1 Brooks, Roy L. (ed.), When Sorry Isn't Enough. The Controversy over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice (New York: New York University Press, 1999)Google Scholar .

2 Weyeneth, Robert R., ‘History, Memory, and Apology. The Power of Apology and the Process of Historical Reconciliation’, The Public Historian, 23 (2001), pp. 9–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

3 Barkan, Elazar and Karn, Alexander, ‘Group Apology as an Ethical Imperative’, in Barkan, Elazar and Karn, Alexander (eds), Taking Wrongs Seriously. Apologies and Reconciliation (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 3–32Google Scholar ; Marrus, Michael R., ‘Official Apologies and the Quest for Historical Justice’, Journal of Human Rights, 6 (2007), pp. 75–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

4 See, for example, Barkan, and Karn, , ‘Group Apology as an Ethical Imperative’; Cohen, Stanley, States of Denial. Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 2002)Google Scholar .

5 Tavuchis, Nicholas, Mea Culpa. A Sociology of Apology and Reconciliation (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar .

6 Thompson, Janna, ‘Apology, Justice, and Respect: A Critical Defense of Political Apology’, in Gibney, Mark et al. , (eds), The Age of Apology. Facing Up to the Past (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 31–44Google Scholar .

7 Nobles, Melissa, The politics of official apologies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

8 Barkan and Karn, ‘Group Apology as an Ethical Imperative’.

9 Negash, Girma, Apologia Politica. States & Their Apologies by Proxy (Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006)Google Scholar .

10 Ibid.

11 Bilder, Richard B., ‘The Role of Apology in International Law and Diplomacy’, in University of Wisconsin Law School: Legal Studies Research Paper Series (Wisconsin: 2006)Google Scholar ; Watts, Sir Arthur, ‘The Art of Apology’, in Rogazzi, Maurizio (ed.), International Responsibility Today (Leiden & Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publications, 2005), pp. 107–116Google Scholar .

12 Bar-Tal, Daniel and Bennink, Gemma, ‘The Nature of Reconciliation as an Outcome and as a Process’, in Bar-Siman-Tov, Yaacov (ed.), From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 11–38Google Scholar ; Cohen, Raymond, ‘Apology and Reconciliation in International Relations’, in Bar-Siman-Tov, Yaacov (ed.), From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 177–195CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

13 Govier, Trudy and Verwoerd, Wilhelm, ‘The Promise and Pitfalls of Apology’, Journal of Social Philosophy, 33 (2002), pp. 67–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar . See also, Marrus, ‘Official Apologies and the Quest for Historical Justice’.

14 Ibid., p. 79; see also, Barkan and Karn, ‘Group Apology as an Ethical Imperative’; Coicaud, Jean-Marc and Jönsson, Jibecke, ‘Elements of a Road map for a Politics of Apology’, in Gibney, Mark et al. , (eds), The Age of Apology. Facing Up to the Past (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 77–91Google Scholar ; Lazare, Aaron, On apology (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 306Google Scholar ; Rotberg, Robert I., ‘Apology, Truth Commissions, and Intrastate Conflict’, in Barkan, Elazar and Karn, Alexander (eds), Taking Wrongs Seriously. Apologies and Reconciliation (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 33–50Google Scholar ; Scheff, Thomas J., Bloody Revenge. Emotions, Nationalism, and War (Boulder & Oxford: Westview Press, 1994)Google Scholar ; Thompson, ‘Apology, Justice, and Respect’.

15 Barkan and Karn, ‘Group Apology as an Ethical Imperative’.

16 See, for example, ibid.

17 Marrus, , ‘Official Apologies and the Quest for Historical Justice’; Yamazaki, Jane W., Japanese Apologies for World War II, Routledge Contemporary Japan Series (New York: Routledge, 2006)Google Scholar .

18 Barkan and Karn, ‘Group Apology as an Ethical Imperative’; Kerstens, Paul, ‘“Deliver Us from Original Sin”: Belgian Apologies to Rwanda and the Congo’, in Gibney, Mark et al. , (eds), The Age of Apology. Facing Up to the Past (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 187–201Google Scholar .

