1.
Flag of Czechoslovakia
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The national flag of the Czech Republic is the same as the flag of the former Czechoslovakia. Upon the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic kept the Czechoslovak flag while Slovakia adopted its own flag, the first flag of Czechoslovakia was based on the flag of Bohemia, and was white over red. This was almost identical to the flag of Poland, so a blue triangle was added at the hoist in 1920, the flag was banned by the Nazis in 1939, and a horizontal tricolor of white, red, and blue was enforced. The 1920 flag was restored in 1945, after the establishment of an independent Czechoslovakia in 1918, the country had been using the red and white flag of Bohemia, identical to the Polish flag. Following calls for a new flag to be adopted by the state, a committee picked a design by Jaroslav Kursa. His design included the red and white horizontal stripes derived from the coat of arms of Bohemia, the Czech Republic violated this clause, passing legislation overruling the previous agreement and keeping the use of the flag. The blazon of this flag is per pall fesswise Argent, Azure, the flag is formed from an isosceles triangle that extends halfway along the rectangle and two bands, one white and one red. The most similar foreign flag is the flag of the Philippines but the latter has dimensions 1,2, another Czech official symbol is the Standard of the President of the Czech Republic. It was first introduced in 1918 for the President of Czechoslovakia, the current version, which was designed by heraldist Jiří Louda, was adopted upon the creation of an independent Czech Republic in 1993. Zbyšek Svoboda, Pavel Fojtík, brochure Naše vlajka, vznik a vývoj české vlajky, Libea,2005, ISBN 80-239-5862-3. Petr Exner, Pavel Fojtík, Zbyšek Svoboda, brochure Vlajky, prapory a jejich používání, Libea,2004, history of the Czech and Czechoslovak flag Czech Republic at Flags of the World Czech flag - facts, history, colors
2.
Coat of arms of Czechoslovakia
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The coat of arms of Czechoslovakia were changed many times during Czechoslovakia’s history, some alongside each other. This reflects the turbulent history of the country and a wish to use appropriate territorial coats of arms, the smaller and the greater versions were not used from 1938 onwards, but the middle arms also was effectively put out of use when Germany occupied Bohemia and Moravia in 1939. When Czechoslovakia was re-established in 1945 at the end of the Second World War, the smaller arms was in essence the arms of Bohemia superimposed by the arms of Slovakia. The Slovakian arms should not be seen as a Herzschild but as a shield carried by the Bohemian lion in the larger motif and it is thus not to be seen as an inescutcheon taking up the honorary heart position in the arms. As can be seen in the image, it is not placed in the visual centre of the arms. The middle arms on the hand, had one shield in the heart position. The main shield also held the arms of Slovakia, Carpathian Ruthenia, Moravia, the greater arms consisted of the same fields as in the middle arms completed with three more arms, the arms of the region of Těšín Silesia and the historical duchies of Opava and Ratibor. The greater arms also had two lions as supporters and the motto of the presidential office, following the fall of Communism in 1989, traditional heraldry was reinstated and new national arms were designed, quartering the arms of Bohemia and Slovakia. These arms were valid until Czechoslovakia was dissolved at new year 1992/93, vexilolognet. cz - History of the symbols of Czechoslovakia Vlastenci. cz Senate, The Czech national emblem
3.
Truth prevails
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Truth prevails was a motto inscribed on the banner of the President of Czechoslovakia, still used today on the banner of the President of the Czech Republic. The banner of the President is one of the symbols according to the Czech Constitution. The phrase also appears along the base of the Jan Hus Memorial in Prague. The motto is believed to be derived from Jan Hus phrase Seek the truth, hear the truth, learn the truth, love the truth, speak the truth, hold the truth and defend the truth until death. The Latin version Veritas vincit was in use on the banner from 1990 to 1992 as a linguistically neutral compromise reached between the Czech and Slovak political representation. The concept of truth has a tradition in Czech political thought. Jan Hus and John Amos Comenius connected the truth with theological aspects, Hus credo traditionally had been seen as testifying the moral and spiritual, rather than physical and military strength. The Charter 77 movement had the motto Truth prevails for those who live in truth
4.
Prague
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Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. It is the 14th largest city in the European Union and it is also the historical capital of Bohemia. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city has a temperate climate, with warm summers and chilly winters. Prague has been a political, cultural, and economic centre of central Europe with waxing and waning fortunes during its history and it was an important city to the Habsburg Monarchy and its Austro-Hungarian Empire. Prague is home to a number of cultural attractions, many of which survived the violence. Main attractions include the Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge, Old Town Square with the Prague astronomical clock, since 1992, the extensive historic centre of Prague has been included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. The city has more than ten major museums, along with theatres, galleries, cinemas. An extensive modern public transportation system connects the city, also, it is home to a wide range of public and private schools, including Charles University in Prague, the oldest university in Central Europe. Prague is classified as an Alpha- global city according to GaWC studies, Prague ranked sixth in the Tripadvisor world list of best destinations in 2016. Its rich history makes it a popular tourist destination, and the city more than 6.4 million international visitors annually. Prague is the fifth most visited European city after London, Paris, Istanbul, the region was settled as early as the Paleolithic age. In the last century BC, the Celts were slowly driven away by Germanic tribes, around the area where present-day Prague stands, the 2nd century map of Ptolemaios mentioned a Germanic city called Casurgis. In the following century, the Czech tribes built several fortified settlements in the area, most notably in Levý Hradec, Butovice and in the Šárka valley. The construction of what came to be known as the Prague Castle began near the end of the 9th century, the first masonry under Prague Castle dates from the year 885 at the latest. The other prominent Prague fort, the Přemyslid fort Vyšehrad, was founded in the 10th century, Prague Castle is dominated by the cathedral, which was founded in 1344, but completed in the 20th century. The legendary origins of Prague attribute its foundation to the 8th century Czech duchess and prophetess Libuše and her husband, Přemysl, legend says that Libuše came out on a rocky cliff high above the Vltava and prophesied, I see a great city whose glory will touch the stars. She ordered a castle and a town called Praha to be built on the site, a 17th century Jewish chronicler David Solomon Ganz, citing Cyriacus Spangenberg, claimed that the city was founded as Boihaem in c.1306 BC by an ancient king, Boyya. The region became the seat of the dukes, and later kings of Bohemia, under Roman Emperor Otto II the area became a bishopric in 973
5.
Czech language
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Czech, historically also Bohemian, is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group. It is spoken by over 10 million people and is the language of the Czech Republic. Czech is closely related to Slovak, to the point of being intelligible to a very high degree. In the later 18th to mid-19th century, the written standard was codified in the context of the Czech National Revival. The main vernacular, known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of Prague, the Moravian dialects spoken in the eastern part of the country are mostly also counted as Czech, although some of their eastern variants are closer to Slovak. The Czech phoneme inventory is moderate in size, comprising five vowels, words may contain uncommon consonant clusters, including one consonant represented by the grapheme ř, or lack vowels altogether. Czech orthography is simple, and has used as a model by phonologists. Czech is classified as a member of the West Slavic sub-branch of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family and this branch includes Polish, Kashubian, Upper and Lower Sorbian and Slovak. Slovak is by far the closest genetic neighbor of Czech, the West Slavic languages are spoken in an area classified as part of Central Europe. Around the 7th century, the Slavic expansion reached Central Europe, the West Slavic polity of Great Moravia formed by the 9th century. The Christianization of Bohemia took place during the 9th and 10th centuries, the Bohemian language is first recorded in writing in glosses and short notes during the 12th to 13th centuries. Literary works written in Czech appear in the early 14th century, the first complete Bible translation also dates to this period. Old Czech texts, including poetry and cookbooks, were produced outside the university as well, literary activity becomes widespread in the early 15th century in the context of the Bohemian Reformation. There was no standardization distinguishing between Czech and Slovak prior to the 15th century, the publication of the Kralice Bible between 1579 and 1593 became very important for standardization of the Czech language in the following centuries. In 1615, the Bohemian diet tried to declare Czech to be the official language of the kingdom. After the Bohemian Revolt which was defeated by the Habsburgs in 1620 and this emigration together with other consequences of the Thirty Years War had a negative impact on the further use of the Czech language. In 1627, Czech and German became official languages of the Kingdom of Bohemia and in the 18th century German became dominant in Bohemia and Moravia, the modern standard Czech language originates in standardization efforts of the 18th century. Changes include the shift of í to ej and é to í and the merging of í
6.
Parliamentary republic
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A parliamentary republic is a republic that operates under a parliamentary system of government where the executive branch derives its legitimacy from and is accountable to the legislature. There are a number of variations of parliamentary republics, most have a clear differentiation between the head of government and the head of state, with the head of government holding real power, much like constitutional monarchies. Some have combined the roles of head of state and head of government, much like presidential systems and this usually means that they are the leader of the largest party or coalition of parties in parliament. Some parliamentary republics could therefore be seen as following the semi-presidential system, typically, parliamentary republics are states that were previously constitutional monarchies with a parliamentary system, with the position of head of state given to a monarch. Following the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War, France once again became a republic – the French Third Republic – in 1870, the President of the Third Republic had significantly less executive powers than those of the previous two republics had. The Third Republic lasted until the invasion of France by Nazi Germany in 1940, following the end of the war, the French Fourth Republic was constituted along similar lines in 1946. Additionally, the government proved unable to make decisions regarding decolonization. Chile became the first parliamentary republic in South America following a war in 1891. However, following a coup in 1925 this system was replaced by a Presidential one, since the London Declaration of 29 April 1949 republics have been admitted as members of the Commonwealth of Nations. In the case of republics in the Commonwealth of Nations, it was common for the Sovereign, formerly represented by a Governor-General. This was the case in with South Africa, Malta, Trinidad and Tobago, India, in many of these examples, the last Governor-General became the first president. Such was the case with Sri Lanka and Pakistan, others became parliamentary republics upon gaining independence. List of countries by system of government Parliamentary system Republic Republicanism Semi-presidential system
7.
