District of Sokolovo and the establishment of Czechoslovakia 1918-1921, part 1.

Autor: Richard Aubrecht / Aubi 🕔︎︎ 👁︎ 32.241

The first efforts to secede of the German-speaking territories

In the autumn of 1918, few believed that the Austro-Hungarian monarchy would still be able to continue the war. The German population of Bohemia had already seen clearly in the actions of Czech politicians at home and abroad that most of them demanded only independence under the new world conditions. In contrast to this, from the beginning of 1918, voices calling for the independence of the German-speaking parts of Bohemia into the so-called province of Deutschböhmen began to appear on a regular basis, revived by the almost complete military defeat of Austria-Hungary and the expected major changes in the organization of Central Europe. These did not come out of nowhere; there had been various proposals for the separation of the German-speaking majority areas since 1849, when the second Palacký plan for the federalization of the monarchy envisaged the creation of borders on a national basis. It was also part of the punctuation of the 1970s, a precondition for the linguistic settlements of the 1980s, and became one of the main themes of Czech-German politics until the outbreak of war, but it was never implemented. Originally born on the Czech side as a defensive element against the gradual Germanization, the idea ended up in the hands of German nationalists as a defence against the self-confident reborn Czech nation. At the end of the World War, however, the strongest German party in Bohemia, the Social Democrats, was also influenced by the idea of a German province of its own, albeit for different motives than those that drove the efforts of the "bourgeois" parties.

As late as January 1918, at the revived demand of the German civic parties for the creation of a separate province of Deutschböhmen, which was to have the status of a separate crown land within the monarchy, the North Bohemian Social Democracy, through the Karlovy Vary-Czech daily Volkswille, merely commented approvingly on the plan for equal and universal suffrage for the proposed provincial assembly, but the very next day added that the German workers had other priorities at the moment - fighting hunger and the consequences of the war - and expressed concern about the fate of the Germans in Prague, České Budějovice and other cities who would "be left at the mercy of the Czech sea". It was in January 1918 that the American president Woodrow Wilson summarized his demands for peace in 14 points, which, among other things, considered the right to self-determination of nations as the basis for future peaceful coexistence, and this right immediately became the backbone of the demands of the non-German peoples of the monarchy. However, this slogan was immediately taken up by some of the German parties of the monarchy, who argued that if it was the right of the Bohemians to realize their national demands, the German inhabitants of Bohemia had the same right, adding that there was nothing in the demand for a separate German province that was not already in the aforementioned Palacký proposal of January 1849. Certain hopes for the realization of these dreams were raised by the plan of Kaiser Karl of 16 October for the transformation of the pre-Lithuanian lands into a federal state, according to which the historical territory of Bohemia was also to be divided between a Czech and a German nation-state. The newly proclaimed German-Austrian state was to include the area of so-called Deutschböhmen, comprising the four regions of northern and western Bohemia, which was to be established on 4 November. But the manifesto came too late to satisfy the demands of the non-German nationalities, and the division of the Bohemian lands was generally unacceptable to the Bohemians.

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Map of the area to be discussed

But the first attempt at at least symbolic secession had taken place a few days earlier in Cheb. On 18 October, a worried Cheb city council reacted on behalf of the whole of north-west Bohemia to the actions of Czech politicians with an announcement urging,

"that the Germans in Austria should also claim the right to self-determination and the freedom to decide their nationality. For this very reason, it is imperative that the legitimate claim for the creation of a separate province of Deutschböhmen should soon be fulfilled. The City Council of Cheb is concerned with the reassertion of the rights of Cheb to its special status and is anxious that an independent Cheb should be created without delay. Deutschböhmen and Cheb will never submit to the Czech state."

