Bohemia and Moravia, claiming the right to self-determination according to the 10th of President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, demanded that their homeland areas remain with the new Austrian State. The Volksdeutsche of Iglau / Jihlava relied on peaceful opposition to the Czech military occupation of their region, a process that started on 31 October 1918 and was completed on 28 January 1919. Thereafter extremist political figures like Hans Krebs, editor of the Iglauer Volkswehr newspaper, became prominent with the rise of Nazism and the Nazi occupation (1939–1945).
Brána Matky Boží (Picture from 1899)
The area remained, until the end of World War II, a distinctive regional folk culture reflecting hundreds of years of local customs. The local dialect of German was a unique branch of Mitteldeutsch. Musicians often used homemade instruments and original groups of four fiddles (Vierergruppen Fiedeln) and Ploschperment. Typical folk dances were the Hatschou, Tuschen and Radln. Peasant women like wearing old "pairische" Scharkaröckchen costumes with shiny dark skirts and big red cloths.
After the end of World War II, and following the Beneš decrees, these German speakers were evicted; it is estimated that hundreds died on the arduous trek to Austria.The town was repopulated with Czech and Moravian settlers favoured by the new Communist regime. After 1951, the town was the site of several Communist show trials, which were directed against the influence of the Roman Catholic Church on the rural population. In the processes eleven death sentences were passed and 111 years of prison sentences imposed. All the convicted persons were rehabilitated after the Velvet Revolution.
In protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1969 Evzen Plocek set himself on fire in the town marketplace in emulation of others in Prague. Today there is a memorial plaque to him.
Since the total collapse of
