Your child belongs to the nation: Nationalization, Germanization, and democracy in the Bohemian Lands, 1900--1945.

Abstract

This study explores the role of children as objects of national conflict in an age of mass politics. Between 1900 and 1945, German and Czech nationalists in the Bohemian Lands (the former Austrian provinces of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia) constructed a political culture in which children belonged to the nation, and in which the nation's legal rights to educate children often trumped parental rights. In spite of their insistence that children comprised a form of national property, however, it remained frustratingly difficult for nationalists and the state to determine which children belonged to which nation in the Bohemian Lands. The nationalist battle for children's souls shaped the development of the welfare state, understandings of democracy, and the dynamics of the Nazi occupation in the Bohemian Lands. By traversing the traditional ruptures signaled by the rise and fall of states, this study highlights the many continuities between Empire, nation-state, and the Nazi occupation in the Bohemian Lands which are often obscured in histories of Central Europe which assume nations or nation-states as their starting point or end-point.