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Vast Workshop and Laboratory: Labor and Refugees to the Bohemian Lands and Czechoslovakia, 1914–39

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2024

Michal Frankl Open the ORCID record for Michal Frankl [Opens in a new window]
Michal Frankl*
Affiliation:
Masaryk Institute and Archives Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic
*
Email: frankl@mua.cas.cz
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Abstract

As a part of the conversation in the forum “Austria and the Czech Republic as Immigration Countries: Transnational Labor Migration in Historical Comparison” this article revisits the history of refugees in the Bohemian Lands and Czechoslovakia, from World War I until the occupation by Nazi Germany in 1939. Taking stock of existing research, it suggests alternative lines of thinking about the management of migrants' labor and contributes to the wider discussion about how to conceptually combine refugee studies and research on labor migration. For analytical purposes, it focuses on three distinct state approaches to managing refugee labor that often existed in parallel: mobilization of refugee labor in a crisis situation, the support of labor as a pathway to future citizenship, and the denial of work as a sign of statelessness. These three approaches show how refugees' work impacted their status, communicated ideas about the future, and reproduced hierarchies defined by ethnicity, class, or political persuasion.

Keywords

refugeesCzechoslovakialabor migrationcitizenship
Type
Article
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , First View , pp. 1 - 12
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Copyright
Copyright © Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, vvi, 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Regents of the University of Minnesota

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References

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17 Walter Mentzel, “Kriegsflüchtlinge in Cisleithanien im Ersten Weltkrieg” (Ph.D. diss., University of Vienna, 1997), 5.

18 Mentzel, “Kreigsflüchtlinge”; Walter Mentzel, “Kriegserfahrungen von Flüchtlingen aus dem Nordosten der Monarchie während des Ersten Weltkrieges,” in Jenseits des Schützengrabens. Der Erste Weltkrieg im Osten: Erfahrung – Wahrnehmung – Kontext, eds. Bernhard Bachinger and Wolfram Dornik (Innsbruck, 2013), 359–90; Kamil Ruszała, Galicyjski eksodus. Uchodźcy podczas I wojny światowej w monarchii Habsburgów (Kraków, 2020).

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22 “Gesetz betreffend die Kriegsleistungen,” Reichsgesetzblatt 236, XCIX (26.12.1912); see also the tightening through the “Kaiserliche Verordnung über die Bestrafung der Störung des öffentlichen Dienstes oder eines öffentlichen Betriebes und der Verletzung einer Lieferungspflicht,” Reichsgesetzblatt 155, LXX (25.7.1914).

23 Kučera, Rationed Life.

24 Mentzel, “Kreigsflüchtlinge,” 370.

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27 Rejzl, 272.

28 Dario Colombo, Boemia: l'esodo della Val di Ledro: 1915–1919 (Tione di Trento, 2008), 155; cited from Rejzl, “Zaměstnávání uprchlíků,” 273.

29 Cretu, Doina Anca, “Child Assistance and the Making of Modern Refugee Camps in Austria-Hungary during the First World War,” Central European History 55, no. 4 (2022): 510–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008938922000632.

30 Jaroslav Šíma, Českoslovenští přestěhovalci v letech 1938–1945. Příspěvek k sociologii migrace a theorie sociální péče [Czechoslovak Migrants 1938–1945. A Contribution to Sociology of Migration and Theory of Social Work] (Prague, 1945).

31 Jan Benda, Útěky a vyhánění z pohraničí českých zemí 1938–1939 [Flight and Expulsion from the Borderlands of the Czech Lands 1938–1939] (Prague, 2013), 324–30; František Dostál Raška, “Uprchlické tábory v Čechách a na Moravě po mnichovském diktátu” [Refugee Camps in Bohemia and Moravia after the Munich Dictate], Soudobé dějiny 8, no. 4 (2001): 732–45.

32 Rákosník and Tomeš, Sociální stát; Jakub Rákosník, Odvrácená tvář meziválečné prosperity. Nezaměstnanost v Československu v letech 1918–1938 [The Darker Side of Interwar Prosperity. Unemployment in Czechoslovakia 1918–1938] (Prague, 2008).

33 Šíma, Českoslovenští přestěhovalci, 62; Josef Harna, Zdeněk Deyl, and Vlastislav Lacina, Materiály k politickým, hospodářským a sociálním dějinám Československa v letech 1929–1939 [Materials on Political, Economic and Social History of Czechoslovakia 1929–1939], Sborník k dějinám 19. a 20. století, vol. 8 (Prague, 1982), 263.

34 SOkA Olomouc, Okresní úřad (District Office, hereafter OÚ) Litovel, box 678, Ministry of Social and Health Care, 12.12.1938.

35 SOkA Olomouc, OÚ Litovel, box 678, Ministry of Social and Health Care, 12.12.1938; report of the District Office in Litovel, 24.12.1938.

36 NA, PMV, call number X/H/21/6, box 1044, report of the Presidium of the Provincial Office in Prague, 6.3.1939.

37 Lubomír Nenička, “Pracovní tábory a boj s nezaměstnaností v pomnichovském Československu” [Labor Camps and the Fight Against Unemployment in Post-Munich Czechoslovakia], Acta academica karviniensia 14, no. 2 (2014): 105–16, here 113, 114.

