Introduction
At the end of August 1945, a crowd gathered in the small town of Nižný Medzev (Unter-Metzenseifen/Alsó-Meczenzéf) in Eastern Czechoslovakia to celebrate the first anniversary of the Slovak National Uprising.Footnote 1 After a morning performance of the local brass band, a platoon of thirty partisans from the town and the surrounding area laid wreaths on the grave of a fallen Soviet soldier. A mass was then held in front of the local Roman Catholic Church, followed by a solemn procession with music, flags and allegorical floats. The ceremony itself began after the Czechoslovak and Soviet anthems had been played and the town’s main representatives – two local schoolteachers – had made their ceremonial speeches. These two members of the local administration spoke in Slovak to a crowd of mainly German and Hungarian speakers. The whole celebration marked both the new ideological orientation of post-war Czechoslovakia and the power dynamics within the town, with the most influential personalities of the local post-war community, particularly the two Slovak-speaking teachers, taking centre stage.Footnote 2 These figures decided on the future of the inhabitants of this linguistically heterogeneous area. They stood behind the post-war retribution, sentenced some of their neighbours to labour camps, restricted their citizenship and confiscated their property. Moreover, these actors spearheaded the process of the ‘cleansing’ of the Czechoslovak nation on the ground, mostly by following centrally issued visions of the state restoration.Footnote 3 These Slovak-speaking teachers, however, were broadly embedded within the largely German- and Hungarian-speaking community. When they gave their speeches in August 1945, they were not unknown outsiders. One of them, Oldřich Taufer, originally Czech, came to the small town in the 1930s to promote Czechoslovak nation-building through his role as school principal. In order to win the support of the largely nationally ambivalent population for the Czechoslovak national project, he had organised various public celebrations and supported local national cultural associations during the inter-war period.Footnote 4
The case of a civil servant sent from the centre to the linguistically mixed periphery to pursue national homogenisation is not exceptional.Footnote 5 This article, however, challenges the widespread perception of civil servants as permanent outsiders coming to the periphery only to enforce policies from above or to advance their own interests. Instead, I focus on the agency of these actors within the local society, their interactions within the community and their ability to shape the nation-building policies on the ground. In order to grasp the positioning of an official pursuing national policies from above, this article draws on a large body of literature on nation-building in Central and Southeastern Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. First, it considers studies that focus on nationalisation efforts in multilingual environments, emphasising the ambiguous reactions and resistance of natives to national activists, with Tara Zahra’s concept of ‘national indifference’ receiving particular prominence.Footnote 6 Second, this article engages with the concept of loyalty, which has gained a pivotal role in the study of nationalism, overcoming the interpretations of nations as primordial groups as well as the idea that national identity is a stable concept.Footnote 7 In their studies of the linguistically heterogeneous regions of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, historians have devoted their attention to the border regions of Upper Silesia, the Czech lands, Romania or Yugoslavia, but the similarly ambiguous regions on the borders between Czechoslovakia and Hungary have tended to be overlooked, despite the considerable peculiarities of local nationalisation policies.Footnote 8 Building upon Leslie Waters’ work on the Hungarian–Slovak borderlands and the shifting loyalties of the local inhabitants, this article focuses on negotiations within the nation-building processes in a largely German-speaking community in a peripheral border region of southeastern Slovakia.Footnote 9
While following Brendan Karch’s suggestion to ‘think small’ when trying to grasp the nationalisation process and the forging of loyalties, this article focuses on the school, which played a pivotal role in nation-building efforts.Footnote 10 The school has traditionally served as not only an educational institution but also a tool for enforcing state policy and ideology, encompassing various aspects of individual life that the state sought to influence. As Tara Zahra noted, children were considered a form of ‘national property’, and it was primarily through schools that they were expected to be educated into citizens who were nationally and ideologically conscious, and aligned with the state authorities’ ideals.Footnote 11 Although children were the main focus of educational initiatives, teachers, especially in remote areas, played a crucial role in the whole community and through organising public events, they spread these ideas to adults. Moreover, schools counted as one of the certainties in people’s lives. Regardless of borders and political changes, children often continued to walk through the same school doors every morning. Despite political and social shifts, teachers, in many cases throughout Czechoslovakia, remained the same, adjusting their loyalties and adapting their teaching to the needs of the new state elites but also, at the same time, maintaining their own agency.
This article analyses how locally embedded actors contributed to maintaining stability in close-knit communities during the upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century. Small-town teachers, I argue, were not only key actors within top-down educational and nation-building efforts, but through their ability to negotiate and manoeuvre in fluid environments and networks, they also remained behind the change or, conversely, continuity on the ground. In this article, I propose a long-term perspective on local development that is often lacking in micro-historical studies. Using the school as a frontline of nation-building, I focus on three major episodes that have shaped the (geo-)political scene in Central Europe: the inter-war period, the Second World War and the post-war reconfigurations. I emphasise how these historical ruptures triggered change but also displayed the continuities of loyalties and belonging in the small community setting. To do so, I follow the story of Oldřich Taufer, a schoolteacher who came to the small town in the inter-war period to appropriate the locals for the Czechoslovak national project and who continued this struggle even during the period of ethnic cleansing after the Second World War. His loyalties repeatedly shifted between the states that he served and his neighbours. It was his alignment with the new regime and his perceived loyalty that enabled him to play an instrumental role in the post-war reprisals within this community. However, his own agency and long-term involvement in the town were crucial in shaping the regime’s directives on the ground.
