East European Quarterly/Volume 15/Number 1/František Palacký and the Development of Modern Czech Nationalism

by František Kutnar

FRANTIŠEK PALACKÝ AND THE DEVELOPMENT
OF MODERN CZECH NATIONALISM

 

František Kutnar
Charles University, Prague

 

Modern Czech patriotism and nationalism evolved under the specific political, socio-economic, and cultural conditions which arose in the Czech lands after the breakup of the medieval Czech state and the victory of the Habsburgs and the Catholic church in seventeenth-century Bohemia. The sovereignty of the Czech state gradually faded. In time, the nation lost its nobility and its creative cultural groups. The majority of the non-Catholic nobility emigrated. The language and the attitudes of the noble families which remained or came to Bohemia from abroad to seize estates inclined toward the principles of the Viennese government. German, the language of the governing classes, was also accepted by the church nobility and the wealthy urban population. In this way, the affluent townsmen attempted to reach the social and cultural level of the governing groups. Under the given circumstances, the nation consisted of rural serfs, urban artisans, tiny groups of intellectuals, and increasing numbers of the poor in towns and villages. In the new economic, social, and ideological milieu, the society and culture of the modern nation was formed by these groups. This long and difficult process manifested itself in different forms and with various degrees of intensity, Favorable stimulation was provided by the economic reconstruction after the Thirty Years’ War and later by the economic and social reforms of Enlightened Absolutism, modern rationalism, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the revolutionary movements of the first half of the nineteenth century, Czech national awareness, thought, and action reacted to these historical phenomena vigorously.

After the battle of White Mountain and the Thirty Years’ War, the Czech population drew upon the older heritage of national thought. The period saw no abrupt or distinct decline of national consciousness and thought. Abroad, in culturally and politically developed Western Europe, the Czech emigration achieved the climax of Czech national thought. The continuation of the ideological level of the period before the Thirty Years’ War was unbroken, but was enriched with new, progressive elements. The classic definition of a nation by the educator Jan Amos Komenský in his Gentis felicitas of 1659 can serve as evidence. The definition is remarkable in its conception of the components which constitute a national society and its theory of the bonds uniting the individual with the national totality. The succint Latin original of the definition is the following: “Gens seu natio est hominum eadem stirpe prognatorum, eodem mundi loco / velut communi domo, quam patriam vocant / habitantium, eodem linguae idiomate utentium et eodem iisdem communis amoris, concordiae et pro publico bono studii vinculis colligatorum multitudo.”–“A nation is a great number of people born of the same tribe, living in the same place in the world (as in a common house which they call their country), speaking the same special language, united by the same mutual bonds of natural love, concord, and efforts for the common good,”

Komenský clearly defines three objective elements of a nation: the unity or community of origin, territory, and language. However, they do not automatically form a nation as a higher, conscious social unit. A nation is the result of social relations and connections that originate in the political, economic, and cultural spheres. Komenský views a nation as a unit having a collective will and manifesting natural egotism in an effort to achieve the common good and prosperity, Komenský’s approach to the existence of a social order based on the feudal privileges of the Estates was basically positive, even though he criticized it and tried to improve it. Naturally, he did not arrive at the concept of a national state, Komenský demanded of the ruler and the aristocracy that they use the national language. He saw in government by foreigners and the deprivation of the Estates of their liberties the end of national dignity and slavery.

Komensky’s criticism of foreign supremacy and his condemnation of those Czechs who yielded meekly to the rule of foreigners and accommodated themselves to their arbitrariness reminds us of the work of a Jesuit, Bohuslav Balbín. This Czech historian analyzed the unfortunate economic, political, and cultural situation in Bohemia after the battle of White Mountain and the Thirty Years’ War in his booklet De regni Bohemiae felici quondam, nunc calamitoso statu (1672), which is usually known under the title of its later, enlightened editor, František Martin Pelel, as Dissertatio apologetica pro lingua slavonica, praecipue bohemica (1775). The author condemned the administration of Bohemia, reaching the conclusion that the universal catastrophe of this country had been the result of rule by foreigners. Balbín’s essay, a defense of the old Czech state and Czech language and a critical reaction to the reversal of fortunes in the country, to the rule of unenlightened absolutism, and to foreign supremacy could not be published until more than a century after its origin.

