Czech, German, and Noble: Status and National Identity in Habsburg Bohemia

Czech, German, and Noble

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ri ta kr ue ge r

Czech, German, and Noble Status and National Identity in Habsburg Bohemia

1 2009

1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright © 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Krueger, Rita. Czech, German, and noble : status and national identity in Habsburg Bohemia / Rita Krueger. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-532345-0 1. Nationalism—Czech Republic—Bohemia—History. 2. Nationalism—Social aspects—Czech Republic—Bohemia. 3. Nobility—Czech Republic—Bohemia—History. 4. Social status—Czech Republic—Bohemia—History. 5. Language and culture—Czech Republic—Bohemia—History. 6. Public institutions—Czech Republic—Bohemia—History. 7. Bohemia (Czech Republic)—Politics and government. 8. Bohemia (Czech Republic)—Social conditions. 9. Bohemia (Czech Republic)—Intellectual life. I. Title. DB2167.K78 2009 320.5409437109'034—dc22 2008021652

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

For my parents

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a c k nowledgments

I

have accumulated many intellectual and personal debts in the course of writing this book. Most recently, my editor at Oxford University Press, Susan Ferber, has been a model of startling efficiency and stylistic clarity. Her input into the final text has been invaluable. I am also grateful to the copy editor, Mary Anne Shahidi, and to Stephanie Attia and the other staff who have been so dedicated in the preparation of the manuscript. Oxford University Press’s two external reviewers provided thoughtful and constructive comments on the manuscript and contributed tangibly to its improvement. There are many who have helped me over years of research and writing. I wish first to recognize the debt I owe my graduate school advisors, Roman Szporluk and Charles Maier, for the steady interest, intellectual support, and personal encouragement they have given me over the years. Roman Szporluk’s enduring interest in the theories of nationalism and its consequences gave my own intellectual development many of its early contours. Charles Maier’s limitless interest in critical historical questions has always been an inspiration. Olwen Hufton deserves special thanks for being the first to encourage this topic, when I had barely formulated it myself. Many readers of parts or the whole of the manuscript have given me untold help in sharpening its focus. Hugh Agnew, Catherine Albrecht, Gary Cohen, David Blackbourn, Cathleen Giustino, Eagle Glassheim, Miroslav Hroch, Jeremy King, and Larry Wolff all encountered early versions and/or parts of the manuscript, and I have gained enormously over the years from their work and their comments. Ian McNeely and Lisa Wolverton were first to read and critique the whole manuscript. Beyond their intellectual insightfulness, their friendship has sustained me over the years. In the Czech Republic, I owe a large debt

to Zdeneˇk Hojda and Barbara Bouzková, who shared their knowledge and research on this period so generously. The late Jan Havránek was unparalleled in his willingness to discuss a vast number of topics and share his extensive knowledge of history and experience of the archives, and I regret only that he did not see the end product. The librarians and archivists in the Czech Republic were an invaluable source of information, and I benefited from the expertise of the staff of the National Library, the State Central Archive in Prague, the State Regional Archives in Trˇebonˇ/Jindrˇichu° v Hradec, Plzenˇ, and Prague, the Archive of the National Gallery, and the Archive of the Academy of Sciences. I am most particularly indebted to the staff of the Archive of the National Museum, especially Jaroslav Cˇechura and Milena Beˇlicˇová, who endured my presence, questions, and endless material and reproduction requests for months on end and invited me for innumerable lunches and coffees. They are the standard bearers for conviviality. More than one institution has provided shelter for this project. Research for the book was completed with assistance from the Fulbright Foundation, the Krupp Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, and the European University Institute. I am indebted to the European University Institute for postdoctoral support, to the faculty of the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who supported my leave of absence, and to Temple University, where I finished the revisions for the manuscript. My Temple colleagues have been wonderfully supportive, reading parts or the whole of the manuscript and its prospectus. There are many friends and family who have been with me throughout the long road to publication. Hanka Ripková was a rock through my years of research trips to the Czech Republic, and I value her friendship enormously. In Madison, Kathie Hendley is one of the best and most encouraging people I know. Priya Joshi and Orfeo Fioretos have been a constant source of support and sociability. I am not sure that I have the words sufficient to thank my husband Mark. It is unthinkable that this book would have been completed without his unflagging support and patience, or without his willingness to make sacrifices that afforded me the opportunity to do this work. He is simply the best of men. My children Cameron and Fiona have faced more than one moment of motherly distraction with aplomb, and I hope that they will someday understand how grateful I am not just for the time they gave me to write, but for the amazing people they have become. I am proud of them beyond measure. I am absolutely indebted to Lynn Krueger, whose generosity and sense of purpose in the face of my father’s illness is humbling. Frank viii

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Knobloch has shared in countless intellectual and political discussions, constantly reminding me how much I value him not just as a member of our family, but as a public intellectual. My sister Linda has always been an inspiration to me, now more than ever. I find it difficult to reduce my parents to the black and white of print. Together and separately, they have faced such hardships, not least of which was the loss of my brother, whose amazing scientific mind and outsize personality are missed by all of us. My parents’ courage, who they are, and the way they have lived, makes me proud to be their daughter. This book is dedicated to them.

acknowledgments

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c o n t ents

Abbreviations

xiii

Introduction

3

chapter one

The Aristocratic World of the Eighteenth Century 23

chapter two

The Challenges of Reform and Revolution 55

chapter thre e

Patriotic Science and the Weal of the Nation 89

chapter four

A Cultured Nation: Art, Gardens, and New Social Spaces 127

chapter five chapter six

The National Museum

161

Political Opposition and Revolution 191 Epilogue Notes

219

229

Bibliography Index

281

261

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a b b r eviations

ANG ANM CAZB CˇSAV E HHSt JH JR KCˇSN PES RA RNM ŠM SOA SUA VHS

Archiv Národního Galerie (Archive of the National Gallery) Archiv Národního Muzea (Archive of the National Museum) Constitutionelle Allgemeine Zeitung von Böhmen Cˇeskoslovenské akademie veˇd (Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences) Eugene Czernin Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv, Vienna Trˇebonˇ/Jindrˇichu° v Hradec Johann Rudolf Královská cˇeská spolecˇnost nauk (Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences) Patriotic-Economic Society Rodiny Archiv (Family Archive) Registratura of the National Museum Šternberk-Manderscheid Fond Státní oblastní archiv (State Regional Archive) Státní ústrˇední archiv (State Central Archive) Vlastenecko-hospodárˇské spolecˇnost (Patriotic-Economic Society)

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Czech, German, and Noble

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Introduction

I

n the eighteenth century, Slavic identity and language barely registered on the intellectual landscape in the Kingdom of Bohemia. As in much of the Habsburg realm, German and French were the governing languages of public and intellectual life in the kingdom. Bohemia’s ancien régime social hierarchy was dominated by aristocrats whose background and traditions made them uniquely cosmopolitan and, initially, nonnational. Cosmopolitanism was a function in part of habits, as the social whirl of the Habsburg aristocracy included the loose international sociability of the spa towns, the court life and rituals of power in Vienna, and extensive travel to the West. Cosmopolitanism was also tied to intellectual expansion as international contacts, university training in Germany, and the importation from abroad of not just taste and social norms, but ideas, came to frame and shape the identity of Habsburg elites. In a sense, the aristocracy were also agents of “contagion,” as they brought in baggage and carriage the banned books and publications of the Enlightenment. Ethnicity, a problematic marker for all groups at any time, was particularly so for the Bohemian aristocracy, whose constituent families came through war, intermarriage, and land-holding patterns to be a European elite deeply integrated into political, social, and economic life across the Habsburg lands in the eighteenth century and beyond. Bohemian statehood, insofar as it was enunciated by the Bohemian aristocracy, was based on ancient noble rights and the heritage of a kingdom that had lost the last vestiges of its independence in the seventeenth century. Yet, by the mid-nineteenth century, this eighteenth-century ancien régime had been transformed to the degree that the intellectual elite, including aristocrats, began to articulate a novel sense of community and public

enterprise. They increasingly identified this community with Czech nationhood, and the public institutions they founded reflected a new commitment to a society that was defined in terms of its “native” Czech population. On the eve of the Prague Revolution of 1848, the debate among educated Bohemians focused on the place of the Czech nation in both the Habsburg Empire and the wider concert of European nations. Moreover, Slavic identity and language were increasingly accepted as the essential attributes of Bohemian identity. As the governor Leo Thun remarked in 1843, “The power of a state rests upon the development of the spiritual forces of its peoples; for the spiritual development of the Bohemian people a Slav national feeling and the revival of the Czech language is a necessary, indispensable means. . . .”1 The national movement as it emerged in the nineteenth century successfully fused language, culture, and homeland as the critical components of not just national identity, but political identity. This was in essence what made it modern: Whatever social or legal residue of the premodern order-based society remained, the national movement asserted (over time, successfully) that all legitimacy, all political claims, were based on the nation. In pervasive and inescapable ways, the rhetoric of nationhood has dominated understandings of the history of Habsburg Central Europe. Conceptions of the region, the ways its history is broken into periods and its society and politics developed, are tied to essential and problematic acceptance of the nationalist past, despite the convincing scholarship on constructed or imagined nations. Although the larger question of the transition from old regime to nationalized society in Bohemia is the central project of this book, it is from a decidedly different perspective than works that focus on the pathology of nationalism, the typology of national movements, or the genealogy of nations in the abstract aggregate. The growth and popularization of national feeling in Bohemia, and the impact this would have on subsequent politics in the region, was not a consequence of a nation awakening from slumber. Much of the work on Czech nationalism has focused understandably on the nineteenth-century nationalist “awakeners”—non-noble activists for a Czechspeaking Bohemia. Contemporary Czech self-understanding has been deeply imprinted by an inherited picture of that generation of nationalists. Although compelling in many ways, the received wisdom that privileged the work of these “romantic awakeners” has obscured the broader historical narrative, denied the critical participation of those who did not fit that awakener profile in the emergence of Czech national identity, and reified national identity in ahistorical ways. Moreover, the tendency to focus on nineteenth-century non-noble nationalists takes their identity formation and historical context 4

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for granted, denying the fluidity of identity and treating the victory of the nation-state principle as inevitable. This book tells a different story, broadening the social spectrum associated with nation building to include nobles as they articulated a new sense of cultural and political community that was increasingly couched in terms of nascent national belonging. What I am interested in here is less the ostensible emergence of the “true” Czech nation with all its attendant political claims, than the process by which public space and public rhetoric were colonized by the nationally minded. It is a story of how and why some nobles began to see their social position through a nationalized lens, and used their social position to endow institutions to prove and promote national excellence. To understand the transition to modern “national” society necessitates examining more fundamental changes in social relations and tracing those through the development of public institutions. The answer to how and why the nation was chosen as the ultimate organizing principle in modern Bohemian society lies at the intersection of two historical challenges: the erosion of traditional social predominance and the recasting of institutional life. Institutions and the individuals who inhabited them gave tangible shape to geographical, political, historical, and cultural concepts of Bohemia, linking territory to language and history. In the process, public life, political rhetoric, and urban spaces began to reflect that profound linking of territory, language, and history, a link that would come to inspire some of the deadliest nationalist violence in Europe. What Eric Hobsbawm saw as a late-nineteenth-century mutation of political nationalism, namely the “novel tendency to define a nation in terms of ethnicity and especially in terms of language,” had its origins in eighteenth-century cultural movements and social changes that effectively reordered old regime society.2 From the perspective of nobles promoting Bohemian interests, the nationalization of public life was an endeavor either to implement the abstract notions of progress that emerged from their take on the Enlightenment or an effort to find a remedy for the encroaching power of the Habsburg state. The emphasis I have placed on the aristocracy is not to highlight the nobility acting as a class, but rather to emphasize the impact of those who transcended pure class interest to embrace a new national agenda. Too often the world of privilege has itself been treated as static, and its inhabitants as being effectively outside the national community. The ways the world of privilege was changing or was under assault is a crucial aspect of not just noble social and political identity, but an aspect of how the intelligentsia itself emerged. It is, in effect, an analysis of the emergence of the intelligentsia that rests at the center of what follows. The intelligentsia were critically introduction