Czechoslovak Nation-Building Penetrating the ‘Exposed Borderland’ and the Struggle for the School
In early 1919, a regional German-language newspaper in Slovakia wondered about ‘the future relationship with the Czechoslovak state’, a parliamentary republic that had been established only a few months earlier. The authors reflected the long-standing influence of Hungarian elites and language in the region, which was located in the Hungarian part of the Habsburg monarchy until 1918. They emphasised that educational institutions in the predominantly German-populated areas had been ‘a powerful protagonist of intellectual life in former Hungary for many decades’ and believed that the new Czechoslovak authorities would support their agenda of enhancing German-language education.Footnote 12 Otherwise, the authors lamented, local ‘Germans were gradually sinking into the surrounding Slavism’, expressing their reticence towards the new state that was based on the idea of the unity of the Czechs and Slovaks. However, neither was the local Slovak population ‘wholeheartedly attached to the Czechoslovak Republic’ and instead showed resistance to its leading ideology, namely Czechoslovakism.Footnote 13 Czechoslovakism was a grounding ideology of the First Czechoslovak Republic, centred upon the idea that the Czechoslovak nation consisted of both Czechs and Slovaks as a single ethnic nation. Apart from this basic notion, Czechoslovakism was merely a set of ideas about the Czechoslovak nation and its position vis-à-vis the competing German and Hungarian nation-building projects.Footnote 14 Although the very idea of Czechoslovakism involved the exclusion of Germans and Hungarians from the concept of the new republic, the central authorities sought to build loyalty to the state among German and Hungarian speakers and to foster their integration into the new republic, in which education was to play a key role.Footnote 15
One of the first endeavours of the new authorities in the field of education was the ‘cleansing’ of teachers, especially in the territory of Slovakia, where Hungarian had been the language of instruction before 1918.Footnote 16 In order to keep their jobs, teachers had to publicly pledge their loyalty to the Czechoslovak state by taking an oath before school inspectors and declaring themselves ‘members of the Czechoslovak Republic’.Footnote 17 The pledge enshrined their commitment to the state-building idea of Czechoslovakism as teachers were to ‘recognize the Czech nation as a fraternal nation’, for which they were to have ‘a dear duty of warm and sincere love’. The pupils were to be educated in the Slovak language and the ‘Slovak spirit’, although they ought to also ‘loyally honour the members of our republic who speak other languages’.Footnote 18 Teachers who did not know the Slovak language or who refused to take the oath were dismissed, and officials in Bratislava reported to the central authorities on this process: ‘This way we got rid of many elements unreliable for the republic’.Footnote 19
The consequence of the dismissals was a significant teacher shortage in the territory of Slovakia, which was supposed to be dealt with by bringing in teachers from the Czech lands.Footnote 20 However, in the peripheral regions of Slovakia, the replacement of civil servants was a very slow process. In addition to the shortage of personnel, the newly established administration faced security challenges in the southern areas of Slovakia, especially because of the invasion of the region by the armed forces of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. In mid-1919, a Czech-speaking official in Bratislava reported to Prague that Czech teachers already employed in towns throughout Slovakia had either fled or taken up arms.Footnote 21 Thus, the young republic and the pioneers of its ideological foundations were endangered very soon after its establishment because of the widespread turmoil during the long end of the First World War.Footnote 22 It was only after the middle of 1919 that the Czechoslovak administration gradually began to penetrate southeastern Slovakia, bringing along its accompanying ideas about the region’s future. In this new context, the authorities, their representatives and locals would compete for a crucial social space that shaped the zone of their activities and communities. This space was the school, through which they all tried to define their loyalty and national belonging.
The fostering of education that promoted Czechoslovak ideology, which saw Czechs and Slovaks as a single, state-constituent nation, was crucial for the central authorities, but it involved a much wider range of actors. Especially in linguistically mixed areas, nationally focused associations played a crucial role in shaping state policy on the ground. One of the most important national organisations in Slovakia was the Slovenská liga (Slovak League), whose main aim was to promote education in the Slovak language, as well as fostering the general cultural and political development of the Slovak-speaking population of the state.Footnote 23 Slovak activists from Slovenská liga called for the establishment of Slovak-language schools ‘from the pedagogical, national-state point of view and also because of the prestige of the state in the border areas of Slovakia’.Footnote 24 For the activists, the school represented a field through which they could foster Czechoslovak nation-building and compete with other nationalist projects. This was particularly evident in areas where Slovak speakers were in a large minority.
Such was the case in the small town of Nižný Medzev in southeastern Slovakia, where most of the nearly 2,700 residents spoke a local German dialect. According to the census of 1921, 1,945 inhabitants declared German nationality (národnosť), 600 inhabitants Hungarian nationality, 102 Czechoslovak nationality and the remainder other nationalities.Footnote 25 The predominantly poorer population employed in metalworking was overwhelmingly German-speaking.Footnote 26 Next to it, the wealthier and better-educated inhabitants were largely multilingual and had been culturally and socially raised within the Hungarian part of the Dual Monarchy.Footnote 27 Consequently, the local elite often identified themselves as Hungarian, while their mother tongue was usually German.
