English Translation

33 Attitude to the idea of unity among the Sudeten Germans. Above all, it was necessary to keep the national idea of keeping the self-assertion of the SuDeten Germans awake and to strengthen them themselves. The way to this was that of an explanation of the sudeten German about itself, about the magnitude of her historical achievement, about her right founded on it. His pamphlets were repeatedly published in thousands and thousands of copies into the people, such as his "Sudetendeutscher Catechism" at the height of 6o ooo. Gierach stood in the ranks of the "Böhnerland Movement", which, in addition to people-minded fighters from the older generation, particularly surrounded the youth that has grown up in the meantime. D;e Böhmerlandjahrbücher since l92o hold on to the will and work of this movement and thus also Gierach's share in it. Soon a new great sphere of influence opened to him, without having therefore detached himself from his Reichenberg: he was appointed pro-fessor to the Prague German University for the subject of the older German language and literature. His teaching was a high, conscientiously fulfilled office, conscious of responsibility before his people. It was precisely because it was about our mother tongue, about the German language, and precisely because he had to teach it at the University of Prague, i.e. on a ground on which the national struggle for decades has often, indeed mostly, revolved around this language, that's why Gierach wanted to teach his Hönern and pupils as future teachers our thorough and dignified training in their so immensely important study and later teaching subjects. Therefore, his well-known (not by him, but especially by inadequate candidates themselves exaggerated) height and severity of the requirements of examinations led to. From his school, it is well known, well-preformed and trained Germanists emerged. As a Germanist, he was not limited to the purely philological or literary history, "his interest was in prehistory as well as folk studies. Gierach has a very great merit in the establishment of a teaching pulpit for pre- and early history (it had been missing until then at the Prague German University at such a time). It is also certainly characteristic that one of his students, his assistant Dr. Bruno Schier, has created such a well-known name in Degt's ethnology. His historical interest has been very strong ever since - with Hans Hirsch, Gierach also stood in close contact beyond the time of the Prague academic effectiveness of this important historian. It was especially the settlement history for which its effect became significant. It was from him that strong suggestions were made about the connection between linguistics and historical research at the University of Karls in Prague, which was so successful and profitable; it is enough to point to his high merit in creating his share of the Sudetendeutsche Ortnamenbücher series. It is precisely this mention that points in a further direction which could prove scientifically fruitful: in the geographical. But all this was not a service to science as such and for the sake of science alone. For Gierach, all this and much more was only a partial service in the service of a higher, incomprehensive whole, of the people. As it was more necessary in Prague and is more necessary to put science at the service of the people's whole, so the academic researcher and teacher here could not and cannot limit himself to his work in his scholar's room or on his catheter. At no time was this more necessary than in the years after l92o. For the internal alienation by Judaism in the faculty of the German University, already considerable before 1 918, found now only more support and promotion at the regulation and top management of the liberal-democratic cschecho- - 3 -