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Despite the prominence of nationality politics in Germany and the Habsburg Empire by 1900, most Bohemian migrants did not participate in them, moving instead between national milieus. Being in Saxony, where the Czech-German nationality ‹ght was not prominent in daily life and politics , probably made this easier. The number of Czech associations in Saxony continued to grow at the turn of the century, appearing in all major and many minor Saxon cities, especially near the Bohemian border. Still, Saxon of‹cials asserted that while only a small minority of Czech speakers were involved in these associations, many participated in German associations or abstained from associations altogether—an assessment with which Czech observers concurred.88 Some speci‹cally German-Austrian associations appeared in Saxony after 1900. Although the Saxon police paid little attention to these groups and thus did not leave extensive records, the presence in Chemnitz of the Union of the German-Austrian Associations in Saxony (Landesverband der Deutsch-Oesterreichischer Vereine in Sachsen) suggests that there were multiple associations of this kind. These organizations of‹cially represented all German speakers from Cisleithania, but like the local Germanspeaking Austrian population, they appear to have been German-Bohemian in membership and focus. These groups tried to maintain Austrian and Bohemian identity among people living in Germany and to support German-Bohemian nationalist efforts in Bohemia. German-speaking Bohemians were probably even more likely than Czech immigrants to integrate into their Saxon surroundings, and Chemnitz’s Union of German Austrians in the German Reich (Deutsch-Oesterreichischer Bund im Deutschen Reich) clearly welcomed members who had taken German citizenship . Citizenship should pose no barrier to German-Austrian (or German -Bohemian) identity.89 After the war, when citizenship took on new meaning, German Bohemians and their associations emerged from the woodwork. Migrants and National Identity Bohemian migrants may have ignored national issues and acculturated to local communities when they crossed the Saxon border. But their presence provided fodder for German, German-Bohemian, and Czech nationalists. In 1909, the Czech association Vlastimil in Dresden invited guests from Bohemia to celebrate its forty-‹fth anniversary. The German-Bohemian na50 Changing Places tionalist press reported the invitation with alarm, asserting that Czechs were planning to “agitate” in Saxony. But Saxon police sent to observe the visitors described a reassuring scene: “Fifty Austrian Czechs, most older and respectably dressed, arrived at the [Dresden] train station and were met by members of the association Vlastimil. In part because of the heavy holiday traf‹c, the arrival of this group of ‹fty was not very conspicuous, but the Czechs themselves carefully avoided anything that might have drawn attention to them.” The Dresden police observed that despite a sharp rise in Czech-speaking immigrants, there had been no signs of Czech nationalist agitation.90 Czech nationalist leaders worried about the effects of migration on their countrymen. In 1904, the publication Ceský vystehovalec (Czech Émigr é) appeared, published in Prague and intended to keep Czechs abroad in touch with their Czech identities and Bohemian politics. Vystehovalec covered news of Czech working-class émigrés all over the world, from Cleveland and Buenos Aires to London and Paris. But most of its coverage from 1904 to the 1920s related to Czech speakers working in Germany. It included reports of associational activity, German labor law, advertisements for Bohemian restaurants, Czech-friendly accommodation, and other goods and services in German cities. While advertisements and articles related to Czech speakers in Germany covered the whole Kaiserreich, Saxony was overrepresented, re›ecting its importance for Czech migrant labor. Vystehovalec also emphasized the signi‹cance of Czech-speaking labor to the development of German industry, claiming that Czech-speaking workers were critical to German industrial success, especially in textiles and mining .91 Fears that Czech speakers in Germany risked assimilation and denationalization ran through the pages of Vystehovalec. A 1905 article declared, For no one does the question of nationality and internationality have such practical importance as for Czech workers who live outside the [Bohemian] borders, particularly in Germany, not only because of the national con›ict at home between bourgeois Czechs and Germans . . . [but because] workers in Germany are predominantly in the camp of international socialism.92 The implication was that Germany’s internationalist working-class milieu would erode Czech workers’ national identities. Czech-speaking migrants in Saxony did not have Czech nationalist organizations either supporting them or chiding them for anational behavA Region on the Move 51 [3.142.171.180] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 03...

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