Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule

Struve has remarked that of all the nobles in the world those in the Hapsburg Monarchy had probably the least reason to boast of their ancestry. This is especially true of the nobility whose advent into Bohemia antedates the first half of the seventeenth century. From the events here related began the rise in Bohemia of such families as Buquoy, Clary de Riva, Aldringen, Trautmansdorff, Metternich, Marradas, Verduga, Colloredo, Piccolomini, Wallis, Gallas, Millesimo, Liechtenstein, Goltz, Villani, Defours, Huerta, Vasques – names indicating Spanish, Italian, German, and Walloon birth. These aliens, enriched by property taken away from Bohemian nobility, surrounded themselves with foreign officials, who treated the natives with the scorn and insolence of victors. Their châteaux formed in many cases the nucleus of German settlements which later threatened to overwhelm the nation. Some of these “islands,” or settlements, which were situated farther inland, were in time absorbed by the native population. But not so with the colonies on the border. These latter not only preserved the lingual and national characteristics of the owners, but they even contrived to Germanize the home element that came into contact with them. It was during this calamitous period that the Germans made the greatest inroads upon Bohemian national territory.

Prior to the Thirty Years’ War Bohemia was overwhelmingly Protestant,5 but Ferdinand determined that in his empire there should be “unity of faith and tongue.” A unity of faith he and his successors have achieved, but it has been denied to the Hapsburgs – much as they have tried to achieve it – the unity of language.

In 1620 Jesuit fathers were invited to come to Bohemia and to take charge of the once renowned University of Prague and of the provincial schools. “The Jesuits buried the spirit of the Bohemian nation for centuries.” This is the severe judgment of no less a person than V. V. Tomek, the noted historian. Accompanied by Liechtenstein’s dragoons these ecclesiastics went from town to town, searched libraries, carried off books written in Bohemian and burned them whether they were “tainted” or not. Sometimes the books were privately thrown in the flames in the houses where they had been seized; at other times they were brought to the market-place or to the public gallows and there publicly burned. The Jesuits were indefatigable in their search for heretical literature, ransacking houses from cellar to garret, opening every closet and chest, prying into the very dog kennels and pig-sties. People hid their most precious books from the ferreting eyes of the inquisitioners in baking ovens, cellars, and caves. There are cases on record of rare Bohemian volumes having been saved from destruction by being hidden under manure piles.

One zealot, Koniáš by name, boasted that he had burned or otherwise mutilated 60,000 Bohemian volumes. According to him “all Bohemian books printed between the years 1414 and 1620, treating of religious subjects, were generally dangerous and suspicious.” From their seat in the Clementinum (Prague University) they presided over the intellectual life of the country; that is to say, they wholly suppressed it. In order to more systematically supervise the work, a censor was appointed by them for each of the three lands, – Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, – and it was the duty of this censor to see to it that no books were published or reprinted that did not meet the approval of the general of the order. Easy was the labor of the censor, for in Moravia, for instance, only one printer was fortunate enough to secure a license. In Bohemia they set up the so-called University Printing Office. Besides this only five or six other establishments were licensed to print books. In a few decades these zealots destroyed Bohemian literature altogether. The almanacs, tracts, hymnals, and prayer books that issued from their printing presses could not be dignified by the term literature. Count Lützow, in his “History of Bohemian Literature,” frankly admits that, with few exceptions, all the men who, during the last years of Bohemian independence, were most prominent in literature and politics belonged to the Bohemian Church. Living in exile in foreign countries, there was no one left at home to resume their tasks.

Ferdinand began his anti-reformation crusade in earnest in 1621. In December of that year he issued a patent by virtue of which about one thousand teachers and ministers of the gospel of the Bohemian Church were forced to leave the country. The Lutherans did not come under this ban, inasmuch as the emperor was anxious to please his ally, the Elector of Saxony, who pleaded clemency for his co-religionists. In 1624 seven patents were promulgated. Some of these were directed against the laity, which, till then, had escaped the wrath of the conqueror. It ordered the expulsion from trade guilds of all those who could not agree with the emperor in matters of faith. Discriminatory measures against nonconformist merchants and traders went into effect, which quickly resulted in their ruin. Another patent, bearing date July 31, 1627, was more severe than those preceding it. By it dissenters of both sexes and irrespective of rank were ordered to renounce their faith within six months, or failing to do so, leave the country. The operation of this patent extended to Moravia, but not to Silesia and Lusatia. The two latter-named provinces had been spared because of a promise given by the emperor to the Elector of Saxony.