38 SOkA Olomouc, OÚ Litovel, box 678, report of the District Office in Litovel, 11.11.1938.; “Vládní nařízení o přechodném umístění zemědělců z území obsazených cizí mocí” [Government Decree on Temporary Placement of Farmers from Territories taken by a Foreign Power], Sbírka zákonů a nařízení 304/1938 (25.11.1938).

39 “Vládní nařízení o pracovních útvarech” [Government Decree on Labor Units], Sbírka zákonů a nařízení 223/1938 (11.10.1938).

40 Pavel Baloun, Metla našeho venkova! Kriminalizace Romů od první republiky až po prvotní fázi protektorátu (1918–1941) [Scourge of Our Countryside! Criminalization of Roma from the First Republic to the Initial Phase of the Protectorate (1918–1941)] (Dolní Břežany, 2022), 290–91.

41 Chinyaeva, Elena, Russians Outside Russia: The Émigré Community in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1938 (Munich, 2001), 55Google Scholar.

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45 Chinyaeva, 13.

46 Zdeněk Sládek, “Prag: Das ‘russische Oxford,”’ in Der große Exodus. Die russische Emigration und ihre Zentren 1917 bis 1941, ed. Karl Schlögel (Munich, 1994), 218–33.

47 L. Hamilton Rhinelander, “Exiled Russian Scholars in Prague: The Kondakov Seminar and Institute,” Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue Canadienne des slavistes 16, no. 3 (1974): 331–52; Jiří Roháček and Julie Jančárková, “The Kondakov Institute – A Research Institution of the Russian Exiles in Prague and Its Heritage,” in Exil v Praze a v Československu 1918–1938/Exile in Prague and Czechoslovakia 1918–1938, ed. David Kraft, trans. Štěpánka Magstadtová (Prague, 2005), 39–44.

48 See for instance citizenship files in NA, Zemský úřad Praha, státní občanství a matriční záležitosti (Provincial Office Prague, citizenship, and registry).

49 Mentzel, “Kreigsflüchtlinge,” 382–83; Rejzl, “Zaměstnávání uprchlíků,” 265, 274.

50 Frankl and Szabó, Budování státu bez antisemitismu?; Frankl, Michal, “‘Criminal Refugees’: Writing Eastern European Jews into the Czechoslovak Nation-State (1918–1919),” Bohemia 62, no. 1 (2022): 40–62Google Scholar.

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52 Ágnes Katalin Kelemen, “Next Year in Brno? Brno's Significance for Hungarian Jews in the Age of the Numerus Clausus and Beyond,” in QUOTAS: The ‘Jewish Question’ and Higher Education in Central Europe and Beyond (1880–1945), eds. Michael L. Miller and Judith Szapor (New York, 2024).

53 NA, MV, SR 1936–40, call number 11/1/6, box 5703.

54 Jan Havránek, “Anti-Semitism at Prague Universities in November 1929,” Judaica Bohemiae 37 (2001): 145–50.

55 See for instance: Jakub Drápal, “Postup advokacie proti židovským advokátům za druhé republiky a těsně po ní” [The Actions of Legal Profession against Jewish Lawyers During the Second Republic and Shortly Thereafter], in Rozpad židovského života. 167 dní druhé republiky, eds. Marcela Zoufalá and Jiří Holý, Judaica 21 (Prague, 2016), 245–72.

56 Čapková, Kateřina and Frankl, Michal, Unsichere Zuflucht. Die Tschechoslowakei und ihre Flüchtlinge aus NS-Deutschland und Österreich 1933–1938 (Köln, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Becher, Peter and Heumos, Peter, eds., Drehscheibe Prag. Zur deutschen Emigration in der Tschechoslowakei 1933–1939 (Munich, 1992)Google Scholar; Bohumil Černý, Most k novému životu. Německá emigrace v ČSR v letech 1933–1939 [Bridge to a New Life. German Emigration in the Czechoslovak Republic 1933–1939] (Prague, 1967).

57 NA, PMV 1936–40 (225), X/N/9/8, box 225-844-3, Prezidium Zemského úřadu v Praze, 15.11.1964.

58 Čapková and Frankl, Unsichere Zuflucht.

59 See for instance Schellenbacher, Wolfgang, “From Political Activism to Disillusionment. Austrian Socialist Refugees in Czechoslovakia, 1934–1938,” S:I.M.O.N. Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation. 5, no. 2 (2018): 78–94Google Scholar, https://doi.org/10.23777/SN0218/SWW_WSCH01.

60 “Zákon o pobytu cizinců” [Law on the Residence of Foreigners], Sbírka zákonů a nařízení 52/1935 (28.3.1935).

61 NA, PP, call number F 808/17, protocol with Hugo Fischer Hugo, 17.6.1938; similar NA, PP 1941–50, call number B 1612/7, box 544, protocol with Richard Bernstein, 12.2.1935.

62 “[ … ] na úkor státního národa.” Michal Frankl and Wolfgang Schellenbacher, eds., Uzavřít hranice! Rakouští uprchlíci do Československa v roce 1938 [Seal the Border! Austrian Refugees into Czechoslovakia in 1938] (Prague, 2022), document 3.8, p. 83.

63 See also Benda, Útěky a vyhánění, 352.