The representatives of all Cheb political parties and the Cheb district committee also agreed on the same declaration. They thus referred to the fact that Cheb was an imperial flag to the Czech monarch and as such retained a special status vis-à-vis the lands of the Czech Crown. However, for the local Social Democrats, who issued a similar statement on 23 October 1918, in line with the Vienna leadership's proposal of 3 October 1918 to transform the monarchy on a federal basis, the very elevation of the so-called historical rights of Chebsk over the "fate of all Germans in Austria" and the different ideas about the state system became a problem. Thus, they did not take part in the preparations for the big demonstration for the independence of Cheb, which was to take place on Sunday 27 October. At a meeting prior to this demonstration, the bourgeois representatives decided that Cheb would take part in the building of the province of Deutschböhmen, but that if this attempt failed, it would join Bavaria regardless of the others. On Sunday, at a meeting of the people in the Chebské Square, independence from the Czech Crown was declared, a separate government for the Germans in Bohemia was demanded, the return of the native regiments and the withdrawal of the foreign regiments from Cheb, etc. Instead of the expected thousands of people from all over the area, however, only a few hundred eventually gathered, and even in view of the events of the following days the whole plan fell into oblivion.

The emergence of the Czechoslovakia and the German response

Within days of 28 October, news of the Prague coup spread through the region. The Loket weekly Elbogener Zeitung wrote:

"On Tuesday (29 October) in the morning hours news spread of the surrender of Austria-Hungary, a special peace proposal and the proclamation of the Czechoslovak state, which were then confirmed during the day... In the last days of the week all the soldiers stationed in Prague and other Czech garrison towns in our districts returned home. According to their testimonies, they were asked to go home by their superiors. After the Czech civilians had torn the cockades from their caps, they left their present posts... The men were told that Bohemia would probably be a republic, that there was no longer an army, the war was probably over."

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As early as 30 October, the Volkswille hailed the "great revolution" and the "fulfillment of dreams for which prominent men ... were denounced as traitors", wishing that Czech workers would win their rightful position in the new state, but adding that now that the Czechs had exercised their right to self-determination, they would not prevent Czech Germans from doing the same. They were urged to hurry up and cooperate in the construction of the new German-Austrian state, on a socialist basis, of course. At this point, curiosity rather prevailed among the inhabitants of the borderlands, and events in the interior were received mostly calmly, even with some support, but the Czech interior and the German borderlands were already seen as politically separate territories, with the coup not representing any fundamental change for the local Germans.

The events of 28 October 1918 were the impetus for the German deputies from Bohemia to accelerate their original plans. On 29 October, the proclamation of a separate "province of Deutschböhmen" falling under the German-Austrian state, formally created already on 21 October, took place in the Provincial Diet building in Vienna. The seat of the provincial assembly was to be Liberec, and a German-nationalist deputy, Raphael Pacher, was elected as the head of government with the title of provincial governor, but he never took office and resigned on 5 November because of his involvement in the German-Austrian government, where he became state secretary (minister) for teaching. He was thus replaced as regional governor by the chairman of the German National Party, Rudolf Lodgman von Auen, with Josef Seliger, a social democrat, as first deputy and Wilhelm Maixner, an agrarian, as second deputy. The next day a resolution of the Czech-German deputies was approved by the German-Austrian National Assembly and three more provinces, Sudetenland, Böhmerwaldgau and Deutschsüdmähren, were proposed. On 22 November, the Austrian National Assembly passed a law declaring the Czech-German provinces part of its territory and even claimed separate linguistic islands around Brno, Jihlava and Olomouc.


Dutch German provinces - Deutschöhmen in brown,Sudetenland in yellow, Böhmerwaldgau in orange and Deutschsüdmähren in pink

