Expulsion or integration: Unmixing interethnic marriage in postwar Czechoslovakia

@article{0fb2fc6032da4e0b8c86669ac6296bfe,

title = "Expulsion or integration: Unmixing interethnic marriage in postwar Czechoslovakia",

author = "Benjamin Frommer",

note = "Funding Information: Frommer Benjamin 03 2000 14 2 381 410 sagemeta-type Journal Article search-text Expulsion or Integration: Unmixing lnterethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia Benjamin Frommer: After the Second World War the Czechoslovak government's plans to expel the country's Germans met with fervent Czech appro- bation. Six long years of foreign occupation had forged a national consensus that only the removal of ethnic minorities could ensure the long-term security of the state. In principle, the so-called Trans- fer was straightforward: any German who had not resisted the Nazis was to be deported. In practice, this process was compli- cated by an uncomfortable reality: thousands of Czechs were mar- ried to Germans. When the government discovered that inter- married Germans could not be expelled without causing harm to their Czech spouses and children, it reacted with policies that were discriminatory, inconsistent, and all too often ineffective. Ulti- mately, the national consensus to {"}cleanse{"} [ocistit] the state broke down over the fate of interethnic families.1 Research for this article was partially funded by grants from the Fulbright-Hays Doc- toral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) program, the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), and the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University. Earlier drafts of this paper were presented at: {"}Prelude to Homo- geneity: Ethnic and National Conflicts in the Wake of World War Two in Europe,{"} Insti- tut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (17 January 1998, Vienna, Austria), and at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (17 April 1998, Cambridge, Massachusetts). In addition to the anonymous reviewer, I thank my friends and colleagues for their insightful comments on various drafts of this article: David Brandenburger, Chad Bryant, Patrice Dabrowksi, Erika Dreifus, Gabriella Etmektsoglou, Melissa Feinberg, Eagle Glassheim, Martina Kerlovi, Tim Snyder, Philipp Ther, and Corinna Treitel. I also thank Roman Szporluk for his guiding contribution to my understanding of the problems of national identity in Central Europe. Finally, let me acknowledge my intellectual debt to Tomas Stanek, whose groundbreaking work on the {"}Transfer{"} introduced me to the problem of mixed marriage. 1. The expulsion of the Sudeten Germans (euphemistically referred to by contemporaries as the {"}Transfer{"}) is one of the few topics in Czechoslovak history to have received considerable scholarly attention. But with the exception of two studies by Tomai Stanek (see n.3), very little has been written on the internal social conflicts caused by the forced removal of a significant minority of the population. For general works available in English, see Radomir Luza, The Transfer of the Sudeten Germans: A Study of Czech- German Relations, 1933-1962 (New York: New York University Press, 1964); Joseph East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 14, No. 2, pages 381-410. ISSN 0888-3254 2000 by the American Council of Learned Societies. All rights reserved. 381 Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223 On 1 July 1945 Eduard Bass, the editor of the only independ- ent Czech daily newspaper, introduced what was to become a recurrent theme in the press: {"}The primary and the greatest con- cern for all of our borderland is mixed marriage.{"}2 From the out- set interethnic families generated controversy incommensurate to their numbers. At the end of the war Czechoslovakia may have harbored as many as 90,000 Czecho-German married couples accompanied by more than 150,000 children.3 While hardly a voice was raised in defense of the nearly three million Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia, numerous petitions, protest letters, news- paper articles and editorials demanded redress for the wrongs suf- fered by the minority of Germans married to Czechs. Although as one letter to the editor stated, {"}the transfer of the Germans is beyond discussion,{"}4 mixed marriage provided an opportunity to criticize the totality of the expulsion. Restrained from challeng- ing certain policies and restricted by self-censorship, the press nonetheless did not shy from even comparing the contemporary regime to its Nazi predecessor.5 The wide-ranging debate over mixed marriage explored the limits and possibilities of contem- B. Schechtman, Postwar Population Transfers in Europe, 1945-1955 (Philadelphia: Uni- versity of Pennsylvania Press, 1962); Theodor Schieder, ed., The Expulsion of the Ger- man Population from Czechoslovakia: A selection and translation from Dokumenta- tion der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, Band IV 1 und IV 2, trans. G. H. de Sausmarez et al. (Bonn: Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees, and War Victims, 1960); Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994). 2. {"}Na vinici Panny Marie,{"} Svobodne noviny, 1 July 1945, 1. Soon after writing this edi- torial Eduard Bass resigned and was replaced by Ferdinand Peroutka. 3. Tomas Stanek, Odsun Nemczu z (eskoslovenska 1945-1947 (Prague: Nase Vo'sko, 1991), 326-27; Tomai Stanek, Nemeckd mensina v ceskych zemich 1948-1989 (Prague: Insti- tut pro stfedoevropskou kulturu a politku, 1993), 32. It is highly possible that these statistics underestimate the frequency of mixed marriage. After the war the Czecho- slovak government had a vested interest in limiting the scope of the problem, and mixed- marriage families had a personal stake in being recorded as Czechs. 4. Dnesek 1:26 (19 September 1946): 414. 5. Although Karel Kaplan argues that there was no censorship in postwar Czechoslovakia, he notes elsewhere that certain areas were declared off-limits by the government; for example, criticism of the president, the nationalization of industry, and the country's alliance with the Soviet Union. Most important, the government limited the number of newspapers and required that each be formally related to an authorized organization or political party. Even Svobodne noviny, which maintained an independent line, was officially the organ of the Union of Cultural Organizations. If anything, these restraints make criticism of the government's treatment of mixed marriages all the more significant. 382 Interethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia porary public discourse and, in doing so, challenged several fun- damental myths of postwar Czechoslovakia. The public discussion of mixed marriage was also a debate about the nature and boundaries of the Czech nation. Mixed marriage couples and, especially, their children could not be easily catego- rized in national terms. As Eva Hahn has explained, {"}In a society determined to punish and persecute Germans it was unambigu- ously demonstrated that it was impossible to delineate who was Czech and who was German.{"}6 But postwar Czechoslovakia did not only discuss the limits of the Czech nation, it also determined them. The expulsion compelled the government to establish cri- teria for {"}national identity{"} which in turn were used to regulate citizenship. As subjective as these criteria may have been, in time they created their own reality. Individuals who were determined to be {"}German{"} were expelled to Germany. Individuals who could demonstrate their {"}Czech-ness{"} were allowed to remain in the country and thus reinforce and reify their Czech identity. In ret- rospect, mixed marriage represented a critical stage in the {"}ethnic unmixing{"} of the region's peoples. As such, this article can be seen as a partial response to Rogers Brubaker's call for an analysis of {"}nationness as an event, as something that crystallizes rather than gradually develops, as a contingent, conjuncturally fluctuating, and precarious frame of vision.{"}7 The conflict over mixed marriage does not fit into the typical model of postwar Czech politics. The historiography has tradi- tionally narrated the valiant but hopeless struggle of Czechoslo- vak, especially Czech, democrats against Communists-a strug- gle that culminated in the communist coup d'etat of February 1948.8 The self-labeled {"}democrats{"} comprised members of the Karel Kaplan, {"}Cenzura 1945-1953,{"} Sesdity 22 (1994): 8; Karel Kaplan, Nekrvavd revo- luce (Prague: Mlada fronta Archiv, 1993),46; see also William Diamond, Czechoslovakia Between East and West (London: Stevens and Sons Ltd., 1947), 55. 6. Eva (Hahn) Hartmannovi, {"}'My' a 'oni': hledani ceske narodnf identity na strankich Dnedka z roku 1946,{"} in Karel Jech, ed., Strdnkami soudobych dejin: Sbornik stati k pjtasedesdtindm historika Karla Kaplana (Prague: Ustav pro soudob6 d6jiny, 1993),103. 7. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 19. 8. For an abbreviated version of this interpretation, see Radomir Luza, {"}Czechoslovakia between Democracy and Communism,{"} in Victor S. Mamatey and Radomir Luza, eds., E'ast European Politics and Societies 383 National Socialist and People's parties,9 as well as the moderate wing of the Social Democrats. Along with Slovak representatives, these Czech political parties formed the National Front and banned all extra-governmental opposition. Within the ruling coalition, members of the People's party, with their Christian phi- losophy, unsurprisingly adopted the most tolerant stance on the issue of mixed marriage, while some Communists did call for a stricter approach to the problem. But dissenting voices could be heard on both sides, from the People's party parliamentarian who called mixed marriage a {"}cancer on the body of our nation,{"} to the notorious communist fellow-traveler, Zdenek Fierlinger, who insisted, {"}[Intermarried] Families, whose mothers remained Czech and who raised their children as Czechs, cannot suffer for what the Nazis did to us.{"}10 In fact, rather than instigating a conflict between competing political parties, mixed marriage caused ten- sions between the center and the periphery, both in terms of geog- raphy and administrative authority. For one, as Eduard Bass's com- ment reveals, mixed marriage was particularly a problem in the country's borderlands, the so-called Sudetenland annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938. Second, as we shall see, local authorities throughout the country ignored ministerial directives-including those issued by the Communist Minister of Interior, V-aclav Nosek- and continued to mistreat intermarried families long after the central government liberalized its policies. Of the many types of mixed marriage in Czechoslovakia- A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1918-1948 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni- versity Press, 1973), 387-415. 9. The National Socialist party (Cieskoslovenska' strana nairodnie socialistickd) was a non- Marxist, social-democratic party which, though ultra-nationalist, was in no way affiliated with its German namesake. The Czechoslovak People's party [Ceskoslovenska strana lidova'] was a moderate Catholic movement that, in the new political atmos- phere, found itself on the right. 10. Fierlinger was, at the time, the head of the Social Democratic party and the country's premier. Before, during, and after February 1948 he played a critical role in facilitat- ing the communist seizure and consolidation of power, but throughout he maintained a more liberal attitude towards the Germans than most of his colleagues to the left or right. {"}Predseda vlady o smisenych manzelstvi,{"} Lidova' demokracie, 19 March 1946, 2. Far from the sympathy expressed by other members of the People's party, the par- liamentarian Jaroslav kehulka, declared, {"}a Czech or Slovak woman, who earlier did not think over her marriage to a German chauvinist, must now face the consequences.{"} Tjsnopiseck6 zpra'vy prozatimniho Ncirodniho shromdidcvni' republiky Cieskosloven- ska, 28th mtg., 12 February 1946, 11; Lidovd demokracie, 13 February 1946, 2. between Slovaks and Magyars, Poles and Czechs, Jews and Chris- tians, etc.-Czecho-German couples caused the greatest postwar controversy. The thoroughness with which the Germans were expelled focused attention on those borderline cases that could not be easily resolved. In contrast, Czechoslovakia's failure to garner Allied approval for the expulsion of the country's Hungarian- speaking population spared the government the dilemma of how to split up Slovak-Magyar families.11 Unless otherwise specified, the terms {"}interethnic,{"} {"}intermarriage,{"} and {"}mixed marriage{"} here refer exclusively to Czecho-German relationships. For pur- poses of clarity, {"}Czech wives of German husbands{"} will be referred to as {"}Czech wives,{"} {"}German wives of Czech hus- bands{"} as {"}German wives,{"} and so on. Finally, this article employs the contemporary usage of the terms {"}nationality{"} and {"}nation,{"} which were no more immutable then than they are now. As for who was {"}truly{"} Czech and who {"}objectively{"} German, the con- fused nature of this question is well illustrated by the title of a 1946 Interior Ministry pamphlet: Summary of Regulations for Germans and Individuals Considered to be German. Included in this detailed exegesis of convoluted bureaucratic directives are instructions for the not uncommon case of an individual {"}of German origin, who before the occupation was considered to be a Czech or a Slovak, but during the occupation declared German nationality.