The descendents of Michael Gold 1

The second explanation has to do with the failed Hussite movement of the early 15th century in Bohemia-Moravia. John Huss, from Prague, was a Protestant precursor to Martin Luther and championed a simpler Catholic faith. He gained many adherents in his native country and after his execution by the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor in 1415, his followers defeated several imperial armies sent against them. In 1436, a treaty was signed which gave the Hussites religious toleration and essentially a native church of their own. The church eventually became known as the Unity of the Brethren (the Unitas Fratum) which today continues as the Moravian Church. Many of the nobles of Bohemia-Moravia joined and protected this new church. In the meantime, many Germans in the northeast province of Brandenburg had earlier became Waldensians, another Protestant forerunner of the Reformation.

The initial question is, "How did a large group of ethnic Germans come to live among the Slavic Czechs in Moravia?"

There are two conflicting historical answers: One is that it began in the 13th century. The invasions of the Mongols in 1241 and the Cumins in 1252 had swept away many inhabitants of eastern Germany into captivity. The survivors fled south in to Moravia encouraged to emigrate by the nobility of Moravia. One of these feudal families, the Premysls, ruled the area around Fulnek and many Germans came to this area, which was also called the Rand-Gebieten area of Bohemia.

This immigration of Germans led to the formation of German townships and the feudal privileges of these Moravian-German settlements were based on those accorded earlier to such cities as Magdeburg and Nuremberg (CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, MORAVIA, page 3)

These opponents of Catholicism lived in the neighborhood of Koneignsburg. In 1478, the Brandenburg Waldensians were brutally oppressed by their Catholic rulers and several hundred of them emigrated to Moravia, became members of the Unitas Fratum and settled in the Fulnek domain of the Hussite noble, Jan Zerotin, one of the most powerful of the Unitas Fratum nobles, who endowed the Protestant Moravians with small plots of land and income in kind, subsidized the building of Unitas Fratium churches , and supported Unity of the Brethern schools. (Rican, Rudolf, THE HISTORY OF THE UNITY OF THE BRETHREN N, 47,307).

Thus, you have these two interpretations of German emigration to Moravia: The earlier 13th century escape from Asiatic invasion and the later Waldensian-Brandenburg emigration of the late 15th century.