Per my dad’s request, here are my “Czech Republic” pieces, hijacked over from my old blog.
To all the historian readers I have – please feel free to interject at any time – and let me know if my interpretation is faulty, or if I’m missing certain elements. I am not an expert. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
Also – I have a love for Czechoslovakia, primarily through its art – a deep love – and so I am completely biased, and this may color how I talk about things.
Let me know if this is the case!
This first piece is on the long history of what is now called The Czech Republic.
The Czech Republic – Part I – History
One of the things I have noticed is: things seem to stay the same in the Czech Republic (or Bohemia, or Czechoslovakia, or whatever other name it is known by), unquestioned, unchanging, for a long long time. Centuries sometimes. And then – suddenly – everything collapses, spectacularly, in a matter of 2 weeks.
This first essay takes us up to World War I.
Back in the day
Czechoslovakia has never stayed in the same form for too long.
In the 5th and 6th centuries, the Slavs arrived in this region. The various tribes adopted Christianity soon after and eventually cohered into an empire. An empire that didn’t last very long. It was called the Great Moravian Empire, and had its glory days from 830 to 906. It was a large empire, encompassing areas in Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Silesia and Bohemia. Silesia and Bohemia are now regions in the Czech Republic.
At the end of the 9th century, the Czechs seceded from this empire to form the country of Bohemia. (A country named Bohemia clearly would eventually elect Vaclav Havel as president.) But the Czechs still were factioned off into little tribes, squabbling tribes, without any unification. So it was very easy for King Otto I (King of Germany) to stroll into Bohemia in 950 and conquer them. Bohemia was incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire, but still: King Otto gave the Bohemian prince (Otakar I) at the time the right to some degree of autonomy (again: this is a theme which also comes up again and again in Czech history) and self-rule. The son of the Bohemian prince (Otakar II) was more ambitious than was expected of him: he tried to claim for himself the title of Holy Roman Emperor, and he also tried to proclaim himself King of the Czechs. This all happened during the middle ages, the 1200s.
Otakar II was doomed for disappointment. The imperial crown instead went to Rudolph Hapsburg, which ushers in a whole new phase in Czech history.
The Hapsburgs were strong rulers. Tyrannical to some, benign to others. It was an empire, after all. The Czech people were subjects in this empire, subjects with a long memory, a memory of a grand past, when they had princes and kings. This past is symbolized (to this day) by Prague Castle, an undeniable reminder of the greatness of this nation once upon a time. During the long drab years under Soviet rule, their borders were closed off, and they were completely cut off from the rest of the world. But there … in Prague … was their castle. The memory of the country contained in its borders; the Soviets could not erase that memory, even though they tried.
Under the Hapsburgs, Bohemia flourished. They had strong protection from the empire, and so were able to blossom, and experience a Golden Age, since they didn’t have worries about self-defense or keeping enemies at bay. Prague became one of the most important cities in Europe.
Moving along in history…
I know a lot of huge stuff went down in the 14th and 15th centuries, but it gets confusing, and I am not too sure of my facts, so I will not be vague, and pretend I understand it all.
I know there were revolutions, I know there was some sort of mass religious reform movement which alarmed the Catholics, and caused a lot of problems. The status quo of Catholicism in Europe was threatened by the reform. And then along came the Hapsburgs again. The Hapsburgs were, of course, a Catholic empire.
The Czech nation came under the Hapsburg sphere again in the 1500s. The Hapsburgs made promises to the Czechs, and did not follow through. (This is yet another theme in the story of Czechoslovakia.) They said that they would have religious tolerance for minorities, they promised freedom, and they also promised the Bohemian royal families that they would maintain their royal privileges. None of this occurred. The Bohemian Royal Estates revolted against this, violently. Two Hapsburg officials were pushed out of a window, and plummeted to their deaths. This event sparked the Thirty Years War. Well, no. That is an exaggeration. There was a hell of a lot of religious turmoil swirling all across Europe at that time. And THAT was what sparked the Thirty Years War … but the Bohemians were so rebellious, and so angry, and actually killed some of the Hapsburgs, so the Hapsburgs felt they had no choice but to crack-down, and crack down HARD, on the pesky little Czechs.
But the real issue in Bohemia, is that the Hapsburgs wanted to stomp out Protestantism, squash it like a bug.
Like I said: I am tearing through this story. I am missing a lot.
The Thirty Years War
This war was crushing to the Czechs.
Here’s a quote about what happened (one of those interminable quotes I collect – sometimes I remember to write down where it came from, sometimes I do not – This one, unfortunately, is un-attributed):
The Austrian Habsburgs had failed in their efforts to increase their authority in the Empire and to eradicate Protestantism, but they emerged from the war stronger than before. In Bohemia, they had stamped out Protestantism, broken the power of the old nobility, and declared the crown hereditary in the male line of their family. With Bohemia now firmly in their grasp and with their large group of adjoining territories, they were ready to expand to the east in the Balkans, to the south in Italy, or to interfere once more in the Empire.
So in the end, the Czechs lost everything. They lost all of their rights. They lost all of their hard-won freedom. They lost their property. They also then were put through forced Catholicization and forced Germanization. The Hapsburgs (again: sometimes benign, sometimes tyrannical) wanted to wipe out the concept of Czech national identity. They wanted to erase the individuality of the Czech people off the map forever. This was devastating. And they nearly succeeded.
What is so incredible, and hopeful, is that it did NOT succeed. You cannot do that to people. You cannot. They will, no matter what the hell you do to them, remember who they are, and where they came from. Sometimes, the worse the tyranny, the stronger the cultural memory. Milan Kundera writes about that so well.
But here’s what’s even more incredible:
After the Thirty Years War, the Hapsburgs kept Bohemia under such a strong thumb that nothing changed in that country for THREE CENTURIES. I mean, of course, people grew up, got married, died, had fun, cried, built buildings, tore buildings down. But I’m talking about evolution as a nation. That completely stopped. They were beaten. Defeated.
The Hapsburgs won.
Until …
The mid-1800s
Tracy Chapman may think that revolution “sounds like a whisper”, but the year of 1848 was a year of shriekingly loud revolutions, which caught on like a brushfire, leaping across borders, igniting in first this country, then that one. Not a hell of a lot of whispering going on. Empires, monarchies – all going up in flames.
Bohemia got caught up in it, too, despite the lead cloak of the Hapsburgs. They began to buck against the authority (the Czechs seem to have a talent for that). They may LOOK like they are being compliant, but underneath it all: they are ready to explode.
I read a great quote from Vaclav Havel about his many years living under Soviet oppression. And of course, he was a big loud-mouth trouble-maker, writing inflammatory plays (none of which were allowed to be performed in his own country), creating human rights organizations, ignoring the ban on public meetings of more than 10 people. Vaclav Havel, at one point, decided to “behave AS IF he were free, in an unfree nation“. He was arrested countless times, he was constantly followed, spied upon … but he behaved AS IF he were free. This seems to me to be a talent of the Czech people.
Anyway. Back to the story.
Slowly, slowly … the Czech people began to contemplate being a free and independent state. This desire percolated for many years, as the Hapsburg Empire slowly deteriorated.
All of that ended when Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian student, stepped out of the crowd one day in Sarajevo and assassinated the heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Of course, this was the shot heard round the world. The shot that began World War I.
History was about to speed up again for the Czechs. Only to come to a shrieking halt once more.
