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Conflicting Constructions of Memory: Attacks on Statues of Joseph II in the Bohemian Lands after the Great War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2009
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In the wake of independence in October 1918, the leaders of Czechoslovakia designated a multitude of national symbols for the nascent state, among them a flag, an anthem, an emblem, coinage, holidays, and stamps. Czech (and Slovak) art, drama, literature, and music commemorated new heroes and resurrected national historic figures ignored under Austria-Hungary. In this break with the past, national memory helped legitimate the new Czechoslovakia through celebration of the anti-Habsburg leaders in the struggle for independence and through denigration of former Habsburg rulers. Some nationalist Czechs, particularly the Czech legionnaires who had served in the Czechoslovak Army Abroad during World War I, were not content with the simple construction or reconstitution of Czech national symbols, but demanded in addition the destruction of numerous symbols of Habsburg rule. Thus, physical representations of the Habsburg past, many of which were to be found in the German-populated border regions of the Bohemian lands, became targets of their opprobrium.
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References
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2 Most legionnaires had served in Russia, but some had also served in France and Italy. Returning legionnaires were among the first volunteers to serve in the new army of the Czechoslovak state. Although both the Czechoslovak Communists and Czech Social Democrats included legionnaires among their ranks, they were more often to be found in the nationally oriented Czech National Socialist party. Contemporary sources specifically noted the participation of former legionnaires and legionnaire members of the Czechoslovak army in the attacks on the statues of Joseph II. On the legionnaires in general, see Thunig-Nittner, Gerburg, Die tschechoslowakische Legion in Russland. Ihre Geschichte und Bedeutung bei der Entstehung der 1. Tschechoslowakischen Republik (Wiesbaden, 1970).Google Scholar
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12 Státní ústřední archiv (hereafter SÚA), presidium ministerstva vnitra, 1919–1924 (hereafter PMV), sign. IV/P (Pomníky)/47, file 225/159/7, Sochy Josefa II (Statues of Joseph II), n.d. (appears to predate the attack on the statue at Eger).
13 Some Joseph statues were spontaneously removed and many more were boarded up in the aftermath of World War I as Czech troops occupied German towns in the border regions. Although I have found no documents detailing precisely how many statues were attacked in Bohemia in 1919 and 1920, at least one statue was demolished in the spring and three were destroyed in the autumn of 1919. Another statue was attacked in the summer of 1920, as were at least four in the autumn of 1920. In addition, fifteen of the sixty-five statues remaining in Bohemia in the autumn of 1920 were boarded up; SÚA, PMV, sign. IV/P/47, file 25/158/17, “Seznam pomníků a jinakých památek na císaře Josefa II. v Čechách” (Inventory of statues and other monuments to Emperor Joseph II in Bohemia), n.d. (1920; postdates the removal of the statue at Teplitz, but appears to predate the removal of the statue at Eger).
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24 A Czech representative made these remarks in the Bohemian Landtag in the early 1880s (ibid., 36). See also Národní listy (National news), 10 30, 1881, 1Google Scholar, on the German nationalists' use of Joseph II.
25 Teplitz-Schönauer Anzeiger, 09 29, 1913, 1Google Scholar. This article was used to illustrate the point about the Germans' use of Joseph II as a nationalist symbol in the decision of the highest administrative court in Prague to uphold the removal of the statue in Teplitz; SÚA, PMV, sign. IV/P/47, file 225/159/7.
26 SÚA, PMV, sign. IV/P/47, file 225/159/6, Decision of the High Court in Prague, April 18, 1923.
27 See Lidové noviny (The people's newspaper) (Brünn), 10 1918-10 1919Google Scholar, as well as the reports of von Lohneysen, the German consul in Brünn, , in Gesandtschaftsberichte, ed. Alexander, 201–2.Google Scholar
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29 The Czech authorities apprehended the Czech perpetrators, who were freed after their identity was ascertained. See report of von Lohneysen, , 10 19, 1919Google Scholar, in Gesandtschaftsberichte, ed. Alexander, , 200Google Scholar; and Lidové noviny, 09 29, 1919, 1.Google Scholar
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31 In addition to the removal of the statue of Joseph II within three days, Czech demands included bilingual street signs and place-names, as well as bilingual city offices, and the removal of all public symbols of the former Habsburg monarchy (SÚA, PMV, sign. IV/P/47, file 22/159/8, č.j. 23174/1920). On alleged mistreatment of army recruits, see Tetschen-Bodenbacher Volks-Zeitung, 10 23, 1920, 1Google Scholar. On the events in Teplitz in general, see reports in SÚA, PMV, sign. IV/P/47, files 225/159/4, 225/159/7, and 225/159/8.
