Borders on the old maps of Jizera Mountain

Power is executed in concrete geographical and administrative units, which are defined by boundaries among other things, and are mostly expressed geographically. These boundaries draw diferences and constitute barriers and have multiple meanings, be it psychological, mental or linguistic (Böhm 2019).

We will use a range of terms in the text, distinguishing between “boundary” and “frontier”, based on Jańczak’s (2014) explanation. In this framework, a boundary is mainly a legal concept which separates state structures (O’Dowd & Wilson 2002). Boundaries then are “sharply drawn lines that mark the limits of authority and ownership (…), marked, and managed, sometimes loosely and sometimes strictly in accordance with the various and changing purposes of the adjoining states” (Custred 2011). A boundary not only separates what is outside, but at the same time binds what is inside (Kristof 1959). Boundarization refers to the creation of a state under the Westphalian order with a clearly defined space, authority and territorially circumscribed population. The process, initiated in Europe in the 17th century, became particularly evident during the nation-state building processes. Boundarization has been reflected on the maps by means of drawing borders as dividing lines.

Frontier is a broader term. It applies to social, economic and political elements referring chiefly to borderland communities (O’Dowd & Wilson 2002). As a result, frontiers are “zones of varying width, either political or cultural in nature” (Custred 2011). Assimilation or even expansion by one of the dominating parties is becoming a common frontier occurrence (Walters 2004). Since the border is drawn in a way enabling interaction and contact between disparate systems, borderlands of new quality are emerging and they difer greatly from their interiors. Consequently, an opinion has been formed that a frontier is an antechamber to the territory proper (Kristof 1959).

The delegitimization and devaluation of borders are connected to the process of frontierization, as it prompts the erosion of boundaries. Limited border controls and the declining importance of borders lead to their increasing permeability (see, for example, Kolejka et al. 2015 or Stryjakiewicz 1998), to more intensive interaction, and consequently to the emergence or reconstruction of the elements of a frontier. We can say that European integration processes have largely contributed to the softening of the meaning of borders.

Nevertheless, at the same time, the two processes unfold in a context of historical legacy, as well as in actual border reality. Keeping in mind the historical origin of borders, both boundarization and frontierization reveal their dual nature. On the one hand, they reflect ongoing existing processes; therefore, they constitute an element of a real policy specific to a time and place. On the other hand, however, they are set in a historical context where until recently borders served a different purpose, had a diferent form and ran along diferent lines. In some cases, borders were politically and historically sensitive issues, due to territorial disputes or recently reclaimed sovereignty. As a result, borders are defined in two ways: first, as an element of current and real politics, and secondly, as an element of historical legacy (Jańczak 2014).

Brunet-Jailly (2005) emphasizes that “each border is unique and no taxonomy of border is conceptually feasible because there are too many types of borders”. Nevertheless, many scholars have attempted to propose such a methodology. We will specifically mention the concept of Martinez (2004), but there are also many others.

Martinez (1994) suggested a border typology based upon the openness of borders and identified four main types. 1) Alienated borders rigidly divide two countries; border areas are militarized scenes of confrontation and conflict, transborder trafic is minimal and cooperation between the parties is virtually non-existent. Most land borders in the world, however, would qualify as 2) coexistent borders. Such borders are primarily for the filtering of transborder flows, while the parties maintain contact and cooperate when required to solve common problems. 3) Interdependent borders arise between countries that have achieved a high degree of political rapprochement and mutual trust and which have coordinated foreign policy: the visa regime is lifted, border areas are fully demilitarized, and intense cooperation between the authorities of both states at diferent levels has been developed, as well as business entities and NGOs. Finally, 4) integrated borders are completely open; cross-border agglomerations and regions with their own governments are created, regulating the most important spheres of activity (Kolosov 2015).

Since the “Silesian Wars” in the mid 18th century, the borderline divided Bohemia (part of the Austrian monarchy) and Lower Silesia (part of the Prussian Kingdom, then part of unified Germany after 1871). This year of Germany’s unification is the starting point for the outline of the historical background of the territory studied for the purpose of this paper.