Both of these educated representatives of Czech national and political thinking of the seventeenth century acknowledged the social values of the privileged nobility and clergy. However, Czech writers living at the beginning of the eighteenth century among the common people saw the social base of a nation in the gentry and peasantry. They recognized the serfs not only as the population source of a nation but also as the guarantor and the preserver of its language. A baroque booklet, Obroviště mariánského atlanta (1704), written in Czech by a country priest, Antonín Frozín, expressed this encouraging notion and conviction. Though devoted to the cult of Mary, the essay also manifested a firm hope in the future of the Czech nation and provided a description of the national situation in the country. The striking and numerous preponderance of Czechs over Germans and the fact that the nucleus of the population of Bohemia was formed by Czech farmers and laborers with a rising birthrate seemed to prove the assumption about the vitality of the Czech nation.

The economic, social, political, and cultural situation of the Czech nation deteriorated until the fifties of the eighteenth century. The Czech language was gradually suppressed in schools, in the administration of estates, towns, and the governing organs, and in the diet. The purity of the language also declined. While the narrow circle of intellectuals was diminishing, the usage of Czech became associated more and more with the town-poor and the serfs in the villages. The developing popular culture of these lower social groups of the population shows that Czech national thinking had faded out but did not vanish. In the Catholic milieu, national consciousness was nourished by a supernatural belief in divine help and in the divine origin of the “elected” Czech nation. Even the Enlightenment, at least in the beginning of its development, did not deny this notion, but added a rational explanation to strengthen it. During the second half of the eighteenth century, this cultural and ideological world of the serfs and of the poor became the source and the object of the Czech Enlightenment and the national revival.

This relatively quiet level of Czech national thinking was favorably disturbed by developments in international politics. The first external attacks were the three Silesian wars over the Habsburg legacy during the rule of Maria Theresa. A wave of moral indignation and social criticism of the estranged nobility arose when the Czechs, represented by townsmen, serfts, teachers, and priests, became aware of the catastrophic consequences of the wars. The nobility was blamed for neglecting the serfs and for leaving them to the plundering enemy, while selfishly seeking to save itself.

The other condition festering growing patriotism during the second half of the eighteenth century can be found in the ideas of the Enlightenment and in the political pressure of the Enlightened state. Without these external factors, the wars could not have transformed the national thought, feeling, and will into a new composition. Enlightened despotism exercised its influence in two different ways. On the one hand, it loosened the bonds of the guilds and serfdom, interfered with ecclesiastical and manorial administration. In this way, Enlightened Despotism encouraged the formation of a new social structure and new urban elements which could become the social base for a new form of Czech patriotic thinking. On the other hand, the cultural policy of linguistic and educational centralism which replaced the national language by German in the administration and in schools affected Czech national thinking negatively. These negative aspects, however, demonstrated the importance of a national language for patriotism and strengthened the elements important for the formation of patriotism and national thought.

The political and economic doctrines of the Enlightenment, which began replacing the theological approach with state-oriented thinking, emphasized the positive worth of the urban and rural classes of workers. The old social and ideological framework focusing on the church, religion, and the hierarchy of a feudal society loosened. Intellectuals took on a significant place in the new social and ideological sturcture. They became the promoters, the chief champions and propagators of the national revival. The form of national thinking cultivated by the Czech intellectuals found receptive individuals among the Czech townsmen and the peasantry, spurred by general developments into a more profound social and ideological activity. As relations between these social groups advanced, patriotic thinking ceased to be the attribute of a limited number of educated individuals. Transformed into a kind of social movement, patriotism was accepted by a wide circle of people.

The origin of Czech patriotism was closely connected psychologically with widespread feelings of national and linguistic degeneration. This inferiority complex, embracing individuals as well as the collective mass, applied to everything Czech. The common people as well as educated individuals were painfully aware of the harsh reality of the fading cultural and ideological adherence to the national past, and of the fact that in world opinion the Czechs had ceased to present themselves as a vital nation possessing full rights. This complex was overcome in several ways. National consciousness was strengthened by the assumption that the Czech language had once been a civilized language used by the higher social classes. It was argued that the Czech language had even surpassed other languages in its wealth of expression and the elegance of its vocabulary. The national complex of smallness and insignificance on the international scene was offset by the vast dimensions of the national and linguistic base of the Slavs. The greatness and antiquity of Czech history and national culture served as proof of the equality of the Czech nation with other European nations. Historical facts were employed to dismiss the old notion of the Czechs holding no rights to their own national existence because they had never created their own culture and had never possessed their own state. At this time, when the Czech state had vanished and Czech literature, science, and art had disappeared, only history, the political and cultural past of the Czechs, could act as a source of national hope and proof of national vitality. History assumed great value in remarkably affecting the national development. In this way, history and historiography became a vital aspect of national feeling and thought, thereby assuming an unusual social function.

