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The presence of Germans and Poles was an inseparable part of the life of Austrian and later Czech Silesia and North Moravia for centuries. While the German settlement with its social and cultural characteristics did not differ significantly from other border regions, the national situation of the Ostrava and Těšín regions can be described as unique in the context of the Czech lands. This industrial and extensively urbanized territory was also characterized by a greater degree of interethnic permeability in the form of mixed marriages, changes in the nationality declared, etc. As a matter of fact, the idea of a distinctive Silesian identity, rejecting or relativizing traditional national categories, was strongly promoted. In areas dominated by German settlements, the border between the majority population and the ‚other‘ was stronger, though not impenetrable. The rise of ethnic nationalism from the end of the 19th century was moderated by the efforts of the socialists and the Catholic Church, even though these entities were not immune to the intensification of national antagonisms. Among the Germans, German orientation, reinforced by the ties with the Prussian environment, prevailed in the long term. The establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918 caused irredentist tendencies among the Poles and the Germans. Relatively benevolent minority legislation contributed to the consolidation. Despite the various frictions, there are many examples of economic, cultural, and often political cooperation across the national spectrum in the interwar era. The apocalypse of 1938–1945 and its consequences fundamentally changed the character of settlement and the position of minorities. Most of the Germans were expelled. Those who remained faced ostracization or, in the best case, disinterest. On the other hand, the position of the Poles was legally stabilized during the 1940s and a legal framework for minority associational life, albeit curtailed by the incoming communist regime, was created. On the one hand, its fall in 1989 led to a revival of the debate on historical traumas and controversies in the history of the Czech-Polish and Czech-German relations, but, at the same time, it opened a way to strengthening scientific, cultural and economic cooperation and to increasing interest in the past and the present of the German minority.