Cleansing the Czechoslovak Borderlands

Eagle Glassheim presents an imaginative account of the postwar history of the Czechoslovak borderlands/the Sudetenland in his new book. Combining a range of engaging visual images with a variety of primary and secondary sources, and even some personal history, the book offers new insights into a complex and sometimes contentious past. In addition to its analysis of the Czechoslovak borderlands, as Glassheim puts it, the book “is also an extended reflection on the idea of rootedness, an idealized condition that intertwines the health of landscapes, communities, and individuals” (12). Indeed, the book explores this theme across the chapters in myriad ways. This approach allows the author to discuss a wide range of ideas related to the Sudeten German expellees and their former homeland. While the book has several guiding themes, none take center stage, which might give some readers uncertain ground to stand upon. At times the discussion focuses on Heimat, at other times health and the environment, elsewhere the narrative emphasizes ethnic cleansing. For Glassheim though, all these themes point to a connection with modernity and the utopian hopes that it holds as well as the dystopian results that it sometimes yields.

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