The socio-political fiction and illusion of the positive feeling of the ruler toward the Czech nation led Czech intellectuals to formulate, from the 1770’s on, political, linguistic, and cultural claims in various so-called apologies and in public speeches. The apology dedicated to Emperor Joseph II, in Czech, by the lexicographer Karel Hynek Thám in 1783; Josef Dobrovský’s address to Emperor Leopold II during his coronation in Prague, in 1791 and delivered at the meeting of the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences; the inaugural address of the first Professor of Czech language at Prague University, František Martin Pelcl, in 1793; the articles written in 1790–92 by the journalist Václav Matěj Kramerius about the political successes of the anti-Habsburg opposition in Hungary, and the speeches written by the village mayor and peasant-annalist, František Vavák, for the coronation of Francis II in Prague in 1792 represented the climax of Czech patriotism and nationalism during the period of the French Revolution and the era of the Estates’ opposition to Emperor Joseph II.

In spite of its many vigorous attacks against the alienated nobility, this generation considered the privileged classes a significant factor in the state and nation and attempted to persuade them to participate in the Czech national movement. The French Revolution, however, convincingly refuting the indispensable character of the privileged classes of a nation, generated a completely negative attitude on the part of the younger generation of Czech patriots toward the nobility at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They regarded the people as the core of the nation and as the basic Czech national element. This notion was categorically proclaimedby the literary historian, Josef Jungmann, in his essay “Two Meditations on the Czech Language” (1806): “The Czech people exist. The nobility may speak Frankish or Chaldean (wiser aristocrats love the language of their people). The lords regard themselves as foreigners and the people hold them as such. The less they are loved by the nation, the less the aristocracy loves the nation”’ During the turbulence of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Jungmann’s generation found a secure base in the national history and in a notion emphasising the coherence between the Czech nation and the great Slavic whole. Already a generation before, the historian Mikuláš Adaukt Voigt had expressed the notion that history forms the spine of national consciousness and provides the proof of an uninterrupted national existence. (See the preface to his Abbildungen böhmischer und mährischer Gelehrten und Künstler, Vol. I, 1773. (Clearly, the strong anti-German orientation of Voigt’s patriotism became a part of the Estates’ opposition to Viennese absolutism and an ardent political expression of Czech nationalism.

The transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century marks a significant period in the development of Czech patriotism and nationalism. They reached a higher socio-political, cultural, and ideological form. Many new components of modern national thinking and feeling had accumulated, but a firm structural whole was still missing, and an integral program embracing the entire economic, political, and cultural activity of the nation remained to be formulated. The generation of the historian and politician František Palacký (1798–1876) was to accomplish these goals, basing itself on the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Realistically analyzing the international and domestic situations, this generation began a political struggle for the realization of national, political, and cultural ideals during the decline of feudal absolutism and the beginnings of the constitutional regime. Only a personality of deep moral certainty and responsibility and immense conceptual power, with a deep understanding of the past and the present, could learn, comprehend, revise, and complete the legacy of the past and bring Czech thinking to a world-level. Indisputably, Palacký was such a personality. As a representative of Czech national thought during the last period of the Czech national revival, he concluded the epoch and opened another era by formulating a purposeful national program. After more than two hundred years, he reintroduced the “Czech question” into the forum of European science and politics. The problem of Czech national existence was transformed into an international issue.

Only after Palacký had become a scholar and historian did he become interested in practical politics. There was, however, no distinct border-line between his scholarly methods and his political thinking. The origin of both activities was marked by two historical events of his youth, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. Under their influence, Palacký came to the significant conclusions which directed his thinking. First, he conceived revolution to be a natural regenerative necessity for nature as well as for the human race. In his understanding, a revolution introduces fresh and powerful aspects into nature as well as society. Second, Palacký saw nations as collective units exercising their own will, intending to be not only passive objects within a state but also active factors in a commonwealth. In addition, Palacký believed that nations would break out of their chains by force if the authorities did not understand the trends of the period. Palacký understood the revolutionary tendencies of the politically and socially oppressed nations. In his judgement, this historical force was slated to change the world in the near future. Anticipating the infiltration of the Habsburg Monarchy by new political thinking, Palacký wanted his nation to prepare itself for this decisive period by developing itself culturally.

