Chapter 12

Czech and Germany

(July 2001; Prague)

Johan, Tenma, Nina... these three central characters

to our story went from Munich to Prague in the Czech
Republic, in search of lost memories. Those readers of
this book who have been to Prague perhaps understand why
Johan and
Nina both called this city a "fairy tale land." Faced
with the sight of Old Town Square lit up at night, I had
the
illusion that I was somehow transported to Disneyland.
It is easy to see why Europeans refer to it as the most
beautiful
place in Europe.
I secured accomodations at the Bettelheim Hotel near
Charles Bridge, and set forth to search the city's used
bookstores for the cursed storybooks -- the works of Emil
Scherbe, Klaus Poppe, Jakub Farobek, and Franz Bonaparta.
After
no luck at the stores around my hotel and on the other
side of Charles Bridge, I made a call to a publisher
specializing
in storybooks, and was able to finally procure copies of
The Nameless Monster, The God of Peace, and others for
myself.
To be completely honest, I did not find the art to be
so unique. In fact, it almost looked familiar. But any
Germans or Czechs who read his books will immediately
notice something else. Putting the mysterious author's
cryptic
messages aside, another commonality shared by the books
is the names of their characters. Beginning with Johan,
then
Otto, Hans... extremely common, traditional German names
are used, but similar Czech names like Jan, Milos and
Pavel are
nowhere to be found. It is quite plain to see how Tenma
and Agent Lunge made their supposition that the single
German
name among the author's pen-names, Klaus Poppe, might in
fact be his actual name. The author is of a German
minority in
the Czech Republic; a German-Czech.

[Picture] (Two photos of buildings in the Czech Republic)

The area of Bohemia, where Czechs and Germans found
themselves at odds. There exists a long-standing hatred
between the
two ethnicities in this place. It is a part of history
that must be explained in attempting to describe the
birth of the
monster.

At this point, it will doubtless be helpful to most

readers to take a close look at the complex historical
background of the Czech Republic -- particularly Bohemia
-- and Germany.
To begin our story, the Bohemian region was
originally settled by the Boii people around 150 BC. By
about 60 BC
they had been replaced by Germanic tribes, who ruled the
area until the 5th century AD, when they migrated to
Bavaria.
After that, three different Slavic tribes settled the
area: Czechs, Moravians and Slovakians. By the 9th
century, the
Czechs had seized control of the region, founding the
kingdom of Bohemia, ruled by the Premyslid dynasty. But
to the east
lay the mighty Hungarian (Magyar) Empire, and the royal
family was forced to join a military alliance with the
Germanic
Holy Roman Empire to avoid the threat of invasion. The
Premyslid line now served under the king of Germany and
the Pope
in the Holy Roman Empire, but in the 12th century
Vladislav II was granted the lands of Austria, opening a
new period of
prosperity. Of course, they were still ruled in
actuality by Germany, so it is not hard to imagine the
Czechs' eventual
struggle for independence in the 15th century.
In the 16th century, the Czech lands fell under
Habsburg Monarchy control -- a reign that would last four
centuries -- and in the 17th century the Czech nobility
started the Thirty Years' War, which led to blunt
oppression from
the Habsburg throne and the demotion of Czech into
Austrian holdings.
It would not be until the 19th century that the Czech
push for independence gained momentum once again. With
historical leaders like Palacky and Masaryk, and the rise
of ethnic self-determination in the wake of the First
World War,
the Czechs finally succeeded in forming their own
sovereign nation, Czechoslovakia.
This history as seen from the German perspective is
as follows. The original German expansion to the east
begins
in the 10th century, for a short period during the rule
of Charlemagne. The German colonists settled the land,
and in the
12th century, the Premyslid rulers of the Duchy of
Bohemia actively sought to invite more Germans to help
cultivate and
advance the prosperity of their land.
The first Germans to cross over were miners and
farmers drawn by the silver-rich Czech mountains and
nutrient-
heavy soil. Next came clergymen, city planners,
merchants and carpenters, and German towns were born --
the Bohemian
region near the borders of present-day Germany, Poland
and Austria.
As these German migrants came from various areas such
as Frisia, Bavaria, Saxony, Swabia, Styria and Austria,
the
Czechs referred to them with the blanket term Teutons,
but they called themselves Sudeten Germans
(Sudetendeutsche), after
the Sudeten Mountains on the border to Poland.
In the 14th century, when Luxembourg's Charles IV,
ruler of Czech was crowned King of the German Holy Roman
Empire, it affected the relationship between the Czechs
and German immigrants. The Sudeten Germans suddenly
gained much
influence and political power, and began to financially
and politically overwhelm the Czechs. The 15th century
Hussite
Wars were the first rebellion against Germany by the
Czechs, and the 17th century Thirty Years' War was a
battle for power
between the Austrian Habsburg dynasty and the Czech
nobility. With their loss here, the Czechs became
totally subordinate
to the Germans and Austrians, even having their language
slowly replaced by German.
But in the 19th century, Czech independence would
grow closer with the waning of the Habsburg dynasty.
Meanwhile,
the Sudeten Germans were pushing to have their land
holdings become a part of the Austrian Empire. The
Industrial
Revolution of that century would work to the advantage of
the Czechs with the enrichment of their capital assets.
When
Germany and Austria-Hungary fell in WWI, it was the
Czechs' capital backing that helped them claim their
independence.
With the consolidation of Czechs and Slovaks and the
birth of a Slavic nation, the Sudeten Germans became a
minority once again. The Czechoslovakian government was
very gracious, even going so far as to grant significant
autonomy
to the Sudetenland area, but their German citizens were
still unhappy. There were still 3.3 million Germans in
Bohemia, a
globally-renowned land of production, exporting silver,
coal, uranium, metals, machinery, paper, textiles, linens
and
glass.
Their plan to regain power lay in the newly-formed
German Nazi Party. In January of 1933, with the
formation of
the Third Reich, Sudeten German politician Konrad Henlein
was quick to support Hitler and request his help. Under
the
banner of German unification and aided by the annexation
of Austria, the Sudeten-German Party absorbed all of the
other
German political parties in Czechoslovakia.

