Abstract (eng)
The Czech province of the Teutonic Order was forced to live under significant enmities and difficulties from the side of the state authorities in the years of the Second World War and in the first years of the communist rule. The main goal of this doctoral thesis is for the first time to critically assess and appreciate this fight of the order for its rights, the preservation of its pastoral and charitable activities but also its relationship to the rulers of the time on the basis of surviving archive materials. After the end of the First World War, the Teutonic Order newly established itself as a priest institute and gave up its structure of knight order. In the Czechoslovakia, the order developed a rich spectrum of pastoral and charitable-cultural activities in the years 1918–1938. After the annexation of the Sudetenland by Nazi-Germany in autumn 1938, the order was considered to be suspicious because of its loyalty to the Czechoslovakia. All attempts of the Grand Master to save the order were in vain. In the beginning of the year 1939, the order was dissolved and its properties were confiscated.
After the war, a new beginning failed mainly due to the expulsion of Germans from the Czechoslovakia. Moreover, the Ministry of Agriculture already started to confiscate the property of the order referring to the Decrees of the President of the Republic. When the communist came into power in February 1948, the Teutonic Order (together with the Jesuits) was declared main enemies within the Catholic Church, although the order was in desolate state anyway in the time. The violent dissolution of all catholic orders by the communists in the Czechoslovakia in 1950 and the big show trial against the Teutonic Order (1952) meant the definitive end of the order in its traditional area.
In the second chapter, the role of the Teutonic Order in the context of Sudeten German Catholicism is examined; in this regard, its attitude to the rising “new” nationalism after 1933 is analysed. The stance of the Teutonic Order in this years will play a key role in the perception of the order by the national socialists and later also for the discussion about the alleged collaboration of the order leaders and the whole order after the war. The chapter deals also with the dissolution of the order by the Liquidation Commissar (Stillhaltekommissar) in February 1939, the fight of the Grand Master to save the order and the resistance of some brothers in the time of the war (Fr. Walter Horny, Fr. Heribert Kluger).
The third chapter examines the history of the order province in the liberated Czechoslovakia after 1945. The question of the property ownership of the “German” order communities and their national administration or alternatively their expropriation presents the political context, which caused a major conflict in the government. The (communist) Ministry for Agriculture made primarily an effort to confiscate the properties on the basis of the Decrees of the President of the Republic. The order was supported by the People's Party, the Ordinary of Olomouc and by the inter-nunciature in Prague. Further main topics of the chapter are: the expulsion of the German-speaking brothers and sisters, the internment of the Grand Master, the forced administration and the policy of the new provincial Fr. Stanislav Dostál.
The final fourth chapter is focused on the order in the Czechoslovakia in the time after the communists‘ coming into power (1948). The role of the Teutonic Order in the communist propaganda is explored subsequently. The characterization of the Teutonic Order, the ecclesiastical main enemy of the regime together with the Jesuits, seems directly bizarre, because there were just two remaining order priest. The possible reason for this can be that the order embodied in itself in a way the three “eternal enemies of the Czech people”, as the new communist propaganda put it: the Church, the Germans, the aristocracy. Than the chapter sketches the show process against the auxiliary bishop of Olomouc Stanislav Zela, who was, among others, accused that he tried to prevent the confiscations of the property of the Teutonic Order. In the year 1952, the great show process against the Mother Superior of the Teutonic Order sisters Sr. Antonia Wittek took finally place. The main part of the chapter deals with the process. In addition, Jindřich Stuchlík, a familiary priest, was also sentenced to 12 years in prison in this process.