Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (66 page)
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Authors: Peter Demetz
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Precisely at 8 a.m. on June 15, his artillery opened fire across the river, and the bombardment, lasting four hours, immediately deepened the rift between the radicals, who finally held a staff meeting at the Clementinum, and the liberals, who wanted to end the bloodshed immediately. The beginning of the end came on the evening of Friday, June 16. The town council resolved to clean up the barricades, many willing workingmen were paid to do this tough job, and the radicals at the Clementinum, resisting Bakunin’s abstract suggestion to proclaim a revolutionary city government with dictatorial powers, made another brave attempt to send out emissaries to appeal for help from the countryside. By 9 p.m. Windischgrätz, reasserting his authority, gave the order to bombard the Old Town again; he concentrated the artillery fire on the Old Town water tower and the right bank. Large flour and wheat magazines burned through the night while the bombardment continued, illuminating the sky over Prague and striking the burghers with fear and feelings of utter helplessness.
On Saturday, June 17, the mayor hastened to Hrad
any Castle to announce the municipality’s unconditional surrender. The isolated radicals dispersed, army columns marched across the bridges to occupy the Old and the New Towns, and Windischgrätz immediately imposed military rule and, not much later, established a commission to investigate who was responsible for the insurrection (he believed, of course, that it was a vast conspiracy). Twenty thousand Praguers left in a panic to escape
the military courts. One train, crammed full of students, members of the Slav Congress, and provincial guards who had come to Prague on a belated and useless excursion, was stopped at B
chovice train station, the first out of Prague, by nervous army units, who killed and brutalized in cold blood: ten people were shot and more than fifty wounded. Still, there were rare pockets of resistance in the New Town, and the proud fishermen of Podolí, close to the river, under the Vyšehrad, were the last to put down their arms. Later historians believed that Windischgrätz’s army of more than 10,000 had been opposed by 1,200 barricade fighters, two-thirds of them students, supported by artisans and workingmen, and 500 nátional guardsmen; when everything was over, forty-six had died in the Prague streets, ten at B
chovice station, and hundreds were wounded, among them three servant girls and a young boy caught in the cross fire. Among the victims was Windischgrätz’s wife, Eleonore, who was killed by a ricocheting bullet while she was standing near a window at the high command. In the Vienna insurrection of October 1848, the third of the revolutionary year, Windischgrätz’s army units had to fight from house to house, and Vienna’s lovers of wine, women, and song fought as fiercely as the Social Democrats of Floridsdorf were to do in February 1934; 5,000 revolutionaries and 1,000 soldiers died in the streets.
any Castle to announce the municipality’s unconditional surrender. The isolated radicals dispersed, army columns marched across the bridges to occupy the Old and the New Towns, and Windischgrätz immediately imposed military rule and, not much later, established a commission to investigate who was responsible for the insurrection (he believed, of course, that it was a vast conspiracy). Twenty thousand Praguers left in a panic to escapethe military courts. One train, crammed full of students, members of the Slav Congress, and provincial guards who had come to Prague on a belated and useless excursion, was stopped at B
chovice train station, the first out of Prague, by nervous army units, who killed and brutalized in cold blood: ten people were shot and more than fifty wounded. Still, there were rare pockets of resistance in the New Town, and the proud fishermen of Podolí, close to the river, under the Vyšehrad, were the last to put down their arms. Later historians believed that Windischgrätz’s army of more than 10,000 had been opposed by 1,200 barricade fighters, two-thirds of them students, supported by artisans and workingmen, and 500 nátional guardsmen; when everything was over, forty-six had died in the Prague streets, ten at Bchovice station, and hundreds were wounded, among them three servant girls and a young boy caught in the cross fire. Among the victims was Windischgrätz’s wife, Eleonore, who was killed by a ricocheting bullet while she was standing near a window at the high command. In the Vienna insurrection of October 1848, the third of the revolutionary year, Windischgrätz’s army units had to fight from house to house, and Vienna’s lovers of wine, women, and song fought as fiercely as the Social Democrats of Floridsdorf were to do in February 1934; 5,000 revolutionaries and 1,000 soldiers died in the streets.Yet the young Prague radicals, at least, wanted to continue their fight, and it was almost inevitable that they threw in their lot with Mikhail Bakunin, a noble revolutionary by profession, who in December announced to his friends the attractive idea of a federation of Slavic republics with Prague as its capital. In Leipzig and Dresden, he talked about Czech conditions with Adolf Vilém Straka, a former theologian (later to be sentenced to death), established contact with Josef Václav Fri
and Emanuel Arnold (later to emigrate to the United States), who had been prominent among the June insurgents, and even went to Prague secretly, in March 1849, to inspect the scene; he did not seem to notice that the Prague mood was certainly less than revolutionary. In Saxony, great plans for an uprising in Dresden and Prague were made, to be prepared by
anciens combatants,
and Prague German students organized in Moldavia and Hilaria fraternities. Fri
and his group were to occupy Smichov and others the Old Town hall; a number of hostages were to be taken immediately, among them former Emperor Ferdinand, who was slightly retarded and had recently been pensioned off at Hrad
any; he liked to go on long walks without a bodyguard, smiling beatifically. This revolution was scheduled for May 12, but the Dresden conspirators, the young composer Richard Wagner among them, started out too early, on May 3; in
Prague the efficient police had long infiltrated their groups and during the night of May 9 arrested nearly everybody. Military rule was imposed and regular army units occupied Prague.