Senate
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A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature or parliament. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate, so-called as an assembly of the senior and therefore allegedly wiser, thus, the literal meaning of the word senate is, Assembly of Elders. Many countries have a named an senate, composed of senators who may be elected, appointed, have inherited the title, or gained membership by other methods. Modern senates typically serve to provide a chamber of second thought to consider legislation passed by a lower house, whose members are usually elected. The modern word Senate is derived from the word senātus, which comes from senex, the members or legislators of a senate are called senators. The Latin word senator was adopted into English with no change in spelling and its meaning is derived from a very ancient form of social organization, in which advisory or decision-making powers are reserved for the eldest men. This form adaptation was used to show the power of those in body and for the process to be thorough. The original senate was the Roman Senate, which lasted until 580, in the Eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantine Senate continued until the Fourth Crusade, circa 1202–1204. This may include minimum age required for voters and candidates, proportional or majoritarian or plurality system, typically, the senate is referred to as the upper house and has a smaller membership than the lower house. In some federal states senates also exist at the subnational level, in the United States all states with the exception of Nebraska have a state senate. There is also the US Senate at the federal level, córdoba and Tucumán changed to unicameral systems in 2001 and 2003 respectively. In Australia and Canada, only the house of the federal parliament is known as the Senate. All Australian states other than Queensland have a house known as a Legislative council. Several Canadian provinces also once had a Legislative Council, but these have all been abolished, in Germany, the last Senate of a State parliament, the Senate of Bavaria, was abolished in 1999. Senate membership can be determined either through elections or appointments, for example, elections are held every three years for half the membership of the Australian Senate, the term of a senator being six years. The terms Senate and Senator, however, do not necessarily refer to a chamber of a legislature, The Senate of Finland was, until 1919, the executive branch. The Senate of Latvia fulfilled a similar function during the interbellum. In a number of cities which were members of the Hanse, such as Greifswald, Lübeck, Rostock, Stralsund, or Wismar
8.
Interwar period
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There were numerous new nations in Eastern Europe, most of them small in size. The United States gained dominance in world finance, by the middle of the decade, prosperity was widespread, with the second half of the decade known, especially in Germany, as the Golden Twenties. The Roaring Twenties highlighted novel and highly social and cultural trends. These trends, made possible by sustained economic prosperity, were most visible in major cities like New York, Chicago, Paris, Berlin, the Jazz Age began and Art Deco peaked. For women, knee-length skirts and dresses became socially acceptable, as did bobbed hair with a marcel wave, the women who pioneered these trends were frequently referred to as flappers. Not all was new, “normalcy” returned to politics in the wake of hyper-emotional wartime passions in the United States, France, and Germany. The leftist revolutions in Finland, Poland, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Spain were defeated by conservatives, but succeeded in Russia, in Italy the fascists came to power under Mussolini after threatening a march on Rome. Most independent countries enacted womens suffrage in the era, including Canada in 1917, Britain in 1918. There were a few countries that held out until after the Second World War. If women could work in factories, it seemed both ungrateful and illogical to deny them a place in the polling booth. But the vote was more than simply a reward for war work. The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Greece did especially well, in advanced economies the prosperity reached middle class households and many in the working class. With radio, automobiles, telephones, and electric lighting and appliances, there was unprecedented industrial growth, accelerated consumer demand and aspirations, and significant changes in lifestyle and culture. The media began to focus on celebrities, especially sports heroes, major cities built large sports stadiums for the fans, in addition to palatial cinemas. The Great Depression was a worldwide economic depression that took place during the 1930s. The timing varied across nations, in most countries it started in 1929 and it was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. The depression originated in the United States, after a decline in lofty stock prices. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide GDP fell by an estimated 15%, by comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession
9.
Munich Agreement
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The agreement was signed in the early hours of 30 September 1938 after being negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe, excluding the Soviet Union. Today, it is regarded as a failed act of appeasement toward Germany. The purpose of the conference was to discuss the future of the Sudetenland in the face of demands made by Adolf Hitler. The agreement was signed by Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Sudetenland was of immense strategic importance to Czechoslovakia, as most of its border defenses, and banks were situated there, as well as heavy industrial districts. Part of the borderland was invaded and annexed by Poland, the phrase Munich Betrayal is also used because the military alliance Czechoslovakia had with France and Britain proved useless and also known because of the phrase About us, without us. This phrase is most hurtful for people of Czechoslovakia, Today the document is typically referred to simply as the Munich Pact. In Germany the Sudeten crisis led to the so-called Oster Conspiracy, from 1918 to 1938, after the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, more than 3 million ethnic Germans were living in the Czech part of the newly created state of Czechoslovakia. Sudeten German pro-Nazi leader Konrad Henlein founded the Sudeten German Party that served as the branch of the Nazi Party for the Sudetenland. By 1935, the SdP was the second largest political party in Czechoslovakia as German votes concentrated on this party while Czech, on 24 April, the SdP issued a series of demands upon the government of Czechoslovakia, that were known as the Carlsbad Program. Among the demands, Henlein demanded autonomy for Germans living in Czechoslovakia, the Czechoslovakian government responded by saying that it was willing to provide more minority rights to the German minority but it refused to grant them autonomy. As the previous appeasement of Hitler had shown, the governments of both France and Britain were intent on avoiding war, the French government did not wish to face Germany alone and took its lead from the British government of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain considered the Sudeten German grievances justified and believed Hitlers intentions were limited, both Britain and France, therefore, advised Czechoslovakia to concede to Germanys demands. Beneš resisted and on 19 May initiated a partial mobilization in response to possible German invasion, while recognizing that this would still be insufficient for a full-scale naval war with Britain, Hitler hoped it would be a sufficient deterrent. Ten days later, Hitler signed a directive for war against Czechoslovakia. On 22 May, Juliusz Łukasiewicz, the Polish ambassador to France, told the French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet that if France moved against Germany in defense of Czechoslovakia, Łukasiewicz also told Bonnet that Poland would oppose any attempt by Soviet forces to defend Czechoslovakia from Germany. Daladier told Jakob Surits, the Soviet ambassador to France, Not only can we not count on Polish support but we have no faith that Poland will not strike us in the back. Hitlers adjutant, Fritz Wiedemann, recalled after the war that he was shocked by Hitlers new plans to attack Britain. In the meantime, the British government demanded that Beneš request a mediator, Not wishing to sever his governments ties with Western Europe, Beneš reluctantly accepted
10.
Czechoslovak koruna
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The Czechoslovak koruna was the currency of Czechoslovakia from April 10,1919, to March 14,1939, and from November 1,1945, to February 7,1993. For a brief time in 1939 and 1993, it was also the currency in separate Czech, on February 8,1993, it was replaced by the Czech koruna and the Slovak koruna, both at par. The ISO4217 code and the abbreviations for the koruna were CSK. One koruna equalled 100 haléřů or halierov, in both languages, the abbreviation h was used. The abbreviation was placed behind the numeric value, a currency called the krone in German and koruna in Czech was introduced in Austria-Hungary on 11 September 1892, as the first modern gold-based currency in the area. The next year, on 10 April 1919, a reform took place. The first banknotes came into circulation the same year, the three years later, in 1922. This first koruna circulated until 1939, when separate currencies for Bohemia and Moravia and Slovakia were introduced and these were the Bohemian and Moravian koruna and the Slovak koruna. The Czechoslovak koruna was re-established in 1945, replacing the two previous currencies at par, as a consequence of the war, the currency had lost much of its value. The koruna went through a number of further reforms, a particularly drastic one was undertaken in 1953. They decided to declare a currency reform effective from 1 June 1953, the reform had been prepared very quickly and was confidential up to the last minute, but some information leaked anyway, causing a lot of panic. The next day, people were allowed to change up to 1,500 old korunas for new korunas at the rate of 5 old to 1 new koruna, all insurance stock, state obligations and other commercial papers were nullified. The economic situation of people got worse, and many petitions and demonstrations broke out, the largest of which took place in Plzeň. In 1993, on the dissolution of the Czechoslovak federation, the Czechoslovak koruna split into two independent currencies, the Slovak koruna and the Czech koruna. The Slovak koruna was replaced by the euro on 1 January 2009, annual increase in the consumer price index Czech koruna Slovak koruna Bohemian and Moravian koruna Czechoslovak banknotes
11.
Austria-Hungary
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The union was a result of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and came into existence on 30 March 1867. Austria-Hungary consisted of two monarchies, and one region, the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia under the Hungarian crown. It was ruled by the House of Habsburg, and constituted the last phase in the evolution of the Habsburg Monarchy. Following the 1867 reforms, the Austrian and the Hungarian states were co-equal, Foreign affairs and the military came under joint oversight, but all other governmental faculties were divided between respective states. Austria-Hungary was a state and one of the worlds great powers at the time. Austria-Hungary was geographically the second-largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire, at 621,538 km2, the Empire built up the fourth-largest machine building industry of the world, after the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. After 1878, Bosnia and Herzegovina was under Austro-Hungarian military and civilian rule until it was annexed in 1908. The annexation of Bosnia also led to Islam being recognized as a state religion due to Bosnias Muslim population. Austria-Hungary was one of the Central Powers in World War I and it was already effectively dissolved by the time the military authorities signed the armistice of Villa Giusti on 3 November 1918. The realms full, official name was The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council, each enjoyed considerable sovereignty with only a few joint affairs. Certain regions, such as Polish Galicia within Cisleithania and Croatia within Transleithania, enjoyed autonomous status, the division between Austria and Hungary was so marked that there was no common citizenship, one was either an Austrian citizen or a Hungarian citizen, never both. This also meant that there were always separate Austrian and Hungarian passports, however, neither Austrian nor Hungarian passports were used in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia. Instead, the Kingdom issued its own passports which were written in Croatian and French and it is not known what kind of passports were used in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was under the control of both Austria and Hungary. The Kingdom of Hungary had always maintained a separate parliament, the Diet of Hungary, the administration and government of the Kingdom of Hungary remained largely untouched by the government structure of the overarching Austrian Empire. Hungarys central government structures remained well separated from the Austrian imperial government, the country was governed by the Council of Lieutenancy of Hungary – located in Pressburg and later in Pest – and by the Hungarian Royal Court Chancellery in Vienna. The Hungarian government and Hungarian parliament were suspended after the Hungarian revolution of 1848, despite Austria and Hungary sharing a common currency, they were fiscally sovereign and independent entities. Since the beginnings of the union, the government of the Kingdom of Hungary could preserve its separated. After the revolution of 1848–1849, the Hungarian budget was amalgamated with the Austrian, from 1527 to 1851, the Kingdom of Hungary maintained its own customs controls, which separated her from the other parts of the Habsburg-ruled territories
12.