So severely did the country suffer by forced expatriation, as a result of these edicts, that Ferdinand saw himself compelled to issue other patents to check it. In the hope of conciliating he remitted fines in certain cases, discontinued suits for treason, and made restitution of confiscated property. In some cases he extended the time within which heretics could become reconciled with the church, but the clemency was extended too late, for while some individuals yielded to the formidable pressure, the great mass of nonconformists, comprising the very flower of the nation, were determined rather to lose their property and leave the fatherland than to renounce that which they held most sacred.

Count Slavata, who himself took no inconsiderable part in this terrible drama of anti-reformation, and who, owing to his religious convictions, cannot be accused of partiality, is authority for the statement that about 36,000 families, including 185 houses of nobility (some of these houses numbered as many as 50 persons each), statesmen, distinguished authors, professors, preachers, – spurning to accept the emperor’s terms, went into exile.

In 1627 Ferdinand promulgated what he designated the “Amended Statute.” The “amendment” really consisted in the abolishment of those ancient rights and liberties of the land which were incompatible with autocratic powers.

Under the “Amended Statute” the kingdom, heretofore free to elect its sovereign, was declared to be an hereditary possession, both in the male and female line, of the Hapsburg family. The three estates – lords, knights, and the cities – which till then constituted the legislative branch of the government, were augmented by a fourth unit, the clergy. The fourth estate was destined to exercise, as subsequent events have shown, the greatest influence on the affairs of the government. The Diet at Prague was divested practically of all its power and initiative; from now on its sole function was to levy and collect taxes. And because the king had invited to the country so many alien nobles (or commoners later ennobled) who were ignorant of the language of the land, the amended statute provided that henceforth the German language should enjoy equal rights with the Bohemian. A disastrous blow to the unity of the Bohemian Crown was further dealt by the annulment of the right of the estates in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia to meet at a General Assembly for the purpose of deliberating on matters common to the crown. By this clever stroke the emperor tore asunder the ancient ties of the kingdom. He rightly reasoned that by isolating each of the integral parts of the kingdom he could easier hope to hold in leash the whole of it.

In time the administration of the Bohemian Crown was entrusted to an executive who received the title of Chancellor, and when the kings no longer resided in Prague, having taken up a permanent abode in Vienna, the Chancellory was removed thither, ostensibly on the ground that the Chancellor was required to be near the person of the sovereign. In reality, however, the transfer was a part of a preconceived plan to make Vienna the centre of the empire, from which the Hapsburg “provinces” were to be ruled. Under one pretext or another the Chancellory was being gradually shorn of its powers, until Maria Theresa (1740-1780) abolished it altogether. Henceforth even purely local matters were administered from Vienna direct, and the officials began to style the once proud kingdom a “province of Austria.” During the Thirty Years’ War thousands of villages were destroyed by fire and many of them have never been rebuilt. The population, which before the war was estimated at 3,000,000, was reduced by fire, sword, and pestilence to about 800,000. Fields lay fallow for years for lack of workers to cultivate them. Of the 151,000 farms before the war hardly 50,000 remained. Native nobility was reduced to beggary by the confiscation of their estates, and the peasantry that survived was reduced by alien lords to a degrading condition of serfdom. Between 1621 and 1630 400 Prague citizens went into exile. The Nové Město (one of the Prague quarters) alone had at one time 500 vacant houses. The town of Žatec, which in 1618 had 460 citizens, counted ten years later 205 of them. In Kutná Hora, of a total of 600 houses, 200 remained without owners or tenants. The population of the city of Olomouc in Moravia, by 1640, was reduced from 30,000 to 1,670. Wherever the armies marched nothing was seen but waste and ruins. According to notes taken by Swedish soldiers, 138 cities and 2,171 villages were totally ravaged by fire. The textile industry, which had been the source of the wealth of the country, was almost wholly destroyed by the war.

