Leo Wiener

“ Bohemia has in the Middle Ages been the mediator between the West and the East, the South and the North, and it will for a long time remain the mediator between the best German thought and the growing Slavic civilization, if the Germans do not, as in the past, rouse the Slavic antipathies. Of all the Slavs, the Bohemians understood the German ideas best, and Dobrovský and other Bohemian Slavists promoted the Slavic idea by means of the German language. That, of course, can never happen again, for the nationalist life is there permanently established. ”

“ It cannot be said that the strong nationalistic movement which developed in Bohemia was entirely beneficial, for it not only led to unhealthy, ecstatic moods in the Bohemian literature of the first part of the nineteenth century, but even to a series of literary falsifications which still form the subject of discussion among laymen. ”

“ Thus arose the German Romanticism, which believed that in the creations of the popular mind could be found truer, more natural sentiments for literary expression than in the artificial productions of a select upper class. Possibly the chief activity in the direction of a simpler literature was developed by the brothers Grimm, who, by their collections of fairy tales and mythological lore, laid the foundation for a nationalistic movement which was soon to sweep over Europe. ”

“ Whatever the interest of the outsider may be in Bohemian literature, it deserves the highest attention on the part of the Slavs, who owe their very regeneration to the labors of the Bohemian scholars a century ago. ”

“ There is nothing which we possess in the way of literary documents that dates back of the ninth century, and there is precious little that can with certainty be ascribed to a period previous to the tenth century. Hence it appears that the literary Teutonic activity is very little, if at all, ahead of the distinctively Slavic literary activity, which, so far as we know, begins, at the end of the ninth century, with the translation of the Bible by the proto-apostles of the Slavs, Cyril and Methodius, for the Čechs of Bohemia. ”

“ In the twenties of the nineteenth century the fame of these ardent Slavists had spread to all the Slavic countries, and in Russia the question of founding a chair of Slavic philology, to be occupied by some Bohemian scholar, was seriously considered. In 1830 the Russian Government offered a chair of Slavic philology to Šafařík, but nothing came of it, chiefly through the machinations of the forger Hanka, who sided with the Russian autocracy, while Šafařík publicly expressed himself in favor of the Poles in the revolution which had just broken out in Russia. ”

“ From the humble beginnings in the first part of the nineteenth century Bohemian literature has developed in a remarkable manner, borrowing what is best in all literatures, and to a considerable extent falling under the influence of the great Russian writers. ”

“ If, in addilion, we consider what Bohemia did for freedom of religious thought a hundred years before the days of Luther, and still more, the great obligation under which the Greek Catholic Church is to Bohemia for its very ecclesiastic language and national alphabets, the sympathies of the world should particularly be enlisted for this country in the possible future reconstruction of the Austrian Empire. ”

“ The nationalistic idea began to grow out of proportion to the folklore which could conveniently be mustered in proof of native superiority, and where there was such a disproportion it became necessary, so unscrupulous nationalists thought, to manufacture such material. ”

“ Especially his grammar of the Čech language which he published in 1808 formed the basis for all Slavic grammars written in the first half of the nineteenth century. Dobrovský was a voluminous writer, and his scientific correspondence, lately edited by Jagić, contains an immense amount of material which throws a light upon the history of the Slavic renascence. Dobrovský soon gained many disciples in the Slavic world. ”

“ It was only in 813 that Charlemagne introduced the Germanic languages to the knowledge of the educated, by ordering that homilies should be written in the native dialects. There does not exist the slightest evidence that, with the possible exception of some Gothic tracts, which Bishop Ulphilas is said to have written in the fourth century, the Germans used their native dialects for any literary purposes. ”