The northern, southern and western areas of the former Czechoslovakia from which the German population was expelled after 1945, referred to historically as the Sudetenland and referred to in Czech as Sudety, comprise a long stretch of mostly mountainous terrain with very diverse climates. The fact that this territory has always bordered several countries with differing levels of economic development and political systems located at varying distances from major centres is also important. In short, Sudety is a geographical term that doesn’t tell us anything about its social content. This may be the reason why it has mutated into a stereotype and a contemporary myth.
Arrivals and flights
In some parts of Sudety, both sides of the border experienced population exchanges after 1945. The new settlers knew very little about one another and did not cooperate across borders at all. In fact, despite the declared goal of mutual economic assistance, cooperation was effectively impossible. One example is the Broumov region, which is adjacent to the part of Lower Silesia from which Germans were driven out after 1945, and which was resettled by Poles from Galicia – all of them displaced by decisions of the Great Powers without their consultation. Just like the Poles in Lower Silesia, the new Czech settlers in the Broumov region had to adapt to their new environment from scratch and learn to manage in new, unaccustomed ways (eloquently depicted in Marie Stryjová’s short stories).
The fact that the Czech border with West Germany and Austria was tightly sealed helped to reinforce the stereotypical view of an idyllic life on the western side and total decline on the Czech. Provided, of course, that one could form any view of what was happening on the other side of the wide and heavily guarded border zone. But whether a region thrives or declines depends more on the political system and its economic priorities than on stable settlement. The parts of the Ore Mountains located in the former GDR, which were also affected by expulsions, are today in quite good shape compared to the once impressive – and now run-down – condition of the Czech towns of Jáchymov and Vejprty. The GDR generated its own ecological and social disaster zone further away from the border, at the lignite works at Schwarze Pumpe in eastern Brandenburg.
Discussions in the context of Czech-German reconciliation over whether what occurred in Sudety should be referred to as expulsion, displacement or resettlement ignore another key factor: ‘The Decree on Nationalisation’ and ‘February 1948’ [the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia – trans.]. This aspect has been of no interest to the German side of the dialogue. In fact, this ‘paradise lost’, to quote the kitschy title of a recent collection of short stories, was dealt a severe blow which it weathered only thanks to massive state support: industry meant work and under socialism everyone was obliged to work regardless of efficiency.
Life was hard but things did slowly improve. Unfortunately, improvement in those days also meant the demolition of old buildings and entire neighbourhoods with large but maintenance-heavy flats, and the construction of prefab housing estates which offered constant hot water and central heating (generated in boiler rooms run by burning sulphur-rich brown coal). This was an important measure of living standards for families with both men and women in full-time employment. The demolition of the old town of Most was an atrocious crime, but open-pit mining also engulfed many other smaller towns and neighbourhoods, now almost forgotten. Even in the Vysočina region, located on the historical border between Bohemia and Moravia, old town centres were destroyed.
What attracted people to move to the borderlands was the prospect of a flat, housing shortages being a bane throughout the socialist era. On the other hand, the horrendous pollution affecting precisely the places where new housing was available was an equally powerful driver of flight out of the region.
A region like any other?
The claim that the new settlers let their environment go to ruin because they ‘had no roots here’ may be an insulting cliche, but there is some truth in it. We don’t know and never will if people would have looked after their newly acquired homes had the conditions been right. Their lack of interest in abandoned manor houses, run-down farms and tenement blocks with poorly insulated flats was a result of the ‘real existing socialism’, which curtailed any kind of business activity, including private investment.
The newcomers lacked information about local history. Now that it has become available, we are gradually finding out about formerly German-owned factories deployed in the Nazi armaments industry, later converted to peacetime production, that lasted until 1990. To this day, villages and towns in the border areas are blighted by derelict factories. While building memorials have begun to be erected, we don’t discuss the many small but equally brutal labour camps. The Sudety also witnessed death marches in which prisoners driven to the American zone died of cold, typhoid and starvation. Growing up in Tachov in western Bohemia, I was aware of these events: a memorial was erected in the town as early as 1948 to commemorate the 232 nameless dead of various nationalities exhumed from graves in the vicinity.
In early 1990, Václav Klaus, then Czechoslovak finance minister and chairman of Civic Forum, attended a discussion with local citizens in Cheb(Eger in German). Asked if the new government had devised a programme for the borderlands, Klaus replied that the borderlands were a region like any other and that the government had no special plans for them. People in these regions arrived at their own solution: those living in areas bordering the ‘West’ took to commuting, while those living along the border with the former GDR and Poland, unable to halt the decline, ‘improved’ their lives through illegal prostitution, drug dealing, smuggling and forgery. The damage was exacerbated by the unexpected closure of textile, porcelain and glass factories, and the near impossibility of setting up local businesses that would have paid taxes and kept people in the area.
Military compounds, the closing down of large factories that left many people unemployed, environmental damage, overloaded transport infrastructure, vast warehouses, Vietnamese marketplaces: all these characterised the border regions in the 1990s and 2000s. There were enormous differences between the prosperous Liberec and the deprived Frýdlant, just a stone’s throw away from each other. In places such as Kraslice, Luby, Abertamy, Šluknov and Rumburk, the mantra of ‘optimization’ – in fact, the shifting of activities from smaller towns to larger centres – lead to social as well as cultural collapse. Meanwhile, Jeseníky and the Ore Mountains, swamped by full car parks and destroyed by erosion around ski areas (in winter) and bike parks (in summer), bore witness to the devastation that the leisure industry can bring about.
Václav Klaus’s response to the question posed at the meeting in the theatre in Cheb was typically arrogant. The state’s lack of concern for the regions burdened with so many problems from the past led to activities massively detrimental to the local population. State and European subsidies were misused by officials of all parties. The locals were dumbfounded by the unquestioning acceptance of foreign investment that not only failed to bring benefits to the borderlands but even exacerbated their problems. When Václav Havel criticized the construction of giant warehouses lining the motorways, he did not know that the workforce it would eventually demand would oblige agencies to recruit workers from around the world. These people really have no relationship with the region – and nor does the region with them.
The inner circle of discrimination
In his essay ‘Democracy in the world of wrecked fences’, the philosopher Václav Bělohradský draws a distinction between internal and external circles of discrimination. In the external circle, the minority is discriminated by the majority. In the internal circle, those who are discriminated hurt one another, for instance by making poor use of subsidies and voting for extremist parties out of a sense that they are being left behind and victimized by forces they do not comprehend. Or by willingly commuting to work across the border and failing to exploit local opportunities, as well as by showing contempt for foreign workers, even though they find themselves in this very role when they take up work abroad. The discrimination business is just as lucrative as the poverty business – the two go hand in hand, after all.
In the Sudety, it is easy to succumb to melancholy. The beautiful, sparsely settled land, the derelict factories, the overgrown foundations of former villages, the ruins of churches, the abandoned cemeteries close to equally deserted former barracks – all contribute to this feeling. The resulting romanticization of the Sudety is exemplified by the short story collection ‘Sudety: A paradise lost’, mentioned above. Some of the stories are composed in a language that sounds as if it were not written by contemporary authors, suggesting that none of the things that have brought about the present state of internal discrimination in the Sudety would have happened had the local Germans not been driven out. As if the present inhabitants were somehow ‘worse’ people. Nevertheless, the talk of reconciliation, expulsion and compensation is nothing but a smokescreen distracting attention from ruthless exploitation, indifference and tragic neglect.