Republic of German-Austria
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The Republic of German-Austria was created following World War I as the initial rump state for areas with a predominantly German-speaking population within what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In Habsburg Austria-Hungary, German-Austria was a term for the areas of the empire inhabited by Austrian Germans. On October 12,1918 Emperor Charles I met with the leaders of the largest German parties, on October 16,1918 Emperor Charles I published a manifesto which offered to change Austria-Hungary into a federation of nationalities. This came too late as Czechs and Southern Slavs were well on their way to creating independent states, however, this gave an impulse to the Reichsrat of German inhabited areas to meet. It elected Franz Dinghofer of the German National Movement, Jodok Fink of the Christian Social Party, the assembly included representatives from Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia who refused to submit to the new state of Czechoslovakia which had been declared on October 28,1918. On October 25 Provisional Assembly called on all German inhabited Lands to form their own provisional assemblies, during its second meeting on October 30 the Provisional National Assembly created the basic institutions of the new state. The legislative power was assumed by the Provisional National Assembly while the power was entrusted to the newly created German-Austrian State Council. On November 11,1918, Emperor Charles I in all but name abdicated, the next day, November 12, the National Assembly officially declared German-Austria a republic, and named Social Democrat Karl Renner as provisional chancellor. On the same day it drafted a constitution that stated that German-Austria is a democratic republic. This was enforced by the refusal of Hungary to sell grain, Social Democrat Karl Renner became Chancellor, Victor Adler Foreign Minister. Social Democrats co-opted newly created soldier and worker councils and used their control over labour unions to implement social policies that reduced risks of Bolshevik revolution, elections to the Constituent Assembly were held on February 16,1919 and for the first time women were allowed to vote. Out of the 38 German inhabited constituencies only 25 participated and 159 deputies were elected to the 170 seats with Social Democrats as the largest party, Social Democrats won 72 seats, Christians Socials 69 and German Nationalists 26. The Constituent National Assembly first met on March 4,1919 and on March 15 a new government was formed, Austrian Social Democrats, despite being one of the leading Marxist parties with its Austromarxism current, did not attempt to seize power or to institute socialism. However, the majority of conservative, Catholic politicians still distrusted them, Social Democrat leader Otto Bauer wrote, “German-Austria is not an organism which has followed the laws of historical growth. It is nothing but the remnant of what remained of the old Empire after other nations had broken away from it. It remained as a bundle of divergent Lands. ”On November 13,1918 Germany-Austria asked Germany to start negotiations of union and on November 15 sent a telegram to President Wilson to support union of Germany. This was grounded in the view that Austria had never been a nation in the true sense. While the Austrian territory had existed in one form or another for over 700 years within the Holy Roman Empire and later the German Confederation, apart from being German inhabited, these Lands had no common ‘Austrian’ identity and there had never been an Austrian state before
13.
German Empire
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The German Empire was the historical German nation state that existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918, when Germany became a federal republic. The German Empire consisted of 26 constituent territories, with most being ruled by royal families and this included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. Although Prussia became one of kingdoms in the new realm, it contained most of its population and territory. Its influence also helped define modern German culture, after 1850, the states of Germany had rapidly become industrialized, with particular strengths in coal, iron, chemicals, and railways. In 1871, it had a population of 41 million people, and by 1913, a heavily rural collection of states in 1815, now united Germany became predominantly urban. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire operated as an industrial, technological, Germany became a great power, boasting a rapidly growing rail network, the worlds strongest army, and a fast-growing industrial base. In less than a decade, its navy became second only to Britains Royal Navy, after the removal of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck by Wilhelm II, the Empire embarked on a bellicose new course that ultimately led to World War I. When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, the German Empire had two allies, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, however, left the once the First World War started in August 1914. In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris quickly in autumn 1914 failed, the Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food. Germany was repeatedly forced to send troops to bolster Austria and Turkey on other fronts, however, Germany had great success on the Eastern Front, it occupied large Eastern territories following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 was designed to strangle the British, it failed, but the declaration—along with the Zimmermann Telegram—did bring the United States into the war. Meanwhile, German civilians and soldiers had become war-weary and radicalised by the Russian Revolution and this failed, and by October the armies were in retreat, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, Bulgaria had surrendered and the German people had lost faith in their political system. The Empire collapsed in the November 1918 Revolution as the Emperor and all the ruling monarchs abdicated, and a republic took over. The German Confederation had been created by an act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, German nationalism rapidly shifted from its liberal and democratic character in 1848, called Pan-Germanism, to Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarcks pragmatic Realpolitik. He envisioned a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany, the war resulted in the Confederation being partially replaced by a North German Confederation in 1867, comprising the 22 states north of the Main. The new constitution and the title Emperor came into effect on 1 January 1871, during the Siege of Paris on 18 January 1871, William accepted to be proclaimed Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. The second German Constitution was adopted by the Reichstag on 14 April 1871 and proclaimed by the Emperor on 16 April, the political system remained the same. The empire had a parliament called the Reichstag, which was elected by universal male suffrage, however, the original constituencies drawn in 1871 were never redrawn to reflect the growth of urban areas
14.
Second Czechoslovak Republic
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The Second Czechoslovak Republic, sometimes also called the Czech-Slovak Republic, existed for 169 days, between 30 September 1938 and 15 March 1939. It was composed of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and the regions of Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia. In addition, the government allowed the banks to effectively come under German-Czechoslovak control. The Czechoslovak Republic was dissolved when Germany invaded it on 15 March 1939, the Czechoslovak Republic had become a shell of its former self and was now a greatly weakened state. The Munich Agreement had resulted in Bohemia and Moravia losing about 38% of their area to Germany. Lacking its natural frontier and having lost its costly system of border fortification, hungary received 11,882 square kilometres in southern Slovakia and southern Ruthenia, according to a 1941 census, about 86. 5% of the population in this territory was Hungarian. Poland acquired the town of Těšín with the area and two minor border areas in northern Slovakia, more precisely in the regions Spiš and Orava. Moreover, the Czechoslovak government had problems in taking care of the 115,000 Czech and 30,000 German refugees, the political system of the country was also in chaos. Following the resignation of Edvard Beneš on October 5, General Jan Syrový had acted as President until Emil Hácha was chosen as President on November 30,1938. Hácha was chosen because of his Catholicism and conservatism and because of not being involved in any government that led to the partition of the country and he appointed Rudolf Beran, the leader of the Agrarian Party since 1933, as prime minister on December 1,1938. He was, unlike most Agrarians, rather rightist, and sceptical of liberalism, the Communist Party was dissolved, although its members were allowed to remain in Parliament. Tough censorship was introduced, and an Enabling Act was also introduced, the greatly weakened Czechoslovak Republic was forced to grant major concessions to the non-Czechs. The Czechoslovak government accepted the Žilina Agreement stipulating the formation of an autonomous Slovak government with all Slovak parties except the Social Democrat on 6 October 1938, Jozef Tiso was nominated as its head. The only common ministries that remained were those of National Defence, Foreign Affairs, as part of the deal, the country officially adopted the short-form name of Czecho-Slovakia. Similarly, the two factions in Subcarpathian Ruthenia, the Russophiles and Ukrainophiles, agreed on the establishment of an autonomous government. On 17 October, Ferdinand Ďurčanský, Franz Karmasin and Alexander Mach were received by Adolf Hitler, on 1 January 1939 the Slovak State Assembly was opened. On 18 January the first elections of the Slovak Assembly took place, disputes continued and, on 1 March 1939, the Ministerial Committee of the Czecho-Slovak government met, where the question of Slovak departure from the state was in focus. There were some disagreement between Tiso and other Slovak politicians, and Karol Sidor returned to Bratislava to discuss the matter with Tiso, on March 6 the Slovak government proclaimed its loyalty to the Czecho-Slovak Republic and its wish to remain a part of the state
15.
