BUDWEISERS INTO CZECHS AND GERMANS A LOCAL HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN POLITICS, 1848-1948 Jeremy King PRINCETON UNIVERSITY I'RKSS ľ lU NC ETON AND OXFORD ľ n-f'tt i t In 1986, I Spcnl .1 day in České Budějovice, a charming Czech town due .south oJ Prague, about three-fourths of the way to the Austrian bordci An American, I had fallen in love with Czech literature several years earlier m college. Then, in 1984, I had moved past fiction, daring six weeks „i Prague. Yet when I made my visit to České Budějovice, during a second stay in Czechoslovakia, T still had no idea thai within rhe "Bohemjan lands" or Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia, the town had long «■■"""ted as nnusuahVimxedjnna^^ r did know that during the Habsburg Monarchy, inter war Czechoslovakia, and the Ihird Reich, the rim of the Bohemian lands had been German, and the interior Czech. Thus the Czech-German conflict that was once so central to Bohemian politics had tended to unfold at armVjength. Budějovice had been one of the exceptions—but that fact T learned only several years later, as the Cold War ended and as I advanced through t he'doctoral program in History at Columbia University. The faee-to-facc quality of national conflict in Budějovice. I came to think, made it a good site for a local study through which I might try to capture the history of Bohemian polities in a new way. Multiple historians o t the Bohemian lands had already written valuable studies on "the nationality question." None of those studies, though, confined its geographical dimension in such a way as to permit considerable length in the chronolog- » ical dimension and reasonable depth in the political one—which spanned the German and the Czech, the rich and the poor, the Christian and the Jewish, and much more. Scholars had provided considerable insight into the «Springtime of Nations" in 1848, when Czech and German leaders hrst took up important positions within formal political structures. Excellent work had been done on multiple aspects of the constitutional era between the 1860s and 1914; on the intetwar Czechoslovak era of Czech democratic dominance; and on the Second World War, when Nazi Germany, in addition to annihilating Bohemian Jewry, drove almost all of Czech politics underground. At least the outlines were clear, finally of the years between 1945 and 1948, when the restored Czechoslovakia eliminated German politics from the Bohemian lands bv expelling its entire German population—and then became part of a quite different conflict between East and West, as a Soviet satellite. The literature seemed to have covered all phases and sides in some fashion, but only piecemeal. In 1991, I returned to Budějovice and began my research. MtV PREFACE Now, ten years later, I find myself humbled, I lie narrow story that I 11,111 sc I out to tell proved dauntingly deep and complex. Yet I also find myself Surprised and heartened. My appro* b yielded Minis different from my predecessors' parts in ways that 1 had nui c\|ici nd, Perhaps the best one word introduction to those sums is "BtldwcJKCrs." By it, I mean not hollies of the American beer but a certain kind n) person from Budějovice—from whose German name, Rudwcis, the Word derives. Budweisers ftWakened mc to the roles played in national, C/cch German conflict by m m national actors, and to flaws in narratives lli.ll revolved around "eth-niciiy'" T came to see thai conflict as only part oi Bohemian politics bc-iwccn 1848 and 1948. I also came to iliink mure historically about "-Czechs" and "Germans," as well as ghoul ilu- "ii.umn/' a defining category of modern times. I thank the many people and institutions thai have helped mc research and write this book. Colleagues and friends include Brad Abrams, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Catherine Albrecht, Celia Applegate, Karen Barkcy, Steven Bcllcr, Arthur Brenner, Rogers Brubakcr, Audrey Budding, Peter Buggc, Gary Cohen, John Connelly, Bhavna Dave, 1st ván Deák, Hana Demctz-Rosskam, Lois Dubin, Elizabeth Dunn, Catherine Epstein, Tamás Fóti, Benjamin Frommer, David Good, Daniel Gordon, Frank Hadler, Eugenia and Robert Herbert, Eugene Hill, Bete ľ 1 lolquist, Charles Ingrao, Owen Johnson, Stephen Jones, Pieter Judson, Judit Kertész, Daniel Kovář, Hana Krejčová, Petr Křivinka, Rita Krueger, Jana Laczová, David Laitin, Hugh Lane, Andrew Lass, Alexander Loesch, Daniel MacMillan, Charles Maier, Edward Malefakis, Jan Mareš, András Márton, Jr. and Sr., Dávid Márton, Milan Mottl and family, Zuzana Nagy, Thomas Ort, Cynthia Paces, Jason Parker, Marko Frclec, Alon Rachám i mov, Agnes Rcthy, Julie Rosenbaum and family, Robert Sak, Til Scheuermann, Petr Šcbesra, Holly Sharac, David Shengold, Alena Šimůnková, Wim Smit, Tim Snyder, Eritz Stern, Philipp Thcr, Markéta Thonová, Stefan Troebst, Jon Van Den Heuvel, Brigitta van Rheinberg, Dan Unowsky, Kathetine Verdery, Mark von Hagcn, Veljko Vujacič, James Wald, Theodore Weeks, Jan Westfall, Nancy VVingfield, and Larry Wolff; an anonymous reviewer for Cornell University Press; and my fellow members in the Department of History at Mount Hoiyoke College. I have also learned much from my students, especially in my course "Trom Habsburg to Hitler; Bohemian Politics, 1848-1948." I am grateful to the following institutions for funding my research, travel, and writing: the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe of the American Council of Learned Societies, Columbia University, the Harvard Academy for Internationa] and Area Studies, the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for (he 1 luiu.iniiics, the ssiu !-MacArthur Foundation Program on Peace PREFACE XV and Security- in a Changing World, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Mount Hoiyoke College, the American Academy in Berlin, the Austrian Cultural Institute, and the Center for Austrian Studies at the University of Minnesota. I also thank the following libraries and research Institutions for allowing me access to their valuable resources: the State Archive, Museum, and Library, as well as the History Department of the University of Southern Bohemia, all in České Budějovice; Widener Library at Harvard University, Butler Library at Columbia University, Van Pelt Libraryr at the Univetsity of Pennsylvania, and Williston Library at Mount Hoiyoke College. Jan Marcs, Director ofthe Regional Division of the State Library in České Budějovice, was particularly generous in sharing with me his time and knowledge. Criticism and support from him, as well as from all ofthe persons previously mentioned, contributed greatly to reducing the faults in my work. Finally, I thank myr mothct, my father, my two brothers, and the rest of my family. Without them—and especially my wife, Katya King, and our two children (born two years apart on the name day of Wcnccslas, the patron saint of Bohem ia)—I could not have overcome the physical and metaphysical obstacles to completing this project. I only wish that our beloved Scout, also known as der Schkuh/Skautík, were still among us. May he live in memory as one ofthe finest American pooches ever to visit B ud we is/B u dě j ovice. 1 November 2001 South Hadley, Mass. 44 CHAPTBK ONI- Czechlcaders.in Budweis/Budějovicc reacted to the defeat oi triaLsm ^rrľT^^an^r^irccKdjLamons other people jews. Indeed even befořthe^erfe^^^ fashion on the Jewish voters in town, who made up only 5 P«g^ diet and Austrian Parliament electorates. "In elections m ^vice the newspaper had claimed just before the Diet election on September 9 "the Constitutionalists owe thanks for then- elcctora ketones above all to the Jews, whom they have tried to keep on then- side at all costs. If the Jews were to vote with us, or at least abstain, the Czech s,de -old erne g he victor from everv contest." The editors had concluded With he threat that Czechs would remember who voted how. Two months later, immediately ^cr the definitive derailment of the Bohemian compromise, Czechs were urged to make no purchases from German or £"*«£ chants at an upcoming fair: "^cJuoHisjOwn [Svoji *««••]' The following week, Budivoj published an anti-Semitic article BudwÍ/Budčjovice's Jte^s^^ujgtiondjd^ni^ have liberal and li^869^su7w^re relative ncwconTcTs to town, usually from iura areas Oh he ( :cmral Bohemian plain. Encounters there with the traditional anti-Scniilism of Catholic, Czech-Speaking peasants had been common. So had less intimate and less dismaying encounters with German-language ,;]llmv i,, .pftrt because of laws dating from the late eighteenth century ,|,.. kul required |cw,sh children to attend German-language elementar,' ,, J „ (l8( Zt recen, iy, t he B** ta town had deaded to «^ *££ able and intelligent lews" as members-butonly a^yeat and a haft after plitting olifrom the Liedertafel. Liberal leaders had been more we com-■ iL Liberal deput.es had also consistently emphasized achievement over birth and had crafted the Fundamental Laws, which ^separated church I from state and established legal equality tor all citizens; Budivoj did not acknowledge the realities that made Czech, conserva- tŕ*e1jCjti*äh^^ mSbTGermans or CzechT^rThanT^nanon" apart. Instead, Bud, W/pandered to Czech anti-Semitism and made Jews into scapegoats for the actions of Francis Joseph-on whom direct attacks were taboo .In December 1871, just before still another election to the Parliament the newspaper singled out Jewish voters for unfriendly attention. The fron page carried three separate appeals. The first, signed by the Elecuon Committee of the Friends of the Compromise," was written in Germ and called on burghers to vote for Grünwald rather than for his opponcn (whose principal backers supposedly included a baptized Jew). The second appeal signed bv the "Czech Flection Committee," was written ,n Czech and delivered a straight national pitch. And the th.rd, signed by The POLITICS IN I'Mix 45 Czechs ot Budějovice, your peace-loving fellow citizens who do you no wrong," was written in Czech, and called on all fifty-four of the Jewish voters bv name to abstain. Jews intending to appear at the polls were warned that they would be assumed to have come in order to vote against Grünwald.67 Two