When one considers the sheer extent of German influence in Prague at the turn of the 19th century, such unrest is hardly surprising. In 1815, only one in every three inhabitants was a Czech. Germans dominated the administration, the streets bore German names (Na prikope became the Graben for example) and German was the language of polite and educated society. All this was to change, as industrialisation created a predominantly Czech working class, whose antagonism towards the Habsburgs was shared by students and liberal intellectuals. Matters came to a head during the revolutions of 1848, when the subject peoples of the Empire made their voices heard for the first time. In June a Slav congress, convening in Prague, brought workers and students on to the streets for an anti-Austrian demonstration which provided General Windischgratz with the excuse to send in the troops. Habsburg rule was eventually restored but with less conviction than before, allowing the Czechs and the other minorities of the far-flung Empire to raise the status of their language and institutions. A National Theatre was opened in Prague in 1881 and a National Museum in 1893 but little progress if any was made in the direction of political autonomy before World War I.
Entering the Twentieth Century
Austria-Hungary entered the conflict on the side of Germany and the Czechs inevitably became embroiled. In 1915 an exiled philosophy professor, Tomas Masaryk, called on Czechs and Slovaks to organise against the Central Powers at the same time as thousands of Czech soldiers at the front were deserting to the Russians. A special Czech legion was formed which now began fighting on the Allied side. This was enough for Masaryk to win a commitment from Britain and France to future independence. The promise was honoured and, on 28 October 1918, the Republic of Czechoslovakia was proclaimed in Prague’s Municipal Hall, Obecni dum.
The new state was eventually destroyed by the same ethnic tensions that had bedevilled its predecessor. Conflict between Czechs and Slovaks and between the Czechs and the other national minorities (Germans, Romanians, Hungarians and Poles) was never far from the surface and occasionally erupted into open hostility. The three million Germans of the Sudetenland had hoped to become part of Austria but the Great Powers had decided otherwise. Smoldering resentment flared into outright opposition during the Depression, when unemployment hit the population of this heavily industrialised region very hard. Hitler encouraged the Sudeten Germans to demand ever closer ties with the Reich. The Czechoslovak government under President Benes offered concessions, while standing firm on matters of principle. But the Czechs’ determination to ride out the crisis, even to go to war if necessary, foundered at Munich in September 1938 when France, under pressure from Britain, finally deserted them, The Sudetenland was sacrificed without the Czechs being consulted and, six months later, German troops marched into Prague.
For the Jews the consequences were catastrophic. Ninety per cent of the inhabitants of the Prague ghetto, or more than 60,000 people, perished in concentration camps during World War II – in Terezin (Theresienstadt) alone, more than 15,000 children died.
Although the Red Army crossed the Carpathians in October 1944, Prague was the last European capital to be liberated. By a miracle, its priceless architectural heritage survived almost intact, despite hand-to-hand fighting in the cellars and basements of Old Town Square.