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Defense฀of฀the฀Liberal฀Community฀฀฀฀฀฀฀◆฀฀฀฀฀฀฀105 C H A P T ER ฀ 4 Defense฀of฀the฀Liberal฀Community The German community in Prague assumed a new defensive stance in the early 1880s. The middle-class Germans had already faced political challenges from Czech nationalists and clerical-conservatives in the two preceding decades, but German liberal control of the Austrian government and Austrian Germans’ economic strength had given the Prague minority community confidence in its ability to maintain itself.After 1879, however, demographic decline, a series of electoral defeats, and adverse administrative actions confronted the Prague Germans with a whole new situation. The clerical-conservatives and Czech nationalists took control of the Cisleithanian government in a new coalition and tried to exploit a growing mass revolt against the dominance of the German liberals. Among Austria’s German-speaking population, radical German nationalists and socialists soon began to mobilize portions of the lower middle and working classes against the liberal notables. Faced by new challenges on all sides, the liberal Germans in the Bohemian capital found their whole social and political situation seriously endangered. The Prague Germans’ demographic and economic decline was too gradual and piecemeal at first to elicit direct group responses, but the political setbacks after 1879 shocked the German burghers and forced them to undertake new defensive measures. Between 1879 and 1883 the German Liberal Party lost control of the Cisleithanian cabinet, the higher state officialdom, the Reichsrat, and the Bohemian diet to a conservative-Slavic coalition. The Prague Germans now found it much harder to reverse adverse decisions by the Czech local authorities. In addition, the widening divisions between moderate German liberals and radical German nationalists throughout Austria after 1885 forced the moderates in Prague’s German Casino into a struggle for the loyalty of Germans in the city and in German Bohemia as well. With few German workers in Prague and governmental repression of the Social Democrats during the 1880s, the German Casino initially faced little threat of socialism among local German-speakers. 105 106฀฀฀฀฀฀฀◆฀฀฀฀฀฀฀CHAPTER฀฀4 Still, the rise of a militantly democratic Marxist movement in Austria during the 1890s presented an additional challenge to liberal politics. As will be seen, Prague’s liberal German community had to take up new defensive activities, create new organizations, and mobilize popular support both to protect German minority interests in the city and to preserve the liberal political and social order. As the defensive efforts proceeded, the contradictions in the liberals’aims quickly became apparent. To understand the new conditions which the liberal community confronted and its responses, we must turn first to the political developments between 1879 and early 1884 that led to the German liberals’ loss of power in Austria and Bohemia and the transformation of German middle-class politics as a whole. These developments first brought home to the liberal community in Prague how much weaker its position had become. The฀End฀of฀German฀Liberal฀฀ Dominance฀in฀Austria฀and฀Bohemia In 1879 Prince Adolf Auersperg’s German liberal ministry in Austria fell, and a coalition of conservatives and Slavic parties under the emperor’s old friend Count Eduard Taaffe replaced it. This initiated a gradual change in the Prague Germans’ perceptions of their political position, which solidified by 1884. By then middleclass Germans in Prague clearly saw themselves as a weak minority community excluded from the governmental bodies that controlled their own future. Spokesmen for the German community talked as if its very existence were threatened by the Czech and clerical-conservative adversaries. The leaders of the Casino initially did not speak so freely about a menace from radical German nationalists, but by the mid-1800s they faced serious attacks from that source as well. The German liberals’ initial setbacks in Austrian politics came at the hands of a new alliance of clerical-conservatives, Czech nationalists, and conservative Poles. Angered by German liberal opposition to Austrian control of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Emperor Francis Joseph asked Count Taaffe to form a new government in 1879 when Prince Auersperg’s ministry broke up. After the resignation of the last German ministers in 1880, Count Taaffe tried to unite behind a neoconservative program all the German and Slavic political forces in Austria that opposed the German liberals except the Social Democrats. The Taaffe government worked assiduously to deprive the German liberals of power in Austria’s representative bodies and higher officialdom. With the Taaffe government’s aid, Czech nationalists in Prague took the last of...

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