32 For a complete record of these events, see SÚA, PMV, sign. IV/P/57, file 225/159/4, Zápis o jednání parlamentní vyšetřující komise v Teplicích-Šanove, Nov. 15, 1920. See also Teplitzer Zeitung, 10 31-11 21, 1920Google Scholar; Kocman, Alois et al. , eds., Boj o směr vývoje československého státu (The struggle for the direction of the development of the Czechoslovak state), vol. 2 (Prague, 1969), 158–59Google Scholar; and Peroutka, , Budování státu 3:218–21.Google Scholar
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34 Okresní archiv Cheb (hereafter OACh), okresní úřad Cheb (hereafter OUCh) (fond 437), carton 47, cat. no. 558, Prezidium zemské správy politické v Praze to pan místodržitelsky rada v Chebu, Apr. 16, 1919. On the events in Eger in general, see also reports in SÚA, presidium českého mistodržitelství, 1911–1920 (hereafter PM), 8/1/78/19.
35 OACh, OUCh (fond 437), carton 47, cat. no. 558, Čsl. Zemské četnické velitelství pro Čechy (hereafter CZCVPCh), oddělení Cheb čís. 7, stanice Cheb čís. 1, to Okresní správa politická Cheb, Nov. 15, 1920.
36 Bohemia, 11 16, 1920, 1Google Scholar. The forcible cutting of women's hair is also mentioned in OACh, OUCh (fond 437), carton 47, cat. no. 558, CZCVPCh, oddělení Cheb čís. 7, stanice Cheb čís. 1, to OSPCh, Nov. 15, 1920. See also Teplitz-Schönauer Volks-Zeitung, 11 20, 1920, 1.Google Scholar
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38 Ibid.
39 OACh, OUCh (fond 437), carton 48, cat. no. 618, Stadtrat Eger to the Ministerrätepräsidium in Prag, Nov. 14, 1920.
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42 SÚA, PMV, sign. IV/P/47, file 225/159/3, Zpráva o událostech (Report on events), Nov. 16, 1920.
43 For archival material on the demonstrations, see, for example, SÚA, PMV, sign. IV/P/47, file 225/159/3, and SÚA, presidium policejního ředitelstvi v Praze 1916–1920, D/6/30. The demonstrations were reported throughout the country from different political-national perspectives, especially between November 18 and 21, 1920. For a German bourgeois perspective, see Teplitzer Zeitung; for a German Social Democratic perspective, see Vorwärts (Reichenberg). For various Czech views, see the following newspapers, all of which were published in Prague: Czech bourgeois, Čas (Time); right-wing Czechoslovak Social Democratic, Právo lidu (Right of the people); and left-wing Czechoslovak Social Democratic, Rúde právo (Red right). See also the report of German minister Samuel Saenger from Nov. 17, 1920, in Gesandtschaftsberichte, ed. Alexander, , 350–58Google Scholar; and the discussion of the Prague city council, AHMP, Protokol schůzí rady městské, listopad-prosinec 1920, Zápis o mimořádné schůzí rady městské, Nov. 17, 1920.
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53 SÚA, PM, 8/1/78/19, č.j. 38733/1920, letter of Nov. 19, 1920, Bürgermeister (Max Künzel) to the Garnison Eger.
