Mark Cornwall Inaugural lecture Event

Youth, Eros and Regeneration: a National Revolution for Central Europe

In the chair: Robert Evans, Regius Professor of History, University of Oxford.

Due to the notorious Munich agreement with Hitler that dismembered Czechoslovakia in 1938, the question of Czech-German relations has remained a sensitive one for the British historian. This lecture aims to revisit some taboo themes at the root of the Czech-German relationship. It particularly uses the life and death of Heinrich Rutha, a prominent nationalist, as a way of explaining the Sudeten German mentality. Why was no ethnic settlement possible in Czechoslovakia in the years before Munich? And why did Rutha’s life mission climax in 1937 with a homosexual scandal and suicide?

Mark Cornwall is Professor of Modern European History and in 2006-9 was head of History in Humanities. A specialist on the modern transformation of east-central Europe, he has published widely on the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, the Great War, and 20th-century Czechoslovakia. This lecture presents many themes contained in his recently completed book about youth, sexuality and the Czech-German nationalist struggle in early 20th-century central Europe.

Each of this year’s Inaugural Lectures in Humanities will have an end of lecture collection for charity. For this lecture the charity to be supported is Stonewall (and especially its work to combat homosexual bullying in schools).

Refreshments: Tea and coffee will be served at 17:30 in the North corridor.
A wine reception will be held following the lecture.