Sally Anderson Boström, PhD (she/her) is a literary scholar, poet, and translator. She is Assistant Professor of English at The Technical University of Liberec, where she teaches American literature and culture. She has her PhD from Uppsala University in Sweden and her BA from The University of California at Santa Cruz. Her research interests include Czech borderlands, Czech feminism in the First Republic, Island Studies, Creole languages, and world literature.

The Legacy of Expulsion: Questions of Belonging in North Bohemia

This presentation explores the legacy of the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia, focusing on personal stories of “belonging” from both Czechs and Czech Germans in the region of North Bohemia. In the aftermath of World War II, 12 million ethnic Germans were expelled from Eastern and Central Europe; 3.5 million came from Czechoslovakia. By some estimates, the city where I live, Liberec (formerly Reichenberg), was 90% German before the end of the war. When the majority of these inhabitants were forcibly removed from the city, new inhabitants moved in, primarily from the interior of the Czech lands and what is now Slovakia. The dominant narrative of the newcomers, or osídlenci in Czech (“settlers”), was that they were repopulating a land that was rightfully theirs, often moving into vacant German houses and acquiring left property; this was seen as just retribution for how Czechs had suffered during the Nazi occupation. The postwar resettlement of former Sudetenland has, in most Czech narratives, led to the understanding that the region lacks a sense of community or pride of place. Recent scholarship, however, including the work of Karina Hořeni, is pushing back on these ideas, arguing that locals do indeed feel a sense of home or “belonging” in this region. My research explores the theme of belonging in oral interviews and written narratives.

In Germany, where the word Heimat has been appropriated in far-right narratives of the plights of expellees, contemporary discussions of homeland have become controversial. Using the work of Celia Applegate and Armin Nassehi, this paper looks at how issues of estrangement, modernity, and mobility intrinsic to contemporary understandings of Heimat are visible in borderland narratives. My enquiry into the word “belonging,” compares it to Heimat, while also focusing on how belonging’s dual meaning as both “connection” and “possession,” can help us untangle the complicated narratives of borderland spaces.

As the American-born granddaughter of expellees, I find myself as both insider and outsider in this region. While my presentation focuses primarily on the narratives of others, I will share some of my family’s story, and reflect on what it means that I feel “at home” in these mountains.