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For more than eighty-five years, Sudeten German communities have gathered together to commemorate the so-called “March Fourth Massacre.” On this date in 1919, Czechoslovak troops opened fire on crowds of Germans who were demonstrating for national self-determination in thirty-five towns across Czechoslovakia's western frontier. By day's end, the violence in seven towns across the border region had claimed a total of fifty-four lives and had left hundreds wounded. The bloodiest altercation took place in the northwestern Bohemian town of Kadaň (Kaaden), which left twenty-two dead and ninety wounded. On that fateful day in Kadaň, this violence was precipitated by an altercation between unruly German students and anxious Czechoslovak guardsmen, who were stationed in front of the town hall. This altercation triggered two minutes of sustained and indiscriminate gunfire upon the crowd of nearly 10,000, who found themselves trapped by Czechoslovak machine gun nests at opposing ends of the market square.

The Topic The 1919 Bible Conference was held immediately after World War I during a heightened interest in the apocalyptic and soon after the death of Ellen White. Patterned after the Fundamentalist prophetic conferences of 1918 and 1919, it was arguably the first “scholarly” conference held by Seventh-day Adventists. During a theologically turbulent time, Adventists found the emerging Fundamentalist movement attractive for its biblicist theology, its opposition to modernism and evolution, and the apparent popular appeal of its prophetic conferences. The Purpose The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the significance of the 1919 Bible Conference for Seventh-day Adventist history and theology. The Sources This was a documentary study based on published and unpublished sources, most of which were produced by Seventh-day Adventists between 1910 and 1922. The most heavily used primary source was the collection of original transcripts of the 1919 Bible Conference. Although these transcripts are not entirely complete, they are extensive. These transcripts were supplemented by other primary sources that included periodicals, correspondence, and other archival materials. Conclusions The 1919 Bible Conference illustrates the polarization in Seventh-day Adventist theology that took place as Adventists grappled with conservative evangelicalism (what later became known as Fundamentalism). Adventist theologians became divided, most notably, between “progressives” and “traditionalists,” both of whom were influenced by the emerging Fundamentalist movement. Some issues were quite controversial at the time, such as the identity of the king of the north in Dan 11, while others such as the covenants and the Trinity would become more important with the passing of time. The topics that had the most lasting effect upon Adventist history and theology were the discussions about Ellen G. White’s writings and their relationship to the Bible. These hermeneutical issues evidenced a theological polarization that continues to shape Adventist thought.

Konrad Henlein founded the Sudeten German Heimatfront (SHF) in October 1933 and in less than a year and a half it would become the largest party in the First Czechoslovak Republic. This achievement is all the more remarkable in light of the initiative undertaken by the Czech and German Social Democrats, as well as the Communists to have the SHF banned in the year before the elections. This initiative would most likely have succeeded had the matter not been referred to Czechoslovakia's ailing President, Tomáš Masaryk. After the state had banned both the Sudeten German Nazi and Nationalist parties on account of their alleged ties to Hitler, Masaryk concluded one month before the 19 May 1935 general elections that the SHF should be allowed to campaign.1 Masaryk, however, mandated that the Heimatfront must change its name to the more democratic “Sudeten German Party” (SdP). Despite the specter of a ban that still haunted the party in the month before the election, the SdP succeeded in transforming itself from a political pariah into a majority German party by using the legal protections and security forces of Czech democracy to wage a legalistic campaign against the state. In light of this stunning success, how then did the party leadership perform this act of political alchemy and what strategies did it deploy in campaigning against the state?

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