Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (73 page)
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Authors: Peter Demetz
BOOK: Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City
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T. G. MASARYK’S PRAGUE
As for other European cities, modernization for Prague was closely bound to advances in industrialization, long delayed, to new networks of communications, and to the economic boom of the 1850s and then again toward the end of the nineteenth century. The first to modernize, in his own way, had been Emperor Joseph II, who by his transformation and destruction of many monastic and ecclesiastical institutions and buildings, had greatly changed the historical charms of Prague’s ancient towns. In the 1830s and 1840s, the Prague burgrave Count Karl Chotek energetically pushed for a productive collaboration of urban architects and new industrialists, built new avenues, initiated a society to construct a second bridge over the river (the one that goes from the National Theater to Smíchov), reorganized the quay on the right riverbank, and yet also protected old gardens, parks, and churches against developers.
Another, far more incisive phase of urban modernization began in the mid-1880s, when a proud city government, by 1888 entirely Czech, suggested a radical plan to “sanitize” the most decrepit parts of the Old Town and a few other corners; in 1895 (after the plan had been approved by the Vienna authorities) the old Jewish quarter—with the exception of a few historic synagogues, the cemetery (though narrowed), and the old Jewish town hall—was totally razed, as was the northern side of the Old Town Square and at least three old churches together with adjacent buildings. The rubble was transported in 21,700 wagonloads to be used as landfill in a district still endangered by frequent inundations from the river. Neither the Hussite civil wars nor the enlightened policies of Emperor
Joseph II had so massively threatened the historical shape of Prague, and while poets, artists, architects, and students voiced their protest in newspapers and in mass meetings, the city government did not substantially yield. International travelers who visit the Prague Jewish Town today walk in the ancient grid of streets, but all the apartment buildings, left and right, reflect
fin de sièc/e
middle-class tastes. Pa
ížtská Street, now a concatenation of international airline offices, violently and destructively intrudes into the old street structure.
Joseph II had so massively threatened the historical shape of Prague, and while poets, artists, architects, and students voiced their protest in newspapers and in mass meetings, the city government did not substantially yield. International travelers who visit the Prague Jewish Town today walk in the ancient grid of streets, but all the apartment buildings, left and right, reflect
fin de sièc/e
middle-class tastes. Pa
ížtská Street, now a concatenation of international airline offices, violently and destructively intrudes into the old street structure.Yet the advantages of modern
asanace
(sanitation) did not primarily affect Jews, because in the fifth district, newly incorporated into Prague’s union of towns in 1850 under the name of Josefov (“Joseph’s Place”), Jewish civic life no longer prevailed and only 10 percent of its residents were still Jewish. The emigration of rich Jews to other parts of the city had started well before the revolution of 1848; a year later the familiant’s law was annulled; by 1852 Jews were allowed to acquire housing wherever they wished; and in 1867 they were assured all civil rights equal to those guaranteed to Czechs and Germans. Even the less well-to-do tried to find apartments somewhere else, especially in the New Town and at bourgeois Vinohrady (a little east of the New Town), although some families, like that of Franz Kafka, restlessly moved year by year, in a circle around the old ghetto. The shabby old houses in the Jewish Town had become the last refuge of the poorest of the poor; contemporary reportages by the Czech realist Jan Neruda described them as havens of unsavory crime, pimps, and low prostitution (the better places, like the famous Goldschmidt salon, were located elsewhere in the Old Town). Contemporary studies prepared by Dr. Václav Preininger were discouraging; by 1885, the Josefov district, or Prague V, with 186,000 inhabitants, was the most overpopulated of all Prague quarters; in the Old Town, 644 people lived on one hectare of housing space, but 1,822 in Josefov, and even in proletarian Žižkov the number had been 1,300. Overall in the city the proportion of one-room apartments was 53 percent, which was bad enough, but in Josefov it was as high as 64 percent; in one small house more than 200 people were found living together. On the average, one toilet served five to ten apartments. The mortality rate for infectious diseases in the Old Town in 1895 was 18.13 per thousand, in the Minor Town 20.61, and in Josefov, a quarter without clean water, sunlight, or gardens, however small, 30.61. So there was ample need for “sanitation” in the strict sense, but there was another reason too, less often discussed publicly. This was the age in which representative public buildings for the new Czech middle class were being constructed in grand neo-Renaissance
style along the Vltava embankment and elsewhere—the National Theater (1881—83), the Rudolfinum concert hall (1884), the School of the Applied Arts (1884), the new National Museum (1885—90), and the Museum of the City of Prague (1898). Prague wanted to rise and shine, preparing for three international exhibitions in the 1890s to show its material and intellectual achievements, and the poor of Josefov were barely hidden by the surrounding new splendor.
