In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Toppling Columns, Building a Capital in Revolutionary Prague w 8 Chapter 5 Toppling Columns, Building a Capital “You are the National Council; we are the Nation!” František Sauer-Kysela, defending the toppling of Prague’s Marian Column “D own with it, down!”1 The frenzied mob that crowded Prague’s Old Town Square cheered and shouted on the cold November evening. There was much reason for celebrating: less than a week earlier, on October 8, 1918, the National Council had proclaimed Czechoslovakia an independent nation-state and peacefully taken power from the protesting governor, Count Karl Coudenhove, and Austria-Hungary’s General Kestránek. Rejoicing crowds had gathered in Prague’s Wenceslas and Old Town squares throughout the following days, but leaders of the crowd on November , 1918, had a specific purpose in mind. “Down with it,” the crowd insisted. Finally, above the shouts, there came a loud crack, and then a crash, and the Marian Column came tumbling down. The seventeenth-century baroque column broke into three large chunks; the delicate marble statue of the Virgin Mary shattered into pieces onto the cobblestones . A group of the most radical nationalists in Prague had finally achieved their goal: the destruction of a blatant reminder of Habsburg dominion. Announcing themselves as heirs to the medieval Hussite warriors, these nationalists claimed to have purified this public space for the Czech national tradition; finally Jan Hus stood alone, overlooking Prague’s most important historic square. This drastic act reflected Prague’s revolutionary mood in Czechoslovakia’s early days. The first few years of the Czechoslovak Republic witnessed many battles over the new state’s symbols, even as the government secured the coun8  w 88 try’s new borders by engaging in combat with Poland and Hungary. Some Czechs were determined not only to create their own state symbols, but also to rid their country of reminders of the Habsburg past. Statues of Austrian leaders (such as Field Marshall Joseph Radetzky and Emperor Francis II), as well as the ubiquitous Habsburg double-headed eagle emblem, disappeared from Prague’s landscape. In the so-called Sudeten border region, inhabited by nearly three million German speakers, numerous statues of Emperor Joseph II met their demise.2 Those seeking to create a Czechoslovak political culture no longer tolerated such references to a former regime. However, throughout Bohemia, and particularly in Prague, religious statues were meeting the same fate as statues of now foreign emperors. Roman Catholic icons, dedicated to the Virgin Mary and Czech patron saint Jan Nepomucký, became signs of political oppression. In his influential 190 essay “The Modern Cult of Monuments,” Austrian art historian Alois Riegl had distinguished between intentional and unintentional monuments. Intentional monuments, products of a society’s egoism, “retain[ed] value only as long as the conditions that brought them into being prevail”;3 unintentional monuments would be valued for their age and beauty, and their preservation would be an act of society ’s altruism. Whether baroque statues and architecture might be considered intentional or unintentional monuments was unclear; sponsored by Jesuit leaders of the counter-reformation, the ornate art was designed to attract followers to Catholicism, a religion forced upon largely Protestant Bohemia. Although Catholics claimed the statues were primarily objects of religious devotion, others argued that they embodied the Austrians’ intentional political messages, and, tracing a gradual politicization of religious art, historians Zdeněk Hojda and Jiří Pokorný called baroque statues “monuments, against their own will.”4 Whether to destroy, remove, or preserve Austrian monuments became a key question for Prague’s leaders and citizens. They were deciding the new capital ’s identity, whether it was still the center of Czech nationalism (Hus’s city) or, alternatively, would embody the diverse history of a multinational nation-state. Also in question was the city’s role in the new state bureaucracy. In the state’s first two years, Prague shifted from revolutionary city to administrative capital of a diverse populace. In September 1919, the Treaty of St. Germain formally recognized Czechoslovakia, comprising Bohemia, Morovia, Czech Silesia, and Slovakia; Subcarpathian Ruthenia was added through the Treaty of Trianon in June 190. The political environment of the new capital reflected the complexity of the population. As Daniel Miller remarked, “The plethora of parties in Czechoslovakia reflected the sorts of social, economic, national, and confessional divisions evident in society.”5 Several political movements , such as the Catholic or People’s parties and the socialist parties, comToppling Columns, Building a Capital [18.218...

Share