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important for the subsequent maturation of the national community because more than any other group, they wielded the power of “nation” rhetoric. The intelligentsia were the public figures able to translate their vision into a palatable and believable political message. They shaped the public debate about community, they gave it “national” form, and they therefore altered the political future. Beginning in the eighteenth century, one can see the emergence of ideas about national character. That the Czechs came to be seen as essentially bourgeois and the national movement viewed by many historians as middle-class nationalism from below are also tied to this historical moment and to the process of nationalization in the Habsburg lands. No national movement is ever self-generating and self-replicating. National movements exist as shifting political phenomena of opposition. How power worked in the Habsburg lands, how elites maintained or failed to maintain their hold over politics and society, how open society was to new institutions and ideas, and the degree to which cultural activity could inform politics and vice versa are all features critical to this story. Beyond the power of rhetoric to change the national equation, there is a brick-and-mortar story of nation building that cannot be ignored. The changing institutional topography of Prague and the other larger towns and cities reflected the commitment of individuals to both intellectual life and new conceptions of the public and public space. Aristocrats intent on pursuing their interests in the nation found their voice in the establishment of new institutions and in their participation in new social arenas. These arenas and institutions were gradually converted into national institutions that could represent the glory of the past and the future possibilities of the national community. In an effort to unravel the processes of social and intellectual change behind the transition to national society, the focus here is on the group of individuals who seemed to have the most to lose by this transition, and yet were among its earliest and most important proponents: the aristocracy. Indeed, Bohemian aristocrats played a formative role in the creation of a new public sphere and new institutions within which the national idea took root and grew in the years prior to 1848. The brick-and-mortar aspect of this nationalization of public life and institutions was the transition from the altered uses of aristocratic interiors for the good of the public as the conceptual precursor to the virtual frenzy of nationalist construction at the end of the nineteenth century that yielded the now familiar grand edifices of Prague: the National Theater, the Rudolfinum, and the National Museum. At first glance, the relationship between status (or class) and nation for the identity of the nineteenth-century Bohemian aristocracy seems straightforward. Traditional accounts of the national movement in the Bohemian 6

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kingdom ascribed to the aristocracy a “patriotism of class” implying that elite social identity was paramount and nationality irrelevant. Interpretations of both the nobility and the national “revival” in the Czech lands have typically depended on the assumption that any patriotic activity sponsored by the nobility was based purely on the desire to protect feudal interests. The perceived reactionary position of the aristocracy has traditionally been explained in terms of two factors: agrarian class interest and the lack of modern Czech national identity. Regarding class, the conclusion has been that the aristocracy would resist change in order to protect the local power they enjoyed, which stemmed from landed privileges such as unfree labor, seigniorial jurisdiction, and a preferential tax system. Regarding nationality, the ostensibly nonnational position of the Bohemian aristocracy has been attributed to the infamous defeat of the Estates at White Mountain in 1620, the consequences of which created a Germanized and nonnative aristocracy in Bohemia. As a German or Germanized elite, the Bohemian aristocrats could lose only by any significant upheaval in the social or political system that might undermine Austro-German dominance or social privilege. In reality, the social and national identities of the Bohemian aristocracy were more fantastically varied and even contradictory, involving a web of elite loyalties to family, order, province, empire, and yes, nation. Obviously, not all aristocrats were committed to progress or interested in promoting a national ideal. Not only did many continue avidly to protect their ascendant social position and local power, but there was also a cadre of powerful Bohemian imperialists, men like Haugwitz and Kaunitz, who enjoyed and exercised enormous political power in Vienna by supporting the centralizing efforts of Maria Theresa. Patriotic aristocrats interested in promoting Bohemian autonomy and distinctly Bohemian interests vis-à-vis the government in Vienna can be divided imperfectly into two groups not always mutually exclusive: those who sought to entrench their power with an appeal to ancient estatist tradition and Bohemian political rights and those who based their opposition to Habsburg authority on relatively modern conceptions of intellectual freedom, social improvement, and progress. Both groups drew on the heritage of Bohemia, both real and imagined, to further their agenda. Conservative aristocrats constructing an oppositional space in the face of Habsburg incursions into their position and authority drew on the constitutional history and tradition of an independent Bohemia to bolster their arguments. Conservative aristocrats attempted to maneuver pre–White Mountain history and the constitutional negotiations of the early seventeenth century into an argument for their own political and social longevity. They portrayed the Habsburg reform program as a violation of inherited rights introduction

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and privileges and excessive imperial authority as an aberration—an affront to Bohemia’s historic position. Progressive aristocrats could draw on the same heritage, but with a very different purpose and emphases. Rather than serving as a source for preserving social predominance, Bohemia as it was imagined by patriots became the target of the improving zeal of enlightened reformers. Projects that varied in nature from ameliorating wretched rural conditions to codifying law fell within the all-embracing Enlightenment-inspired desire for order and progress. Scientific methods, the organization of knowledge and information, and the categorization of an entire people were brought to bear on Bohemian conditions. Properly delineating the history and heritage of Bohemia and her peoples and emphasizing the importance of fluid intellectual exchange in the local medium, in other words, Czech, as a way to improve local conditions was a natural corollary of this reforming zeal. History, land, and language united in a common agenda. Both groups of nobles inherited a sense of the Kingdom of Bohemia that had historical, political, geographical, social, and cultural dimensions long after Bohemia had ceased to be independent, or even significantly autonomous. Liberal and conservative aristocrats embraced this heritage; indeed, they were the only group in a position to honor and protect it publicly. Ultimately, aristocrats like Eugene Czernin, Francis Sternberg, and Johann Buquoy used the Bohemian heritage as the focus for patriotic activity regardless of their own families’ origins, language use, or historical connection to the kingdom. In the case of these three individuals, both the Czernins and the Sternbergs were old Czech families with medieval origins, but the Buquoys had settled in Bohemia after 1620. In eighteenth-century Bohemia, influential members of the nobility began to use their wealth, prestige, ability to travel, intellectual energy, and local power to establish and protect new cultural institutions. From the 1760s onward there was an unprecedented growth in learned societies, clubs, Freemason lodges, and patriotic institutions. In Bohemia, these institutions— the Society of Sciences, the Society for the Patriotic Friends of the Arts, the Patriotic-Economic Society, industrial societies, literary clubs, lodges, and the National Museum—formed a new social grid that linked intellectual life and social networks and provided new public spaces for the exploration of culture and community. Whatever the original mandates of these institutions, the nature of the sociability taking place within them and the recasting of their missions in national terms were to have a profound impact on national unity. Scientific societies in the eighteenth century, like the Private Learned Society begun in Prague in 1769, had emphasized rational enlightenment 8

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and broadly defined scientific exploration. From the late eighteenth century, however, these scientific institutions were “nationalized.” Science was increasingly wielded for the benefit of the Fatherland, and scientific methods were applied to the exploration of the historical, linguistic, and anthropological heritage of Bohemia. The agenda of the Bohemian National Museum, established over thirty-five years later than the Private Learned Society, was a natural outgrowth of this earlier scientific and patriotic activity. The National Museum, whose stately shadow over Wenceslaus Square has reified the nation in an imposing stone façade for more than a century, was set up in 1818 in less awe-inspiring quarters. Yet the goals and importance of this institution for the founders, drawn primarily from the aristocracy, and the nation was made clear from the beginning. As the founding documents stated, the goal of the National Museum was to unite all the patriotic efforts, past and present, “bringing them together as a looking-glass, vividly revealing the natural connection to the Fatherland, and guiding the Bohemians . . . to the essential condition of all enduring progress: self-realization.”3 As the public activities of learned societies and patriotic institutions created, publicized, and promoted a developing national agenda, the personal connections formed within these societies and institutions wrought a deeper social transformation. The essence of the transition to modernity lay precisely here—the story of choices made in private life and for public action that defy being reduced to “merely” culture, separate from politics. We have to reassess our notions of the place and impact of culture, the workings of status and privilege, and the characteristics of the public/private divide. Aristocratic power and the ways that status was changing challenge any simple notion of the public and private. Aristocrats were public figures because of their connection to state authority and administrative offices and their virtual monopoly on the dispensation of justice at the local level. Although aristocratic lifestyle can be seen as conspicuous consumption, or the public “performance” of status, aristocratic lifestyle and seigniorial power had distinctly private elements, separate from the masses on the one hand and the state on the other. For an aristocrat to pursue an intellectual or scientific agenda was a decision rooted in private life, and a natural extension of aristocratic education and dilettantism. But for an aristocrat to choose intellectual life as his primary social purpose captured a seismic shift that would have a profound impact on public discourse and social identity. The cumulative effect of enlightened discourse and relatively open interaction among learned men from different social backgrounds permanently changed the way these individuals viewed their own social roles as well as the nature and place of the public within which they operated. The day-to-day individual development introduction

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of identity, of social give and take, that took place in the public sphere and in national institutions propelled social and intellectual change. Intellectual and scientific activity that was concentrated on improving the lot of the common man—in mind and physical circumstances—was the primary formative force in the development of the public sphere and a basic element of national rhetoric as well. Aristocrats willing to exchange a static aristocratic conservatism for positive public action were a crucial element of this new social world. The individuals who inhabited national institutions had essentially stepped beyond, or out of, the traditional social hierarchy. In the last decade, many scholars of Eastern Europe have used notions of the public sphere and civil society to capture transitions in both the nineteenth century as well as post-1989. Both concepts, the public sphere and civil society, must be qualified when applying them to eighteenth-century East Central Europe, given the region’s agrarian structure and lingering fondness for traditional hierarchy. But these concepts do provide a useful categorization of the social and intellectual changes in Bohemia described here. The public sphere, originally defined by Jürgen Habermas as “the public of private individuals who join in debate of issues bearing on state authority,” existed at least in part “in every conversation in which private individuals assemble[d] to form a public body.”4 New social groups and institutions in Bohemia fit this description, as they took the form of both informal gatherings and formal, yet voluntary, associations with distinct patriotic missions. These new institutions and voluntary associations were distinguished by a blending of social classes, an administrative structure based on individuals rather than estate or class, and a stated public commitment to national progress. This was true of diverse social groups, from Freemasons to literary circles, from agrarian societies to the National Museum. The emergence of the public sphere was in theory predicated on a transformation of social and economic relationships that enabled citizens to come together irrespective of social background in order to promote political and social change. This is an interesting concept to apply to the Habsburg lands, where the Viennese court and its etiquette continued to be obsessively attached to hierarchy.5 However, the new sociability of the salon and academy at the turn of the eighteenth century, despite the continued emphasis of court life, offered a social enclave operating separate from the state, with significant political repercussions. One of the basic characteristics of voluntary associations like clubs, lodges, and museum societies was that traditional status was not to be the primary arbiter of men’s fates, or of their ability to speak critically or act positively in the public interest. New public fora provided the institutional bases for the further growth and definition of the public sphere, 10