19 Ibid., ‘Group Apology as an Ethical Imperative’; Govier and Verwoerd, ‘The Promise and Pitfalls of Apology’; Harris, Sandra, Grainger, Karen, Mullany, Louise, ‘The Pragmatics of Political Apologies’, Discourse & Society, 17 (2006), pp. 715–737CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Villadsen, Lisa Storm, ‘Speaking on Behalf of Others: Rhetorical Agency and Epideictic Functions in Official Apologies’, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 38 (2008), pp. 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Tavuchis, Mea Culpa; Thompson, ‘Apology, Justice, and Respect’.

20 Austin, John L., How To Do Things With Words (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1962)Google Scholar .

21 Ibid.; Yoshitake, Masaki, ‘Critique of J. L. Austin's Speech Act Theory: Decentralization of the Speaker-Centred Meaning in Communication’, Kyushu Communication Studies, 2 (2004), pp. 27–43Google Scholar .

22 Austin, How To Do Things With Words; Balzacq, Thierry, ‘The Three Faces of Securitization: Political Agency, Audience and Context’, European Journal of International Relations, 11 (2005), pp. 171–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Cerf, Walter, ‘Critical Review of How to do Things With Words’, in Fann, K.T. (ed.), Symposium on J. L. Austin (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), pp. 351–380Google Scholar ; Anna Trosborg, Interlanguage Pragmatics. Requests, Complaints and Apologies; Mey, , Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, ed. Coulmas, Florian and Jacob, L. (Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995)Google Scholar ; Yoshitake, ‘Critique of J. L. Austin's Speech Act Theory’.

23 Yoshitake, ‘Critique of J. L. Austin's Speech Act Theory’.

24 Austin, How To Do Things With Words; Austin, John L., Wort und Bedeutung. Philosophische Aufsätze (München: List Verlag, 1975)Google Scholar .

25 Austin quoted in Balzacq, ‘The Three Faces of Securitization’.

26 Yoshitake, ‘Critique of J. L. Austin's Speech Act Theory’.

27 Ibid., p. 34.

28 Ibid.

29 Gu, Yueguo, ‘The Impasse of Perlocution’, Journal of Pragmatics, 20 (1993), pp. 405–432CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Yoshitake, ‘Critique of J. L. Austin's Speech Act Theory’.

30 Trosborg, Interlanguage Pragmatics. See also, Darley, Steven J., Scher, John M., ‘How Effective are the Things People Say to Apologize? Effects of the Realization of the Apology Speech Act’, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 26 (1997), pp. 127–140Google Scholar .

31 Balzacq, ‘The Three Faces of Securitization’.

32 This is indeed what many scholars do. The failure of a public apology to contribute to conflict resolution (its illocution) is usually traced back to its failure to correspond to the required cultural or linguistic conventions and expectations, such as a certain form, wording and content, or signals that prove its sincerity. Some scholars, such as Michael Marrus or Mark Gibney and Erik Roxstrom, have therefore developed ‘style guides’, that is, catalogues of cultural and linguistic conventions for public apologies that are supposed to enhance their success in conflict resolution. See, for example, Gibney, Mark and Roxstrom, Erik, ‘The Status of State Apologies’, Human Rights Quarterly, 23 (2001), pp. 911–939CrossRefGoogle Scholar , Marrus, ‘Official Apologies and the Quest for Historical Justice’ for the style guides and Govier and Verwoerd, ‘The Promise and Pitfalls of Apology’, O'Neill, Barry, Honor, Symbols, and War (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for the demand for sincerity.

33 The Czechoslovakian Federation was dissolved in June 1992 and separated into two sovereign states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The leading politicians of the Czechoslovakian-German reconciliation process, Vaclav Havel and Vaclav Klaus remained influential figures in the Czech Republic.

34 Maria Cornelia Raue, ‘Doppelpunkt hinter der Geschichte: Die Prager Deutschlandpolitik 1990–1997’ (Humboldt-Universität, 2001).

35 Sueddeutsche Zeitung (23/24/25 December 1989), p. 8.

36 In January, the SZ and FAZ loosely referred to Havel's ‘openness’ in regard to the Czechoslovakian past. Only one article explicitly mentioned and praised the apology; see FAZ (17 January 1990), p. 10.

