Egerland

It included large Bohemian territories up to the outskirts of Plzeň, comprising cities like Falknov (today Sokolov), Kraslice, Chodov, Mariánské Lázně (Marienbad) and Tachov, which never belonged to the historical region.

In return for John's support against Louis' rival Frederick of Habsburg at the Battle of Mühldorf, he received Eger as a Reichspfandschaft (Imperial lien) with the "guarantee of complete independence from the Kingdom of Bohemia".

This reservation, however, became meaningless as Louis never redeemed the pawn, and with the accession of Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg in 1346, the crowns of the Holy Roman Empire and Bohemia were united in one hand.

While the present-day Franconian parts up to the Fichtel Mountains were acquired by the Principality of Bayreuth under Hohenzollern rule, the remaining territory was administered within the Bohemian kraj of Loket from 1751.

The incorporation of the Bohemian kingdom into the Habsburg monarchy had created ongoing conflicts at first along the fault-lines between the Catholic dynasty and the Protestant nobility culminating in the Thirty Years' War.

The rise of ethnic nationalism turned out to be fatal, as, while some central parts of Bohemia were only inhabited by a smaller German-speaking elite, in border regions like the Egerland people who identified as German were in the majority, like in the town of Eger/Cheb, where the Czech population was only 7% per the 1930 census.

Both parties acted unilaterally, the Czechs, supported by France and Britain, prevailed establishing the Czechoslovakian Republic comprising all parts of historic Bohemia as it existed under Austrian rule, including the Egerland.

However, under a legal framework perceived as "czechification", there was growing unease about laws and policies which were felt to be discriminatory, especially in areas identifying as culturally German or Austrian.

After years of lobbying by German-speaking minority representatives in the Czech parliament, a law granting full equality and proportional representation in all aspects of civil life was finally implemented in 1937.

After Hitler had pushed the situation towards an armed conflict, the prime ministers of Britain and France in the 1938 Munich Agreement backed the annexation of regions with greater than 50% German-speaking population, including the Sudetenland with the Egerland, by Nazi Germany.