A short outline of the historical, political and socio-cultural conditions in the Sudetes – borderlands alongside the mountain range dividing Czech historical territory from German neighbours – between 1871 and 1945 will help us present the territory studied and its national/minority issues. The Western Sudetes were inhabited predominantly by German-speaking inhabitants until 1945. The main integrating factor of the territory was the common language of border inhabitants (see, for example, Dołzbłasz & Raczyk 2010 or Dołzbłasz 2017). On the current Czech side, they were more connected to Vienna, the centre of the Habsburg monarchy, until 1918, than to Berlin or Saxony, as was the case on the other side of the border. However, there was a Czech-speaking minority in the southern part of the Western Sudetes. Furthermore, the Czechoslovak national policy of 1918–1938 caused a small increase in the number of Czech-language-speaking inhabitants in the Sudetes. After 1938 the Nazi policy caused a decrease in the Czech minority population, but not their eradication. Germans were forcibly displaced (almost completely) from new Czechoslovakia and new Poland after 1945, but this period is not analyzed in the paper.

On the current Czech side of the border, the cultural and economic resurgence of Czechs challenged the German predominance, and “Sudetendeutschtum” – which can be translated as self-identification as Sudetes German – can be traced back to the unanimous voting of Bohemia’s German deputies at Frankfurt’s parliament of 1848. The progressively greater availability of Czech-language schooling consolidated the Slavic-speaking middle classes. As a result, the territory – both physical and intellectual – which had previously been considered German was increasingly infiltrated, until it was annexed outright by the declaration of Czechoslovak Statehood on 28 October 1918 (Burcher 1996).

The gradual shift in the balance of domestic power was accompanied by bureaucratic conflicts related to language laws and derived from ideas of the historic rights of nations and other collectives: what the criteria for native-language schooling in a particular district should be, whether and how the human geography of the historic provinces should afect access to justice in one language or the other.

The German language was used as the principal communication tool and it was also the mother tongue of the vast majority of the population living in the studied region. This changed slightly in 1918, when Czechoslovakia was founded and Germans were the biggest national minority in this state, living mainly in the border areas of the Sudetes/Sudetenland. Immediately after World War I these German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia refused to be part of this state and declared independence; however, the Czechoslovak authorities managed to gain control over the territory rather quickly and this state of afairs was then confirmed by the Versailles system. The coexistence of Czechs and Germans was afterwards relatively calm until the mid 1930s. The German minority was allowed to use their language and the language regime along the border did not change substantially. Therefore, many printed works, including maps, were also published in German, and distributed in interwar Czechoslovakia. Most of the authors of the maps depicting the territory of the Jizera Mountains were German speaking, which was also reflected in the dominance of the German language on these maps.

After 1945, everything changed: a new western Polish border on the Nysa/Neisse and the Odra/Oder was defined; the German-speaking population was expelled from both Poland and Czechoslovakia. A major population exchange occurred. We can thus say that the population is largely new on both the Polish and the Czech side of the territory since the second half of the 1940s.

On the current Polish side, World War II did not have devastating consequences until evacuation was organized by the German authorities during the first half of 1945 (Miszewska 1994). When the German front collapsed under Soviet pressure at the end of winter of that year, the area was spared heavy fighting and the infrastructure remained largely intact. However, Germans started to leave and, following the arrival of the Soviet Red Army and the Potsdam Treaty (which placed Silesia under Polish administration), all the remaining Germans were displaced (300,000–400,000) unless they could prove their Polish origin or their participation in anti-Nazi activities. Other nationalities (including Austrian Germans) remained, but nevertheless the late 1940s was a period of great migratory upheaval which had a particularly radical impact on the Sudetes where only some five per cent of the present population can be regarded as indigenous (Czetwertyński-Sytnik et al. 2000).

On the Czech side of the border, there was a massive expulsion of German speakers. “Between the years 1945 and 1947, this is what happened to twenty-nine out of every thirty German speakers who were on Czechoslovak soil at the end of the Second World War, held collectively guilty for the destruction of the first Czechoslovak Republic in 1938–39” (Burcher 1996).

Modern infrastructure (roads and railways) on the Prussian (Czetwertyński-Sytnik et al. 2000) as well as on the Austrian side of the border contributed to the rise of the Prussian/German as well as the Austrian/Czech industrial economies. This encouraged the development of towns on both sides of the border, especially on the mountain rim (Walbrzych) and in the principal valleys (Jelenia Gora, Kamienna Gora and Liberec on the Austrian side).

