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11.
The beginning of a new era
After
the death of Karl VI in 1740, the War of Austrian Succession
broke out, which Frederick II of Prussia, whose reign had just
begun, used as opportunity against Maria Theresia, Empress of
Austria and the Holy Roman Empire. He did not dispute her
inheritance, but demanded the surrender of three Silesian
duchies. He marched into Silesia on the 16th of December 1740,
starting the First Silesian War which was soon followed by the
second one. Austria was also pressured severely by Bavaria,
France and Spain. This phase ended with the Peace of Aachen
compelling Maria Theresia to cede Parma and Piacenza to Spain
and to accept the momentous and far-reaching loss of Silesia.
She had hardly begun implementing generous reforms in her
dominion when in 1756 the storm-bells of war sounded again.
International political conflicts again laid the background to
this new war, which subjected the Sudetenlands to severe
trials. Known as The Seven Years War, it was a drawn-out
interplay of bloody battles. Time and again, the Sudetenlands
became the theater of war. The horrors of war appeared on the
horizon again in 1778 when Prussia and Austria had a new
controversy, this time over the Bavarian succession.
The
cession of Silesia to Prussia made the Germans a minority
under the Czechs in Bohemia thereby possibly precipitated the
catastrophe of 1945. Had there been two equal contenders after
1918, a reasonable settlement between the two parties could
possibly have been achieved and engendered a mutually more
agreeeable political development. With the last third of the
18th century, when Austria obtained the provinces of Galicia,
Lodomeria and Bukovina, the German element became a minority
throughout the Austrian monarchy.
Changes
were brought into the lives of the Sudetengermans not only by
the wars, but also by the reforms the Empress and her son
Josef II had initiated (enlightenment, mercantilism,
industrialization, promotion of productivity in farming,
abolition of serfdom, prohibition of torture, elementary
schools for all children, fair distribution of taxes, freedom
of religion). But Josef's reforms evoked criticism too. In the
Alpine regions, in Hungary and in Galicia the peasants opposed
the kaiser, and the Czechs grumbled, because Josef had taken
the Wenzel-crown to Vienna and had not conceded to his
coronation in Prague. In contrast, the Sudetengerman burghers
and peasants served as Josef's enthusiastic and loyal
followers. From the end of the 18th century up to 1918 they
were the most important supporters and determined pioneers of
Josef's state philosophy. No sovereign before him, since the
kings of the Middle-Ages, had such firsthand knowledge of the
conditions in towns and countryside. Often he appeared in
disguise, and only on departing he revealed his identity of
being the emperor. A personage most impressively embodying the
Sudetengerman sentiments of Josef's time is the North-Bohemian
dean Wenzel Hocke - the "Hockewanzel" in common
usage. Josef's successor Leopold ended the reform era and
returned the Bohemian crown to Prague, thereby reconciling the
corporative orders of the land.
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