Lands of the Bohemian Crown
As countries of the Bohemian Crown ( Bohemia also crown; Bohemian Crown, Czech Crown Lands, Czech Česká koruna Země, Koruny české; Latin Bohemiae Corona, Corona Regni Bohemiae ) refers to the totality of the countries as well as with the Kingdom of Bohemia by the common ruler over feudal relations were connected. With the Bohemian crown here is not the material crown, the crown of St. Wenceslas, meant that the king was set on his head, but the royal domination, which was the Czech political system in conjunction with the caste system. The term was until 1918, until the end of the Habsburg monarchy, which included the lands of the Bohemian crown since 1526, common.
History
In the 12th and 13th centuries, only Bohemia, the Margraviate of Moravia and the county of Glatz on duration were interconnected. Under the Luxembourg kings John and Charles IV since 1202 political and dynastic independent from the Polish State Association of Silesian duchies, the Upper and Lower Lusatia and a variety of smaller fiefs were added. The Treaty of Trenčín in 1335 the Polish king Casimir the Great renounced to King John of Bohemia finally to the suzerainty over Silesia, having previously had recognized Bohemian sovereignty for many Silesian princes. The formal connection of individual territories to the crown of Bohemia was called the incorporations.
Charles IV decreed that the lands connection should have regardless of the dynastic developments, although there are the Luxembourg should die once. This was also maintained under the Habsburgs, since Ferdinand I. in 1526 the lands of the Bohemian crown for the House of Habsburg inherited. In the Habsburg monarchy that these countries and the countries of the Hungarian Crown and the Austrian hereditary lands were one of the three main parts of the Central European dominions of this dynasty.
The Bohemian Crown was neither a mere personal union nor a federation of equal members. Instead, the Kingdom of Bohemia and his estates were considered major, the other countries than the limbs. While Bohemia emphasized the difference between the main land and ancillary countries and in addition to the leadership inside claimed the sole representative of the state outward stressed Moravians, Silesians and Lusatian the political autonomy of their countries that had finally united voluntarily with Bohemia.
The leadership of Bohemia was not always provided by the stands of the countries in question addition, although persistently more rights, such as the participation in the election of a king called for since the beginning of the 15th century. ( After 1620, this rivalry become less important, as the lands of the Bohemian crown had inserted into a much larger total monarchy. )
Besides the king ordered the Bohemian crown no common state organs, which was a big disadvantage in times of crisis. Rarely, the levels of all countries met to General Land days. Only the Bohemian Court Chancellery under the leadership of Colonel Chancellor was responsible for all the countries of the crown. ( It was moved in 1620 from Prague to Vienna, where she opened the 1714 building today by that name exists. )
Although hardly any institutions were present, it was especially in the 16th century ever closer political links between the countries of the Bohemian crown, and at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, it seemed as could the Confoederatio Bohemical the political system of the Bohemian crown to be modernized crucial. With the obtained from the Imperial Battle of White Mountain, 1620, this constitutional experiment, however, was quickly ended.
In the following years the crown of Bohemia lost more and more as a state construct in the early modern Habsburg monarchy in importance. Already in 1635 had been removed in the Lausitz Peace of Prague and, in Saxony. The events after 1620 caused a long-lasting political decline of the nation-state of Bohemia, the Czech language was increasingly displaced by the Germans. In the Treaty of Berlin ( 1742), Austria had to cede to Prussia, most of Silesia and the county of Glatz. The Austria remainder of Silesia was Court and State Calendar to 1918 run as Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia in the country as the Bohemian crown; but special rights of the Crown Lands of Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia in Cisleithania existed.
Effects
When falling apart Cisleithania or Austria -Hungary in October / November 1918 put the Czechs, as agreed by their politicians in exile since 1916 with the Triple Entente, for the western part of the Czechoslovak Republic, the boundaries of the lands of the Bohemian crown by. The appeal of German Austria to the Woodrow Wilson proclaimed by self -determination of peoples was unsuccessful for German Bohemia, Deutschmährer and Austrian Silesia.
The lands of the Bohemian crown form with small deviations, for example, in Valtice / mountain or in the Olsa territory of today's Czech Republic since 1993.