Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule. Various
Prussia and Moravia; on the south by Lower Austria; on the west by Bavaria. According to the census of 1910, 4,241,918 inhabitants declared for Bohemian and 2,467,724 for the German language. Historians recognize two epochal events in the life of the nation. The first begins with the outbreak of the Hussite wars, following the death of King Václav IV. in 1419; the second, with the battle of White Mountain in 1620. The period intervening between the first two events is referred to as the Middle Age. That which preceded the Hussite wars is called the Old Age, and, that which followed the defeat at White Mountain, the New Age.
The Margravate of Moravia, a sister state of Bohemia, and one of her crown-lands, contains an area of 8,583 square miles. The population of Moravia is 1,868,971 Bohemians and 719,435 Germans.
The third crown-land of Bohemia is the Duchy of Silesia, with an area of 1,987 square miles. The population is divided as follows: 180,348 Bohemians, 325,523 Germans, 235,224 Poles.2Although statisticians found in Austria, in 1910, only 6,435,983 Bohemians, it is generally known that the actual figure is higher by several hundred thousands. Singularly enough, the test in Austria of one’s nationality is not the mother tongue of the citizen, as elsewhere, but the lingual medium which one employs in daily association with others. This medium the statisticians designate the “Verkehrsprache” – the “Language of Association.” The first decennial census, under this novel system, was taken in 1880, and the results thereby obtained pleased Vienna so well that the method has remained in use ever since. When the matter was debated in parliament in 1880 the Bohemians and other Slavs indignantly protested against it as unscientific and as a device dictated by political motives. A census so taken, they contended, was calculated to raise by artful means the numerical strength of the Germans and to deduce from it the superior importance to the state of the Germanic element to the disadvantage of the non-Germans.3 It was argued that the mother tongue of the citizens should serve as the test of one’s nationality, not the language in which the Slavic workman may be compelled to address his German employer or a Slavic subaltern his German military superior. But, as usual, Slavic opposition was over-ridden. Even fair-minded Austrians condemned the system as unscientific. Innama-Sternegg, for instance, deplored the fact that the empire should have recourse to the “Verkehrsprache” test for political purposes. On this ground Austrian official figures should be scrutinized with extreme caution. It has repeatedly been proven by private census-takers that the official census is unreliable, and that it grossly underestimates the numerical strength of the Bohemians.
From an agricultural state, that it was until recently, Bohemia is rapidly changing into an industrial state. Two of the most valuable products, which make for the wealth of industrial countries, namely, coal and iron, the hills of Bohemia contain in abundance. Among her specialties, which have acquired world-wide renown, are decorated and engraved glassware, beer (Pilsener), high-class cotton textiles and linen goods, grass seeds, embroidery, hops, fezzes worn by the Mohammedan people of the Orient, toys, etc.
From times immemorial, Bohemia has been the battle-ground between the Slav and the Teuton. A glance at the map of Central Europe will tell the story. Most westerly of all the Slavic peoples, the Bohemians are surrounded on the north, west, and south by Germans. Only on the south and east frontiers are there strips of territory that connect them with kindred races. More than once the Germanic sea has threatened to engulf them in the same way that it swept away the Slavic tribes that lived north of them in Lusatia and of whose existence nothing now remains but the Slavic names of rivers and cities. The struggle for supremacy in Bohemia may be said to have begun the year the fabled leader Čech, in the gray dawn of history (about 450 A.D.), migrated to the country, having dispossessed the non-Slavic tribes of Boii, from whom Bohemia acquired her name. The Hussite wars in the fifteenth century are popularly believed to have been waged to free men’s intellects from the spiritual trammels of Rome; yet in the last analysis it will be found that the Hussites, in making war on the invaders who poured into the country from Germany, rejoiced in vanquishing alike the foes of their race and the oppressors of their conscience. Such, at least, is the conviction that one acquires in perusing those chapters of the history of the country that treat of the Hussite wars.
Jointly with Moravia, Bohemia formed the nucleus of the Bohemian State; this state had never ceased to be Bohemian-Slavic in character, though at times ruled by alien kings. The whole of Silesia and both Lusatias (Upper and Lower) also constituted part and parcel of this state, yet the latter were never so closely affiliated with Bohemia as Moravia had been, because the inhabitants of the Lusatias were not by origin or preponderatingly Bohemian, but of Polish and Serb (Wend) ancestry, having been largely Germanized at the time they passed under the rule of the Bohemian Kings in the fourteenth century.