The defeat at White Mountain could not have been productive of such disastrous consequences had it not been for the fact that the nobles were the standard-bearers of Bohemian nationalism and the sole representatives of the nation’s culture and traditions. The peasantry in those days and for a long time afterward was yet helplessly dependent on the aristocracy.

Bohemian Huguenots were scattered over every land in Central Europe, most of them seeking refuge in nearby Saxony, Silesia, Hungary, and Poland. Many emigrated to more distant lands, such as Sweden, serving in the army of Gustavus Adolphus, Russia, Holland, England. A few of the more adventurous spirits wandered off with the English and the Dutch to America. One of them, Augustine Herman, a noted figure among the early Dutch in New Amsterdam, made an attempt to establish a colony of compatriots on a grant of land that he had received from Lord Baltimore and which he named in honor of his native land, Bohemia Manor, a place famous in early Maryland history. Numerous exiles settled in the first half of the seventeenth century in Virginia. In the beginning the exiles hoped to be permitted to return home, but the terms of the Peace of Westphalia (1648) made such a return definitely impossible. They repeatedly called for help. Oliver Cromwell, it is said, had a project under consideration whereby Bohemian exiles were to be settled in Ireland. John Amos Comenius, the bishop of the Bohemian Church, a distinguished educator, himself an exile living in Holland, presented the history of his church to King Charles II. of England in 1660, with a stirring account of its suffering.

Suspecting that the dissenters were yet unsuppressed, the government caused other patents to be issued, one of which, published in 1650, imposed severe penalties such as the billeting of troops, banishment from the country, confiscation of property and, in extreme cases, death. A patent dated April 9th of that year required that within six weeks all parishes should instal conformist clergy or close. Under Josef I. (1705-1711), and again under Charles VI. (1711-1740), the work of anti-reformation was renewed with increased severity. Loyal subjects were enjoined under pain of death from harboring or aiding heretic teachers or ministers, the reading and smuggling into the country or otherwise circulating Bohemian books on the prohibited list. Other patents followed in 1721, 1722, 1723, 1724, 1725, 1726, with the result that non-Catholics who still secretly clung to the forbidden faith emigrated to Saxony and Prussia, where they sought the protection of the rulers of those countries. The suffering of the unfortunates was somewhat, though not wholly, relieved when the German princes, assembled in the Diet at Regensburg in 1735, sent a strong appeal to the Austrian Emperor to treat his subjects with more toleration. When the Edict of Toleration was issued in 1781, permitting free worship, there still remained in Bohemia about 100,000 Protestants.6 Of the refugees who fled to Germany in the first quarter of the eighteenth century many found their way with the Herrnhuters, or Moravians, as they are called in the United States, to Georgia, and others to Pennsylvania, where they established, in 1741, the flourishing town of Bethlehem, now the recognized centre of the Moravian Church in the United States.7

GERMANIZATION AND THE AWAKENING

Germanization, as a matter of fact, was pursued in Bohemia by every Hapsburg, though the rulers of that house have not planned it as systematically as Maria Theresa or her son, Josef II. Centralism, to be successful and powerful, required the levelling of the differences of speech and of race. Every Hapsburg ruler had been educated to the belief that he was rendering a supreme service to his subjects by forcing them “to unlearn the barbaric language of their sires, which isolated them from the rest of the world.” “He who knows only Bohemian and Latin,” declared Councilor Gebler, in 1765, “is bound to make a poor scholar, and it were better for him to stick to the plow and to the trade; there are too many Latin scholars as it is.” More and more the conviction gained ground that a language like the Bohemian, spoken but by a few millions of people, was valueless, and that it would be a folly for the government to aid in its restoration.

Austrian statesmen were determined to impose German at one time even on the unsuspecting Galicians, though in Galicia there were no Germans at all, only Poles and Russians. Discoursing upon the worth or the lack of value of languages of small nations, Denis says: “These arguments may be true, but unfortunately they could be applied to every language in the world.”

