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The฀German฀Lower฀Strata,฀1883–1897฀฀฀฀฀฀฀◆฀฀฀฀฀฀฀137 137 C H A P T ER ฀ 5 The฀German฀Lower฀Strata,฀฀ 1883–1897 The liberal community found it difficult to increase the numbers of lowerstrata Germans in Prague and engage them in liberal group life. Poorly qualified employees, workers, and their dependents comprised around one-third of the German-speaking citizens of Prague and the inner suburbs after 1880. Their total numbers ranged from around 13,000 in 1880 to about 10,000 in 1900. Yet they were too mobile and too thinly dispersed in the poorer districts to be easily reached by the liberal community, and it was hard for them to sustain any public life of their own.1 The dispersion and high transiency of the German-speaking lower strata make it hard to identify them even now. Without manuscript census returns for the outlying districts, one cannot define their origins precisely. Descendants of the few lower-strata German-speakers in the city during the 1840s and 1850s comprised some of the German-speaking craftsmen, employees, and workers at the end of the century. Downward mobility out of the German middle class also contributed to the lower strata. The largest portion, however, probably derived from migration after 1860 from German-speaking districts in Bohemia and Moravia or from southern Germany.2 In the long run, of course, only a larger immigration and an end to the assimilation of poorer German-speakers with the Czechs could reverse the numerical decline of the Prague Germans. Low incomes and jobs in the industrial districts obliged many of the poorer German-speakers to live in overwhelmingly Czech-speaking neighborhoods removed from the affluent centers of German group life in the Old Town and New Town. Many of them ultimately disappeared, either through assimilation or through migration out of Prague. As already noted, the more than 4,000 Jews who shifted from German loyalties to Czech between the 1890 and 1900 censuses came primarily from the intermediate and poorest strata.3 The poorer German-speakers in Prague gave other signs of their presence, in addition to the cold census statistics. There were German-speakers in Holešovice, 138฀฀฀฀฀฀฀◆฀฀฀฀฀฀฀CHAPTER฀฀5 Libeň, Vršovice, and Žižkov who sent their children to local kindergartens and primary schools operated by the German School Society. The German lower strata claimed certain pubs and cafés as their own in the inner city as well as in some of the industrial districts. Even Žižkov had at least one German Bierstube.4 The German liberal groups remained the only significant German political forums despite the rise of opposition in Prague in the late 1880s, and German-speaking craftsmen and workers occasionally sought them out when stirred by political events. The meetings of the German Club in the Casino were too staid and exclusive for workers, but the gatherings of the German Political Association in Vinohrady were less intimidating.5 Yet the atomized existence of many of the poorest German-speakers meant that involving them in German group life on a continuing basis would require great efforts. The scantiness of the surviving records for the German-speaking lower strata reflects their marginality to the collective life of the German middle class. Newspaper and police reports on the activities of lower-class German groups are fragmentary at best. But what made most of the German-speaking petty employees and workers insignificant to contemporary journalists and bureaucrats makes them crucial to understanding the social structure of the Prague Germans as a declining minority. The various efforts by liberals and their opponents to create a group life for lower-strata German-speakers in Prague reveal much about social and political relations in the German minority. The฀Handworkers’฀Society฀and฀the฀Tactics฀of฀Co-optation The leaders of the German Casino responded only slowly to Philipp Knoll’s urgings to enlarge the popular base of the German community. After Knoll’s speech of March 1883, they took no action to carry out his proposals until late 1884. The liberal notables had more urgent concerns in the meantime: the elections for the Bohemian diet in spring 1883, an anti-Semitic incident in the Casino and a brief Jewish boycott in October 1883, and suffrage reform and new elections for the Prague Chambers of Trade and Manufacture in early 1884. The German School Society’s expanding net of local chapters began to engage more lower-strata Germans in liberal...

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