Conventional Long Name: | Province of the Sudetenland |
Common Name: | Sudetenland |
Year Start: | 1918 |
Year End: | 1919 |
Date Start: | 29 October |
Event End: | Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye |
Date End: | 10 September |
Flag Type: | Flag[1] |
Subdivision: | Province |
Capital: | Troppau |
Nation: | the Republic of German-Austria |
Stat Year1: | 1919 |
Stat Area1: | 6534 |
Stat Pop1: | 671.800 |
Image Map Caption: | Province of the Sudetenland as shown within German Austria, colored in orange. |
P1: | Austria-Hungary |
Flag P1: | Flag of the Habsburg Monarchy.svg |
S1: | First Czechoslovak Republic |
Flag S1: | Flag of Bohemia.svg |
Today: | Czech Republic |
Demonym: | Sudeten Germans |
Era: | Interwar period |
The Province of the Sudetenland (German: Provinz Sudetenland) was established on 29 October 1918 by former members of the Cisleithanian Imperial Council, the governing legislature of the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire. It consisted of German-speaking parts of Moravia, Bohemia and Austrian Silesia, and was meant to become an integral part of the newly proclaimed Republic of German-Austria.[2]
The province was originally established by the provisional government of the so-called "German Moravia", which meant to represent German interests in Moravia. The provisional capital was declared as Troppau (Opava). It mimicked a similar provincial establishment in Bohemia, where Reichenberg (Liberec) became the capital.
Along with various other German-speaking parts, these provinces were intended to eventually integrate into Austria, on the basis of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which emphasized the right to self-determination of peoples. This would not come to pass, however. Both the provinces of German Bohemia and German Moravia were given to the newly proclaimed Czechoslovak Republic. Czechoslovak troops occupied the province by the beginning of 1919, and the position of the said province within Czechoslovakia was confirmed by the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which was signed 10 September 1919, and the province was disestablished in the same day.
In 1919, about 646,800 (96.2%) ethnic Germans lived within the province, along with about 25,000 (3.7%) ethnic Czechs.
The majority of ethnic Germans in all of Czechoslovakia, including what was once this province, were expelled after the Second World War.