asanace
(sanitation) did not primarily affect Jews, because in the fifth district, newly incorporated into Prague’s union of towns in 1850 under the name of Josefov (“Joseph’s Place”), Jewish civic life no longer prevailed and only 10 percent of its residents were still Jewish. The emigration of rich Jews to other parts of the city had started well before the revolution of 1848; a year later the familiant’s law was annulled; by 1852 Jews were allowed to acquire housing wherever they wished; and in 1867 they were assured all civil rights equal to those guaranteed to Czechs and Germans. Even the less well-to-do tried to find apartments somewhere else, especially in the New Town and at bourgeois Vinohrady (a little east of the New Town), although some families, like that of Franz Kafka, restlessly moved year by year, in a circle around the old ghetto. The shabby old houses in the Jewish Town had become the last refuge of the poorest of the poor; contemporary reportages by the Czech realist Jan Neruda described them as havens of unsavory crime, pimps, and low prostitution (the better places, like the famous Goldschmidt salon, were located elsewhere in the Old Town). Contemporary studies prepared by Dr. Václav Preininger were discouraging; by 1885, the Josefov district, or Prague V, with 186,000 inhabitants, was the most overpopulated of all Prague quarters; in the Old Town, 644 people lived on one hectare of housing space, but 1,822 in Josefov, and even in proletarian Žižkov the number had been 1,300. Overall in the city the proportion of one-room apartments was 53 percent, which was bad enough, but in Josefov it was as high as 64 percent; in one small house more than 200 people were found living together. On the average, one toilet served five to ten apartments. The mortality rate for infectious diseases in the Old Town in 1895 was 18.13 per thousand, in the Minor Town 20.61, and in Josefov, a quarter without clean water, sunlight, or gardens, however small, 30.61. So there was ample need for “sanitation” in the strict sense, but there was another reason too, less often discussed publicly. This was the age in which representative public buildings for the new Czech middle class were being constructed in grand neo-Renaissance
style along the Vltava embankment and elsewhere—the National Theater (1881—83), the Rudolfinum concert hall (1884), the School of the Applied Arts (1884), the new National Museum (1885—90), and the Museum of the City of Prague (1898). Prague wanted to rise and shine, preparing for three international exhibitions in the 1890s to show its material and intellectual achievements, and the poor of Josefov were barely hidden by the surrounding new splendor.
The decisions of the magistrate to change so much of Prague provoked the opposition of many organizations, including the Czech Club of Architects and the German Club for City Affairs, yet people were not concerned about the disappearance of the former ghetto, though they helped to protect the streets nearby, the churches of the Old Town, and a few old buildings in the New Town—for instance, the “Faust” house—endangered by city planners. In 1895, the Czech Club of Architects and the M
št’anská Beseda submitted a memorandum reminding the city fathers of the ancient history of Prague, and soon artists and intellectuals were on a collision course with the powers that be. The distinguished novelist and playwright Vilém Mrštík (a Moravian) unsparingly attacked Prague’s urban renewal, speaking against the “blindness” and “ignorance” of the few people robbing Prague of its “most precious treasure,” and in yet another, even more belligerent essay (1896—97) called those responsible for the cleanup the
“bestia triumphans,”
a term derived from Friedrich Nietzsche to denote the absolute victory of brutal power over sensible intelligence.
št’anská Beseda submitted a memorandum reminding the city fathers of the ancient history of Prague, and soon artists and intellectuals were on a collision course with the powers that be. The distinguished novelist and playwright Vilém Mrštík (a Moravian) unsparingly attacked Prague’s urban renewal, speaking against the “blindness” and “ignorance” of the few people robbing Prague of its “most precious treasure,” and in yet another, even more belligerent essay (1896—97) called those responsible for the cleanup the“bestia triumphans,”
a term derived from Friedrich Nietzsche to denote the absolute victory of brutal power over sensible intelligence.
