Making Czechoslovaks: German Businessmen and Their Republic, 1918-1932

• In Event: The Cost of National Liberations: Post-Imperial Transitions in East Central European Business Realms

Abstract

After World War I, German businessmen from Bohemia found themselves a national minority in the Czech and Slovak nation-state and cut off from access to raw materials and consumers in the former Habsburg Empire. Newly minted German-Czechoslovak businessmen had to cement their position in their new state to maintain access to a wider European market to sustain their export-driven companies and their elite socioeconomic status. In the 1920s German-Czechoslovak businessmen publicly presented themselves via lobbying groups and personal relationships as loyal elite members of the largest national minority, engaged in German cultural activities, and built the stability of the state through paternalistic capitalist projects. German nationality provided businessmen both an organizational category and a means of inclusion within the Czechoslovak economy in confronting language barriers and nationality politics. By the beginning of the German financial crisis in 1931, German-Czechoslovak businessmen had established themselves as both local and national socioeconomic elites who helped make foreign businesses “Czechoslovak” and integrated with Czech capital, creating a Czechoslovak economy at home.

Author

• Jesse Edward Siegel, Rutgers, The State U of New Jersey