Hitler and Henlein's claim was as follows. The

German people had lived in the Sudeten area for over 700
years.
It was a part of the Holy Roman Empire until the early-
1800s, a part of the German Confederation until the mid-
1800s, and
Austrian-Hungarian territory through 1918. Therefore, it
had long belonged to Germany.
In 1938, Czechoslovakia was forced to sign the
humiliating Munich Agreement by fearful countries seeking
to
appease Hitler, ceding to Germany 40% of its land, 30% of
its population and nearly half of its industrial
production.
Upon seeing the famous pictures of the wildly celebrating
people at the sight of Hitler's army advancing into
Sudetenland,
one might wonder why people being conquered would be so
happy. But consider that those people identified
themselves not
as Czechs but Germans, and it makes sense. By next
March, when Hitler had taken all of Czechoslovakia for
himself, there
was not a single Czech language sign or landmarker to be
found in Sudetenland.

[Picture] (A contract in German, with signatures)

The cessation contract between Czech and Germany, signed
by Hitler.
[Picture] (Photo of a Nazi parade through a city)
The Sudeten Germans fanatically greeting a Nazi march
into Bohemia before WWII. It would later lead to
tragedy...

But the Sudeten German prosperity would end with the

Third Reich's defeat in World War Two. At the Potsdam
Conference, it was decided that all Germans on Czech
lands -- between 2.4 and 3.5 million -- would be deported
back to
Germany. All privately-held lands were seized, and they
were left with whatever they could carry with them. Many
of them
-- between 20,000 and 200,000, though the real number
will never be known -- were beaten or murdered out of
hatred for the
German aggression in the war. The deep-rooted hatred of
Nazi Germany in the two countries was directed at the
Sudeten
Germans.
The Czech-German relationship has become so complex
that it was not until very recently in 1997 that the two
countries officially met at a table and first recognized
their injustices in events related to World War II.
What happened to the once-prosperous Sudetendeutsch
after the war? According to the Sudeten German
Association
formed in 1949 and still active today, 2 million of them
live in western Germany, with half of that number in
Bayern
(Bavaria). 800,000 ended up in eastern Germany, 140,000
in Austria, 24,000 further overseas, and 240,000 died in
the
process of exile.
What I could not ignore in my investigation of the
Johan case is the history of the 200,000 Germans who did
not
leave the Czech lands after the war. Like their exiled
countrymen mentioned above, their property was seized and
they
were subjected to withering discrimination after the war,
yet they still chose to live in Czechoslovakia. My
primary goal
in the Czech Republic was to trace the roots of this most
mysterious of men Franz Bonaparta, and to find the truth
of the
rumor that Johan's father was in fact, German.
I will start with the ghastly incident that Johan is
thought to have committed first after heading to the
Czech
Republic.