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Mo·ra·vi·a (mə-rā'vē-ə, mō-)  |
A region of central and eastern Czech Republic. Settled by a Slavic people at the end of the sixth century A.D., it became an independent kingdom in 870 but fell to the Magyars in 906 and later to the Bohemians. In 1526 Moravia came under the rule of the Austrian Hapsburgs. It was incorporated into Czechoslovakia in 1918.
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History
With Bohemia and Czech Silesia, Moravia makes up the Czech Lands, which have been the homeland of the Czechs, a branch of the Western Slavs, since they displaced the Germanic tribes that occupied the region from the 1st to the 5th cent. A.D. Before then, Moravia had been inhabited by the Celtic Boii and Cotini. Subjugated by the Avars, the Czechs freed themselves under the leadership of Samo (627–c.660), who established the first state of the Western Slavs. The state disintegrated after his death, but by the 9th cent. the Moravians, again united, formed a great empire, including Bohemia, Silesia, Slovakia, S Poland, and N Hungary. In 863 the missionaries Cyril and Methodius were sent to Moravia on the appeal of Duke Rotislav, and the Moravians accepted Christianity, placing themselves under the Roman Catholic Church. The Moravian empire reached its height under Svatopluk (d. 894), but after his death it broke apart and (early 10th cent.) fell to the Magyars.
When Emperor Otto I defeated (955) the Magyars, Moravia became a march of the Holy Roman Empire. From the early 11th cent. it was in effect a crownland of the kingdom of Bohemia, with which it passed (1526) under Austrian rule. However, Moravia retained its separate diet and was at times separated from the Bohemian crown (e.g., at periods during the Hussite Wars of the 15th cent. and from 1608 to 1611, when Bohemia was ruled by Emperor Rudolf II and Moravia by his brother Matthias). Moravia, generally more tolerant of Hapsburg authority than Bohemia, suffered less in the religious and civil strife of the 16th cent. and even experienced a flowering of Protestantism during a period of religious toleration. In 1618, however, the Czechs of Bohemia revolted and were crushed at the battle of the White Mountain by the Hapsburgs, who thereafter took reprisals against the Moravian Czechs as well. Moravia's diet was reduced to total ineffectiveness. The Moravian towns underwent thorough Germanization from the 13th cent. Under Hapsburg rule nearly the entire upper and middle classes were German; cities such as Brno, predominantly German-speaking, were surrounded by a countryside of Czech-speaking people. In 1849, following an abortive revolution during which the Czechs of Bohemia and Moravia demanded unification of their historic lands and creation of a common diet, Moravia was made an Austrian crownland.
Hapsburg rule was finally overthrown in 1918, and Moravia was incorporated into Czechoslovakia. In 1927, Moravia, with Czechoslovak Silesia, was constituted into the province of Moravia and Silesia. The German element, however, continued to play an important part in Moravian life. The Munich Pact of 1938 resulted in the annexation by Germany of Czechoslovak Silesia, of NW and S Moravia, and of N and W Bohemia (the Sudetenland). In 1939 Moravia and Bohemia became a German “protectorate.”
After World War II the pre-1938 boundaries were restored, and the larger part of the German-speaking population was expelled. In 1949 the province of Moravia and Silesia was replaced by four administrative regions, and in 1960, in a new administrative reorganization, Moravia was divided into the South Moravian region (5,795 sq mi/15,009 sq km) and the North Moravian region (4,271 sq mi/11,062 sq km). On Jan. 1, 1969, the Moravian region, along with Bohemia and Czech Silesia, was incorporated into the Czech Socialist Republic, renamed the Czech Republic in 1990. The Czech Republic became an independent state when Czechoslvakia was dissolved on Jan. 1, 1993.
| Wikipedia: Moravia |
Moravia (Czech: Morava; German: 
Mähren (help·info); Silesian: Morawijo; Polish: Morawy) is a historical region in central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, one of the former Czech lands. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region.
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Moravia occupies most of the eastern third of the Czech Republic including the South Moravian Region and the Zlín Region, as well as parts of the Moravian-Silesian, Olomouc, Pardubice, Vysočina and South Bohemian regions.
In the north, Moravia borders Poland and Czech Silesia; in the east, Slovakia; in the south, Lower Austria; and in the west, Bohemia. Its northern boundary is formed by the Sudetes mountains which become the Carpathians in the east. The meandering Dyje flows through the border country with Austria and there is a protected area on both sides of the border in the area around Hardegg.
At the heart of the country lie the sedimentary basins of the Morava and the Dyje at a height of 180 to 250 m. In the west, the Bohemian-Moravian Heights rise to over 800 m although the highest mountain is in the north-west, the Praděd in the Sudetes at 1490 m. Further south lie the Jeseníky highlands (400 to 600 m) which fall to 310 m at the upper reaches of the River Oder (the Moravian Gate) near Hranice and then rise again as the Beskids to the 1322 m high Lysá hora. These three mountain ranges plus the "gate" between the latter two form part of the European Watershed. Moravia's eastern boundary is formed by the White Carpathians and Javorníky.
Between 1782–1850, Moravia (also thus known as Moravia-Silesia) also included a small portion of the former province of Silesia – the so-called Austrian Silesia (when Frederick the Great annexed most of ancient Silesia (the land of upper and middle Oder river) to Prussia, Silesia's southernmost part remained with the Habsburgs).
In the south around Hodonín and Břeclav the land is part of the Viennese Basin and petroleum and lignite are drilled for in its deeper sediments. In the area around Ostrava there was intensive coal mining until around 1995. Iron, chemicals, leather and building materials are the main industrial goods. The main economic centres are Brno, Olomouc, Zlín and Ostrava. As well as other agriculture, Moravia is noted for its viticulture; it contains 94% of the Czech Republic's vineyards and is at the centre of the country's wine industry.
