Reconciling the Opposites: Max Brod and Nationalism in Prague

While twentieth-century scholarship viewed 1900–1938 Prague as a hotbed of national conflict between Czechs, Germans, and Jews, contemporary research highlights the three parties’ day to day mutual life and cultural transfer and stresses the fluidity and dynamism of ethnic identities. These two opposing approaches are examined in this paper through the focus on the political thought and activity of the writer, poet, essayist, and politician Max Brod and his unique combination of ethnic discourse and consistent effort to dismantle ethnic boundaries and essentialist thinking. Brod suggested several innovative formulas for championing ethnic differences in a multinational, tolerant framework.