Prague Panoramas: National Memory and Sacred Space in the Twentieth Century

Chapter 7. Religious Heroes for a Secular State

Toppling Columns, Building a Capital in Revolutionary Prague w 115 Chapter 7 Religious Heroes for a Secular State “There will be no rolls!” Prague Bakers Union, declaring its intent to honor Jan Hus Day H eadlines throughout Czechoslovakia on July , 195, announced the strange news that the pope had suddenly recalled his representative from Prague and broken diplomatic relations with the Czechoslovak government. A European state with a majority Catholic population had provoked a rift with the Roman Catholic leadership that would last for three years, and at the heart of the conflict was a Prague festival: the Catholic Church in Rome was protesting the alleged insensitivity of the Czechoslovak state’s lavish Jan Hus celebrations. By 195, it should have been clear that internal conflicts within Czechoslovakia , and within Prague itself, prevented consensus on how to commemorate the nation’s history. Individual citizens, voluntary organizations, and religious groups attacked competing versions of national memory with, literally, clubs and swords, and figuratively, with pens and newsprint. High government officials , however, tried to stay out of the fracas, abiding by President Masaryk’s admonition “We have more important business than statues.”1 Foreign Minister Edvard Beneš tried to call off the culture war, and pleaded for tolerance of diverse views of national memory. Nonetheless, Czechoslovakia could not avoid the necessary rituals, symbols, and festivals that legitimate the very existence of any new polity. Already it had designed currency and postage, but there remained the difficult job of sanctioning national heroes whom citizens could esteem and emulate. In any nation, stories and images of such heroes impart values; they provide context for shared 115 w 116 celebrations; they tie diverse individuals to a common historic past. These tasks were especially important for a new state trying to forge its identity. As Thomas Carlyle had argued in his 180 lectures, heroes offer a model for imitation but also create history through their strength and wisdom.2 This historicist interpretation of heroism, later expanded by such German philosophers as Friedrich Nietzsche, influenced nationalists throughout Europe. Jan Hus had obviously served such multiple heroic purposes for nationalists during the Habsburg Era, but he was becoming a divisive rather than a unifying symbol. Nonetheless, his popularity with many of Czechoslovakia’s current leaders (not least of all the president) blinded many to the dangers of his two-edged symbolic meaning. Thus, as leaders tried to retain Hus as a national symbol while appeasing those who despised his memory, much of the 190s was spent in a cultural tug of war. Battles over national holiday legislation and state-sponsored festivals erupted throughout the decade. As usual, Prague, in its role as the present national capital and historic center of the Czech past, was the principle battleground . As the home of the Czechoslovak Parliament, and as host of lavish festivals, Prague wrestled with how to recognize Hus’s role in that past while still representing the new nation’s diverse citizenry. The 195 Holiday Law Creating a national calendar was an essential task for the new state, but Czechoslovak legislators delayed enacting a holiday law until seven years into the young republic. Choosing state holidays had economic, political, and cultural repercussions, and have effects on official state ideology. The Habsburg calendar was unsurprisingly heavy on Catholic holidays, and not only were anticlerical nationalists concerned with avoiding any official sanctioning of Catholicism , but commercial interests warned against the economic burdens of adding, rather than replacing, days off from work and trade. Yet holidays were necessary for the ongoing process of legitimating a new state. Holidays would teach citizens what to celebrate—indeed, that they should celebrate their country’s existence. A few key decisions about holidays took effect as early as 1919. Honoring October 8, the date of Czechoslovakia’s declaration of independence from Austria-Hungary, was a natural choice. And, in a country with strong workers’ parties, privileging May 1 was essential. Removing the official April 11 holiday, which commemorated Hungary’s 188 constitution (bestowed by the Habsburg king), was an easy choice as well: the Slavic cabinet ministers certainly did not want to encourage irredentism among the six hundred thousand Hungarians who lived within the Czechoslovak borders.3 Other Habsburg successor states faced difficult choices regarding holidays. Religious Heroes for a Secular State w 11 Hungary also discarded April 11, in favor of March 15, the day the 18...