The infrastructure development and rising living standards (Murgaš 2019) also brought tourists to the mountains and health and spa resorts (inter alia Cieplice Slaskie, Karpacz or Szklarska Poręba on the Prussian side and Hejnice on the Austrian side). A particular role was played here by the inhabitants of Berlin – whose population rose from 750,000 in 1870 to 2 million in 1910. Thanks to the relatively eficient train connections it was possible to get to Jelenia Gora in a few hours, which substantially contributed to the use of the Giant mountains/Riesengebirge as a leisure destination for Berliners (Potocki 2004). This boom was accompanied by the development of services accompanying tourism. Unions of (German-speaking) tourists operating on both sides of the border started to publish maps depicting the territory. These maps were in German and thanks to the openness of the borders due to the Dresdner Convention, involved elements from both sides of the border. The role of organizations promoting tourism was particularly important in the German environment, as there were plenty of them in the whole of Germany – their initial purpose was to improve the general physical condition of young men so they would be prepared for eventual military conflict, but tourism seemed to be rather an appropriate complementary tool (Potocki 2004).

The end of World War I and the appearance of Czechoslovakia brought substantial changes to the territory studied. The existing dominance of German-speaking tourist organizations cooperating on both sides of the border started to be distorted by the Czech element that was appearing. Tourist organizations operating on the German side of the border started to complain about a worsening level of cooperation with their counterparts on the other (Czechoslovak) side of the border, and blamed Czechoslovak authorities. Antagonism from the international relations level, strengthened after the Nazis gained power in Germany in 1933, had repercussions also in other sectors, including tourism. One of the causes for this antagonism can be also found in the process of the “nationalization” of elements of the tourist infrastructure on the Czech side of the border, where German-speaking owners or operators of mountain cottages were replaced by Czech ones, as the forested border mountain territory was nationalized after establishing Czechoslovakia in 1918 – and the previous owners were mostly German-speaking entrepreneurs/members of the aristocracy (Wójcik 2015). Also, border crossing for tourism became more dificult than it had been before World War I. These dificulties were of rather administrative nature, yet it had a distinctly tourism-preventing nature, and had roots in the fight against smuggling, the emancipation of the newly born Czechoslovak State and the desire of Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia to become part of the German Reich.

The situation got even more complicated in 1938, when many tourist routes on the Czechoslovak side of the border were closed for military purposes, as will be explained later in this paper. These limitations ceased to exist after the annexation of the Sudetes at the end of September 1938, which was hugely celebrated by German-speaking tourist organizations, for example, by erecting a huge swastika on Ještěd.

Our paper deals primarily with the period between 1890 and 1940, when very diferent border-crossing regimes were in place in the territory studied. The Dresden Convention (1850), joined by Austria in 1859, enabled free border crossing within the states of the German Confederation. This convention remained valid also after the German unification of 1871 (Rychlík 2016). The emperor’s regulation of 1865 practically abolished regular border controls, which meant that Austrian citizens had to have their passports only as a matter of formality. This liberal regulation was valid in most of Europe, which changed only at the beginning of World War I in 1914 (Rychlík 2016). The Austro-Hungarian Constitution of 1867 acknowledged the rights of Austro-Hungarian citizens to cross the border and spend time abroad for tourism purposes, to study or for economic activities (Rychlík 2016).

The end of World War I brought along the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the emergence of new states, one of them being Czechoslovakia. The new Czechoslovak authorities abolished uncontrolled border crossing and started to demand regular passports including visa obligations (Wójcik 2014) and temporary permissions – the only exception was the so-called “minor border crossing” which could be used by inhabitants of border areas up to 15 to 20 kilometres from the border. This was very unwelcome by representatives of tourist organizations on both sides of the border – although those on the Czech side could not be so open about this – who strongly disliked the actions of the Czechoslovak authorities who introduced a relatively strict border regime (Wójcik 2014).

