1st Edition
Negotiating Identity and Collective Memory in Czech Silesia
By Johana Wyss
Copyright 2026
216 Pages
by
Central European University Press
How do people negotiate identity, memory, and history in Czech Silesia? How do they make sense of a turbulent past marked by mass displacement, shifting borders, and successive political regimes? And what do dominant narratives of Czech nationalism mean for communities living with the absence of others?
This rich ethnography of the city of Opava and the neighbouring Hlučín region follows a... Read more
Introduction
Chapter 1 – Silesia’s turbulent past and present
Chapter 2 – Silesian identity: Hlucíns and Opavians
Chapter 3 – Remembering the vanished others
Chapter 4 – Grandfathers in the Wehrmacht
Chapter 5 – German past, Czech present
Conclusion / Epilogue
Bibliography
Biography
Johana Wyss is a social anthropologist and tenured researcher at the Czech Academy of Sciences. She examines memory politics, identity, political polarisation, and ethno-national formation in Central and Eastern Europe. Her work explores how post-imperial legacies and contested borderland histories shape collective memory and contemporary identity narratives.