Sudetenland
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The Sudeten crisis of 1938 was provoked by the demands of Nazi Germany that the Sudetenland be annexed to Germany, which in fact took place after the later infamous Munich Agreement. Part of the borderland was invaded and annexed by Poland, when Czechoslovakia was reconstituted after the Second World War, the Sudeten Germans were largely expelled, and the region today is inhabited almost exclusively by Czech speakers. Parts of the current Czech regions of Karlovy Vary, Liberec, Olomouc, Moravia-Silesia, the Celtic and Boii tribes settled there and the region was first mentioned on the map of Ptolemaios in the 2nd century AD. The Germanic tribe of the Marcomanni dominated the core of the region in later centuries. Those tribes already built cities like Brno, but moved west during the Migration Period, in the 7th century AD Slavic people moved in and were united under Samos realm. Later in the High Middle Ages Germans settled into the less populated border region, in the Middle Ages the regions situated on the mountainous border of the Duchy and the Kingdom of Bohemia had since the Migration Period been settled mainly by western Slavic Czechs. In the course of the Ostsiedlung German settlement from the 13th century onwards continued to move into the Upper Lusatia region, after the extinction of the Přemyslid dynasty in 1306, the Bohemian nobility backed John of Luxembourg as king against his rival Duke Henry of Carinthia. His son, Bohemian King Charles IV, was elected King of the Romans in 1346 and he added the Lusatias to the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, which then comprised large territories with a significant German population. In the hilly border regions German settlers established major manufactures of forest glass, the situation of the German population was aggravated by the Hussite Wars, though there were also some Germans among the Hussite insurgents. The city of Prague had a German-speaking majority from the last third of the 17th century until 1860, from the Luxembourgs, the rule over Bohemia passed through George of Podiebrad to the Jagiellon dynasty and finally to the House of Habsburg in 1526. Both Czech and German Bohemians suffered heavily in the Thirty Years War, Bohemia lost 70% of its population. From the defeat of the Bohemian Revolt that collapsed at the 1620 Battle of White Mountain, during the subsequent Counter-Reformation, less populated areas were resettled with Catholic Germans from the Austrian lands. Also in 1749 Austrian Empire enforced German as the language again. Emperor Joseph II in 1780 renounced the coronation ceremony as Bohemian king, nevertheless, German cultural influence grew stronger during the Age of Enlightenment and Weimar Classicism. The Bohemian Kingdom remained a part of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary until its dismemberment after the First World War, in the wake of growing nationalism, the name Sudetendeutsche emerged by the early 20th century. Of these three terms, only the term Sudetendeutsche survived, because of the ethnic and cultural conflicts within Bohemia, thirty-four of each 1,000 inhabitants were killed. Austria-Hungary broke apart at the end of World War I, late in October 1918, an independent Czechoslovak state, consisting of the lands of the Bohemian kingdom and areas belonging to the Kingdom of Hungary, was proclaimed. The German deputies of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia in the Imperial Council referred to the Fourteen Points of U. S, on 20 September 1918, the Prague government asked the United Statess opinion for the Sudetenland
16.
Second Polish Republic
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The Second Polish Republic, also known as the Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland, refers to the country of Poland between the First and Second World Wars. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland and it had access to the Baltic Sea via a short strip of coastline either side of the city of Gdynia. Between March and August 1939, Poland also shared a border with the then-Hungarian governorate of Subcarpathia, the Second Republic was significantly different in territory to the current Polish state. It included substantially more territory in the east and less in the west, the Second Republics land area was 388,634 km2, making it, in October 1938, the sixth largest country in Europe. After the annexation of Zaolzie, this grew to 389,720 km2, according to the 1921 census, the number of inhabitants was 27.2 million. By 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II, almost a third of population came from minority groups,13. 9% Ukrainians, 10% Jews,3. 1% Belarusians,2. 3% Germans and 3. 4% Czechs, Lithuanians and Russians. At the same time, a significant number of ethnic Poles lived outside the country borders, Poland maintained a slow but steady level of economic development. By 1939, the Republic had become one of Europes major powers, the victorious Allies of World War I confirmed the rebirth of Poland in the Treaty of Versailles of June 1919. It was one of the stories of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Poland solidified its independence in a series of wars fought by the newly formed Polish Army from 1918 to 1921. The extent of the half of the interwar territory of Poland was settled diplomatically in 1922. In the course of World War I, Germany gradually gained overall dominance on the Eastern Front as the Imperial Russian Army fell back, German and Austro-Hungarian armies seized the Russian-ruled part of what became Poland. In a failed attempt to resolve the Polish question as quickly as possible, Berlin set up a German puppet state on 5 November 1916, with a governing Provisional Council of State, the Council administered the country under German auspices, pending the election of a king. A month before Germany surrendered on 11 November 1918 and the war ended, the Regency Council had dissolved the Council of State, with the notable exception of the Marxist-oriented Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, most Polish political parties supported this move. On 23 October the Regency Council appointed a new government under Józef Świeżyński, in 1918–1919, over 100 workers councils sprang up on Polish territories, on 5 November 1918, in Lublin, the first Soviet of Delegates was established. On 6 November socialists proclaimed the Republic of Tarnobrzeg at Tarnobrzeg in Austrian Galicia, the same day the Socialist, Ignacy Daszyński, set up a Provisional Peoples Government of the Republic of Poland in Lublin. On Sunday,10 November at 7 a. m, Józef Piłsudski, newly freed from 16 months in a German prison in Magdeburg, returned by train to Warsaw. Piłsudski, together with Colonel Kazimierz Sosnkowski, was greeted at Warsaws railway station by Regent Zdzisław Lubomirski, next day, due to his popularity and support from most political parties, the Regency Council appointed Piłsudski as Commander in Chief of the Polish Armed Forces
17.
Czech Republic
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The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, is a nation state in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west, Austria to the south, Slovakia to the east and Poland to the northeast. The Czech Republic covers an area of 78,866 square kilometres with mostly temperate continental climate and it is a unitary parliamentary republic, has 10.5 million inhabitants and the capital and largest city is Prague, with over 1.2 million residents. The Czech Republic includes the territories of Bohemia, Moravia. The Czech state was formed in the late 9th century as the Duchy of Bohemia under the Great Moravian Empire, after the fall of the Empire in 907, the centre of power transferred from Moravia to Bohemia under the Přemyslid dynasty. In 1002, the duchy was formally recognized as part of the Holy Roman Empire, becoming the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1198 and reaching its greatest territorial extent in the 14th century. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the whole Crown of Bohemia was gradually integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy alongside the Archduchy of Austria, the Protestant Bohemian Revolt against the Catholic Habsburgs led to the Thirty Years War. After the Battle of the White Mountain, the Habsburgs consolidated their rule, reimposed Roman Catholicism, the Czech part of Czechoslovakia was occupied by Germany in World War II, and was liberated in 1945 by the armies of the Soviet Union and the United States. The Czech country lost the majority of its German-speaking inhabitants after they were expelled following the war, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia won the 1946 elections. Following the 1948 coup détat, Czechoslovakia became a one-party communist state under Soviet influence, in 1968, increasing dissatisfaction with the regime culminated in a reform movement known as the Prague Spring, which ended in a Soviet-led invasion. Czechoslovakia remained occupied until the 1989 Velvet Revolution, when the communist regime collapsed, on 6 March 1990, the Czech Socialistic Republic was renamed to the Czech Republic. On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully dissolved, with its constituent states becoming the independent states of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. The Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004, it is a member of the United Nations, the OECD, the OSCE, and it is a developed country with an advanced, high income economy and high living standards. The UNDP ranks the country 14th in inequality-adjusted human development, the Czech Republic also ranks as the 6th most peaceful country, while achieving strong performance in democratic governance. It has the lowest unemployment rate in the European Union, the traditional English name Bohemia derives from Latin Boiohaemum, which means home of the Boii. The current name comes from the endonym Čech, spelled Cžech until the reform in 1842. The name comes from the Slavic tribe and, according to legend, their leader Čech, the etymology of the word Čech can be traced back to the Proto-Slavic root *čel-, meaning member of the people, kinsman, thus making it cognate to the Czech word člověk. The country has traditionally divided into three lands, namely Bohemia in the west, Moravia in the southeast, and Czech Silesia in the northeast. Following the dissolution of Czechoslovakia at the end of 1992, the Czech part of the former nation found itself without a common single-word geographical name in English, the name Czechia /ˈtʃɛkiə/ was recommended by the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs
18.
Slovakia
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Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Slovakias territory spans about 49,000 square kilometres and is mostly mountainous. The population is over 5 million and comprises mostly ethnic Slovaks, the capital and largest city is Bratislava. The Slavs arrived in the territory of present-day Slovakia in the 5th and 6th centuries, in the 7th century, they played a significant role in the creation of Samos Empire and in the 9th century established the Principality of Nitra. In the 10th century, the territory was integrated into the Kingdom of Hungary, which became part of the Habsburg Empire. After World War I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a separate Slovak Republic existed in World War II as a client state of Nazi Germany. In 1945, Czechoslovakia was reëstablished under Communist rule as a Soviet satellite, in 1989 the Velvet Revolution ended authoritarian Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. Slovakia became an independent state on 1 January 1993 after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. The country maintains a combination of economy with universal health care. The country joined the European Union in 2004 and the Eurozone on 1 January 2009, Slovakia is also a member of the Schengen Area, NATO, the United Nations, the OECD, the WTO, CERN, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the Visegrád Group. The Slovak economy is one of the fastest growing economies in Europe and its legal tender, the Euro, is the worlds 2nd most traded currency. Although regional income inequality is high, 90% of citizens own their homes, in 2016, Slovak citizens had visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 165 countries and territories, ranking the Slovak passport 11th in the world. Slovakia is the world’s biggest per-capita car producer with a total of 1,040,000 cars manufactured in the country in 2016 alone, the car industry represents 43 percent of Slovakia’s industrial output, and a quarter of its exports. Radiocarbon datingputs the oldest surviving archaeological artefacts from Slovakia – found near Nové Mesto nad Váhom – at 270,000 BC and these ancient tools, made by the Clactonian technique, bear witness to the ancient habitation of Slovakia. Other stone tools from the Middle Paleolithic era come from the Prévôt cave near Bojnice, the most important discovery from that era is a Neanderthal cranium, discovered near Gánovce, a village in northern Slovakia. The most well-known finds include the oldest female statue made of mammoth-bone, the statue was found in the 1940s in Moravany nad Váhom near Piešťany. Numerous necklaces made of shells from Cypraca thermophile gastropods of the Tertiary period have come from the sites of Zákovská, Podkovice, Hubina and these findings provide the most ancient evidence of commercial exchanges carried out between the Mediterranean and Central Europe. The Bronze Age in the territory of modern-day Slovakia went through three stages of development, stretching from 2000 to 800 BC
19.