According to state officials, the town belonged to the ‘exposed borderland’, where the ‘Czechoslovak element is at an early stage of development’ and could be ‘saved only by the cultural enhancement of the population’.Footnote 28 Because of these characteristics and the interest of the authorities, the small town became a battleground for both Slovak and German-speaking activists organised around their associations, the Slovenská Liga and the Deutscher Kulturverband (German Cultural Association).Footnote 29 However, their targets – local inhabitants and especially children – largely showed ambivalence to their activities. At the time, when the internal political situation in Czechoslovakia generally settled down at the beginning of the 1920s, locals rather strove for stability after a period of turmoil.Footnote 30
In the case of Nižný Medzev, one of the symbols of this stability was the local primary school (Volkschule, ľudová škola) principal, Edmund Wachdeutsch.Footnote 31 He received his education at the turn of the twentieth century, during the period of accelerated Magyarisation efforts.Footnote 32 Wachdeutsch had been employed in the education system since 1903, and he continued to teach even after the changes and blanket dismissals that followed the establishment of Czechoslovakia. In 1923, he received a nostrification certificate, which validated his teaching qualification, and became permanently employed as the principal at the school in Nižný Medzev. He was also a member of the local branch of the Deutscher Kulturverband.Footnote 33 The fact that he was granted a nostrification certificate indicated that the Czechoslovak authorities considered him to be loyal and trustworthy enough to continue in the permanent teaching position that was so important to the new administration. Wachdeutsch was scrutinised by a special committee set up to inspect teachers in the region, which had forced some of his colleagues from Nižný Medzev to retire. Although a detailed explanation for the committee’s positive assessment of Wachdeutch is absent from the sources, Wachdeutsch apparently convinced the authorities of his loyalty. In the context of the general need for reliable personnel in Slovakia, Wachdeutsch, as a German-speaking teacher educated in a Hungarian milieu, was obviously able to negotiate with the new officials, remaining a teacher and later even becoming a school principal in the town.Footnote 34
Since the majority of the town’s population was German-speaking, the language of instruction at the primary school was German, as permitted by the Constitutional Charter of the Czechoslovak Republic of 1920. Although one of the priorities of the state authorities in Slovakia after 1918 was to introduce Slovak as the language of instruction in all primary schools as soon as possible, the state also allowed education in German, Hungarian or Ruthenian, including within higher education. As early as 1925, the inhabitants of Nižný Medzev submitted an application for a citizen school (Bürgerschule, meštianska škola), a type of middle school that offered extended primary education with a focus on practical skills. This was considered a ‘vital issue’ for not only the town’s inhabitants but also the Deutscher Kulturverband and Slovenská liga.Footnote 35 The foundation of the citizen school soon generated a power struggle between the two associations at local, regional and national levels. Slovenská liga submitted a request to a regional school inspectorate to establish a citizen school in the town in Slovak, claiming it is ‘urgently needed here since a similar school has already been assigned to the Germans’.Footnote 36 However, local authorities demanded a German language school and even mobilised more than 500 residents to sign their petition. They linked their demands for the citizen school to the economic crisis, stressing that the new generation would have to find jobs in other professions, cleverly using the new state’s narrative of modernisation.Footnote 37 In the report of the Ministry of Education and National Enlightenment, state officials also emphasised that establishing a local citizen school was vital for the ‘economic as well as cultural development of the poor, nationally mixed area’.Footnote 38
After several rounds of heated debates, the participation of both German- and Slovak-speaking associations, the local administration as well as the inhabitants, the Ministry finally decided that the new citizen school would be opened starting with the school year 1932/1933.Footnote 39 The school was established with Slovak as the language of instruction with parallel classes in German, much to the delight of the Slovenská liga and the disappointment of the Deutscher Kulturverband.Footnote 40 In late 1932, Slovenská liga presented the work of their branch as highly successful based on the opening of the Slovak citizen school. They saw their struggle over the school as a ‘legitimate and justified fight’ backed by the numbers. Out of 215 pupils from the town and the region, 136 pupils enrolled in two German classes, and the remainder in the two parallel Slovak classes. The report on the school concluded that they ‘won over a considerable part of the more reasonable German population to our idea’.Footnote 41 Thus, the opening of the new school and the question of the language of instruction turned into a fierce dispute. Many actors were involved in the discussions and negotiations about the school, and in the end, it was the minister who decided to establish the school with Slovak as language of instruction, although most of the pupils were German-speaking. Indeed, the highest state authorities and the Slovenská liga saw spreading the knowledge of the state language in the areas where other languages were spoken as a top priority, one that was closely connected with the propagation of Czechoslovakism as the founding ideology of the state and the fostering of loyalty among its citizens. In the case of Nižný Medzev, which can be regarded as representative of other small towns, the state achieved this through not only the establishment of Slovak language classes with the help of the Slovenská liga but also the subjects taught in the school. After all, the teachers employed in these institutions played a decisive role in enforcing and spreading the state’s ideas among local children and their parents.
