Czech National Theatre in Prague, photograph, around 1898

The Czech people’s national interpretation of history always accentuated the democratic element. The evolution of the nation was seen here as the endeavour to emancipate the broader mass of the people from feudal or national oppression. The opponents from the camp of those defending German hegemony in Bohemia designated the Czechs demeaningly as “a nation of plebeian lackeys”.

Prague (Czech Praha), the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, had always been a bilingual city in which Germans and Czechs lived alongside each other. The history of the city was dominated by the alternating importance of the languages. From the middle of the 19th century, the pendulum swung to the benefit of Czech.