Author: Kasper, Т.
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This article on the Sudeten Youth Movement and National Political Education in the years 1918-1933 is an account of the Sudeten German educational reform movement in the socio-political context of the Czechoslovak Republic of the time. Most of the reform-movement teachers saw the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic as a threat to the national existence of the „Sudeten German tribe“. The idea was therefore to unite all Sudeten Germans at a supra-political, state-wide level. School and extra-curricular educational activity were important elements in the programme and were made instruments of national political goals - the creation of a united Sudeten German national community. The Sudeten German youth movement exploited the concept of „youth“, which became a component of the strategy of politically and socially dissatisfied groups. Calls for the creation of a united national society overcoming class and political differences were particularly strong in the Sudeten German educational reformist camp. The concept of overall education and upbringing as the programme of masculine societies was taken up by the „:young“ generation in the rank-and-file of the movement, which set itself against the „traditional“ educational concepts of the „old“ generation. After 1918 the Sudeten German youth movement saw what was known as a battle between the „old“ and „young“ generations, and the conflict moulded its development in the years under discussion, i.e. 1918-1933. The two generations agreed that that the current „crisis“ of the Sudeten Germans could not be overcome by applying the model of political competition and Sudeten German politics. On both sides it was believed that education and upbringing should achieve what politics had not - the total unification of the Sudeten national tribe. While the „old“ generation favoured developing the established concept of patriotic education further, the „young“ generation demanded that this too should be left behind and wanted a socially „more activist“ educational model, i.e. a national political education that would abandon the hitherto acknowledged principle that education should not be political. Although the „new“ style gained ever more adherents, it initially lacked a united organisational base. This was finally provided by the reformed German Physical Education Cllub, led after 1931 by Konrad Henlein. The „young“ generation of the Sudeten German movement and the Physical Education Club formed an „ideal“ alliance for pushing through national political education in the majority of Sudeten German youth organisations.
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