days later, armed gendarmes stood irt the snow on the Ringplatz/ rynek and made certain that Czech threats and dreams of disenfranchising Jews did not come true. Grünwald lost in Budweis/Budějovíce by a tally of 489 to 584, but prevailed in the electoral district as a whole. Budivoj soon printed a letter from him, in which he expressed his thanks to supporters in both Czech and German. In the same issue, the Czech Electoral Committee also thanked Czech voters, together with "a small cluster of German voters who voted with us.'" "Finally," the statement continued, "we thank the Jews of Budějovice, who have pronounced themselves our clear political opponents, casting off the mask of hermaphroditism [obojet-nost\. Decided adversaries we find preferable to fawning hypocrites. We will forgive those who have.no homeland and have fost their language that they do not understand the struggle for these two estates [statky]. We regret, however, that these people ask not on which side lies right but instead which parly rules."68 Yet if Jews really were "decided adversaries" of Czechs, then Czechs bore at least half the responsibility. And whatever the politics of Budweis/Budejovicc's Jewish residents, they were finding, as had Klawik/KIavik and Tirsik/Tirsik, that taking sides in the German-Czech struggle was increasingly difficult to avoid. Conclusion The political flirx that had begun in 1848 came to an end in 1871. A Greater Germany did not come into being. Instead, Prussia completed its expansion, through victorious wars against Denmark, the Habsburg Monarchy, and France, into a smaller German Empire. The Habsburg Monarchy, which had divided into a dual monarchy after losing the Austro-Prussian War, stopped short of'f'urthcr division into a trialist one. To the south, Piedmont-Sardinia capped its transformation into Italy bv seizing Rome. In the Prussian and Picdmontcse cases, the dynasties that controlled the upper reaches of the state met with considerable success in claiming natu mal legitimacy. They supposedly restored, or at least partly restored, a Ii>m German and Italian unity. In the Habsburg case, on the other hand, it ".is [he Hungarian movement that met with greatest success in claiming ii.ii »mal legitimacy, ntjninstxhc dynasty. Hungarian leaders supposedly re-storcd, or at least partly restored, a lost Hungarian sovereignty. 46 C M A ľ I I H MNI Nearly surrounded by the German IJnrnrc, I tah; and 1 [imtyiry wasCis-leithania, or what came to be known as the_Ausrrian half of "Austria-Hungary." Here, as in the three emergent nation-states, much of politics now unfolded within a constitutional order of civil liberties and of elected /legislatures with carefully delimited powers. That continued to be the pattern, in fact, until the First World War. Yet Cisleithariia was fundamen-iJ tally different. In the German Empire, Italy, and Hungary, the major fac- £ tions all claimed to speak for the same "nation," and collaborated in sup- pressing non-Germans, non-Italians, or non-Hungarians who challenged the rules of the game. In Cislcithania, when centralists and federalists spoke of domestic conflict in national terms, that conflict was often between two "nations," rather than within one. Politics had moved in the Jw_direction of_ becoming not so much national as binational or multina-^ ' tional. The state apparatus, however, remained for the mostjjart Habsburg. Some ministers and officials were national—usuallv German, Yet they served at tbc pleasure of Francis Joseph and over the objections of federalists, and could do little to nationalize the imperial-royal civil service, the army, or the law. Gcrm.inncss and Czcchncss in Cisleithania, meanwhile, in the process of moving u i ward the rxrlkkaLforc. had changed co^rsinj^ahly. even while remaining linked by a "negative and analog tie." German leaders had abandoned their historical locus on the territory of the Holy Roman Empire and had shifted to a more realistic, civic focus on the rerrirorvof Cisldlhania. At the same time, they had pushed the historical-cultural, or elitist, strand to Germanncss in civic directions, and had reduced their emphasis on ethnicity, Czech leaders, in conrrast, had retained_rhcir emphasis on cthnicjrxjmd had beconŤěniore populist—through tábory, thřoúghTnvocanons of "five million souls," and, forthat matter, through attempts at harnessing base popular sentiments such as anti-Semitism. One result was that the weak historical-cultural strand to'Czechncss had grown weaker stilL Federalist great landowners had become less important to the Czech movement. They, as well as ethnic Germans in the Bohemian lands, had become less Czech in Czech eyes. Yet the historical-territorial strand to Czechness remained, German-speaking Bohemians might not count as Czech, but the land on which they lived did. The strength of the Czech and German national movements, however, should not be ex atr,a.e rated. ř\or should the extent of their conflicrjĽJth traditional. Habsburg forces. Tn Budweis/BudČjovice, national leaders had succeeded in forcing a choice on some Budweisers between Czech and German. That choice, though, concerned only thin slices oflifc: elections, in which the great majority of Budweisers could not vote; associations, which the great majority could not or did not join; the press, which ľ i »i i i i < «. i n i i i< \ 47 many pc< >pk did not read; and schools, which were only beginning to offer a choice between Bohemia's two languages. Typical was not the treasonous Statement of "better to become Prussian than Czech," but rather an .ij2yjnp_i_by the Beseda and Liedertafel to outsing one another in the presence ofthc Bohemian governor.69 The national movements competed with each other over which was more Habsburg-loyal. Two_______------------------ A More Broad and National Politics, 1871-1890 The common people of our town axe Czech, and thus far, this precious material has not enjoyed our attention. —-August Zátka, 1882 We wish to draw all strata of the German citizenry to the great national project. —Josef'Taschek, 1884 in Budweis, the two competing parties must demonstrate their congenital strength. Whichever side proves itself, over time, to he stronger must necessarily be accommodated by each government, in accordance with the law. —Count Hiiuard 'IhfjQ'i; 1888 In Biidwcis/líudčjovicc during the 1870s and 1880s, public life expanded, Elections, associations, schools, and the press ceased to exhaust the list of principal political spaces, and a bourgeois elite, together with imperial-royal officials, ceased to exhaust the list of principal political actors in town. Municipal enterprises, the census, new and less local associations, the labor market, and both shops and shopping became important arenas for contestation. So, for that matter, did many non bourgeois—at the same time that they became political actors in their own right. Politics also became more national, even as nationhood itself changed. Constitutionalists grew' more German, and less liberal. Their opponents grew- more Czech, and less Catholic. German leaders became somewhat less elitist, while Czech leaders reduced their emphasis on Bohemian state ŕjghtšľ "Both came to think of nationhood in more ethnic terms. Both national movements also expanded demographies ly and spread out from their original, fairly specific tethering points along the political spectrum. The expansion and change both of nationhood and of politics more general ly, however, were incremental, not revolutionary. August Zátka and Josef Taschek, new leaders of the opposing movements in Budweis/Budejovicc from the early 1880s, followed up only in part with action on their claims to the "common people of our town" and to "all strata of the German A Mdlll UNOAII AMI) NA I IllNAI POLITICS W Citizenry." Organlsnil.....s tame to include many lower-middle-class indi- udu.ils, hm continued to exclude working-class ones. Jn some senses, (!ouni Eduard Taaffe, the Cisleithatúan prime minister between 1S79 and 1893, did "accommodate" the stronger, German side in town, led by Taschek. Bur before, during, and after Taaffe's term in office, the state was dominated by nonnational elites, and actively shaped the political field. State policy, for example, largely defined the lower-middle class that Taschek and Zátka set to embracing. The strength of the two increasingly national parties in town, for that matter, became more equal over time— less because of their "congenital" natures than because of ongoing dynamics in which the Habsburg authorities, both intentionally and unintentionally, played major roles. Public and Private Months before the enactment of the Fundamental Laws in 1867, workers in Budweis/Budějovice had begun tearing down the medieval ramparts that by that point served only to choke the town. Budivoj found strong symbolism of a national sort in the event. "With the demolition of this bulwark," the newspaper commented, "legal continuity is sundered. Demolished is the historic right of our Teutons not to know Czech."1 Mayor Claudi saw things differently, perhaps in part because he and other Constitutionalists dominated the town council. In the mid-1860s, t hrough legislation understood by Habsburg policymakers as a counterbalance to the centralist February Patent of 1861, town councils throughout Cisleithania had gained a measure of autonomy almost without parallel in Europe. "Communes" [Gemeinden/obce\ had won extensive latitude in important fields, including education, taxation, language policy, and public utilities. Urban communes, or municipalities, had retained control over the granting of burgher status and, thus to some degree, over the contours of the third municipal curia.2 At about the same time, as part of a Europe-wide trend, the size of municipal government had begun to mushroom. During the late 1860s and early 1870s, the town council in Bud we i s/Budějovice oversaw not only the razing of the old town walls but also the illumination of streets by a new gasworks, the drastic reduction of cholera outbreaks by a new sewage system and waterworks, and more. Such projects gave Liberal and German aldermen tangible ways to promote Germanness and to discourage Czechncss. Czech leaders, in an open letter to the mayor in February 1869, complained that whenever the Liedertafel sponsored a dance, lamps belonging to the new gasworks lit up the streets until dawn. The lamps outside the German Casino burned brightly all the time. But around the site for a Beseda-gathering, the light- f. 2 chap i m rwo of Bohemia's richest and oldest noble families, Prince Franz von Lohko witz/František z Lobkovic. After this bow to federalist great landowners, additional bows followed in the direction of other key constituencies. In the Tabor/Tabor district of the chamber, a bloc of Jewish voters had abandoned the Constitutionalist ticket and had decided the outcome in one curia. Tn 1885, the Chamber Council filled its seat in the Lower House with a Jew. Czechs, for their part, gained linguistic equality in the chamber's publications, as well as the replacement of German with Czech as the language of administration.38 V A New Generation In 1883, Grünwald moved to Prague. His departure, combined with the aging of Hynek Zátka and others, cleared the way for August Zátka to assume t he'mantle of Czech leadership in town. By now thirty-sue years old, with his own law offices, Zátka had settled down, marrying Klawik/ Klavik's granddaughter, Johanna Klawik/Jana Havíková, in 1878. Since Xatka's first, somewhat wild public appearances in the early 1870s, he had matured into .i principled and charismatic leader, equally gifted at war mum stratCgizing and at rallying crowds with impassioned speeches.' 