The Opening of the Citizen School
In late 1932, the inhabitants of Nižný Medzev witnessed the opening celebration of the newly established citizen school in the town. The event was launched by a speech of a newcomer, Oldřich Taufer, the recently appointed principal, who became one of the leading personalities of the town in the coming decades. Taufer was born in 1900 in a Moravian town situated within the Austrian part of the Habsburg monarchy. He himself asserted his origin as Czech, indicating that it was likely his mother tongue.Footnote 42 Since 1924, Taufer had been employed as a teacher of mathematics and physics, and during the 1920s, he had worked in schools in linguistically diverse areas of Slovakia.Footnote 43 An East Slovak newspaper reported that in 1932, Taufer ‘left a more advantageous position in Košice and took up the hard pioneering work in Nižný Medzev’.Footnote 44 Taufer was thus characterised as a ‘pioneer’ who arrived in the linguistically mixed and remote town as a member of the state-constituent nation. He was politically active as a member of the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party (Československá strana národně socialistická), one of the most important political parties in inter-war Czechoslovakia, which promoted the concept of a united Czechoslovak nation. For example, the second Czechoslovak president, Edvard Beneš, acted as its vice-chairman between 1926 and 1935. Additionally, Taufer was affiliated with the Czechoslovak Church (Církev československá), which separated from the Roman Catholic Church and gained official recognition from the state in 1920.Footnote 45 As the Czechoslovak Church was closely associated with the Czechoslovak nationalist movement, it demonstrated Taufer’s commitment to the idea of a Czechoslovak state.Footnote 46
In 1932, Taufer arrived in Nižný Medzev as the appointed principal of the newly opened citizen school. During the school opening ceremony, Taufer gave the welcome address in Slovak and German and local children also performed in both languages. Edmund Wachdeutsch, the long-time principal of the primary school, also attended the ceremony and personified continuity from the earlier period of Hungarian rule. As evidenced by their joint appearance at the opening ceremony, both Wachdeutsch and Taufer had to work closely together as principals in the small town. At the same time, the newcomer Taufer penetrated the rather closed local society and brought the locals together across linguistic lines through his participation in non-nationalist clubs. For example, he also became the first president of the Fishermen’s Association.Footnote 47
From the very beginning of his stay in the town, Taufer took part in public celebrations, which were another important means of building loyalty to the new state.Footnote 48 In 1935, he became the chairman of the local branch of Slovenská liga, which played an essential role in organising cultural events in order to compete for public space with the Deutscher Kulturverband.Footnote 49 Slovenská liga usually tried to portray life in the town as a struggle between the Slovak minority and the German-speaking majority in its periodical, whereas the Deutscher Kulturverband tried to do the opposite and show how the two local associations actually tried to work together.Footnote 50 In a similar vein, the Deutscher Kulturverband organised various cultural festivities that did not necessarily have a national connotation, such as New Year’s Eve celebrations. The German-language regional newspapers emphasised the participation of pedagogues from primary and citizen schools, especially Czech and Slovak teachers led by Taufer. They saw it as ‘a nice gesture of appreciation for the activities of the Deutscher Kulturverband and also as a guarantee of the same loyal and correct behaviour on less pleasant occasions’.Footnote 51
However, most people, rather than being drawn into the competition between the respective associations, were more concerned with earning a living, especially during the economic crisis of the first half of the 1930s. As one of the locals commented on the costs of ‘banal nationalism’ in a letter to a regional newspaper: ‘The people of Nižný Medzev like to celebrate – in good times – but now a compulsion is bitterly felt. Most of the inhabitants often have no money for their daily bread and now they have to buy flags?’Footnote 52 Even for Principal Taufer, the practical problems of everyday life were more pressing than public celebrations and national competition. He was mainly concerned with providing the citizen school with sufficient staff and teaching materials. Taufer submitted reports to the Ministry on the number of overtime hours worked by local teachers and asked for permission to hire additional school staff, who were generally in short supply throughout the state.Footnote 53 He wrote advertisements in Czech for teachers who could teach Slovak in practice. Complaining that his school did not have a single professional teacher, Taufer assured the Ministry that the school would be grateful and that ‘many will enjoy it and stay here’.Footnote 54
At the same time, providing textbooks for pupils was a difficult task. While certain subjects continued to draw on material utilised prior to 1918, others – particularly those aimed at legitimising the new state and fostering loyalty among its citizens – demanded new textbooks, especially for ‘civic education’, geography, and history.Footnote 55 The new textbooks were generally in short supply, but in the case of Nižný Medzev, efforts to secure school textbooks became the pretext for an incident that nearly cost Taufer his position at the school. Taufer, as the school principal, had spent years purchasing Slovak and German textbooks from the state publishing house because they were not sold by any local merchants. In mid-1937, however, a merchant approached Taufer with an offer to order the textbooks. Taufer accepted the proposal and urged the students to buy the textbooks from the merchant. But this recommendation was strongly opposed by another merchant from the local German-speaking community, who accused the principal of favouritism.Footnote 56 This trivial dispute soon found its way into the regional newspapers, as well as to the highest state authorities. It reached the level of the Minister of Education and National Enlightenment, and the deputies of the nationalist Carpathian German Party (Karpatendeutsche Partei, KdP) demanded an explanation.Footnote 57 In the fall of 1937, the KdP deputies demanded from the Minister that Principal Taufer compensate the merchant, that ‘disciplinary proceedings be initiated [against him and that] he be severely punished’.Footnote 58 Taufer tried to defend himself by sending an article to a German-language newspaper in which he explained his procedure for purchasing school supplies and denied that his actions had caused any damage to the German-speaking merchant.Footnote 59 Finally, the Ministry had to investigate the local incident. After examining the matter, it concluded that the accusation was unfounded and that there was no reason to take action against Taufer.Footnote 60
This incident mirrored the radicalisation of Czechoslovak internal politics as well as the international situation in 1937–8. As manifested in this dispute within the micro-space of a small town, reports of coexistence and cooperation between linguistic groups disappeared from the regional press and were replaced by heated debates on injustice and intolerance between different communities. In the midst of these debates stood Taufer, who faced accusations and attempts at punishment from some local residents. It is questionable to what extent national competition played a role in the clash about school supplies, since the allegedly affected merchant belonged to the majority of the local community speaking the German dialect, while the accused principal of the local school was considered to be Czech. Perhaps more important than the mother tongue was the fact that the merchant was born in Nižný Medzev and had a local family background, while the principal and the supposedly favoured merchant were ‘outsiders’ who had arrived in the town in the inter-war period. It seems likely that during the escalating nationalist conflict in 1937 and 1938, some of the local German-speaking residents sought to get rid of those who they believed did not belong in the town. In the spring of 1938, Taufer managed to avoid the punishment that had been demanded by representatives of the KdP at the state level. However, his position became increasingly uncertain throughout the year in the context of domestic and international political turbulence.
