ABSTRACT
The history of the Germans in the lands of the Bohemian crown for a century and a half preceding the end of the last World War is a curious mixture of confusion as to aims, indecision as to loyalty, and uncertainty as to their own position in the Hapsburg Empire. The Germans in Bohemia and Moravia could afford to be almost benevolent in their attitude toward their fellow Bohemians whose names indicated that they were of Slavic extraction. In the early years of the nineteenth century the armies of Napoleon won victory after victory over German arms. The government seemed determined, even at tremendous cost to itself, to shield the Austrian and Bohemian mind from the vicious onslaught of liberal ideas. In some ways the censorship was more severe upon the Germans in Bohemia than upon the Czechs. The significance of the revolutionary movements of 1848 is, as a general rule, inadequately appreciated in western Europe.