37 The apology must have been noticed by German politicians however, as two debates of the German parliament Bundestag on the Czech-German relations five years later reveal. In both special sessions from 1995 and 1996, several delegates, in particular from the left opposition parties, referred to Havel's apology, praised it as a very mature political gesture, and complained that Germany had not reacted in an adequate way at the time. See, 28. Sitzung des Deutschen Bundestags, 13. Wahlperiode, 17. März 1995, 82. Sitzung des Deutschen Bundestags, 13. Wahlperiode, 31. January 1996.

38 Raue, ‘Doppelpunkt hinter der Geschichte’, pp. 95–6.

39 Ibid., p. 90ff; Witte, Michaela, Entfremdung, Sprachlosigkeit, Aussöhnung? (Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2002)Google Scholar .

40 Witte, Entfremdung, Sprachlosigkeit, Aussöhnung?.

41 Pauer, Jan, ‘Moral Political Dissent in German-Czech Relations’, Czech Sociological Review, 6 (1998), pp. 173–186Google Scholar ; Raue, ‘Doppelpunkt hinter der Geschichte’.

42 Ryback, Timothy W., ‘Dateline Sudetenland: Hostages to History’, Foreign Policy (1997), pp. 162–178Google Scholar .

43 Raue, , ‘Doppelpunkt hinter der Geschichte’; Jacques Rupnik, ‘Europe's New Frontiers: Remapping Europe’, Daedalus, 123 (1994), pp. 91–105Google Scholar .

44 In the Czech-German case, the call for financial restitutions might also be linked with the fact that the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans happened in the not too distant past and so the interest group to which the apology was addressed was still alive and moreover very well politically organised. In cases in which the apology is issued for more distant historical wrongs and hardly anyone of the victim group is still alive, such effects of apologies will probably be weaker.

45 Beushausen, Reiner, ‘Die Diskussion über die Vertreibung der Deutschen in der CSFR’, Dokumentation Ostmitteleuropa, 17 (1991), pp. 1–176Google Scholar . Havel's apology received support only from few persons within his party Civic Forum and from parts of the Catholic Church. See Beushausen, ‘Die Diskussion über die Vertreibung der Deutschen in der CSFR’.

46 With a circulation of 1 million, the Rudé Právo was the most widely read newspaper in Czechoslovakia. Before the Velvet Revolution, the Rudé Právo was the official newspaper of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, after the revolution it was transformed into an unaffiliated paper but maintained most of its existing reader base. The Svobodné Slovo was the daily newspaper of the Czechoslovak Socialist Party and had a circulation of 260,000. During 1968, Svobodne Slovo acquired a considerable degree of popularity, especially among white-collar, non-Communist strata in larger communities.

47 Kucera, Jaroslav, ‘Zwischen Geschichte und Politik. Die aktuelle Diskussion über die Vertreibung der Deutschen in der tschechischen Gesellschaft und Politik’, in Streibel, Robert (ed.), Flucht und Vertreibung. Zwischen Aufrechnung und Verdrängung (Wien: Picus Verlag, 1994), pp. 174–187Google Scholar .

48 Beushausen, ‘Die Diskussion über die Vertreibung der Deutschen in der CSFR’.

49 Cordell, Karl and Wolff, Stefan, Germany's Foreign Policy Towards Poland and the Czech Republic. Ostpolitik Revisited, Routledge Advances in European Politics (London: Routledge, 2005)Google Scholar ; Kraft, Claudia, ‘Der Platz der Vertreibung der Deutschen im historischen Gedächtnis Polens und der Tschechoslowakei/Tschechiens’, in Cornelißen, Christoph, Holec, Roman and Pesek, Jiri (eds), Diktatur – Krieg – Vertreibung. Erinnerungskulturen in Tschechien, der Slowakei und Deutschland seit 1945 (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2005), pp. 329–354Google Scholar .

50 According to Raue, the later Czech President Vaclav Klaus even said that he did not learn about the expulsions before 1994 Raue, ‘Doppelpunkt hinter der Geschichte’, chap. 6.

51 Ibid., chap. 6.

52 The text of the Czech-German Declaration is available at: {http://www.bundestag.de/geschichte/gastredner/havel/havel2.html} accessed on 16 July 2008.