{"}'12 Discrimination by Decree Marriage between Czechs and Germans (or, more accurately, between Czech- and German-speakers) had been a common fea- ture of the region for centuries. After Nazi Germany annexed the Sudetenland in September 1938 and then six months later turned the rump provinces of Bohemia and Moravia into an occupied 11. The Americans and British opposed attempts to expel the Magyars and, although Stalin apparently gave his blessing, Soviet military authorities refused to accept deportees into occupied Hungary. Czechoslovakia only achieved an agreement to {"}exchange{"} its Magyars for Hungary's Slovaks. In the end, through flight, expulsion, and popu- lation exchange, 160,000 of Czechoslovakia's 700,000 Magyars left the country. Kaplan, Nekrvavd, 37-39; Ludvik N6mec, {"}Solution of the Minorities Problem,{"} in Mamatey and Luza, eds., History of the Czechoslovak Republic, 422-24. 12. Josef Sebestik and Zdenek Lukes, eds., PNehledpivedpisfi o Neimcich a osobdchpovaio- vanych za Nemce (Prague: Statni tiskarna, 1946), 17. East European Politics and Societies 385 {"}protectorate,{"} mixed marriage became a question of one's very existence. When local Germans became Reich citizens and Czechs Protectorate subjects, interethnic families were forced to choose between the advantages of one affiliation and the marked disad- vantages of the other. Intermingling, however, did not cease: in the year starting 1 August 1939, one-fifth of all marriages conducted by German officials in the Protectorate (i.e., of all weddings involving a German partner) were heterogamous. Despite calls for a ban and concerns about the purity of {"}Aryan blood,{"} Nazi authorities continued to permit mixed marriages among Gen- tiles. After 1941, however, Czech partners had to submit personal photographs-originally nude ones, though later bathing suits were deemed acceptable- for a race examination.13 As part of a wider campaign of forced assimilation, German authorities pres- sured intermarried Czech Gentiles, particularly females, to adopt their spouses' nationality. Children of mixed marriages were con- sidered in principle to be German.14 The end of the war brought no respite to Czecho-German fam- ilies. Thousands of mixed marriage families were among the 660,000 Germans driven from Czechoslovak territory in spring 1945.15 As late as July, a vocational teacher reported that inter- married women in the Jihlava region had been chased from their homes, robbed, and even raped. His own 69-year-old mother-in- law had a gun pulled on her {"}when, as a Czech, she hesitated to join a 'transport.{"}'16 In the absence of clear instructions from the central government, local officials often enforced anti-German 13. Vojtech Mastny, The Czechs under Nazi Rule: The Failure of National Resistance, 1939-1942 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 134-36. 14. Josef Mucha and Karel Petrzelka, 0 nejkterfch souc(asnych problemech ndrodnostne smisenych manielstvi (Prague: Svoboda, 1946), 4-6. For non-Jews who satisfied racial criteria, the Nazis promoted a policy of assimilation. According to a 1939 decree, any- one in the Protectorate who declared German nationality and could speak or was edu- cated in German was to be considered German. Moreover, Czechs who volunteered for and were accepted into the Wehrmacht were naturalized. Gerhard Jacoby, Racial State: The German Nationalities Policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs of the American Jewish Congress and World Jewish Congress, 1944), 80-82. 15. Karel Kaplan, Povdlec~ne (eskoslovensko: Ndrody a hranice (Munich: Narodni Poli- tika, 1985), 136. 16. Urad piedsednictva vlady [Office of the government presidium (UPV)], 11/2 no. 4775- 11- 1051/46, Statni ustredni archiv [State Central Archive (SUA)], Prague, fond (f.) UPV- bez., karton (k.) 1032, signatura (sign.) 1364/2. 386 Interethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia sanctions against interethnic families. Self-appointed paramili- taries turned them out of their apartments and confiscated or just plundered their property. Intermarried Czechs received smaller, {"}German{"} rations and had to wear armbands marking them as Ger- mans. Many were interned as alleged collaborators and traitors. A summer 1945 inventory of the jail in the eastern Bohemian town of Caslav lists several Czech detainees whose only discernible cause for arrest was the German ethnicity of their spouses. In one case, an intermarried German husband lasted only a night before being pronounced dead. The daughter of another intermarried couple still languished in prison in August.17 The day after the Potsdam Conference approved the {"}orderly transfer of the German population{"} from Eastern Europe, the Czechoslovak government finally acted to fill the legal vacuum that had permitted so much arbitrary action. On 2 August 1945 President Edvard Benes signed Decree no. 33 which aimed, in the words of a high-ranking Interior Ministry official, {"}to strip Ger- mans and Magyars of Czechoslovak citizenship in order to pre- pare their transfer from Czechoslovak territory.{"}18 Only Germans who had fought actively against the occupation or had suffered Nazi or fascist persecution could request reinstatement as Czech- oslovak citizens. Even such {"}anti-fascists{"} needed to demonstrate that they had remained loyal to the Czechoslovak Republic and had never wronged the Czech or Slovak people. Prewar {"}Czechs{"} who during the occupation had officially declared themselves {"}German{"}-as many as 300,000 had done so19-could only regain Czechoslovak citizenship if they proved that they had acted under extreme duress. Much of Decree no. 33 was devoted to an incomplete and one- 17. {"}Seznam osob zajigt6nych ... ve veznici okresniho soudu v Caslavi ve veci tykajfci se kolaborantfi a zradcfu,{"} Stitni okresni archiv [State District Archive], Kutna Hora, f. Okresnf narodnf vybor [District National Committee] (C:slav, k. 75. 18. Vladimir Verner, {"}Stitni obcanstvi podle ustavniho dekretu Presidenta republiky ze dne 2. srpna 1945, 6. 33 Sb.,{"} in Prdvniprakse 9:1 (1946): 161. The logic was decep- tively simple: during the war the Germans had acquired Reich citizenship and there- fore should be repatriated after the war to their own country, Germany. The govern- ment could claim, after all, that it was only fulfilling the Germans' wish to go Heim ins Reich. 19. This number corresponds roughly to one of every twenty-five individuals who declared themselves {"}Czech{"} on the 1930 census. {"}Zapis 36. schfize druhe vlWdy,{"} 1 March 1946, SUA, f. 100/24 (archivnf jednotek (aj.) 1494), svazek (sv.) 140. East European Politics and Societies 387 sided resolution of the citizenship of mixed-marriage partners. Prewar law determined a wife's citizenship by that of her hus- band: a foreign woman who wed a Czechoslovak citizen received Czechoslovak citizenship; a Czechoslovak woman who married a foreigner became a foreigner.20 Thus, a Sudeten German's wife, regardless of her own ethnicity, should have automatically lost her citizenship when her husband lost his. To avoid divesting Czech wives of their civic rights, the government stipulated that for the purposes of Decree no. 33 the citizenship of married women and minor children was to be judged independently. But the decree's legal gymnastics did not stop there: Paragraph Four declared that requests for reinstatement of citizenship by {"}the wives and minor children of male Czechoslovak citizens [were] to be judged benevo- lently.{"} Moreover, until the resolution of their petitions, German wives were to be treated as Czechoslovak citizens.21 German hus- bands, by contrast, received no special dispensation. Decree no. 33 left them in a legal limbo, technically eligible to apply for cit- izenship (as were in theory all former Czechoslovak citizens), but given no means to do so. In short, according to Decree no. 33 some mixed marriages were more equal than others. The government and the public appar- ently viewed German women as far less threatening to the state than their male counterparts. Many German men, after all, had served during the war in Nazi Germany's armed forces. Be that as it may, the double standard most likely reflected, in the words of one commentator, {"}the conviction that a German woman mar- ried to a Czech man will better conform, than [will] a German man 20. The guiding principle of the old citizenship law, the {"}doctrine of family unity,{"} priv- ileged a man over his wife and children, whose legal status was dependent upon his. Despite a campaign by Czech feminists and several draft laws, interwar Czechoslo- vakia never reformed the citizenship statutes it inherited from the Habsburg monar- chy. The constitutional establishment of an end to gender privilege and the achieve- ment of female suffrage notwithstanding, citizenship law was one of several areas where women continued to face legal discrimination. In fact, Czechoslovakia's failure to reform its code meant that by the end of the interwar period it was one of only nine coun- tries to mandate the abrogation of a woman's citizenship when her husband was nat- uralized in another state. See Melissa Feinberg, {"}The Privileges of Sex: Gender and Democracy in the Czech Lands, 1918-1945{"} (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 2000). 21. Italics added. Karel Jech and Karel Kaplan, eds., Dekrety prezidenta republiky 1940-1945: Dokumenty (Brno: Ustav pro soudob6 dejiny, 1995), 345-46. 388 Interethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia [married] to a Czech woman.{"}22 A husband was expected to force his language and, more important, his culture upon his wife and children so that in time they would adopt his nationality. The underlying rational for this belief was based on a paternalistic con- ception of family life: traditional citizenship law was, in the words of a contemporary scholar, {"}a legacy of the days when a woman was treated legally on the same level as children and had to be rep- resented officially by her husband.{"}23 In short, women were like children-they could be {"}brought up{"} by their husbands to behave correctly. Men, on the other hand, were fully formed adults and no amount of re-education could alter their basic beliefs and, more to the point, their national identity. One petition to the gov- ernment even argued that German war widows and single moth- ers, who had never even been married to Czech men, could even- tually be assimilated into the Czech nation.24 Needless to say, no one suggested the same for German widowers. Decree no. 33 failed to resolve several other important issues. For one, it never defined what was meant by {"}German national- ity.{"} Authorities had to rely on an earlier decree, stating that any- one who declared himself German or joined a German organiza- tion after 1929 was determined to have German nationality.25 In practice, this meant that one's answer on the 1930 census deter- mined one's fate fifteen years later. No one who originally filled out the form could have been aware of the ultimate consequences of his or her decision. Moreover the census itself only asked for one's mother tongue. After the war, provincial authorities reported that thousands of adults who considered themselves entirely Czech had their mother tongue recorded in 1930 as German.26 Sec- ond, Decree no. 33 surprisingly drew no distinction between mixed 22. {"}Smisen6 manzelstvi,{"} Svobodne slovo, 30 October 1945, 1. 23. Antonin Bohac, {"}Cesky Nemkami?{"} Svobodne slovo, 13 December 1945. SUA, f. UPV- bez., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 24. Nirodni jednota Severocesk6 (18 December 1945), SUA, f. 1jPV-b6i., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 25. After the war, nationality was determined according to Decree no. 5/1945 which nullified material transactions conducted during the occupation and confiscated the property of {"}unreliables.{"} Jech, Dekrety, 217. 26. An Interior Ministry official commented, {"}In our legal code we have no definition for Czech nationality{"} (Josef Hujrsky, Zjist'ovdnz ndrodnosti [Prague: Ceskoslovensky uistav zahranicni, 1947], 64-66). East European Politics and Societies 389 marriages consecrated in the interwar years, when native Germans were Czechoslovak citizens with full rights and responsibilities, and wartime marriages, when occupation authorities were enforc- ing policies designed ultimately to eliminate the Czech nation, if not physically then culturally. The conflation of the two categories seriously harmed the cause of the former group without helping those of the latter, whose situation was probably hopeless from the beginning.27 Subsequent directives established various cut-off dates-as early as 21 May 1938 (Czechoslovak military mobi- lization against the Nazi threat) or as late as 16 May 1939 (Nazi imposition of.the Protectorate)-after which a Czech who wed a German was supposed to have knowingly committed an act of col- laboration. An unanticipated result of Decree no. 33's silence on this issue was that after 2 August 1945 a German woman could potentially regain her Czechoslovak citizenship by marrying a Czech man-{"}After which divorce might immediately follow,{"} explained an official publication, permitting {"}undesirable indi- viduals to acquire our citizenship.