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60 See the classic tale Babička by Czech national author Božena Němcová, which first appeared in 1854. Early in the story, the Czech grandmother proudly shows her grandchildren the coins Kaiser Joseph gave her when she met him as a young girl near where Ples, later Josefstadt, was being constructed (Němcová, , Babička: Obrazy venkovského života [The grandmother: Pictures from a rural life] [Prague, 1987], 17, 37–44Google Scholar). An exhibition on Joseph II at the Melk Cloister in 1980 contained numerous and varied representations of Joseph II over a period of more than two hundred years, including the plow the emperor used in the southern Moravian village of Slawikowitz bei Brünn (Slavíkovice) in 1769 (Landesausstellung, Niederösterreichische, Österreich zur Zeit Kaiser Josephs II. Mitregent Kaiserin Maria Theresias, Kaiser und Landesfürst [Vienna, 1980])Google Scholar. The plow and other representations of Joseph as a friend of the peasants are part of the collections of the Moravian Museum in Brno.
61 I would like to thank Jeremy King for reminding me of the importance of including a third category of self-identification, “imperial,” for the inhabitants of the Bohemian lands during the early nineteenth century.
62 See, for example, the entries “Joseph II” and “Josephinism” in different editions of the Czech-language encylopedia, Ottův slovník naučný (Ottův encyclopedia), from the late nineteenth century. Popular Czech attitudes toward Joseph II remain ambivalent to this day; Rak, Jiří, Bývali Čechové: České historické mýty a stereotypy (Once upon a time, the Czechs were: Czech historical myths and stereotypes) (Prague, 1994), 139–40, 142.Google Scholar
63 Jan Černý's speech to the National Assembly, Těsnopisecké zprávy o schůzích Národního shromáždění republiky Československé, 18. schůze (Stenographic protocols of sessions of the National Assembly of the Czechoslovak Republic, 18th session), 11 9, 1920, 248–50Google Scholar, has been reprinted in Kocman, et al. , Boj, 158.Google Scholar
64 SÚA, PMV, sign. IV/P/32–47, file 225/158/16, contains correspondence from Národní jednota severočeská dating from the early 1920s alleging a German-nationalist cult of Joseph II as grounds for the removal of statues of the same.
65 This fear was apparently widespread. See Bohemia, 11 11, 1920, 1Google Scholar; and Právo lidu, quoted in Čas, 11 18, 1920, 2Google Scholar. See also an announcement criticizing the unlawful behavior in Prague, signed by Baxa, Karel, mayor of Prague, in Čas, 11 18, 1920, 1.Google Scholar
66 Representatives from every other Czech political party in the parliament except the newly formed Marxist Left cosponsored Franke's bill. See also Kaadner Zeitung, 12 1, 1920, 1, 2Google Scholar. Komotauer Anzeiger, 11 24, 1920, 1Google Scholar, reported that the Czech National Democrats wanted to amend the law of April 14, 1920, in order to remove all Habsburg monuments.
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74 I would like to thank Hugh Agnew for providing me with a photograph of this statue, which now stands at the roadside pub “U Cisaře” in Kunratice, sporting, as he says, “a coat of high-gloss enamel in something approximating living color.”
75 During the Protectorate, the Nazis—also no friends of the Habsburgs and certainly aware of the importance of symbols—confiscated the statue of Joseph II from the city museum and melted it down, along with other statues from Aussig, including one of Masaryk; Lidové noviny (Prague), 09 25, 1993, TV&R insert, 4.Google Scholar
76 Only monuments of artistic merit, for example the statue of Kaiser Joseph in Teplitz, were to be re-erected. This was intended more for “the reparation of German cultural objects than for the reawakening of the memory of the time before 1918, particularly of the Habsburgs”; AMÚL, Landrat, inv. č. 884, “Beseitigung bzw. Wiederaufrichtung von Denkmälern,” 01 18, 1939.Google Scholar
77 On the naming and renaming of the streets, parks, bridges, squares, and gardens in Prague, see Čarek, Jiří, Hlavsa, Václav, Janáček, Josef, and Lím, Václav, Ulicemi města Prahy od 14. století do dneška (Through the streets of Prague from the fourteenth century until today) (Prague, 1958)Google Scholar. The Nazis were especially concerned with compliance in the renaming of streets and other public places in the Protectorate; see correspondence from 1939 to 1940 in AKPR, sign. T 1170/21 (Praha—obec a magistrát).
78 On the odyssey of Soviet tank 23, which became the focus of much public debate in late April 1991, after art student David Černý gave it a coat of pink paint, see Lidové noviny (Prague) and Mladá fronta dnes (Young front today) (Prague), 04 29-05 18, 1991.Google Scholar
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