Simultaneously with the proclamation of the Land Government of Deutschböhmen, national councils or committees began to form in the district towns parallel to the authorities of the former monarchy, which were overwhelmingly subordinate to this Land Government. These district national councils had the task of controlling all provincial, autonomous and military authorities and institutions and of unifying their activities under a single political leadership. The National Council for the political and judicial district of Loket was established on the initiative of the district committee on Friday, 1 November, at a meeting in the meeting hall of the Loket town hall attended by representatives of the district, municipalities, industry, trade and agriculture, and its chairman was the existing chairman of the district committee, the factory owner Rudolf Wessely. Similar meetings were held in the surrounding districts. In Falknov (which is not Sokolov), Simon Starck, chairman of the local Free Socialist Party, commonly referred to as the Free Socialists, became chairman of the council. (This party was founded by Starck after he was expelled by the Social Democrats in 1903 for disagreements. Starck had been the Reich MP for Falknov from 1907 and was mayor of Falknov from 1923-27. The party never rose in importance beyond the borders of the district and in the second half of the 1920s its members dispersed either to the Socialists or to the DNSAP.) As early as 28 October 1918, the German administration of Kraslice was formed, headed by the factory owner Anton Breinl, and on 4 November the Kraslice District National Committee was established.

Volkswehr and military councils

Due to the post-coup uncertainty and the disrupted security apparatus, militias, called Bürgerwehr or more commonly Volkswehr, began to emerge from the beginning of November. In these units, former and returning soldiers and workers were recruited to secure various depots of food, clothing and military material, as well as the equipment of military installations and prison camps, from looting and pillaging, in return for promises of accommodation, food, clothing and pay from the provincial government. In view of their often slight willingness to endure military discipline again and the revolutionary and radically democratic views that were widespread among them, the recruitment appeals stressed the complete democracy and voluntariness of these new formations. Initially, the local action of the various municipalities was sanctified by a circular from the Liberec provincial government, which promised a daily salary of five crowns per person. The provincial government appointed Feldmarschallleutnant Anton von Goldbach as Volkswehr commander.

By then, however, other paramilitary organizations, so-called military or workers' councils, had begun to emerge in individual towns. These were usually founded by soldiers returning from the war, usually imbued with militant radicalism, but they did not have a unified idea of the way forward and soon became subordinate to the national councils. Sometimes they were founded by them and from the beginning served as their executive body, directing the work of the Volkswehr. The Loket District Soldiers' Council was formed on Wednesday, 6 November, at a meeting of the soldiers of the Loket district, called by the National Council for the Loket district and the Loket Municipal Soldiers' Council. Professor Gustav Kerl became the chairman of the District Soldiers' Council and it was envisaged that a soldiers' council would be established in each individual village, the aim being to maintain peace and order in the district. The military council was also supposed to prevent the spread of rumours and to intervene against some returning soldiers who carried out searches of the population on their own. All returning soldiers were also to report to the council and give their whereabouts, both so that the council could summon them and so that it could more easily take action against them if they caused trouble. At a second meeting two days later, the council divided itself into a protection corps (Heimwehr), a labour mediation committee and an inspection committee. On a proposal by the head of the Chodov consumer association, Alois Tschinkel, after a stormy debate, the council even decided that the unpopular Loket district governor Peter Heider should leave the administrative territory of the town within 24 hours because he had acted too harshly during the wartime supply crisis. Heider had already taken a leave of absence from office at the time. The aforementioned inspection commission had set itself the task of assessing the activities of persons suspected of black market trading and other common, mainly economic offences on the basis of statements by residents, and it also reserved the right to sanction what had happened before its formation, during the war. Punishments were then to be determined by the national or military council. For these purposes, an office was even opened in the Loket hotel "U Zlatého lva", where denunciations were to be received.

The workers' and military council of Chodov was very active. Sixty of its members were on guard duty, and during inspections of carriages and railway wagons they mainly searched for food. On 9 November, for example, they arrested a lieutenant from the security of the prison camp in Jindřichovice at the local railway station, who was involved in its looting. He had two large suitcases and several smaller ones, which contained 128 new shirts and many other clothes from military stores. On 11 November, in turn, members of the council confiscated a considerable quantity of stolen provisions, which had been sent to his flat in Karlovy Vary by Löwy, the former commander of the guard detachment at the Imperial Shaft in Nový Sedlo. The Chodov council worked for about a month, then handed over the administration of the town to a newly formed twenty-six-member town council, composed in a 1:1 ratio of representatives of civic parties and social democratic workers.