{"} To close this loophole, on 2 October 1945 the government banned new marriages between Czechs and Germans.28 Orders and Disorder Although Decree no. 33 apparently resolved Czech wives' citi- zenship, it did not end their travails. True, they were exempt from property confiscation, but their German partners were not, and when the husband's half of an apartment was expropriated the wife's portion tended to be seized as well. The family of an incarcerated German father was deprived of his financial support and faced des- titution. Even when not interned he was often more of a burden than a help, because as a German he remained stateless and sub- ject to onerous restrictions on pay, rations, and travel. In the words 27. Even the independent weekly Dnesek, which otherwise promoted the cause of the inter- married, stressed, {"}In the interest of clarity the editors consider it their responsibility to point out that they distinguish between the marriages of Czech women to German men before 1939 and those consecrated after 1939. To the extent that the editors per- mit a debate [on the issue], it is only concerned with the former{"} (Dnesek 1:38 [12 December 1946]: 608). 28. Mucha, 0 nejkterfch, 14-15. 390 Interethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia of one commentary: {"}It's true that the state gave [Czech wives] citizenship, [but] it did not give them the possibility of exis- tence.{"}29 The predicament of Czech wives was further com- pounded because local authorities routinely disregarded Decree no. 33 and continued to treat women according to the nationality of their husbands. In the autumn of 1945 the press reported that Czech wives and their children were still being forced to wear arm- bands marking them as German and were still receiving German rations. Interethnic families had been thrown out of their apart- ments and even interned in detention camps. Local authorities dis- missed criticism that they were disobeying official orders with such weak excuses as: {"}We haven't yet had a chance to study [the direc- tives],{"} {"}We never received them,{"} or even, {"}We lost them.{"}30 The denial of citizenship to German husbands left open the pos- sibility that they could be expelled, with or without their fami- lies. One week after the promulgation of Decree no. 33, the Min- istry of Interior had ordered that {"}the forced evacuation of families with children of mixed marriage be temporarily stopped until fur- ther regulations.{"}'31 This directive, however, represented only a temporary reprieve. In response to numerous letters, telephone calls, and personal visits to the editorial staff, in November Lidova demokracie (People's democracy), the daily newspaper of the People's party,32 vociferously demanded an immediate halt to the expulsion of mixed-marriage families.33 It had yet to be determined what would happen in January when Czechoslovakia began to deport millions of Germans by rail to the Allied occupation zones in Germany. One journalist remarked: {"}Czech women are by no means at the end of their wretched odyssey. It is only now ap- 29. {"}Mlelive trpitelky,{"} Dnedek 1:10 (30 May 1946): 148. 30. {"}Co bude se smisenymi manzelstvimi?{"} Lidovdademokracie, 13 October 1945, 1; {"}Jeste smiseni manzelstvi,{"} Lidovd demokracie, 6 November 1945, 1-2; {"}Poradek do veci smisenych manzelstvi,{"} Lidovd demokracie, 25 November 1945, 1-2. 31. Stanek, Odsun, 167. 32. Lidovd demokracie was the third largest daily newspaper with an average sale of 185,000 copies per day. Among the other newspapers quoted here, the communist Rudeprdvo (Red right) sold approximately 500,000 copies per day, the National Socialist Svobodne slovo (Free word) 300,000, and the nonaligned Svobodne noviny (Free news) 68,000. All were published in Prague. Karel F. Zieris, {"}The New Czech Press,{"} in Newspa- pers and Newspapermen in Czechoslovakia (Prague: Union of CzechJournalists, 1947), 32-33. 33. {"}PoHrdek,{"} Lidovd demokracie, 25 November 1945, 1-2. East European Politics and Societies 391 proaching its culmination. The long-desired organized transfer of the Germans from our republic is now drawing near: how will mixed-marriage couples be treated?{"}34 On the eve of the new year the Interior Ministry finally answered these concerns. Czech wives, their children and their German hus- bands (as long as they were a family's primary provider) were not to be deported. Most important, no Czechs at all were to be included in the transports.35 But these orders were again only a reprieve: ten days later the minister of interior, Vaiclav Nosek, told a parliamentary committee that the citizenship of German hus- bands and their children remained an {"}open question.{"}36 In March, Nosek rejected a proposal that all Germans in mixed marriages should, until decided otherwise, be treated as Czechoslovak citi- zens with full rights.37 Only at the end of May 1946 did the gov- ernment exempt intermarried Germans (who had not engaged in {"}anti-state{"} activities) from the most oppressive measures. Thence- forth they were not to be subjected to travel restrictions, were to receive normal rations and pay, and could no longer be forced to wear markings. Most important, they were explicitly excluded from the Transfer.38 Perhaps these orders were lost as well. On 11 June 1946 the Min- istry of Interior reported that local authorities had {"}repeatedly{"} deported Czechs, {"}many of whom cannot even master the Ger- man language.{"}39 One month later a train departed the country carrying 1,200 individuals, including 120 children under the age 34. {"}Co bude,{"} Lidovd demokracie, 13 October 1945, 1. The {"}Organized Transfer{"} of more than two and a quarter million Sudeten Germans via railway cars to occupied Ger- many lasted from January through the autumn of 1946. Kaplan, Povdlecne, 153. 35. In principle Czechs were not to be expelled, but in order to be exempted Czech wives had to have retained their own citizenship. Moreover, the mixed marriage had to have been consecrated before 21 May 1938 and both partners must have been Czechoslo- vak citizens at that time. German wives who could fulfill the requirements outlined in Decree no. 33 were also excluded from the Transfer. Stanek, Odsun, 319. 36. {"}Jde o vic,{"} Lidovd demokracie, 26 Jan. 1946, 1-2. 37. {"}Zipis 43. schiuze 2. vlady{"} (19 March 1946), SUA, f. 100/24 (aj. 1494), sv. 140. Although a 28 March 1946 directive permitted German husbands to apply for residence permits, it did not in any way resolve their permanent status. Stanek, Odsun, 321. 38. Sebestik, Prehled, 44. This directive applied only to Germans who married Czechs before 21 May 1938. In other words, marriage after that early date, when war was by no means a certainty, was considered to be a form of collaboration. 39. {"}Odsun Nemcu~i, opetovne zavady pri vyberui osob . . . ,{"} Ministerstvo Vnitra [Inte- rior ministry (MV)] (11 June 1946), SUA, f. MV-Nova registratura (NR), k. 2016. 392 Interethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia of six. The ministry complained, {"}The Czech language predomi- nated throughout the entire transport-as if it were a transfer of Czechs not Germans-because in the transport were mainly mixed marriages, Czech women with their German husbands.{"}40 At the beginning of September, another 150 children, who {"}didn't even have a clue about German,{"} were put in a transport train; ac- cording to Lidova demokracie, the cars {"}resounded with Czech.{"}41 The Interior Ministry finally made a despairing plea: The Ministry of Interior cannot but reproach the relevant [local] authorities for the lack of loyalty to their popularly-elected gov- ernment, the lack of sense of duty and even frequent malice-if sus- picion that government orders are being [willfully] sabotaged does not itself need to be aroused.... [M]any hundreds of children are being gratuitously delivered, thoughtlessly or maliciously, to cer- tain Germanization and are thereby being consciously consigned to the ranks of the greatest enemies of the Czech nation-for these children will be turned into German janissaries. While impover- ishing our own nation, we are enriching a foreign nation inimical to us. The Ministry of Interior therefore hopes that this reminder will suffice for sense and judgment to prevail over indifference and incomprehension and that another notice will not be required for [local authorities] to fulfill their duty.42 Apparently local officials did not share the Interior Ministry's con- cern that {"}illegal{"} acts could interfere with the {"}smooth opera- tion{"} of the Transfer.43 The open defiance of official orders illustrates a fascinating and largely unexplored aspect of postwar Czechoslovak politics. In the spring of 1945, the country's traditional administrative struc- tures were thoroughly replaced by a system of national commit- tees. Each of these councils, in theory elected by the people, con- trolled the security forces within its own geographical jurisdiction. National committees issued gun licenses, residence permits, {"}certificates of national reliability,{"} and even determined who would receive citizenship and who would be transferred. When 40. {"}Smernice o ulevch ... zivady,{"} MV no. Z/S-3624/142-31/7-1946 (6 September 1946), SUA, f. UPV-be., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 41. {"}Kdo za to odpovfid?{"} Lidovd demokracie, 28 January 1947, 1. 42. {"}Sm6rnice o ulevach ... zavady,{"} SUA, f. UPV-be., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 43. {"}Odsun Nemcii.{"} East European Politics and Societies 393 it came to mixed marriage, the parochial interests of local author- ities, especially the desire to expropriate property, clashed with the geopolitical concerns of the central government. This does not appear to have been an ideological conflict between conservatives in Prague and radicals in the provinces. After all, both the Inte- rior Ministry and the overwhelming majority of the national com- mittees it struggled to control were dominated by members of the Communist party.44 In March 1946 Communist party secretariats from the Pilsen area sent dozens of similar petitions-some were merely mimeo- graphed copies-to the Justice Ministry demanding inter alia an end to the favorable judgment of mixed marriage.45 Before par- liament the communist representative from Pilsen voiced his area's demands and decried the {"}leniency{"} shown towards the German wives of Czech men. He denounced these women as {"}ferocious Nazis{"} and claimed that they dominated their Czech husbands. He then called for the revision of Decree no. 33 to stop the benevolent treatment of undeserving German women's appli- cations for citizenship.46 Here, one might suppose, the Com- munist party publicly identified with a harsh position against mixed marriage; but in the next day's issue of the party's official newspaper, Rude'pravo, which featured the Pilsen representative's {"}significant{"} speech as its lead article, his rant against intermar- ried German women was curiously absent.47 His complaints about the Justice Ministry, various judges, and retribution as a whole were apparently viewed as representative of the party. By contrast, the editors of Rude'pravo chose that the public not learn of his radical views on mixed marriage. Nosek himself, in an address to the parliament the next day, only stated that inter- married Germans who committed treason could not expect to remain in Czechoslovakia simply by virtue of their spouses 44. After the 1946 elections, 78 percent of all District National Committee chairmen in the Czech provinces were Communist party members; in Bohemia the number was a staggering 89 percent. Karel Bertelmann, Vyvoj ndrodnich vyborui do uistavy 9. kvetna (1945-1948) (Prague: Ceskoslovenska akademie ved, 1964), 179. 45. SUA, f. Ministerstvo spravedlnosti [Ministry of Justice (MS)], k. 1934, sv. 3. 46. Stekl, Tjsnopisecki' zprdvy prozatimniho, 28th mtg., 12 February 1946, 17. 47. {"}Zajistit bezpecnost statu a nirodniho majetku,{"} Rude prdvo, 13 February 1946, 1. 394 Interethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia nationality.48 While local cadres, perhaps in a quest for property and the votes it could buy, may have promoted the punishment of interethnic families, the central party leadership remained remarkably circumspect on the issue. Perhaps communist lead- ers played a clever double-game, but until evidence to that effect emerges, it remains just as likely that the party itself was divided over the fate of interethnic families.49 Defending Mixed Marriage Faced with discriminatory policies that were being routinely dis- obeyed, some intermarried Czech women seized the initiative. They repeatedly called upon parliamentary representatives and government ministers to ameliorate their dire situation. They denounced the unfairness of the laws and the central government's inability to curtail abuses by local authorities. For example, in mid- July 1946 a delegation of intermarried Czech women visited the government and demanded not only the resolution of their hus- band's citizenship problems but also compensation for their suf- fering.50 In November 1946 a group of {"}Czech Women-married to Germans, former Czechoslovak citizens{"} petitioned government ministers to intervene on their behalf. In a three-page letter, the women explained that a year and a half after the war had ended they had yet to receive official documentation, without which their children had been expelled from school. As Germans, their hus- bands still received, {"}in the best case,{"} pittance wages and ration- cards marked {"}Deutsche.