Ukraine
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Ukraine is currently in territorial dispute with Russia over the Crimean Peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014 but which Ukraine and most of the international community recognise as Ukrainian. Including Crimea, Ukraine has an area of 603,628 km2, making it the largest country entirely within Europe and it has a population of about 42.5 million, making it the 32nd most populous country in the world. The territory of modern Ukraine has been inhabited since 32,000 BC, during the Middle Ages, the area was a key centre of East Slavic culture, with the powerful state of Kievan Rus forming the basis of Ukrainian identity. Following its fragmentation in the 13th century, the territory was contested, ruled and divided by a variety of powers, including Lithuania, Poland, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. A Cossack republic emerged and prospered during the 17th and 18th centuries, two brief periods of independence occurred during the 20th century, once near the end of World War I and another during World War II. Before its independence, Ukraine was typically referred to in English as The Ukraine, following independence, Ukraine declared itself a neutral state. Nonetheless it formed a limited partnership with the Russian Federation and other CIS countries. In the 2000s, the government began leaning towards NATO, and it was later agreed that the question of joining NATO should be answered by a national referendum at some point in the future. Former President Viktor Yanukovych considered the current level of co-operation between Ukraine and NATO sufficient, and was against Ukraine joining NATO and these events formed the background for the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014, and the War in Donbass in April 2014. On 1 January 2016, Ukraine applied the economic part of the Deep, Ukraine has long been a global breadbasket because of its extensive, fertile farmlands and is one of the worlds largest grain exporters. The diversified economy of Ukraine includes a heavy industry sector, particularly in aerospace. Ukraine is a republic under a semi-presidential system with separate powers, legislative, executive. Its capital and largest city is Kiev, taking into account reserves and paramilitary personnel, Ukraine maintains the second-largest military in Europe after that of Russia. Ukrainian is the language and its alphabet is Cyrillic. The dominant religion in the country is Eastern Orthodoxy, which has strongly influenced Ukrainian architecture, literature, there are different hypotheses as to the etymology of the name Ukraine. According to the older and most widespread hypothesis, it means borderland, while more recently some studies claim a different meaning, homeland or region. The Ukraine now implies disregard for the sovereignty, according to U. S. ambassador William Taylor. Neanderthal settlement in Ukraine is seen in the Molodova archaeological sites include a mammoth bone dwelling
20.
Zakarpattia Oblast
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The Zakarpattia Oblast is an administrative oblast located in southwestern Ukraine, coterminous with the historical region of Carpathian Ruthenia. Its administrative centre is the city of Uzhhorod, other major cities within the oblast include Mukachevo, Khust, Berehove and Chop which is home to railroad transport infrastructure. Some scholars say that during the Ukrainian independence referendum held in 1991, although a large majority favoured autonomy, it was not granted. However, this referendum was about self-government status, not about autonomy, situated in the Carpathian Mountains of western Ukraine, Zakarpattia Oblast is the only Ukrainian administrative division which borders upon four countries, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. The Carpathian Mountains play a part in the oblasts economy, making the region an important tourist and travel destination housing many ski. With its almost 13,000 square kilometres, the oblast is ranked 23rd by area and 15th by population as according to the 2001 Ukrainian Census, the oblast is also referred to as the Transcarpathian Oblast, Transcarpathia, Zakarpattya, or historically as Subcarpathian Rus. In other languages the oblast is named, Rusyn, Подкарпатьска област, the Zakarpattia Oblast has a total area of 12,800 km2 and is located on southwestern slopes and foothills of the Carpathian Mountains covering around 80% of area in the region. The rest of the region is covered by the Transcarpathian Lowland which is part of the Pannonian plain, Zakarpattia is the only Ukrainian oblast to have boundaries with four countries, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. The Zakarpattia Oblast mostly consists of mountains and small hills covered with deciduous and coniferous forests, Mountains cover about 80% of the oblasts area, and cross from North-East to South-East. The Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians, part of which are located within Zakarpattia Oblast, were recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007, the largest rivers that flow through the oblast include the Tysa, Borzhava, and the Tereblia. A high altitude lake is located in Rakhiv Raion, which is the highest in the region, the lake is located in the Hoverla preserve on the slopes of Turkul mountain. The lakes area is 3,000 square metres and it is located 1,750 metres above sea level, the regions climate is moderate and continental with about 700–1,000 mm of rainfall per year. The average temperature in summer is +21 °С and −4 °С in winter, with an elevation of 2,061 metres above sea level, Hoverla, part of the Chornohora mountain range, is the highest point in the oblast. The lowest point,101 m above sea level, is located in the village of Ruski Heyevtsi in the Uzhhorodskyi Raion, the lands of Transcarpathia were part of the Kingdom of Hungary since 896. As such, it formed part of Austria-Hungary until the latters demise at the end of World War I and it approximately consists of four Hungarian counties, Bereg, Ung, Ugocsa and Maramaros. This region was part of the short-lived West Ukrainian National Republic in 1918. The region was annexed by Romania by the end of year, mostly the eastern portion such as Rakhiv. It was later recaptured by Hungarian Soviet Republic in the summer of 1919. S, zatkovich was appointed governor by Czechoslovakias first president, T. G. Masaryk in 1920, and served for about one year until he resigned over differences regarding the regions autonomy
21.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
22.
Hungarian language
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Hungarian is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary it is spoken by communities of Hungarian people in neighbouring countries. Like Finnish and Estonian, it belongs to the Uralic language family, its closest relatives being Mansi and it is one of several European languages not part of the Indo-European languages, and the most widely-spoken European language that does not belong to the Indo-European family. The Hungarian name for the language is magyar or magyar nyelv, the word Magyar is used as an English and Hungarian word to refer to Hungarian people as an ethnic group. Hungarian is a member of the Uralic language family, the name of Hungary could be a result of regular sound changes of Ungrian/Ugrian, and the fact that the Eastern Slavs referred to Hungarians as Ǫgry/Ǫgrove seemed to confirm that. Current literature favors the hypothesis that it comes from the name of the Turkic tribe Onogur, there are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and the other Ugric languages. For example, Hungarian /aː/ corresponds to Khanty /o/ in certain positions, for example, Hungarian ház house vs. Khanty xot house, and Hungarian száz hundred vs. Khanty sot hundred. The distance between the Ugric and Finnic languages is greater, but the correspondences are also regular, during the later half of the 19th century, a competing hypothesis proposed a Turkic affinity of Hungarian. Following an academic debate known as Az ugor-török háború, the Finno-Ugric hypothesis was concluded the sounder of the two, foremost based on work by the German linguist Josef Budenz. The traditional view argues that the Hungarian language separated from its Ugric relatives in the first half of the 1st millennium b. c. e. in western Siberia, east of the southern Urals. The Hungarians gradually changed their lifestyle from settled hunters to nomadic pastoralists, in Hungarian, Iranian loans date back to the time immediately following the breakup of Ugric and probably span well over a millennium. Among these include tehén ‘cow’, tíz ‘ten’, tej ‘milk’, increasing archaeological evidence from present-day southern Bashkortostan found in the previous decades confirms the existence of Hungarian settlements between the Volga River and Ural Mountains. The Onogurs later had a influence on the language, especially between the 5th-9th centuries. This layer of Turkic loans is large and varied, and includes words borrowed from Oghur Turkic, e. g. borjú ‘calf’, dél ‘noon, many words related to agriculture, to state administration or even to family relations have such backgrounds. Hungarian syntax and grammar were not influenced in a dramatic way during these 300 years. After the arrival of the Hungarians into the Carpathian Basin the language came into contact with different speech communities, Turkic loans from this period come mainly from the Pechenegs and Cumanians who settled in Hungary during the 12th-13th centuries, e. g. koboz ‘cobza’, komondor ‘mop dog’. Hungarian borrowed many words from especially the neighbouring Slavic languages, in exchange, these languages also borrowed words from Hungarian, e. g. Serbo-Croatian ašov from Hung ásó ‘spade’. Approximately 1. 6% of the Romanian lexicon is of Hungarian origin, on the basis of the growing genetic evidence, the accepted origin theory is contested by geneticists too
23.
Polish language
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Polish is a West Slavic language spoken primarily in Poland and is the native language of the Poles. It belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of the West Slavic languages, Polish is the official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the languages of the European Union. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic Latin script, Polish is closely related to Kashubian, Silesian, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, after Russian, in history, Polish is known to be an important language, both diplomatically and academically in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a language in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine, west and central Lithuania, as well as the northern parts of the Czech Republic. There are 55 million Polish language speakers around the world, Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. With Christianity, Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet, which made it possible to write down Polish, the precursor to modern Polish is the Old Polish language. Ultimately, Polish is thought to descend from the unattested Proto-Slavic language, Poland is the most linguistically homogeneous European country, nearly 97% of Polands citizens declare Polish as their first language. Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, Polish is the most widely used minority language in Lithuanias Vilnius County and is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries, in the United States, Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census were found in three states, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services offer services available in Polish at all of their machines in addition to English and Spanish. According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England, in Canada, there is a significant Polish Canadian population, There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to the 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto and Montreal. The geographical distribution of the Polish language was affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II. Poles settled in the Recovered Territories in the west and north and this tendency toward a homogeneity also stems from the vertically integrated nature of the authoritarian Polish Peoples Republic. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak standard Polish somewhat differently, first-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty distinguishing regional variations
24.
