Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

In the time of the rising power of Nazism, the tension was mounting in German-speaking and ethnically mixed border areas of Czechoslovakia, the notorious “Sudetendland”. Periodicals such as “Our Minorities“ (later “Our Boundaries”) tried to support small and often isolated Czech communities on the frontier, which were “minorities” within their own country. In a European context, Czechoslovakia was one of the last islands of democracy before the outbreak of WW2. The paper is based on original research and presents the role of interwar serial information distribution, while at the same time connecting and supporting the Czech minority in Nord-East Bohemia. It provides information about publishing, the personalities responsible for the monthly periodical, and the creators of its content. Using a method of historical analysis, it summarizes the purpose and character of a First Republic periodical, published between 1920 and 1938. This was an era shortly after the proclamation of the newborn Republic of Czechoslovakia (1918), which was dealing with the consequences of WWI and heritage of the previous monarchy, and only months after one of the biggest disillusions of modern Central European history, that of the Munich Treaty (1938), which fatally affected the lives of all Czech citizens in the researched area of Sudetenland, and also therefore the lives of the periodical, its authors and readers. The research shows how the periodical reflected an atmosphere of totalitarianism in Europe during times of threatened democracy that seems to have much in common with the current situation in some areas of Central Europe.