{"} The women summed up their desperate state: {"}We-native-born Czechs who are bringing up demon- strably Czech children-have been abandoned to the mercy of the 48. Nosek, Tjsnopiseck6 zprdvyprozatimn[ho, 30th mtg., 14 February 1946, 19. 49. Even some harsh statements by Communists appear less so under scrutiny. For exam- ple, one letter to Rudeprdvo commented: {"}I don't know what sense it makes to leave several thousand of such characterless individuals here, even if they are by chance of Czech origin. We don't handle traitors with gloves.{"} But this partisan spoke of inter- married Czechs who either adopted German nationality during the war or otherwise collaborated with the Nazis. In fact, the letter refers specifically to one Czech woman who married an SS officer-hardly a representative case. {"}Jak s nimi nalozit?{"} Rude prdvo, 12 July 1946, 5; Stanek, Odsun, 323. 50. Stanek, Odsun, 323. East European Politics and Societies 395 perilous streets, impoverished of our possessions, of all our house- hold goods, not even to mention the houses themselves, and to top it off we have been maliciously denounced out of greed.{"}51 In late November the petition from {"}Czech women-married to Germans{"} was featured in the independent weekly Dnesvek (Today). In the next issue the journal printed a biting and unsym- pathetic response from {"}F. A.{"} who, in the name of women whose husbands had been killed by the Nazis, declared post-Munich intermarriage to be {"}100 percent treachery.{"} She further demanded that even prewar intermarried couples be judged according to their wartime behavior-by the {"}spirit in which one raised one's chil- dren and whether one helped the Czech people.{"}52 As the incar- nation of a radical nationalist viewpoint, the author became a tar- get at which critics of the regime's policies could aim their barbs. Over the next two months Dnes-ek printed over a dozen responses to her letter. F. A. was subjected to ad hominem attacks which asked her to show some compassion-in the words of one letter, to {"}be a woman!{"} Another contribution suggested, {"}She proba- bly has never known true love, which recognizes no obstacles, not even national ones!{"}3 F. A., however, was not alone in failing to see that family could be a stronger bond than nation, and that the two allegiances could clash. It was official government policy after all that had prompted the conflict. Although most contemporaries viewed {"}nationality{"} as an essential human characteristic, they understood {"}national iden- tity{"} to be contingent and changeable. From the beginning, con- tributors challenged the idea that the Czechs were a distinct nation, free of all German influences. One letter writer hoped that F. A. would find a German ancestor and would {"}begin with a purification of [her] own ranks and boot . .. [her] own treach- erous great-grandfather across the border.{"}54 Here clearly was the 51. Petition letter of {"}Czech women-married to Germans, former Czechoslovak citi- zens{"} (30 November 1946), Archiv Akademie ved Cesk6 republiky [Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (A-AVCiR)], Prague, f. Zdenek Nejedly, vefejnai cinnost, k. 22. 52. {"}Prosba Ceiek, vdanych za Nemce,{"} Dnesek 1:36 (28 November 1946): 576; {"}Odpoved' Ceskam, provdanym za Nemce,{"} Dnesek 1:37 (5 December 1946): 591-2. 53. Dnesek 1:38 (12 December 1946): 608; Dnesek 1:39-40 (19 December 1946): 636. 54. Dnesek 1:42 (9 January 1947): 672. 396 Interethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia recognition, voiced in another letter, that {"}mutual Czecho-German assimilation is simply a historical fact of the centuries-old coex- istence of both nations in our lands.{"}55 A letter to Lidova demokra- cie pointedly suggested that Bo?ena Nemcova's German father, were he alive, would have to be expelled.56 In other words, had the Transfer been carried out earlier, the Czechs would have been denied one of their most beloved authors. Repeating Bass's initial call for a sympathetic approach to the problem of intermarriage, one nationalist organization from the mountainous northeastern corner of Bohemia explained, {"}In our borderlands there are many inhabitants who could just as easily demonstrate their Czech origin as their German.{"}57 The troubled relationship between the Interior Ministry and national commit- tees was not the only center-periphery divide exposed by the con- troversy. {"}Old settlers,{"} Czechs who had remained in the Sude- tenland throughout the war, had lifelong experience with the malleability of national identity and, consequently, great sympa- thy for the plight of intermarried families. According to official figures, the 868,250 old settlers were joined after liberation by more than 1.5 million {"}new settlers,{"} Czech migrants from the interior in search of land and opportunity.58 Unlike the recent arrivals, who abstractly believed the intermarried to be traitors, indigenous Czechs knew them as neighbors, friends, and often relatives. In large part the conflict was over land: old settlers sought to pro- tect their extended family's property while new settlers tried to expropriate it. Overrun by migrants they viewed as little more than carpetbaggers, old settlers turned to Prague for help. For exam- ple, in April 1946 representatives from seven northern Bohemian towns (including Decin, Litomerice, Most, and Teplice) sent a joint resolution to the president's office demanding that German hus- bands of Czech women regain their citizenship and be partially 55. Dnedek 1:26 (19 September 1946): 414. 56. {"}Co bude,{"} Lidovd demokracie, 13 October 1945, 1. Bozena Nemcova was the author of Babilka [Grandmother] (1854), one of the central works of Czech national literature. 57. Nirodni jednota Severoceske (18 December 1945), SUA, f. UPV-be., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 58. Statisticka' przru6ka (eskoslovenske republiky 1948 (Prague: Statni urfad statisticky, 1948), 32. East European Politics and Societies 397 exempted from property confiscation. Later that year an aggrieved congress of old settlers again decried the {"}inhuman expulsion{"} of mixed-marriage families from their homes.59 Besides pointing out the heterogeneous origin of the Czech people, defenders of mixed marriage resorted to three primary arguments: that women were suffering disproportionately for their alleged wartime sins, that government policy was undemocratic, even {"}un-Czechoslovak,{"} and that the Czechs, as a small nation, could not afford to expel their own kin. The tribulations of Czech wives were part of postwar society's vicious punishment of wartime {"}horizontal collaboration{"} with Germans. In the spring of 1945 self-appointed security forces arrested Czech women on the sole grounds that they had fraternized with German soldiers. Much like in France, where women were paraded through crowds with their heads shaven, Czech women in the town of Frydek were forced to sweep the streets for a month while wearing signs on their backs which read: {"}I consorted with Germans and am shirk- ing work.{"}60 The punishment of interethnic, non-marital affairs received official sanction in October 1945 when the government empowered national committees to prosecute {"}amorous rela- tions{"} as an {"}offense against national honor.{"} Thereafter, any Czech who had maintained sexual-or even just social-relations with a German soldier or civilian could be punished with a con- siderable fine and up to one year in prison.61 Whereas sanctions against women who consorted with German soldiers may have garnered widespread acceptance, if not enthu- siastic support, the abuse of legally intermarried Czech women generated considerable outrage. Criticism of government policy and local practices focused on the unequal treatment afforded to men and women. After reporting that Czech wives had been forced to wear armbands marking them as Germans, Lidova demokra- cie asked, {"}Can anyone imagine that Czech men married to Ger- man women would wear such armbands. .. ?{"} The newspaper 59. Sdruzeni hranicaiiu (UPV 47033-11-9122-I1/2); Ceskoslovensky nirodni odboj, Decin- Podmokly (24 December 1946), SUA, f. UPV-be., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 60. {"}Stykala jsem se s Nemci . . .,{"} Lidovd sprdva 1:3 (30 October 1945): 10. 61. See Benjamin Frommer, {"}Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czech- oslovakia{"} (Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1999), 193-240. 398 Interethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia argued that society desperately needed these women, some of whom were professionals such as nurses and pharmacists. Instead of working in hospitals, they had been reduced to washing floors and cleaning dishes.62 The petition of {"}Czech Women-married to Germans{"} complained that, whereas protests had been called against Czech wives and whereas local authorities encouraged tes- timony against German husbands' requests for citizenship, Czech men wed German women in peace and quiet. In particular, the peti- tion decried the numerous postwar marriages between Czech men and German women-there had allegedly been 8,000 such unions. Even more scandalous were the nuptials of one current parlia- mentarian to a German woman after the Munich Pact and those of a {"}high state functionary{"} to another after 5 May 1945. The peti- tion concluded bitterly: {"}Perhaps we will finally see the day when the leaders of our own state and nation will have as much under- standing and good will for us as they do in cases of mixed mar- riage between Czech men and German women.{"}63 Several letters to Dnesek later revealed that local authorities were not as {"}benevolent{"} to German wives as the government had asked them to be. Although such cases should have been resolved by early 1946, at the end of the year one Czech man wrote that his wife still awaited confirmation of her citizenship. Half their property had been confiscated and the husband had been advised to solve his problems through divorce.64 In another case two men complained to the government that because of their mixed mar- riages they had been demoted and that, in the summer of 1946, their wives still wore markings and received German rations.65 Despite these complaints, Czech males romantically involved with Germans received far more favorable treatment than their female counterparts. In March 1947 the Interior Ministry even ordered 62. {"}Pofrdek,{"} Lidovd demokracie, 25 November 1945, 1-2. 63. {"}Czech women-married to Germans,{"} A-AVCR, f. Zd. Nejedly, vefejna cinnost, k. 22. 64. Dnedek 1:39-40 (19 December 1946): 636. For some families the pressure was too much. A legal scholar commented, {"}The wave of ... divorce disputes between spouses, where one was a non-Aryan, which under the influence of racial statutes flooded our courts during the occupation now has its analog in the ... divorce litigation between spouses, where one is Czech and the other is a German citizen{"} (Josef Frydrych, {"}Rozvod a rozluka smisenych manzelstvi,{"} Prdvniprakse 9:3 [1945]: 225). - 65. In reference to UPV no. 30.166-11-6157/46, SUA, f. UPV-b6i., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. East European Politics and Societies 399 that the German female partners of Czech men were not to be expelled as long as they were not merely engaged in {"}opportunistic amorous relations.{"}66 The predicament of intermarried Czech wives offered critics an opportunity to deplore the mistreatment of all women. Misogy- nist violence cast a shadow on the May 1945 {"}Revolution{"} when, in addition to battling the Nazis, vigilantes avenged the nation's {"}honor.{"} In the words of one letter, liberation was accompanied by a {"}frothy scum of malicious creatures who, as later events showed, had their poisonous spit ready just to cover up their own evils.{"}67 Lidova demokracie proclaimed, {"}One cannot ... praise a male Czech who, after having been completely indifferent to the nation for years, suddenly begins to demonstrate his patriotic sen- timents by tyrannizing women and children!{"}68 Ultimately, the suffering of intermarried women undermined official myths about the country and its people. Dnesek insisted that the wartime behav- ior of Czech women in mixed marriages was no worse than that of their compatriots. The weekly asked: were Czech wives more deserving of punishment than Protectorate bureaucrats who signed an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler? Why persecute a woman, whose only misdeed was to legally marry a German, when Czech work- ers who labored voluntarily in the Reich escaped unharmed? After all, {"}whoever remained at home sooner or later got a whiff of collaboration.... Whoever worked, worked at least partially (if not intentionally) for the enemy.