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and fostered the literary projects that connected intellectuals, disseminated information, and shaped public discourse. If the process of nation building is recast in terms of the growth of the public sphere, the relationship of patriotic aristocrats to the nation and the public sphere is clearer. Gatherings of intellectuals in Bohemia and elsewhere at the turn of the eighteenth century were drawn de facto from a narrow segment of the population. One had to have the means and the time to pursue intellectual work. Scholarly exchange implied a level of wealth and education not available to the bulk of the working population; the world of letters demanded a knowledge of letters. Whatever the caveats of their literacy requirements, the learned societies of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries functioned very effectively as social hybrids. Although one cannot characterize these societies as definitively democratic, they were subversive of the “old order.” In essence, these institutions and societies were transitional, bridging the gaps among social strata and between public and private action. Hybrid social gatherings such as the Private Learned Society—begun like many salons as a public institution in a private home—served as a link between a traditional aristocratic intellectual world and an emerging intelligentsia with new political, social, and cultural agendas. This link was crucial for the cultivation of a mature, modern, and, above all, national community. The expansion of the literary sphere in the eighteenth century allowed the goals of enlightenment rhetoric to be applied to the broader public, and eventually to the national public. The goals of institutions in the public sphere were, of course, diverse. Societies could emphasize individual edification and secular, moral rejuvenation, or a straightforward intellectual agenda. Even club interests, for example, early church music, folklore, or local flora and fauna, emphasized not merely collective intellectual interests, but the broader common bond that brought individuals together, namely Bohemia itself. Thus, whether an aristocrat or not, an individual’s acceptance into the Bohemian world of scientific societies and soirées was based on education and inclination. Whether the gathering was an informal discussion on botany at the spa in Karlovy Vary, a profound and lengthy correspondence between intellectuals, or the formal sittings of the Society of Sciences, for the first time, social distinctions did not significantly count in fora based on contributions according to ability and merit. Or, as Dorinda Outram described it, the new sociability within these institutions meant that “distinctions among different members were temporarily abandoned in the impartial search for truth and the pursuit of ideas.”6 Therefore, any Bohemian aristocrat, indeed any Bohemian, who engaged in the kind of activity that brought together a diverse social group contributed to the growth of cultural institutions that introduction

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established linkages across class. This was an alteration in the norms of public life, and with it came a redefinition of individual identity that could cut across traditional social divisions. Once a swath had been cut across social boundaries, it was possible for members of this novel intellectual elite to focus on a new cultural configuration—the nation. The common bond of individuals, based on an identity beyond church or caste, could be reformulated as a national community. The public sphere is generally meant to refer to groups of individuals who meet to converse critically about the nature and problems of state authority. Open political commentary and activity were stifled in the Habsburg lands, particularly during the reign of Francis II from 1792 to 1835. In a society in which political action was seriously curtailed, intellectual and cultural engagement provided an alternate forum that allowed public, but not directly political, action. New institutions served as alternative sites for the critical voices of intellectuals under the guise of science and culture. However, the collective effort of intellectuals and scientists to address a wide variety of Bohemian cultural, social, and intellectual issues had significant political repercussions. The Bohemian public sphere, if more quiescent on matters of politics than would be the case in other regions, engendered a new way of talking and thinking about Bohemia itself. Aristocrats within new institutions saw culture and heritage as the new glue that bound state and society, and established new political claims of legitimacy on culture and particular views of history and heritage. Cultural and intellectual institutions, as sites of mixed social interaction in the nascent public sphere, borrowed many of the qualities of the extended noble family network. The public sphere was, in fact, an extension of that family circle. This was a result of a combination of factors: the nature of aristocratic households and a tradition of aristocratic paternalism that translated into a sense of duty and responsibility for the community in the abstract. I am not suggesting that the aristocracy collectively were unusually altruistic and excessively concerned with the lot of their countrymen. However, when it came to articulating the need for change, aristocratic reformers began that discussion by drawing on a rhetoric of noble, if not Christian, duty that was inherited with social position. Aristocratic households included large entourages encompassing the nuclear family, extended family members, tutors, servants, estate managers, accountants, friends, archivists and librarians, cooks, priests, musicians, and hangers-on. Aristocratic sponsorship of new cultural institutions, as well as the nonaristocratic proponents working within them, began in the household. Traditional avenues of aristocratic influence and power were used to create new social bonds and political agendas, particularly in the protection 12

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given to Czech literati. Old forms of patronage and household positions, like tutors, librarians and archivists, were purposefully wielded by the nobility as sinecures for intellectuals whose goals and interests lay far beyond the family circle. Many of the “fathers of the Czech nation,” including the preeminent František Palacký (1798–1876) among them, were formally employed within noble households like those of the Czernin, Sternberg, and Nostitz families, or by the Estates. This sponsorship prevented the Austrian authorities from “cracking down” effectively on literary activity, or from preventing the further movement of these intellectuals. The intellectual benefits of the presence of nonaristocratic scholars in aristocratic households went both ways. Aristocratic youth were taught to revere the Bohemian culture and past, and the scholars were able to take advantage of aristocratic libraries rich in the works of the Enlightenment and other European intellectual movements. In addition to this patronage, the social duties normally within the purview of the aristocracy—charity, philanthropy, improvement of the public weal, patronage of the arts, education—were easily converted into patriotic activity. Beyond their base in the mixed social world of aristocratic households and the salons that were sometimes attached to them, aristocrats also participated in bourgeois salons through the connections they made in the aristocratic household and in learned societies. But, whereas the family circle still often preserved the distinctions of rank, the sociability found in salons did not. One famous salon took place during the 1780s in the Mayer household in Prague. Johann and Joseph Mayer had a profound impact on a generation of scholars, aristocratic and otherwise. The meetings of intellectuals in the Sternberg house on Malá Strana square brought together all the great intellectuals in Prague, including, of course, Francis Sternberg and his cousin Kaspar, a prominent Bohemian aristocrat and scientist. Despite the occasional confusion of goals and intentions, elite individuals established patriotic institutions, or converted older institutions to patriotic activities, with the stated purpose of celebrating the past of the Fatherland and developing its future potential. The activities of national institutions depended on the belief that Bohemia was a cohesive, independent, cultural, and political unit, and the institutions and their founders worked to shape and propagate that belief. The projects of many of these institutions served to confer historical and cultural continuity and meld a vision of national culture, based on folklore, language, origin stories, and law, with contemporary agendas of progress and relative autonomy. Folklore, schematisms, questionnaires, essay contests, cartography, “national” botany, archaeology, and so forth created a portrait of an eternal Bohemia. The concern of intellectuals, aristocratic and otherwise, to define and preserve national heritage drew introduction

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the larger community together and influenced more vague local notions of geographical cohesiveness and mutual social affiliation. When the Society of Sciences or later the National Museum repeatedly requested that local clergy and officials procure information, artifacts, and documents in the name of the nation and national heritage, the identity of the national community became more immediate and tangible, and the public’s link to it solidified. Benedict Anderson’s influential work describes the nation as an “imagined political community,” drawing on Hugh Seton-Watson’s assertion that a nation “exists when a significant number of people in a community consider themselves to form a nation.”7 One of the essential aspects of these arguments is the role of both belief and public imagining in the process of nation formation and, for Anderson, the belief within national communities of the “common cause” or “deep, horizontal comradeship” shared by members. The work of national institutions was a critical, necessary part of the reformulation of public imagination in regard to the political community and its identity. Moreover, what could not be found, could be made. As became clear particularly in the nineteenth century, historical truth and authentic documentary evidence were flexible categories, authenticity less important than establishing a believable historical claim to national importance. Historical forgeries in the nineteenth century presented documentary “evidence” of a glorified, medieval Czech past. The weight of an immutable past was brought to bear as proof of current worth and to legitimate political claims. Forgery was, in the mindset of the nationally minded, a legitimate way to “replace” the real documents that would have been found had they not been destroyed by barbaric, invading foreigners. This was the imagined past, served up to suit the national needs of the present and the future. By calling upon traditions based on a stylized, not to say falsified, past, learned societies and museums strove to cultivate territorial particularity. Scholars emphasized the importance of establishing the true Slavic nature of the region, of trying to determine the unique quality of its ancient jurisprudence, social structure, and religious heritage, and of understanding Bohemia’s economic development, resources, and political history. Essay contests sponsored by patriotic organizations sought to explore the possible innocence or guilt of Jan Hus, ferret out the duke responsible for feudal subjection to the German Emperor, and assess the reasons for rural dearth, among other topics. These inquiries were to give tangible shape to a Bohemian history independent of its contemporary status as “merely” a province of the Habsburgs. Concentrating on the medieval period allowed the more nationally minded to beg the question of aristocratic defeat at White Mountain and the subsequent “denationalization” of the elite, and let old Czech families highlight 14

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their ancient lineage. The fondness for medieval history, with the associated emphasis on a strong artisan class (regardless of ethnicity) and clearly Czech rulers, also bespoke a nostalgia for an era of Bohemian strength: Bohemia as the heart of Europe, a land with an admirable and seemingly more unambiguous past. The work of intellectual societies attempted to expound upon that past, make it accessible, and use it to define the contemporary national community. Many of the activities sponsored by national institutions concentrated on the relationship between Bohemia’s territory, its economic and political development, and its cultural heritage. Aristocrats and national institutions used the land, understood in various ways, as a central rhetorical focus, more than amorphous notions of ethnicity or status, and more than language, which would come to dominate the debates of the later nineteenth century. This emphasis on the land was entangled in how the nation was imagined and who (or what) determined its members. The marriage of land, nationality, and language that would later prove so explosive arose out of this early emphasis on territoriality. Territoriality—a country’s geographical position, what its borders did or did not encompass, and how it related to other areas—raised crucial questions in identity formation. What patriotic institutions served to do was not only to create a national “state of mind,” but also to imprint this idea of the community on a distinct geographical space, and later attach it to a distinct national idiom. Scientific work was critical to this process. In Bohemia, perceptions of the state—of the Kingdom of Bohemia—were central to the concept of a national identity as it emerged in the eighteenth century and resonated deeply with new ideas about sovereignty that located political legitimacy somewhere outside the dynasty or court. The nobility’s emphasis on land and territory, although occasionally dismissed as simply cultural patriotism or reactionary aristocratic response, was a necessary and important precursor to the national movement. Enlightened aristocrats who focused on Bohemian distinctiveness defined a new agenda of autonomy and legal statehood that would resonate in the national movement. The self-image generated by the national community was a composite of the perceptions of the intellectual elite regarding Bohemia’s domestic culture and relations with the outside world. Cultural and political configurations that defined national identity were grafted onto the physical region whose boundaries could impart a sense of permanence and apparent objectivity to the national community. The work of intellectual societies, and their aristocratic members, was crucial in efforts to make “the Fatherland” an immutable and independent unit. Accentuating the importance of the Land was a natural position for intelligentsia who accepted the mixed linguistic nature of Bohemian society. introduction