These reflections of Palacký about the state of European politics during the second half of the nineteenth century originated at the time when he wrote a critical essay, “The Origins of Czech Poetry,” with Pavel Josef Šafařík. In perspective, it was directed toward a higher quality of Czech literature and scholarship and the independence of Czech thinking from foreign patterns, mainly German and French. The young generation that spoke out at this time was not satisfied with mere national existence. Its concern was the quality of this existence. In competition with other European nations, the Czechs were expected to express their equality by the independence of their thought. According to Palacký, the Czechs first had to learn to think independently and only then to speak their own language, since independence of thought is the foremost sign of national existence.

Palacký had no national prejudices. Refusing thoughtless acceptance and degrading imitation, he defended the integrity of the Czech character against foreign intrusions. He followed, as he used to say, the path “to introduce old Bohemia into new Europe and to domesticate Europe in her.” This was one of the constants of Palacký’s personality and of his political and scholarly thinking. His historical knowledge, also determining his political practice, was the other constant. In his principal work, The History of the Czech Nation in Bohemia and Moravia, which was published in five volumes and in several versions between 1836 and 1875, Palacký proclaimed the chief purport and meaning of Czech history to be the struggle between the Germans and Slavs. The ideological form of this conflict had been expressed in the struggle of Slavic principles of democracy, equality, and liberty with the principle of German feudalism, based on the distinction between the lord and his subject. During the revolution of 1848, Palacký introduced a program for a national federation in Austria. The modern function or “idea” of the Habsburg commonwealth as a protector of small Central European nations, and the notion of so-called Austro-Slavism, based on political cooperation between the Slavic nations in Austria, were the core of this scheme. A significant political essay, “The Idea of the Austrian State,” in 1865, explains his plan. The program was at times accepted, at times criticized and refused. The outline advocated such decisive and even revolutionary changes in the Central European political structure that it is hard to conceive the political, constitutional, social, and cultural consequences to which its realization would have led and the effect it would have had on all of Europe.

Without an understanding of Palacký’s conception of the developing trends of the past and present, it is impossible to understand his concept of the historical significance of the Czech nation and his program of Austrian federation. On the grounds of Hegel’s idealistic dialectics and Schelling’s principle of polarity, Palacký accepted the “eternal law of nature” and the notion that developments in nature and in society always assume the form of a polarity of forces. The idea that the world tends toward centralization, toward the formation of huge political and economic units, is confronted by its negation, the tendency toward the decentralization of the world. This decentralization is manifested by differentiation and evolution, by the individualization and liberation of nations, or as Palacký said, in the principle of nationality. The advancement of world centralization had been expressed, in Palacký’s view, in the formation of the English political center in the West and the Russian center in the East. Considering the spheres of influence and the pressure of the two political centers, the continued existence of small nations seemed doubtful. Therefore, Palacký came to the conclusion that their integrity had to be insured in a Central European federation of small, independent, and equal nations. Federalization was the principle equalizing the contradictions of world centralization and decentralization.

Many of the propositions on which Palacký built his political construction were faulty, and his program was not realized. Palacký, taking into consideration European political developments, maintained that Austria, if transformed into a federation of small nations, was to be defended in the interests of Bohemia, Europe, humanity, and culture. After the origin of Austro-Hungarian dualism and after the victory of Prussia in Germany, Palacký proclaimed that there would either be a federative Austria or no Austria at all. Palacký overcame his former skepticism regarding the independent political existence of the Czech nation and convincingly concluded: “We were before Austria and we will be after Austria.” After the defeat of his Austrian-federation idea, Palacký formulated no positive program for Czech politics. The reason for this lay in the murky perspectives of the serious international conflict which was rising on the horizon, the shift of the axis of Central European problems from Vienna to Berlin, and the aggressiveness of Bismarck’s Germany, whose clouds overcast the whole European continent.

Palacký understood and explained the national principle, i.e., the founding of independent national units, as a powerful historical agent which, since the period of the Napoleonic wars, had been transforming Europe and the world. He correctly estimated the growing effectiveness of this principle and its influence on developments not only in the nineteenth but also in the twentieth century, often assuming the form of violent overthrows and bloody catastrophes. The origin of modern Germany and the Italian states and the founding of national state units in the Balkans undoubtedly affected Palacký’s views. The predominance of these political aspects caused Palacký, who was deeply interested in relations among nations, in the relationship between a nation and a state, and in the internal structure of a national entity, to underestimate economic and social forces in the historical process. Although Palacký realized the historical significance of modern national problems, he refused to predict their results or to judge their positive and negative aspects. Nevertheless, he correctly evaluated future trends. Palacký, who was aware of the strength and historical necessity of the national principle, considered all ideological or physical struggles directed against it as futile and expected that sooner or later any military conflict in Europe would assume the form of a national, tribal, internecine war.