{"}69 Postwar Czechoslovakia fared especially poorly when com- pared to the interwar republic. After all, the mixed marriages that caused so much suffering after 1945 (or more accurately, after 1938) had been perfectly legal when they were consecrated. A German man wrote: My wife has lost her citizenship, property, home, purpose in life and belief in humanity-trifles in comparison with her fateful guilt that in 1931 in the very heart of the capital of the Czechoslovak Republic, before a Czech representative of the Czech mayor, in the 66. Stanek, Odsun, 328. 67. Dnedek 1:41 (2 January 1947): 656. 68. {"}Smiseni manzelstvi,{"} Lidovd demokracie, 27 September 1945, 1-2. 69. {"}Mlcelive trpitelky,{"} DnesVek 1:10(30 May 1946): 147-8. For a similar critique, see Svo- bodne slovo, 30 October 1945, 1. 400 Interethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia presence of two Czech witnesses and according to Czechoslovak law, she married a Czechoslovak citizen.70 Several letters and editorials recalled that Tomas G. Masaryk, the revered founder and first president of Czechoslovakia (191 8- 35), had encouraged intermarriage in the belief that it could help solve the country's nationality problems.7' Most of all, the suf- fering of the Czech wives-and the government's failure to end it-contradicted the very principles upon which the republic was supposed to have been founded. The Masarykian tradition was cast into doubt: {"}these women are trying to believe the words of promi- nent individuals about democracy, freedom, humanity [and] law.{"}72 Some comparisons contained implicit, perhaps unintended criticism of the Transfer itself. For example, Lidova demokracie questioned why, if Germans could have served as officers, bureau- crats, and ministers in the interwar Czechoslovak Republic, it was automatically assumed that all German husbands were incorrigi- ble traitors.73 An Interior Ministry official even argued in defense of mixed marriage that {"}many{"} Germans had fought alongside Czechs against Hitler.74 Defenders of mixed marriage did not even shy from drawing an explicit comparison between Nazi ideology and the postwar government's policy. Sometimes such critiques masked them- selves as personal attacks, for example the letter that claimed that F. A. {"}probably liked the insane racist politics of the Nazis.{"}75 Another letter directly compared postwar treatment of mixed mar- riage to the Nuremberg Laws: {"}As far as we know, only the Nazis... punished marriages with Jews.{"}76 The analogy with Nazism was most potently illustrated in {"}Conversation with a child of mixed marriage,{"} featured in Dnes-ek in February 1947. 70. Dnesek 1:38 (12 December 1946): 608. 71. {"}Kdo za to odpovida?{"} Lidovd demokracie, 28 Jan. 1947, 1. See also Ladislav Gut, {"}Smfsen6 manzelstvi,{"} Svobodne Slovo, 30 Oct. 1945, 1; {"}eskU zeny ze smiseny'ch manzelstvi,{"} letter to the President's office (received 16 August 1946) and {"}Vsl. nirodnf odboi,{"} letter to Premier K. Gottwald (24 December 1946), SUA, f. UTPV- bez., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 72. Dneek 1:43 (16 January 1947): 688. 73. {"}Kdo za to odpovidi?{"} Lidovd demokracie, 28 January 1947, 1. 74. Hfirsky, Zjist'ovdni, 67. 75. Dnesek 1:39-40 (19 December 1946): 636. 76. Dnesek 1:45 (30 January 1947): 720. East European Politics and Societies 401 The subject of the story, a young girl, was the offspring of a mixed marriage between a Czech Jewish man and a German Christian woman. After the war, the father explained to his daughter that she was a Mischling-{"}It is true that Hitler gave you that label, but it has become so ingrained that one can still hear it today.{"} When Germany occupied the Sudetenland in 1938, she and her family fled to Prague, only to find that as outsiders they were not welcome there either. During the war her father eked out a living on the menial jobs that he, a Jew marked by a yellow star on his chest, was still able to find. Her mother resisted official pressure to divorce her husband and struggled to support the family in the face of constant harassment and occasional threats from Ger- man and Czech neighbors. The girl's entire paternal family, with the exception of her father who survived his imprisonment in the Theresienstadt ghetto, perished in the Nazi camps. The end of the war only brought more suffering: {"}One grandmother was gassed by the Nazis because of prejudice; the other grandmother has been expelled and delivered to hunger.{"} The father concluded that there had been no chance for mixed marriage: {"}That form of union can survive only in a democratic world which knows no racial, reli- gious, or other prejudices.{"}77 Beyond their concern for individual suffering, the defenders of mixed marriage argued that the government's policies contradicted the fundamental interests of the Czech nation. They insisted on an emotional level that the Czech nation should not reject its sons and daughters, or even its grandsons and granddaughters, who had {"}Czech blood{"} in their veins. In Premier Zdenek Fierlinger's words, {"}We want to and must save for our nation every drop of honorable Czech blood.{"}78 Fears of the loss of {"}children of our own blood{"} and of {"}wasting{"} Czech blood are common features of the letters and editorials.79 What gave a sense of urgency to this matter was the belief that the Czechs were a {"}small nation.{"} In the words of an official in the Interior Ministry, {"}We are not a nation large enough to waste our own blood ... ; even large nations 77. {"}Rozhovor s ditetem ze smiseneho manzelstvi,{"} Dnesek 1:48 (20 February 1947): 756-7. 78. {"}Predseda vlady o smisenych manzelstvi,{"} Lidovd demokracie, 19 March 1946, 2. 79. Dnesek 1:26 (19 September 1946): 414-15; {"}Na vinici,{"} Svobodne noviny, 1 July 1945, 1. For other examples, see Hartmannovi, {"}'My' a 'Oni,{"}' 102-3. 402 Interethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia do not indulge in such luxury.{"}80 The defenders of mixed mar- riage further reasoned that as a practical matter the Czechoslo- vak state could not afford, economically or militarily, to deport interethnic families. The expulsion of the Sudeten Germans left the country underpopulated and the economy underproductive. As a result Czechoslovakia faced a population crisis which was frequently discussed and lamented in the press.8' Combining an emotional and a practical appeal, the Social Democratic party's weekly journal declared, {"}We cannot allow the needless loss of a single child, not even of a single able worker.{"}82 As a substitute for the agricultural labor lost in the Transfer, one town even requested that mixed-marriage families be deported to its area to do farm work.83 Militarily, the expulsion of the children of inter- married families not only deprived Czechoslovakia of future recruits, but also, as one parliamentarian asserted, it could even help Germany to overcome its wartime losses with {"}Czech blood and Czech children.{"}84 The obsession with blood was more than just a reflexive bor- rowing of Hitlerite terminology. In contrast to the Nazis, those Czechs who worried about national purity used acquired traits, not heredity, as a benchmark. They demanded not only a correct answer on the 1930 census, but also loyalty to the Czech nation during the occupation. Consequently, the cultural purists were far more restrictive than the defenders of {"}Czech blood.{"} For exam- ple, in response to a proposal calling for the forced assimilation of Germans, a representative of the State Statistical Office argued, {"}A Czech man or women who through marriage joined the Ger- man nation and thus deserted ... does not deserve sentimental con- sideration and it makes no sense for them now to be 'saved' for the poor, small Czech nation.{"} In his view, {"}When it comes to a 80. Quoted in Hu'rsky, Zjir'ovdni, 67-68. 81. See {"}Musi nas byti vice,{"} Lidovd demokracie, 19 August 1945, 1; {"}Pro vetsi narod,{"} Svobodni slovo, 21 September 1945, 1; Minister of Health, Dr. Ad. Prochazka, {"}Pop- ulacni problem,{"} Lidovd demokracie, 31 January 1946, 1. 82. {"}Odsun a smiseni manzelstvi,{"} C0l 2:22 (7 June 1946): 339-40. 83. Okresni narodni vybor v Nov6m meste na Morave (21 February 1947), SUA, f. UPV- bez., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 84. Jihoceskdpravda, 8 February 1946, 1-2. Quoted inJeremy King, {"}Loyalty and Polity, Nation and State. A Town in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848-1948{"} (Doctoral dis- sertation, Columbia University, 1998), 166. East European Politics and Societies 403 nation, quality is more important than quantity.{"}85 The time for assimilation had long passed; only the elimination of Germans via expulsion could resolve the country's internal conflicts. The guardians of Czech blood would have apparently preferred the more generous definitions of nationality employed by other Central European peoples. Even before the Allies ruled out the expulsion of the country's Magyars, the Slovaks had approached their minority population far differently than their Czech com- patriots. In Bratislava assimilation and not expulsion was the pri- mary concern in borderline cases. Whereas {"}Slovakization{"} was integral to the country's nationalist program, the term {"}Czech- ification{"} was not a part of the contemporary vocabulary. In fact, the Slovak definition of nationality was so liberal that all one often needed to qualify for Slovakization was a {"}Slovak{"} name, a birth- place in a {"}Slovak{"} village, or even a relative who had been suc- cessfully {"}renationalized.{"} A contemporary scholar judged the dif- ferent views of assimilation's prospects: {"}The Czechs are careful, untrusting, and more pessimistic; the Slovaks, in contrast, are bold, broad-minded, and more optimistic.{"}86 The.Czechoslovak gov- ernment also appeared miserly in comparison with the Hungar- ian regime, which had explicitly exempted German partners in mixed marriages from expulsion.87 Most distressing of all, even Germany, Czechoslovakia's nemesis, was far more accepting. This was true not only after the Second World War, when Allied pol- icy determined who was accepted into the occupation zones and who was not, but also during the war itself, when Nazi authori- ties encouraged (or, as was often the case forced) Czech partners in mixed marriages to adopt German nationality and accepted applications for Reich citizenship from many others with a very tenuous claim to Germanic descent. One of the many paradoxes 85. {"}Napraveni germanisace,{"} President Statniho ufadu statistick6ho no. P-203-15/4-46 (15 April 1946), SUA, f. UPV-bez., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 86. Hu'rsky, Zjist'ovdni, 62-4. Slovak even has a word for a magyarized Slovak (mad'ar6n), where again contemporary Czech had no equivalent (apart from tendentious terms like {"}renegade{"} or {"}defector{"} [odrodilec]). For {"}Slovakizace,{"} see Kaplan, Povdle6n6, 116-8. 87. Germans over 65 years old were also exempted. Lidovd demokracie, 26 January 1946, 1-2. Another article praised the Danish government which {"}rightly{"} distinguished between prewar and wartime mixed marriage. Cdl (23 August 1946), SUA, f. UPV- bez., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 404 Interethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia of this tragic period is that, in the Protectorate and the Sudeten- land at least, genocidal Nazi Germany was more assimilationist- provided, of course, that one was not aJew, Romany, or Mischling- than postwar Czechoslovakia. Irresolute Resolution In the end, the most effective weapon for Czech wives was to {"}vote with their feet.{"} Many pleas ended with the desperate threat that if women had to choose between their husbands and their nation, then they would elect to leave Czechoslovakia to keep their fam- ilies intact. The petition of {"}Czech Women-married to Germans{"} called emigration the {"}only possible solution{"} for intermarried families.88 As time elapsed, more and more Czech wives requested to be transferred with their children because their present condi- tions made their lives untenable.89 In late November 1946 a high- ranking government official informed the country's premier that numerous reports of intermarried women seeking immigration permits had recently been received. He warned that this develop- ment could have serious international repercussions because {"}Soviet and American authorities are already now requesting that our offices permit the return of those Germans who were trans- ferred and are of Czech origin.{"} Czech women applying for visas at foreign embassies was a public relations fiasco which could embarrass Czechoslovakia and might even jeopardize the Trans- fer. The official noted that he had communicated these concerns directly to the interior minister. After a meeting with his depart- ment chiefs, Nosek decided that the time had come to issue a gov- ernment edict permitting Germans living in mixed marriages to acquire citizenship.90 While the evidence cannot conclusively 88. Italicized in the original. {"}Czech women-married to Germans,{"} A-AVCR, f. Nejedly, verejna cinnost, k. 22. 