1tcoomu/iuľ i he cent ral (l/.cdi advantage—mounting strength with everv year he worked consistently to choke off impulsive calls from the ranks for frontal charges, without depressing morale. Zátka, by coincidence, means "stopper or "cork" in the Czech language. By the following year, 1884, a changing of the guard had begun m the Consiiiutionalist camp, too. Deputy Mayor Groh retired, and Mayor Claudi died that tall. For the next several years, a cluster of men ran the party and town hall: Wendelin Rziha, an attorney who apparently had begun his political career elsewhere as a Czech (Vendelín Riha); Anton Franz Taschek, a merchant; and several others. Yet none of those burghers succeeded in bending the others to his will. Rather, with time, Taschek's son Josef did. This graduate of the engineering faculty in Vienna, only twenty-seven years old in 1884, had set to work immediately upon his return to Budweis/Budějovice in the late 1870s at constructing a personal political machine within the world of liberal associations. In electoral politics, the first results of his efforts showed in the summer of 1884, with his election to the town council as an alternate. This was followed by his designation as deputy mayor in 1890, as member of the diet in 1893, and then as mayor in 1903—the nearly mechanical outcome of harnessing the local wheels of power and patronage, and then of due diligence in lubricating them.4" AMIIIII IIKMAII ANI) N AT [ON A I 1**1) [TICS 63 Like (luidi, Taschek found his very Germunncss called into question by (!zcchs—Oil ethnic grounds. Sometimes, as Zátka delighted in pointing out, Taschek made Czech-inspired grammatical errors in the German language. Hndivoj reminded its readers that Taschek's rather had come to Budweis/Budějovice in the 1840s from the Czech-speaking village of lk-mardicc and had signed on as a charter member of the Besedu in 1862 before rethinking his loyalties. For that mattet, Budivoj noted that the tanuly name was a Czech one, and lay at the root of the word "taškář"— meaning "rascal."41 Taschek was "really" a Czech, and thus the worst kind of German. As a Czech saying goes, Poturcenec horší Twrkß— "worse than the Turk is the Turkish convert." . *i Constitutionalists, in a sign that their understanding offfjmioty continued to differ from the Czech understanding, did notTquestion 1'aschek's Germanness. Nor did they claim that Grünwald wa/a German because of his name, or that Zátka was a German because he snoke German as a native. Czech understandings of ethnicity, as has ahead/ been noted, tended to stress native command of a language, and to classify as "Czech" anyone who spoke both languages of Bohemia equally w/Jll. (Czechs did make exceptions when doing so helped the cause. Zatkané mother, for example, had learned Czech only as an adult; here is part of why German counted as one of the "mother tongues" of her oldest sain. But she counted as a Czech to Czechs—who did not poke fun at thewery national names of her last two sons: Vlastimil and Dobroslav. Here/supranational understandings of women as minors—such that thei r nationhood, like thei r citizenship, hinged on that of a father, husband, or soA—played a role.) Con-stitutionalist and German understandings of ethnicity, in contrast, tended i n cases of bilingualism to emphasize what Constitutionalists had always seen as important: individual action and conviction. Taschek was German because he spoke German, acted like a German, and claimed to be a German—anv accent or errors notwithstanding.42 In those parts of the Bohemian lands where almost everyone spoke only gne language, the new, jointly national emphasis on ethnicity promised to render the nationalization of two "peoples" easier. Czech and German leaders, by agreeing on who belonged to which national movement, could hinder each others' recruitment efforts less, and could make national] za-i ion seem more natural and inevitable. But in places such as Budweis/ Budějovice, where the proportion ofutraquists was unusually high, the difference between Czech and German ethnicity allowed both national movements to claim many of the same individuals. As Zátka and Taschek began to look past burghers and bourgeois to an entire people, each leader pursued an internally consistent view ofwho his people were. Yet the result was not a productive division of nationalizing labor. Rather, thousands of n Iraq nisi s became sites ol"( //cell -German contestation. A person's nation- 73 AM......i li u \ 11 \ í I 11 •■ i \ I li If , \ I POLITICS 68 ,ilitv depended on who wm doing i lit- ascribing, Even lor people speaking onll one language, n.iinHi.ili/.iiion became less a miest ion ol nature and nl inevitability than ofchoice—not only between Czech and German hnr lu i ween national and no n national. Because the rhetoric of ethnicity had ( Ecch and German variants, Budweis/Budčjovicc's many utraquists did nm "break" or completely disable the rhetoric. Yet by clashing, the two variants stripped the Czech and German ethnic convergence of at least pari of its accelerating ctiect on nationalization. Both Taschek and Zátka worked harder than their predecessors at split-lint; utraquist associations and at heightening the national qualities of middle-class clubs already dominated by one national movement or the other. The First South Bohemian Association of Soldiers and Public Offi-cials, founded on a utraquist basis in 1880, did nor remain that way for iTmg. When the president led the board in rejecting applications for membership from Zátka aud from two other men late in 1882, Czech members staged a revolt. In January 1883, on a floor vote, they revoked the board's action and impeached the president, replacing him with Zátka. There followed an exodus by Germans from the club, which transferred its headquarters to the Beseda. (In 1884, members nonetheless attended Claudľs liineral.) Both the Turnverein and the Liedertafel added the word "German" to their name—although a majority of the gymnasts rejected the change in 1882 and agreed to it, at Taschek's urging, only on a second \ i ite in the following year. The Liedertafel also adopted a new emblem: a swan with spread wings over oak leaves and a lyre on a band in the black, red, and gold German colors.43 In the rail of 1883, a bust of Toseph II of Habsburg went up in town, in a sign that Constitutionalist leaders continued to strengthen their emphasis on Germanness, and to do so in ethnic ways. A century previously, Joseph II had sought to improve and to centralize the governance of his far-flung lands. To that end, he had attempted—and failed—to make German a sort of Habsburg lingua franca. Taschek, together with German leaders throughout Cisleithania during the early 1880s, seized on the monarch's promotion of the German language and made him a new na-lional hero. Taschek also exploited the unveiling of the bust to lend his still heavily middle-class movement a more populist appearance—-by recruiting villagers to attend. For them, Joseph IPs improvement of peasants1 legal position vis-ä-vis nobles probably meant more than did his language policy (whose national motives existed only in the imagination of i. lermans and of Czechs). The bronze took up a position directly opposite the Besed», where it provoked Czechs daily over the following decades.44 immediately after the unveiling, Taschek held a meeting at which he proposed forging closer links between Germans in Budweis/Budějovice and German speakers living in the nearby countryside. The German 40 66 CHAPTER TWO Union of the Bohemian "Forest \Deutscher Böhmerjmläkmid\ canK mI" being as a result, with Taschek serving as president. In 1884, the Kreisblau explained that the mission of the association was to "bring laborers and domestic help as fresh elements to the Germans of this town so as to nut an end to the inundation with Czech factory workers and maids. The apprentice and maid from [the Bohemian Forest], and if necessary from [Upper] Austria, must be mobilized. It should no longer be so that prominent German businesses in Budweis have Czech managers who bow and scrape on the job in front of their employers, then take part assiduously in the sappers' work of the Czechs in the Beseda." In another report on the Böhmerwaldbund, the newspaper insulted Czechs again, even while borrowing the central Czech ethnic nictaphoro f national consciousness as a natural state to which individuals/áwakcnfrom a deep sleep: "In wide circles, there still rules an alarminA indifference in national matters. In the long term, this can only bring about the worst, given that our Czechs, allied with the fcudals and with the clericals, use even,' possible means