Jim Sheehan and Norman Naimark proved superb teachers and advisors at Stanford . Rudolf Boch has provided invaluable support during several stints in Germany and made Chemnitz a place I return to for intellectual engagement . At various junctions, Cathy Albrecht, Karl Bahm, Houri Berberian, David Blackbourn, Chad Bryant, Holly Case, Gary Cohen, Jane Dabel, Anne Eakin Moss, Melissa Feinberg, Margot Finn, Eagle Glassheim, Peter Haslinger, Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, Christine Holbo, Andy Jenks, Elizabeth Jones, Tom Lekan, Ken Moss, Eric Oberle, Denise Phillips, Jim Retallack, Lise Sedrez, Wulf Wäntig, Larry Wolff, Tara Zahra, and...