Czech National Renaissance

From Slavic.info

The Czechs were the first theorists of the national renaissance of their own and of other Slav peoples. In their peculiar position as a threatened nationality, from the outset dependence upon the other Slavs was an important element in the idea of the national renaissance. Josef Dobrovský (1753- 1829), the great founder of the Slavistic movement, had doubts about the vital efficiency of his own nationality, but he was the first russophil to bring forward reasoned grounds on behalf of his ideas and sympathies. He paid a visit to Russia in the year 1792. In Bohemia he had several predecessors, most of whom wrote in German. Dobrovský himself, the most vigorous reawakener of his nation, like Gelasius Dobner, Mikuláš Adaukt Voigt, František Martin Pelzel, etc., wrote only in German and in Latin. There were likewise German Slavists (Alter of Vienna, etc.), and there were German historians (Anton, etc.) who occupied themselves with the history of the Slav nations. In Russia at this epoch historical interest was limited to the Russian past.

To Dobrovský the most notable element common to the Slavs was the linguistic, but he considered they displayed likewise a community of manners and customs, and he believed that it was possible to detect a Slav national psychology.

Upon the foundation established by Dobrovský, Ján Kollár (1793-1852) developed Herder's historico-philosophical and slavophil ideas into the notion of the literary mutuality of the Slavs. Kollár's studies at the university of Jena and his experiences of the German nationalist movement (at the Wartburg festival etc.) exercised no small influence on his mind. The aggressive nationalism of the Magyars also affected him very powerfully —he was born in Hungary, and in Pest he became Protestant preacher to the Slovako-German congregation. The Slavs, he contended, must create for themselves a Slav universal culture, for it was their mission to take over the historic leadership of the world from the decayed Teutons and Latins. In point of program Kollár's Slav ideal was quite unpolitical; he wholly accepted Herder's humanitarian ideal, and he dreamed of a nonpolitical fraternity of the'nations under the leadership of Slav civilization. The study of Slav tongues was to subserve this end, and the extent to which they were to be mastered was graded in accordance with the learner's degree of culture. An ordinary well-educated man was to be able to speak the four main living languages, Russian, " Illyrian," Polish, and Czecho-Slovak; the more learned Slav should know also the dialects, Little Russian, Croatian, Wendic, and Bulgarian ; finally the man of learning, the Slavist and historian, must be familiar with the living and dead languages and dialects. Consult the writing, Concerning Literary Mutuality Between the Various Stocks and Linguistic Families of the Slav Nations, published in German in 1837 (2nd edition, 1844). The fundamental idea had previously been given to the world in Czech in an essay and in several other works, and among these in the annotations to the epic poem, Slávy Dcera (The Daughter of the Slava) which appeared in 1821. Russian translations were published in 1838 and 1842, and a Serbian translation in 1845.

In the spirit of Kollár worked Pavel Josef Šafařík with his study of Slav archeology, and Josef Jungmann. Especially active in this field was Václav Hanka, the most diligent forger of Old Czech literary works and documents (the Königinhof manuscript and the Grünberg manuscript).

The Slavist labours of the Czechs had a certain practical result in the Slav congress held in Prague in the year 1848, as imitation and rival of the Frankfurt parliament.

Kollar's successors, and notably František Palacký (1798-1876) and Karel Havlíček Borovský (1821-1856), the political leaders of 1848, effected considerable modifications in Kollár's abstract ideal. Panslavism as a vague cosmopolitanism was replaced by a fully conscious Czechism ; instead of " great " panslavism there came into existence " lesser " panslavism, or Austroslavism. Palacký and Havlíček Borovský entered protests against the Russian universal monarchy. Palacký wrote for the Czechs the first philosophically conceived history wherein the reformation effected by Jan Hus and above all by the Moravian brethren was presented as the climax of Czech and European development. Palacký, too, elaborated the first political program. Upon the foundation of Herder's humanitarian ideal and by a process of natural law, a democratic federation of all the peoples of Austria in their several ethnographic boundaries was to come into existence. This program was journalistically defended and democratically equipped by Havlíček Borovský with unrivaled mastery.

Havlíček Borovský was one of the first if not the first of the Czechs to acquire an intimate knowledge of Russia. In the years 1843 and 1844 he was tutor in the house of Sevyrev. He would have nothing to do with official Nicolaitan Russia, but he was equally averse to the doctrines of the slavophils, adhering consistently to the philosophy of the enlightenment and to the democratic system of universal suffrage. His was the proposition " Secular absolutism is pillowed upon religious absolutism." He considered, however, that a closer union of the Austrian Slavs was a practical aim.