"She behaved like an honourable woman, treated her with care, and did not in the least harm her." Perceptions of childbirth and midwife assistance in the testimonies given in the litigation between Justine Siegemund and Martin Kerger.
The present study aims at sketching some aspects of the last phase of existence of one mixed Czech-German community (Karlov-Libinsdorf), on the basis of ethnographic and historical sources. It offers a reflection of a more general process from the point of view of a local microlevel, a process that finally resulted in the ethnic homogneization of the Czech lands. The analysis of the controversy fo r national character of the community is being realized, on the one hand, through the study of the competition for the character of national schools in the locality, and, on the other hand, through the symbolical importance that the contesting parties ascribed to the existence of this mixed enclave. As a result of the general ethnic homogneization, the inhabitants of the naturally double-language community were confronted with the necessity of the unequivical declaration of their ethnicity. The nacionalization of the collective identity of the local inhabitants and the necessity of the „actualization“ of this identity according to the political situation of the moment was being imposed through the general social context and through the movement of „ethnic defense“ that was being incited from the outside, by the representants of the „defense associations“ The possible alternatives, however, were in competition one to another and, at the same time, they were inconsistent with the „traditional“ local (i.e. non-ethnic) identity. This dilemma hadbeen „imported“ from the outside, from the makrosocial level, but had to be solved on the level of local everyday life. In the situation of real existence of two different (ethnic) linguistic groups in the community under study, however, didn't exist the need to express the social reality through explicitly ethnical cathegories. If this expression was realized, it was in the direction to the outside, especially as a reaction to the demands from part of the State administration to define unequivocally the ethnic denomination - for example, for the use of the population censuses at the times of the Austria-Hungary and the Czechoslovak Republic or during the Protectorate when asking for the citizenship of the Protectorate or of the Reich - or in connexion with the regular interventions of the nationally outspoken activists. Similarly, also the institutionalized form of the „national struggle“ that seemingly found its possibility for expression in creating theparallel social structures in the community acquired such imposed character. There are many arguments for the assumption that the rivalry of the nationalist associations didn’t stem from the authentic local conditions. The local inhabitants could not be labeled as the ori and ginators of the conflicts with nationalist bacground, even though they have been sometimes perceived as the actors of such conflicts. We can sum up that the nationalization of the social ties didn’t occur spontaneously and represents rather a product of the interventions to the life of the community and a response to the ethnic enunciation imposed from the outside