Czech-German Sudeten relations: reconciliation process between two nations

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the present relationship between the Czech Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany regarding the post-World War II transfer of Germans from Czechoslovakia to Germany. The new approach to this issue appeared after the fall of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1989. The Sudeten German issue started to be openly discussed again, and both countries tried to solve this issue by negotiating and creating the Czech-German Declaration; however, this did not bring the reconciliation process to the end. This thesis describes the life of Czech and German nations within the Central European region since the thirteenth century and shows some important events of their common history. The thesis discusses the problem of nationalism, which started to increase from the beginning of the nineteenth century, and became a widespread political problem. In 1998, both the German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder and Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman backed the 1997 declaration statement by agreeing their countries would not encumber their relations with the past. However, German opposition, as well as the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft, opposed these statements and conditioned the European Union membership for the Czech Republic by solving Sudeten German issue which remains still unsettled