Romani language
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Romani is any of several languages of the Romani people belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. According to Ethnologue, seven varieties of Romani are divergent enough to be considered languages of their own, the largest of these are Vlax Romani, Balkan Romani, and Sinte Romani. The differences between various varieties can be as big as, for example, differences between various Slavic languages, speakers of the Romani language usually refer to the language as řomani čhib the Romani language or řomanes in a Rom way. This derives from the Romani word řom, meaning either a member of the group or husband and this is also where the term Roma derives in English, although some Roma groups refer to themselves using other demonyms. The English spelling Rromani language may also be found, reflecting a different transcription of the Romani phoneme ř, before the late nineteenth century, English-language texts usually referred to the language as the Gypsy language. In the USA, gypsy is still the term, as Romani is not in common use there. In the 18th century, it was shown by studies that Romani belongs to the Indo-European language family. Romani is an Indo-Aryan language that is part of the Balkan sprachbund and it is the only New Indo-Aryan spoken exclusively outside of the Indian subcontinent. Romani is sometimes classified in the Central Zone or Northwestern Zone Indo-Aryan languages, Romani shares a number of features with the Central Zone languages. The most significant isoglosses are the shift of Old Indo-Aryan r̥ to u or i, however, unlike other Central Zone languages, Romani preserves many dental clusters. This implies that Romani split from the Central Zone languages before the Middle Indo-Aryan period, however, Romani shows some features of New Indo-Aryan, such as erosion of the original nominal case system towards a nominative/oblique dichotomy, with new grammaticalized case suffixes added on. This means that the Romani exodus from India could not have happened until late in the first millennium CE, many words are similar to the Marwari and Lambadi languages spoken in large parts of India. However, Romani is nearer to the Marwari spoken in Rajasthan, Romani also shows some similarity to the Northwestern Zone languages. In particular, the grammaticalization of enclitic pronouns as person markers on verbs is also found in such as Kashmiri. This evidences a northwest migration during the split from the Central Zone languages consistent with a migration to Europe. Based on these data, Matras views Romani as kind of Indian hybrid, to r and ř, and shift of inflectional -a to -o. After exiting the Indian subcontinent, Romani was heavily affected by contact with European languages, the most significant of these was Medieval Greek, which contributed lexically, phonemically, and grammatically to Early Romani. This includes inflectional affixes for nouns, and verbs that are productive with borrowed vocabulary, the shift to VO word order
25.
Rusyn language
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Rusyn /ˈruːsᵻn/, also known in English as Ruthene UK /rʊˈθiːn/ US /ruːˈθiːn/, is an Eastern Slavic language spoken by the Rusyns of Eastern Europe and historically in parts of Central Europe. There are controversial political implications about the nature of Rusyn as a language or dialect, some linguists treat it as a distinct language, whereas some Ukrainian scholars of Slavic languages treat it as a dialect of Ukrainian. The classification and identification of the Rusyn language is historically and politically problematic, before World War I, Rusyns were recognized as the Ukrainians of Galicia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand had planned to them as one of the ten states of a planned United States of Greater Austria before his assassination. After the war, Austria-Hungary was partitioned, and Carpathian Ukraine was appended to the new Czechoslovak state as its easternmost province, with the advent of World War II, Carpathian Ukraine declared its independence, lasting one day, until its annexation by Hungary. Poland did the same, using internal exile to move all Rusyns from the homelands to western areas conquered from Germany. Scholars with the former Institute of Slavic and Balkan Studies in Moscow formally re-acknowledged Rusyn as a language in 1992. These studies were supported by the Russian Academy of Sciences. Ukrainian politicians do not recognise Rusyns as an ethnicity, regardless of Rusyn self-identification. Ukraine officially considers Rusyn a dialect of Ukrainian, related to the Hutsul dialect of Ukrainian, attempts to standardise variants of Rusyn have been unsuccessful. Rusyns live in four countries, and efforts are hampered because Rusyns living outside the home region often do not speak the language fluently. Different orthographies have been developed, and a number of different grammatical standards exist and it is not possible to estimate accurately the number of fluent speakers of Rusyn, however, their number is estimated in the tens of thousands, primarily living in Ukraine and Slovakia. Serbia has recognized Rusyn, more precisely Pannonian Rusyn in Vojvodina, since 1995, Rusyn has been recognized as a minority language in Slovakia, enjoying the status of an official language in municipalities where more than 20 percent of the inhabitants speak Rusyn. Rusyn is listed as a language by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia and Romania. The Rusyn dialect was codified as a language in Vojvodina region of Yugoslavia in 1923, early grammars include Dmytrij Vyslockijs Карпаторусский букварь Vanja Hunjanky and Metodyj Trochanovskijs Буквар. The Carpatho-Rusyn language can be divided as follows, Boiko, Hutsul, Lemko, until World War II, the letter Ѣ ѣ was used, and was pronounced /ji/ or /i/. The Rusin Question in a Nutshell, a new Slavic language is born. The Rusyn literary language in Slovakia, the Slavic and East European Journal, Vol.42, No.2
26.
Yiddish
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Yiddish is the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews. Yiddish is written with a fully vocalized alphabet based on the Hebrew script, the earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז or טײַטש, a variant of tiutsch, the contemporary name for Middle High German. Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון, distinguishing it from לשון־קדש, the term Yiddish, short for Yiddish-Teitsch, did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century the language was commonly called Jewish, especially in non-Jewish contexts. Modern Yiddish has two major forms, Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern, Mideastern, and Northeastern dialects, Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by the extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern, Midwestern, and Northwestern dialects, the term Yiddish is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with Jewish, to designate attributes of Ashkenazi culture. Prior to the Holocaust, there were over 10 million speakers of Yiddish, 85% of the Jews who died in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, assimilation following World War II further decreased the use of Yiddish both among survivors and Yiddish-speakers from other countries. However, the number of speakers is increasing in global Hasidic communities, the established view is that, as with other Jewish languages, Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they then Judaized. Exactly what German base lies behind the earliest form of Yiddish is disputed, both Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum developed this model further in the mid-1950s. In Weinreichs view, this Old Yiddish substrate later bifurcated into two versions of the language, Western and Eastern Yiddish. They retained the Semitic vocabulary needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, recent linguistic research has finessed, contested, or challenged the Weinreich model, providing alternative approaches to the origins of Yiddish. Some theorists argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian dialect base, the two main candidates for the germinal matrix of Yiddish, the Rhineland and Bavaria, are not necessarily incompatible. There may have been developments in the two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish. Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged from contact between speakers of High German and Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East, wexlers model has met with little academic support, and strong critical challenges, especially among historical linguists. Alternative theories recognize the extent of Yiddishs Germanic vocabulary. Ashkenaz was centered on the Rhineland and the Palatinate, in what is now the westernmost part of Germany and its geographic extent did not coincide with the German principalities of the time, and it included northern France. Ashkenaz bordered on the inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, the Sephardim or Spanish Jews
27.
Bohemia
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Bohemia is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech lands in the present-day Czech Republic. Bohemia was a duchy of Great Moravia, later an independent principality, a kingdom in the Holy Roman Empire, and subsequently a part of the Habsburg Monarchy, after World War I and the establishment of an independent Czechoslovak state, Bohemia became a part of Czechoslovakia. Between 1938 and 1945, border regions with sizeable German-speaking minorities of all three Czech lands were joined to Nazi Germany as the Sudetenland, in 1990, the name was changed to the Czech Republic, which become a separate state in 1993 with the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Until 1948, Bohemia was a unit of Czechoslovakia as one of its lands. Bohemia was bordered in the south by Upper and Lower Austria, in the west by Bavaria and in the north by Saxony and Lusatia, in the northeast by Silesia, and in the east by Moravia. In the 2nd century BC, the Romans were competing for dominance in northern Italy, the Romans defeated the Boii at the Battle of Placentia and the Battle of Mutina. After this, many of the Boii retreated north across the Alps, much later Roman authors refer to the area they had once occupied as Boiohaemum. The earliest mention was by Tacitus Germania 28, and later mentions of the name are in Strabo. The name appears to include the tribal name Boi- plus the Germanic element *haimaz home and this Boiohaemum was apparently isolated to the area where King Marobods kingdom was centred, within the Hercynian forest. The Czech name Čechy is derived from the name of the Slavic ethnic group, the Czechs, Bohemia, like neighbouring Bavaria, is named after the Boii, who were a large Celtic nation known to the Romans for their migrations and settlement in northern Italy and other places. Another part of the nation moved west with the Helvetii into southern France, to the south, over the Danube, the Romans extended their empire, and to the southeast in Hungaria, were Sarmatian peoples. In the area of modern Bohemia the Marcomanni and other Suebic groups were led by their king Marobodus and he took advantage of the natural defenses provided by its mountains and forests. In late classical times and the early Middle Ages, two new Suebic groupings appeared to the west of Bohemia in southern Germany, the Alemanni, many Suebic tribes from the Bohemian region took part in such movements westwards, even settling as far away as Spain and Portugal. With them were also tribes who had pushed from the east, such as the Vandals, other groups pushed southwards towards Pannonia. These are precursors of todays Czechs, though the amount of Slavic immigration is a subject of debate. The Slavic influx was divided into two or three waves, the first wave came from the southeast and east, when the Germanic Lombards left Bohemia. Soon after, from the 630s to 660s, the territory was taken by Samos tribal confederation and his death marked the end of the old Slavonic confederation, the second attempt to establish such a Slavonic union after Carantania in Carinthia. Other sources divide the population of Bohemia at this time into the Merehani, Marharaii, Beheimare, Christianity first appeared in the early 9th century, but only became dominant much later, in the 10th or 11th century
28.