and Emanuel Arnold (later to emigrate to the United States), who had been prominent among the June insurgents, and even went to Prague secretly, in March 1849, to inspect the scene; he did not seem to notice that the Prague mood was certainly less than revolutionary. In Saxony, great plans for an uprising in Dresden and Prague were made, to be prepared byanciens combatants,
and Prague German students organized in Moldavia and Hilaria fraternities. Fri
and his group were to occupy Smichov and others the Old Town hall; a number of hostages were to be taken immediately, among them former Emperor Ferdinand, who was slightly retarded and had recently been pensioned off at Hradany; he liked to go on long walks without a bodyguard, smiling beatifically. This revolution was scheduled for May 12, but the Dresden conspirators, the young composer Richard Wagner among them, started out too early, on May 3; inPrague the efficient police had long infiltrated their groups and during the night of May 9 arrested nearly everybody. Military rule was imposed and regular army units occupied Prague.
The trial of the conspirators, half of them Czech, half German, and none older than twenty-six, lasted for four years; twenty-eight were sentenced to death (all the death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment), fifty-one received long sentences, (474 years in all) and the rest were forced to join the army. Fri
, a talented and elegant member of the incipient
jeunesse dorée,
was sentenced to eighteen years in jail; amnestied in 1854, he was arrested again, and sent into exile. He lived in London and Paris, but when Prussians occupied Prague in 1866 he returned, then left for Berlin and Zagreb. He ceaselessly wrote plays about political heroes and indefatigably tried to explain Czech affairs to the European public; he was allowed to return in 1879. Bakunin was caught in Saxony, and the Prussians and Austrians handed him over to the tsarist police, who sent him to Siberia. From there, he made a spectacular escape to New York and London, only to be ostracized in the international workers’ movement by Karl Marx. He died in 1876, a bitter and disappointed man, in Switzerland.
, a talented and elegant member of the incipientjeunesse dorée,
was sentenced to eighteen years in jail; amnestied in 1854, he was arrested again, and sent into exile. He lived in London and Paris, but when Prussians occupied Prague in 1866 he returned, then left for Berlin and Zagreb. He ceaselessly wrote plays about political heroes and indefatigably tried to explain Czech affairs to the European public; he was allowed to return in 1879. Bakunin was caught in Saxony, and the Prussians and Austrians handed him over to the tsarist police, who sent him to Siberia. From there, he made a spectacular escape to New York and London, only to be ostracized in the international workers’ movement by Karl Marx. He died in 1876, a bitter and disappointed man, in Switzerland.
Karel Havlí
ek was the first Czech intellectual in the modern sense, bridging the gap between literature and political activism, and in his own way he anticipated the realist T. G. Masaryk, professor of philosophy and founder of the Czechoslovak Republic. (Masaryk, of course, wrote a lively volume about his predecessor.) Patriots of earlier generations had devoted their energies to the study of Slavic archaeology and history, but Havlí
ek lived in the present, as satirist, literary critic, newspaper editor, and member of committees and the Austrian parliament; one of his recent biographers has raised the legitimate question whether Havlí
ek suffered more in exile, controlled by the Austrian police, or when he returned home six years after the revolution and found only silence, indifference, and very few friends.
