Czech people

“ What the Czechs in America Feel.
The event of that fateful July day in 1914, which suddenly changed nearly all of Europe into a mass of consuming fire, shocked profoundly the large Czech and Slovak population of America. These people, unable longer to endure the inhuman Austrian tyranny, had turned away in mighty numbers from their native land. That land, to be sure, was the richest soil of the Empire; but it was so sapped by greedy misrule that existence had come to mean only want and limitation. They came to America. ”

“ That will enable us perhaps to get some sense of how the Czech people are still in the process of defining who they are exactly, given that they have had control of their own destiny for such a short period of time and are still faced with the competing claims of more dominant cultures. It may also help to explain some of the major contradictions and ironies we will encounter in our reading and some of the paradoxes we experience in our responses to Prague itself. ”

“ For people whose language has never come close to facing extinction, it is difficult to imagine the complex difficulties of the task of restoration. Once Czech had all but disappeared as the language of government, education, and most artistic, religious, and intellectual life, those urging its return had, in effect, no literate Czech-speaking audience (often they themselves were not particularly fluent themselves) and had to present their defences of Czech culture in German. ”

“ A nation, which towards the end of the eighteenth century had been practically extinct, became a power by the middle of the nineteenth century. With the stubbornness of peasants and the zeal of pioneers the apostles of the Czech nationality worked for the uplifting of their people. The fruit of their labours was a renaissance almost without parallel in the history of the world. Beginning with the midddle of the nineteenth century, they have held, as to wealth and education, the first place among the nationalities of Austria-Hungary. ”

“ The Czech people are Slavs who, along with the closely related Slavic group of the Slovaks, moved from regions in the east into three adjacent territories in central Europe—Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia—in the fifth century AD, where they have remained ever since. ”

“ Nearly ten per cent of the Czech people live in the United States. The war roused them from their absorption in earning a livelihood, it swept away their bickerings and petty disputes and inspired them to render some signal service to their unfortunate native land and to their enslaved, perishing brethren. ”

“ Making Prague and the Czech Republic the focus of a cluster of courses is something of an exception to this tradition simply because until very modern times for most of the history of those countries we normally associate closely with Western Culture, the experience of people living in the Czech lands—and particularly the culture of the Czech-speaking part of that population—has been largely ignored, unknown, or misunderstood. ”

“ The transit trade is very valuable. The people are mostly Czechs, of the Slavonic race, Roman Catholics in religion; there is a large and influential German minority of about two millions, with whom the Czechs, who are twice as numerous, do not amalgamate; the former being riled at the official use of the Czech language, and the latter agitating for the elevation of the province to the same status as that of Hungary. Education is better than elsewhere in Austria; there is a university at Prague, the capital. ”

“ Then the Germans had succeeded in getting all the business into their hands; but now the Czechs have got it all back again. The banks, too, are almost all Czech. There is hardly a German sign to be seen anywhere. Every street has its own Czech name; but how the Czechs had to fight for this, and how sore the Germans are over it! The Czech believes in fighting for the right, he believes in educating [43] his children, he is willing to make any sacrifice that will make Bohemia his own again. We're a different people ”

“ The German populations in this state are in the main descended from settlers who were brought in by the kings of Bohemia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to clear and colonize the forests and waste lands, which then formed a girdle around the borders of the kingdom. These people voluntarily established themselves in a Czech land, and their descendants have always been subjects of the Czech state, save possibly during the last century or so when it is a contentious question whether a Czech state existed. ”

“ They also learned that the renowned Bohemian glass employs over fifty thousand workers; that there are excellent highways, extending to ten thousand miles, and several important railroad lines; that one-third of all the gold and silver mined in Hungary is mined in neglected Slovakia. Jozef was particularly impressed by the fact that despite all the discrimination of the Government against the Czech schools, the Czechs were by far the most literate people of the monarchy. ”

“ What complicates these questions even more in the case of the culture of the Czech lands is the ethnically diverse traditions of that culture. For almost all of its history, Czech territory—especially Prague itself—has been an arena for competing cultures—Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, and others. ”

“ This does not mean that we ought to forget, later on, what they do for us; but such an attitude on their part is at once the most generous and the most happily inspired. Like the philosopher who proved motion by walking, the Czech nation proves its existence by action and struggle. ”

“ In fact, the most salient point about the development of the modern history of the Czech lands is the emergence at last of an independent and democratic Czech-speaking state relatively free of the traditional internal divisions and hostile external pressures, after hundreds of years of subservience to German-Austrian culture and political control, major internal conflicts, and a series of short-lived and often unhappy experiments (to use the mildest word available) with different political systems. ”

“ At this time the Czechs were much weakened by quarrels among themselves. A new party had arisen, calling themselves Radicals, but generally known as the Young Czechs. They disliked the alliance with the aristocracy and the clergy; they wished for universal suffrage, and recalled the Czech dissensions.Hussite traditions. They desired to take their seats in the diet, and to join with the Germans in political reform. They violently attacked Rieger, the leader of the Old Czechs, who maintained the alliance with the Feudalists and the policy of passive opposition. ”

“ In spite of the constant struggle against the perjured dynasty, the Czech nation is to-day, culturally and economically, one of the most progressive nations. It has thus proved its virility, its energy and ability to hold its own against the pressure of imperialistic Germany and Austria; this high degree of culture, as we have emphasised before, being attained by the Czechs through their own strength, without assistance from the dynasty and from Austria. ”