In Kraslice, the military council put together an entire centenary force of 300 men, which was sworn in on 18 November to the district national committee. As usual, this Volkswehr was to keep the peace in the town and, by means of guard posts at all important places in the town and at the food stores, to prevent any theft. However, order was not always maintained. Food shortages in many places also resulted in spontaneous actions by the population against "keteers" and "war profiteers". As early as 6 November 1918, people from the surrounding villages invaded Falknov and looted the shops. A large part of the population of the region did not care much about the establishment of Czechoslovakia or Deutschböhmen and tried mainly to solve their own difficult economic situation. For this reason, some of them, on the other hand, expected the Czechoslovak state to improve supplies or to abolish the delivery obligation, and therefore people often took the new state as something given, which only those who were well provided for had time to fight against.

Jindřichovice prisoner of war camp

As already mentioned, one of the victims of looting was the Jindřichovice prison camp. This camp was established in the area between the Rotava basalt quarry and Jindřichovice in June 1915 and its population consisted of up to 28,000 or more prisoners of war, mostly Serbs. It had one hundred residential barracks, and about thirty barracks served as quarters for captured officers, a hospital and facilities. Another fourteen barracks were guard quarters. The prisoners were used to work in the surrounding factories, in the Rotava ironworks and quarry, to build the Falknov chemical plant, to build roads and to help in agriculture. At the time of the announcement of the dissolution of Austria, there were still around 800 prisoners in the camp, 200 of them Italian officers and 400 soldiers, the rest were Serbs. About 500 of these prisoners were sick. The soldiers on guard duty, half Czech and half German, agreed after the declaration of the Republic to let the Italians go free and to remain in place until the situation became clear, so that then the Czech part of the garrison and most of the German part would leave the camp. Only a few Czech officers remained on the spot. On Friday, November 1, therefore, fearing that the almost unguarded Serbian and Italian prisoners might be disarmed, the German National Council at Cheb was to call upon the District National Committee at Kraslice to take charge of the camp itself, and especially of the material and foodstuffs therein, and itself sent a certain lieutenant to take command. For the supervision of the camp, a detachment of about 100 men of the "Jugendwehr" was formed from the inhabitants of Jindřichovice and Rotava, which was later to be reinforced from Kraslice. As late as 3 November, most of the able-bodied prisoners were taken by special train to Annathal. By then, however, people from the surrounding area were already flocking to the camp, and on Sunday, 4 November, under the pretext of a fair distribution of supplies, a final looting took place, in which the remaining soldiers from the guard took part. The civilian guards completely failed, and it was only the gendarmes who attempted to stop the looting, during which one man died of a bayonet wound. Many of the volunteer guards may have aided the looting themselves.


Mausoleum of Serbian soldiers who died in the Jindrich POW camp

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The quality of the Home Guard volunteers was controversial and their work was often criticized. Despite many laudatory mentions for the crackdown on swindlers and profiteers, the Volkswills, which would write in connection with the occupation of the borderlands about the rough behaviour of Czech soldiers, among whom there were supposed to be "bad elements", would themselves describe a few days later, that in the formation of Volkswehr units, "unwitting elements" had also been brought in, going far beyond their powers of search and robbing returning soldiers, and although the military councils had gradually expelled many of them, there were still many unauthorised searches, in which people had their meagre supplies confiscated. They therefore warn that anyone conducting a search must carry a warrant from the national council. The Czech writer František Cajthaml, who personally lived through the period of the German efforts at separation as a clerk in Ústí, wrote directly that instead of soldiers cured of their wartime enthusiasm by a stay in the trenches, the Home Guard was filled with rubbish, attracted by pay, assured food and accommodation and the possibility of personal enrichment. The internal struggle between those who took their involvement in the Volkswehr only as an opportunity for self-enrichment and the leadership was not resolved until the Czechoslovak military intervention, which brought an end to the military councils and the Home Guard and thus settled everything from the outside.

 

Continued next time.

Sources and references will be listed in the last installment.

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