Chapters

Coming next after the suppression of the 1848 Revolution was at first a political ice age. Nevertheless, the people’s demands could not be permanently ignored. National-liberal ideas had cast strong roots also in the Czech bourgeoisie, just emerging at the time.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, popular political parties began to form in the German-speaking part of the Monarchy: Social Democrats, Christian Socialists and German Nationalists. They gradually began to make their appearance in documentary films and newsreels in Austria-Hungary.

The demand for autonomy for Bohemia was a core issue in the national movement, which by now had become a mass phenomenon. From the Czech perspective Bohemia was seen as a political nation with an emphatically Czech character – consciously suppressing the fact that this contradicted the ethnic concept of the nation: because “Bohemians” no longer existed; national agitation now applied only to Czechs and Germans.

Shortly prior to 1900 there was a change in political culture: reforms in the electoral system now gave the broad-based public a say in political matters. Against all expectations, this triggered a radicalisation. Now Germans and Czechs were in uncompromising opposition to each other in Bohemia – and both ethnic groups saw their national development shackled by the Austrian Empire.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century the Czechs availed of a fully developed spectrum of parties, with the parliamentary representatives of the Czechs in the Vienna Imperial Council assigned to different political camps.

The empire of the Habsburgs was seen by widespread circles of Czech political élites as Völkerkerker, the prison of nations, which hindered the process of becoming a nation. The Czechs compared themselves to a canary in a golden cage: well protected and fed, he can twitter his songs – but not fly free.

Even before the cinematograph conquered the world, showmen presented colourful and spectacular pictures to the public. Attracted by the fascinating moving pictures, audiences immersed themselves in this new sensory experience and forerunner of the visual cinema.

After the Lumière brothers had presented the cinematographic technology for the first time commercially on 28 December 1895 on Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, there were shows the following February in London, Bordeaux and Brussels. The ‘living photographs’ were presented in Vienna on 20 March 1896.

Even before the turn of the century, vaudeville theatres were the main venue for film projections in Austria-Hungary, and travelling shows remained popular until 1910. Because there were so few films, the main programme needed to have variety, and the shows also had to move around rapidly to different places.

The early cinema was closer to vaudeville than theatre. Variety was the driving force in the pioneer days, and films were presented with much fanfare at festivals and fairs, where the cinematographic shows were to be mainly found.

The selection of films was based on the ‘fairground attraction’ principle. Like vaudeville, the ten or fifteen films in a cinema programme were seen as ‘numbers’, a collection of attractive short films designed to entertain the public.

The American film historian Tom Gunning coined the phrase ‘cinema of attractions’ to describe the early film presentations. Instead of narrating, as was to be customary later, the films simply put their subjects on show.

International film producers dominated early cinematography. Austrian film pioneers appeared around 1910 and were to influence the domestic cinema scene for the next two decades.

On the eve of the First World War Austria-Hungary was the European state with the second-largest area after Russia. In spite of its enormous size, however, the Habsburg empire was falling behind the major European powers in many respects.

At the start of the twentieth century, the importance of a state was measured above all in terms of its population. According to the 1910 census, the Dual Monarchy had 51.4 million inhabitants.

The last decades of Emperor Franz Joseph’s rule were marked by conflicts between the various nationalities within the Habsburg Monarchy. The competing national demands were increasingly incompatible with the idea of a supranational Austria-Hungary.

All of the major monotheistic religions were represented in the Habsburg empire. In spite of the clear dominance of the Catholic Church, the Habsburg Monarchy was multi-confessional.

The Habsburg Monarchy incorporated territories with very different cultural, social and economic development. This variety, which was extremely fecund at the cultural level, proved to be an obstacle to the modernization of the state as a whole.

In view of the high level of illiteracy within the population as a whole, the Habsburg Monarchy lagged behind other western European states. The vast regional differences in literacy was a characteristic feature.

In spite of the differing attitude of some regions and sectors of society, the people of the Habsburg Monarchy and the other warring nations mostly backed the decision of their rulers. The enthusiasm for war was also captured in propaganda films.

After the death of Emperor Franz Joseph, the new young emperor and his wife became the focus of Austro-Hungarian film propaganda. The idea was to enhance their popularity and communicate calm, harmony and security amid all of the chaos.

The film reporters in the First World War, on whichever side they were, had the same problems to deal with: the production of authentic war pictures was difficult if not impossible. The cameras were heavy and cumbersome, telephoto lenses almost unknown, and the film material was not very light-sensitive, so that it was difficult if not impossible to film at dusk or in the night, when a lot of the fighting took place.

The military film propaganda focused on good news from the front. In addition, the mechanization and destructive efficiency were shown on film, along with the organization and discipline of the soldiers in action.

In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire had difficulty in maintaining its status as a major power. The need to modernize the huge empire became increasingly pressing, as the backwardness in many areas compared with the European powers revealed itself.