Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Interaction, migration and change
232 Maruška Svašek who has bought large plots of land and numerous buildings in the village, and who has established a pheasant shoot with the help of a British gamekeeper. To reach their goal - the actual or symbolic appropriation of property and space - the three groups have all used emotionally powerful narratives and actions. The research setting Vesnice is a small West Bohemian village situated close to the German border in the former Sudetenland. It was established in 1666 during the Habsburg Empire by ethnic Germans who cultivated the land and exploited the forest. For a period of almost three centuries, the village community remained ethnically German. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the inhabitants began to regard themselves as "Sudeten Germans”. As with all the other Sudeten Germans living in the Bohemian, Moravian, and Silesian border areas, they created a strong sense of "rootedness” and "closeness" to the land (cf. Svašek 2001). Their ideology of blood and soil became more outspoken during the first two decades following the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918, when the tensions between Czechs and Sudeten Germans increased, particularly as Hitler came to the political fore in neighbouring Germany. In 1938 most Sudeten Germans, including the inhabitants of Vesnice, welcomed the incorporation of the Sudetenland by Nazi Germany. The 1945 Potsdam Agreement stipulated that ethnic Germans from all over Central and Eastern Europe should be expelled from the area and “return” to Germany. In the case of Czechoslovakia the Sudeten Germans’ citizenship rights were annulled by the post-war government between May and October 1945, and most of their property was confiscated. During the next two years, over three million Sudeten Germans were expelled to Germany and Austria, and were forced to leave their homes and belongings behind.5
