GESSMANN, Marianne (ed.). KREIS NIKOLSBURG. Südmähren: Die Vertreibung aus der Heimat 1945–1946. Geislingen an der Steige: 2015. ISBN 978-3-927498-39-6.
The book brings together the memories of the inhabitants of South Moravia of German nationality, who were deported to the Federal Republic of Germany after 1945, about their old homeland and the circumstances of the act of expulsion itself.
It is important for the study of the Liechtenstein phenomenon that a number of the people about whom the book gives testimony come from came from places that belonged to the former Liechtenstein estates and later became part of the Mikulov district. These include Valtice, Lednice, Břeclav and Hustopeče. The expulsion therefore concerned persons and families whose members often worked in Liechtenstein enterprises or were in contact with the Liechtenstein world at least on a daily basis.Of course, memories, like any ego-document, contain many positives, but also certain pitfalls. Among the positives is the immediacy of personal testimony recording fates and historical contexts that are still little known in the Czech environment. A certain pitfall is the subjectivity of the testimonies, which are not confronted with similarly tragic stories on the Czech side. In addition to the interesting content, the publication also contains many valuable picture appendices, giving testimony about life in South Moravia in the interwar period.
Marianne Gessmann