There was a shorter period of détente including a temporary lifting of visa obligations at the end of the 1920s. However, after the Nazis gained control in Germany in 1933, the border regime became stricter and visa obligations were reintroduced. This stricter regime – with some exemptions for the sake of minor border crossing for tourist purposes – remained until 1938, as the Sudeten Germans living in Czechoslovakia started to call for annexation by the Third Reich. The tourism mainly on the Czechoslovak side of the border was hugely curbed by measures resulting from the construction of the Czechoslovak defence network of fortresses – starting with a prohibition of photography, and leading to the closure of selected hiking routes.

From 1871 until 1918 borders divided the Austrian monarchy and unified Germany. Both empires became closely associated following the Dual Alliance of 1879, although the Habsburg monarchy was the junior partner. Dependence on the Prussian empire made the German element predominant in the multi-ethnic Habsburg monarchy. German-speaking populations were split in their identification with Austria and Germany.

As mentioned in the previous part, border crossing was free in this period and this type of border could have been classified as interdependent with elements of an integrated border – without joint governance structures for an efficient cross-border administration of the joint territory.

One of the tourist maps depicting the studied territory at the beginning of the 20th century is the first edition of Gustav Adolph’s Vom Oybin bis zur Schneekoppe. It was the first edition out of eight altogether, published between 1905 and 1940. The first edition was published in 1905, when the border divided the Austrian Empire and Germany; the last map of 1940 illustrates the “borderless” situation of annexed Sudetenland to the German Reich. We worked with its second edition of 1907.

What is very common for all these maps is a very decent illustration of the border, which can easily be seen. The partial reason may be the fact that a German-speaking population lived on both sides of the border, which kept mutual relations thanks to a non-existent language barrier. Also, the cartographic characters used in the maps – although some are handled imprecisely or in a simplified way compared to current standards – cross the state border; they also capture marked tourist paths that often cross the border, as is well illustrated around the Smrk/Tafelfichte mountain, as there are three (red, green and yellow) tourist routes crossing the border (Fig. 2). The fragment of the currently most popular web portal of tourist maps on the Czech side shows that there is no single tourist map crossing the border now (however on other current tourist maps, there is a marked path crossing the border – for instance Góry Izerskie by Plan 2017, or Jizerské hory a Frýdlantsko – Edice Klubu Českých turistů, map 20–21, 2015).

Figure 2

Comparison of the tourist trail on the old map of 1907 (Matouschek) and current tourist map. Source: left – Adolph, C Bengler, A. 1907 (1:100 000, author’s private collection); right – Seznam.cz 2018.

The situation at the border changed in 1918, when Czechoslovakia was established and the dominance of the German element in the territory was seriously disrupted. However, most of the population living in the studied territory was German speaking, which was true also for the map creators. The old maps coming from the 1918–1938 period depicted a completely diferent political–administrative context – the border was coexistent; at the end of the period it even had some features of alienated borders, as the geopolitical situation of 1938 sharpened dramatically, mainly after the Anschluss of Austria to the German Reich.

Nevertheless, the above-mentioned context of the coexistent border was not reflected in the content of studied maps, at least in most of them made by German-speaking map authors. For example, when looking at the fourth edition of Adolph’s Vom Oybin bis zur Schneekoppe, this old map also tells us the distance between places, irrespective of the side of the border, as evidenced by the distance from (Czech) Hrádek nad Nisou (Grottau) to (German) Zittau (Fig. 3). The frequency of interconnections across the state border suggests that during this period of the first half of the 20th century, the region was relatively interconnected also across the border, even after 1918.

Figure 3

Indication of distance between two places in two countries (on a tourist map). Source: fragment of the map Vom Oybin bis zur Schneekoppe, Gustav Adolph, Gablonz 1927 or 1929 (1:100 000, author’s private collection).

The tourist map Vom Oybin bis zur Schneekoppe (published in Jablonec/Gablonz 1927) gives us further evidence that the border was not a barrier for tourists – the map also contains an indication of the distance between places on diferent sides of the national borders, as is documented on the example of Hrádek nad Nisou (Grottau) and Zittau.

The outline of the old maps dating from the period between the two world wars clearly documents how the original German population perceived the territory as a functional unit without emphasizing the meaning of borders – this is easily visible on tourist routes crossing the border around Smrk (Tafelfichte) on the map by Josef Matouschek, another important author of maps (Fig. 4). We can talk about a real cross-border tourist region in the sense of Poser’s (1939) description.

