Death of a Nation

by Stephen R A'Barrow

  Confessional issues took precedence once again, as they had during the Hussite rebellion.xliii Nationalist Czech historians’ depiction of the Battle of White Mountain as a black and white fight between Czechs and Germans is a crass over-simplification. The fact that the Czech nobility were fighting for their right to elect a Protestant German king from the Rhineland, rather than have a Catholic Austrian Habsburg imposed on them, or that substantial numbers of German Bohemian noble families and German mercenaries were fighting alongside Hungarian and Moravian troops against the forces of the Emperor, is frequently either glossed over or completely ignored, as is the fact that the German mercenaries put up more of a fight against imperial troops than many of their Czech brethren. What is remembered is that an enraged Emperor employed largely German troops to quell the rebellion, which included using the Catholic League and the southern German principalities — infamous for their hatred of all Protestants — to do his dirty work. The ensuing expropriation of the Czech nobility and repression of the Czech language were entirely the product of the Habsburgs’ obsessive determination to implement a root and branch Catholic Counter-Reformation than some notional desire to Germanise their provinces. The Habsburgs were not in a position to attempt a Germanisation of their multinational dominions. An attempt to do so would have been suicide, as it would have fractured the very nature of their multinational empire and brought an end to their expansionist ambitions. The Habsburg monarchy used ‘the the army of Catholicism’, the Jesuits, to reinstate the Catholic faith with a ferocious missionary zeal, seeking to expunge all traces of the Hussite heresy leading them to burn every Kelch communion book and indeed any book in the Czech language that they could lay their hands on; one monk named Konias was said to have personally burned over 30,000. Nationalists have readily claimed that this attempt to rob the Czechs of their language and heritage was ethnically motivated. That is a historical rewrite from a modern perspective. Neverthless, the Czech culture and language were dealt a heavy blow by the Jesuits from which they did not begin to recover until the 1780s following the coronation of Joseph II, a more liberal-minded Habsburg emperor.(25)

  The Habsburg’s brutally over-zealous Counter-Reformation in the Bohemian crown lands did however lead to the emigration of somewhere between 10 and 30 per cent of the Czech population. The fact that the Catholic Church had allied itself entirely with the most radical Counter-Reformation emperors of the Habsburg monarchy, and allowed itself to de facto be used as a tool to curb Czech nationalism, did not endear it to the Czech people. Unlike in neighbouring Poland, the Catholic Church played no role in the 1968 Prague Spring or in the 1989 Velvet Revolutions (the two greatest outpourings of Czech rebellion against communist oppression), and modern Czechs still have ample cynicism with regard to all things religious. If any benefits can be ascribed to the post-White Mountain national catastrophe, it can only be in the form of the Catholic Church’s attempt to woo back its erstwhile opponents by extravagant expenditure on art and architecture. During the period after the Battle of White Mountain, there was a boom in the construction of ornate Counter-Reformation buildings, which included two of Prague’s greatest architectural gems: St Nicolas’s Cathedral and the Klementinum Library. Prague grew into the third largest city of the empire, becoming a thriving cultural centre that was only superseded by Vienna. Beyond that, Bohemia became the industrial hub of the Austrian Empire. By the outbreak of the First World War it accounted for over 60 per cent of all the Austrian Empire’s industrial and war production, a significant factor that the Allies took into account when looking at redrawing Austria’s boundaries. However, none of this assuaged the dented national pride of the Czech people, especially after Bismarck’s defeat of Austria when the Hungarians rose up to demand parity of status with the Austro-Germans of the empire. Emperor Franz Joseph subsequently went to Hungary to be crowned king of the Hungarians in 1867 in an act of reconciliation between the two largest constituent parts of the empire, but he did not come to Prague. The Czechs felt they had become second-rate citizens of the empire and no amount of beautiful buildings made up for their having become merely a province of Austria.

  Whilst fractures between the Czechs and Germans can be traced back to Ottokar II’s reign in the thirteenth century — followed by religious, ethnic and dynastic tensions from the time of the Hussite rebellions to the Battle of White Mountain — the real radicalisation in the two communities came in the nineteenth century, when the Czechs looked to the wars of liberation being fought by the Greeks and the Poles as examples. The Czechs had increasingly come to fear that their fate could one day resemble that of Poles in Russian-administered Poland, or the fate of the Irish and Scots in the British Isles who were being treated as non-historic peoples to be assimilated. Not an entirely fair comparison when one considers that English state policy was far more aggressive in its attempt to ‘subsume’ Celtic cultures and languages across the British Isles by a sustainted policy of land clearances of the Gaelic clans following the last Jacobite rebellion of 1745; a policy which lasted for over eighty years, deporting many of the indigenous population to Nova Scotia and repopulating the Highlands largely with sheep. A policy which was followed by allowing the entirely preventable Irish famine to run its horrendous course with near zero intervention from the richest country in the world in one of its dominions, leading to the death and immigration of over 2 million Irish citizens. The evolution of Prague into a majority German-speaking city during the early 1800s, with the German language becoming predominant in the civil service, bureaucracy, military and the arts only served to heighten the Czechs’ fears that they too could face a similar fate and that their language and their cultural identity potentially stood on the brink of oblivion.

