German Bohemia was a region in Czech Republic

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

 established, for a short period of time, after World War I. It included parts of northern and western Bohemia

Bohemia

Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...

 once largely populated by ethnic German

Ethnic German

Ethnic Germans historically also ), also collectively referred to as the German diaspora, refers to people who are of German ethnicity. Many are not born in Europe or in the modern-day state of Germany or hold German citizenship...

s. Important population centers were Liberec

Liberec

Liberec is a city in the Czech Republic. Located on the Lusatian Neisse and surrounded by the Jizera Mountains and Ještěd-Kozákov Ridge, it is the fifth-largest city in the Czech Republic....

 (Reichenberg), Ústí nad Labem

Ústí nad Labem

Ústí nad Labem is a city of the Czech Republic, in the Ústí nad Labem Region. The city is the 7th-most populous in the country.Ústí is situated in a mountainous district at the confluence of the Bílina and the Elbe Rivers, and, besides being an active river port, is an important railway junction...

 (Aussig), Teplice

Teplice

Teplice , Teplice-Šanov until 1948 is a town in the Czech Republic, the capital of the Teplice District in the Ústí nad Labem Region. It is the state's second largest spa town ....

 (Teplitz-Schönau), Duchcov

Duchcov

Duchcov is a town in the Teplice District in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic. It has a population exceeding 9,000 and is located at the foot of the Ore Mountains....

 (Dux) , Cheb

Cheb

Cheb is a city in the Karlovy Vary Region of the Czech Republic, with about 33,000 inhabitants. It is situated on the river Ohře , at the foot of one of the spurs of the Smrčiny and near the border with Germany...

 (Eger), Mariánské Lázně

Mariánské Lázne

Mariánské Lázně is a spa town in the Karlovy Vary Region of the Czech Republic. The town, surrounded by green mountains, is a mosaic of parks and noble houses...

 (Marienbad), Karlovy Vary

Karlovy Vary

Karlovy Vary is a spa city situated in western Bohemia, Czech Republic, on the confluence of the rivers Ohře and Teplá, approximately west of Prague . It is named after King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who founded the city in 1370...

 (Karlsbad), Jablonec nad Nisou

Jablonec nad Nisou

Jablonec nad Nisou is a town in northern Bohemia, the second largest town of the Liberec Region. It is known as a mountain resort in the Jizera Mountains, an education centre, and a centre of world-production of glass and jewellery...

 (Gablonz an der Neiße), Litoměřice

Litomerice

Litoměřice is a town at the junction of the rivers Elbe and Ohře in the north part of the Czech Republic, approximately 64 km northwest of Prague....

 (Leitmeritz), Most

Most

Most is the capital city of the Most District, situated between the Czech Central Mountains and the Ore Mountains, approximately northwest of Prague along the Bílina River and southwest of Ústí nad Labem.-Etymology:...

 (Brüx) and Žatec

Žatec

Žatec is an old town in the Czech Republic, in Louny District, Ústí nad Labem Region. It has a population of 19,813 .The earliest historical reference to Sacz is in the Latin chronicle of Thietmar of Merseburg of 1004. During the 11th century it belonged to the Vršovci - a powerful Czech...

 (Saaz).

German Bohemians (Deutschböhmen, Čeští Němci) and German Moravians (Deutschmährer, Moravští Němci) also are alternative expressions for Sudeten Germans

Sudeten Germans

- Importance of Sudeten Germans :Czechoslovakia was inhabited by over 3 million ethnic Germans, comprising about 23 percent of the population of the republic and about 29.5% of Bohemia and Moravia....

. Deutschböhmen and Deutschmährer are considered to be political neutral terms, while Sudeten Germans often is associated with German nationalistic tendencies within Sudeten German institutions.

History

Lands constituting German Bohemia were historically an integral part of the Habsburgs Kingdom of Bohemia

Kingdom of Bohemia

The Kingdom of Bohemia was a country located in the region of Bohemia in Central Europe, most of whose territory is currently located in the modern-day Czech Republic. The King was Elector of Holy Roman Empire until its dissolution in 1806, whereupon it became part of the Austrian Empire, and...

 but, with the imminent collapse of Habsburg Austria-Hungary

Austria-Hungary

Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...

 at the end of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, areas of the Czech-majority Bohemia with an ethnic German majority who began to take actions to avoid joining a new Czechoslovak state. On 27 October 1918, the Egerland

Egerland

The Egerland is a historical region in the far north west of Bohemia in the Czech Republic at the border with Germany. It is named after the German name Eger for the city of Cheb and the main river Ohře...

 region declared independence from Bohemia and a day later the independence of Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...

 was proclaimed in the Bohemian capital of Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

.

On 11 November 1918, Emperor Charles I of Austria relinquished power and, on 12 November, the ethnic German areas of the empire were declared the Republic of German Austria

German Austria

Republic of German Austria was created following World War I as the initial rump state for areas with a predominantly German-speaking population within what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire, without the Kingdom of Hungary, which in 1918 had become the Hungarian Democratic Republic.German...

 with the intent of unifying with Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. The Province of German Bohemia (German: Provinz Deutschböhmen) was formed from the part of Bohemia containing the most ethnic Germans (however, ethnic German areas of southwestern Bohemia in the Bohemian Forest Region

Bohemian Forest Region

The Bohemian Forest Region is a historical region in the Czech Republic. It includes parts of southwestern Bohemia in the Bohemian Forest once largely populated by ethnic Germans.-History:...

 were added to Upper Austria

Upper Austria

Upper Austria is one of the nine states or Bundesländer of Austria. Its capital is Linz. Upper Austria borders on Germany and the Czech Republic, as well as on the other Austrian states of Lower Austria, Styria, and Salzburg...

 instead of German Bohemia). The capital of the province was Liberec.

In late November 1918, the Czechoslovak army began an invasion of German Bohemia and during December it occupied whole area of the region with Liberec falling on 16 December and the last major city, Litoměřice, falling on 27 December 1918.

The status of German areas in Bohemia and Moravia

Moravia

Moravia is a historical region in Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, and one of the former Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Silesia. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region...

 was definitively settled by the 1919 peace treaties of Versailles

Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...

 and Saint-Germain-en-Laye that declared that the areas belong to Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak Government then granted amnesty for all activities against the new state.

The region was then reintegrated into the Bohemian Land of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia

First Republic of Czechoslovakia

-Independence:The Czechoslovak declaration of independence was published by the Czechoslovak National Council, signed by Masaryk, Štefánik and Beneš on October 18, 1918 in Paris, and proclaimed on October 28 in Prague...

 and remained a part of it until the Nazi

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 dismemberment of Czechoslovakia when it was added to Sudetenland

Sudetenland

Sudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...

. This unlawful act was marked by a wholesale flight of the Czech minority that has already experienced the Nazi-sponsored militia - the Sudetendeutsche Freikorps (SFK) - violence and was afraid to stay with their erstwhile German neighbours. After World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, the area was returned to Czechoslovakia. Most of the remaining German population living in the region following the War were expelled out of the country

Expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia

The expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II was part of a series of evacuations and expulsions of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe during and after World War II....

; many of these persons were killed or died during their flight from the attacking Czech and Soviet armies.