Page:Bohemia under Hapsburg misrule (1915).pdf/26

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BOHEMIANS AND SLOVAKS

habitants of the Lusatias were not by origin or preponderatingly Bohemian, but of Polish and Serb (Wend) ancestry, having been largely Germanized at the time they passed under the rule of the Bohemian Kings in the fourteenth century. Generally speaking, the Bohemians inhabited the flat lands of the interior, while the Germans overflowed the border line on the south, west, and north, forming an almost uninterrupted chain of settlements. As a matter of fact, however, there is no compact, unmixed German territory in Bohemia, which is exclusively German and into which the Bohemian workman, going in search of employment to the mines, mills, and shops in the northwest, has not penetrated, and in which he has not domiciled himself. The invasion of Bohemian workmen has virtually rendered bilingual every such Germanized district where industrialism flourishes.

So intermixed are the two races on the border line that a person cannot say confidently that his ancestry is either pure German or pure Bohemian. Observe, for example, the names of Bohemian leaders: Rieger, Brauner, Grégr, Zeithammer. They have an unmistakable Teutonic ring. Again, note the names of Schmeykal, Tascheck, Chlumecky, and Giskra, who lead the German cohorts. These clearly betray Slavic origin. It has been remarked