Erziehung zum Staatsbürger? Deutsche Sekundarschulen in der Tschechoslowakei 1918–1938 (review)

Though political, economic, and cultural relations between Czechs and Sudeten Germans have received extensive treatment in the scholarly literature, Neěmec's study manages to look at a relatively neglected, but extremely important aspect of that history: the German-speaking minority's secondary schools in interwar Czechoslovakia and their connection to politics and everyday life. The monograph focuses in particular on the mechanisms and challenges of minority-population education in a democratic state, and thus sheds light on a topic that has been and remains vital to many European countries: how might the school system of a multiethnic state be organized in order to educate and create loyal citizens?

As Neěmec points out in his introduction, secondary education, an important element of nation-building in the nineteenth century, has frequently been a potential area of conflict between states and national minorities. He demonstrates, however, that Czechoslovak authorities failed to intervene much in the German-speaking secondary schools after 1918. They showed little interest in reforms, in fact, and lacked enthusiasm in introducing them. As a result, the structures of the schools as well as the public school administration remained very much in line with Habsburg traditions. This is not really astonishing, given the demographic situation: according to the 1930 Czechoslovak census, German speakers made up 29.5 percent of the population, i.e., the Bohemian and Moravian Germans were not a small minority (like the Lusatian Sorbs in Germany or the Frisians in the Netherlands).

Most had their mental “homeland” in Austria or Germany—a crucial point often underemphasized in many studies on Czech-German history, but one that Mirek Neěmec is very much aware of. Neěmec attaches great importance to three subjects that he believes were particularly important for the integration of the German minority: Czech, German, and history. The teaching of the majority language mattered a great deal in this context, but the introduction of obligatory courses in Czech was not an easy task for Czechoslovak authorities: German-speaking parents often rejected the “oppressors'” language, and Greek or Latin teachers feared that Czech classes would be held at the expense of their own lessons. School authorities also failed to train a sufficient number of Czech-language teachers for the German schools, and Czech textbooks were often unsatisfactory.

Summarizing his findings, Neěmec emphasizes “missed opportunities” on both sides: the Czechoslovak government and school administration did not play a very active role in trying to integrate the German-speaking population, while the majority of Sudeten Germans increasingly embraced nationalist ideas and Nazi politics. The invention of common traditions through school festivities might have been one way to bring about successful integration. Neěmec points out, however, that the Czechoslovak Republic did not manage to offer its German citizens ceremonies that would have helped to integrate both their Czech and German identities. Instead, celebrations of the republic's founding fathers, Jan Masaryk and Edvard Beneš, or of purely Czech historical personalities alienated many Germans and drove them toward nationalist German traditions.

In postwar West German discussions largely shaped by expellee groups, the interwar Sudeten Germans were often seen as victims of nationalist Czech politics. Either their active role in the destruction of the Czechoslovak Republic was denied, or a small group of Sudeten German Nazis (such as Konrad Henlein and Karl Hermann Frank) was blamed for the Munich crisis of 1938. Mirek Neěmec's book provides a number of concrete examples that demonstrate the opposite of such claims. German secondary school teachers in interwar Czechoslovakia were sworn state officials, but very few of them had loyal feelings toward the Czechoslovak Republic. Emil Lehmann, for instance, a leading figure in the Sudeten Nazi party (DNSAP), spent more time on Volksbildung than on his assigned teaching duties. Another example was Richard Patscheider, a teacher from Tyrol who moved to Opava/Troppau before World War I and became heavily involved in...