One of the old palaces people fought about was the late Baroque Benedictine prelacy originally built by Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer in 1730 to be affiliated with nearby St. Nicholas. In that prelacy, secularized by Joseph II, Franz Kafka was born in 1883, but the original building was destroyed by fire (1897) and a new construction, in style and adornment imitating the old prelacy, was built on the spot in 1902. In 1966, after considerable conflict with the Communist authorities, people were able to affix a plaque to the house saying that Franz Kafka was born there—true, in a purely topographical sense—and international pilgrims deciphering the Czech inscription have to learn that in the Old Town, as in Kafka’s writings, things are not always what they seem.
In the time of the
asanace,
continuing into the first year of World War I, Prague advanced, as if with a sudden leap of energy, to being a modern city, massively industrialized, especially in its expanding suburbs, and run by a new strong Czech middle class legitimately proud of its splendid cultural and economic institutions, the Czech University, and new banks
and insurance companies. Germans had been defeated in the city council elections of 1861 and, increasingly excluded from the political administration of the community, tried to balance their political losses by much attention to their theater, a flowering literary life, and innumerable social clubs. Since the new industries attracted a continuous immigration from the Czech countryside, the number of German speakers in Prague quickly decreased (in 1880 to 15.5 percent, and in 1900 to 7.5 percent).
asanace,
continuing into the first year of World War I, Prague advanced, as if with a sudden leap of energy, to being a modern city, massively industrialized, especially in its expanding suburbs, and run by a new strong Czech middle class legitimately proud of its splendid cultural and economic institutions, the Czech University, and new banks
and insurance companies. Germans had been defeated in the city council elections of 1861 and, increasingly excluded from the political administration of the community, tried to balance their political losses by much attention to their theater, a flowering literary life, and innumerable social clubs. Since the new industries attracted a continuous immigration from the Czech countryside, the number of German speakers in Prague quickly decreased (in 1880 to 15.5 percent, and in 1900 to 7.5 percent).
The four original Prague towns grew constantly; not only was the Jewish community incorporated as Josefov (Prague V) but the Vyšehrad district and Holešovice-Bubny, a mighty bastion of the Czech proletariat, followed in 1901. Other suburbs did not want to be incorporated into the city; they were afraid of its special tax on rents (approximately 14 percent) and enjoyed being favored by the government, which readily granted them the privilege of being imperial and royal towns on their own, as was Vinohrady and Žižkov; Vienna recognized, of course, that rapid incorporation of so many Czechs into Prague would wash away the last vestiges of German entitlements there.
Matters were complicated even more by the social transformations of Prague’s Jewish community, which demographically held its own, though its members were now dispersed, predominantly all over the Old and New Towns. An increasing number of families, though continuing to send their sons to German schools and the German university, preferred to declare during statistical inquiries that their language was Czech; by 1900, 14,576 Prague Jews declared themselves to be speakers of Czech, while the number of German speakers had dropped to 11,599. The reorientation of language did not immediately affect the community’s religious life; administrative functions were in the hands of well-to-do German-speaking liberals, and the major synagogues, including the Old New and the Pinkas synagogues, retained the old Hebrew rites. Mixed marriages, in spite of the advancing acculturation to other language groups, were surprisingly rare (in 1894, 1 in 655, rising to 4 in 684 in 1895 and 21 in 676 in 1897). (The corresponding numbers in Vienna and especially Berlin were twice as high.) The notion of Jews as a “nation among nations” had been current among the young writers of the
Sippurim
in 1847, and yet the first Zionist student group was not established until 1893, renewed as Bar Kochba (bilingual) in 1899, while the Czech Theodor Herzl group suffered from a dearth of Jewish students at the Czech University (by 1911, there were only 101, and even by 1921, only 469, as compared with 1,400 Jews studying at the German university).
Sippurim
in 1847, and yet the first Zionist student group was not established until 1893, renewed as Bar Kochba (bilingual) in 1899, while the Czech Theodor Herzl group suffered from a dearth of Jewish students at the Czech University (by 1911, there were only 101, and even by 1921, only 469, as compared with 1,400 Jews studying at the German university).