Moravia
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Moravia is a historical country in the Czech Republic and one of the historical Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Czech Silesia. Moravia has an area of over 22,348.87 km2 and about 3 million inhabitants, the statistics from 1921 states, that the whole area of Moravia including the enclaves in Silesia covers 22,623.41 km2. The people are historically named Moravians, a subgroup of Czechs, the land takes its name from the Morava river, which rises in the northern tip of the region and flows southward to the opposite end, being its major stream. Moravias largest city and historical capital is Brno, however before being sacked by the Swedish army during the Thirty Years War, though officially abolished by an administrative reform in 1949, Moravia is still commonly acknowledged as a specific land in the Czech Republic. Moravian people are aware of their Moravian identity and there is some rivalry between them and the Czechs from Bohemia. Moravia occupies most of the part of the Czech Republic. Moravian territory is naturally strongly determined, in fact, as the Morava river basin, with effect of mountains in the west and partly in the east. Moravia occupies a position in Central Europe. All the highlands in the west and east of part of Europe run west-east. Moravia borders Bohemia in the west, Lower Austria in the south, Slovakia in the southeast, Poland very shortly in the north and its natural boundary is formed by the Sudetes mountains in the north, the Carpathians in the east and the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands in the west. The Thaya river meanders along the border with Austria and the tripoint of Moravia, Austria and Slovakia is at the confluence of the Thaya, the northeast border with Silesia runs partly along the Moravice, Oder and Ostravice rivers. Between 1782–1850, Moravia also included a portion of the former province of Silesia – the Austrian Silesia. Geologically, Moravia covers an area between the Bohemian Massif and the Carpathians, and between the Danube basin and the North European Plain. Its core geomorphological features are three wide vales, namely the Dyje-Svratka Vale, the Upper Morava Vale and the Lower Morava Vale, the former two form the westernmost part of the Subcarpathia, the latter one is the northernmost part of the Vienna Basin. The vales surround the low range of Central Moravian Carpathians, the highest mountains of Moravia are situated on its northern border in Hrubý Jeseník, the highest peak is Praděd. Second highest are the Moravian-Silesian Beskids at the very east, with Smrk, the White Carpathians along the southeastern border rise up to 970 m at Velká Javořina. The spacious, but moderate Bohemian-Moravian Highlands on the west reach 837 m at Devět skal. The fluvial system of Moravia is very cohesive, as the border is similar to the watershed of the Morava river
29.
Czech Silesia
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Czech Silesia is the name given to the part of the historical region of Silesia presently located in the Czech Republic. While not today an administrative entity in itself, Czech Silesia is, together with Bohemia and Moravia, in this context, it is often mentioned as Silesia even though it is only around one tenth of the area of the historic land of Silesia. It lies in the north-east of the Czech Republic, predominantly in the Moravian-Silesian Region, Czech Silesia borders Moravia in the south, Poland in the north and Slovakia in the southeast. After Ostrava, the most important cities are Opava and Český Těšín, historically Český Těšín is the western part of the city of Cieszyn which nowadays lies in Poland. Situated in the Sudetes, it is cornered by the Carpathians in the east and its major rivers are the Oder, Opava and Olše. The first Germanic settlements were built in the second century, later the Germanic tribes moved west and Slavs came into the country. It was re-organised as the Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia, in 1900, the Duchy occupied an area of 5,140 km² and had a population of 670,000. Hlučín Region, formerly part of Prussian Silesia, also part of Czechoslovakia under the Treaty of Versailles in 1920. Following the Munich Agreement of 1938, most of Czech Silesia became part of the Reichsgau Sudetenland and Poland occupied the Zaolzie area on the west bank of the Olza. With the exception of the areas around Cieszyn, Ostrava and Hlučín, following the Second World War, Czech Silesia and Hlučínsko were returned to Czechoslovakia and the ethnic Germans were expelled. The border with Poland was once again set along the Olza, the population mainly speaks Czech with altered vowels. Some of the native Slavic population speak Lach, which is classed by Ethnologue as a dialect of Czech, in Cieszyn Silesia a unique dialect is also spoken, mostly by members of the Polish minority there
30.
Carpathian Ruthenia
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Before World War I most of this region was part of the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary. In the interwar period, it was part of the First, during World War II, the region was annexed by the Kingdom of Hungary once again. After the war, it part of Soviet Ukraine. It is a diverse region, inhabited by Ukrainian, Rusyn, Lemko, Hungarian, Slovak. It also has small Hutsul, Jewish, Romani, Szekler, the nomenclature of the region depends on nationality, language/dialect, geographical perspective and political point of view. The name Carpathian Ruthenia is sometimes used for a contiguous area of Ukraine, Slovakia. Most Rusyns, however, use the term Zakarpattia, under suppression of Ukraine some Ruthenians and Hungarians identified themselves as Ukrainians. Carpathian Ruthenia is usually known as Transcarpathia, during the period in which the region was administered by the Hungarian states it was officially referred to in Hungarian as Subcarpathia or North-Eastern Upper Hungary. The Romanian name of the region is Maramureş, Romania includes the southern Maramureş region, on the south bank of the Tisa river. The name of the mountains themselves is Carpații Păduroși which means Wooden Carpathians, the main city of the Romanian Maramureş region is Sighetu Marmației. In 1945, most of the region was annexed by Soviet Union, the region has subsequently been referred to as Zakarpattia or Transcarpathia, and on occasions as Carpathian Rus’, Transcarpathian Rus’, Subcarpathian Rus’. Uzhhorod Mukachevo Khust Berehovo Vynohradiv Chop Svaliava Rakhiv Tiachiv Irshava Slavic tribes began to migrate from their Transcarpathia homeland in the 4th century, in 896 the Hungarians crossed the Carpathian Range and migrated into the Pannonian Basin. Anonymus chronicle and Nestor chronicle wrote that Hungarian tribes had to fight against local Slavs, prince Laborec fell from power under the efforts of the Hungarians and the Kievan forces, many of these forces remained behind and were assimilated by the White Croats. As the Hungarians established the borders of Kingdom of Hungary along the Carpathian Mountains, local Slavic nobility often intermarried with the Hungarian nobles to the south. Prince Rostislav, a Ruthenian noble unable to continue his familys rule of Kiev, governed a great deal of Transcarpathia from 1243 to 1261 for his father-in-law, Béla IV of Hungary. Later, the county system was expanded to whole Transcarpathia. From 1280 to 1320, north-western part of Carpathian Ruthenia was part of the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, from 1526, the region was divided between Habsburg Monarchy and Eastern Hungarian Kingdom. Beginning in 1570, the region was divided between the Habsburg Monarchy and vassal Ottoman Principality of Transylvania, part of Transcarpathia under Habsburg administration was included into the Captaincy of Upper Hungary, which was one of the administrative units of the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary
31.
Central Europe
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Central Europe lies between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. The concept of Central Europe is based on a historical, social and cultural identity. Central Europe is going through a phase of strategic awakening, with such as the CEI, Centrope. While the regions economy shows high disparities with regard to income, elements of unity for Western and Central Europe were Roman Catholicism and Latin. According to Hungarian historian Jenő Szűcs, foundations of Central European history at the first millennium were in connection with Western European development. The keyword of Western social development after millennium was the spread of liberties and autonomies in Western Europe and these phenomena appeared in the middle of the 13th century in Central European countries. There were self-governments of towns, counties and parliaments, in 1335 under the rule of the King Charles I of Hungary, the castle of Visegrád, the seat of the Hungarian monarchs was the scene of the royal summit of the Kings of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary. They agreed to cooperate closely in the field of politics and commerce, in the Middle Ages, countries in Central Europe adopted Magdeburg rights. Before 1870, the industrialization that had developed in Western and Central Europe, even in Eastern Europe, industrialization lagged far behind. Russia, for example, remained rural and agricultural. The concept of Central Europe was already known at the beginning of the 19th century, an example of that-time vision of Central Europe may be seen in J. Partsch’s book of 1903. On 21 January 1904, Mitteleuropäischer Wirtschaftsverein was established in Berlin with economic integration of Germany, another time, the term Central Europe became connected to the German plans of political, economic and cultural domination. The bible of the concept was Friedrich Naumann’s book Mitteleuropa in which he called for a federation to be established after the war. The concept failed after the German defeat in World War I, the revival of the idea may be observed during the Hitler era. According to Emmanuel de Martonne, in 1927 the Central European countries included, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, italy and Yugoslavia are not considered by the author to be Central European because they are located mostly outside Central Europe. The author use both Human and Physical Geographical features to define Central Europe, the interwar period brought new geopolitical system and economic and political problems, and the concept of Central Europe took a different character. The centre of interest was moved to its eastern part – the countries that have appeared on the map of Europe, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, however, the conflict of interests was too big and neither Little Entente nor Intermarium ideas succeeded. The interwar period brought new elements to the concept of Central Europe, after the war, the Eastern part of Central Europe was placed at the centre of the concept
32.
Sudeten Germans
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German Bohemians, later known as the Sudeten Germans, were ethnic Germans living in the lands of the Bohemian Crown, which later became an integral part of the state of Czechoslovakia. Ethnic Germans migrated into Bohemia, a part of the Holy Roman Empire, since the 11th century, mostly in the regions of the Sudetenland. They became known as the Sudeten Germans after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, after 1945, most ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia to Germany and Austria. The area that became known as the Sudetenland possessed chemical works and lignite mines, as well as textile, china, the Bohemian border with Bavaria was inhabited primarily by Germans. The Upper Palatine Forest, which extends along the Bavarian frontier, Moravia contained patches of locked German territory to the north and south. More characteristic were the German language islands, towns inhabited by German minorities and this form of separation continued until the end of the Second World War, when the Germans were expelled. In the English language, ethnic Germans that originated in the Kingdom of Bohemia were traditionally referred to as ″German Bohemians″ and this appellation utilizes the broad definition of Bohemia, which includes all of the three Bohemian crown lands, Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia. In the German language, it is common to distinguish between the three lands, hence the prominent terms Deutschböhmen, Deutschmährer and Deutschschlesier. Even in German, however, the use of ″Bohemian″ is also found. The term ″Sudeten Germans″ came about during rising ethnic nationalism in the early 20th century and it coincided with the rise of another new term, ″the Sudetenland″, which referred only to the parts of the former Kingdom of Bohemia that were inhabited predominantly by ethnic Germans. These names were derived from the Sudeten Mountains, which form the border of the Czech lands. As these terms were used by the Nazi German regime to push forward the creation of a Greater Germanic Reich. There have been ethnic Germans living in the Bohemian crown lands since the Middle Ages, Czechs made up about 20 percent of the student body at the time of its founding, while the rest was primarily German. For centuries, German Bohemians played important roles in the economy, for example, forest glass production was a common industry among German Bohemians. Though they were living beyond the medieval Kingdom of Germany, an independent German Bohemian awareness, however, was not widespread, individuals were usually seen as Bohemians, Moravians, Silesians. With the rise of the Habsburgs in Bohemia after the 1620 Battle of White Mountain, increasingly, the Bohemian crown lands were ruled from the Austrian capital Vienna, which favored the dominance of both the German language and German culture. As the 19th century arrived, resistance to the German domination began to develop among the Czech population, each ethnicity, in regions in which they were the majority, tried to retain sovereignty over their own affairs. Czechs and Germans generally maintained separate schools, churches, and public institutions, nevertheless, despite this separation, it was not uncommon for Germans to understand some Czech, or for Czechs to speak some German
33.
