Talk:Czech Americans

John Kerry
John Kerry cannot be called a Czech American as his parents' mother tongue was obviously German, like of the majority of the region from where they moved to Lower Austria, Austria! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.127.141.243 (talk) 18:16, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Strong disagree - this is an incorrect assumption. The mother tongue of numerous individuals of Czech descent was German.  This is particularly true with the Jewish community in Czechoslovakia before World War II (which is the case for Senator Kerry).  Here is one reference to support Kerry's inclusion as a Czech American.BWH76 (talk) 19:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

The question is how "descent" is defined. My point is that it is better to define descent by the mother tongue, not the country of origin. The Austrians (or Germans) in that region had a long history of living in that part of Moravia and the majority spoke German. I think that it would make more sense to call him an Austrian American or German American. But if you use the country where some of his ancestors were born to define his origin also Hungarian would be acceptable as Kerry's grandmother was born in Budapest. I don't know if you wanna hear that, but within 270 000 000 28th great-grandfathers could be any important figure of history. And when you count those grand ... grandfathers from grandfather to the 28th great-grandfather there are more than one billion possible kings. Therefore Kerry could be of any descent you want. 85.127.141.243 (talk) 22:52, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
 * they were not Austrians! Austrian-Hungarian Empire calld them germans (Austrian census), Czechoslovakia calld them germans (Czechoslovakian census/laws), Western Powers in the interwar peiod calld them Germans (sudetengerman question), they calld themselves Germans (e.g. in the interwar period the party representing them was the sudetengerman party) 78.42.252.102 (talk) 18:55, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

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Czechs or people from Bohemia
Please excuse my ignorance, but I think this article confuses Czechs and people from Bohemia. The alleged first Czech, Gans, was a Jew, the second, Augustine Herman, sounds more like a Dutch or German, and the third one, Frederick Philipse, doesn't sound Czech either. Bohemia was a multiethnical country back then, not everyone from there was a Czech. Karasek (talk) 12:26, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Are you confusing this article with the List of Czech Americans? The reason that I ask is that the definition of Czech American, at least in this article, is given in the very first sentence.  Whether this definition is correct or not is debatable, though that doesn't seem to be what you are asking.  BWH76 (talk) 15:36, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, I really think the definition of a Czech American is wrong. Hungarians, Jews and Germans descended from the territory of the Czech lands, but they weren't Czechs (Slavs) and shouldn't be included here (like Gans, a Jew). These people should be listed as Hungarian Americans, German (or Austrian) Americans and American Jews. After all these differences shaped the history of the Czech lands!Karasek (talk) 16:15, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

FYI: Augustine Herman is really Augustin Heřman and Frederick Philipse is Bedřich Filip —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.110.61.140 (talk) 20:40, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * And Benedikt Ried, a German/Austrian from Lower Austria, was also called Benedikt Rejt, while Bedřich Smetana, a Czech from Litomyšl, was also called Friedrich Smetana from Leitomischl. Things aren't always that simple... Karasek (talk) 07:25, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Tags added
I now added some tags. The article confuses Czechs, Jews and Germans, which are entirely different ethnic groups. A Jew or German from Bohemia can't become a Czech American, since he can't change his ethnic belonging by crossing the ocean. Karasek (talk) 07:15, 12 June 2009 (UTC) This debate sounds a bit too ethnic. If we were to apply your approach to America and exclude all the Jews and people speaking in foreign languages, there would not be too many people left. Americans are people living in America or in the US and not just people speaking English. Similarly, as defined in Webster Dictionary, Czechs are natives or inhabitants living in Czechoslovakia or Czech Republic and not just people speaking Czech.

Frankly, in their past, their country (Kingdom of Bohemia) was completely Germanized, particularly under the Habsburgs and German was the official language, Czech was not allowed and was spoken only in some remote villages. It was not until late nineteen century during the National Revival that Czech began spoken again, many of the Czechs having to relearn the language. Yet the people living in that area in the past were clearly Czechs.

Let me give you another analogy. Some half of the people living in Vienna (Austria) are Czechs, yet they are called Austrians. By your definition, these people should not be counted as such. I mind you, this would include a number of Austrian Presidents.

With respect to native Czechs living in America, such as Secretary Mme Albright, would you exclude her from the list of Czech Americans because her family was Jewish?

You say that Kerry cannot be considered among them because his mother tongue was German - how do you know this for fact? And even if that were true, so what? President Thomas G. Masaryk's mother's tongue was also German and yet nobody in his right mind would not call him German. One could go on and on.George.Deer (talk) 12:19, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, the history of the Bohemian lands is complicated, but with your definition of a Czech American you completely erase this difficult history. Youself give the best answer: the Czechs had their national revival in the 19th century because, although they spoke German, they felt different, because they are after all a different ethnic group. But the same is true for the Germans in the Bohemian lands. They can't become Czech just because the land where they lived was also called Czech lands. Czechs, Jews and Germans are *different* ethnic groups, which this article denies. Karasek (talk) 06:55, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Every country has some ethno-linguistic or cultural minorities and those who belong to them can either stick to their ethnic identity and refuse the national/majority one or live with both of them. Bohemia (now called the Czech Republic) is one of the oldest existing countries in the world and also one of the more stable in terms of its territorial extent. People who lived there for centuries became Bohemians (as subjects of the Bohemian King) regardless of their ethnicity, just like people of Switzerland were Swiss, no matter what their mother tongue was. Despite this centuries-long tradition, the 19th century nationalism and subsequent two world wars eventually ended it in a few decades. German-speaking Bohemians became Germans (or Austrians) and the Czech-speaking Bohemians started to call themselves Czechs, Tschechen, Tchèques, etc. in other languages to stress their Slavic identity (and Jews had to chose between them). This is the reason why Bohemia is called Czech Republic and Bohemian language is Czech language in present-day English. Possibly the best way how to deal with the problem of too "ethnicity-laden" term Czechs (Czech-Americans) is to return to the good old name Bohemians (Bohemian-Americans). Qertis (talk) 17:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * There's only one problem with this. Moravians seem to get counted as Czech but not Bohemian.--MacRusgail (talk) 13:42, 28 February 2010 (UTC)