Palacký considered the state only a form of organization, while recognizing the nation as the essential social organism, an element superior to the state. He understood, however, that political activity in a state is a manifestation of the national will and an indispensable condition of national vitality. In Palacký’s view, relations among nations should be based on the idea of the natural rights of nations to existence. In this connection, Palacký stressed the principle of equality among nations, regardless of their relative size, population, and political and economic power. There are no perfect or imprefect nations; in this sphere, nature recognizes no inferiority or superiority, no dominance or servitude. Therefore, Palacký demanded full national equality and equivalency, warning against undervaluing and overvaluing specific nations and the messianic notion about national predestination. Every nation should have its own government and ruler and be subject only to itself. Palacký considered relationships of supremacy and subjugation among nations, together with national expansion, the cause of hostilities and wars, an international evil, and a danger to common peace.

The internal social structure of a nation should be governed by the ideals of liberty and equality which from the time of the French Revolution had become familiar in European political and social life. In his search for the limits of the two principles, Palacký tried to curtail their negative aspects. Liberty, as a condition of prosperity and human dignity, can exist only in a symbiosis with moral and ethical values and must be accompanied by voluntary restrictions and justice. As an attribute of freedom, Palacký stressed morally responsible behavior based on the maxim, “Do not do to others that which you do not want to be done to you” (Kant’s categorical imperative translated by Palacký into more understandable language). Liberty can be realized only in an organized society ruled by authority. The contradiction between the ideal of liberty and the principle of power, between reason and authority, can be overcome if authority is governed by reason and reason utilizes authority. This means that, in practice, governments should adopt appropriate reforms and changes to implement progress and avoid revolutions and violent changes.

The problem of equality and inequality assumed a more complicated form in Palacký’s doctrine. Palacký, accepting natural differences in nature and society, asked whether or not their forcible abolition was necessary to reach true democracy. He considered complete equality of fortunes, jobs, and working conditions utopian. People have always been physically and spiritually different, craving for different goals and Ideals, possessing different working and economic habits. In Palacky’s scheme, equality can be realized only in political life: men can enjoy equal legal and political rights. As a liberal, Palacký considered the ideal of economic and social equality an illusion. However, he sought the leveling of economic and social discrepancies. In regard to the nobility, Palacký openly demanded the obliteration of all political, social, and economic privileges, since they were based on injustice and social coercion.

Palacký’s conception of human relations in national and state societies clearly had a deep ethical core and content. In this sense, Palacký appears as a deeply moral personality. As an historian and politician who worked with historical as well as contemporary facts and looked realistically at their nature, he was aware of conflicts inside human society. Palacký saw the struggle between good and evil, justice and injustice, reason and brutal instinct, the just and humane order and individual or collective despotism. At the highest level of his national, social, and political reasoning, Palacký stands as an ethical and religious man hoping for the final victory of righteousness, truth, and justice. Palacký’s national thinking and his political program are a personal, structured whole, reflecting previous Czech spiritual development, the contemporary political situation, and careful regard for the trends of world activity. Greatness of construction, logical integrity, and a deep moral core are the indisputable attributes of Palacký’s concept. In the nineteenth century, it became the cornerstone of Czech political and national thinking, Palacký’s principles, which were accepted at times but also criticized or refused, became in a later period the source of Czech national ideology.

The case of Palacký the Czech historian and politician bears witness to the continuing positive and negative effects of national ideology in its various forms in history. Patriotism, nationalism, and integral nationalism are still strong determinants of world affairs, although the principles of social class and the class struggle have also shown their integrating and disintegrating strength. Modern nationalism is at present being intensively studied by various social sciences, though it is still necessary to use historical methods and to view the problem from an evolutionary perspective. The aim of such an analysis should be to recognize the social function and all of the positive and negative aspects of the national phenomenon. In the common interest of nations and states there must evolve a positive and constructive ideal of national consciousness which will accept the principles of mutual respect, tolerance, and full deference to national individuality as the fundamental ethical rule in relations among nations.