Reconfiguration of the School During and After the Partition of Czechoslovakia
A few months after the Ministry of Education and National Enlightenment finally closed the case concerning Taufer, Nižný Medzev faced another major macro-political change. Following the signing of the Munich Agreement in September 1938, Slovak politicians, led by the Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party (Hlinkova slovenská ľudová strana, HSĽS), demanded autonomy of the Slovak part of the republic, which was one of their long-term goals. At the beginning of October 1938, representatives of HSĽS and other political parties declared the autonomy of Slovakia, which was formalised in November 1938.Footnote 61 However, even before the adoption of this law, the autonomous Slovak government was established and began to exercise its authority in Slovakia from the beginning of October 1938. The educational system in Slovakia also fell under the jurisdiction of the autonomous government. Very soon, the Ministry of Education and National Enlightenment of the Slovak Land began to push for changes, primarily concerning the personnel restructuring. Only those who shared the HSĽS’s national and ideological perspectives could work in the education system.Footnote 62
Growing nationalist sentiments among Slovak politicians led to demands for the removal of Czech civil servants from their positions within autonomous Slovakia. As early as October 1938, the first dismissals of Czech teachers and school principals took place, swiftly affecting even peripheral areas like Nižný Medzev. In late 1938, a Slovak newspaper listed the names of Czech teachers in Slovakia who had been ‘put at the disposal of Prague’, including the principal Taufer, and, similarly, a German-language newspaper also named him among the ‘dismissed teachers’.Footnote 63 But despite local tensions and the fact that he was ousted from the school, Taufer continued to live in the town for some time. In the first half of 1939, he was still involved in the local branch of Slovenská liga. A report on the reorganisation of the local branch assessed the activities of the members in Nižný Medzev as very weak due to ‘turbulent political conditions’ and recommended that ‘if the organisation is to carry out its national mission properly in a town with such a small Slovak minority, whose position is now all the more difficult because the town is so close to the border, it is necessary to breathe new life into the organisation’.Footnote 64 Taufer, however, was no longer one of those who would ‘breathe new life’ into the Slovak-speaking community in the town. He was imprisoned in a concentration camp for two months in 1939 due to his clear Czechoslovak stance, his fostering of intolerance towards the German and Hungarian populations and his national work in the linguistically mixed community, to quote Taufer’s words written after 1945.Footnote 65 The reasons why Taufer, who had been a member of the HSĽS since October 1938, was removed from his post in a small town are not verifiable from other sources. However, it is likely that local tensions and power struggles under the new regime played a significant role in his dismissal, as evidenced by the dispute over school supplies. Interestingly enough, during the war Taufer was employed in a school in a larger town in northeastern Slovakia and continued to work in the education system. In 1944 and early 1945, as the Red Army advanced through Slovak territory, Taufer and his family moved to a small town near Nižný Medzev, which was also inhabited mainly by German-speakers, including his wife’s relatives.
By the time Taufer was forced to leave Nižný Medzev in 1939 in connection with his imprisonment, Czechoslovakia did not exist anymore and the idea of Czechoslovakism had been buried. On 14 March 1939, the Slovak Parliament declared the independence of Slovakia and Slovak nationalism became the guiding doctrine of the new state. One of the essential characteristics of the new regime was its attempt to exert total ideological control over all levels of society, which was particularly evident in the field of education. School instruction was to conform to the ideology of the emerging state, the cornerstones of which were Slovak nationalism and Catholicism.Footnote 66 This ideological orientation manifested itself in the introduction of compulsory religious instruction in primary and secondary schools, as well as the dismissal of non-religious teachers. A key feature of the new regime was the mobilisation of teachers and pupils into mass organisations modelled on those in Nazi Germany, such as the paramilitary organisation of the HSĽS and its youth division, which controlled all extracurricular activities, including military training.Footnote 67 Although membership was not compulsory, teachers faced considerable ideological and social pressure to join. Participation in the mass youth organisation was also incentivised through opportunities for social advancement.
In Nižný Medzev, schools, local teachers and pupils also adapted to the new regime. Following the dismissal of Taufer, the vacant post was assumed by a new principal. Additionally, Wachdeutsch, the long-term German-speaking principal of the primary school, was also removed from his position, though the reasons for this dismissal remain ambiguous within the available sources.Footnote 68 Local schools suffered from a constant shortage and frequent turnover of teachers, due to the mobilisation of men for the armed forces, as well as dismissals for national and ideological reasons. The town was not directly affected by the conflict, but the relatively peaceful course of the war in Nižný Medzev was shattered by the evacuation of the local German-speaking population, which was organised by the military units of the Deutsche Partei in autumn 1944 in connection with the approach of the Red Army.Footnote 69 For many children, schooling was interrupted and their childhood was marked by the experience of forced movement. Nevertheless, the lives of the Nižný Medzev children were not in imminent danger, as was the case for millions of their peers throughout Central and Eastern Europe. In early 1945, the Red Army entered Nižný Medzev without a fight. Soon after the Soviet soldiers had captured the town, some locals broke into the closed town hall, ransacked it and destroyed all official documents. After the attack on the town hall, the local schools were the next victims of looting. A number of townspeople took German textbooks and notebooks from the school buildings and burned them in the schoolyard.Footnote 70 The burning of German textbooks was intended to halt German schooling in the town, where the majority of the population still mainly spoke German. With the gradual transfer of power to the new post-war Slovak authorities, German education in the town came to an end. A new era of cleansing Slovak society began, of not only the ideology of Slovak nationalism and its close links to Catholicism but also the German- and Hungarian-speaking population.
