Reichenberg
Reichenberg was a major town in the very north of the Austrian Crown Lands of Bohemia. From 1919-1938 it was included in the artificial state of Czechoslovakia under the Treaty of Versailles. President Woodrow Wilson's fine declarations on self-determination were ignored. The Czechs changed the ancient name of the town to the meaningless Liberec. Being ethnically German as far as historic records afford, it subsequently fell into the Sudetenland which was annexed to Germany in October 1938 under the Munich Agreement.
In 1905 the town had 34,200 inhabitants and even a USA Consul, Mr. Silas C. McFarland. This was little changed in 1935 when it had 38,525 people. The town contained large cloth factories, a splendid late 19th century Rathaus (Town Hall) with beautiful stained glass, a magnificent theatre, plus other buildings of architectural merit, and the North Bohemian Industrial Museum which contained extensive collections of art-industrial objects (furniture, carvings, textile products, pottery, glass, metal-work, etc) as well as a library. In the Kaiserpark was a bronze bust of the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, by Anton Brenek. This was destroyed by the Czechs after World War I. Nearby was the estate of Count Clam-Gallas which contained a deer-park.
Reichenberg was once referred to as the "Vienna of the North". It is the home town of Ferdinand Porsche, Konrad Henlein and children's book author Otfried Preußler. It has a great zoo. Zittau is the next town.
In 1945 following the Red Army over-running the region, the Soviet Union reinstated the pre-1938 borders of Czechoslovakia, under their tutelage. Fanatical Czech nationalists and communists then proceeded to brutally expel and murder the entire ethnic German population in a series of war crimes. This included Reichberg.
Sources
- Baedeker, Karl, Austria-Hungary by Karl Baedeker, 10th revised edition, Leipzig, 1905, p.271.
- Documents on the Expulsion of the Sudeten Germans
- Schieder, Professor Theodor, et al, editors, The Expulsion of the German Population from Czechoslovakia, Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims, Bonn, West Germany, 1960, Band IV, 1 and IV, 2.