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The meaning of Bohemia as a cultural unit was constantly renegotiated in the seventy years before 1848. Its heritage as both independent kingdom and imperial state, as homeland to primarily Czech, German, and Jew, but also a variety of European noble families, its position sandwiched between east and west, all defined the development of the nation. Territoriality was intimately connected to the perception of contrast, if not conflict, with the proximity of other nations, and Bohemian and Czech identity were formed with the indelible stamp of geographical, political, and cultural nearness to Germany. Bohemia’s centuries-long participation in the Holy Roman Empire, its connection to the “German” Habsburgs, and its ethnic mix all added confusion, or at least layers, to the search for a new identity among the Bohemian elite. Likewise, the long cultural reach of Russia and Slavicism shaped debates about Bohemia’s place within a constellation of nations. However, the effort to promote cohesion that was implicit in all the cultural activities pursued by national institutions changed the way the Bohemian mix was viewed. Increasingly in the nineteenth century, eras of “national humiliation” were portrayed as the responsibility of the ethnic “other.” Bohemian problems were cast in terms of the traitorous actions of the Germans within her borders, who had brought “darkness” and the perceived threat of national extinction. Territoriality, at one time inclusive, became a means of excluding those who had a contrary claim on Bohemia. For the vociferous nationalist in the nineteenth century, particularly after 1848, the nation had to be cast as the equal of its neighbors, or at least equally deserving, and it had to be in possession of a legitimate territory. National movements are often not terribly interested in the subtleties of history, and the Czech national movement was no different. The subsequent exclusion of German and noble from the national public sphere in Bohemia of the later nineteenth century should not distract from the crucial role of the aristocracy in the genesis of the public sphere and the national institutions so important for the national movement. In his influential work The Social Preconditions of National Revival, Miroslav Hroch argues that nations are a constituent of social reality with distinct historical origins; the essence of national membership is derived from the connection of the individual to a series of social relations. Within this myriad of relations, Hroch designates the development of exchange relations and the national market as the most important preconditions for the formation of the modern nation. According to Hroch, linear phases of economic development predicated on capitalist structures determined the intellectual content, adherents, and success of national movements. Hroch’s insights provide a useful map of the transition to mass national movements, but his treatment of 16

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the earlier stage of nation building as a strict linear process should be understood as a process of seismic reverberations. The chapters that follow trace the general paths of these reverberations, furnish a sketch of the intellectual movements and ideas that inspired patriotic activity among the nobility, and discuss the processes by which patriotic ideas and their institutional edifices became catalysts of social and national change. I have adopted this structure not to deflect from the importance of individuals or individual families in the formation of institutions of national culture, but rather to highlight the important intersection of enlightenment, patriotic individuals, institutions, and nation building. The voices of a few particular aristocrats will sound more clearly in the pages that follow. This is a function of their importance for the historical account of nation building in Bohemia. In particular, I rely on the history of Kaspar Sternberg (1761–1838) to augment many of the arguments that I make here. Kaspar Sternberg’s life experience illustrates many of the challenges faced by Bohemian aristocrats in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the contradictions with which they often lived. The biographical details about Sternberg and his compatriots in the subsequent chapters provide more than the basic outline of individuals’ lives: they throw into relief the most important social and political changes of a generation, illustrate the lifestyles and the options open to individuals of different backgrounds, and capture the profound intellectual transformations within an individual’s worldview over the course of a lifetime. Kaspar Sternberg and other aristocrats like him offer excellent subjects for study not because they are necessarily the most nationally oriented, or the most liberal-minded, of intellectuals. Rather, as aristocrats and intellectuals, these men are emblematic of the ambivalence and uncertainty that many aristocrats faced in the midst of changing status and new intellectual currents. Intellectually engaged aristocrats like Sternberg inevitably faced contradictions in their roles as intellectuals, landowners, Diet representatives, German and French speakers, men of the “old guard,” and so on. In addition, like many of his peers, Sternberg spent a large part of his professional life beyond the borders of Bohemia. As a result, he had close personal, professional, and intellectual ties to the German-speaking community outside of Bohemia. Originally educated at home, Sternberg subsequently attended the Collegium Germanicum in Rome and pursued a career in the imperial church—all aspects of traditional aristocratic upbringing. Sternberg’s early educational experiences and lifestyle on his father’s estate undoubtedly shaped his response to his career and to the wider world. Yet, there were “subversive” elements even in this apparently traditional Bohemian world. Kaspar Sternberg’s mother was highly educated and exposed her sons introduction

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to Enlightenment literature, classical history, and German theater and philosophy. The Collegium in Rome, although no longer a coven for Jansenist or other reform movements, also revealed to Sternberg many of the problems and possibilities of the church and his career in it. The subsequent period in Sternberg’s life built on these earlier influences. He was enmeshed in imperial politics, as well as church duties, and his social life revolved around the diplomatic circles of the Imperial Diet. From Regensburg, Sternberg witnessed the events of the French Revolution and the ensuing conflicts, which challenged many of the assumptions with which he had been raised. In the midst of these uncertainties, Sternberg found and pursued a lifelong interest in science, particularly botany. This interest, combined with the uncertain political and social world, encouraged Sternberg to retreat from both politics and church and to redefine his productive life in terms of intellectual activity. After the death of his elder brother during the Napoleonic wars, Kaspar Sternberg quit his post in Regensburg and returned to permanent Bohemian residence. Sternberg became a crucial proponent of the institutionalization of scientific pursuits for the good of Bohemia. He retained a sincere commitment to learning, scientific exploration, and an improved Bohemia until the end of his life. He built strong and permanent friendships with individuals not normally encountered in an aristocratic circle, and most of all, laid claim to a profound love of his Fatherland and a belief that his scientific and intellectual activities were working for its greater good. In addition, Sternberg’s experiences at home and abroad encouraged a reevaluation of the accepted role of the aristocrat. This engendered a type of fluid intellectual and social milieu. As J. P. Eckermann wrote about Sternberg to J. W. Goethe, a friend and correspondent of Sternberg, “I saw him as a count and a cosmopolitan man, and at the same time as a deep and many-sided scholar; this is for me a problem which I would gladly see solved. . . .”8 The process of reconciling status, intellectual and scientific engagement, and national interest was a constant concern of aristocrats like Kaspar Sternberg. By the end of his life, Sternberg acknowledged that his expectations and intellectual interests had been transformed. As the principal founder of the Bohemian National Museum and an active participant in the nascent public sphere, Sternberg moved from empire to nation, and then back again, more than once. The time of his Bohemian residence, beginning in 1808, was also characterized by the distance which Sternberg placed between himself and overt political activity. The contours of Sternberg’s worldview, shaped by the intellectual currents of the century, as well as his aristocratic upbringing, were also marked by his experience of political and social upheaval. He is simultaneously a perfect and imperfect subject: perfect in the reflection that his life 18

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story casts on the history of Bohemian individuals both aristocratic and patriotic, and imperfect in the contradictions and inconsistencies that occurred in the life spans of the same individuals. Although consistency would allow for a simpler story, particularly where the question of self-identity is concerned, aristocratic identity was the complex product of myriad interwoven loyalties to family, empire, province, church, estate, and eventually nation. I start to examine this web of loyalties at the point of most resistance—the structures and institutions that shored up traditional aristocratic identity. To get a clear picture of the significant gravitational pull of traditional aristocratic privilege and lifestyle, this book starts on the land, where aristocratic power was literally grounded. The array of social, economic, and political privileges that had defined aristocratic predominance could serve very effectively to prevent an aristocrat from reassessing his public role, a reassessment that was crucial to the nascent public sphere. Beyond landed privilege there were institutions and traditions that hindered aristocratic selfidentification with the Czech national cause. Imperial politics reinforced the connection of the aristocracy to state authority and the German political and cultural world. Imperial offices and power were a lure that deflected interest away from the local community. Cosmopolitanism likewise reinforced consumption habits, travel, and the performance of status that were shared by European elites and that eroded rather than reinforced national boundaries. The Catholic Church also served to buttress the international character of the aristocracy in Bohemia. These traditions, habits, and institutions of privilege make obvious the obstacles to reformulating aristocratic identity, but even within these bastions of the old regime, there were changes underway that affected both privilege and the perception of status. Economic modernization and scientific discoveries encouraged aristocrats to rethink their use of labor and land. Imperial politics were not always an avenue for advancement, and at the turn of the eighteenth century the future of empire and imperial offices appeared shaky. Cosmopolitanism and the tradition of travel abroad gave aristocrats access to intellectual movements that would encourage them to reevaluate the links between state and society and the bases on which community, privilege, and political legitimacy rested. The Enlightenment literature and the correspondences of the Republic of Letters that were part of Bohemian aristocratic cosmopolitanism gave nobles the conceptual tools for the practical application of abstract ideas of human progress. And the Catholic Church, often seen as a mainstay of conservative society, had a flourishing and powerful reform movement in the late eighteenth century. The classic era of historical upheaval—the period framed by centralizing Habsburg reform and the introduction

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Napoleonic Wars—reveals the most about the flexibility or rigidity of social norms and aristocratic identity. The “dual revolution” from within (centralization) and without (French Revolutionary Wars), combined with the positive intellectual influences of the Enlightenment tradition, had a profound effect on the aristocracy, leading many of them to believe that the future would bring the inevitable breakdown of social predominance, as well as progress and public enlightenment. But what did the Bohemians understand of the Enlightenment? What types of Enlightenment surfaced in Central Europe, and with what impact? In other words, in the search for an “alternate” or compensatory identity, how did the aristocracy use the Enlightenment, however they understood this, to turn their pursuits in art and science into a blueprint for national progress that ultimately defined the social, cultural, and political boundaries of the nation? A desire for enlightenment and progress was the rationale for a plethora of scientific and patriotic institutions established in Bohemia between the Theresian period and the second decade of the nineteenth century. These institutions were arenas for aristocratic engagement in intellectual questions and scientific work and were social domains that gave precedence to merit rather than birth. The impact of science on the development of national identity cannot be underestimated. Whatever grand pronouncements were made about human progress in the eighteenth century, the reality was that intellectuals quickly nationalized science and its corollary, technical expertise. The organization of knowledge, the expropriation of skill and material, and technical prowess all came to serve competition between states, and then between nations. Although scientific organizations and institutions were the happy meeting ground for like-minded intellectuals, their justification to the state reflected concerns about national improvement, competition, and national status. Science and literature were, moreover, not the only areas of national rejuvenation sponsored by aristocrats. Far-reaching intellectual changes were reflected in virtually every sphere of aristocratic and public life. Even areas dominated by the realities of pomp and patronage were affected. Thus, changes in the nature of aristocratic patronage and the cultural landscape of art and theater are critical to this story. Within the period covered here, there was a shift in the notion of the public, and what the aristocracy owed to it as prominent citizens. The realm of “the public” was expanded in different social arenas, whether art societies, gardens, or theater. Cultural activities and collections, primarily theater and art, which had been seen as private, were shifted to the realm of the broader public audience. Public gardens were established in Vienna and Prague, fundamentally changing the city 20

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landscapes and the movements and location of people in urban life. Intellectuals saw theaters, like museums, as the accouterments of a mature national community, and the aristocracy, as an elite of means and inclination, were in a unique position to provide for culture and to protect Bohemian heritage. Importantly, it was no longer sufficient for elites merely to import culture from abroad—Bohemia could never be on a par with other European nations if its own cultural production was not recognized and celebrated. This sense of promoting culture for the benefit of Bohemia’s international reputation lent an additional impetus to support for Czech linguistics and literature as well as domestic artists. Moreover, the damage that had been done by the Habsburgs and others to the “native” Bohemian art collections created yet another arena wherein the Habsburgs and the rest of the Monarchy were “them” and the Bohemians decidedly “us.” No story of the institutional development of nationalism in the Czech lands would be complete without an examination of the creation of the Bohemian National Museum. The National Museum was a new type of national institution that was based on the principle of public consumption of national culture. It was established without royal patronage and was to serve the interests of the community at large. In addition to its intended function as an institutional hub for national scientific and literary inquiry, it sought to turn its edifying principles into giving the nation and its history tangible form. This tangible history could then be translated into a unifying principle of national heritage and national potential. The decades of cultural work beginning in the eighteenth century were never intended by elites to be the end of the story, with artifacts of the nation packed away to gather dust. Elite founders of national institutions meant culture, history, and heritage to be the building blocks of a bright national future. The work of national institutions, inherited by a new generation of nationally committed intellectuals, would ultimately be the basis for powerful political claims. The fusion of the liberal aristocratic political agenda with new ideas about culture and ethnic belonging were to have a powerful impact on the national movement. Earlier cultural work defined the agenda of aristocratic reform efforts in Bohemia during the 1840s, including the debates about the Czech language and Austroslavism. The ultimate breakdown of the reform agenda, again, in the face of revolution in 1848, was a heartbreaking denouement for those who had believed that Bohemia uniquely held the key to the problem of competitive and contested national relations. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, in his essays on the growth and historic role of intellectuals, asserted, “Each man, finally, outside his professional activity, carries on some form of intellectual activity, that is he is a introduction

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“philosopher,” an artist, a man of taste, he participates in a particular conception of the world, has a conscious line of moral conduct, and therefore contributes to sustain a conception of the world or to modify it, that is, to bring into being new modes of thought.”9 The aristocratic intellectuals of Bohemia also took part in the creation of “new modes of thought.” From static carriers of “high culture,” the intellectuals of the aristocracy became what Seymour Lipset described as “creators of culture” or members of the intelligentsia.10 By entering the public sphere, the realm of learned and patriotic institutions, the aristocrats in the chapters that follow used their intellectual activity to move beyond their status—to become representatives of the national interest—participating thus in the creation of modern society in Bohemia.