In 1774 a detailed plan for the Germanization of schools in the empire was submitted to Maria Theresa. This plan provided for German schools and none others. By “mother” language was meant the German. Bohemian was permitted in the primary or lowest grades of the school. No pupil could enter a gymnasium (secondary school) who had not had a previous training in German. Fortunately for the non-Germans of that period, progress was less rapid than had been generally expected. Schoolmasters were scarce and pupils, not understanding the language of the teachers, advanced but slowly. As a result of all this, the queen, though unwilling, was compelled to make concessions here and there and to proceed less aggressively.

A noted writer has truthfully said that in the eighteenth century Bohemians were outcasts in their own country. A lad who wanted to learn a trade had to attend a German school for apprentices, and only pupils knowing German were entitled to receive stipends. In the secondary schools in Bohemia the vernacular was treated as a “foreign” language. A professor was required to qualify in Latin and Greek, yet no one questioned whether or not he knew the tongue of the natives. Pupils were educated in German to be able to perform the work of janissaries on the people of their own race. Slowly but steadily Bohemian was likewise forced out of the courts. Laws were promulgated in the German language. The Bohemian began to lose ground in the highest courts of justice; gradually it was forced out from the inferior courts. After 1749 law documents in Bohemian became rarer. When, in 1788, Count Cavriani moved that only certain notices be published in that language, the motion was passed without opposition. From that time on German took its place as the official language in the kingdom.

Can we wonder then that, pressed as it was on four sides – by the church, the state, the school, and the dominant classes of the population – the tongue of Hus and Comenius lost ground almost altogether? And who saved it from utter extinction? It was the lowly peasant who continued giving it shelter under his thatched roof, long after it had been expelled from the proud châteaux of the nobility and disowned by the middle classes. The peasant preserved the language for the literary men who rescued from oblivion this precious gift for future generations. “It is admitted by all,” said Palacký, “that the resuscitation of the nation was accomplished wholly by our writers. These men saved the language; they carried the banner which they wished the nation to follow. Literature was the fountain spring of our national life, and the literati placed themselves at the forefront of the revivalist movement.” The diet of the kingdom recommended, in 1790, that Bohemian should be introduced at least in certain secondary schools, preferably in Prague, but the Austrian world of officialdom was opposed even to this concession. “No one threatens the life of the Bohemian tongue,” protested these officials. “The government cannot antagonize the feeling of the most influential and wealthiest classes who use German, if not exclusively, at least overwhelmingly. Moreover, to encourage Bohemian would be to lose sight of the idea of the unification of the empire. The state must not deprive the Bohemians of the blessing and of the opportunity that emanate from the knowledge of German. Useful though Bohemian may be, its study must not be at the expense of German.”

Two important events, both of which occurred toward the end of the eighteenth century, helped to awaken the soul of the prostrate nation. One was the determination of Emperor Josef II. to make the empire a German state, as has already been pointed out. But a greater incentive than Josef’s coercive measures were the inspiring ideals of the first French Revolution which found their way even to far-off Bohemia. The motto of the French revolutionists, “Liberty, equality, fraternity,” could not fail to give hope to the handful of Bohemian intellectuals.8

However, as late as 1848, the year of revolutionary changes in Austria, the Bohemian language was still a Cinderella in its own land. In the streets of Prague it was rarely spoken by the people of any social distinction. To engage in Bohemian conversation with strangers was a risky undertaking, unless one was prepared to be rebuked in the sternest manner. German predominated, except in stores that were patronized by apprentices and peddlers. Posters solely in Bohemian were not allowed by the police. The text had to be translated, and the German part of it printed above the Bohemian. Nowhere but in the households of the commonest classes was the despised tongue sheltered. Families belonging to the world of officialdom and to the wealthier bourgeoisie, though often imperfectly familiar with it, clung to German. Strict etiquette barred Bohemian from the salons. The only entrance that was open to it led through the halls of the servants. So completely were the people denationalized that foreigners visiting the resorts at Carlsbad and Marienbad expressed their astonishment on hearing the peasants talk in an unknown tongue. They had learned to look upon Bohemia as a part of Germany and on the inhabitants as Germans. Particularly the Russians and the Poles were surprised to meet kinsmen in Bohemia whose language sounded familiar to their ears.

