Sudetenland
The
Sudetenland is the German name to refer to those northern, southwest, and western areas of Czechoslovakia which were inhabited mostly by German speakers, specifically the border districts of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia located within Czechoslovakia. The name is derived from that of the Sudetes mountains – featuring in Ptolemy's 2nd-century Geography as
Sudeti montes – which run along the northern Czech border as far as Silesia and contemporary Poland, although it encompassed areas well beyond those mountains. The word
Sudetenland came into existence in the early 20th century, and only came to prominence after the First World War. The indigenous German-speaking inhabitants of the region were then called
Sudeten Germans. Previously, they were known variously as German Bohemians and German Moravians. The German minority in Slovakia, the Carpathian Germans, are not included in any of these ethnic categories. Parts of the current Czech regions of Karlovy Vary, Liberec, Olomouc, Moravia-Silesia and Ústí nad Labem are situated within the former Sudetenland.