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c ha p ter one

The Aristocratic World of the Eighteenth Century

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n 1790, the Bohemian Count Kaspar Sternberg traveled to Frankfurt to attend the coronation of Leopold of Habsburg as Holy Roman Emperor. Details of the events in Paris had begun to percolate through Germany, and in viewing the events of the 1790s from the more comfortable temporal distance of the 1820s, Sternberg believed he had at the time seen many unfortunate omens in this penultimate coronation: Here for the last time was Germany displayed in all its splendor and majesty. . . . Despite this, there was no unity of purpose in Germany, and harbingers of future events spit over from the left bank of the Rhine, though these were in the meantime subjugated by the excitement of the coronation. The Princes and Ambassadors conveyed great state and pomp; only, Emperor Leopold could not properly fit into the crown and vestments of Charlemagne. . . . As I visited the rooms where the portraits of the emperors were painted on the corners, and found only one corner yet free, I wrote in my travelogue: Is this an evil omen?1 In Dichtung und Wahrheit, J. W. Goethe also recounted his visit as a boy to the imperial hall in Frankfurt and reported the same premonitions: “Our informants added ominously that another such prophecy or, rather, a feeling of foreboding was making the rounds, for it was obvious that there was only room enough left for the portrait of one more emperor. This circumstance, although apparently a chance happening, filled patriotic hearts

with anxiety.”2 The end of the Holy Roman Empire was indeed imminent, but its demise was not to stem from the discomfort of the Habsburgs with the Carolingian heritage and its regalia, or from the hand of fate revealed in the placement of the portraits. Although we tend to dismiss the Holy Roman Empire as a political relic, overtaken by the politics of sovereign states, Sternberg and Goethe’s commentaries suggest in part that with time, patriotism for the Empire mellowed for some into nostalgia for an era when “Germany” was ineffably more than it became with the squabbling of postImperial German politics. More importantly, Sternberg and Goethe, longtime correspondents and friends in the last years of their lives, reveal in their commentary on the coronation and the questionable longevity of the Empire a compelling puzzle about identity. The rituals of empire, the pomp and circumstance of Habsburg power, could still seem to elicit patriotism from both the German intellectual and the Bohemian aristocrat at the turn of the century. But the Holy Roman Empire was just one sociopolitical backdrop against which aristocratic identity was mutating in the eighteenth century. With the new century, and the upheavals and wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, aristocratic ties to empire, elite lifestyle, landed power, privilege, and connections to the church were all transforming. If the normative ground of aristocracy was shifting in the eighteenth century, why not test the elements of aristocracy, and the conceptual world aristocrats inhabited, at the points of most resistance? How flexible was aristocratic identity in the eighteenth century? It is undeniable that the framework of traditional aristocracy—legal and social privileges, wealth, political power, and lifestyle—was resilient in the eighteenth century and continued to exert a powerful influence on the identity of the aristocracy across the Habsburg lands. As long as power was centered in Vienna and at the court, aristocracy mattered, and this alone would merit a closer look at the characteristics of the noble world of privilege. In the early decades of the century, the administration of the Habsburg lands still relied on social elites, bolstered by a legal edifice of privilege, who could use their position to serve noble interests and even to line their own pockets. The provincial and local power of the aristocracy, preserved for the most part by the Habsburgs even in the course of centralization in the eighteenth century, could and did serve to retard the commitment of the aristocracy to a distinctly national identity. However, by the end of the century, some aristocrats were able to transcend issues of status and traditional loyalties, to trade these loyalties for a modern identity based on the national community. The critical issue is assessing how Habsburg society “made” an aristocrat, and to what degree this social construction was in flux after 1700. 24

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Problems of Identity: Political Legacies, Ethnicity, and Language The ethnic makeup and “non-Czech” character of the nobility in Bohemia has often been used to explain the lack of proper national feeling on the part of the aristocracy in the latter nineteenth century. Nationalists have railed against the “German” aristocracy in the Czech lands, portraying them as separate from the true nation—a class that would ultimately betray the nation by their indifference and innate foreignness.3 The reality of language usage, ethnicity, and cultural affiliation among the aristocracy in Bohemia is a less black-and-white matter than this debate suggests. The reality of language and ethnicity across the Bohemian lands is exceedingly messy, particularly in reference to the aristocracy. Ethnicity is a problematic historical category at any time, but in the Czech lands, both ethnicity and language were further complicated by the legacy of the Bohemian defeat at White Mountain in 1620. The conflict of the aristocratically dominated, Protestant Estates with the Catholic, Habsburg Emperors was set off spectacularly by the famous defenestration in Prague of the Emperor’s representatives in 1618. This event, and particularly the subsequent “ignominious” defeat two years later, was arguably the defining moment of Czech historical memory as it was created in the nineteenth century, surpassing even the legacies of Charles IV and of the fifteenth-century Czech martyr, the religious reformer Jan Hus. The decades before and after the White Mountain defeat also reveal the degree to which religion was a formative element for aristocratic identity. And not just identity: Religion could and did determine access to wealth and power, both of which were of considerable interest to aristocratic families. Even before the conflicts of the seventeenth century, imperial patronage—with significant consequences in terms of wealth, land, and office holding—had been tied to religious affiliation.4 After the Habsburg accession in the sixteenth century, the Catholic minority in Bohemia held a lock on imperial administrative and court positions, as the Habsburgs effectively barred the Protestant nobility from state service and thus from financial aggrandizement. The loss of political and court influence by great Protestant nobles, Protestants forming a sizeable majority of the Bohemian nobility, also affected the fortunes of lesser nobles, who had an even higher percentage of Protestant adherents and who depended on the clientelism of the powerful Bohemian magnates. Thus, the disruption in the social structure of the nobility due to economic and social change, not to mention war, was considerable and particularly damaging to the lower nobility. the aristocratic world of the eighteenth century

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The loss of the Bohemian Estates at White Mountain, which had a profound effect on the Czechs and their national memory, did serve to alter the social and political structure of the nobility in Bohemia and permanently influenced the relationship of the German Habsburgs with the Bohemian elite. However, contrary to lingering popular patriotic myth, the native aristocracy was not decimated and exiled in the aftermath of this defeat. Nor were Czech noble families uniformly hostile to the Catholic and imperial cause. It would be impossible to provide a proper history of the period of the Bohemian rebellion in the context of this volume, but more important here than the narrative of the nobles’ opposition and their subsequent defeat is the use made of this period by both the aristocracy and the nineteenth century nationalists. With the possible exception of the legacy of Charles IV as emperor, no other historical period more decisively defined the popular historical imagination than the Battle of White Mountain and its aftermath. Nineteenth-century collectors greatly valued documents of this period, and documents were of highest value to those with a point to prove about family status or nationality. Families that were strongly connected to the imperial court and the Catholic Church hierarchy in the Habsburg lands through the conflict and after were not merely hoping to accrue heavenly interest. The Habsburgs amply rewarded the Catholic aristocracy for their loyalty in property, access to the court and patronage, and goods. The Sternbergs, one of several old Bohemian families who sought to preserve status and wealth with the “triple guarantee of latifundium, Catholic orthodoxy, and fairly unswerving dynastic loyalty,”5 remained in the seventeenth century staunchly Catholic and Kaisertreu, or loyal to the emperor.6 Adam Sternberg, educated by the Jesuits, was Grand Burgrave in 1618 and at the Prague Castle when a hundred Bohemian nobles from the Diet, led by Count Thurn, came to the castle in full armor on May 23 to take retribution for the Emperor’s actions against Bohemia and the Protestants. While Adam Sternberg and Grand Prior Diepold Count Lobkowitz were escorted to the next room, Jaroslav Count Martinitz, Wilhelm Count Slawata, and the secretary Fabricius—the representatives of the emperor—were sent flying out of the chancellery window. These three survived their fall thanks to the dung heap piled in the castle moat below, and took refuge in the palace of Polyxena of Perštejn, claiming divine intervention for their survival.7 The incident marked the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, as Ferdinand II grew resolute in his commitment to reclaim the Kingdom of Bohemia for the Habsburgs and the Pope. The Bohemian revolt between 1618 and 1620 was a miserable failure from the perspective of the Bohemian Protestant nobility. As Jean Bérenger has noted, the noble leaders of the revolt were “neither good soldiers nor able diplomats.”8 The oppos26

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ing armed contingents met on a hill called White Mountain (Bílá Hora) at the outskirts of Prague, and the rout of the Bohemian forces in the face of a far superior Catholic army was completely decisive. The Bohemian army dispersed in confusion and left Prague defenseless. The rebellion quickly collapsed with the flight of King Frederick from Bohemia, but the religious conflict at the heart of the rebellion spread to the rest of Europe. With the defeat in 1620 came major social, political, and economic turmoil for the elites in Bohemia. The history of property holding after 1620 is one of upheaval, and property dislocation took place on a “staggering scale.”9 Though the numbers can be contested, assembled statistics have shown that between a half and three-quarters of all estates (or two-thirds of Bohemia itself ) changed hands: 166 landowners lost their lands, 302 surrendered at least part of their holdings, and another 112 held property conditionally as fiefs of the crown.10 The transfers of land were a mechanism of power: Retribution in the form of land expropriation was visited even on families, individuals, and villages that had not taken part in the revolt from 1618 to 1620. It has been estimated that roughly half of all noble families, and a disproportionate number of lower nobility, were ruined by property expropriations. These statistics, too, are open to question, given that losses were also the result of the long-term economic decline of the lower nobility in the Czech lands. Critically, opposition to the authority of the Emperor was not ethnically based, nor did it determine family fortunes absolutely. Families like the ancient Czech Lobkowitzes, who had family members knee-deep in both Protestantism and the rebellion, could and did escape relatively unscathed. The Habsburgs handsomely rewarded the loyalty, especially military loyalty, of those who fought for them, and the history of property transfers after 1620 is rich with stories of military commanders who took control of sequestered Bohemian estates. The material rewards were, however, not enjoyed only by foreigners, as popular imagination would retell it. As R. J. W. Evans and others have pointed out, the impressive growth of the wealth and holdings of the Waldsteins and other families of native origin was directly related to the sequestered wealth of other noble families.11 Although there was a measurable influx of new nobles into Bohemia, most of them military conquistadores who had fought for the Habsburgs against the Protestants, the majority of these new arrivals never attained the wealth, dominance, and power of the older Bohemian families. Moreover, the rich upper strata took advantage of the confiscations by purchasing expropriated estates cheaply and were further able to consolidate their wealth and influence. Some newcomers to Bohemia, like the Schwarzenberg family, made significant inroads into new holdings in the crownlands, but arrived on the scene already rich, powerful, tied to the aristocratic world of the eighteenth century

