Ethnic Minorities in the Czech Education System: Before and After Transition (1945–97)

Abstract

The Czech lands (Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia) have a rich history of inter-ethnic conflicts over schooling, perhaps the most pronounced being that between Czechs and German-speakers in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. The events of the Second World War, and the subsequent expulsion of practically the entire three-million strong community of Germans from Czechoslovakia, brought an end to the fragile coexistence of the two groups. This meant also an end to the highly developed German-language education system that had existed in inter-war Czechoslovakia (Mitter 1991: 214). The Holocaust and, to an even greater extent, the expulsion of Germans who resided mainly in the Czech lands, turned the latter into an almost ethnically homogenous region. Whereas in 1930 only 68.4 per cent of inhabitants of the Czech lands declared themselves to be ethnic Czechs, in 1950 as many as 93.8 per cent did so (Demograficka přirucka 1982: 48).