1957 10 KORUN CZECHOSLOVAKIA COIN WILLENBERG 250 YEAR PRAGUE ENGINEERING SCHOOL

Bohemia (Czech: Cechy; German: Polish: Czechy; French: Bohême; Latin: Bohemia) is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague. In a broader meaning, it often refers to the entire Czech territory, including Moravia and Czech Silesia, especially in historical contexts, such as the Kingdom of Bohemia. Bohemia is a historic country of central Europe that was a kingdom in the Holy Roman Empire and subsequently a province in the Habsburgs’ Austrian Empire. Bohemia was bounded on the south by Upper and Lower Austria, on the west by Bavaria, on the north by Saxony and Lusatia, on the northeast by Silesia, and on the east by Moravia. From 1918 to 1939 and from 1945 to 1992 it was part of Czechoslovakia, and since 1993 it has formed much of the Czech Republic.

Bohemia has an area of 52,065 km² and today is home to approximately 6 million of the Czech Republic's 10.3 million inhabitants. It is bordered by Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, the historical region of Moravia to the east, and Austria to the south. Bohemia's borders are marked with mountain ranges such as the Bohemian Forest, the Ore Mountains, and the Krkonoše (Giant Mountains), the highest within the Sudeten mountain range.

Etymology
In the 2nd century BC, the Romans were competing for dominance in northern Italy, with various peoples including the Boii. The Romans defeated the Boii at the Battle of Placentia (194 BC) and the Battle of Mutina (193 BC). After this, many of the Boii retreated north across the Alps.

Roman authors refer to the area they invaded as Boihaemum, the earliest mention being in Tacitus' Germania 28 (written at the end of the 1st century AD). The name appears to include the tribal name Boi- plus the Germanic element *xaim- "home" (whence Gothic haims, German Heim, English home). This Boihaemum included parts of southern Bohemia as well as parts of Bavaria (whose name also seems to derive from the tribal name Boii) and Austria. The Czech name "Cechy" is derived from the name of the Slavic tribe of Czechs who settled in the area during the 6th or 7th century AD.

After World War I, Bohemia (as the biggest and most populated land) became the core of the newly-formed country of Czechoslovakia, which combined Bohemia, Moravia, Austrian Silesia, Upper Hungary (present-day Slovakia) and Carpathian Ruthenia into one state. Under its first president, Tomáš Masaryk, Czechoslovakia became a liberal democratic republic but serious issues emerged regarding the Czech majority's relationship with the native German and Hungarian minorities.

Following the Munich Agreement in 1938, the border regions of Bohemia historically inhabited predominantly by ethnic Germans (the Sudetenland) were annexed to Nazi Germany; this was the only time in Bohemian history that its territory was politically divided. The remnants of Bohemia and Moravia were then annexed by Germany in 1939, while the Slovak lands became the separate Slovak Republic, a puppet state of Nazi Germany. From 1939 to 1945 Bohemia, (without the Sudetenland), together with Moravia formed the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (Reichsprotektorat Böhmen und Mähren). Any open opposition to German occupation was brutally suppressed by the Nazi authorities and many Czech patriots were executed as a result. After World War II ended in 1945, the vast majority of remaining Germans were expelled by force by the order of the re-established Czechoslovak central government, based on the Potsdam Agreement, and their property was confiscated by the Czech authorities. This severely depopulated the area and from this moment on locales were only referred to in their Czech equivalents regardless of their previous demographic makeup. In 1946, per the Potsdam Agreement, and under the stipulation that it be placed "under Polish administration" the post war Communist Party backed by the Soviet Union re-established Czechoslovakia. The Party won the most votes in free elections but not a simple majority. Klement Gottwald, the communist leader, became Prime Minister of a coalition government. In February 1948 the non-communist members of the government resigned in protest against arbitrary measures by the communists and their Soviet protectors in many of the state's institutions. Gottwald and the communists responded with a coup d'état and installed a pro-Soviet authoritarian state.

Beginning in 1949, Bohemia ceased to be an administrative unit of Czechoslovakia, as the country was divided into administrative regions. Between 1949 and 1989 Czechoslovakia (from 1960 officially called Czechoslovak Socialistic Republic) became a Soviet satellite even though there was not a Soviet army present until 1968 (interestingly enough, surrounding countries including Eastern Austria were occupied by the Red Army) when Czechoslovak Communist Party started to reform and democratize itself. This "Prague Spring" process was stopped abruptly by an invasion of 'brotherly' armies of Warsaw Pact in August 1968. "Temporary stationing" of Soviet army following the invasion ended in 1991. In 1989, Agnes of Bohemia became the first saint from a Central European country to be canonized by Pope John Paul II before the "Velvet Revolution" later that year. After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993 (the "Velvet Divorce"), the territory of Bohemia became part of the new Czech Republic.

The Czech constitution from 1992 refers to the "citizens of the Czech Republic in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia" and proclaims continuity with the statehood of the Bohemian Crown. Bohemia is not currently an administrative unit of the Czech Republic. Instead, it is divided into the Prague, Central Bohemia, Plzen, Karlovy Vary, Ústí nad Labem, Liberec, and Hradec Králové Regions, as well as parts of the Pardubice, Vysocina, South Bohemian and South Moravian Regions.

Moravia (Czech: Morava; Polish: Morawy; Latin: Moravia) is a historical region in Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic and one of the historical Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Czech Silesia. It was also one of the 17 former crown lands of the Cisleithanian part of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1867-1918 and one of the five lands of Czechoslovakia in 1918-1928. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region. Moravia's largest city and former capital is Brno; before the Thirty Years' War, there were two capitals: Olomouc and Brno.

Following the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, Moravia became part of Czechoslovakia. As one of the five lands of Czechoslovakia, it had restricted autonomy. In 1928 Moravia ceased to exist as a territorial unity and was merged with Czech Silesia into the Moravian-Silesian Land. After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II, Moravia was divided - part was made an administrative unit within the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the area with more ethnic Germans was absorbed by the German Third Reich.

In 1945 after the end of World War II and Allied defeat of Germany, Czechoslovakia, expelled the ethnic German minority of Moravia to Germany and Austria. The Moravian-Silesian Land was restored with Moravia as part of it. In 1949 the territorial division of Czechoslovakia was radically changed, as the Moravian-Silesian Land was abolished and Lands were replaced by "kraje" (regions), whose borders substantially differ from the historical Czech-Moravian border, so Moravia politically ceased to exist after approx. 1116 years (833-1949) of its history.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Czechoslovak Federal Assembly condemned the cancellation of Moravian-Silesian land and expressed "firm conviction that this injustice will be corrected" in 1990, however after the breakup of Czechoslovakia into Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, Moravian land remained in the Czech territory, and the latest administrative division of Czech Republic (which was introduced in 2000) is nearly identical with the administrative division of 1949.