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the court, and at the top of the social scale before 1620. In all, the critical measure was religion, not ethnicity: The Catholic aristocracy of Bohemia benefited from the travails of their defeated Protestant compatriots. The Thirty Years’ War and its immediate aftermath did serve the purpose of making a noble population that had been overwhelmingly Protestant into a converted Catholic group. Although religious affiliation is difficult to measure in this period, it is certain that before 1620, the majority of the nobles were of some Protestant or Hussite faith, and that the Catholic minority measured anywhere between 10 and 25 percent of the noble population, with a large percentage of this 25 percent stemming from the upper nobility. Unless a Protestant noble family had remained loyal to the Habsburgs, and this did occur, conversion or exile was the choice offered in 1627. Loyal Protestant nobility who remained, although at least initially allowed to practice religion in the home, were effectively excluded from any prominent public position, and Protestantism was outlawed in the Renewed Land Ordinance issued in 1627. Despite the depiction of the White Mountain defeat and its aftermath as an episode of German domination, as far as the nobility were concerned the struggle of 1618–1620 was not a national or ethnic struggle. Nobles of Czech and German heritage took part in the rebellion, and it is difficult to characterize the revolt as a bid for Czech independence given that the Diet elected the German Frederick as king in 1619. Even in the case of religion, there were instances of Catholic nobles siding with the Estates, and Protestants with the Emperor. Ancient and prominent Czech families could be found on either side of the conflict, and even on both sides. “What the confiscations did not do,” according to James Van Horn Melton, “was to replace a ‘Czech’ nobility with a ‘German’ one.”12 Some of the leading beneficiaries of confiscations were native Czech families like the Martinitz, Slawata, and Lobkowitz families. The core of loyal native families maintained their ascendant position in church, empire, and province: “However ragged its colours, however decimated its ranks, the old nobility of Bohemia still provided political leadership in the state.”13 Furthermore, there existed among the most powerful of the native aristocracy a sense of family lineage and Bohemian heritage that kept them distinct from others of more recent Bohemian inkolát, the grant of Bohemian citizenship. The upper crust of the nobility was highly resistant to foreigners, and used every opportunity to “reserve and protect from foreign intrusion the assets, titles, and dignities which they possessed.”14 Foreigners were gradually and very reluctantly absorbed into the social milieu of the native nobility, and then only the most important families among them. For the Bohemian elite, there remained after the Battle of White Mountain a clear, if modified, notion of “us” versus “them.” 28

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There is no doubt that the Habsburgs of the seventeenth century possessed a fervent desire to reclaim Bohemia for Catholicism and to secure it in perpetuity as a hereditary land. To accomplish this, Emperor Ferdinand II and his successors believed it was necessary to root out Protestant heresy and destroy the autonomy of Bohemia’s political institutions to the degree that these institutions could harbor religious subversion or had done so in the past. This did not represent an attitude of leveling, or fundamentally eviscerating, the power of the landed class. On the contrary, the Habsburgs respected a number of traditional aristocratic privileges and even created new seigniorial powers, establishing in the process a dualist system of control. The Habsburgs were left unchallenged in matters of state, and provided they were publicly Catholic and loyal, the Bohemian nobility were left unchallenged in matters of property. As the site for potentially organized opposition, the position of the Estates and the Diet was more problematic; from the Habsburg perspective, both king and church needed to be restored to their central importance even in the Diet. The mechanism was the Renewed Land Ordinance (Verneuerte Landesordnung) that Ferdinand II forced on Bohemia in 1627. The Renewed Land Ordinance attempted to take the teeth out of any possible noble opposition in religious or political terms. Although taxes still had to be approved by the Estates, who also controlled tax collection and farming, the Bohemian Estates lost several important rights and privileges, and the Renewed Land Ordinance affected the right of election of the king and the concept of justified opposition. The king alone was to have the right to legislate and to amend the law. The clergy, denied individual curia representation in the Diet since the Hussite period, was given the honor of “first Estate,” and all non-Catholic religions became publicly illegal.15 The Estates were bound to serve the king in time of war and the king was to have control over defensive construction and tolls. Justice was to be dispensed in the king’s name, not that of the country, and oaths of state service were to be sworn to the king, not the Diet.16 The king alone would hold the power of the inkolát and the right to grant patents of Bohemian nobility, “thus bypassing the reiterated requirement for his servants to be natives of the realm.”17 Despite the reorganization and constraints placed on the Diet, all the rights, privileges, and freedoms of the nobility, which did not contradict the Renewed Land Ordinance, were maintained and affirmed by Ferdinand II in the Confirmation of May 29, 1627. The material rights of noble status—representation in the Diet, Landtafel rights, privileged legal status, exemptions from personal taxes and military service, exercise of patrimonial jurisdiction and seigniorial rights—were maintained and supported by Ferdinand II.18 Bohemian titles were protected, and rank recognized in Bohemia only if the titleholder possessed Bohemian inkolát.19 Most ominously though the aristocratic world of the eighteenth century

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for later nationalists, the German language was raised in the Renewed Land Ordinance to equal status with the Czech language in Bohemian official life, a bid to infuse Bohemian administration with German-speaking Habsburg loyalists. This plank of the constitution thus gave ammunition to later nationalists who portrayed the seventeenth century as the period of national “darkness.” In this view, silencing Czech was the means the Habsburgs used to extinguish Czech national consciousness. The nationalists conflated the difference between languages used by serf and lord and social conflicts between serf and lord.20 The nobility as it reconstituted itself in the mid-seventeenth century represented a powerful political and social force concentrated in the hands of a small, wealthy aristocracy whose power was based on land and local influence. By 1700, the high aristocracy of the Bohemian lands, though subject to the changing fortunes of social and political patronage at court, was both deeply embedded in the Habsburg administration and part of the European elite. The upper nobility was wealthy enough that it routinely made large loans to the Viennese court and maintained a monopoly on nearly all important local administrative positions. Royal bureaucratic interference at the local level was minimal until the middle to late eighteenth century, and as a result, the Estates retained their administrative and fiscal importance: “However draconian its consequences in the confessional sphere, the Habsburg victory over the Protestant Estates in 1620 did not fundamentally alter the dualist structure of territorial government.”21 Interestingly enough, the most powerful coterie of magnates that emerged were by and large those of the old, pre–White Mountain, Czech nobility, and their predominance was not directly affected by their erstwhile Protestantism or even their participation in the rebellion.22 After all, loyalty and power alone could not ensure the longevity of a family, and whether loyal or not, Catholic or not, families were under the same pressures of ensuring inheritance and producing the requisite legitimate heirs. Indeed, more than one family benefited by the purchase or gift of sequestered estates only to see the wealth and land become moot with the lack of an heir. By the end of the seventeenth century, the “inner circle” of noble leadership was composed of ten powerful families: Czernin, Kolowrat, Kinský, Lobkowitz, Martinitz, Nostitz, Schlik, Slawata, Sternberg, and Waldstein.23 And it was from these families that many of the most influential aristocratic patriots were drawn. The legacy of the Battle of White Mountain touches on more than landholding and political power. It is often suggested that the seventeenth-century conflict and the reimposition of Catholicism and Habsburg control caused an intensive period of emigration and Germanization, resulting in a foreign noble class. However, the ethnicity of the Bohemian aristocracy was unclear even before 1620 and relying on ethnicity as a historical marker is fraught with 30

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problems. Ethnicity was problematic, even among pre–White Mountain families: “names by themselves meant very little, if it were a question of establishing ‘nationality.’ . . . Whether a particular family was to become ‘Czech,’ ‘German,’ or ‘Polish’ was often still in the process of being decided in the nineteenth century.”24 Czech and German names were often used interchangeably and continued intermarriage blurred ethnic lines further. This ethnic “flexibility”—a boon to the study of genealogy and family history—simultaneously made it possible for individuals or families to lay claim to Bohemian identity, while also making the aristocracy suspect as a national group. Families considered part of the “ancient” Czech aristocracy were those who appeared in medieval Bohemian court documents, and long Czech lineage was later used as a stamp of authenticity against those families who had settled in Bohemia as part of the seventeenth-century royal land grant frenzy after the Battle of White Mountain.25 There were successive waves of German settlement in Bohemia, but newly arrived families were distinguished from the “authentically Bohemian.” In the eighteenth century, when Bohemian particularism and the emphasis on the glorious past of the Bohemian Kingdom was stressed by noble patriots, possessing an ancient Bohemian heritage became a matter of some prestige. For example, the Sternbergs, like many others who pursued the history of their family in Bohemia, desired an unambiguous lineage that proved the family’s unbroken association with the land. In the historical and genealogical notes of the Sternberg family that František Palacký prepared for his history of Bohemia, Palacký wrote that a member of the Sternberg family first appeared in documents toward the end of the twelfth century as a witness to a charter issued by Bishop Henry Brˇetislav of Prague in 1194. Their ethnic background was, according to Palacký, unassailable: The mostly pure Slavic given names of the oldest Sternbergs suggest that they were no immigrant family, but born Bohemians [Czechs]. Neither the German family name, nor its identification with the Frankish and Westphalian Sternbergs justify the assumption that the family settled in Bohemia from Germany. It was the fashion of the Bohemian nobility under Ottokar to give their fortresses and castles German names, from which they then took their family name. Thus did the Rosenbergs, Wartenbergs, Riesenbergs, Waldsteins and others whose Bohemian origin is in no doubt. . . . One finds in the oldest accounts of the family no hint, even ever so slight, of either their immigration from abroad or of any connection with foreign Sternbergs.26 Although Palacký’s observations of Bohemian noble surname customs were likely true, the Sternberg family’s actual ethnicity was occasionally the aristocratic world of the eighteenth century

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interpreted differently. The Wurzbach Biographisches Lexikon cites the family as genealogically related to the Frankish Sternbergs, and lists them as Frankish immigrants to Bohemia in the twelfth century.27 The family was, and continues to be, accepted as an old Czech family, and this perception is perhaps more important than any ethnic “reality.” If a family could prove its lineage to be old enough, and Czech enough, which the Sternbergs did accomplish, they enjoyed social and political cachet. If ethnicity is thus little help in ascertaining where one might place the aristocrats of the Czech lands, what about language? There was a powerful cadre of old Czech families, the Sternbergs and Czernins among them, who remained at the pinnacle of the social ladder throughout the period from the Thirty Years’ War (and before) until the nineteenth century (and later). By 1700, however, the Bohemian aristocracy was not primarily, or solely, a Czech-speaking group, and this intensified later perceptions that the Bohemian nobility was not a national nobility. Our sense of this eighteenthcentury reality is colored by our modern tendency to make language and ethnicity coterminous. The linking of language and ethnicity, and what language meant for personal identity, does not translate well to the eighteenth century. Language use was tied to patronage and court culture, and to cosmopolitanism. The extinction of the Czech ruling family, the Prˇemyslids, had meant the importation of different court cultures to Bohemia. Even Charles IV, the most beloved of Bohemian kings, had been raised in a French-speaking court dominated by French court culture. Italian dominated the court of Emperor Leopold I, and German and particularly French were the languages of Maria Theresa’s court. French, Italian, and German dominated aristocratic and learned circles and language was in itself a marker in Bohemia of status rather than of nationality. In the case of the Sternberg family in the eighteenth century, Kaspar Sternberg’s mother Anna Josepha, a born Kolowrat-Krakovský and daughter of the Grand Burgrave Philipp Kolowrat, was a highly educated woman, who, as Kaspar Sternberg described her, “wrote and spoke German, French, and Italian fluently, and learned English in later years. She loved French literature above all.”28 There is no mention of Czech. Kaspar himself learned Czech as a child from his nurses and servants, German from his tutor, French from his parents, and Latin from his brothers’ schoolmaster. Kaspar’s cousin Francis, raised in Bohemia and educated in the Rhineland, learned Czech during his studies at the Faculty of Law on his return to Prague. For Kaspar Sternberg, as well as other Bohemian aristocrats of his generation, the emphasis was never on written and literary Czech. Kaspar learned to read and write German formally, whereas Czech only by opportunity, and this was true of other families as well.29 In the case of the Schwarzenberg fam32

