Debates on 'Sudeten German Literature' in the Prague Magazine Die Wahrheit. With an Excursus on the Reception of Nadler in Czechoslovakia
Abstract
The article analyses the contributions of the Prague German magazine Die Wahrheit (1921-1938), which deal with a delineation of German literature and culture in Czechoslovakia. For the very first time, it also maps and evaluates the early Czech- and German-language reception of the work of the conservative, later fascist literary historian Josef Nadler, which received a surprisingly positive response from liberal and leftist intellectuals in Czechoslovakia around 1930.
The articles in Die Wahrheit by Ferdinand Demel and Otto Pick on „Sudeten German literature,“ like the polemic by Johannes Urzidil and Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer, are closely related to the reception of Josef Nadler’s literary‑historical works emphasizing cultural mixing and plurality. The contributions of the aforementioned authors, as well as Julius Mader’s insights into contemporary culture, show to what extent the vision of a common Czechoslovak culture was a desire, while the contradictions between Prague and the province, Czechs and Czechoslovak Germans, were more evident in the living reality.