Sudetendeutsch
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Ethnic Germans in the Bohemian Forest
|
|
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| c. 3,252,000 in 1910 | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia | |
| Languages | |
|
Bavarian and Austrian dialects Silesian Upper Saxon Erzgebirgisch East Franconian Upper Lusatian Standard German |
|
| Religion | |
|
Roman Catholic majority Lutheran Protestant minority |
|
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Germans, Czechs, Austrians, Silesians, Poles |
German Bohemians and German Moravians (German: ), also known as the Sudeten Germans (German: ) in the early 20th century, were ethnic Germans living in the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Margraviate of Moravia (parts of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown) both of which came under jurisdiction of the state of Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of the dissolution of Austria-Hungary after World War I and the subsequent failure to create German Austria.
Before 1945, Czechoslovakia was inhabited by over three million such German Bohemians and German Moravians, comprising about 23 percent of the population of the whole republic and about 29.5 percent of the population of Bohemia and Moravia. Ethnic Germans migrated into the Kingdom of Bohemia, an electoral territory of the Holy Roman Empire, since the 11th century, mostly in the border regions of the Sudetenland, in a process of German expansion known as Ostsiedlung (English: Settling of the East). They became known as the Sudeten Germans after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, which was a consequence of the First World War. After 1945, most ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia to Germany and Austria.
The area that became known as the Sudetenland possessed chemical works and lignite mines, as well as textile, china, and glass factories. The Bohemian border with Bavaria was inhabited primarily by Germans. The Upper Palatine Forest, which extends along the Bavarian frontier and into the agricultural areas of southern Bohemia, was an area of German settlement. Moravia contained patches of "locked" German territory to the north and south. More characteristic were the German language islands: towns inhabited by German minorities and surrounded by Czechs. Sudeten Germans were mostly Roman Catholics, a legacy of centuries of Austrian Habsburg rule.
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Wikipedia