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ily, French and German were learned by the sons as children, and Czech was “acquired” during summers in Bohemia.30 For the eighteenth-century generations of Kaspar Sternberg’s parents and grandparents, Czech was not seen as the language of the educated, nor was learning it necessary for a child’s entrance into society. As Eugen Lemberg described, whatever the aristocracy felt about it, Czech was never a “necessity of life.”31 This is in marked difference to the experience of their children and grandchildren as adults. Kaspar’s cousin, Francis Sternberg—although it was still unusual—advertised for and insistently sought a governess who could teach his daughters Czech, and his daughters subsequently reported on the progress their children made in “Bohemian.”32 In the eighteenth century and still later, the marriage of language and nationality was not obvious. Even among unassailable Czech patriots like Bernard Bolzano or the Slavic philologist Josef Dobrovský, German was the accepted language of intellectual discourse. In fact, Bolzano never mastered Czech. The struggle that nationalist Czechs mounted against the German cultural influence in Bohemia was a long process, however, and a century later, František Palacký, the “father of the Czech nation,” “impressed Friedrich Engels as a crazy German Professor.”33 To a large degree, the latter nineteenth century was the time when nationalists in Bohemia succeeded not just in defining Bohemia purely in terms of its Slavic language, but in ousting German as the acceptable natural lingo of any patriot. Initially, however, the communal identity of the aristocracy, what Eugen Lemberg refers to as their Gemeinschaftsbewußtsein, was not linguistically determined.34 What is in fact striking is the degree to which aristocrats were able to engage completely in the rhetoric of nation building while explicitly including both the Czechand the German-speaking populations of the kingdom. Aristocrats engaged in the sciences and linguistics in Bohemia often complained about their compatriots’ ignorance of Czech, as well as their ignorance of the science and technology that could improve their lands. Among the more famous writings on this are Count Kinský’s oft-quoted remarks in his educational tract Erinnerung über einen wichtigen Gegenstand von einem Böhmen, in which Kinský urged his compatriots to learn Czech and to have it taught to their children: “I confess that as a good descendant of the Slavs I inherited the prejudice that if the mother-tongue of a Frenchman is French and of a German is German, that of a Czech ought also to be Czech.”35 In this sentiment, Kinský was certainly in the minority in Bohemia, and he recognized as much in claiming, “I do not want to begin a fight over what mother-tongue a Bohemian should have.”36 Kinský stressed Czech’s musical qualities and reiterated the uses to which Czech ought to be put, not the least important the aristocratic world of the eighteenth century

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of which was to communicate with one’s peasants. The eighteenth-century Bohemian aristocracy as a whole, however, considered “proper” linguistic ability, like art and the social graces, to be a matter reflective of education, status, and sophistication, and the place of the Czech language in this aristocratic world was unclear. Kinský made the argument that the cadences and stresses of Czech were very similar to ancient Greek and Latin, and that the ancient Slavs stood in origin close to the Greeks—implying a critical cultural and linguistic connection to an idealized ancient world and to its influence on Western civilization.37 Although the German language was put on an “equal footing” with Czech after the defeat of the Estates in 1620, the more critical wave of Germanization was the more or less voluntary one that took place in the latter decades of the seventeenth century, so that by 1700, we can describe the elites as German-speaking, if not exclusively so.38 This Germanization was voluntary in the sense that it was not legally imposed from above, but was imbedded in the structures of aristocratic advancement and social standing. Success in the traditional avenues of aristocratic advancement, namely the military and high civil service, was predicated on German language usage. This was compounded by the methods of the Counter-Reformation and the influx of noble families of different states who were rewarded with or took advantage of the availability of land after 1620. As Evans notes, “The Czech language fell into decline, though it proved the casualty of cosmopolitan atmosphere, not of official policy. . . . The aristocrats gradually abandoned it in favour of Italian and French, as well as German.”39 Court life itself, although not always dominated by German, certainly did not cultivate the use of Czech. The influence of Austrian Baroque culture, and the issue of prestige and status at a nominally German Viennese court, made affinity with the German-speaking world even more attractive. It is, perhaps, more accurate to say affinity with the non-Czech world, as it should be noted that there were eras when German was not the prominent court language; under Francis Stephen, Maria Theresa’s Lothringian husband, French was the accepted language at court. As with the question of ethnicity, the Bohemian aristocracy were flexible in their language skills, using whatever language was appropriate to the situation at hand, communicating with their families in French or German, with acquaintances in German, French, or Italian, and with their servants and estate managers in Czech or German. This very flexibility, which in contemporary terms was a mark of education and high society, was suspect from the vantage point of the Czech nationalist. The question was not so much whether the aristocracy as a whole were or were not authentically Czech, but whether they had so completely immersed themselves in German language and culture 34

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that they no longer cared to be Czech. The “loss” of the language as a means of elite communication was perceived as evidence of this, although in reality “linguistic considerations were secondary and [the aristocracy] remained consciously Bohemian.”40 Language usage and the Habsburgs’ attempts to curb provincial sentiment in Bohemia are only part of the explanation for the willingness of the nobility to become so intimately connected to the German linguistic and cultural spheres. Intermarriage of the Bohemian nobility with Catholic noble families of the Holy Roman Empire further solidified both noble social insularity and the connection of the Bohemians to the Germanspeaking lands. There was another, less tangible, influence at work dispersing Bohemian identity. The nobles’ use of French, Italian, and German implied a distinct sense of high society, of sophistication and taste, and of what was appropriate to their station as European elites. The Bohemian notion of taste in the eighteenth century followed that of the French and Italians as much as possible, and this enhanced their interest in Western thought and literature. Whatever the perceptions of Westerners regarding Prague and Bohemia, educated Bohemian aristocrats considered themselves, and Bohemia, to be a part of the West, in terms of fashion, culture, aristocratic habits, and language.41 The primary use of French and German allowed the aristocracy in Bohemia, as in other parts of the Habsburg realm, to associate themselves with the wider intellectual world implied by their linguistic affiliation with it. The question of language usage distilled the broader national problem in Bohemia: for nationalists in Bohemia, the issue was not that Bohemia was portrayed as Slavic, and therefore, an Eastern “other” whose relationship with the West had to be established or evaluated, but rather that it was seen as part and parcel of Germany, and as such needed to be clearly defined as Slavic and extricated from its cultural and political association with Germany.

The Making of an Aristocrat: Landed Power, Education, and Leisure The nobility of Bohemia, whether in the seventeenth century or at the end of the eighteenth, was not a uniform or homogenous group. Changes in status, size, privileges, and noble influence were a result of both internal and external political and economic pressures. At the end of the early modern period, the nobility of Bohemia constituted approximately 1 percent of the population, numbering about 1,830 in 1557 and 1,880 in 1656.42 In the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a powerful and rich magnate the aristocratic world of the eighteenth century

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class concentrated power on the top of the aristocratic scale. Although this development is often associated with the social turmoil after 1620, it was in fact the continuation of a process among the noble strata of consolidation of power and land due to economic dislocation.43 The subdivision of land holdings and partible inheritance, along with a series of price increases, had left the lower nobility seriously impoverished, even before 1620. These economic problems contributed to the loss of land, and little by little the lower nobility dropped from the noble ranks. Some drop in the number of lower nobility can also be attributed to those families who managed to succeed and move up into the ranks of the lordly class, through administrative or military service.44 In general, however, military service, marriage customs, infant mortality, and inheritance patterns had an adverse effect on the knightly class. The decline of the lower nobility, a slide initiated before 1620, was significantly hastened by the rearrangement of property and privileges that followed the Bohemian defeat in 1620. The magnates, or high aristocracy, took advantage of the plummeting fortunes of their unlucky compatriots to increase their own holdings. In the post-1620 period, the pattern of landholding reflected the method by which land was acquired. Pre-seventeenth century Bohemia had been characterized by powerful families like the Lobkowitzes, who held considerable, unified amounts of Bohemian territory. After this period of upheaval, although noble estates did include large latifundia, landholding within families more resembled a patchwork than previously. Families held estates all over Bohemia, the Holy Roman Empire, and other areas within the Habsburg Monarchy. Although they certainly benefited from the financial proceeds of these holdings, families were less likely to consolidate their local power around a mass of estates, or in some cases to feel any particular loyalty or connection to the locales from which their income derived. The splintering of property holdings and the increased presence of the aristocracy in urban centers, rather than at home in the country, created an additional social and mental distance between the aristocracy and local, rural life. From the late seventeenth century, aristocratic culture was increasingly urban culture, as Prague and Vienna became the loci of aristocratic sociability. During the decades after 1650, the massive building craze that had seen the construction of the most palatial aristocratic residences in Prague and Vienna reached its apex. Despite the encroaching bureaucracy of the eighteenth-century Habsburg state under Maria Theresa and Joseph, the political and social structure of Bohemia in the eighteenth century rested on the basic principles of the manorial system. Seigniorial rights were at the heart of the Bohemian nobility’s landed power and wealth. Estate structure in general followed a form of 36

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seigniorial demesne (Gutsherrschaft), with direct cultivation of the land by means of unfree rural labor, though this needs to be a qualified statement. Land was divided into two categories: rustical and dominical. Rustical land was occupied by peasants and subject to the Kontribution; the state had to be constantly vigilant if it was to prevent the illegal absorption of these taxable lands into neighboring demesnes.45 Dominical land was registered in the lord’s name, and worked by peasants who had contractual agreements with the lord for their tenancy. From the seventeenth century, the lord was responsible for the tax burden (Kontribution) assigned to each estate, parceling it out to his taxable peasants. Peasants residing on dominical land were not subject to the land tax, and therefore owed more obligations to their seignior than the rusticals.46 The seignior retained primary ownership of the land, even when the peasant occupation was hereditary.47 Seigniors also had the right to collect fees for milling, storage, and equipment, as well as irregular fees when land changed hands. Although the notion of defense had long since been abandoned as an excuse for noble privilege, status-based paternalism made it the lord’s responsibility to provide for his peasants in time of dearth and natural or man-made disaster. Even if many landlords did not agonize overly much about this obligation, there were instances in which they would intercede in an attempt to stave off disaster. Although we regularly associate Bohemia with the manorial system and the continued presence of serfdom, there were wide discrepancies in the nature of peasant land tenure and labor. Until 1848, peasants were officially held to mandatory fees and labor services, the bulk of which was usually farm labor and transporting.48 The amount and type of labor and services depended on the size of the demesne.49 Bohemia was famous for the heavy labor services exacted on Gutsherrschaften properties, amounting to a maximum of three days a week. Seigniorial abuse of labor dues and judicial power, and the generally poor situation of the peasantry in Bohemia, had convinced the Austrian government of the need to intercede on the peasants’ behalf. Some peasants chose not to await the dubious outcome of the government’s negotiations with the Bohemian Estates, and in January 1775, fostered a rebellion that began near Königgrätz. Many of the peasant rebels were convinced that the Empress had absolved them of their labor obligations. The revolt was suppressed by the imperial army, but Joseph II advised leniency, and relatively few were punished.50 The great Bohemian landholding families preserved their estates from division and impoverishment by the institution of the fideicommiss, a form of entail introduced into the Austrian lands in the seventeenth century. The purpose of the fideicommiss was to prevent the fragmentation of estates, and it remained a the aristocratic world of the eighteenth century

