Bohemia, Austria and Radical Politics: A Case Study, 1879–93

Abstract

Throughout the 1880s Bohemia served as a focal point for the national struggle in the Monarchy.¹ Much of the literature has emphasised the antagonism between the Czechs and Germans — whether in politics or in everyday life.² Recent works by Tara Zahra and Pieter Judson have adjusted this view and stressed the existence of ‘national indifference’ and strategic, flexible uses of nationalism in everyday life.³ In politics while nationalism dominated, there continued to be evidence of liberal tolerance and a general recognition that some form of modus vivendi was required. Yet over the decade of the 1880s nationalist rhetoric became more radi- cal and less conciliatory. This chapter looks at the process from the perspective of the older, patrician leaders Franz Schmeykal, Eduard Herbst and Ernst Plener. As Gary Cohen has noted, this liberal elite, while under enormous pressure both from Czech-dominated institutions and from German national activists, never- theless retained its dominant position within Prague and Bohemia until the 1897 riots over the Bade ni Decrees.⁴ These older leaders attempted to balance between a continued belief in a progressive, centralised Austrian state and the growing German nationalist movement that placed more emphasis on local associations, Volk spirit and direct action. In his book on Budweis, Jeremy King has postulated a model of Bohemia as a triadic configuration: Germans, Czechs and Habsburg loy- alists.⁵ Certainly for the Bohemian Germans throughout the 1880s, the possibility of a return to German liberal government in Vienna meant a continued engage- ment with the centralist institutions and politics. Herbst, for example, often used the phrase: ‘we gravitate to Vienna’.⁶ This chapter attempts to give due weight to the forces in Bohemia and their relationship to centralist institutions in Vienna.