to pull the nightcap farther over the eyes and cars of the plain and honest German [dem deutschen Michel]"* Constitutionalist leaders were taking poorgr^peopk more seriously as potential national recruits. Those leaders also agreed now wit h í './ech leaders t hat people who arrived in town speak-Lng only Czech translated much more easily into Czechs than into Ger- Imans. In less than liberal fashion, Taschek attempted to uiSfíéitec who joined i he labor market in town, thus conceding that sheer i^umberj mat tered more than he liked in the Czech-German struggle. The Bifkmermtdfoind, although geographically more focused than the German School Association, differed less from it than from the men's choirs and social clubs that had characterized both national movements during the 1860s and 1870s. Membership in the new type of associations was more broad, not only in the class, numerical, and territorial senses but in a gender sense as well. Emphasis lay less on face-to-fäce encounters of middle-class males who already knew one another than on pulling together small financial contributions from a large number of men and women. Those contributions or dues, furthermore, went not so much to self-celebration as to projects that benefited others—strangers made abstractly familiar through their nationalization. Less than a year after the founding of the Böhmerwaldbund, more than 7,000 members belonged to it through forty-eight chapters, one in Budwcis/Budějovicc and the rest scattered over the Bohemian Forest and beyond. Ar about the same time, the local chapter of the German School Association (also headed by Taschek) claimed that the number of its female members alone had now A M11 K ľ lilt 11A 11 ANO MAI H IN A I ľ < 11 I I M s 67 School Association In 1880, Zátka's Czech School Foundation had he-mine part of a pan-Bohemian association, the Czech Central School Foundation, Both of the gymnastics clubs in town had done much the same even earlier. The size and the social composition of the Turnverein, though, stagnated. Only 194 men belonged in 1890, despite an effort during the late 1880s at recruiting lower-middle-class members with free lessons. The Sokol puWzd ahead, counting 320 members by 1894. (Anyone inclined to take literally the Sokol slogan, "Every Czech a Sokol*.™ though, has to draw sobering conclusions even from that higher figure.) Both gymnastics clubs, like the Beseda, the Geselligkeitsverein, the Liedertafel (which added a small women's choir), and additional associations, failed to take off into geometric growth. Instead, they continued to be predominantly middle-class, local, and male.47 In electoral contests, trends were similar. Focal Constitutionalists and federalists had already tied themselves into larger political networks some lime ago. Rut under Zátka's leadership, Czechs and Catholics gradually became more open about their affiliation with the Bohemian/Czech National Party, and discontinued names such as the Burgher Party. Both of the major "parties" in town also became more worth)' of that name, by growing beyond small clusters of notable men. The Czech "Each to His Own" campaign, as well as a German equivalent, began to influence the purchasing decisions of a broader cross-section of town residents. District captains and judges frowned on calls to boycott, and the Cisleithanian Supreme Court eventually ruled that they violated t he constitutional rights of shopkeepers and that instigators could be punished with jail terms of up to six months. Yet prosecutors put next to no one on trial—because people were not so dim-witted as to require incitement explicit enough to meet legal standards of proof. Owners of businesses came under pressure to make a declaration of national colors and to surrender one part of their clientele in order to keep another. In I 885, the Böhmer wuldbund issued an address book or directory lor Bud-weis/Budějovice that ascribed a nationality to business owners through different typefaces, llie National Bohemian Forest Union (NJP), founded by Czechs in response to the Böhmerwaldbund, condemned the publica-lion. But once the Czech business community in town stood on firmer legs, the NJP published a directory of its own, in 1894.4S The very exis-icnce of such directories, of course, indicates that even shoppers who assumed that every business owner had a national affiliation sometimes Y i ould only guess at what it was. In June 1884^ in a sort of inaugural speech as Griinwald's successor, Aitka proposed ways to weave more densely the Czech institutional web i hat, radial i ng i »inward from the Beseda, was beginning to cover the town. II c urged t he crcai ion of a new gft^gofthe People, on the model of the 68 i 11 • i i i i- I w < I original Beseda- and of the derivative Beseda "I Ai t t>..i i «^ and tradesmen, rounded in 1882. "The common PCOPJC "four hwii Jir t'/ech," lie claimed, "and thus rar, this precious material lias not enjoyed nur .men tion." The attention that he now proposed included (bunding more schools. Zátka also made a case for establishing a Germanlanguage news paper and a club which, conservative and noncon fron rational, mi.nl» draw national neutrals in the direction of the Czech movement. In keeping with the long-standing Czech practice of combining ethnicity with a more historical, state rights nationhood, he pointed out that sonic German-speakers, especially imperial-royal officials, army officers, priests, and Jews, might become Czechs. "Perhaps the slogan of reconciliation might find an echo among burghers as well. There is plenty' of material for a conciliatory German association. In elections to the diet, Austrian Parliament, and town council, Czechs would not hesitate to vote for honorable men, even if t hey were Germans by birth, and such candidates could win if they had, in addition to Czech votes, a relatively small number of German ones. For Jews, such a German conservative association could serve as a bridge over which [o escape from German-national captivity."49 Such people felt more 11 unii malile in German speaking settings. Zátka apparently believed, but I hey disagreed with some or all of liberal and German politics. By demanding Ic^ i han I he German inovemeni did and by offering more, the ( z. ih movemem might win adherents. t /r, I r, followed ihmiti'.h quickly on Zarka's proposals. The Beseda of the People, founded In December L884, lured lowcr-middlc-ciass people by charging m> dues and by sponsoring cheery gatherings—where the Jul......im, "( /cch children belong in Czech schools," probably figured prominently, A new Czech high school, funded entirely through private donations« opened its doors in September. By 1885, there were 2,396 children in Budweis/Budějovice acquiring an education primarily in the Czech language, nearly seven times as many as in 1870. Zátka's wife became the president of a new Czech women's association dedicated to raising money for girls' schools; the NJP opened a lending library in town; and the Beseda undertook construction of a new wing.i0 Attempts at making Czechs out of German-speakers yielded less inspiring results. When elections to the Parliament took place in November 1884, neither Zátka nor other local leaders of the Bohemian/Czech National Parry ran. Instead, they persuaded a retired army officer with an impeccable record and with no clear nationality, Franz/František von Kopřiva, to do so. As a Czech historian phrases the matter, the hope was that he would prove appealing to voters for whom "the state idea meant more than the national cause." The town council, which had the right to ap-point half of the members for an electoral commission encharged with policing the polls, appointed Constitutionalists. The district captain, who * M.......I'M M, \......A ( (MO,M I'll I | Ml '. bcSin a boycott of the Diet in 1886. Federalists, meanwhile, rushed to embrace the shopkeepers, low-ranking officials, and less wealthy artisans ^ who made up the "live-florin men." They, in fact, were the audience at which Zátka aimed the new Beseda of the People.53 Although Czechncss 64 67 I i MAPI hH nvii the original party came lo Ik known, to their disadvantage), ami quel tioned the close alliance with federalist glial landowners, Yd V......y, Czechs, like Old Czechs, maintained a historical, State rights rhetoric tieXl to an ethnic one. And unlike völkische, Young Czechs maintained organ! zational unity. They also made their first major mark not with Utopian aiul rash proposals but with the pragmatic objection during the 1870s that the Czech boycott of the diet and of rhe Austrian Parliament was yielding no results. That challenge to civic negativism helped to bring about the Iron Ring. During the 1880s, five-florin men helped to make the National Liberals or Young Czechs a major force in Bohemian politics. Yet the Czech movement as a whole remained tar more united than the German one. Young Czech leaders worked closely with Old Czech ones until the late 1880s and argued that two parties could serve the Czech ''nation" better than could one.5y The flip side to that argument was that, in pockets of Czech weakness, a one-party structure remained justified. And indeed, in Bud-wcis/Budčjovice, Zátk.ťs Old Czechs did not face a branch of the Young Czech Partv until the end of the decade. Even then, Czech clubs experienced nothing Ilk« the tensions tri German ones between Liberals and ytllkischt In HiidwciyT.iidč|i>vu-c, i he unusually even balance of Czech .mil tiriiii.in Micni'.lh delayed -nul soiicned a central outcome for the Bohemian Li i ni1. .)•■ a win ile ul 1.1.die's enfranchisement push: greatly in-in im d ( '/et. h t v.