Liechtenstein in European history : ad honorem Peter Geiger

In its first part, the present article presents the role of Peter Geiger as an historian and as cochairman of the Liechtenstein-Czech Commission of Historians. PD Dr. Peter Geiger has been the co-chairman of the Liechtenstein-Czech Commission of Historians for the last ten years. Between 2010 and 2020, he was one of its basic building blocks. In the commission, Associate Professor Geiger dealt mainly with the modern history of Liechtenstein and selected aspects of Liechtenstein-Czech relations. He prepared a crucial article on how frequently Czechoslovak and Czech topics figured in the pages of the Liechtenstein press, and thus what impression the ordinary citizen of the Principality of Liechtenstein could form of the original homeland of their princes. In the context of his research into Liechtenstein continuities and discontinuities, he again described the transformation of Liechtenstein from a somewhat marginal territory within the Liechtenstein states into the centre of life of the princely family. Peter Geiger's professional interest in the Liechtenstein-Czech Commission of Historians was divided between the history of the family and the history of the country and its inhabitants, especially in the area of property gains and losses. He therefore wrote two fundamental studies on the topic of the "Liechtensteins, Liechtenstein and Czechoslovakia in the 20th Century". The first of these deals with the efforts of the Liechtenstein family from 1938–1945 to regain and save the property they lost in connection with the so-called first land reform. Geiger's articles on the expropriation of Liechtenstein citizens living in Czechoslovakia after 1945 can thus be considered a fundamental topic. In the second part of the article, other contributions are then thematised and contextualised; these included in this "Liechtenstein" volume of the Studia Historica Brunensia journal.