On a Southern Bohemian holiday a few years ago, that sense of a landscape abandoned, and almost frozen in time, seemed especially present in the rural area bordering Austria.
I came across a German-language poem dated 1936, praising the beauty of the Böhmerwald/Bohemian forest and the Heimat, in the little abandoned chapel on the hill above the village of Malšín/Malsching. The German text is here: https://meinboehmerwald.de/malsching-malcin/
Really interesting - a shame you never wrote the book! I remember the Sudententag being on the news when I lived in Germany and finding it odd, and Edmund Stoiber's wife being part of it. I also remember a memorial in, I think, Telč, which said pre-war, the German-speaking population had been something like 40%, and a Czech friend refused to believe it.
On a Southern Bohemian holiday a few years ago, that sense of a landscape abandoned, and almost frozen in time, seemed especially present in the rural area bordering Austria.
I came across a German-language poem dated 1936, praising the beauty of the Böhmerwald/Bohemian forest and the Heimat, in the little abandoned chapel on the hill above the village of Malšín/Malsching. The German text is here: https://meinboehmerwald.de/malsching-malcin/
Really interesting - a shame you never wrote the book! I remember the Sudententag being on the news when I lived in Germany and finding it odd, and Edmund Stoiber's wife being part of it. I also remember a memorial in, I think, Telč, which said pre-war, the German-speaking population had been something like 40%, and a Czech friend refused to believe it.
In places like Liberec and Jablonec it was even higher…90% in places. Even Jihlava/Iglau was predominantly German.
On the topic of multi-layered Czech(oslovak) Sudeten relationships is "must read" Majewski´s "trilogy":
Sudetští Němci 1848–1948 /// Jenom ať si nemyslí, že jsme kolaboranti /// Kdy vypukne válka? 1938