alternatehistory.com

Petike in the "Turn Czechs in to German Austrians" thread:

Yet another "screw the non-German nations of central Europe" idea. :rolleyes: Really, guys ? No offence, but this is already becoming somewhat of a cliché...

So therefore, in answer to Petike's issue, I decided to make a Czech-wank challenge. Its rather simple-make Czechia, and the Czech language, have as much power, prestige, and territory as you can. To force you to be creative, however, there's one stipulation: no POD's before the Battle of Mohacs in 1526, which resulted in Czechia coming under Hapsburg control. You have to free it from them first.

My attempt: The War of Austrian Succession goes much worse for the Hapsburgs, and their Empire is partitioned. The Crown of Bohemia (including Silesia) becomes an independent country again under, say, a Wettin (which house doesn't really matter). The Germans, of course, have a dominant position in this country, and most of the nobility are Germanophone, but Czech still has some official standing, which it keeps for the rest of the 18th century.

In the 19th century, the dynamics of the Czech national awakening are different-its less an indepedence movement and more a movement emphasizing the Czech part of Bohemia's national identity. At a grassroots level, it encourages people to speak Czech and tries to stem the spread of German, and at a national level it wants Czech and German to have equal status, with parents able to choose whether their children will be educated in Czech or German. Generally, it becomes identified with Bohemia's liberals, and its main opponents are the conservative Germanophone nobility.

When TTL's equivalent of 1848 roles around, the Bohemian kings agree to the Czech movement's linguistic demands as a way of forstalling having to actually liberalize. Later in the 19th century, Bohemia has several kings who promote a conservative, romanticized version of "Czech-ness" as a way of detaching it from liberalism.

All of this means that the Germanization of Bohemia effectively stops, and reverses to some degree. In Silesia, the Czech movement becomes popular among the slavic Silesians, and the majority of them begin to identify as Czechs and send their children to Czech schools. Meanwhile, Bohemia industrializes, and lots of rural Czechs migrate into the towns and especially into Silesia. A considerable number of Poles migrate to the industrial cities of Bohemia as well, and most of them become Czechs as well (even in Silesia they have Czech communities to assimilate into at this point).

In the 20th century, Bohemia is a major industrialized nation, and one of the biggest powers in Central Europe. A census at the beginning of the 21st shows that lingustically, about 55% of the people speak Czech, 35% speak German, and 10% speak Polish. (Germans mostly live in the Sudatenland and Silesia, Poles mostly in Silesia.)

Any other Czech-wanks?
Top