89. Kra'sky sekretariat Ceskoslovenska strana socialni demokracie v Usti nad Labem (1 October 1946), SUA, f. U1PV-bez., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2; {"}Anonymni upozornenf na naklidani s Ceskami ve smisenim manzelsvti,{"} Office of the President of the Repub- lic no. R-10.946/46, SUA, f. UPV-be., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. Intermarried Czech men, whose wives faced discrimination, also threatened that they would be forced to emi- grate. In reference to UPV no. 30.166-11-6157/46, SUA, f. UPV-bez., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 90. UPV no. 44535-11-8701/46 (25 November 1946), SUA, f. OPV-bez., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. East European Politics and Societies 405 prove that Nosek reacted primarily to intermarried women's peti- tions to emigrate, his rapid response to the report clearly indicates that the issue was on his mind. Less than one month later the Interior Ministry announced that as of 1 January 1947, intermarried German husbands would have six months to apply for the reinstatement of their Czechoslovak citizenship. The resolution even adopted a late cut-off date for acceptable marriages: 16 March 1939. According to Nosek, this step was {"}only the first phase in resolving the problem of the cit- izenship of those Germans and Magyars who remain with us. {"}91 Although the government had finally acted, the tribulations of intermarried couples had still not ended. Only German men mar- ried to Czechoslovak citizens could apply for citizenship, but many Czech wives had yet to have their own prewar status reinstated. Local authorities still refused naturalization requests from Czech women who had declared themselves German under compulsion. Moreover, former Wehrmacht soldiers and Nazi party members were precluded from receiving citizenship which meant, as peti- tioners pointed out, that many Germans did not qualify to apply. Delegations of Czech wives continued to call on the government: one in April 1947 stressed again {"}the international significance of the inequitable treatment of mixed marriage{"} and demanded forthright, {"}in the name of all Czech women in mixed marriages, that their emigration be allowed so that they can escape the poverty and uncertainty which have arisen from the unclarified existential question of their husbands.{"}92 To make matters worse, rumors spread that intermarried cou- ples were to have their holdings expropriated and were to be reset- tled in the interior of the country, where they allegedly could no longer threaten the security of the state.93 In December 1947 dozens of farmers from one frontier locality clamored, {"}We want our hometown and all of the borderlands-CZECH.{"}94 Soon 91. {"}Zapis 49. schuize 3. vlady{"} (20 December 1946), SUA, f. 100/24 (aj. 1494), sv. 142. 92. UPV no. 12555-11-3780/47 (14 April 1947); copy related to no. 11475-II-3442/47, SUA, f. UCjPV-bez., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 93. Stanek, Odsun, 329; Kaplan, Povdlecne, 154. 94. Mistni rolnicka komise Hostka (11 December 1947), SUA, f. UPV-bez., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. See also the letter to the editor, {"}Smisena man2elstvi do vnitrozemi,{"} Rude prdvo, 30 October 1947, 2. 406 Interethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia thereafter, in the large industrial city of Ostrava, the National Front of Women, representing all four Czech political parties, demanded that members of {"}mixed marriages . .. be eliminated from all [public] offices and transferred from the borderlands to the interior without any compensation for their confiscated property because only then can they be prevented from carrying out anti-state activity.{"}95 Thirst for land as well as individual antipathies undoubtedly lay behind these demands. In response to such calls, the Interior Ministry declared twice in November 1947 and again in February and March 1948 that mixed-marriage families were not to be resettled.96 Mixed marriage continued to bedevil the government even after the Communists seized unchallenged control of the state in the February 1948 coup d'etat. Despite the repression of political opponents and the suppression of free speech, societal conflicts endured. Because in some areas {"}various oversights and mistakes{"} were still occurring, in June 1948 the Interior Ministry issued a sixteen-page guide to the {"}legal conditions of individuals living in nationally-mixed marriages.{"} Again it was emphatically stated that mixed-marriage families were not to be resettled.97 In May 1949 it was reported that 4,446 German husbands had applied and received Czechoslovak citizenship; another 1,895 had been refused.98 Not until 1953 did the regime grant citizenship to all Germans permanently residing in the country, thereby resolving once and for all their ambiguous status. Conclusion By the end of 1946 perhaps half of the original 90,000 intermar- ried Germans had already departed Czechoslovakia. With the expulsion largely completed, the authorities estimated that there were 33,000 German males and 14,000-15,000 females married to Czechs left in the country. These figures represented a significant portion of the remaining German community, a percentage that 95. {"}Resoluce Narodni fronty zen,{"} (12 January 1948), SUA, f. UPV-be., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 96. Stanek, Odsun, 330. 97. MV no. D-300/8532-1948-DN (7June 1948), SUA, f. UIPV-bez., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 98. Kaplan, Povalecne, 154. East European Politics and Societies 407 grew in subsequent years.99 As the German community dwindled, from approximately 165,000 in 1950 to only 47,789 in 1991, the frequency of heterogamy increased. Between 1960 and 1964 over 70 percent of all consecrated marriages involving a German part- ner were intermarriages with Czechs. By the period 1971-73 this figure had risen to over 90 percent and from 1981 to 1984 less than five percent of marriages involving Germans were homogamous. Czech historian Toma Stanek does not exaggerate when he remarks that by the 1980s {"}the German nationality in Czechoslovakia had lost the capability to sustain itself.{"}100 The social scientist Burton Hurd has written that intermarriage is {"}at once an index and a method of assimilation.{"}{"}10 In the Czechoslovak case this axiom ultimately proved true; after the war mixed marriage saved thou- sands of individual Germans from deportation, but in time it con- tributed to the erosion of the remaining German community. The problems of mixed marriage in a multiethnic society were by no means unique to postwar Czechoslovakia. As the letters cited above demonstrate, contemporary Czechs saw similarities between their government's treatment of interethnic families and the poli- cies of the Nazis. The ultimate goal of the two regimes differed significantly; whereas Nazi Germany aimed to exterminate every last European Jew, postwar Czechoslovakia sought to physically 99. In November 1946 intermarried Germans represented approximately 20 percent of the 239,911 Germans remaining in the Czech provinces. Once we subtract those Ger- mans slated for expulsion (98,335), more than one-third of the remaining Germans were married to Czechs. Industrial {"}experts{"} (33,537) and their families (53,103) con- stituted most of the rest. Lu2a, Transfer, 290; Stanek, Odsun, 326. 100. According to the decennial census, the number of Germans in the Czech provinces dropped from an estimated 165,117 (1950) to 134,143 (1961) to 80,903 (1971) to only 58,211 (1980). Even after the 1989 Velvet Revolution permitted citizens to freely declare their identity without fear of the consequences, the 1991 census reported only 47,789 Germans in the Czech Republic. Kaplan, PovdlecJn&, 153; Stanek, Neimecki mensina, 145-47,171-75. 101. Quoted in Madeline A. Richard, Ethnic Groups and Marital Choices: Ethnic History and Marital Assimilation in Canada, 1871 and 1971 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1991), 20. Sociologists have long studied intermarriage as a prime indicator of assimilation, but they have concentrated mainly on marriage in immigrant societies like the United States, Canada, and Australia, or on interethnic relations between the dominant and subordinate groups in colonies or occupied ter- ritories. For current examples and references to older works, see Walton R. Johnson and D. Michael Warren, introduction, to Walton R. Johnson and D. Michael War- ren, eds., Inside the Mixed Marriage: Accounts of Changing Attitudes, Patterns, and Perceptions of Cross-Cultural and Interracial Marriages (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994), 6-7; Richard, Ethnic Groups, 16-20. 408 Interethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia remove as many Germans as possible from the country and cared little for them thereafter.102 Nonetheless, there are parallels between the fate of intermarried Jews in Nazi Germany and that of inter- married Germans in postwar Czechoslovakia. In wartime Berlin protests of Gentile wives managed to save their Jewish husbands from deportation and likely death. In the end, Nathan Stoltzfus estimates that approximately 98 percent of the surviving Jews in Germany were married to Gentiles. He explains, {"}The noncom- pliance of intermarried Germans ... caused a conflict between Nazi ideology and perceived policy options, influencing Hitler to hesitate.{"}'03 In both wartime Germany and postwar Czechoslo- vakia a beleaguered minority's ties to the dominant group provided a measure of protection from deportation as well as a means to influence government policy. As press coverage of the problems faced by interethnic fami- lies in the former Yugoslavia demonstrates, mixed marriage con- tinues to be an issue of great importance for Central and Eastern Europe.104 Rogers Brubaker, among others, has pointed to the potential {"}unmixing of peoples{"} in the former Soviet Union, where 102. Although the Nazi leaders at one time discussed the deportation of European Jewry to another continent, it is hard to imagine that Hitler ultimately would have exempted intermarried Jews, even female ones. The Czechoslovak government, by contrast, always accepted that a small German minority, above all anti-fascists, would remain in the country. Or, to phrase it otherwise, although postwar Czechoslovakia presumed guilt before innocence and placed an extraordinarily high burden of proof upon Sude- ten Germans, it did not disqualify them permanently from membership in society (or in humanity, for that matter) simply by virtue of their birth. This distinction is- significant because it influenced policies regarding mixed marriage and other borderline cases. 103. Nathan Stoltzfus, Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), xxv, 16. 104. Karen Breslau, {"}When Marriage is Sleeping with the Enemy,{"} Newsweek, 5 Octo- ber 1992, 52; Remy Ourdan, {"}The End of a Dream,{"} World Press Review 42:1 (Jan- uary 1995): 29; Raymond Bonner, {"}Even in Peace, a Family is Balkanized,{"} New York Times, 29 January 1996, A7; Nikolai Botev, {"}Where East Meets West: Ethnic Inter- marriage in the Former Yugoslavia, 1962 to 1989,{"} American Sociological Review 59 (June 1994): 461-80; Snjezna Mrdjen, {"}La mixite en ex-Yougoslavie. Integration ou segr6gation des nationalit6s?{"}Revue d'etudes comparatives Est-Ouest 3 (1996): 103-6. Mrdjen demonstrates that in the former Yugoslavia, exogamy grew slowly from 8.6 percent of marriages in 1950 to 13.5 percent in 1990. This aggregate figure masks great regional differences, from Vojvodina, where nearly 30 percent of marriages were ethnically mixed, to Kosovo, where the percentage actually decreased until it reached a low of 4.5 percent in 1989. Other studies have estimated that four million people in the former Yugoslavia were intermarried and that, until the recent war began, nearly half of all new marriages in Sarajevo were exogamous. East European Politics and Societies 409 intermarriage in some regions was common under communist rule.'05 In all of these cases, including Nazi Germany and post- war Czechoslovakia, mixed marriage has posed a fundamental chal- lenge to nationalists and ethnic cleansers. When ideology and real- ity have clashed, authorities have sought to assimilate, divide, expel, or eliminate interethnic families. In the end, the dilemmas faced by policy makers are less troubling than the suffering of individ- uals. For in the midst of ethnic cleansing, intermarried couples and their children find themselves caught between conflicting alle- giances; no longer agents of society's integration, they become vic- tims of its disintegration. 105. Brubaker, Nationalism, 177 n. 82, 169-78 passim; see also Paul S. Pirie, {"}National Identity and Politics in Southern and Eastern Ukraine,{"} Europe-Asia Studies 48:7 (1996): 1084-85. 410 Interethnic Marriage in Postwar Czechoslovakia * Research for this article was partially funded by grants from the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) program, the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), and the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University. Earlier drafts of this paper were presented at: “Prelude to Homogeneity: Ethnic and National Conflicts in the Wake of World War Two in Europe,” Institut f{\"u}r die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (17 January 1998, Vienna, Austria), and at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (17 April 1998, Cambridge, Massachusetts). In addition to the anonymous reviewer, I thank my friends and colleagues for their insightful comments on various drafts of this article: David Brandenburger, Chad Bryant, Patrice Dabrowksi, Erika Dreifus, Gabriella Etmektsoglou, Melissa Feinberg, Eagle Glassheim, Martina Kerlov{\'a}, Tim Snyder, Philipp Ther, and Corinna Treitel. I also thank Roman Szporluk for his guiding contribution to my understanding of the problems of national identity in Central Europe. Finally, let me acknowledge my intellectual debt to Tom{\'a}{\v s} Stan{\v e}k, whose groundbreaking work on the “Transfer” introduced me to the problem of mixed marriage. 