ek was the first Czech intellectual in the modern sense, bridging the gap between literature and political activism, and in his own way he anticipated the realist T. G. Masaryk, professor of philosophy and founder of the Czechoslovak Republic. (Masaryk, of course, wrote a lively volume about his predecessor.) Patriots of earlier generations had devoted their energies to the study of Slavic archaeology and history, but Havlíek lived in the present, as satirist, literary critic, newspaper editor, and member of committees and the Austrian parliament; one of his recent biographers has raised the legitimate question whether Havlíek suffered more in exile, controlled by the Austrian police, or when he returned home six years after the revolution and found only silence, indifference, and very few friends.Havlí
ek’s father was a village merchant from the hills on the Czech-Moravian border, and Karel, one of seven children, was the ugly duckling, stubborn, wild, and unruly, and yet a gifted student in the provinces and in Prague, where he attended the archbishop’s seminary—though only for one year because he changed his mind about his vocation, and his
superiors did not like his epigrams or his Pan-Slavic ideas. He spent much of his time at the university library, and its director recommended him for a position as tutor to the conservative Russian historian Mikhail Pogodin, who passed him on to his learned colleague St
pan Petrovich Shevyrov, professor of Russian literature at Moscow University and head of a Slavophile group of poets and scholars who were committed to the ancient virtues of Orthodox Mother Russia. At first, the twenty-two-year-old Havlí
ek felt in an all-Slav heaven, tutoring Shevyrov’s son Boris for five hours a day and spending the rest of his time in Shevyrov’s rich library or exploring Moscow’s street life, admiring the wonderful Russian folk. Unfortunately, the family took him in late May 1843 to its vast country estate, and his Russian illusions were abruptly shattered when he saw the poverty of the villages, the way in which the estate owners dealt with their “souls,” dead or alive, and the unemployment that prompted hundreds of thousands of village lads to seek work in the cities, leaving behind their poor sisters and wives, or rather, as he put it, “fifty thousand whores.” He learned a lesson about the realities of Slav life, left his employers more or less in a huff, and announced to his friends that he was going home to write in a different style. He did not know yet that he was closely watched by the Austrian police, who believed that he was a Pan-Slav radical, pro-Russian, and dangerous to the state.
ek’s father was a village merchant from the hills on the Czech-Moravian border, and Karel, one of seven children, was the ugly duckling, stubborn, wild, and unruly, and yet a gifted student in the provinces and in Prague, where he attended the archbishop’s seminary—though only for one year because he changed his mind about his vocation, and hissuperiors did not like his epigrams or his Pan-Slavic ideas. He spent much of his time at the university library, and its director recommended him for a position as tutor to the conservative Russian historian Mikhail Pogodin, who passed him on to his learned colleague St
pan Petrovich Shevyrov, professor of Russian literature at Moscow University and head of a Slavophile group of poets and scholars who were committed to the ancient virtues of Orthodox Mother Russia. At first, the twenty-two-year-old Havlíek felt in an all-Slav heaven, tutoring Shevyrov’s son Boris for five hours a day and spending the rest of his time in Shevyrov’s rich library or exploring Moscow’s street life, admiring the wonderful Russian folk. Unfortunately, the family took him in late May 1843 to its vast country estate, and his Russian illusions were abruptly shattered when he saw the poverty of the villages, the way in which the estate owners dealt with their “souls,” dead or alive, and the unemployment that prompted hundreds of thousands of village lads to seek work in the cities, leaving behind their poor sisters and wives, or rather, as he put it, “fifty thousand whores.” He learned a lesson about the realities of Slav life, left his employers more or less in a huff, and announced to his friends that he was going home to write in a different style. He did not know yet that he was closely watched by the Austrian police, who believed that he was a Pan-Slav radical, pro-Russian, and dangerous to the state.Arriving in Prague, Havlí
ek wasted no time in establishing himself as a new kind of literary critic of political interests, showing little patience with sentimentality and patriotic oratory. In an essay in the widely read
eská V
ela
(
Czech Bee
) he deplored the “irritating truth” that in his homeland every writer was also a praiseworthy patriot, making it difficult to criticize anyone because immediately the nation itself felt offended; frank literary criticism was simply impossible. Havlí
ek did not have an easy time defining his personal position; he clearly did not like literature without a message because he believed that people living in an important moment of history could not and should not enjoy timeless beauty closed upon itself, and he insisted that poetry with a message (he used the Young German term
Tendenzpoesie
) was simply better than poetry without one—the assumption being, of course, that it was real poetry, and Havlí
ek was willing to speak on that occasion of a meaning or direction of literature rather than mere tendentiousness.
ek wasted no time in establishing himself as a new kind of literary critic of political interests, showing little patience with sentimentality and patriotic oratory. In an essay in the widely readeská Vela(
Czech Bee
) he deplored the “irritating truth” that in his homeland every writer was also a praiseworthy patriot, making it difficult to criticize anyone because immediately the nation itself felt offended; frank literary criticism was simply impossible. Havlí
ek did not have an easy time defining his personal position; he clearly did not like literature without a message because he believed that people living in an important moment of history could not and should not enjoy timeless beauty closed upon itself, and he insisted that poetry with a message (he used the Young German termTendenzpoesie
) was simply better than poetry without one—the assumption being, of course, that it was real poetry, and Havlí
ek was willing to speak on that occasion of a meaning or direction of literature rather than mere tendentiousness.Other books
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