Brno/Brünn 2026: A milestone for German-Czech reconciliation

Recently, I was in Brno, a city where Czech, German and Jewish people had lived together for centuries. However, this coexistence ended with the rise of nationalism, the Holocaust and the expulsion of the German-speaking population.

Meeting Brno is a Czech initiative that played a key role when in 2015, the city of Brno officially apologised for having imposed collective guilt on 27,000 people who were driven towards the Austrian border in the Brno death march. Several thousand didn’t make it.

For 2026, Meeting Brno invited the Sudeten Germans to hold their traditional annual meeting, the 76^th, for the first time in the Czech Republic. Three million of them were expelled after the war and found a new home elsewhere. Last weekend, many of their descendants met in the Brno Exhibition Centre, where also a lot of Czech visitors came to. It was a historic moment and an opportunity for encounter, dialogue, understanding and reconciliation.

Meeting Brno also initiated a commemoration event on the death march followed by a reconciliation march, in which Germans and Czechs with European flags walked a part of the route together – symbolically in the opposite direction, from Pohořelice to Brno.

Massive protests however accompanied all the events. There are extremist groups in the Czech Republic who don’t want reconciliation with the Germans and consider the expulsion justified. They had tried to prevent the Sudeten German Day in front of the parliament, sprayed swastikas on the memorial for the death march victims and were present holding Czech flags and banners with provocative slogans. Therefore, there was a strong police presence and increased security measures for the safety of the attendees.

Even though 57 percent of the Czechs criticise the Sudeten German Day taking place in Brno, others told me how great they find this and how little the Czech society knows about its country’s dark chapter of history, since it hardly came to terms. They emphasised that acknowledging it does not mean revisionism.

Also, there are still prejudices: Many Czechs fear that the Sudeten Germans would return to reclaim their property. Instead, it became clear that they are bridge builders who come to foster friendly relations and to visit the homeland of their ancestors, sharing the same connection to Bohemia and Moravia as the Czechs.

I interviewed Petr Kalousek (initiator of Meeting Brno), Bernd Posselt (chairman of Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft) and a woman who only survived the death march thanks to a Czech who protected her. Furthermore, I was happy to meet the documentary film maker Lenka Ovčáčková and to speak to exhibitors including Landesecho, Sudetendeutsches Museum, Kulturstiftung der deutschen Vertriebenen and Deutsch-Tschechischer Zukunftsfonds.

Brno showed me how controversial history can be. I very much appreciate Meeting Brno’s efforts, which is an important and, given the circumstances, courageous work in the Czech Republic.