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 Czech Republic |  Germany |
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Czech–German relations are the relationships between theCzech Republic andGermany. The two countries share 815 km of common borders and both are members of theEuropean Union,NATO,OECD,OSCE,Council of Europe and theWorld Trade Organization.
| Official name | Czech Republic | Federal Republic of Germany |
|---|---|---|
| Common name | Czechia | Germany |
Flag |  |  |
Coat of arms |  |  |
| Kde domov můj (Czech) | "Deutschlandlied"[a] | |
| 10,649,800 | 84,432,670 | |
| 78,866 km2 (30,450 sq mi) | 357,600 km2 (138,100 sq mi) | |
| 134/km2 (347.1/sq mi) | 232/km2 (600.9/sq mi) | |
| UTC+1 (CET) | ||
Government | Unitaryparliamentary constitutional republic | Federalparliamentary republic |
Capital & largest city |  Prague – 1,324,277 (2,677,964 Metro) |  Berlin – 3,850,809 (6,144,600 Metro) |
Official language | Czech | German |
First leader | Bořivoj I, Duke of Bohemia (867–889, traditionally) Václav Havel (1936–2011, current constitution) | Louis the German (843-876, traditionally) Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967, current constitution) |
Current head of government | Prime MinisterPetr Fiala (ODS; 2021–present) | ChancellorFriedrich Merz (2025–present) |
Current head of state | PresidentPetr Pavel (2023–present) | PresidentFrank-Walter Steinmeier (2019–present) |
| $261.732 billion $24,569per capita | $4.309 trillion $51,384per capita | |
| $432.346 billion $40,586per capita | $5.546 trillion $66,132per capita | |
| Czech koruna (Kč) – CZK | Euro (€) – EUR | |
| 0.891 (very high) – 2017 | 0.942 (very high) – 2021 | |
Expatriates | 21,267Germans in the Czech Republic | 503,000Czechs in Germany |
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Bohemia and Moravia (now in the Czech Republic) were settled in the 6th century byCzechs, as part of thepost-Roman migration of peoples. Later German settlers constituted a minority in the Czech lands and relations between the two communities were generally amiable. In theMiddle Ages, theBohemian (Czech) realm, itself a part of theHoly Roman Empire, extended to territories located in present-day Germany, such asLusatia and theBohemian Palatinate. After the extinction of the CzechPřemyslid dynasty, theKingdom of Bohemia was ruled by theHouse of Luxembourg, theJagiellonians, and finally theHabsburgs. In theThirty Years' War, the Protestant Czechs resisted Holy Roman EmperorFerdinand II's attempt to reintroduce Catholicism. After the Czechs' defeat at theBattle of White Mountain in 1620, the Czech nobility and educated Protestant population was slaughtered or exiled, the Czech lands made a hereditary possession of theAustrian Empire andGerman made the official language. TheCzech language declined, and became endangered until theCzech National Revival in the late 18th century. Tensions deteriorated between the Czechs and the Germans, and afterWorld War I, whenTomáš Garrigue Masaryk convincedAmerican President Woodrow Wilson to establish a Czechoslovak state in Central Europe on the principle of nationalself-determination, after three hundred years of Austrian domination, with a significant German minority (30% of the total population) in the nation'sborderlands, which had a majority German population.
AfterAdolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, the Nazi German government sought to inflame nationalistic tensions in neighbouring Czechoslovakia, and instructed local Nazi leaderKonrad Henlein, the leader of the German minority in the Czech borderlands, to make unreasonable demands on the Czech government and to attempt to paralyse theFirst Czechoslovak Republic. Ethnic German nationalists backed by Hitler demanded the union of German-speaking districts with Germany. At the height of WesternAppeasement of Nazi Germany, the British and French-backedMunich Agreement granted the German areas, including all of the crucialCzechoslovak border fortifications, to Germany. Despite the Czech-French alliance, Czech officials were not invited to negotiate and were informed of the agreement only after its conclusion. The defenceless Czechoslovak state was forced to give up one third of Slovakia to Hungary, and theTrans-Olza area, containing the only railway between the Czech lands and Slovakia, to Poland. The Czechoslovak leadershipfled to London and Hitler seized the rest of Czechoslovakia. TheGerman occupation of Czechoslovakia destroyed the Czechoslovak state, the only Central Europeanparliamentary democracy, and sought to "reintegrate" Bohemia and Moravia into the Nazi empire. This Nazi German policy took the form of so-calledGrundplanung OA (Basic planning) from the summer of 1938, which included the extermination of Czech nation, and later the genocidalGeneralplan Ost.
At the end of the war, as part of thepost-war flight and expulsion of Germans, the German population was expelled from Czechoslovakia in accordance with thePotsdam Agreement andBeneš decrees. These expulsions were carried out by the army and wartime resistance forces. An estimated 2.4 million ethnic Germans were deported toEast andWest Germany, of whom several thousand perished in the population movement. There have been calls within Germany for the compensation of the refugees, which theCzech government has refused to entertain, citing the German occupation, wartime injustices, the German minority's support for theNazi Party, genocidal plans by the German government, and atrocities such as theLidice massacre.
After the end of the Cold War, relations warmed between the newly-reunifiedFederal Republic of Germany and the newly-democraticCzech Republic. On 27 February 1992, German ChancellorHelmut Kohl and Czechoslovak PresidentVáclav Havel signed a treaty of friendship, known asCzech-German Declaration.[2] In 2012, German PresidentJoachim Gauck and Czech PresidentVáclav Klaus jointly visitedLidice, a Czech village razed to the ground by German forces in 1942, heralding a leap in Czech-German rapprochement.[3] As a result of theSchengen Agreement, there are no border checks between the two countries, and their borders are completely open to one another. Citizens from one state may also freely move to and work in the other state as a result of the European Union'sfreedom of movement for workers.
In December 2010 and November 2011,Horst Seehofer was the firstMinister-President of Bavaria, who visited the Czech Republic. This was considered an important step in the dispute over the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans after the Second World War. In February 2013 the then Czech Prime MinisterPetr Nečas was the first Prime Minister to visit the Free State of Bavaria. In a speech in front of the Bavarian Parliament he regretted the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans.[4]
On December 4, 2014, the Minister-President Horst Seehofer opened the Representation of the Free State of Bavaria in the Czech Republic. Among the guests of the opening ceremony were the Czech Prime MinisterBohuslav Sobotka and many Czech and Bavarian ministers. In his speech, Seehofer praised the establishment of a Bavarian Representation in the Czech Republic as a symbol of the growing friendship between Bavaria and the Czech Republic and for a common Europe. The Bavarian Representation should be a place for dialogue, friendship and cooperation.[5]
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TheDeutsche Schule Prag is a German international school in Prague.
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see also:Foreign relations of Czechoslovakia | ||
