ABSTRACT
The beginning of critical historiography in Bohemia, the interpretation of the 13th century has depended largely on the extent to which the rise of the kingdom of Bohemia. At that time is judged to have been triggered by the arrival of waves of German colonists and the legal and organisational structures they brought with them. The question whether the so-called 'German Bohemians' had always lived on Bohemian territory or whether they had migrated there as part of the German settlement of the East became a highly political issue. Later theories which stated that the Germanic original inhabitants had never left the Bohemian-Moravian area, but survived there in smaller or larger numbers, became dominant among German scholars. The role of German colonisation in the history of Bohemia was reinterpreted by the young Czech Positivist movement. According to F. Palacky, a dramatic change of fateful significance took place in the 13th century.
