Erst der „Aufmarsch“, dann die „Schlacht“. Das Bild der Deutschen und die Kolonialisierung des Sudetenlandes nach der Vertreibung in Václav Řezáčs Roman Bitva
First the “Arrival,” then the “Battle”: The Image of Germans and the Colonization of the Sudetenland after the Expulsion in Václav Řezáč’s Novel The Battle

Summary/Abstract: In his novel Bitva [The Battle], Václav Řezáč describes the colonization of the Sudetenland following the expulsion of the German population. In the preceding first part of Řezáč’s trilogy, Nástup [The Arrival], the Germans collectively appeared as ethnic and ideological enemies; in Bitva they are already rather depicted as individual and marginal figures. The main enemies are now identified as those among the Czechs who oppose the socialist transformation of postwar Czechoslovakia. Bitva represents the construction of a modern socialist society; its author submits to the artistic claim of Socialist Realism for hegemony and thus himself becomes a tool of Soviet colonization.

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