A mature couple?
A composed relationship devoid of the pathos of international friendship
Adéla Gjuričová, Martin Schulze Wessel
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Adéla Gjuričová, director of the Czech Institute for Contemporary History, and Martin Schulze Wessel, a Munich-based historian specialising in Eastern Europe, examine the past, present and future of the German-Czech ‘community of conflict’. They describe how a relationship characterised by cooperation, competition and dominance, several separations and an expulsion, has evolved into a European coexistence and cooperation. Both societies have learnt to cope with the asymmetry – ten million inhabitants here, eighty million there – and to speak candidly about the wounds they have inflicted upon one another. And yet there remains a breeding ground for nationalist mobilisation within Czech society. Nor can a return by the Sudeten German Association to provocative historical rhetoric be ruled out.
(Osteuropa 5-6/2026, pp. 51–60)