Figure 4

Depiction of tourist marked paths (red lines) frequently crossing the border (blue ribbon). Source: fragment of Josef Matouschek’s tourist map Spezialkarte vom Jeschken und Isergebirge, Reichenberg 1927 (1:50 000, author’s private collection).

Most of the analyzed maps were produced after Czechoslovakia was founded in 1918. Yet we should not necessarily blame the German-speaking authors of the maps that they did not want to reflect this political reality. We must underline that the period after 1918 in the Sudetes was characterized by endeavours to find Czech toponyms for the places, which had only German names for centuries.

However, “Czech” geopolitics can be found on the map of the Giant (Krkonoše) and the Jizera Mountains made by the Czech cartographer Jan Havránek during the interwar Czechoslovakia period. It is characterized by the use of Czech local names (absent in Adolph’s or Matouschek’s maps), and their apparent superiority to German translations, also the depiction of the national border is very visible there (Fig. 5). Except for that diference we should stress the fact that Gustav Adolph used colours to distinguish individual tourist routes, which was very innovative and was not the case in maps made by either Matouschek or Havránek. Moreover, Adolph’s use of colours stresses the permeability and openness of the borders for tourism.

Figure 5

Illustration of the same border territory using Czech and German geopolitics. Source: Havránek 1926 (1:60 000), Adolph 1927/1929 (1:100 000), (both author’s private collection).

Another challenge we identified is to find a border on the map that has to be identified “between the lines”, which often says something about the region and its internal division far more than the line on the map. A good example of such a border where we need to “read between the lines”, is the language border. Havránek’s map mainly applies the principle of bilingualism in the north of the Czech part of the depicted area – with a predominant majority German population – but the south-west part of the map, showing the north of the Bohemian Paradise is described only in Czech. The linguistic border is thus visible.

There is also a comparison of the maps of two authors published in German (Fig. 6). While Gustav Adolph on the left is a German with an incomplete knowledge of Czech, Josef Matouschek mastered both languages perfectly. In the map of the same area there are red circles around the wrong names of Czech villages on the map made by Gustav Adolph and the correct – with some minor exceptions – names in Czech on the map of Josef Matouschek. Moreover, the green line roughly labels the linguistic border between the southern Czech and the northern German language communities. The possible explanation could be the origin of Josef Matouschek. He was born into a Czech family (his father’s surname was Matoušek), but later on he was raised and educated in German schools and environments.

Figure 6

The “invisible” linguistic border and mis-depiction of the names of Czech villages by a cartographer publishing only in German (Gustav Adolph, 1927 or 1929, on the left) and a cartographer familiar with both languages (Josef Matouschek, 1927, on the right). Source: the image is from an interactive web map application developed for the purpose of studying and demonstrating the language boundary in the course of our project (Šmída, Vrbík 2017).

The Munich Agreement of September 1938 brought the annexation of the Sudetes by the Third Reich, followed by the creation of the Protectorate in March 1939 – this entity was controlled by Germans with a certain level of autonomy still in the hands of a Czech administration during World War II. The former Czechoslovak–German border thus ceased to exist. The situation was depicted on the seventh edition of the Vom Oybin bis Schneekoppe map of 1939 (Fig. 7). The year of publication was changed in the legend, where the original border dividing Czechoslovakia and Germany before was depicted as “Alte Reichsgrenze” – old border of the empire (Fig. 4). We do not know why the non-existent border – an example of Jańczak’s (2014) “Phantom border” – was actually put on that map. Similarly, as in the case of most examples of old tourist maps, we cannot rely on the documented methods of the work of the author. Hence we have been speculating about the motives of the authors of these maps to illustrate and interpret a certain topic. We could speculate that the author wanted to convey an implicit message by depicting a border that no longer existed at that time. Alternatively, we could also speculate that he merely did not want to discontinue the previous six editions. Alternatively, the reasons could have been of a technical nature – the map could have been already in print or major modifications were not technically possible. The modification of the legend could have been a compromise which caused no problems for the publisher.

Figure 7

The example of a map with confusing political borders (Vom Oybin bis zur Schneekoppe map of 1939, see legend).

Source: own elaboration based on Adolph 1939 (1:100 000, author’s private collection).