53 The Lidové Noviny is a daily paper which reaches a print run of 70,000.

54 Lidové Noviny, (11 December 1996), p. 8; Lidové Noviny (21 January 1979), p. 8.

55 Raue, ‘Doppelpunkt hinter der Geschichte’, chap. 4.

56 Kunstat, Miroslav, ‘Czech-German Relations After the Fall of the Iron Curtain’, Czech Sociological Review, 6 (1998), pp. 149–172Google Scholar .

57 Hofhansel, Claus, Multilateralism, German Foreign Policy and Central Europe (Abingdon: Routledge 2005), p. 47Google Scholar .

58 Kozáková, Pavla, ‘Czechs, Germans Clash Again Over Postwar Expulsions’, Transitions Online, 7 (2003)Google Scholar ; Nagengast, Emil, ‘The Benes Decrees and EU Enlargement’, European Integration, 25 (2003), pp. 335–350CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

59 Nagengast, ‘The Benes Decrees and EU Enlargement’.

60 Ibid., p. 341.

61 Ibid., p. 342; Hofhansel, Multilateralism, German Foreign Policy and Central Europe.

62 Sueddeutsche Zeitung (11 December 1996), p. 1; Hospodarske Noviny (10 December 1996), pp. 1, 3; Lidové Noviny (10 December 1996), p. 1.

63 Raue, ‘Doppelpunkt hinter der Geschichte’, p. 149.

64 Ibid, p. 149.

65 See, for example, SZ (21 January 1997), p. 11; FR (23 January 1997), pp. 1–2.

66 Die Welt (21 January 1997), p. 4.

67 The text of the statement is available at the website of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs: {http://www.czechembassy.org/wwwo/mzv/default.asp?id=34187&ido=13797idj=2&amb=1} accessed on 6 August 2008.

68 Radio Prague News (24 August 2005), available at: {http://www.radiocz/print/de/nachrichten/69965} accessed on 6 August 2008.

69 Interview with the German ambassador to the Czech Republic, Helmut Elfenkämper. Available at: {http://www.deutschebotschaft.cz/de/politik_presse/ARCHIV/ARCHIV_2005/09_elfenkaemper_hn_interview.htm} accessed on 5 August 2008.

70 Frankfurter Rundschau (25 August 2005), p. 5.

71 Nachrichten der Sudetendeutschen in Baden-Württemberg (Folge 3/2005) (15 September 2005). Available at: {www.sudeten-bw.de/?download=2005_03.pdf} accessed on 6 August 2008.

72 Sueddeutsche Zeitung (25 August 2005), p. 7.

73 Sueddeutsche Zeitung (25 August 2005), p. 7.

74 Criticism against the apology was raised by President Vaclav Klaus as well as the Civic Democratic Party (ODS). See: Lidové Noviny (25 August 2005), pp. 1, 2; Hospodarske Noviny (23 August 2005), p. 9. Importantly, however, criticism was only raised against the particular shape of the apology as a government declaration, not against its content or against the general necessity to apologise for the expulsions, as in 1989. Insofar, the message of regret communicated by the apology was not impeded and accordingly the apology was not challenged or denounced by the protest.

75 Hospodarske Noviny (24 August 2005), pp. 1, 2. Hospodarske Noviny is a leading economic and political daily newspaper in the Czech Republic with a daily average circulation of approximately 90,000 copies.

76 The Rzeczpospolita is the second biggest national newspaper in Poland after the Gazeta Wyborcza. It reaches a circulation of about 200,000 and is read by about 1.3 million people.

77 The German translation of these articles can be found in Bachmann, Klaus and Kranz, Jerzy (eds), Verlorene Heimat. Die Vertreibungsdebatte in Polen (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1998)Google Scholar .

78 Kerstens, “Deliver Us from Original Sin”.

79 Ibid.

80 Barkan and Karn, ‘Group Apology as an Ethical Imperative’.

81 Ibid.; Kerstens, “Deliver Us from Original Sin”.

82 The limited scope of the apology might have also contributed to its relative acceptance. The 2005 apology did not refer to the expulsions or excesses during the expulsions in general, but only addressed those expellees who had actively opposed the National Socialists.