Böhmen liegt nicht am Meer – Lebenswege sudetendeutscher Sozialdemokraten. Ausstellung

In the organizer's words:

Duration of the exhibition: March 17 to April 22, 2025

In 1919, German Social Democrats founded the German Social Democratic Workers' Party (DSAP) in Teplice in what was then the Czechoslovak Republic. Josef Seliger, a member of the old Austrian Social Democratic Party from near Reichenberg (now Liberec), textile worker, health insurance company official and expert on questions of national cooperation in mixed-national Bohemia, became its chairman.

With the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the German Wehrmacht in 1939, the members of the DSAP were also massively persecuted by the National Socialists and worked from exile. Some of them fled by ship - even though Bohemia is not by the sea. The title of the exhibition alludes to this. Despite their political resistance to Hitler and their fight for the Czechoslovak state, the Sudeten German Social Democrats were not allowed to participate in the reconstruction of Czechoslovakia. As anti-fascists, they were able to obtain Czechoslovakian citizenship, but the majority left Czechoslovakia under the prevailing pressure and restrictions and immediately joined the re-established SPD, especially in Bavaria.

With the founding of the Seliger Community in 1951, the Sudeten German Social Democrats in Germany created their own community as a successor organization to the German Social Democratic Workers' Party in the Czechoslovak Republic.

The bilingual exhibition (German/Czech) is dedicated to the lives of 24 Sudeten German Social Democrats using roll-ups with photos, maps and texts. QR codes supplement the exhibition with further information.

In addition, the exhibition builds a bridge to the present and presents the activities of the Seliger community, which is still committed to a sincere and sustainable German-Czech dialog today.

The exhibition was conceived by Herbert Schmid ("Arbeit und Leben" in Weiden), Dr. Thomas Oellermann (historian), Ulrich Miksch (journalist) and Rainer Pasta (Seliger-Gemeinde).