Sudeten German Party

The Sudeten German Party is presented as a political force whose demands, encouraged by Hitler’s government and backed by German military pressure, make the threat of invasion seem immediate to Viktor Landauer. Its significance lies less in a detailed account of the party’s organization than in the way its claims become part of the coercive logic surrounding Czechoslovakia: Viktor sees danger whether the demands are accepted or refused, and begins preparing his family to escape.

Political pressure and the threat of invasion

In a conversation with Liesel, Viktor points to the Sudeten German Party’s demands and the German troops massing near the border. He warns that the Hitler government is encouraging the party and that war could be close. His concern is practical as well as political: he wants to consider removing the company from his ownership and urges Liesel to take the danger seriously, while she initially treats him as a pessimist.

Viktor later explains the dilemma more fully. He says that the party’s leader, Henlein, has a secret pact with Hitler and is demanding self-rule for the border regions. If the Czechoslovak government grants that demand, Viktor fears Henlein will invite German troops in; if it refuses, he expects Germany to use alleged oppression of the Sudeten Germans as a pretext for invasion. In his assessment, either outcome leaves the country exposed. He compares the prospect to Germany’s presence in Austria and begins making arrangements for the family to go to Switzerland, though not immediately.

From political crisis to family decisions

The threat changes the meaning of ordinary household arrangements. When Liesel and Viktor discuss leaving, she points out that Liba, their children’s nurse, is engaged to Jan, who lives in Prague, and has given notice. Her departure would leave the family without the childcare support they depend on during an escape. Liesel therefore proposes that Katalin Kalman come with them, noting that the children get along with Marika and that Martin is fond of Katalin. The political danger is thus registered not only in Viktor’s plans but in the family’s practical calculations about care, work, and whom they can bring.

The party’s demands also belong to a wider landscape of altered borders and insecure passage. On a later journey, Viktor remarks that passport control has appeared at a border where none existed before, calling the change ironic even as he acknowledges that it is a small loss of freedom beside other freedoms people have gained. The novel thereby places the party’s political pressure within a chain of changes that makes movement increasingly subject to national boundaries and official permission.

Exile and the limits of documents

The family’s escape does not end the uncertainty. At a railway inspection, Viktor presents passports, French transit visas, Spanish visas, and tickets for his family, the children’s nanny, and her daughter. Katalin’s refugee passport is a Nansen passport, but officials separate her and Marika from the others despite Viktor’s insistence that her papers are in order. He is warned to return to the train or risk detention; the family is pushed onward while Katalin and Marika are taken away for questioning.

That episode gives the party’s earlier political demands a consequence beyond the border regions themselves. The crisis helps drive a family into exile, while the systems of border inspection encountered along the way can still divide those fleeing together. The novel does not treat political claims as abstractions: their force is measured in preparations to leave, the loss of security at borders, and the precarious status of people whose papers may fail to protect them.