The legal status of minorities and universities in inter-war Czechoslovakia

Minority issues are still topical and their legal solution is complicated. Minority universities, which are an uncommon phenomenon, are a specific feature of this issue. While education in minority languages at elementary and even secondary schools is common, teaching in minority languages at the highest level of education is occurs infrequently. In the overall view of historical development, it is also necessary to recognize that colleges have traditionally been conceived as transnational, and Latin has been a common language in Europe from colleges’ medieval beginnings to modern times. In the Czech lands, however, minority universities originated in principle at the end of the monarchy. At that time, however, minority universities were those with instruction predominantly in Czech (in addition to already existing German), that is, in a language prevalent in the Czech lands, but unprivileged within the framework of the monarchy. After the rise of Czechoslovakia, higher education in German remained, although Germans constituted a real minority. As a result, higher education in German was a very exceptional issue at that time.