Teachers in Power after 1945
After the end of the Second World War, when the Czechoslovak Republic was re-established, Czechoslovakism and the idea of a united Czechoslovak nation vanished as a central concept of the republic. The revived state was to consist of Czechs and Slovaks as two separate nations.Footnote 71 The key task of the post-war authorities was to purge the state of ‘war wrongdoers’ as well as Germans and Hungarians.Footnote 72 This mission was encoded in the declarations of the highest authorities, especially in the programme of the new Czechoslovak government, which was adopted in Košice in April 1945. The so-called Košice Government Programme outlined the basic order of the re-established Czechoslovakia in all spheres of post-war life. This programme emphasised the need to punish Germans, Hungarians and ‘collaborators’ as a part of a widespread call for the post-war ‘cleansing’ of the society.Footnote 73 It called for the expulsion of non-Slavic minorities, especially Germans and Hungarians, from society. The punishment of Germans and Hungarians on the basis of their collective guilt for the outbreak of the war and the suffering of the Czechs and Slovaks, was, in the eyes of the post-war authorities, the culmination of Czechoslovak nation-building.
The cleansing of post-war society was closely intertwined with purges in the schools, which served as a tool for mass education of the younger generation. The Košice Government Programme articulated the fundamental ideas of education and its role in the (re)creation of post-war society together with the commitment to ‘school cleansing’. It stated that ‘it is not enough to remove, but to rebuild in the spirit of the new times and the new needs of the state’.Footnote 74 Along with the Košice Government Programme, the Slovak National Council’s legislation of September 1944 was in force on the territory of the Slovak Republic, which included basic regulations for the Slovak education system, such as the nationalisation of schools at all levels and the transformation of school staff into state employees.Footnote 75 In their circulars, the Slovak authorities addressed the teachers with great emotion, stressing that they would be ‘rescued from the shameful position into which the reactionary fascist government has thrown them’ and that their importance would be ‘greater than ever in a people’s democratic society’.Footnote 76 One reason the appeal sought to absolve teachers of blame for the previous regime was simple pragmatism. There was a shortage of teachers in Slovakia, so it was impossible to dismiss all teachers who had been involved in the state organisations of independent Slovakia, which had intervened in all spheres of public life. Not only were teachers allowed to remain in their positions despite their participation in the previous regime, but due to the general shortage of staff, the new authorities simultaneously appointed more and more Czech- and Slovak-speaking teachers, even in German- and Hungarian-speaking regions.
In light of this, Taufer returned to Nižný Medzev as the principal of the citizen school. However, he also served in the new governing authority, the Local Administrative Committee (Miestna správna komisia, MSK). He was considered trustworthy by the post-war authorities at the higher levels, as his appointment was thoroughly vetted by all potential members of the local administration. Therefore in early 1945, Taufer came back to the place where he had worked during the inter-war period as a pioneer of modernisation, education and the spread of Czechoslovak nation-building in the periphery. However, after the Second World War Taufer did not promote the modified Czechoslovak national project only through school and cultural events, as he had done in the 1930s. He became an actor in the reshaping of the local largely German-speaking community through the important organs of power to which he was appointed.
On the ground, this post-war cleansing of society was to be carried out by local authorities who were deemed to be loyal by the state. This was even though they often shifted their loyalties to the changing state establishment, depending on the situation. In the case of Nižný Medzev, the five-member board, including Taufer, was composed of persons considered by the regional authorities to be Slovaks or Czechs, who were indispensable in a town they viewed as ‘predominantly German-Hungarian’.Footnote 77 However, all the board members were somehow woven into the fabric of the small town, having worked there in the past. Next to Taufer, the chairman was also a teacher whose wife came from the local German-speaking community, and others were civil servants who had served in the mass organisations of the former Slovak state regime.Footnote 78 Nevertheless, they were not considered ‘locals’, as evidenced by a report written by the town’s long-serving parish priest, who wrote that ‘the Local Administration Committee has five members who are outsiders, not from Nižný Medzev’.Footnote 79 Although the priest knew the members of the committee, particularly Taufer, as they were both among the most influential personalities of the inter-war period, he claimed that they were ‘strangers’. Negotiating who was local and who was foreign, as well as who was loyal or untrustworthy, was a constant and complicated process.
In the post-1945 period, the members of the Local Administrative Committee were repeatedly inspected by the higher authorities. A few days after the official end of the Second World War, members of the MSK had to fill out questionnaires in which they were asked about their personal data, as well as their national background and activities during the war. According to the questionnaire, the chairman of the committee had been a teacher during the war, a member of the HSĽS and had participated in the Slovak National Uprising. Taufer was also a member of the HSĽS and active in the party’s youth organisation. Nevertheless, both of them were considered by the district authorities to be the right people to take over the organs of power in the small town, mainly because they claimed to be Slovak or Czech, which was of the utmost importance for the higher authorities. In a report on the security situation in the district, the district commissioner explicitly stated that ‘only through appointing Slovak teachers will suitable people be found for the appointment of administrative commissioners’. The commissioner thus underscored the role of teachers in the restoration of Czechoslovakia through the governing bodies, which he repeated several times throughout the document. He emphasised the importance of schooling in the region ‘so that our lilting Slovak language may be heard again in our border towns and villages.Footnote 80 The two principals and the commissioners in Nižný Medzev promptly responded to the commissioners’ calls to ‘hear the lilting Slovak language’ and carried out a thorough cleansing of German-language education in the town, as is clear from Taufer’s reports.
