Nationality and competition: Czechs and Germans in the economy of the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938)

Abstract

THE BASIC SITUATION The nationality issue The nationality issue was an element of cardinal importance in the political, economic and social life of the First Czechoslovak Republic. The background of this issue was the presence of a strong native German population (‘Volksgruppe’) in a state that defined its identity not as multinational but as the state of the Czechoslovaks. To some extent, the Germans were conceived of as a menace to this identity and as a threat to the newly gained national independence. These statements are very general; they only characterise mainstream or average attitudes. The Volkstumskampf (‘ethnic struggle’), as it was called by contemporaries, characterised the First Republic from its foundation in the autumn of 1918 until its end following the Treaty of Munich. However, talking about conflict alone would draw a strongly distorted picture. Reality was characterised by a complex mixture of antagonism and cooperation. The result was a modus vivendi – sometimes arduous but viable on the whole. The element of conflict was predominant in the first years after the First World War. It faded into the background in the second half of the 1920s when the ‘activist’ German parties – that is, those that professed to be loyal to the state – co-operated with the Czech parties and participated in government.