Publication details
"... and they will consider themselves the last victims of the world war." Anton Granatier and his plans for the population exchange between Czechoslovakia and Hungary and the settlement of Slovakia after the Second World War
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Človek a spoločnosť |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | https://individualandsociety.org/sk/casopis/2022/1/and-they-will-consider-themselves-the-last-victims-of-the-world-war-anton-granatier-and-his-plans-for-population-exchange-and-resettlement-of-slovakia-after-the-second-world-war |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.31577/cas.2022.01.602 |
| Keywords | Czechoslovakia; Hungary; minority policies; population exchange; re-emigration; resettlement |
| Description | Introduction: While the wave of migrations after the Second World War remains among the more discussed topics of central-European historiography, certain questions still remain unaddressed. In the past, the practical matters of which groups were moved, and where and how they were moved, have been the subject of a great amount of attention from researchers. Now our focus is turned to additional matters, that are however no less important to our understanding of the processes that largely shaped today’s ethnic composition of central Europe. Objectives: This article aims at shedding some light on how the people planning the population exchanges and movements thought about ethnicity and nationhood. So, what formed the policy-makers? We will try to give a partial answer to this question through the example of Anton Granatier, one of the prominent ethnic policy experts of the 1930s and 1940s Czechoslovakia. His life offers some interesting insights into the society and thinking of Slovak elites in Czechoslovakia. A legionnaire and a resistance fighter, in some aspects he embodies the ideal Czechoslovak of the first republic. His ideas on the place of Slovaks and ethnic minorities within Czechoslovakia often clashed with the official line and institutions in Prague, and therefore offer an interestingly multi-faceted picture of contemporary thinking. Conclusion: The opinions of Anton Granatier about the aspects of nationality offer a mix between an essentialist and constructivist approach to ethnicity. Like many of his time, he considered the existing Trianon border untenable and proposed changes to it. However, even in this his opinion often differed from the official line that allowed for no territorial concessions. His various conflicts with central institutions and colleagues alike offer a crystallisation of ideas that allows us to look into the thinking and re-thinking of nationhood and inter-ethnic relationships of post-war Czechoslovakia. |
| Related projects: |