Nazi Germany
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Nazi Germany is the common English name for the period in German history from 1933 to 1945, when Germany was governed by a dictatorship under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Under Hitlers rule, Germany was transformed into a fascist state in which the Nazi Party took totalitarian control over all aspects of life. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich from 1933 to 1943, the period is also known under the names the Third Reich and the National Socialist Period. The Nazi regime came to an end after the Allied Powers defeated Germany in May 1945, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. The Nazi Party then began to eliminate all opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the powers and offices of the Chancellery, a national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer of Germany. All power was centralised in Hitlers person, and his word became above all laws, the government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitlers favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending, extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahnen. The return to economic stability boosted the regimes popularity, racism, especially antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime. The Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the purest branch of the Aryan race, millions of Jews and other peoples deemed undesirable by the state were murdered in the Holocaust. Opposition to Hitlers rule was ruthlessly suppressed, members of the liberal, socialist, and communist opposition were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. The Christian churches were also oppressed, with many leaders imprisoned, education focused on racial biology, population policy, and fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed, recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, and the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased the Third Reich on the international stage. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, the government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. Beginning in the late 1930s, Nazi Germany made increasingly aggressive territorial demands and it seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Hitler made a pact with Joseph Stalin and invaded Poland in September 1939. In alliance with Italy and smaller Axis powers, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940, reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas, and a German administration was established in what was left of Poland. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the tide gradually turned against the Nazis, who suffered major military defeats in 1943
34.
Hungary
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Hungary is a unitary parliamentary republic in Central Europe. With about 10 million inhabitants, Hungary is a member state of the European Union. The official language is Hungarian, which is the most widely spoken language in Europe. Hungarys capital and largest metropolis is Budapest, a significant economic hub, major urban areas include Debrecen, Szeged, Miskolc, Pécs and Győr. His great-grandson Stephen I ascended to the throne in 1000, converting the country to a Christian kingdom, by the 12th century, Hungary became a middle power within the Western world, reaching a golden age by the 15th century. Hungarys current borders were established in 1920 by the Treaty of Trianon after World War I, when the country lost 71% of its territory, 58% of its population, following the interwar period, Hungary joined the Axis Powers in World War II, suffering significant damage and casualties. Hungary became a state of the Soviet Union, which contributed to the establishment of a four-decade-long communist dictatorship. On 23 October 1989, Hungary became again a democratic parliamentary republic, in the 21st century, Hungary is a middle power and has the worlds 57th largest economy by nominal GDP, as well as the 58th largest by PPP, out of 188 countries measured by the IMF. As a substantial actor in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds 36th largest exporter and importer of goods, Hungary is a high-income economy with a very high standard of living. It keeps up a security and universal health care system. Hungary joined the European Union in 2004 and part of the Schengen Area since 2007, Hungary is a member of the United Nations, NATO, WTO, World Bank, the AIIB, the Council of Europe and Visegrád Group. Well known for its cultural history, Hungary has been contributed significantly to arts, music, literature, sports and science. Hungary is the 11th most popular country as a tourist destination in Europe and it is home to the largest thermal water cave system, the second largest thermal lake in the world, the largest lake in Central Europe, and the largest natural grasslands in Europe. The H in the name of Hungary is most likely due to historical associations with the Huns. The rest of the word comes from the Latinized form of Medieval Greek Oungroi, according to an explanation the Greek name was borrowed from Proto-Slavic Ǫgǔri, in turn borrowed from Oghur-Turkic Onogur. Onogur was the name for the tribes who later joined the Bulgar tribal confederacy that ruled the eastern parts of Hungary after the Avars. The Hungarians likely belonged to the Onogur tribal alliance and it is possible they became its ethnic majority. The Hungarian endonym is Magyarország, composed of magyar and ország, the word magyar is taken from the name of one of the seven major semi-nomadic Hungarian tribes, magyeri
35.
Zaolzie
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Zaolzie is the Polish name for an area now in the Czech Republic which was disputed between interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia. The name means lands beyond the Olza River, it is also called Śląsk zaolziański, equivalent terms in other languages include Zaolší in Czech and Olsa-Gebiet in German. The Zaolzie region was created in 1920, when Cieszyn Silesia was divided between Czechoslovakia and Poland, Zaolzie forms the eastern part of the Czech portion of Cieszyn Silesia. The division did not satisfy any side, and persisting conflict over the region led to its annexation by Poland in October 1938, after German invasion of Poland in 1939, the area became a part of Nazi Germany until 1945. After the war, the 1920 borders were restored, historically, the largest specified ethnic group inhabiting this area were those identifying as Poles. Under Austrian rule, Cieszyn Silesia was initially divided into three, and later into four districts, one of them, Frýdek, had a mostly Czech population, the other three were mostly inhabited by Poles. During the 19th century the number of ethnic Germans grew, another significant ethnic group were the Jews, but almost the entire Jewish population was exterminated during World War II. In addition to the Polish, Czech and German national orientations there was another group living in the area, the Ślązakowcy, the term Zaolzie is used predominantly in Poland and also commonly by the Polish minority living in the territory. In Czech it is referred to as České Těšínsko/Českotěšínsko, or as Těšínsko or Těšínské Slezsko. The Czech equivalent of Zaolzie is rarely used, the term of Zaolzie is also used by some foreign scholars, e. g. American ethnolinguist Kevin Hannan. The term Zaolzie denotes the territory of the districts of Český Těšín and Fryštát. It makes up the part of the Czech portion of Cieszyn Silesia. However, Polish historian Józef Szymeczek notes that the term is often used for the whole Czech part of Cieszyn Silesia. Since the 1960 reform of administrative divisions of Czechoslovakia, Zaolzie has consisted of Karviná District, after the Migration Period the area was settled by Slavs, which were later organized into the Golensizi tribe. The tribe had a large and important gord situated in contemporary Chotěbuz, after the fall of Great Moravia in 907 the area could have been under the influence of Bohemian rulers. In the late 10th century Poland, ruled by Bolesław I Chrobry, began to contend for the region, from 950 to 1060 it was under the rule of the Duchy of Bohemia, and from 1060 it was part of Poland. The castellany was then a part of Duchy of Silesia, in 1172 it became a part of Duchy of Racibórz, and from 1202 of Duchy of Opole and Racibórz. In order to strengthen the border Władysław of Opole decided to found Orlová monastery in 1268, upon the death of Elizabeth Lucretia, its last ruler from the Polish Piast dynasty in 1653, it passed directly to the Czech kings from the Habsburg dynasty
36.
Silesia
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Silesia is a region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic and Germany. Its area is about 40,000 km2, and its population about 8,000,000, Silesia is located along the Oder River. It consists of Lower Silesia and Upper Silesia, the region is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesias largest city and historical capital is Wrocław, the biggest metropolitan area is the Upper Silesian metropolitan area, the centre of which is Katowice. Parts of the Czech city of Ostrava fall within the borders of Silesia, Silesias borders and national affiliation have changed over time, both when it was a hereditary possession of noble houses and after the rise of modern nation-states. The first known states to hold there were probably those of Greater Moravia at the end of the 9th century. In the 10th century, Silesia was incorporated into the early Polish state, in the 14th century, it became a constituent part of the Bohemian Crown Lands under the Holy Roman Empire, which passed to the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy in 1526. Most of Silesia was conquered by Prussia in 1742, later becoming part of the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the varied history with changing aristocratic possessions resulted in an abundance of castles in Silesia, especially in the Jelenia Góra valley. The remaining former Austrian parts of Silesia were partitioned to Czechoslovakia, in 1945, after World War II, the bulk of Silesia was transferred to Polish jurisdiction by the Potsdam Agreement of the victorious Allied Powers and became part of Poland. The small Lusatian strip west of the Oder-Neisse line, which had belonged to Silesia since 1815 and its centres are Görlitz and Bautzen. Most inhabitants of Silesia today speak the languages of their respective countries. The population of Upper Silesia is native, while Lower Silesia was settled by a German-speaking population before 1945, an ongoing debate exists whether Silesian speech should be considered a dialect of Polish or a separate language. Also, a Lower Silesian German dialect is used, although today it is almost extinct and it is used by expellees within Germany, as well as Germans who were left behind. The names all relate to the name of a river and mountain in mid-southern Silesia, the mountain served as a cultic place. Ślęża is listed as one of the numerous Pre-Indo-European topographic names in the region, according to some Polish Slavists, the name Ślęża or Ślęż is directly related to the Old Slavic words ślęg or śląg, which means dampness, moisture, or humidity. They disagree with the hypothesis of an origin for the name Śląsk from the name of the Silings tribe, in the fourth century BC, Celts entered Silesia, settling around Mount Ślęża near modern Wrocław, Oława, and Strzelin. Germanic Lugii tribes were first recorded within Silesia in the 1st century, Slavic peoples arrived in the region around the 7th century, and by the early ninth century, their settlements had stabilized. Local Slavs started to erect boundary structures like the Silesian Przesieka, the eastern border of Silesian settlement was situated to the west of the Bytom, and east from Racibórz and Cieszyn
37.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
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