The Democratic State Playing Favourites: Building for Minorities in Interwar Czechoslovakia

• In Event: The Road to the Protectorate: Exploring Czechoslovakia’s Uncomfortable Pasts

Abstract

In interwar Czechoslovakia, more than half of the state’s investments in educational infrastructure were directed toward so-called minority schools. A minority was defined by local demography, and the primary beneficiaries of minority policies were, by design, Czech-speaking communities in the predominantly German-speaking Sudetenland border regions. While officially framed as an effort to address historical disparities in educational access, the implementation of minority policies also helped deepen the tensions between the national groups. The hundreds of newly built schools, therefore, rather than being neutral institutions of learning, became visible markers of state influence. The paper aims to explore the interplay of state building policies, the kind of architecture it procured, and the ethnic conflict it both mirrored and further exacerbated, as well as the reasons why this physical testimony of First Czechoslovak Republic politics is now largely forgotten.

Author

• Barbora Řepková, Inst of Art History CAS (Czech Republic)