Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands 1900-1948

by Tara Zahra

2011 Award in History and Social Sciences

Jury Statement

A work of extraordinary scholarly creativity and excavation, Tara Zahra’s Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands 1900-1948 explores Czech-German relations in the first half of the twentieth century to address larger questions about national identification, indifference, and appropriation of constituencies for national agendas from a fresh archival angle. Working deeply in multiple national archives, Zahra examines policies toward children and schooling in a border region of Bohemia in which partisans of Czech and German identity competed for allegiance. Without ever losing sight of big questions or Hauptpolitik, Zahra enlivens every page with vivid detail and takes us into ordinary lives to show not that national identity is merely a matter of cultural and political circumstance, but that particular circumstances cause claims on identity to work in different ways. A model monograph, with interesting lessons for the future of multilingualism in European educational systems.