Kidnapped Souls

Tara Zahra

Description

Throughout the nineteenth and into the early decades of the twentieth century, it was common for rural and working-class parents in the Czech-German borderlands to ensure that their children were bilingual by sending them to live with families who spoke the "other" language. As nationalism became a more potent force in Central Europe, however, such practices troubled pro-German and pro-Czech activists, who feared that the children born to their nation could literally be "lost" or "kidnapped" from the national community through such experiences and, more generally, by parents who were either flexible about national belonging or altogether indifferent to it.Highlighting this indifference to nationalism-and concerns about such apathy among nationalists-Kidnapped Souls offers a surprising new perspective on Central European politics and society in the first half of the twentieth century. Drawing on Austrian, Czech, and German archives, Tara Zahra shows how nationalists in the Bohemian Lands worked to forge political cultures in which children belonged more rightfully to the national collective than to their parents. Through their educational and social activism to fix the boundaries of nation and family, Zahra finds, Czech and German nationalists reveal the set of beliefs they shared about children, family, democracy, minority rights, and the relationship between the individual and the collective. Zahra shows that by 1939 a vigorous tradition of Czech-German nationalist competition over children had created cultures that would shape the policies of the Nazi occupation and the Czech response to it.The book's concluding chapter weighs the prehistory and consequences of the postwar expulsion of German families from the Bohemian Lands. Kidnapped Souls is a significant contribution to our understanding of the genealogy of modern nationalism in Central Europe and a groundbreaking exploration of the ways in which children have been the objects of political contestation when national communities have sought to shape, or to reshape, their futures.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Eastern Europe
• Nationalism
• History of Europe
• Germany

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 02 mai 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801461910
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Kidnapped Souls

KIDNAPPEDSOULS

NationalIndifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948

TaraZahra

CornellUniversityPress

ithaca and london

Copyright ©2008by Cornell University

Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsinareview,thisbook,orpartsthereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House,512East State Street, Ithaca, New York14850.

Firstpublished2008by Cornell University Press

PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica

LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData

Zahra, Tara.  Kidnapped souls : national indifference and the battle for children in the Bohemian Lands,1900–1948/ Tara Zahra.  p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN978–0–8014–4628–3(cloth : alk. paper) 1. Children and politics—Czech Republic—Bohemia—History—20th century. 2policy—Czech Republic—Bohemia—History—. Children—Government 20th century. 3. Nationalism—Czech Republic—Bohemia—History—20th century.4. Germans— Czech Republic—Bohemia—Politics and government—20th century.5. Bohemia (Czech Republic)—Ethnic relations.6(Czech Republic)—Politics and. Bohemia government—20I. Title.th century.

 HQ792.C89Z342008  305.23094371’0904—dc22

 2007033004

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Contents

ListofFiguresandMapsviii Prefaceix ListofArchivesandAbbreviationsxv NoteonPlacesandNamesxvii

Introduction1 “Czech Schools for Czech Children!”13 Teachers, Orphans, and Social Workers49 Warfare, Welfare, and the End of Empire79 Reclaiming Children for the Nation106 Freudian Nationalists and Heimat Activists142 Borderland Children andVolkstumsarbeitunder Nazi Rule169 StayatHome Nationalism203 ReichLoyal Czech Nationalism231 Epilogue253

 Index275

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ListofFiguresandMaps

Figures Fig.1. The wards of the Bund der Deutschen’s Dr. Karl Schcker orphanage,190971 Fig.2. Mobilizing children for war,191784 Fig.3. An Austrian official places children under the guardianship of the Czech Provincial Commission for Child Welfare,1915100 Fig.4. The Day of Czech Youth, Moravskâ Ostrava/Mährisch Ostrau, June13,1944244 Fig.5. The Kuratorium for Youth Education in Wenceslas Square, Prague,1944244

Maps Map1. The Habsburg Empire,1914xiii Map2. The Bohemian Lands,1918–45xiii

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Preface

I n1998I spent my first summer in Europe. I was not fortunate enough to be sent on an exchange to live with a family of German or Czech peasants as a child, and so the official purpose of this visit was to learn German so that I could apply to graduate school. During that summer, instead of backpacking through Europe’s great cities, I spent several weeks in the Austrian National Library’s reading room looking at the yellowed and crumbling newsletters of German nationalist associations from the fin de siècle. Some of the first words of German I learned wereLehrerandSchule,as one of my tasks was to figure out how many teachers served as leaders in GermanBohemian na tionalist associations between1896and1909. I quickly learned that teach ers had become the heart and soul of German nationalist associations in the final decade of the Austrian Empire. Even with my limited vocabulary, it was also clear to me that Austrian nationalists spent a lot of time throwing rocks at schoolhouse windows and that they were virtually obsessed with schools and education. When it came time to choose a dissertation topic, I decided to write about these nationalists and their efforts to transform children into Czechs and Germans. I soon discovered that nationalist school conflicts were only one small part of a much broader crusade to secure the loyalties of nationally ambiguous children in the Bohemian Lands between 1900and1948. Czech and German nationalists built new minority schools; promoted pedagogical reform; constructed orphanages, soup kitchens, and summer camps; and finally resorted to bribery, boycotts, threats, denuncia tions, and new laws to classify children and their parents as Germans or Czechs, often against their will. Ibeganmyresearchwiththeassumptionthattheprofusionofnation alist polemics about children reflected the depth of nationalist sentiment and the intensity of nationalist conflict in the Bohemian Lands. Almost ev ery textbook or popular representation of East European societies I had

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