The citizen school in Nižný Medzev was subject to the process of abolition of German education, in accordance with the Košice Government Programme, which claimed that German teachers were ‘one of the main pillars of Hitlerism’ and declared that all German schools should be closed. First, teachers in Nižný Medzev who were perceived to be German were dismissed by order of the Slovak National Council, which led to an even greater shortage of school personnel because many of the teachers left at the end of the war and did not return.Footnote 81 Next, German classes were abolished. In contrast to the pre-war period, when there were eleven classes in the school building, five Slovak and six German, Taufer planned to open only six classes in the school year 1945/1946. In his report on the citizen school in mid-1945, Taufer stated: ‘But now there are no German classes’.Footnote 82 Therefore, the German language quickly and suddenly disappeared from education, causing a great obstacle for German-speaking children and their parents. According to Taufer’s report on the functioning of the citizen school in the school year 1945/1945, 225 pupils attended the school, out of which 108 the principal registered in the column of Slovak nationality, 103 German and fourteen Hungarian.Footnote 83 However, only a few children from the local German-speaking community could speak or even understand Slovak. Not only could German no longer be the language of instruction, but children were forbidden to speak German in school.
In addition to the abolition of German education, new subjects and languages were introduced that corresponded to the new post-war order. According to the Košice Government Programme, education was ideologically oriented towards the Soviet Union through the introduction of the Russian language and basic information about the history and geography of the Soviet Union. This soon became apparent even in Nižný Medzev, where one of the teachers began teaching Russian as early as the 1944/1945 school year.Footnote 84 In other subjects, such as the Slovak language, history and geography, the content had to be revised to eliminate anything related to the previous regime. According to the ideological directives, the school had to contribute to establishing the people’s democratic Czechoslovak Republic, which was being built in close cooperation with the Soviet Union. Although the ideological directives emphasised the importance of the Czechoslovak Republic as the ‘home of the equal Slovak and Czech nations’, more important than the idea of a common state was the emphasis on the ‘people’s democratic’ character of the state and its proximity to the Soviet Union, even before the communist coup in 1948.Footnote 85
The position of religious education in schools also changed rapidly. Religion was no longer a compulsory subject and teachers and students were no longer required to attend religious services. However, the Catholic Church and religious education remained highly respected, especially in rural areas. In line with this, Taufer proposed to allow Roman Catholic religion classes at the citizen school, which would be led by the local parish priest.Footnote 86 In this sense, the reopening of the school after the war, with its well-known principal and religious instruction by an established priest, was one of the signs of continuity in the small town despite the significant ruptures.
Taufer faced a number of difficulties in re-establishing the post-war school in the new setting of restored Czechoslovakia, such as repairing the school’s damaged equipment or navigating power rivalries in the town. The ideological reorientation of the state, as well as the power structures of the new regime, manifested themselves in the public sphere, especially through public ceremonies organised primarily by the school authorities.Footnote 87 In Nižný Medzev, Taufer co-organised various public ceremonies in the second half of 1945, such as the celebration of the first anniversary of the Slovak National Uprising or the October anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia.Footnote 88
The two public events that took place in Nižný Medzev in mid-1945 mirrored both the ongoing power-sharing negotiations in the small town and the broader processes taking place throughout Slovakia: the transition from the former regime to a new society, the continued influence of the old elites, the continuation of old loyalties and the shift between old and new government structures.Footnote 89 They reflected the long-standing importance of teachers and the Catholic Church in the Slovak countryside and the growing influence of new actors, especially former partisans and the Communist Party. All these actors sought to participate in the struggle for power in the chaotic post-war period. In Nižný Medzev, the attempts of individuals to navigate this new political establishment were particularly reflected in the personality of Taufer. Although archival documents suggest how important Taufer’s role was in local education, he repeatedly tried to secure his position among other power players in the town. Despite the fact that Taufer had been a member of the HSĽS since 1938, after the Second World War he became chairman of the local branch of the Democratic Party (Demokratická strana), the most important political party in Slovakia except for the Communists, which shows his ability to adapt to changing political circumstances. In the post-war period, he continued to be a member of the associations promoting Slovak nation-building, Slovenská liga and Matica slovenská, as well as local branches of clubs that were not nationally orientated, such as the Fishermen’s Association.Footnote 90 When Taufer returned to Nižný Medzev after the war, he kept participating in the most important educational, political and recreational activities of the town, just as he had done since his arrival in 1932. Moreover, Taufer tried to become involved in other organisations that gained influence after the war. In December 1945, he applied for membership in an organisation uniting resistance fighters or political prisoners in Slovakia.Footnote 91 He based his application on the fact that he had been imprisoned in a concentration camp during the war and was accepted into the organisation in December 1945.Footnote 92 Membership in this organisation certainly bolstered Taufer’s credibility in the repeated vetting he had to undergo as a school principal and a member of the Local Administrative Committee. Only two months after he joined the organisation of political prisoners, the district committee’s report described him as ‘originally Czech, but claiming to be Slovak at this time, but also in 1940’. The committee’s evaluation is consistent with Taufer’s self-assessment, namely that in various documents he asserted that he was of Czech origin but claimed Slovak nationality. Most likely, Taufer spoke Slovak in public, as the official documents he filled out as a local public figure were written in Slovak. On the basis of these claims that he was a Slovak, the district committee declared him to be ‘completely reliable from the national, political and popular-democratic point of view’.Footnote 93
Taufer, therefore, was deemed to be one of the most influential personalities in the linguistically mixed small town. The new political circumstances offered him opportunities for advancement in which he was able to apply his skills and experience. This became evident in the spring of 1946 when Taufer also became the chairman of the Local People’s Court. The Court in the town functioned for less than a month in the spring of 1946 and, as Taufer acknowledged, exposed leaders of the former regime left Nižný Medzev and did not return.Footnote 94 The court heard twenty-one cases, primarily against ‘citizens of German nationality’ and in one case against a ‘citizen of Slovak nationality’. Interestingly, the court did not deal with any of those claiming Hungarian nationality, pointing out that Hungarian speakers did not represent wartime wrongdoers to local authorities in the same way as German speakers. Nižný Medzev was a regional exception, as in the predominantly Hungarian-speaking district, Hungarians were more likely to be the focus of post-war justice.Footnote 95 The Local People’s Court in Nižný Medzev, which Taufer headed, sentenced defendants to up to ten months’ imprisonment in labour units; the sentences indicated these were minor cases. It was, therefore, not the most important body deciding the fate of the locals in the heated post-war period, as the decisions of the district authorities carried far more weight. Similarly, Taufer was only one of the power players in the town. His positions and reliability were questioned, especially by another partisan organisation in the town, which had close ties to the Communist Party and was trying to gain influence in the town’s power structures. Members of this partisan organisation attempted to smear Taufer before the district leadership of the organisation by claiming that he was ‘very biased against the USSR and the Communists’. They added that it was not known what he had done during the war and that he was a member of the Democratic Party, which again should have damaged his credibility.Footnote 96
Despite these accusations from the partisan organisation, the higher authorities, who played a decisive role in the new post-war settings, continued to see Taufer as a loyal civil servant. However, they based their decisions on the assessments made by local authorities such as Taufer. He was one of those who enforced the ideology of the Czechoslovak state in this peripheral town, whether it was inter-war Czechoslovakism or the retribution and cleansing of Czechoslovak society after the Second World War through a wide range of measures. As a local authority, Taufer, well integrated into the local community and married to a German-speaking woman, witnessed the expulsion of dozens of his neighbours, including some of the teachers at his school, from the town and the country during 1946 and 1947. Yet, Taufer was not merely a bystander; he was an active participant in the decision-making processes. Despite the constant competition for power and influence within the small-town environment, he was part of the crucial bodies shaping the fate of the community.