  THE RISE OF CZECH NATIONALISM

  František Palacký suggested that, as the language of diplomacy in Europe was French, in the interests of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the true equality of all its many communities, the administrative language should become French. The alternative, he foresaw, was that the language of the countryside (Czech) would increasingly become an alien language to the upper and ruling classes. Even though he is often termed the ‘father of Czech nationalism’, up to this point he had published his works firstly in German, and even spoken the language at home with his family. However he later spearheaded the movement to consciously reverse this trend.(1) His view was that all Slavs were part of one family and that all their languages stemmed from one core source. He did however differentiate the Slovaks as Slavic Hungarians — a curious definition, as the Hungarians are not a remotely Slavic people.

  Early Czech nationalists had to invent historical documents to support their ancient claims to nationhood. These were embraced by František Palacký, but later proved to be forgeries by none other than Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk — the man who would lead the Czechs to their independence. The documents in question were apparently discovered in the walls of a church tower in the town of Königinhof (Dvur Kralove nad Labem); they depicted great uprisings of the Czechs against the Tartars 1,300 years earlier. More documents, such as the Grünberger texts, emerged shortly thereafter to an eager audience. These were authenticated by Vaclav Hanka, a museum librarian, who it was later proved was the author of these fabrications.(2)

  One of František Palacký’s most interesting contributions to the debate about the future of Bohemia and Moravia came in an appeal that he made for greater equality for the Czechs within the Austrian Empire. Some historians have gone so far as to call this one of the most significant documents of Central European history. On the 11th April 1848 following the spread of the French Revolution into Germany, Palacký handed a letter to the president of the newly constituted Frankfurt National Assembly in which he explained why he had to refuse the offer to join them in the creation of a German National Assembly. It politely stated that, if their aim was to create a German Federation out of the historical multinational empire and its ruling nobility that would bind in the people of Bohemia, then
this was a totally unrealistic expectation that had no historical or legal basis. His letter argued that Imperial Austria’s existence as an independent state would be greatly weakened by such a move.

  In contrast to the pan-German discussions going on in Frankfurt, a ‘Slav Congress’ was called in the autumn of 1848 in Prague. While Russophile pan-Slavists agitated at the conference, Palacký took a different approach. His programme envisaged a united Austro-Slavic bloc to counterbalance the interests of the Germans and Hungarians within the multiethnic empire. He still preferred the protective shield that the multiethnic Austrian Empire provided the smaller Slavic communities of central Europe, rather than being totally subsumed by Russia. He warned that the smaller nations of Eastern Europe could fall prey to Russian dominance should a vacuum in Central Europe ever emerge. He believed that the Czechs’ primary political purpose should be to ‘free the human spirit, to which end he saw the Czechs as the vanguard of liberal western values in the east, not as the western outpost of the Slavic authoritarianism in the east.’(3)

  He was presciently foreseeing the possible implosion of the Austrian Empire and the fate this would carry for the smaller mixed ethnic communities of central Europe.xliv In defence of the Austrian Empire, he stated, ‘Think if Austria dissolved into countless Republics — what a welcome foundation that would be for a universal Russian monarchy.’ Instead he advocated the continued forbearance of a geopolitical empire along the Danube basin promoting a ‘healthy, strong union which unites us all (rather than be fragmented by a thousand petty divisions). Truly had the Austrian Empire not been in existence for so long, in the interests of Europe, we would need to have made haste to create her.’(4) He was the last Czech nationalist to make such a profound defence of the Austrian Empire.

  The furor and idealism resulting from the outgrowth of the 1848 revolutions across Europe created an atmosphere of optimism and the feeling that anything was possible. Ludwig von Löhner, a Bohemian German nationalist of the day, swayed from one extreme to the other, arguing in March that, ‘Black, red, gold (colours of the new German national assembly) should be the colours of the wedding dress in which Austria (without Poland or Italy) should unite with Germany. This is the key question, if Austria is “To be or not to be”?’ However, the initial optimism of the German revolution for a united Germany soon faded, with first the Austrian and then with the Prussian monarchies rejecting the terms offered by the Frankfurt Assembly. When Palacký made it clear that the majority of Czechs wanted no part of it, Löhner changed his tune and began to argue for a federal solution to divide Bohemia between Germans and Czechs.(6)

  By the time of Palacký’s death in 1874 he had lost faith in the ability of Austria-Hungary to offer equality for the Czechs within the empire. His protégés were more radical. With a sense of foreboding, Karel Havlíček wrote, ‘Who wants to be a Czech must stop being a Jew… We wished for a permanent farewell between Germans and Czechs.’ He also wrote, ‘As we took leave of one another there were tears on both sides, the Germans cried with bitter sorrow, the Czechs with heartfelt joy… either you will die or I, but not both of us and whoever wins will be Lord and master, will sing the last Amen for the other and then bury him.’(7) Hans Kudlich, an equally radical voice in the German community wrote, ‘No matter what, there has to be a great reckoning between the Slavic and Germanic Worldviews, if Germany is ever going to enjoy the fruits of its Empire in peace and security.’(8) The writing was on the wall. Prophets of doom were gathering and drowning out the voices of calm reason.

