Croats are one of the 14 recognized minorities in the Czech Republic. According to the 2021 census, 2,400 Croats lives in the Czech Republic, half of which stated their Croatian nationality in combination with another nationality. Out of that number, 800 are descendants of the Moravian Croats, who settled in

Moravia Moravia ( , also , ; cs, Morava ; german: link=yes, Mähren ; pl, Morawy ; szl, Morawa; la, Moravia) is a historical region in the east of the Czech Republic and one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia. The ...

in the 16th century. They have the right to use the

Croatian language Croatian (; ' ) is the standardized variety of the Serbo-Croatian pluricentric language used by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina, and other neighboring countries. It is the officia ...

in communication with Czech authorities and government according to the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Basic Freedoms of the Czech Republic. They live primarily in the

South Moravian Region The South Moravian Region ( cs, Jihomoravský kraj; , ; sk, Juhomoravský kraj) is an administrative unit () of the Czech Republic, located in the south-western part of its historical region of Moravia (an exception is Jobova Lhota which trad ...

, in the municipalities of Jevišovka, Dobré Pole and Nový Přerov.

History

The ancestors of the Croats in the Czech Republic arrived in the first half of the 16th century at the invitation of the

House of Liechtenstein The House of Liechtenstein, from which the principality takes its name, is the family which reigns by hereditary right over the principality of Liechtenstein. Only dynastic members of the family are eligible to inherit the throne. The dynasty's me ...

from central Croatia, fleeing before the

Ottoman Turks The Ottoman Turks ( tr, Osmanlı Türkleri), were the Turkic founding and sociopolitically the most dominant ethnic group of the Ottoman Empire ( 1299/1302–1922). Reliable information about the early history of Ottoman Turks remains scarce, ...

. The period of their settling is at the same time as the arrival of the Croats to

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous c ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croat ...

and

Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to th ...

, who are called the

Burgenland Croats Burgenland Croats (, , , ) is the name for ethnic Croats in the Austrian state of Burgenland, along with Croats in neighboring Hungary and Slovakia. Around 320,000 residents of Austria identify as of Croat heritage; 56,785 have, as sole or mul ...

. The migration of the Croats to Moravia got the attention of ethnographers, linguists, and historians in that era. The first mention of Croats was at the end of the 18th century. They tried to explain the reasons for the migration of the Croats from their ancestral homeland. They believed that the colonization of the Croats started from the Croatian regions south of the

Kupa The Kupa () or Kolpa ( or ; from la, Colapis in Roman times; hu, Kulpa) river, a right tributary of the Sava, forms a natural border between north-west Croatia and southeast Slovenia. It is long, with its border part having a length of and th ...

and Petrova Gora, better known as Banska Krajina (present-day Banovina), was summarized by Adolf Turek. The Czech Croats lived without a main settlement in parts of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany and Austria. It used to be a continuous string of villages, especially in the region of so-called " Czech Corridor". This corridor known as a link between the

Western Slavs The West Slavs are Slavic peoples who speak the West Slavic languages. They separated from the common Slavic group around the 7th century, and established independent polities in Central Europe by the 8th to 9th centuries. The West Slavic lang ...

and the Southern Slavs, more precisely Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and Czechoslovakia, was proposed but ultimately rejected at the

Paris Peace Conference of 1919 Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

Languages

A saying of the Czech Croats was "We are a people of three languages." Of all the national minorities, only the Croats were trilingual. They spoke German, and

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech ...

and nurtured Croatian at home. Considering that they often used Czech and German in schools, churches, public administration, the grammar and vocabulary of the Moravian Croats did not remain untouched. The Croatian Cakavian and

Ikavian Shtokavian or Štokavian (; sh-Latn, štokavski / sh-Cyrl, italics=no, штокавски, ) is the prestige dialect of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language and the basis of its Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin standards. It ...

language was mixed with loan words of both Czech and German origins. Croatian is not studied in Czech schools, so the majority younger generation does not speak it. The older generation of Czech Croats preserved the language, culture, and customs by gathering in organizations and reading magazines in Croatian.

References

{{Croatian diaspora , state=autocollapse Czech Republic Ethnic groups in the Czech Republic

History

Languages

See also

References