Generally speaking, the Bohemians inhabited the flat lands of the interior, while the Germans overflowed the border line on the south, west, and north, forming an almost uninterrupted chain of settlements. As a matter of fact, however, there is no compact, unmixed German territory in Bohemia, which is exclusively German and into which the Bohemian workman, going in search of employment to the mines, mills, and shops in the northwest, has not penetrated, and in which he has not domiciled himself. The invasion of Bohemian workmen has virtually rendered bilingual every such Germanized district where industrialism flourishes. So intermixed are the two races on the border line that a person cannot say confidently that his ancestry is either pure German or pure Bohemian. Observe, for example, the names of Bohemian leaders: Rieger, Brauner, Grégr, Zeithammer. They have an unmistakable Teutonic ring. Again, note the names of Schmeykal, Tascheck, Chlumecky, and Giskra, who lead the German cohorts. These clearly betray Slavic origin. It has been remarked sarcastically that the Bohemians were really German-speaking Slavs. Certain it is that their association of more than a thousand years’ duration with Teutonic neighbors resulted in their accepting many of the latter’s customs and western culture. Then, too, foreigners have noticed in Bohemians a degree of aggressiveness that they claim is singularly lacking in the make-up of the other Slavs. This trait, aggressiveness, may have been inherited as a result of an almost ceaseless struggle for national existence. It is not improbable, however, that the racial mixture above mentioned may have been one of the contributing causes.
Fear of the Teutonic peril has always harried the soul of the nation. Every historian, every poet, every patriot has admonished the people to be on their guard. One of the oldest chorals extant contains the pathetic invocation to the patron saint of the country. “St. Václav, Duke of the Bohemian Land, do not let us perish nor our descendants.”
In course of time many Germans and denationalized Bohemians were Bohemianized, so that it is hazardous to guess whether in Bohemia and Moravia more Germans adopted the Bohemian language than Bohemians the German. The final sum of this process of assimilation seems to be that the Bohemians constitute more than two-thirds and the Germans less than one-third of the entire population of the kingdom.
As regards the ownership of land, Bohemians hold about three-fifths of the soil, in Moravia three-fourths. If it is true that the people with a future is the one that owns the land, then the future of Bohemians is clearly assured. Looking backward, it was very fortunate for the nation that in the days of its deepest abasement the peasant was not allowed to dispose of his holdings at will, otherwise the inrush of the Teutons would have still more reduced the national area.
If we accept literacy as one of the tests of the culture of a people, it will be found that the Bohemians rank highest among the Slavic races, surpassing even Austrian-Germans and Hungarian Magyars. According to the official reports of the Commissioner of Immigration in Washington, the number of illiterates among Bohemians is less than 3 per cent., Slovaks 25 per cent., Serbo-Croatians, 38 per cent., Poles 40 per cent., Little Russians (Ruthenes), 63 per cent. Among the non-Slavic immigrants from Austria-Hungary to America the percentages of illiteracy are as follows: Germans 4 per cent., Magyars 12 per cent., Italians 23 per cent., Jews 23 per cent., Rumuns 29 per cent.
It may not be uninteresting to note, as indicative of the position held by Bohemians among the Slavs, the number of newspapers circulated in Slavdom.4 The Lusatian Serbs, a remnant of a once populous Slavic branch in Germany, support 11 publications; Slovaks, 53 (4 of which are dailies); Slovenes, 110 (5 dailies); Bulgars, 300 (19 dailies); Serbo-Croatians,
Silesia was much larger, but Frederick II. of Prussia despoiled Maria Theresa in 1742 of a major portion of it. Thus was created Prussian Silesia and Austrian Silesia. In Macaulay’s “Life of Frederick the Great,” we read why the Prussian King made war on his neighbor. In manifestoes he might, for form’s sake, insert some idle stories about his antiquated claim on Silesia; but in his conversations and Memoirs he took a very different tone. His own words were: “Ambition, interest, the desire of making people talk about me, carried the day; and I decided for war.” If there is a rectification of Prussian boundary after the war, a portion of Prussian Silesia, that is still Bohemian, should be returned to Austrian Silesia.
Representation in parliament being determinable by the result of the enumeration, one can at once see of what vital concern it is to non-Germans to obtain a census free from political bias. As matters are, the Germans constitute 35 per cent. of the population, yet have 52 per cent. representation in the Reichsrath (parliament), while 24 per cent. Bohemians are represented in parliament only by 17 per cent.
“The Slavdom: Picture of Its Past and Present,” Prague, 1912.