“A few of us,” writes Jacob Malý, one of the staunch patriots of that time, “met each Thursday at the Black Horse (a first-class hotel in Prague) and gave orders to the waiters in Bohemian, who, of course, understood us well. This we did with the intention of giving encouragement to others; but seeing the futility of our efforts in this direction, we gave up the propaganda in disgust.”

In 1852, the then chief of police of Prague confidently predicted that in fifty years there would be no Bohemians in Prague. That even Austrian Chiefs of Police could make a mistake, appears from the fact that Greater Prague to-day numbers nearly 600,000 inhabitants, of whom only about 17,000 are Germans. When, in 1844, Archduke Stephen came to Prague and the citizens arranged a torch procession in his honor, the police were scandalized to hear, mingling with the customary “Vivat,” shouts in Bohemian, “Sláva!”

Authors and newspaper writers were objects of unbounded curiosity. Malý, already quoted, relates the following: “Walking in the streets of Prague, I often noticed people pointing at me and saying: ‘Das ist auch einer von den Vlastenzen’ (Here goes another of those patriots), or ‘Das ist ein gewaltiger Czeche’ (There is a thorough Čech for you). During my stay in southern Bohemia in 1838, the innkeeper of a tavern which I frequented evenings had surely no reason to regret my patronage, for people would come primarily to have a peep at me.”

In the biography of Palacký9 we read an account of a memorable meeting of patriots held in 1825 in the Sternberg Palace in Prague. Palacký being invited to dinner on that particular day, as he often had been, remained in the company of the Counts Sternberg until midnight. A violent dispute that arose between the guests and the hosts would not allow of their separation. Among other questions discussed was the prospective publication of a scientific magazine in both languages, Bohemian and German. Abbé Dobrovský, the “father of Slavic philology,” and Count Kaspar were of the opinion that it was too late to think seriously of the resuscitation of the Bohemian nation, and that all attempts in that direction must end in failure. Palacký, then a youthful enthusiast, disagreed in this with his elder companions and bitterly reproached Dobrovský, that he, a literary light among his people, had not written a single book in the mother tongue. “Were we all to do the same, then indeed our nation would perish for lack of intellectual nourishment. As for me,” fervently argued Palacký, “were I but a gypsy by birth, and the last of that race, I would still deem it my duty to try to perpetuate an honorable mention of it in the annals of mankind.” Count Sternberg, though he knew the language well, never used it in conversation with people of education. He availed himself of it only when talking with his servants.

In 1811 Dobrovský wrote to the noted Slovene scholar, Kopitar, that “the cause of the nation is desperate, unless God helps.” In his discourse, “Geschichte der Deutschen und ihrer Sprache in Böhmen,” dated 1790, Pelcl expressed himself as follows: “The time is approaching when the Bohemian language will be in the same situation at home as the Slavonic language is to-day in Miess, Brandenburg, and Silesia, where German is everywhere prevalent and where nothing remains of the Slavic but the names of cities, villages, and rivers.”

It stands to reason that the language, returning to its own after a disuse of almost two hundred years and dug from the grave of oblivion, needed much burnishing, purifying, and modernizing. Terminology of arts and sciences, that flourished while the language lay dormant, had to be created. Dictionaries, grammars, and histories had to be compiled. Above all, the dross of alien forms had to be removed and, while the old Bohemian of Hus, Comenius, and Blahoslav constituted an inexhaustible store of material, it was necessary to borrow from kindred Slavic tongues and to coin many modern terms.

That the older writers composed some of their works in German seems paradoxical (German in these instances was used to defeat German), yet it was natural, considering the low state of Bohemian culture and the corresponding literary excellence in neighboring Germany. Thus, John Kollár, the apostle of literary Pan-Slavism, wrote his main work in German. Josef Dobrovský, already mentioned, composed all his works in German. Josef Šafařík’s monumental volume on “Slavic Antiquities” was also written in German; even the “Father of his country,” Francis Palacký, wrote his “History of the Bohemian Nation”10 in the tongue of Schiller and Goethe. When, in 1831, a number of writers gathered in a well-known coffee-house in Prague, Čelakovský, one of them, remarked, half jokingly and half seriously, that Bohemian letters would perish should the ceiling of the room where they were chatting fall and kill those present.