A comparison between the founding phases of Czechoslovakia after 1918 and after 1945 shows that a relatively liberal phase of universal protection of property rights, particularly real estate, gave way to an era of nationalization wherein property rights were gradually linked to Czech and Slovak ethnicity. Modest attempts to make the nation more uniform via agrarian reform following the First World War, were implemented more radically after 1945 by means of stripping people of their citizenship, and expropriating and expulsing populations of chiefly German and Hungarian origin. No longer ensuring the individual right to choose one’s nationality or to be compensated for seized property, property regulations were transformed into a demographic policy tool aimed at making society and the nation more uniform.