As Prague increasingly modernized, a special literature about it began
to emerge internationally, insisting on its magic if not mystical image. Contemporary Czechs, concerned with commercial, technological, and political advances, celebrated Zlatá Praha, the golden Slavic city of past and future achievements, yet English, German, and American writers on the grand tour once again became enchanted by the metaphysical, strange, and spectral town of ancient cathedrals and synagogues, and dutifully wended their way through the old streets to the famous old Jewish cemetery. The walk itself followed literary convention; ever since the later eighteenth century, cemeteries had been sweet places of melancholy reflections about frail life and sublime death, and Prague’s Jewish cemetery exerted a strong pull on minds shaped by Christian tradition. Uncertain feelings of otherness, history, and eerie portents curiously mingled; it is not difficult to understand why English and American travelers, who are more substantially responsible for the literature of magic Prague than we perhaps assume, were ready for supernatural experiences, and they wrote stories of hypnosis, strange blood transfusions, ghosts, and weird revenants. The
asanace
ordered by the city magistrate may have razed much of the Jewish Town, but the many stories about magical Prague kept alive the literary image of a topography long gone.
to emerge internationally, insisting on its magic if not mystical image. Contemporary Czechs, concerned with commercial, technological, and political advances, celebrated Zlatá Praha, the golden Slavic city of past and future achievements, yet English, German, and American writers on the grand tour once again became enchanted by the metaphysical, strange, and spectral town of ancient cathedrals and synagogues, and dutifully wended their way through the old streets to the famous old Jewish cemetery. The walk itself followed literary convention; ever since the later eighteenth century, cemeteries had been sweet places of melancholy reflections about frail life and sublime death, and Prague’s Jewish cemetery exerted a strong pull on minds shaped by Christian tradition. Uncertain feelings of otherness, history, and eerie portents curiously mingled; it is not difficult to understand why English and American travelers, who are more substantially responsible for the literature of magic Prague than we perhaps assume, were ready for supernatural experiences, and they wrote stories of hypnosis, strange blood transfusions, ghosts, and weird revenants. The
asanace
ordered by the city magistrate may have razed much of the Jewish Town, but the many stories about magical Prague kept alive the literary image of a topography long gone.
George Eliot, accompanied by her devoted friend George Henry Lewes on a trip from Vienna to Dresden, spent July 16, 1858, in Prague, walked through the Old Town, kissed “a lovely dark-eyed Jewish child … in all its dirt,” looked at the “somber old synagogue with its smoky groins,” and never forgot her impressions. Publishers and critics were confused about the immediate result of her first trip to Prague, a story called “The Lifted Veil,” written in 1859, and later she was inclined herself to hide it in a volume of other stories rather than risk independent publication again. She defended it by saying she had written
“a jeu de melancholie
,” an
“outré”
story. That much is true: an aging Englishman who always wanted to be a poet but lacked inspiration confesses that instead he received the gift of “prevision,” the ability to look forward in time and into people’s secret thoughts. Strangely enough, it is the word “Prague” (where his father wants to go on a trip) that, for the first time, triggers a precise vision of a future moment; though he has never been in Prague or seen a picture of it, he suddenly sees “a city … in the summer sunshine of a long-past century arrested in its course … and the dusty, weary, timeeaten grandeur of a people doomed to live on in the stale repetition of memories, like the past and superannuated kings in their regal goldinwoven tatters,” and as he walks he passes “under the blank gaze of blackened statues” along “the unending bridge.”
“a jeu de melancholie
,” an
“outré”
story. That much is true: an aging Englishman who always wanted to be a poet but lacked inspiration confesses that instead he received the gift of “prevision,” the ability to look forward in time and into people’s secret thoughts. Strangely enough, it is the word “Prague” (where his father wants to go on a trip) that, for the first time, triggers a precise vision of a future moment; though he has never been in Prague or seen a picture of it, he suddenly sees “a city … in the summer sunshine of a long-past century arrested in its course … and the dusty, weary, timeeaten grandeur of a people doomed to live on in the stale repetition of memories, like the past and superannuated kings in their regal goldinwoven tatters,” and as he walks he passes “under the blank gaze of blackened statues” along “the unending bridge.”
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