ľi 11 alul Gei iii.in German competition. Why, contrary to I a.i lie's expectations, did lower-middle-class politics lake on primarily national limns, and spur a grearer nationalization of middle_i._fiv._i_" »lnu1, m the sen^e ihat Constitutionalists became mor__ Gcnn.in and Icdcralists more Czech? Across Europe, as well as beyond it, politics was becoming more national. In Cisleithania, the parries that dominated politics at the beginning of the 1880s were already partly national. Even before Taafife's enfranchisements took effect, those parties (and especially the Bohemian/Czech National Parry) had begun to rccruir and to nationalize lower-mid die-class males. Because runners-up in winner-take-all elections get no prizes, political entrepreneurs who sought power by courting the new voters had ro court at least some of the old voters as well. Useful in that context were national rhetorics. They proved flexible enough to accommodate considerable change in the social composition both of the national movements and of Bohemian politics more generally. As will be shown in the nexr chapter, furthermore, rhe Czech and the German movements in Budweis/BudČjovice thrived not only on conflict with one another but also on internal conflict as well. Both movements, once internally articulated, succeeded in reaching more residents than ever before and also in reaching deeper into individual lives. a mu» ľ umí n. < ,. , i i,, . n i........ '!. i 11■ I•_ iml) madi Incremental additions ><>< It.....ates, I [edid noi trans dum i hem and i In |..ui\ system by enfranchising vast numbers of people ill .ii onCC I nun H&bsburg perspectives, the politics that mattered was not U al As Taaffb stated in 1888, "In Hud weis, the two competing párii'"* .....St demonstrate their congenital strength. Whichever side proves Itself, over time, to be stronger must necessarily be accommodated by each govern men t, in accordance wir h the law."60 He left municipal electoral orders unchanged, and provided few incentives for politicians ro found panics that professed loyalty to the Habsburg Monarchy in nonnational ways. Instead, he focused on boosting already existing parties that made up part olhislron Ring. Habsburg policy wras at most boldly conservative no] revolutionary. And as is the case with most policies, it had some unintended consequences. As the Czech and German movements grew socially more inclusive, a subtle yet momentous transformation rook place. "Liberal" and "Constitutionalist" had used to overlap considerably with "German.''' Now the < 'zeeh and the German movements both claimed a Liberal partv. ThcTc-vcrsc, though, did not hold true: no liberal movement existed with subordinate Czech and German parties. The Right-Left political spectrum and the Czech-German conflict, for some time roughly parallel wrerc becoming hierarchically ordered. Both Czech and German Liberals were now-less liberal than they were national. Non-Liberal vorers, too, tended now m decide first on their national loyalties, and only then on how they viewed the Church, "equality," and individual candidates and issues. The Habsburg injection of the lower-middle class into electoral politics challenged the Czech and German esrablishmeuts, but the more complex poli-tics that resulted was all the more emphatically national. In 1866, the Habsburg Monarchy had lost a major war with Prussia. As Pietcr Judson has pointed out, however, Constitutionalists in Cislcithania had experienced the military defeat less as a nationalizing event than as confirmation that their own, only partly national course was correct. Indeed, they had exploited Francis Joseph's weakness after 1866 to win significant political victories—above all, the enshrincment of their principles in the Fundamental Laws, and the almost uninterrupted control for more than a decade of key Cisleithanian ministries. During those years, Liberals had claimed, as exceptional individuals, to represent the best interests of all—without regard to class, for example, or to language.61 The Ger-manness of Cisleithanian liberalism had remained weakly defined and often secondary, and the German n cm of Prnyia and nfrhr Germany ere -■ Ued in I87I had remained dis tan t. In_lS79, shortly after rhe Habsburg Monarchy's "victory" in claiming Bosnia and Herzegovina, Liberals had lost their positions within the state apparatus. The new holders of at ieast some of those positions had been 59 76 < HA ľ I ľ.K 1 WM federalists. That development, far more than the war of l.Sn». had led lo a redefinition and strengthening of Gcrmanncss in Budwcis/liudciovicc and in the Bohemian lands. Indeed, thai reversal had led to a redefinition and strengthening of nationhood more generally within Bohemian politics. Constitutionalists had become less liberal and more German, and Germanness had become less civic and more ethnic. Constitutionalists had noTbecomc German or ethnic enough, though, to prevent the emergence of a new, völkisch wing to the German movement. Although inconsistent, that new wing might be characterized as indifferent to the question of centralism or federalism, and hostile to civic understandings of Germanness. Völkisch leaders also pushed historical-cultural, elitist Ger-/ manncss in populist directions, such as to place even the most lowly. speaker of German over any speaker of Czech. Federalists, meanwhile, had become more Czech, while Czeehness had continued to become more populist. Czeehness had also grown less anticivic—in the sense of remaining primarily ethnic, with a secondary emphasis on the historical unity of the Bohemian lands, but becoming reconciled to the centralist structure of Cisleithania. The two blocs that, together with Habsburg 7 leaders, m.uk: up the principal players in Bohemian politics were becoming miny ii.tiiuii.il, and i lie two n mi mil mod s more similar, even as basic asym-liu-1 lies prislMcd. old Politics and New I n 18X8, Btfdivoj estimated t hat three or four thousand "Czechs" in Bud-Weis/Budějovlce either remained indifferent in national matters or "pass themselves off as Germans so as not to spoil things for themselves with h he lords.""53 That claim amounted to a wildly optimistic exaggeration ofthe breadtlioť national sentiment in town. Only recently had the institutional structures of either national movement begun to include the lower-middle class. Both movements continued almost to ignore families below the five-florin tax threshold—who made up an absolute majority of the population. Both movements devoted more attention than previously to females, but still far less than to males. Even among middle-class males, Rudweiser components persisted into the late 1880s and beyond. Higher-ranking civil servants, for example, fit poorly into the national scheme of things and had reasons not to accommodate to it. The same holds true of genuinely liberal (as opposed to nationally liberal) individuals who spoke only Czech and of devoutly Catholic burghers who spoke only German. Armyofficers remained largely nonnational too. In I860, an author had written that "the Austrian armed forces form a society in and of themselves, one could almost say a nationality." A generation later, men on A mi in r HRO At> A NM NATION AI POLITICO 77 .nim mllítarj duty, like almost .ill WOmcn, continued to be denied the vole in any election. Officers also continued to associate above all with each other, ľroni the mid-1880s, the Beseda and the Gäsüligkeitsverein each counted an officer among the members of its board. But those two men, together with their comrades in arms, belonged to both clubs simultaneously. This double, group form of membership, ordered by the army command, weakened the national content to dances and to other forms of socializing with civilians.03 Some priests had strong national sentiments and clashed with a part of their congregation as a result. But at higher levels ofthe Church administration in town, where policy was made and where funds were allocated, individuals did not divide clearly into Czechs and Germans. In February 1883, Bishop Jirsik/Jirsik died. Over the following decade or more, Czechs annointed him a national hero, commemorating the day of his death every year and collecting funds to erect a statue in his honor. The next bishop, an imperial count, acted with scrupulous national impartiality during his tenure—which was cut short in 1885 by his elevation to archbishop in Prague, and then to cardinal. His successor in Budwcis/Budč-jovice, Martin Josef Biha, a professor at the seminary, was of far more humble origins, yet displayed the same "strict impartiality." Germans did not celebrate his birthdayr as Czechs did, but German newspapers found little cause for national complaint right up to Bishop Biha's death in 1907. And the Liberals who dominated town hall made him an honorary burgher in 1899.ú4 Many middle-class Jews remained weakly national as well. They did so, though, not so much by their own decisions as because of anti-Semitism in both national movements. The very shape ofthe synagogue, built in 1888, expressed strong assimilationist desires. It was, in the words of an architectural historian, "the most obviously church-like structure created for Jewish worship" in all Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and a signal that members "were almost hoping to be mistaken lor local Catholics." This assessment finds confirmation in a fictionalized family history written by Norbert Frýd, a Jew born on Budweis/Budejo-vice's Ringplatz/rynek in 1913. Jews in town, he claims, regularly referred to the synagogue as "the church"—a designation that Frýd judges justified, given that the building "was in the fashionat>le neo-Gothic style, with two pointed towers, stained windows, and an organ that made it resemble a Catholic sanctuary far more than a synagogue."6" Rudweis/ líudéjovicc's Catholic population was becoming more national. But the Jewish population, by embracing Catholic appearances, failed to enter completely into the trend. Czech and German acceptance of Jews was less i li.m complete—whatever liberal Germans said to the contrary. (ma ľ i bii rwo Above the middle dm« aad ™>stiy beyond Budwds/Budijoyto boundary were anstoerats. They continued, although less dwita.Ott» past to plav major roles in politics, through mStltUtiOOS such as the gTC&l ESSS curias in the diet and m the Lower House oi the Austrian Parliament, through the Upper House as a whole, and through post s such as Taaffe's. Ahandful of high nobles also wielded considerable clou n re totally The Schwarzenbcrg family, for example, owned dozeusof%ew« « rnUls, ancTÄonal enterprises in Southern Bohemia, staffedbymore thin 2,000 officials and employees. The head of **jT&*££ít branch of the fcmilv, Charles (1824^1904), was a leading federalist and a c£ pohtkál associate of Old Czechs. And the head of the mam krnm-maXnmlov branch, Prince John Adolf (1799-1888), "behaved m SdlSo, toward the Czech nation» during ^^^ 1 ife according to Budivoj. Yet Dgkber man counted as national John Ado» ďcontnbufe thirty florins to the Ä3Ö upon us founding; m 1884 Considering that his family owned approximately one-third of the entire Bohemian W, though the contribution «s ^ -= one—and in any case, found a Czech counterbalance in John Adolf s status ľ Kundin rľernber of, he fe* "The late Prince's WW *0j in Us obituary in 1 888, probably glad that he had not become a Ger- m in "..... ' position above the national parties. "• The u-.Jm *nd the Czech movements made ^ «gffgg^ I,.."'