1. The expulsion of the Sudeten Germans (euphemistically referred to by contemporaries as the “Transfer”) is one of the few topics in Czechoslovak history to have received considerable scholarly attention. But with the exception of two studies by Tom{\'a}{\v s} Stan{\v e}k (see n.3), very little has been written on the internal social conflicts caused by the forced removal of a significant minority of the population. For general works available in English, see Radom{\'i}r Lu{\v z}a, The Transfer of the Sudeten Germans: A Study of Czech-German Relations, 1933-1962 (New York: New York University Press, 1964); Joseph B. Schechtman, Postwar Population Transfers in Europe, 1945-1955 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962); Theodor Schieder, ed., The Expulsion of the German Population from Czechoslovakia: A selection and translation from Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, Band IV, 1 und IV, 2, trans. G. H. de Sausmarez et al. (Bonn: Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees, and War Victims, 1960); Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994). 2. “Na vinici Panny Marie,” Svobodn{\'e} noviny, 1 July 1945, 1. Soon after writing this editorial Eduard Bass resigned and was replaced by Ferdinand Peroutka. 3. Tom{\'a}{\v s} Stan{\v e}k, Odsun N{\v e}mců z {\v C}eskoslovenska 1945-1947 (Prague: Na{\v s}e Vojsko, 1991), 326-27; Tom{\'a}{\v s} Stan{\v e}k, N{\v e}meck{\'a} men{\v s}ina v {\v c}esk{\'y}ch zem{\'i}ch 1948-1989 (Prague: Institut pro st{\v r}edoevropskou kulturu a politku, 1993), 32. It is highly possible that these statistics underestimate the frequency of mixed marriage. After the war the Czechoslovak government had a vested interest in limiting the scope of the problem, and mixed-marriage families had a personal stake in being recorded as Czechs. 4. Dne{\v s}ek 1:26 (19 September 1946): 414. 5. Although Karel Kaplan argues that there was no censorship in postwar Czechoslovakia, he notes elsewhere that certain areas were declared off-limits by the government; for example, criticism of the president, the nationalization of industry, and the country's alliance with the Soviet Union. Most important, the government limited the number of newspapers and required that each be formally related to an authorized organization or political party. Even Svobodn{\'e} noviny, which maintained an independent line, was officially the organ of the Union of Cultural Organizations. If anything, these restraints make criticism of the government's treatment of mixed marriages all the more significant. Karel Kaplan, “Cenzura 1945-1953,” Se{\v s}ity 22 (1994): 8; Karel Kaplan, Nekrvav{\'a} revoluce (Prague: Mlad{\'a} fronta Archiv, 1993), 46; see also William Diamond, Czechoslovakia Between East and West (London: Stevens and Sons Ltd., 1947), 55. 6. Eva (Hahn) Hartmannov{\'a}, “`My' a `oni': hled{\'a}n{\'i}{\v c}esk{\'e} n{\'a}rodn{\'i} identity na str{\'a}nk{\'a}ch Dne{\v s}ka z roku 1946,” in Karel Jech, ed., Str{\'a}nkami soudob{\'y}ch d{\v e}jin: Sborn{\'i}k stat{\'i} k p{\v e}ta{\v s}edes{\'a}tin{\'a}m historika Karla Kaplana (Prague: {\'U}stav pro soudob{\'e} d{\v e}jiny, 1993), 103. 7. Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 19. 8. For an abbreviated version of this interpretation, see Radom{\'i}r Lu{\v z}a, “Czechoslovakia between Democracy and Communism,” in Victor S. Mamatey and Radom{\'i}r Lu{\v z}a, eds., A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1918-1948 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973), 387-415. 9. The National Socialist party ( {\v C}eskoslovensk{\'a} strana n{\'a}rodn{\v e} socialistick{\'a} ) was a non-Marxist, social-democratic party which, though ultra-nationalist, was in no way affiliated with its German namesake. The Czechoslovak People's party [{\v C}eskoslovensk{\'a} strana lidov{\'a}] was a moderate Catholic movement that, in the new political atmosphere, found itself on the right. 10. Fierlinger was, at the time, the head of the Social Democratic party and the country's premier. Before, during, and after February 1948 he played a critical role in facilitating the communist seizure and consolidation of power, but throughout he maintained a more liberal attitude towards the Germans than most of his colleagues to the left or right. “P{\v r}edseda vl{\'a}dy o sm{\'i}{\v s}en{\'y}ch man{\v z}elstv{\'i},” Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 19 March 1946, 2. Far from the sympathy expressed by other members of the People's party, the parliamentarian Jaroslav {\v R}ehulka, declared, “a Czech or Slovak woman, who earlier did not think over her marriage to a German chauvinist, must now face the consequences.” T{\v e}snop{\'i}seck{\'e} zpr{\'a}vy prozat{\'i}mn{\'i}ho N{\'a}rodn{\'i}ho shrom{\'a}{\v z}d{\v e}n{\'i} republiky {\v C}eskoslovenska, 28th mtg., 12 February 1946, 11; Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 13 February 1946, 2. 11. The Americans and British opposed attempts to expel the Magyars and, although Stalin apparently gave his blessing, Soviet military authorities refused to accept deportees into occupied Hungary. Czechoslovakia only achieved an agreement to “exchange” its Magyars for Hungary's Slovaks. In the end, through flight, expulsion, and population exchange, 160,000 of Czechoslovakia's 700,000 Magyars left the country. Kaplan, Nekrvav{\'a}, 37-39; Ludv{\'i}k N{\v e}mec, “Solution of the Minorities Problem,” in Mamatey and Lu{\v z}a, eds., History of the Czechoslovak Republic, 422-24. 12. Josef {\v S}ebest{\'i}k and Zden{\v e}k Luke{\v s}, eds., P{\v r}ehled p{\v r}edpisů o N{\v e}mc{\'i}ch a osob{\'a}ch pova{\v z}ovan{\'y}ch za N{\v e}mce (Prague: St{\'a}tn{\'i} tisk{\'a}rna, 1946), 17. 13. Vojtech Mastny, The Czechs under Nazi Rule: The Failure of National Resistance, 1939-1942 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 134-36. 14. Josef Mucha and Karel Petr{\v z}elka, O n{\v e}kter{\'y}ch sou{\v c}asn{\'y}ch problemech n{\'a}rodnostn{\v e} sm{\'i}{\v s}en{\'y}ch man{\v z}elstv{\'i} (Prague: Svoboda, 1946), 4-6. For non-Jews who satisfied racial criteria, the Nazis promoted a policy of assimilation. According to a 1939 decree, anyone in the Protectorate who declared German nationality and could speak or was educated in German was to be considered German. Moreover, Czechs who volunteered for and were accepted into the Wehrmacht were naturalized. Gerhard Jacoby, Racial State: The German Nationalities Policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (New York: Institute of Jewish Affairs of the American Jewish Congress and World Jewish Congress, 1944), 80-82. 15. Karel Kaplan, Pov{\'a}le{\v c}n{\'e}{\v C}eskoslovensko: N{\'a}rody a hranice (Munich: N{\'a}rodn{\'i} Politika, 1985), 136. 16. {\'U}{\v r}ad p{\v r}edsednictva vl{\'a}dy [Office of the government presidium ({\'U}PV)], II/2 no. 4775-II-1051/46, St{\'a}tn{\'i}{\'u}st{\v r}edn{\'i} archiv [State Central Archive (S{\'U}A)], Prague, fond (f.) {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., karton (k.) 1032, signatura (sign.) 1364/2. 17. “Seznam osob zaji{\v s}t{\v e}n{\'y}ch... ve v{\v e}znic{\'i} okresn{\'i}ho soudu v {\v C}{\'a}slavi ve v{\v e}ci t{\'y}kaj{\'i}c{\'i} se kolaborantů a zradců,” St{\'a}tn{\'i} okresn{\'i} archiv [State District Archive], Kutn{\'a} Hora, f. Okresn{\'i} n{\'a}rodn{\'i} v{\'y}bor [District National Committee] {\v C}{\'a}slav, k. 75. 18. Vladim{\'i}r Verner, “St{\'a}tn{\'i} ob{\v c}anstv{\'i} podle {\'u}stavn{\'i}ho dekretu Presidenta republiky ze dne 2. srpna 1945, {\v c}. 33 Sb.,” in Pr{\'a}vn{\'i} prakse 9:1 (1946): 161. The logic was deceptively simple: during the war the Germans had acquired Reich citizenship and therefore should be repatriated after the war to their own country, Germany. The government could claim, after all, that it was only fulfilling the Germans' wish to go Heim ins Reich . 19. This number corresponds roughly to one of every twenty-five individuals who declared themselves “Czech” on the 1930 census. “Z{\'a}pis 36. schůze druh{\'e} vl{\'a}dy,” 1 March 1946, S{\'U}A, f. 100/24 (archivn{\'i} jednotek (aj.) 1494), svazek (sv.) 140. 20. The guiding principle of the old citizenship law, the “doctrine of family unity,” privileged a man over his wife and children, whose legal status was dependent upon his. Despite a campaign by Czech feminists and several draft laws, interwar Czechoslovakia never reformed the citizenship statutes it inherited from the Habsburg monarchy. The constitutional establishment of an end to gender privilege and the achievement of female suffrage notwithstanding, citizenship law was one of several areas where women continued to face legal discrimination. In fact, Czechoslovakia's failure to reform its code meant that by the end of the interwar period it was one of only nine countries to mandate the abrogation of a woman's citizenship when her husband was naturalized in another state. See Melissa Feinberg, “The Privileges of Sex: Gender and Democracy in the Czech Lands, 1918-1945” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 2000). 21. Italics added. Karel Jech and Karel Kaplan, eds., Dekrety prezidenta republiky 1940-1945: Dokumenty (Brno: {\'U}stav pro soudob{\'e} d{\v e}jiny, 1995), 345-46. 22. “Sm{\'i}{\v s}en{\'e} man{\v z}elstv{\'i},” Svobodn{\'e} slovo, 30 October 1945, 1. 23. Anton{\'i}n Boh{\'a}{\v c}, “{\v C}e{\v s}ky N{\v e}mkami?” Svobodn{\'e} slovo, 13 December 1945. S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 24. N{\'a}rodn{\'i} jednota Severo{\v c}esk{\'e} (18 December 1945), S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 25. After the war, nationality was determined according to Decree no. 5/1945 which nullified material transactions conducted during the occupation and confiscated the property of “unreliables.” Jech, Dekrety, 217. 26. An Interior Ministry official commented, “In our legal code we have no definition for Czech nationality” (Josef Hůrsk{\'y}, Zji{\v s}t'ov{\'a}n{\'i} n{\'a}rodnosti [Prague: {\v C}eskoslovensk{\'y}{\'u}stav zahrani{\v c}n{\'i}, 1947], 64-66). 27. Even the independent weekly Dne{\v s}ek, which otherwise promoted the cause of the intermarried, stressed, “In the interest of clarity the editors consider it their responsibility to point out that they distinguish between the marriages of Czech women to German men before 1939 and those consecrated after 1939. To the extent that the editors permit a debate [on the issue], it is only concerned with the former” ( Dne{\v s}ek 1:38 [12 December 1946]: 608). 28. Mucha, O n{\v e}kter{\'y}ch, 14-15. 29. “Ml{\v c}eliv{\'e} trpitelky,” Dne{\v s}ek 1:10 (30 May 1946): 148. 30. “Co bude se sm{\'i}{\v s}en{\'y}mi man{\v z}elstv{\'i}mi?” Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 13 October 1945, 1; “Je{\v s}t{\v e} sm{\'i}{\v s}en{\'a} man{\v z}elstv{\'i},” Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 6 November 1945, 1-2; “Po{\v r}{\'a}dek do v{\v e}ci sm{\'i}{\v s}en{\'y}ch man{\v z}elstv{\'i},” Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 25 November 1945, 1-2. 31. Stan{\v e}k, Odsun, 167. 32. Lidov{\'a} demokracie was the third largest daily newspaper with an average sale of 185,000 copies per day. Among the other newspapers quoted here, the communist Rud{\'e} pr{\'a}vo (Red right) sold approximately 500,000 copies per day, the National Socialist Svobodn{\'e} slovo (Free word) 300,000, and the nonaligned Svobodn{\'e} noviny (Free news) 68,000. All were published in Prague. Karel F. Zieris, “The New Czech Press,” in Newspapers and Newspapermen in Czechoslovakia (Prague: Union of Czech Journalists, 1947), 32-33. 33. “Po{\v r}{\'a}dek,” Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 25 November 1945, 1-2. 34. “Co bude,” Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 13 October 1945, 1. The “Organized Transfer” of more than two and a quarter million Sudeten Germans via railway cars to occupied Germany lasted from January through the autumn of 1946. Kaplan, Pov{\'a}le{\v c}n{\'e}, 153. 35. In principle Czechs were not to be expelled, but in order to be exempted Czech wives had to have retained their own citizenship. Moreover, the mixed marriage had to have been consecrated before 21 May 1938 and both partners must have been Czechoslovak citizens at that time. German wives who could fulfill the requirements outlined in Decree no. 33 were also excluded from the Transfer. Stan{\v e}k, Odsun, 319. 36. “Jde o v{\'i}c,” Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 26 Jan. 1946, 1-2. 37. “Z{\'a}pis 43. schůze 2. vl{\'a}dy” (19 March 1946), S{\'U}A, f. 100/24 (aj. 1494), sv. 140. Although a 28 March 1946 directive permitted German husbands to apply for residence permits, it did not in any way resolve their permanent status. Stan{\v e}k, Odsun, 321. 38. {\v S}ebe{\v s}t{\'i}k, P{\v r}ehled, 44. This directive applied only to Germans who married Czechs before 21 May 1938. In other words, marriage after that early date, when war was by no means a certainty, was considered to be a form of collaboration. 39. “Odsun N{\v e}mců, op{\v e}tovn{\'e} z{\'a}vady p{\v r}i v{\'y}b{\v e}rů osob...,” Ministerstvo Vnitra [Interior ministry (MV)] (11 June 1946), SUA, f. MV-Nov{\'a} registratura (NR), k. 2016. 