Around 60 BC the Celtic Boii people withdrew from the region and were succeeded in turn by the Germanic Quadi and in the sixth century the Slavic tribes. At the end of the eighth century the Moravian Principality came into being in present-day south-eastern Moravia, Záhorie in south-western Slovakia and parts of Lower Austria. In 833 A.D. this became the state of Great Moravia with the conquest of the Principality of Nitra (present-day Slovakia; from 10th century into 1918 part of the Kingdom of Hungary). Their first king was Mojmír I (ruled 830-846). Louis the German invaded Moravia and replaced Mojmír I with his nephew Rastiz who became St. Rastislav.[1] St. Rastislav (846-870) tried to emancipate his land from the Carolingian influence, so he sent envoys to Rome to get missionaries to come. When Rome refused he turned to Constantinople to the Byzantine emperor Michal. The result was the mission of SS Cyril and Methodius who translated liturgical books into Slavonic, which had lately been elevated by the Pope to the same level as Latin and Greek. Methodius became the first Moravian archbishop, but after his death the German influence again prevailed and the disciples of Methodius were forced to flee. So the unique situation which anticipated the II. Vatican Council by several centuries was destroyed. Great Moravia reached its greatest territorial extent in the 890s under Svatopluk I. At this time, the empire encompassed the territory of the present-day Czech Republic and Slovakia, the western part of present Hungary (Pannonia), as well as Lusatia in present-day Germany and Silesia and the upper Vistula basin in southern Poland. After Svatopluk's death in 895, the Bohemian princes defected to become vassals of the East Frankish ruler Arnulf of Carinthia, and the Moravian state ceased to exist after being overrun by invading Magyars in 906/7.
Following the defeat of the Magyars by Emperor Otto I at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955, Otto's ally Boleslaus I, the Přemyslid ruler of Bohemia, received Moravia. Boleslaus I of Poland annexed Moravia in 999, and ruled it until 1019, when the Přemyslid prince Bretislaus recaptured it. Upon his father's death in 1035, Bretislaus also became the ruler of Bohemia. In 1054, Bretislaus decreed that the Bohemian and Moravians lands would be inherited together by primogeniture, although he also provided that his younger sons should govern parts of Moravia as vassals to his oldest son.
Throughout the Přemyslid era, junior princes often ruled all or part of Moravia from Olomouc, Brno, or Znojmo, with varying degrees of autonomy from the ruler of Bohemia. Moravia reached its height of autonomy in 1182, when Emperor Frederick I elevated Moravia to the status of a margraviate (or mark), immediately subject to the emperor, independent of Bohemia. This status was short-lived: in 1197, Vladislaus III of Bohemia resolved the succession dispute between him and his brother Ottokar by abdicating from the Bohemian throne and accepting the margraviate of Moravia as a vassal of Bohemia.
Since then, Moravia has shared its history with Bohemia. The Přemyslid dynasty became extinct in 1306, and in 1310 John of Luxembourg became king of Bohemia. Moravia and Bohemia remained within the Luxembourg dynasty of Holy Roman kings and emperors (except during the Hussite wars), until inherited by Albert II of Habsburg in 1437.
After his death followed the interregnum till 1453; land (as the rest of lands of the Bohemian Crown) was administered by the landfriedens (landfrýdy). The rule of young Ladislaus the Posthumous subsisted only less than five years and subsequently (1458) the Hussite George of Poděbrady was elected as the king. He again reunited all Czech lands (then Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Upper & Lower Lusatia) into one-man ruled state. In 1466, Pope Paul II excommunicated George and forbade all Catholics (i.e. circa 15 % of population) from continuing to serve him. The Hungarian crusade followed and in 1469 Matthias Corvinus conquered Moravia and proclaimed himself (with assistance of rebelling Czech nobility) as the king of Bohemia.
The subsequent 21-year period of a divided kingdom was decisive for the rising awareness of a specific Moravian identity, distinct from that of Bohemia. Although Moravia was reunited with Bohemia in 1490 when Vladislaus Jagiellon, king of Bohemia, also became king of Hungary, some attachment to Moravian freedom and resistance to government by Prague continued until the end of independence in 1620. In 1526, Vladislaus' son Louis died in battle and the Habsburg Ferdinand I was elected as his successor.
The epoch 1526–1620 was marked by increasing animosity between Catholic Habsburg kings (emperors) and rather Protestant Moravian (and other Crowns') estates. Moravia, like Bohemia, remained as a Habsburg possession until the end of World War I. Until 1641 Moravia's capital was the centrally-located Olomouc, but after its capture by the Swedes it moved to the larger city of Brno which resisted the invaders successfully. The Margraviate of Moravia had its own parliament – zemský sněm (Landtag in German), whose deputies were elected (from 1905 onward) in ethnically separate German and Czech constituencies.
Following the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, Moravia became part of Czechoslovakia (and was part of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II). In 1945 the ethnic German minority of Moravia were expelled. (See Expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II). With the break up of Czechoslovakia, Moravia became a part of the Czech Republic in 1993.
The Moravians are a Slavic ethnic group who speak various dialects of Czech. Some Moravians regard themselves as an ethnically distinct group; others consider themselves to be ethnically Czech. In the census of 1991, 1,362,000 (13.2%) of the Czech population described themselves as being of Moravian nationality. In the census of 2001, this number had decreased to 380,000 (3.7% of the population).[citation needed]
Moravia historically had a minority of ethnic Germans, although they were largely expelled after World War II.
Notable people from Moravia include:
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