Abstract
During the last years of Beneš’ ministership, the Czechoslovak-German relations, although officially still referred to as correct and routine, became more and more associated with an issue of German minority in Czechoslovakia and with new type of activities in German minority political parties and organisations. After parliamentary elections in 1935, the Sudeten German Party became the strongest German political movement in Czechoslovakia and further weakened the position of the so-called activist parties.
This outcome surpassed the gloomiest outlooks of otherwise very realistic Edvard Beneš. Few months before his election to the office of the president of the republic, Beneš reviewed his ministerial career in the services of the young state.
He parted with the legacy he had left, as the Czechoslovak foreign minister, in European politics as well as in Czechoslovak-German relations. The wish he pronounced to carry on with friendly cooperation between both countries, that had been started in the latter half of 1920s, did not come true: Europe, Germany, and Czechoslovakia headed towards a catastrophe that, in mid-1930s, hardly someone could imagine.