Memories of ethnic cleansing and the local Iron Curtain in the Czech–German borderlands

Abstract

The Czech–German borderlands are an archetypal European border region. They evoke not only Cold War histories, but also shelter layers of European memories of the ethnic reshaping of early post-war Europe. By means of life story interviews with German speakers of the border region, this article analyzes the symbolic meaning of and the individual dealing with the local Iron Curtain. It will shed light on the biographical and narrative interconnectedness of experiences of ethnic cleansing in the early post-war period and retrospective perceptions of the Iron Curtain in these borderlands. In particular, it inquires whether and to what extent the local Iron Curtain intensified fractures caused by the region's post-and pre-war attempts to halt the multiethnic composition of the border communities. The article suggests that the local Czech–German Iron Curtain would have never endured as strongly if the border communities' common identity had not already been severely damaged in the course of the region's traumatic history and forced population transfers.

Keywords:

• borderlands
• border communities
• ethnic cleansing
• post-war
• iron curtain
• oral history

Acknowledgements

I would like to particularly thank Muriel Blaive and Libora Oates-Indruchova, the editors of this special issue, for their initiative, support, and helpful comments. I would equally like to thank the anonymous reviewers of the article as well as Eagle Glassheim for their inspiring comments and suggestions. Their critical feedback helped me to deepen my knowledge of the border region's recent history and to better contextualize some of the interviews. At last, I would like to also thank Ilse Lazaroms and Zoe Roth for their careful corrections of the article.

Notes

1. Ethnic cleansing is understood here as forced population transfer, not as genocide.

2. While having fully relied on the life story interview method of Gabriele Rosenthal (Rosenthal), the article does not apply the narrative analysis method. The article's aim is not to look closely at the narrative logic of single life stories, but instead closely focuses on particularly relevant interview sequences.

3. In 2010, we initiated an oral history project at Regensburg University, entitled Die Erzählte Grenze (The Narrated Border). Through this project, we aimed at orally capturing the life stories of the elderly generation in this region, the results of which are continuously uploaded to the public and bilingual homepage www.die-erzählte-grenze.de.

4. Rosenthal argues that the thicker and more direct a narration is, the closer the interviewee comes to his/her actual experiences.

5. Throughout the article I will only be referring to the ‘Czech’ borderlands and border community, as the region under consideration only embraces the Western bohemian area.

6. Translation from German by the author.

7. HU OSA 300-1-2-9718. Records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute (1951).

8. HU OSA 300-1-2-18230. Records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute (1952).