Publication details
Mehrsprachigkeits-, Interkulturalitäts- und Toleranzunterricht im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert am Beispiel der Zwittauer deutschen Sprachinsel in Böhmen
| Title in English | Multilingualism, Interculturality and Tolerance in the 18th and 19th Centuries using the example of Zwittauer German language island in Bohemia |
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Citation | |
| Description | After the ambitious Theresian school reform of 1774, schools were to be built in the Habsburg monarchy in all parishes. This affected both Czech and German Bohemian communities in the territory of the Kingdom of Bohemia and Moravia, because the school reform was designed bilingual from the beginning. Therefore, many promotional steps have been taken. In Prague, a large stock of textbooks and a publishing house, which published double-language texts. School libraries were built containing books on German as well as Czech language, history and geography. In the present contribution, the impact of one of the most significant social changes of the 18th century and of Central European history from a micro-historical perspective will be discussed on the basis of contemporary chronicles and other evidence. It focuses on the life of village teachers in a culturally homogeneous, monolingual German microregion, which, however, was on the border to a larger, different-language area. The teachers had to defy (in addition to the daily struggle for existence) also challenges that are still relevant today. They took on the task of preparing the students, who grew up in a linguistically, culturally and religiously homogeneous environment, to meet people from different cultures and other cultures, to teach them the basics of the Czech language and to convey Czech culture and history. Using the example of the German linguistic island of Zwittau / Bohemia, this paper will show how teachers as educational institutions were able to meet the challenges of multilingualism and intercultural education in the Central European language area in the 18th and 19th centuries. |