  Bismarck’s defeat of the Austrians in 1866 ended Austria’s virtual 500-year unbroken dominance in Germany. This was followed by the equally significant Hungarian claim to parity with Austro-Germans within the Austrian Empire, and the creation of a dual monarchy. Austria became Austria-Hungary. The Hungariansxlv were happy to ignore the calls made by the Czech delegations at the Viennese parliament for tripartite equality within the empire, just as the Czechs continued to ignore similar calls from the Poles or South Slavs. Franz Joseph, the Habsburg Kaiser, was wary after the recent humiliating climb down to the Hungarians. Once was a gamble, but twice would surely lead to the break-up of his multinational patchwork. Still, the Czechs were in no position to press their case. The ensuing Austrian crackdown in Bohemia did nothing to assist moderate voices in coming to the fore in the following years. As much as Bismarck’s defeat and humiliation of Austria had given the Austrian Empire’s non-German nationalist elements hopes of greater freedom and eventual national liberation, his defeat of France and the following unification of Germany gave them genuine cause for alarm. This strengthened the desire of the German communities outside Bismarck’s newly created Second German Reich to join the historical steamroller. In particular, it appealed to the German communities on the fringes of Austria-Hungary and German speakers who formed the majority in large cities and towns — who found themselves surrounded by increasingly angry natives in the countryside.

  The history of German settlement in Central and Eastern Europe had revolved around their success in clearing, irrigating and cultivating land, and also in establishing fortified towns and trading centres. This legacy meant that in many parts of Central and Eastern Europe, German communities formed the majority of the population in the towns, but were sparsely spread throughout the countryside. However, from the 1860s–70s onwards, rapid industrialisation saw a dramatic increase in the move of populations from the countryside to the cities. This created a particular ‘angst’ on the part of the German minority in Austria-Hungary. The influx was so great that even Vienna was predicted to become a Slavic city in the early twentieth century. As a result, the most extreme pan-German nationalists of the last quarter of the nineteenth century emerged in Austria, preying on the fear of German-Austrians in areas where their numerical dominance was now coming under sustained threat. One of these populist agitators was none other than the ‘Grandfather of National Socialism’, Georg Ritter von Schönerer, who orchestrated the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Prime Minister, Kasimir Felix Graf Badeni from office who had called for civil servants in Bohemia to speak Czech as well as German. This ruling would have disbarred most Germans in Bohemia, as their knowledge of Czech was either limited or non-existent.(9)

  One of the most ironic aspects of the emergence of these nationalists was that the most radical nationalist leaders invariably had the worst national credentials. Kaiser Wilhelm was Queen Victoria’s oldest grandson and therefore half English; Hitler was an Austrian who didn’t obtain German citizenship until 1929; Churchill was half American, and Stalin was Georgian. The same was true for the leading lights of Czech and German nationalism in Bohemia. For example, the Groeger brothers — who changed their name to Grégr, to give it more of a Czech sound — were born to an Austrian mother from Steyr, whose maiden name was Pillewitzer. The Grégrs were ultra-nationalists and one can only wonder what their mother must have thought when Edvard Grégr gave a speech on the 2nd September 1888 referring to the German language as a ‘devastating infection in the Bohemian lands’.(10) The qualifications of German nationalists were no better. Konrad Henlein, the leader who united the majority of the Sudeten Germans behind Hitler’s National Socialist movement, was also the product of a German-Czech mixed marriage. His mother’s maiden name was Dvoracek.(11) Meanwhile, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk — who was instrumental in leading Czechoslovakia to independence — had a Slovak father and Moravian mother. Bohemia had become a melting pot over the course of three quarters of a millennium. There had been generations of intermarriage at all levels of society, from the nobility to the working classes. Any attempt to untangle this would have had similar consequences to those seen during the break-up of Yugoslavia one hundred years later.

  The desires of competing extreme nationalisms could only lead to the ‘Balkanisation of Bohemian politics’. It would be no different if one were to try and ethnically separate Wales and Scotland from its English population and influences today. Although there are, of course, th
ose who would like to see this happen, in reality it would be madness. And it is exactly this kind of madness that was, and still is, justified as both rational and acceptable by many people in Czech society.

  By December 1897, the conflict had become physical, with both Jews and Germans coming under attack, and their property being destroyed in Prague and other cities around the province. Vienna had to send in troops to restore order. Again, the issue of language was at the core of this ethnic explosion. One of the few institutional exceptions, which refused to allow itself to be divided along ethnic lines, was the Social Democratic Movement in Bohemia and Moravia. The Moravian born Social democrat Karl Renner (who later became president of post-war Austria) passed a resolution for ethnic federalism at the Brünn (Brno) National Congress in 1899. In practical terms, this was only ever put into practice during the 1905 Moravian elections, where German speakers chose their candidates from their own list and the Czechs from theirs. But it all came too late.(12)