“ Above the mass of the population, composed of small shopkeepers, peasants and workmen, eighty per cent of whom were of Czech origin—a mass possessing an old culture which, for all its rusticity, had not lost its freshness and colour—there were three upper strata boasting the loftier culture of Central Europe: the Germanised middle class of Prague and the leading towns, the civil and military official caste, numerous and well-disciplined, and finally the international aristocracy with its eyes turned towards Vienna. ”

“ The romantic period of the renaissance affected not only Czech and Slovak literature, but it left its imprint on all the arts—on philosophy, religion, the sciences, and political, social and moral life. The protest of rich imagination, of unfettered freedom in feeling and expression against the cold reasoning and polished conventionality of the eighteenth century found its outlet among the Czechs and Slovaks in an enthusiastic exaltation of their nation and language—two concepts never separated in the mind of the true patriot of that land. ”

“ With the utmost savagery the Austrian-Germans under Hapsburg and Jesuit leadership uprooted the Czech aristocracy and landed gentry, and filled their places with foreign adventurers, who ever since have insulted the country in which they live by considering themselves its peers and owners. The Czech nation lost all its educated classes and practically ceased to exist. ”

“ Already men who under the Austrian regime would never think of calling themselves Czechs now vie with one another in promising loyalty to the new state and using the Czech language in place of German. In cities like Hodonín, Masaryk’s birthplace, where the Germans artificially maintained their rule, German schools are empty, because most of the children attending them have been placed by their parents in Czech schools. The Jewish element of the population claims to be Czech now and speaks Czech in public. ”

“ They had no rich tradition of printed works written in Czech (literature, history, poetry, or even school books, the essential tools for cultural development) . All these had to be produced. A Czech tradition had to, as it were, be invented, so that the National Revival had an effective Czech content. It is an astonishing tribute to the untiring efforts of Czech intellectuals and artists that their efforts in the second half of the nineteenth century were so successful. ”

“ Perhaps it is due to the fact that the Church of Rome encouraged the converted Hussites to keep things merry and bright on every available saint's day so as to deaden all recollection of Hus's martyrdom, but this is a deeper matter which we will discuss later. The fact is that the Czech is by nature gay and cheerful and an expert merrymaker, as who would not be in a country like Bohemia, with its grand natural beauties, its wealth of music and poetry—and its beer? ”

“ By the end of the nineteenth century, the National Revival had had considerable success in re-creating a Czech culture, building a number of Czech institutions, and fostering a revival of spoken Czech, particularly by emphasizing traditional Czech customs, work habits, artistic styles, folk music, and story telling. ”

“ This fact alone proves what a gigantic work was done by the patriots who awakened the Czech nation to a new life. And yet the citizens of Prague were in a sense patriotic Bohemians, for all of them, Czechs and Germans, looked upon Bohemia as their fatherland and were proud of its noble history. ”

“ Such is, in its broadest outlines, the Czech poetry of recent years. It is the poetry of a nation that has been labouring under a heavy yoke, but whose bonds have at length been shattered. And in its verse is heard the exultant cry of freedom, the vigorous utterance of young and lusty spirits. The poetry of the Czechs has won for itself a place among the poetry of more favoured nations, whose languages are widely spoken and who are able to look back upon a glorious literary past. ”

“ The revival of the Czech nationality and the inroads made by the Czech language upon the German, tended to a limitation of intellectual development which would have boded ill for the Czechs, had these evils not been arrested before they had time to spread. ”

“ Prague’s population halved. . . . All forms of Protestantism were outlawed, the education system was handed over to the Jesuits and, in 1651 alone, more than two hundred “witches” were burned at the stake in Bohemia. (Humphreys 244)
The century following the Thirty Years’ War almost witnessed the extermination of Czech culture entirely. German-speaking Catholics (spearheaded by the Jesuits) under the direction of Vienna and Rome took over religious and educational centres and brought in waves of German immigrants. ”

“ Indeed, for two centuries, the Czech language had been practically dead and buried. Bohemia suffered perhaps more severely than any other country in the Thirty Years’ War, and after their defeat in the battle of the White Mountain in 1621, the Czech nation as such disappeared from European history. The country became an appendage of Austria; the Czech language was repressed. ”

“ It is in this spirit that the Czech nation throws itself into action, ready for all the sacrifices which its conscience may dictate. Even if its appeal should prove useless, it would at least have the satisfaction of having done its duty at a critical moment, by bearing witness to truth, right, and the cause of the liberty of peoples. ”

“ While the bulk of the Czechs and Slovaks now living in the United States, came to this country during the last seventy-five years, yet immigration of Czechs, to speak of the older branch of the nation, is not a phenomenon restricted wholly to the nineteenth century. The first individuals of Czech (Bohemian) origin came to America during the seventeenth century, undoubtedly seeking religious and political liberty, even as did the Pilgrim Fathers. ”

“ Not a portion of the Czechs but all of them have had political education and have been familiar with suffrage and parliamentary life. The Czechs had their quota262 of functionaries in the Hapsburg Empire, which gives them trained men for government service. Without intending offense, one might say that the Czechs are the most promising of the newly emancipated people because they are German-trained in public life, administration, and education, as well as in business. ”

“ The new state is thus of considerable size, and includes several dialects of Slav; it is both agricultural and industrial; it is keenly patriotic, and disposed, one hears, to split off from the Roman Church, just as it was so disposed in the Middle Ages. This state is contrasted to some extent with the majority of the Slavonic regions, in that, in spite of a large German element, there is more homogeneity and strength of cultural tradition throughout the Czech country than there is among many other Slav-speaking peoples. ”