 * There's lots of problems with this. The cultural exchange between German lands and Bohemian kingdom went on for centuries even before the Habsburg rule. German names are very common in Czech population and don't actually say anything about the ethnicity of a person born in Czech Republic. In fact, German words in general are commonly used in conversation even though most Czechs don't even realize that the words are German. The same goes for Jews. They lived in the Lands of the Czech Crown for centuries, some of the families probably lived in Bohemia even before Bohemia became a kingdom. So yes, they were Jew by faith, but most of them lived in Bohemia, Moravia or Silezia for generations. They were Czech and Jew at the same time. I don't mean to take their heritage away from them, but saying they are not Czech is a stretch. In any way, the hard fact is that they were more Czech than Caucasian Americans are Americans.
 * Also, the terms "Czech" and "Bohemian" are equivalent, but Bohemia is not Czech Republic. Czech Republic is the remnant of what was once officially called Lands of the Czech Crown and today, it consists of Bohemia, Moravia and Silezia (but included, at one time or another, Slovakia, Poland, Hungaria, Austria, parts of Germany and possibly other bits of Europe). The difference is that "Czech" is a Czech word and "Bohemian" is a Latin one. Since the state is called "Czech Republic", however, the word "Czech" is sometimes used for anything that comes from Czech Republic. It's kind of as if UK was called "English Kingdom" and so anything Scottish could be also called "English". In fact, don't ever call a Moravian person "Czech", they don't take kindly to that.
 * My last point would be that Czechs aren't particularly Slavic and as far as the historians can say, we never were. Czechs have a Slavic language and half-Slavic culture. The other half is Germanic and our genes are mostly Celtic. The reason why there's this belief that we are Slavic is that under the Habsburg rule, during the national revival, we needed a new national identity and it needed to be as far away from anything Germanic as possible.
 * 193.85.146.236 (talk) 22:30, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

No Henry Fonda?
Aren't Henry Fonda and his family the best known Czech Americans around?! Where do they get a mention? --MacRusgail (talk) 13:43, 28 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I notice that the wikipedia article disagrees, but I have heard other things elsewhere... --MacRusgail (talk) 13:45, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Reaching
IMHO, this article is committing a sin common to many ethnic articles. It is trying to brag. That is, it is looking for famous people to include under its umbrella. Ultimately many of us are descended from many ethnicities. But articles on ethnic groups should make meaningful distinctions. First, it should be careful about which statistics it includes. Truthfully it is probably the case that almost all Americans are of Czech descent; it's just that for most of us that ancestry is so old we don't know about it. But certainly when including famous examples the article should restrict itself to people who have a meaningful and substantial connection to their Czech heritage. A good set of criteria would be to only include famous people that fall in the following categories:
 * First generation immigrants (excluding people who were too young to remember their homeland).
 * Second generation immigrants who traveled regularly to the homeland and/or spoke Czech at home or maintained other major connections to the culture (i.e. something more than being in a Czech bowling league).
 * Descendants who grew up in a Czech-speaking community that maintained Czech culture in some meaningful way (being part of a Czech fraternity in college doesn't count).

--Mcorazao (talk) 00:56, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect article
I see that I'm not the only one who is angered by the current state of the article. It's really insulting to all Czechs to include everyone who has ever lived in the Czech lands and then moved to the US as Czech Americans. Madeleine Albright is a Jew, not a Czech, just as many other people who are assigned the Czech ethnicity just because they lived in Bohemia at some point. Unfortunately I don’t have the time to do anything about it.--Kohelet (talk) 12:33, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
 * While from an ethnic standpoint, I agree, ethnic Jews and Germans should not be included in the "Czech American" article, Americans are not as good at making those distinctions. The result is that Czech Jews and German Bohemians often end up getting listed as Czech Americans (or identifying as such), but not always. Ethnic Germans from Bohemia are often just called plain German Americans…but sometimes they are called Czech Americans. Or sometimes German Bohemians. Czech Jews, it depends, they might be considered Jews, or Czech, or even German if they spoke German. It really is a mess, and there isn’t much one can do to fix it. It isn’t really Wikipedia’s fault, but simply a cultural thing. RGloucester  (talk) 17:58, 1 July 2013 (UTC)
 * well most Jews form the Czech lands spoke German, or Yiddish, or both as primary language/first language 78.42.252.102 (talk) 19:00, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Native American History
These two phrases in the article stood out to me: "to civilize the Indians and promote Christianity," and "the free uncultivated land in America encouraged immigration throughout the nineteenth century." It would be more accurate to say "to culturally indoctrinate or assimilate Indians and convert them from their native religions to Christianity," and to say, "the land formerly used and lived on by displaced Indian nations in America was advertised in Europe as cheap and uncultivated to encourage immigration throughout the nineteenth century." A lot of indigenous Americans certainly did cultivate crops and they hunted in combination, plus they regularly burned the prairies to bring in game, which they managed though hunting techniques that kept up the health of the herds. The rich soil that we Czech American colonists farmed here was taken from others who were violently pushed off. This article should acknowledge that instead of erasing it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.81.100.27 (talk) 16:52, 31 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Should Bohemians drink and do drugs and is it worse on Bohemians as it is on regular Americans send it all 166.199.234.61 (talk) 21:36, 18 March 2024 (UTC)