^^^rr^vI^rBTidwe.ser holdouts among-tfeTjnr^eois. In; S lower middle class. Socially speaking, Zátka, laschek,^ and other ]n( iol1ilTleTders probably had little in common with individual shopkee p- s clerks and the like. As a group, such people in Budweis/Budepvi c arguably had less power than a single Schwarzcnberg Yet m then^ ties emerging beside the old across the monarchy (and for that matte. g. Europe), victory went not to the gourmet but to the^ t The old was a politics of quality. The new was a politics of qnarpty. And '4 m the context of that new politics, the lower-middle class more than made up for a lack of refinement, as compared to "higher" nonnational elements, with greater numbers and with a greater ease or in§f10*, . The last Budweiscr to have played a significant role as a political leader had been Klawik/KJavik, during the 1860s. Since *£»££^ been Habsburg-loyal in mostly reactive ways, as followers. In Budweis/ Budějovice, that left as Habsburg leaders only the dtstnet captain and a fw other imperial-royal officials (as opposed to municipal ones for example who almost had to be German). And those imper.ai-royal officials were much less leaders than administrators or soldiers. Outside town there was the rest of the imperial-royal ovil service and military as well *f»™ menscly powerful figure of the emperor-king. But they, together with A M DIU' U U o Al> ANO N A I M IN A I POLITICS 79 riľ.n landowners and with Other practitioners of the old politics, saw no ť.re.u need to weld Budwciscts, Pragucrs, and so on into some sort of "pcuplc " National leaders—less powerful and less shielded from the daily, local rough-and-tumble than were men such as Prancis Joseph, Taaffc, and I' 111 ice John Adol f—almost had to understand better the implications of «^ popular participation in politics. With hard work, those national leaders met I he Habsburg challenge of suffrage reform. They began to digest a whole new following. One consequence was an increase in tensions within both national movements. Rut another, as will be seen, was a new ro-hustnejis—manifested in organizational structures, in membership figures, and in a growing confidence that national fortunes might rise and fall, but "nations" would remain. All this occurred gradually and within limits. National and nonnational modes of action remained complementary in many ways, not contradictory. The old, grand politics and the new, more gritty one collided only in some arenas. And even then, Czechncss or Ger-manness by no means implied disloyalty to the state. The opening and closing dates of this chapter, 1871 and 1890, also frame Bismarck's years as chancellor of the German Empire. That is a coincidence, as well as an indication that the whole of Central Europe was caught up in some of the same developmental trends. Links between Germanness in Budweis/Budejovice and abroad remained weak. Domi-nating the political horizon in town in 1871 was not the unification of Germany but the collapse of the Bohemian state-rights effort at converting the monarchy from a dualist state into a trialist one. More important in the history of Czech and German nationhood in the Bohemian lands than the military alliance with the German Empire in 1879 was Taaffe's formation that same year of his Iron Ring. Thereafter, conflict between federalists and centralists arguably became a dimension ofcoi~ llict between Czechs and Germans, rather than vice versa. In 1890, not so much Bismarck's dismissal by the young and rash Emperor William II marked the beginning of a new era as did another attempt, discussed in the next chapter, at a restructuring of politics through a Bohemian compromise. In 1890, far the first time, workers across the Elabsburg Monarchy cele-bratčťľthe fostof May with public processions. In Budwcis/Budějovicc, fewer than 200 men and women dared to participate, and thus to defy both their employers and the intimidating presence of intensified police patrols.67 The year before, a united Austrian Social Democratic Party had been founded again, while in 1891, antisocialist legislation in Cislcithania expired. Politics began to open wider still and to include not only an addi-t ion a! social stratum but also a movement that claimed to represent a non- w national or at least multinational "people"—the proletariat. Here was a new challenge for Budweis/Budejovice's Czech and German movements. Three______________ v Free-for-All, 1890-1902 I accept with pleasure the assurances of the loyalty and dynastic fealty of the town of Budweis, and I express to you my warm thanks. I am convinced that the inhabitants of this town of both nationalities will always maintain their loyal Austrian ways [spoken in German]. 1 sincerely wish that all of you will compete, with all your strength, for the public sood in peace, and that you will thus contribute to the prosperit)' and progress of the town [spoken in Czech]. — Emperor-King Francis Joseph, 1895 In a lime when the fratricidal struggle against < l.iv, conscious workers is conducted with unprecedented loutishness on the hoi soil of nationality struggles^ .nul when often a solitary critical word «ufficea to ensure thai he who pronounced it is branded a traitor to his fatherland and driven to the pi »lil k a I slaughterhouse by his enemies as an enemy ol the nation, we feel doubly the weight of OUT ia.sk. [iliočcský dělník, a Social Democratic newspaper in Budweis/Biidéjovice, 1897 [Wie will smash your brewery to smithereens. We know your weak spots, and it is not an audit but something else that will break your neck. . . . Here you have our ultimatum. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth! We do not want to conquer Town Hall but we have a right to the third curia, and we will not allow anyone to strip us of it! —Budivoj, 1902 During the final decade of the nineteenth century, public lifejn Budweis/ Budějovice continued to expand. The Czech and German movements participated in that deepening and broadening of political participation but i ľ t p mu ah id did not create ll t)l II tltcy did create it, i hen it created and re-created 1 hem as well, in a mmplcs pi i >ccss wil h causes and consequences that in no Way remained limned to national matters. Habsburg leaders, for example, played a major role m pulling lower-class men into politics. So did Social Democrats, or Marxists. The unity of both national movements came under new strain. Indeed, the Marxist insistence on the primacy of class signaled at least the possibility' of supplementing or replacing the national and Habsburg categories that had structured politics thus far. Between the national movements, within them, and across the whole of the growing political field, conflict found expression in ever sharper language and even in physical clashes. The trend toward greater ideological complexity, in contrast, proved short-lived. The German and Czech movements, rather than breaking into pieces along class or other lines, became more differentiated and articulated. Politics as a whole, rather than swinging in a less national direction, swung in a more national one. Not only Social Democrats but also Habsburg leaders, including "Francis loseph himself, thought more and more nationally, even as they sought solutions to mounting national problems. The new class complexity remained. But national leaders, and especially Czech ones, succeeded at accommodating their organizations to it, and at making national questions V trump class questions much more often than vice versa. Intranational Conflict, Nationalizing and International Dynamics In the early 1890s, national politics in Budweis/Budějovice "caught up" somewhat with national politics elsewhere in the Bohemian lands, by becoming internally more divided. Yet the Old C'zee h-Young Czech division and the Liberal-völkisch one did not set back the national movements as a whole. Even as hostility between individuals on the same national side increased, nationhood in a generic sense became more central to politics. *" Intranational conflict also pushed the German and Czech camps farther apart; national sentiments became deeper and more Intense.1 The following discussion presents this complex dynamic through the example of the aftermath in Budweis/Budějovice of the Bohemian Compromise, a pact signed in 1890 but never implemented. Early in January D590, Prime Minister Taaffe called together Old Czechs, Liberal Germans (known at this point as the "United German Left"), and both centralist and federalist great landowners for negotiations in Vienna. By the end of the month, all parties to the talks had settled on legislation, to be passed by the Bohemian Diet, that reworked administra-tivc boundaries, diet curias, language policy, and more. At the heart of 106 , I I A ľ I I K I I I H I I merwaldbund organized in the Bohemian Botest, in the village oi I Im it// Hořice, proved a continual financial drain on the municipality. So did an omnibus venture within the town limits. Partly as a result, Budwcis/Bu dčjovice ran large budget deficits and imposed on residents the highest tax rates in all Bohemia.5' In 1885, Czech companies and institutions had employed fewer than 120 workers and managers. By 1900, that figure had increased to almost 700. To be sure, the Hardtmuth pencil factory alone employed more than 1,000 men and women by the turn of the century, and was by many accounts a German bastion. Yet the Czech movement had made considerable