Austria and the Czechs[1].
By Dr. Jan Herben.
I wish to recapitulate briefly the relations between the Hapsburg monarchy and the Czech nation since the national re-awakening of the Czechs.
Emperor Joseph I. died knowing that the State reforms contemplted by him would not come to pass, and a few days before he died he confessed his errors. A month after his death, in March, 1790, everybody in Austria was working to destroy all he built. They were destroying everything, not only that which was hasty and apparently harmful, but also that which was liberal and good for the welfare of the people. At the March Diet of Prague the Bohemian Estates submitted three voluminous books of complaints. It is necessary to recall the fact that the Estates (the nobles, the knights and the towns) then really represented the nation and that their demands and their grievances were the demands and grievances of the whole Bohemian nation, of all the inhabitants of the kingdom. So that at the March diet the nation, through its states, for the first time spoke its mind.
Among the grievances against the government of the dead Emperor there was one concerning the spread of the German language. The demand was made that the new government of Leopold II. should favor the Czech language as much as the German. The Bohemian nobles raised this demand only out of opposition to the government of Joseph I., for otherwise they themselves did not know the Czech tongue nor held it in very high esteem.
The Bohemian Estates were apparently preparing for a strong attack; the city of Prague was full of rumors and expectations. But when it came to acts, the linguistic questions were pushed into the back ground and included in the third volume containing the complaints and demands of the clergy; and the clergy asked that the education of prosptctive clergymen in the high schools and universities be conducted in Latin and that the pupils in the three gymnasia of Prague be taught in Bohemian:
With this demand, meekly and moderately as it was worded, the Bohemian “gubernium” (“Statthalterei” of to-day) which was to submit its opinion to the government, did short work. The German language, it said, can not be an obstacle to the education of the clergy, as the Czech grammar schools were few and every year their number was decreasing. As far as the university was concerned it admitted the necessity of a chair of Bohemian. The Vienna Commission declared the chair of Bohemian at the Prague University as superfluous, but nevertheless Emperor Leopold gave his consent to its establishment. F. M. Pecl was appointed professor of Bohemian and in March, 1793, delivered his first lecture.
A great number of complaints and demands were submitted to the Diet during the reign of Francis I. Again the subject of Bohemian schools and Czech language came to the forefront. A memorandum was submitted by thirty-three Czech citizens (who in the records are called “Original böhmen”) which was in effect a protest against the forcible germanization of the Czechs. It threatened a revolt of the oppressed and described “how all evil in the land comes from the Germans and how Bohemia attained power, greatness and prosperity only in those times when the King and Estates spoke Bohemian.”
In the meantime the Napoleonic Wars broke out and the Czechs showed great loyalty to the Emperor and to the empire, as well as great readiness for sacrifice.
As an acknowledgement of their loyalty the Imperial Commission on Studies issued, in August, 1816, a decree which ordered the teaching of Bohemian in the gymnasia in the case of those pupils who brought with them a knowledge of the language. In the appointment to political offices in the Bohemian lands preference was to be given to applicants knowing the Czech language. A little later another decree ordered that all the applicants for the position of city and county physicians in the Bohemian lands should possess a knowledge of the Czech language. The decree was not clear, however, in that it did not state whether Bohemian lessons were to be included in the regular curriculum or whether they were to be taught outside of the regular school hours. Bohemian teachers who were trying to introduce the language as a part of the curriculum were in constant conflict with their superiors; the uncertainty, however, did not last long. In February 1821, a supplement to the decree was issued which changed it in such a manner as to leave none of the privileges of the original decree.
In the year 1818 the National Museum of Prague was founded. Bohemian patriots congratulated themselves that it was not forbidden by the government. The museum committee on publication submitted in 1832 a memorandum on the neglect of the Czech language in schools; but the answer did not come until from the successor of Francis I.
Emperor Ferdinand V. was called the benevolent, but in his dealings with the Czechs he was no more generous than his father. The memorandum submitted to the government by “The Society for the Development of the Czech Language and Literature” was written very carefully and in the most moderate terms. It indicated that for more than sixty years Czech pupils in Bohemia had been taught in German, but without success, and that it was a pity, for the children were only forgetting their own language while not acquiring the command of any other. In such a manner the general culture of the population suffered. In the years 1816 to 1818 you could still find the
- ↑ Translated from the Národní Listy, Prague, February, 1918.
