The Vectors of Czech National Identity

In contrast to the Poles and Magyars, the major vectors in the evolution of the nation were the bourgeoisie and the affluent farming community, and not the aristocracy, which professed allegiance to the country’s bilingualism and remained indifferent to the concept of nationality.

The national renaissance of the Czechs profited from the effects of the general economic and social progress that fundamentally changed the Habsburg Monarchy in the nineteenth century. Thus the Bohemian school system, separated linguistically, was deemed to be the best in the Monarchy. The growing literacy of a broad-based public created a new readership for the blossoming Czech literary production. National associations, magazines and publishing houses such as the Matice česká founded in 1831 propagated the now obligatory canon of national viewpoints.

Industrialisation and urbanisation generated a modern mass society with a socially diversified spectrum. Czech was no longer exclusively the language of the petty bourgeoisie and rural population, but also of a new middle class. Academics and entrepreneurs likewise began to profess allegiance to the Czech nation. One expression of the change was the “tilting” of erstwhile German-dominated towns and cities in favour of the Czechs: thus in 1861 the latter managed to attain the majority in the Prague Municipal Council.

This development was supported by the strongly pronounced presence of associations and cooperatives, which communicated national viewpoints to the broad-based public. First and foremost to be mentioned here is the gymnastics and sports union Sokol (Falcon), which acted as a tightly organised national strike force.

A triumph was celebrated in the division in 1882 of Prague University – founded in the Middle Ages by Charles IV – into two institutionally separate faculties with German, respectively Czech, as teaching languages. Now it was possible for Czechs to go through their educational career, all the way from elementary school to university graduation, in their mother tongue.

Not only this: the revivalists worked to enhance the nation’s honour in the cultural sphere as well. In 1873 an initiative was started to finish St Vitus’s Cathedral in Prague, which had remained unfinished since the fifteenth century. Comparable with the completion of Cologne Cathedral (as a symbol of German reunification in the nineteenth century), the Prague action was seen as a national tour de force and symbol of the reawakening of the Czechs.

In 1881 the proud Czech nation celebrated by opening the new building of the Prague National Theatre; proudly blazoned above the stage in golden letters was the device: “Národ sobě“ [approximately: Dedicated by the nation to the nation]. From then on the building on the banks of the Vitava (Moldau) became the leading home of drama and music with a genuine Czech note – the works of composers Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák may be named as examples.

In 1891 the new, opulent building of the National Museum – as an institution already the long-time centre of Czech academe – was completed in a dominating position on St Wenceslas Square in Prague. Now the prerogative of hegemony for Czech culture in the country’s capital had also found palpable expression in a building.

Translation: Abigail Prohaska