The reconciliation between the Sudeten Germans and Czechs is based on good foundations, said Bavarian Sudeten German Homeland Association chairman Steffen Hortler on Saturday at the opening of the Sudeten German Congress in Regensburg, adding that more should now be built upon those foundations.
For the 4th time, the Czech anthem was played at the congress.
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said that thanks to the efforts of the Sudeten Germans, Czechs and Germans have become not only neighbours but also brothers.
The 75th annual congress of Sudeten Germans deported from Czechoslovakia after the Second World War and their descendants took place in Regensburg. Eighty years after the end of the war, the motto of the congress is to seek lessons from the past and fight for peace and freedom.
Hortler praised the current state of relations between Czechs and Sudeten Germans, but said there were still “many unresolved issues”. He described the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia as a “post-war crime”. However, he said, the Sudeten Germans wanted to be “a guarantor of understanding between nations” today when Russia was waging a “brutal war of aggression” against Ukraine in eastern Europe.
Bavarian Minister for Family and Social Affairs Ulrike Scharf, whose ministry is responsible for the Sudeten Germans, also delivered a speech at the congress. She praised the contribution of the Sudeten Germans to the development of Bavaria after the Second World War. She condemned their expulsion, but also acknowledged that it was from Germany that the Second World War originated.
Czech Education Minister Mikulas Bek attended the congress as a guest of honour, and gave a speech there yesterday. He also attended the previous event in 2023.
Interior Minister Dobrindt addressed the Sudeten Germans, as well as a number of visitors from the Czech Republic, on Saturday.
“The Sudeten Germans made it possible for our neighbours to become our brothers,” he said, referring to the Czech-German reconciliation. He said they had achieved this by placing understanding instead of hostility at the forefront in their efforts. In his speech, Dobrindt called for support for European integration and European solutions to problems, including migration.
The organisers of the Meeting Brno festival received the Sudeten Germans’ Prize for Human Rights. As part of the festival, they have organised the Reconciliation Pilgrimage every year since 2016, which follows the route of the irregular deportation of the German-speaking inhabitants of Brno in 1945, but in the opposite direction from Pohorelice to Brno.
The three-day congress of Sudeten Germans culminated yesterday with the presentation of the European Karl IV Prize to Bavarian Minister-President Markus Soder.
Relations between the Sudeten Germans and the Czech Republic have improved significantly in recent years. The Sudeten German Homeland Association’s decision to delete from its statutes references to the return of property confiscated from the Sudeten Germans during their post-war deportation was a significant contributing factor.
The Czech Republic also took a number of conciliatory steps, including a speech by Prime Minister Petr Necas in Munich in 2013, in which he expressed the country’s regret for the harm caused to the Sudeten Germans during their post-war deportation.
On Friday, the Sudeten Germans’ leader Bernd Posselt told a press conference in Regensburg that the congress could be held in Brno next year, after an invitation from the Meeting Brno festival.
Some 3 million Germans were deported from Czechoslovakia after the Second World War. The Sudeten Germans refer to the process as expulsion. According to a Czech-German commission of historians, between 15,000 and 30,000 people lost their lives in the process. During the previous more than six years of the Nazi rule, some 320,000 to 350,000 inhabitants of Czechoslovakia perished.
