Too, the Olomouc Region has its own story too where gunsmiths like Gustav Tichý sidelock of Moravska Ostrava & Jaroslav Teichman Olomouc Czech Republic each worked as an apprentice to František Faukner, who was a stickler for detail.
You are very right, Raimey. These cities and towns that you name here, Olmütz and Mährisch Ostrau, were also an integral part of what was once called Central Europe, and what after 1918 and especially after 1945 has been too easily forgotten, in lieu of an artificial West <-> East division in Europe.
Both were "German cities" in the sense that the (significant) majority of their population since the Middle Ages spoke German, and that the city was constituted according to German township and city laws (Deutsche Stadtrechte, Magdeburg being the most influentia). Yet that fact must not be misconstrued in a more modern, 19th century sense of ethnically based nationalism.
Both belonged, until 1918, to the Habsburgian Margraviate of Moravia, which on its turn was merely one part of the "Lands of the Bohemian Crown", hereditary in the House of Habsburg.
So, they were subjects of the Emperor, inhabitants of Cisleithania, linguistically and maybe culturally Germans.
Jani might chime in here, from his "Windische" (as it was then called) perspective on Ferlach. Some parallels are obvious. ;-)
Herzliche Grŭße,
Carcano
