Právní normy let 1938–1948 týkající se Němců v Československu a ostatní Evropě - Diskuse
Legislation from 1938–48 Relating to the Germans of Czechoslovakia and the Rest of Europe - Discussion

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses the complicated history and conception of a Czech-German project, the aim of which is the research and comparison of post-war legislation used by individual European countries to resolve the problems faced by the German minorities living on their territory. The article mainly provides its own interpretation of the project results, and attempts a summary of the topic in the broader historical context. The main result of the project, which eventually included the post-war German minorities of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy and South Tyrol, Belgium, France (Alsace), Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein, and Allied-occupied Germany, is publications, in parallel Czech and German editions, comprising articles and documents related to the relevant countries: Německé menšiny v právních normách 1938–1948: Československo ve srovnání s vybranými evropskými zeměmi (Brno and Prague: Doplněk and the Institute of Contemporary History, 2006) and Deutschsprachige Minderheiten 1945: Ein europäischer Vergleich (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006). The editors of the two volumes are Jiři Pešek with Oldřich Tůma and Manfred Kittel with Horst Moller. During the project, confl icting interpretations arose between the Czech and German sides, making it impossible not only to write joint introductions to the volumes, but also – owing to the resistance of the German side – to publish jointly the Czech and German introductions. The German version, by Kittel and Moller, was published as “Die Beneš-Dekrete und die Vertreibung der Deutschen,” in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 54, (2006) no. 4, pp. 541–81. The Czech translation will come out in Střední Evropa. The Czech version will be published in German translation in Bohemia, the periodical of the Collegium Carolinum, Munich, and in the original Czech in Soudobé dějiny. The authors of the Czech version put the emphasis on the hitherto largely neglected context of history and power politics, in which – at both the international level (amongst the Allies) and national level – the decisions were made and legislation passed regarding the German minorities in post-war Europe. The authors demonstrate the relative nature of the thesis that while the states east of Germany had acted unjustly towards German minorities (expelling them on the principle of collective guilt) and tried to gain territory at the expense of Germany, the Western democracies fairly. They point to the expulsion of the German minority from the Netherlands at the end of the war, and also to the French and Dutch claims to German territory, which were blocked by the Americans in view of the need to stabilize Germany and the beginning of the Cold War.

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