progress toward what Czech publications consistently phrased as a liberation of Czech workers from the bondage of German employment. Czech leaders, as usual providing impossibly precise figures, claimed that Czechs had paid only 30.5 percent of municipal taxes in 1890 but 38.1 percent in 1900. In 1902, Czechs captured control over the last of the small businessmen's associations in town.56 The Social Democratic movement also made progress, but of another sort. In April 1899, workers stopped building a new barracks on the out-skin s of town and persuaded several thousand other men and women to pul down lheir tools, loo. Leaders demanded a reduction in the length of Shifts, an increase in wages (bricklayers earned slightly more than two CfOWns .1 day at the time), and recognition of the first of May as a holiday. More thin two weeks of daily demonstrations followed, including some violent confrontations that provoked the intervention of the municipal police and ilie army. The sinkers won at least some concessions. After the German firm that was overseeing the construction of the barracks had joined other firms in granting a small wage increase, work resumed on the second of May.57 Nationalizing Beer j An example of how national loyalties had come to shape economic activity-lies in the production, marketing, and consumption of beer. The Burghers' Brewery in Budweis/Budějovice, established in 1795, was the property of those individuals who owned the nearly 400 buildings downtown. To sell a building was to lose one's share in the brewery. Until the 1860s, no other business in town had possessed brewing rights, and laws had regulated tightly which beer could be sold where within Cislcithania. The brewery had thus paid reliably plump dividends—which had found reflection in real estate prices and in the social profile of the owners. That profile, in turn, had found reflection in politics. In 1871, Budtpojhzd objected to the participation of the Burghers' Brewery in elections to the Austrian i ii i i |>(iH ALI 107 Parliament A. majorit) "i the owners of the brewery, in other words, had dc< ided n > us< Ita vi >te In t he (Ihamber of Commerce and Trade to back a (lonstitutionalisl candidate. The deregulation ol'the beer market, together with the development of an ever more dense railroad network over which beer could be transported quickly, cheaply, and packed in ice, had signaled new dangers, but also new opportunities for the Burghers' Brewery. On the one hand, the Beseda and other Czech establishments had begun switching to other, less German suppliers, such as the Schwarzenberg brewery in Krummau/Krumlov. Attempts by German Liberals at blocking this aspect of the "Each to His Own" campaign—by exploiting control over town hall in order to link the issuance of liquor licenses to long-term contracts with the Burghers' Brewery, for example—had failed. On the other hand, vast new markets had opened up. In the early 1870s, an old-fashioned faction had lost control of the Board of Directors of the brewery, and an opposing faction (including members of the Taschek family, but also of the Zátka one) had set a bold new course: modernizing and ramping up production, as well as pushing the sales force farther afield. Small quantities of Budweiser beer had soon traveled even to the United States. Little profit had resulted from that particular export drive, but something else had. Two men in St. Louis, Eberhard Anheuser and Adolphus Busch, had appropriated the Budweiser name for an unrelated brew, and then had gone on to make it one of the first coast-to-coast American brand names.59 Closer to home, the Burghers' Brewery had fared better. By the mid-18905, it owned multiple installations besides the becr-producing plant itself: several restaurants near town, including one at the site of the Passion Plays in Höritz/Honce; refrigerated warehouses in Brünn/Brno, Graz, Innsbruck, Trieste, and additional cities of Cisleithania; and also warehouses in such places as Zagreb, Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich. Production had nearly tripjed since 1871, to 114,000 hectoliters; the number of employees in Budweis/Budějovice had scxtupled, to more than 200; and the dividend had jumped from 100 to 400 crowns—more than half of what a bricklayer could hope to earn in a year. The Burghers' Brewery, despite its antiquated ownership structure, had become a modern manufacturing facility. To the extent that the brewery was German, it seemed to disprove Zátka's claim that German burghers in town made poor businessmen. The Germanncss of the brewery, however, had reached a high point »luring the late 1880s or early 1890s, and thereafter had yielded to a more generic nationalization. At the beginning of the 1890s, the Czech Savings Bank had managed, through subterfuge, to purchase a brewery-linked building on the RingpUttz/rynek from a burgher allied with Taschek. Liberal German leaders, made suddenly aware of a new threat, had mobilized 3895 I OH I II A ľ I i.......II to defend the brewery, and for thai mottet tin tci......I town onl) to realize gradually just how powerful the < ÍCI h pii-.h Willi In ľ'IKI, ( /.-. h families and businesses made urj almost um- third "l L lie iiww rs /nKi himself continued to own at leasi one brewery linked lioiuc "" Well before 1900, Zátka had decided to complement i Ik- ( vidi attempt at gaining control of the Burghers' Brewery with a more radical Strategy; founding a iTew^Czech brewery that would capture market share from the German-dominated one. In 1895, a Czech Shareholders' Brewery h.ul come into existence in town. Rejecting the model of the Burghers" Brewery, which just then was celebrating its centenary, the new company had organized itself as a corporation instead. Like other Czech companies, it had raised capital by issuing stock in denominations small enough that even individuals of modest means could afford a share or two. By 1902, the Czech Shareholders' Brewery had more than 6,500 shares outstanding/" The new business had proved an immediate success. The Beseda had signed up as one of the first regular customers, and from that point on could claim the distinction of being a Czech establishment that served (řZech beer. So, before long, could more and more restaurants and pubs, including one called "The Czech/Bohemian German" [Učeského Nemce]. Open and explicit in lin.iiici.il dealings in a way that the Burghers' Brewery h.1.1 never been, I he Czech Shareholders' Brewery timed annual reports and dividends to coincide with t hose of the rival company. Regular drinkers of the new brand probably included all shareholders. In hoisting a i'J.iss, i hey could quench their thirst, increase the value of their assets, and serve the national cause all at once. The annual summer festival of the Shareholders' Brewery soon became a major Czech fund-raising event. Germans, meanwhile, also stood free to drink the beer—which, like its competitor, carried the name "Budwciser" in German. At the request of some buyers in Štyria, the Czech Shareholders' Brewery even shipped bottles with labels that contained no mention of anything Czech or Bohemian. By 1900, the new Brewery had 130 employees in Budweis/Budě-jovicc. It had also already given shareholders some tidy profits, and perhaps some beer bellies. The following year, when Czech-language schools in town first surpassed German-language ones in enrollment, the Shareholders' Brewery outstripped the Burghers' Brewery in barrels produced.62 Such remarkable achievement set new standards in town for enterprise. The spectacular feat of outproducing a major firm after only six years also indicated that something was rotten in the Burghers' Brewery. Indeed, its beer seemed to have declined in quality—in a development related to a dramatic widening in the Liberal -völkisch divide. In the late 1890s, Leopold Schweighofer, a German völkisch leader and the owner ľltľl I"« Ml !()'> uf a brewer) llnktfd I...... had Inuiii hed ■< campaign against the Liberal < m i m.in i.n i m mi i In uli'd in In town hall, by Taschek and by Kohn) that 'i.....Ina ted 11 •• brewery'« Board of Directors. The young and brash Vhui ii'lii'K i, m Imqticsl lor victory against Liberals and for growth more in line with thai oi i he Czech Shareholders' Brewery, proved willing to pact even With house-owners downtown who were Czechs.63 "Better a ( vecli than a Liberal German," he and his followers seem to have reasoned in their angrier moments, and "Better a Czech than a Jew." To Czechs who owned a stake in the Burghers' Brewery, Schweighofer held out not only hope of better management but a chance to bloody Taschek and to neutralize the company as a political factor. After all, the brewery could influence how its employees behaved—not only at the ballot box but in school enrollment decisions for their children, in associational life, and so on. By definition, a volkiscb-Czech coalition would not exercise its power to the advantage of either national movement. The combination of Czech pressure and of völkisch rebellion weakened the Liberal grip on the Burghers' Brewery. Once the Liberal faction lost its ability to shroud financial data in secrecy, Schweighofer discovered that Taschek, his father, Kohn, and their associates had been selling the Burghers' Brewery ice, wood, coal, and hops at grossly inflated prices. The motive for this swindle remains unclear. Liberal leaders may have sought to profit personally, or they may have acted on behalf of their party—which needed ever more cash to keep members and voters in line. Quite likely brewery funds ended up diverted both to private and to German public ends. Wherever the money went, völkisch and Czech brewery owners found that expressing shock over its absence served their aims. Some of Taschek and Kohn's previously passive allies, appalled and angered by the new revelations, began to side with the rebels. Liberal members of the board denied everything and refused to step down.64 In October 1900, just as town residents were gearing up for the census and for elections to the Austrian Parliament, Schweighofer went public with his allegations. The speech he made provides a perspective committed all too rarely