In broader perspective, Taufer was neither a symbol, nor a protagonist of discontinuity. Indeed, he was involved in punishing the actual or alleged perpetrators of the previous regime and wartime misdeeds, especially from the ranks of the German-speaking population. But he also represented a great deal of continuity and stability for the inhabitants of the small town through his membership in the local governing body and his position as the school’s long-time principal since the inter-war years. The accumulation of functions, the high level of responsibility and the involvement in the process of post-war reorganisation of power, however, cost the forty-six-year-old Taufer a great deal of strength. In his report to the District People’s Court regarding the termination of the Local People’s Court’s activities in the spring of 1946, Taufer concluded by saying that he felt ‘nervously exhausted’ and would resign as president of the court if it resumed its activities. He emphasised that as principal, he had ‘neglected the school agenda and […] has much catching up to do to get the school service back on track’.Footnote 97 A few months later, in January 1947, he resigned as deputy chairman of the Local Administrative Committee, citing health, service and family reasons.Footnote 98 With this resignation, Taufer disappears from the archival record at the time of escalating internal political struggles in Czechoslovakia. Very soon, this struggle, which the Communists won, was reflected in the power structure of the small town. And the local school and the local government would once again become contested sites of power and ideology, but this time without Taufer.
Conclusion
The narrative of the possibilities and limits of the state’s presence on the ground is profoundly complicated by a long-term perspective on actors and regions on the margins of state attention, which have remained largely absent from historical scholarship. The story of a single school principal, Oldřich Taufer, acting in the small town of Nižný Medzev in the ‘exposed borderland’ of eastern Slovakia, shows us the agency of individuals within the changing contexts of the first half of the twentieth century. By focusing on Taufer, who came to the linguistically mixed town from the Czech lands, questions regarding individual negotiations, loyalties and commitments come to the fore. Through his involvement in the school, local power structures and national associations, Taufer served as one of the advocates of the Czechoslovak national project on the periphery of the state. He was able to manoeuvre within the community to which he had been admitted as an ‘outsider’, and to survive various ruptures in official state ideologies. Taufer was not a model case, but neither was he an exception. Some of his colleagues, such as the other school principal, Edmund Wachdeutsch, were also willing to compromise – out of not only opportunism but also conviction and a desire to overcome rifts and periods of upheaval.
In this context, the school emerged as a social and political space of paramount importance for a diverse range of actors, from authorities at all levels to nationalist associations and local inhabitants. It served as a site through which these actors not only promoted official state ideologies but also asserted their own agency at the local level. Throughout several periods of rupture, teachers often transcended these macro-political upheavals because they were equipped with unique skills that were in demand by the powers that be. They adapted to different state ideologies and transmitted them to local communities. As members of various political and social organisations, teachers played a pivotal role in shaping community life and development. By focusing on the actions and motivations of those involved in the struggle over education, I argue that it was the capacity of individual actors that drove the shifts in the environment. Their ability to navigate changing circumstances ensured continuity on the ground, even amid the significant ruptures of the first half of the twentieth century.
The story of Taufer, in this sense, is one of many European narratives of ‘ordinary people’ who not only transmitted but also complicated the nation-building efforts of states.Footnote 99 It illustrates the widespread efforts of individuals to serve the state in which they lived, to adapt to official ideologies and even to promote them. At the same time, it highlights their ability to adjust their loyalties in response to regime changes. Despite the top-down efforts of states to build national communities, in practice, this task was carried out by individuals who – whether motivated by a deep belief in these ideas or by opportunistic behaviour – adapted and shaped the ideologies imposed from above to suit local circumstances.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Charles University Grant Agency (GA UK), grant no. 242323. I would like to thank Siobhán Hearne and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and insights, as well as Ulf Brunnbauer and Ota Konrád for their feedback at various stages in the development of this article. I would also like to express my gratitude to the participants of the ASEEES 2023 panel ‘Our Town Comes First: Locals against the Centralizing Powers of Empires and Nation-States in Twentieth Century East European Borderlands’, Jovo Miladinović and Zora Piskačová, for their support and invaluable perspective during the drafting process.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
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