40. “Sm{\v e}rnice o {\'u}lev{\'a}ch... z{\'a}vady,” MV no. Z/S-3624/142-31/7-1946 (6 September 1946), S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 41. “Kdo za to odpov{\'i}d{\'a}?” Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 28 January 1947, 1. 42. “Sm{\v e}rnice o {\'u}lev{\'a}ch... z{\'a}vady,” S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 43. “Odsun N{\v e}mců.” 44. After the 1946 elections, 78 percent of all District National Committee chairmen in the Czech provinces were Communist party members; in Bohemia the number was a staggering 89 percent. Karel Bertelmann, Vyvoj n{\'a}rodn{\'i}ch v{\'y}borů do {\'u}stavy 9. kv{\v e}tna (1945-1948) (Prague: {\v C}eskoslovensk{\'a} akademie v{\v e}d, 1964), 179. 45. S{\'U}A, f. Ministerstvo spravedlnosti [Ministry of Justice (MS)], k. 1934, sv. 3. 46. {\v S}tekl, T{\v e}snop{\'i}seck{\'e} zpr{\'a}vy prozat{\'i}mn{\'i}ho, 28th mtg., 12 February 1946, 17. 47. “Zajistit bezpe{\v c}nost st{\'a}tu a n{\'a}rodn{\'i}ho majetku,” Rud{\'e} pr{\'a}vo, 13 February 1946, 1. 48. Nosek, T{\v e}snop{\'i}seck{\'e} zpr{\'a}vy prozat{\'i}mn{\'i}ho, 30th mtg., 14 February 1946, 19. 49. Even some harsh statements by Communists appear less so under scrutiny. For example, one letter to Rud{\'e} pr{\'a}vo commented: “I don't know what sense it makes to leave several thousand of such characterless individuals here, even if they are by chance of Czech origin. We don't handle traitors with gloves.” But this partisan spoke of intermarried Czechs who either adopted German nationality during the war or otherwise collaborated with the Nazis. In fact, the letter refers specifically to one Czech woman who married an SS officer—hardly a representative case. “Jak s nimi nalo{\v z}it?” Rud{\'e} pr{\'a}vo, 12 July 1946, 5; Stan{\v e}k, Odsun, 323. 50. Stan{\v e}k, Odsun, 323. 51. Petition letter of “Czech women—married to Germans, former Czechoslovak citizens” (30 November 1946), Archiv Akademie v{\v e}d {\v C}esk{\'e} republiky [Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (A-AV{\v C}R)], Prague, f. Zden{\v e}k Nejedl{\'y}, ve{\v r}ejn{\'a}{\v c}innost, k. 22. 52. “Prosba {\v C}e{\v s}ek, vdan{\'y}ch za N{\v e}mce,” Dne{\v s}ek 1:36 (28 November 1946): 576; “Odpov{\v e}d' {\v C}e{\v s}k{\'a}m, provdan{\'y}m za N{\v e}mce,” Dne{\v s}ek 1:37 (5 December 1946): 591-2. 53. Dne{\v s}ek 1:38 (12 December 1946): 608; Dne{\v s}ek 1:39-40 (19 December 1946): 636. 54. Dne{\v s}ek 1:42 (9 January 1947): 672. 55. Dne{\v s}ek 1:26 (19 September 1946): 414. 56. “Co bude,” Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 13 October 1945, 1. Bo{\v z}ena N{\v e}mcov{\'a} was the author of Babi{\v c}ka [Grandmother] (1854), one of the central works of Czech national literature. 57. N{\'a}rodn{\'i} jednota Severo{\v c}esk{\'e} (18 December 1945), S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 58. Statistick{\'a} p{\v r}{\'i}ru{\v c}ka {\v C}eskoslovensk{\'e} republiky 1948 (Prague: St{\'a}tn{\'i}{\'u}{\v r}ad statistick{\'y}, 1948), 32. 59. Sdru{\v z}en{\'i} hrani{\v c}{\'a}{\v r}ů ({\'U}PV 47033-II-9122-II/2); {\v C}eskoslovensk{\'y} n{\'a}rodn{\'i} odboj, D{\v e}{\v c}{\'i}n-Podmokly (24 December 1946), S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 60. “St{\'y}kala jsem se s N{\v e}mci...,” Lidov{\'a} spr{\'a}va I:3 (30 October 1945): 10. 61. See Benjamin Frommer, “Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1999), 193-240. 62. “Po{\v r}{\'a}dek,” Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 25 November 1945, 1-2. 63. “Czech women—married to Germans,” A-AV{\v C}R, f. Zd. Nejedl{\'y}, ve{\v r}ejn{\'a}{\v c}innost, k. 22. 64. Dne{\v s}ek 1:39-40 (19 December 1946): 636. For some families the pressure was too much. A legal scholar commented, “The wave of... divorce disputes between spouses, where one was a non-Aryan, which under the influence of racial statutes flooded our courts during the occupation now has its analog in the... divorce litigation between spouses, where one is Czech and the other is a German citizen” (Josef Frydrych, “Rozvod a rozluka sm{\'i}{\v s}en{\'y}ch man{\v z}elstv{\'i},” Pr{\'a}vn{\'i} prakse 9:3 [1945]: 225). 65. In reference to {\'U}PV no. 30.166-II-6157/46, S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 66. Stan{\v e}k, Odsun, 328. 67. Dne{\v s}ek 1:41 (2 January 1947): 656. 68. “Sm{\'i}{\v s}en{\'a} man{\v z}elstv{\'i},” Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 27 September 1945, 1-2. 69. “Ml{\v c}eliv{\'e} trpitelky,” Dne{\v s}ek 1:10 (30 May 1946): 147-8. For a similar critique, see Svobodn{\'e} slovo, 30 October 1945, 1. 70. Dne{\v s}ek 1:38 (12 December 1946): 608. 71. “Kdo za to odpov{\'i}d{\'a}?” Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 28 Jan. 1947, 1. See also Ladislav Gut, “Sm{\'i}{\v s}en{\'e} man{\v z}elstv{\'i},” Svobodn{\'e} Slovo, 30 Oct. 1945, 1; “{\v C}esk{\'e}{\v z}eny ze sm{\'i}{\v s}en{\'y}ch man{\v z}elstv{\'i},” letter to the President's office (received 16 August 1946) and “{\v C}sl. n{\'a}rodn{\'i} odboi,” letter to Premier K. Gottwald (24 December 1946), SUA, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 72. Dne{\v s}ek 1:43 (16 January 1947): 688. 73. “Kdo za to odpov{\'i}d{\'a}?” Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 28 January 1947, 1. 74. Hůrsk{\'y}, Zji{\v s}t'ov{\'a}n{\'i}, 67. 75. Dne{\v s}ek 1:39-40 (19 December 1946): 636. 76. Dne{\v s}ek 1:45 (30 January 1947): 720. 77. “Rozhovor s d{\'i}t{\v e}tem ze sm{\'i}{\v s}en{\'e}ho man{\v z}elstv{\'i},” Dne{\v s}ek 1:48 (20 February 1947): 756-7. 78. “P{\v r}edseda vl{\'a}dy o sm{\'i}{\v s}en{\'y}ch man{\v z}elstv{\'i},” Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 19 March 1946, 2. 79. Dne{\v s}ek 1:26 (19 September 1946): 414-15; “Na vinici,” Svobodn{\'e} noviny, 1 July 1945, 1. For other examples, see Hartmannov{\'a}, “`My' a `Oni,'” 102-3. 80. Quoted in Hůrsk{\'y}, Zji{\v s}t'ov{\'a}n{\'i}, 67-68. 81. See “Mus{\'i} n{\'a}s b{\'y}ti v{\'i}ce,” Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 19 August 1945, 1; “Pro v{\v e}t{\v s}i n{\'a}rod,” Svobodn{\'e} slovo, 21 September 1945, 1; Minister of Health, Dr. Ad. Proch{\'a}zka, “Popula{\v c}n{\'i} problem,” Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 31 January 1946, 1. 82. “Odsun a sm{\'i}{\v s}en{\'a} man{\v z}elstv{\'i},” C{\'i}l 2:22 (7 June 1946): 339-40. 83. Okresn{\'i} n{\'a}rodn{\'i} v{\'y}bor v Nov{\'e}m m{\v e}st{\v e} na Morav{\v e} (21 February 1947), S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 84. Jiho{\v c}esk{\'a} pravda, 8 February 1946, 1-2. Quoted in Jeremy King, “Loyalty and Polity, Nation and State. A Town in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848-1948” (Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1998), 166. 85. “Napraven{\'i} germanisace,” President St{\'a}tn{\'i}ho {\'u}{\v r}adu statistick{\'e}ho no. P-203-15/4-46 (15 April 1946), S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 86. Hůrsk{\'y}, Zji{\v s}t'ov{\'a}n{\'i}, 62-4. Slovak even has a word for a magyarized Slovak ( mad'ar{\'o}n ), where again contemporary Czech had no equivalent (apart from tendentious terms like “renegade” or “defector” [ odrodilec ]). For “Slovakizace,” see Kaplan, Pov{\'a}le{\v c}n{\'e}, 116-8. 87. Germans over 65 years old were also exempted. Lidov{\'a} demokracie, 26 January 1946, 1-2. Another article praised the Danish government which “rightly” distinguished between prewar and wartime mixed marriage. C{\'i}l (23 August 1946), S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 88. Italicized in the original. “Czech women—married to Germans,” A-AV{\v C}R, f. Nejedl{\'y}, ve{\v r}ejn{\'a}{\v c}innost, k. 22. 89. Krajsk{\'y} sekretariat {\v C}eskoslovensk{\'a} strana socialn{\'i} demokracie v Ust{\'i} nad Labem (1 October 1946), S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2; “Anonymn{\'i} upozorn{\v e}n{\'i} na nakl{\'a}d{\'a}n{\'i} s {\v C}e{\v s}kami ve sm{\'i}{\v s}en{\'i}m man{\v z}elsvt{\'i},” Office of the President of the Republic no. R-10.946/46, S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. Intermarried Czech men, whose wives faced discrimination, also threatened that they would be forced to emigrate. In reference to {\'U}PV no. 30.166-II-6157/46, S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 90. {\'U}PV no. 44535-II-8701/46 (25 November 1946), S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 91. “Z{\'a}pis 49. schůze 3. vl{\'a}dy” (20 December 1946), S{\'U}A, f. 100/24 (aj. 1494), sv. 142. 92. {\'U}PV no. 12555-II-3780/47 (14 April 1947); copy related to no. 11475-II-3442/47, S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 93. Stan{\v e}k, Odsun, 329; Kaplan, Pov{\'a}le{\v c}n{\'e}, 154. 94. M{\'i}stn{\'i} rolnick{\'a} komise Ho{\v s}tka (11 December 1947), S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. See also the letter to the editor, “Sm{\'i}{\v s}en{\'a} man{\v z}elstv{\'i} do vnitrozem{\'i},” Rud{\'e} pr{\'a}vo, 30 October 1947, 2. 95. “Resoluce N{\'a}rodn{\'i} fronty {\v z}en,” (12 January 1948), S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 96. Stan{\v e}k, Odsun, 330. 97. MV no. D-300/8532-1948-DN (7 June 1948), S{\'U}A, f. {\'U}PV-b{\v e}{\v z}., k. 1032, sign. 1364/2. 98. Kaplan, Pov{\'a}le{\v c}n{\'e}, 154. 99. In November 1946 intermarried Germans represented approximately 20 percent of the 239,911 Germans remaining in the Czech provinces. Once we subtract those Germans slated for expulsion (98,335), more than one-third of the remaining Germans were married to Czechs. Industrial “experts” (33,537) and their families (53,103) constituted most of the rest. Lu{\v z}a, Transfer, 290; Stan{\v e}k, Odsun, 326. 100. According to the decennial census, the number of Germans in the Czech provinces dropped from an estimated 165,117 (1950) to 134,143 (1961) to 80,903 (1971) to only 58,211 (1980). Even after the 1989 Velvet Revolution permitted citizens to freely declare their identity without fear of the consequences, the 1991 census reported only 47,789 Germans in the Czech Republic. Kaplan, Pov{\'a}le{\v c}n{\'e}, 153; Stan{\v e}k, N{\v e}meck{\'a} men{\v s}ina, 145-47, 171-75. 101. Quoted in Madeline A. Richard, Ethnic Groups and Marital Choices: Ethnic History and Marital Assimilation in Canada, 1871 and 1971 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1991), 20. Sociologists have long studied intermarriage as a prime indicator of assimilation, but they have concentrated mainly on marriage in immigrant societies like the United States, Canada, and Australia, or on interethnic relations between the dominant and subordinate groups in colonies or occupied territories. For current examples and references to older works, see Walton R. Johnson and D. Michael Warren, introduction, to Walton R. Johnson and D. Michael Warren, eds., Inside the Mixed Marriage: Accounts of Changing Attitudes, Patterns, and Perceptions of Cross-Cultural and Interracial Marriages (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994), 6-7; Richard, Ethnic Groups, 16-20. 102. Although the Nazi leaders at one time discussed the deportation of European Jewry to another continent, it is hard to imagine that Hitler ultimately would have exempted intermarried Jews, even female ones. The Czechoslovak government, by contrast, always accepted that a small German minority, above all anti-fascists, would remain in the country. Or, to phrase it otherwise, although postwar Czechoslovakia presumed guilt before innocence and placed an extraordinarily high burden of proof upon Sudeten Germans, it did not disqualify them permanently from membership in society (or in humanity, for that matter) simply by virtue of their birth. This distinction is significant because it influenced policies regarding mixed marriage and other borderline cases. 103. Nathan Stoltzfus, Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), xxv, 16. 104. Karen Breslau, “When Marriage is Sleeping with the Enemy,” Newsweek, 5 October 1992, 52; Remy Ourdan, “The End of a Dream,” World Press Review 42:1 (January 1995): 29; Raymond Bonner, “Even in Peace, a Family is Balkanized,” New York Times, 29 January 1996, A7; Nikolai Botev, “Where East Meets West: Ethnic Intermarriage in the Former Yugoslavia, 1962 to 1989,” American Sociological Review 59 (June 1994): 461-80; Snjezna Mrdjen, “La mixit{\'e} en ex-Yougoslavie. Int{\'e}gration ou s{\'e}gr{\'e}gation des nationalit{\'e}s?” Revue d'{\'e}tudes comparatives Est-Ouest 3 (1996): 103-6. Mrdjen demonstrates that in the former Yugoslavia, exogamy grew slowly from 8.6 percent of marriages in 1950 to 13.5 percent in 1990. This aggregate figure masks great regional differences, from Vojvodina, where nearly 30 percent of marriages were ethnically mixed, to Kosovo, where the percentage actually decreased until it reached a low of 4.5 percent in 1989. Other studies have estimated that four million people in the former Yugoslavia were intermarried and that, until the recent war began, nearly half of all new marriages in Sarajevo were exogamous. 105. Brubaker, Nationalism, 177 n. 82, 169-78 passim; see also Paul S. Pirie, “National Identity and Politics in Southern and Eastern Ukraine,” Europe-Asia Studies 48:7 (1996): 1084-85. ",

year = "2000",

doi = "10.1177/0888325400014002007",

language = "English (US)",

volume = "14",

pages = "381--410",

journal = "East European Politics and Societies",

issn = "0888-3254",

publisher = "SAGE Publications Inc.",

number = "2",