to paper on an important issue: how Taschck's part)' commanded loyalty or obedience from followers. "It would be interesting to know," Schweighofer said, how many votes for [the Liberals] would remain if everyone could vote as he thought. But one person owes money to the Savings Bank and another has a promise of a loan. The first is a municipal employee, the second an official of an institution—the Brewery, the Savings Bank, the "Bee" Loan Cooperative— dependent on them in another way. A third person is subject to the Town School Board, a fourth rents his lodgings from one of their people and is threatened 8996 with eviction. A litih, meanwhil<. who uwtt i luiu • Hud hlmw " ihr< i.......I with termraation of his Ic.isl- by .1 rcntei bclungini '" ''■■ " ľ1"* ' raliiwíwn they threaten with no mow work, businessmen with Ihjj.....I ITn the Liberal German political economy, all was linked in .1 seamless web having town hall at its center. Indeed, town hall itself owned nearly a dozen brewery-linked buildings, while the brewery held at least one vote in the very small and very powerful municipal first curia.66 This structure made for political strength, but also for economic inefficiency. The brewery, under Taschck and Kolín, had no real bottom line, and insufficient incentive to streamline operations as the market demanded. If the thou-) sands of shareholders and employees of the Czech brewery found that f what was good for the Czech movement also benefited them individually, í then only the elite among German owners of the Burghers7 Brewery could claim the same. For other Germans, national and personal interests coincided in much sloppier fashion. Schwcighofcr and other völkische fought Taschek and his Liberals with more abandon than Holansky and other Young Czechs fought Zátka and his Old Czechs. Unlike Holanský, Schweighofer succeeded in wresting control from his intranational nemesis over a major institution; in January 1902, he won election as Chairman of the Board of the Burghers' Brewery, backed bv )>{ilkisc}jc and by (Izechs. Immediately, that coalition faced a test. Liberal leaders bad been exerting llieir influence within companies in an attempl to assure a Czech defeat in elections, now overdue, to the town council. Early in February, Czech leaders learned the extent ofthat at-tcmpl (whose details ate explained in the next chapter), and reacted with .1 vehemence—and confidence—that would have been inconceivable a decade previously. Budivoj, less concerned with the fortunes of Schweighof-er's Czech allies among the owners of the Burghers' Brewery than with Czech political fortunes more broadly, warned Schweighofe r to rescind the previous chairman's pro-Liberal measures. Otherwise, LSvejyJlL>mash your brewery to smithereens. We know your weak spots, and it is not an audit bur something else that will break your neck. . . . Here you have our ultimatum. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth! We do not want to conquer Town Hall but we have a right to the third curia, and we will not allow anyone to strip us of it!"67 In 1900, Schweighofer had countered Liberal charges that he was betraying the national cause by arguing that the Burghers' Brewery "is not a political enterprise. Rather, it is a purely commercial one, purely economic. Neither Germans nor Czechs nor Jewrs count in it, but simply numbers and success." He had drawn the line at cooperating with Czechs in elections. Now, though, in order to deal another blow to his intranational ......I IÉI Al I I I 1 tin i.il uppitiii ni'., in 1 ikki d 111111 if. In-. 11,1t.....al, Činech opponents to s big .K1hn.1l victory and Lotting........\ M Sdiweighofcr hesitated, then he did noi 11csit.1tľ very long I Ic ľ,-i\c hi n> ehe t'/ech pressure, and re-si Inded his I .iberal predecessor's incisures. In April, the new management 1 li.ii Si hweighofcr headed filed suit against former members of the board, .nul erected j ('zee h -language sign to complement the Germ an-language one ai tlie entrance to the factory compound.06 Originally a brewery of Budwciser burghers, then an increasingly Liberal .umí German one, and then a mostly German one with a seditious Czech minority, the Burghers' Brewery (and for that matter, Bud weis/ It u dejov ice as a whole) had become a factionalizcd pö/tecj^Gcrman-Liberal- Jewish - Ch ristian-Czech hodgepodge. Between 1901 and 1905, the company paid out no dividend. Eventually, Taschek and his allies had to repay tens of thousands of crowns, if not the nearly two million crowns sought in lawsuits. The Czech Shareholders' Brewery, meanwhile, continued to thrive. Then again, how Czech it was stands open to question. Schweighofer claimed in 1902 that Germans owned almost half of all shares.03 As the case of the breweries illustrates, the structure of individual com- ( panics reflected their owners' national loyalties. The structure of those 1 loyalties, in turn, continued to reflect early Czech-German socioeconomic disparities—and contributed, paradoxically, to reducing or even to re- ; versing them. To some consumers, the two brands of beer may have ■ seemed quite similar. But their political aftertastes differed radically. The ( izech on ť was strong, open, and promising, while its rival smacked of (:< irruption, decline, and discord. The former brew figured both as product I and as producer of a Czech capitalist society characterized by strong cross- [ class bonds and by growing confidence. The latter, to the extent that it could be called German, served as symbol of a divided community whose increasingly illiberal leaders feared the future. As a Czech-German hybrid, I finally, beer made by the Burghers' Brewery embodied the growing problems of containing a mutually exclusive, mutually reinforcing national dynamic within a Habsburg framework. The Czech movement could have sought out unexploited economic niches for its ventures. Instead, it founded company after company directly opposite established German firms: the Shareholders' Brewery opposite the Burghers' Brewery, the National Pencil Company opposite Hardt-muth's, the First Budějovice Enamchvarc Factory, Inc. opposite three small, family-run enamelers, and so on. A few of the Czech startups drove their German enemies out ofbusiness. Several failed themselves. Most did neither, instead hauling the sleepy local economy into modern times and tightening the national grip on business and on public life as a whole. 78 í oni Ihm.mi During the L8.90s, the Czech movement m Budwclí Budějovice Ii.nI t proved successful at maintain i iig a fundamental utiily even while.....lergO ing rapid change and growth. Key elements had bed! the development of internal aj;Hcjularions, which found expression in an emergent multipara system, in an ever larger set of associations, and in the ownership si ructurc of businesses. Whether rich or poor, whether anticlerical or devout ly C 'ai h-olic, individual Czechs could take pride in "their" brewery in town. Differentiated organizational structures provided attachment points for every Czech—which the entire movement defined consistently, in primarily et h nic fashion. The German movement, in contrast, featured mutually hostile factions. Until the 1880s, Pieter Judson has argued, German-speak ing bourgeois males in Cisleithania had used the universalist language of liberalism to conceal even from themselves their particularist interests. "Then, after the political shocks of 1879-80, an ethnic strand to Gcrmanncss had emerged—less elitist, unambiguously national, and more like the dominant strand within Czecbness. During the 1890s, the Liberal and völkisch strands had railed to converge on a consistent, overarching understanding of Gcrmanness. Meanwhile, in an echo of the Liberal-German pattern of i he 1860s and 1870s, working-class Germans had found perhaps their strongest advocate (and maker) in the Social Democratic movement, despite its location partly outside the German camp. In similar fashion, at least in some parts of Austria, the Christian Social Party had become a foremost representative of German political Catholicism—yet had developed in less national and in more Catholic directions than Czech counterparts. In the German Empire, Bismarck had waged domestic battles during the 1870s and 1880s against both Social Democracy and political Catholicism. In the more complex setting of Cisleithania, too, the Gcr-manization of many workers and Catholics involved considerable intranational dissonance. Czechization unfolded with greater consistency and success. Despite these Czech-German differences, politics as a whole in Bud-weis/Budějovice had grown more national. Why? First, the national movements had been able to meet the challenge of a more pervasive politics from a position of strength. Neither movement controlled the state, but for some time now, both had played central roles in electoral politics and in associational life. Second, the national movements had each other. Social Democratic leaders did not have the good fortune of finding major opponents who understood themselves primarily in class terms. Nor did would-be leaders of Catholic or Aryan movements succeed in pairing off " ' ■.....m..................■' I.....[I' nn win*» rdiglomoi racial ixls ''"',.........................an and< *ech leader», In......raw, did agree '......"" llru«8l( ■'!■.-"»'■' each other, the) generated a powerful frame wu.r* «feting, however Inaccurately, nearlyany event on thepolit-'«i Acid Politics mighl pit burghers ,,.,.„ „s, officials, Bohemians against UUdWCiserg, «Ch men against poor. Catholics against Jews, and any of .....,C. •1*''""M themselves, or against Czechs or Germans. But from national perspectives, all those conflicts reduced to a competition for resources between Czechs and Germans. Nonuational loyalties figured merely as less-1 han-national ones. Even when Habsburg loyalties figured as umře than-nationa! ones, they did so as a mere adding together of rial lonal parts, as a common political language for the national communi-i ICS wHInn the country. Budweiser, burgher, Bohemian, and other non-nattonal categories were becoming secondary—and not only for adherents of national movements. y 00 9 4852 78