Ethnic Germans in Brno/Brünn

Remember the Sudeten Germans whose supposed oppression Adolf Hitler used as a pretext to annex much of Czechoslovakia in 1938? Well, it seems that a few ageing members of this minority community continue to live in the Moravian city of Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic. Transitions Online tells their story in this fascinating article: "Twilight of a Minority." At one time this city, more often known by its German name Brünn, was one of a number of polyglot cities that dotted the landscapes of the former Habsburg, Russian and Ottoman Empires. Among the natives of the city were the founder of genetics, Gregor Mendel, and one of my favourite composers, Leos Janácek. Like the Greeks of Constantinople, the German-speaking community in Brno has been reduced to very small numbers indeed. However, the end of communism has allowed them to come out into the open and to form the sorts of cultural associations which would have been unthinkable a short time ago.

Nationalism artificially homogenized such cities as Brno, Vilnius, Budapest, Constantinople, Alexandria, Thessaloniki and Smyrna -- and at tremendous human cost. One hesitates nowadays to express nostalgia for the empires of old. Yet I cannot help thinking that something was lost in the transition from these polyglot dynastic commonwealths to the plethora of ethnically pure nation-states that supplanted them.