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right legally confined to men of noble status until 1848.51 In the case of the Sternbergs, the elder branch of the family, founded by Franz Damien of Sternberg, were the holders of the fideicommiss, established in 1701 by the testament of Adolf Wratislav and confirmed by Emperor Leopold I. The Sternberg estates of Cˇastolovice, Zasmuk, the Prague house in Malá Strana, and the painting collection were all listed as part of the fideicommiss, to be inherited by the eldest son of the holder of the fidei.52 Possessions listed under the entail could not be sold or displaced, even if they had no value. The fideicommiss guarded against the accumulation of excessive debt, because borrowing against these entailed estates was not allowed without the consent of the monarch. In the case of the Czernin family, royal permission had to be sought to incur debt in order to rebuild Jindrˇichu˚ v Hradec after a fire decimated the town and estate’s buildings. Not all estates were entailed, as the case of Kaspar Sternberg’s father shows. Johann Sternberg was the younger son of the younger line of the Sternberg family. As such, he was not in line to inherit any of the principal family properties, and had to acquire his own with the help of family money, influence, and his own professional earnings from the military and the civil service. Disposing of estates not under the restrictions of the fideicommiss was much more flexible. When Kaspar Sternberg himself had no heir, he chose a son of his cousin’s to inherit the estate at Brˇezina. The privileges of the nobility on the land were fiscal, judicial, and political. Fiscal exemptions were conferred by noble land, not noble status, and in 1700 commoners were still forbidden by law to own noble land. There were commoners who managed to buy noble land, despite this restriction; the problem for the government was to keep the nobility from transferring peasant or rustical land into noble land that would be subject to lower taxes. Some of the legislation, as well as the cadastres ordered by Maria Theresa and Joseph, were an attempt to regulate and redress land transfers. Noble lands were taxed, but the Habsburgs allowed noble demesnes to be taxed less than peasant land, ostensibly to cover the cost of demesne operations—a subjective accounting at best. The nobility was immune from the Haussteuer until the fiscal system was reorganized under Maria Theresa in 1749, but the loss of fiscal immunity was countered by the noble right to be assessed less stringently. Nobles were subject to indirect taxation, including duties on alcohol, salt, and tobacco, and this indirect taxation became the focus of Habsburg attempts to increase revenue without reforming the tax system. Under the initial wave of government reforms from the late 1740s to the 1760s, reforms were not enacted because of any doubt in the nobility as a ruling class or the seigniorial system as the proper management of land.53 Rather, reform and regulation (not abolition) of the system was inspired by 38

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the desire for a prosperous and peaceful peasantry that could finance the government’s military agenda. For all intents and purposes, however, Bohemian nobles in the eighteenth century experienced little direct interference in the management of their rural populations and estates, despite the Habsburgs’ attempts to interject the bureaucracy and central authority into rural life. In fact Maria Theresa, in her desire to encourage the nobility’s acceptance of a more rational administrative and fiscal system, did so by delimiting the state’s administrative authority “at the boundaries of the nobles’ estates.”54 The reforms of 1748–1749 did create new royal administrative positions at the local and provincial levels, primarily to squeeze more money out of the Bohemians for the imperial coffers. In 1748, Maria Theresa established a peasants’ court in Prague and some peasant complaints were investigated by the tax commissioners. Outright seizures of peasant land were forbidden with stringent financial penalties attached, and lords became tax responsible for untilled peasant land.55 In the 1750s, districts and district offices were reorganized, with the result that tax collecting was more efficient and justice more equitable. The Habsburgs did attempt to limit the abuses of the seigniorial administration of justice by having seigniorial courts minimally responsible to the provincial government. However, the new system did not replace the nobility on the local level. Despite the increased visibility of the central government, as far as the peasantry were concerned, the lord remained the most visible and eminent political force. Sovereigns and seigniors thus preserved “the integrity of their respective domains.”56 In addition to the fiscal privileges conferred by noble land, the aristocracy was the only part of the population with a public voice. Estates classified as noble in the Landtafel entitled the owner to admission to the Diet. Besides the clergy, the only non-nobles who had a presence in the Diet were the representatives of royal townships in the fourth Estate. The Estates, furthermore, were inequitably divided, because the nobility and clergy of the first three Estates could vote by head, whereas the commoners had to vote collectively. Within the Diet there were divisions of rank among the nobility that conditioned both social patterns and marriage, the most important division lying between those of the second and third “benches” of the Estates.57 The first of these groups, the Hochadel, comprised counts and barons and enjoyed numerous privileges, including access to the monarch and the court. At the pinnacle of this group were those families who could marry into the imperial family without the union being considered morganatic.58 Although the eighteenth-century Habsburgs left the rural autonomy of the nobles relatively untouched at first, they did attempt to curb any possible tendency toward autonomous action on the level of the Diet. Although the the aristocratic world of the eighteenth century

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Estates in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries did not enjoy the same power as in the years before White Mountain, they were still an obvious social and political base for calls for Bohemian identity and autonomy. Additionally, the Bohemian Diet had earned the long-lasting enmity of Maria Theresa when a large number of its members had supported the Bavarian Elector’s imperial candidacy rather than that of her husband, Francis Stephen, after 1740. Both as prescription for pro-Bohemia sentiment and as punishment for anti-Habsburg behavior, the Habsburgs and their advisors increasingly insinuated the central administration into local governance. The Diet was no longer responsible for the appointment or control of local officials, many of whom became royal salaried officials. By the 1780s, the only Diet-appointed officials were two advisors attached to the Gubernium. In addition, the fiscal control of the Diet was severely curtailed, as taxes normally collected by the Diet were converted into royal taxes and others were granted decennially. In the eighteenth century, the Bohemian Diet “ceased to question the royal demands for revenue and so in practice renounced its right to determine taxation.”59 Although the Diet did meet annually to consent to and determine the allocation and collection of taxes, it was rarely more than a rubber stamp on royal fiscal demands. The political responsibility that the Diet had enjoyed in the past was co-opted by royal bureaucratic administration, particularly the Gubernia. The bureaucracy, although staffed in its lower echelons by educated individuals from different social backgrounds, had at its higher levels an overwhelming percentage of nobles, and this was true of local and central political authority. As Macartney describes it, “In all fields of public life the principle was maintained that the Crown exercised its direct authority only through nobles, and conversely, that the nobles by birth were the class from which the Crown took the great majority of its servants.”60 This allowed the nobility to pursue their own interests through their use of offices. Gradually, the efforts on the part of the Habsburgs to rationalize state administration elevated bourgeois prospects due to new educational requirements for state service. However, this did not eliminate the nobles from the bureaucracy, and in fact is yet another example of class flexibility. Noble office holding privileges were entrenched until the Napoleonic period, and ennobling offices could not be purchased.61 Although nobility could not be purchased, nobles did usually pay for the honor of holding noble offices, the same way they paid for their “membership” in the Knights of Malta and other honor societies and orders. Offices at court held by the nobility, including the “honor” of Court Chamberlain, were unsalaried positions for which the nobles paid an honorary fee when elevated to the position. Local, provincial, and imperial admin40

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istration all reserved the highest offices for the nobility. Despite the fact that some offices were primarily ceremonial, they could provide some measure of access to the monarch and centers of power at court. That was reason enough for nobles to continue to pursue them and align themselves with traditional networks of offices and honorable positions. Even the office of Kreis (district) captain, although removed from Estates’ control and made a royal salaried appointment in 1751, was nearly always occupied by a nobleman. Despite the attempts of Joseph II to curtail noble predominance in administration, it was not until the revolution in 1848 that the system was reformed. The offices of bureaucratic power were also supplemented by a great range of titles and honors that nobles attached to themselves. On the sarcophagus of Johann Rudolf Czernin were included the following: the list of all his important estate holdings, Knight of the Golden Fleece, Knight of the Royal Sardinian Order of the Annunciade, holder of the great cross of the Order of St. George, royal-imperial privy councillor and chamberlain, and so forth.62 Membership in the Knights of Malta, the Leopold Order, was also prevalent. Little by little in the eighteenth century, some aristocrats would begin to substitute this list of titles with a list of their memberships in intellectual societies and academies. There is little doubt that the privileges and the status of nobility exerted a powerful influence on the identity of the aristocracy. In addition to the obvious influence of legally defined privileges, aristocratic identity was shaped by the less formal but still tangible impact of aristocratic education, lifestyle, and family networks. It was not just by language and custom that aristocratic families exerted influence on the development of their children. Family influence, in the form of interests and connections, were the initial basis for any aristocrat’s intellectual development and social understanding. An accomplished polyglot, Kaspar’s mother Anna Josepha was a devotee of Western and German literature, especially Goethe, Wieland, and Shakespeare. Her knowledge and library dictated the outlines of Kaspar Sternberg’s early literary interests. Family atmosphere was particularly important, given that the education of a noble in Bohemia was generally undertaken initially at home. Aristocratic parents influenced children most when it came to custom and tradition, and sometimes religion, unless they took an active role in the children’s curriculum. In the case of the princely Schwarzenberg and Liechtenstein families, children dined with their parents only on Sunday; the rest of the time was spent primarily with the governor (tutor) and others hired to supplement the children’s social and moral education. Prince Schwarzenberg’s instructions regarding his sons’ education stressed obedience, religiosity, ethics, and the aristocratic ideals of duty and responsibility.63 Life in the Sternberg household the aristocratic world of the eighteenth century

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was less rigidly structured, as well as being a literary and multilingual experience. As was customary, Kaspar was tutored by a French cleric, Abbé Lambin. At the age of nine, and after two years of tutorial had solidified Sternberg’s knowledge of French, he began to study with a Moravian Jesuit named Johann Spalek, who was the Latin tutor of Kaspar’s older brothers, Johann and Joachim. Johann and Joachim Sternberg were destined for military careers, but both were well educated and completed their philosophical studies.64 Kaspar Sternberg’s older brothers, seven and nine years older, profoundly influenced his intellectual development. Kaspar himself acknowledged his intellectual debt to his brothers: “older siblings always influence the development of the younger even by their association alone, and mine especially brought me far beyond my own sphere.”65 Tutors were, of course, a mixed lot, as Kinský’s educational tract pointed out. Although the nature of aristocratic education might be provincial and isolated, in the Bohemian case it was also a fruitful intersection between the nobility and their compatriots, many of whom were subsequently to make a name for themselves in the nationalist lexicon. Francis Martin Pelcl (1734–1801), a Bohemian historian and linguist, was tutor in the Sternberg household from 1761 to 1769. In 1769 he moved to the Nostitz family, where he remained until 1793, when he took the newly created chair of Czech language and literature at Prague University. Pelcl, often considered the first professional Czech historian, wrote a popular chronicle of Bohemia and published Bohuslav Balbín’s manuscript on the Czech language, among many other works. There is little doubt that Pelcl’s interests and admonitions affected those of the two eldest Sternberg sons. Kaspar explicitly stated that his brother Johann spent his free time after his normal studies learning about Bohemian history, and had been especially encouraged in this by Pelcl. Although Johann had chosen a military career, his parents insisted that he complete studies for a law degree, in case his military career should fall through. In this way he could, like his father, enter the civil service and be “useful to the Fatherland.”66 Kaspar Sternberg’s experiences at home were indicative of the approach to education among the aristocracy. Once his brothers entered military service, Kaspar, being little entertained by the quiet country life of his parents, was left at home to pursue his education with his tutor, Spalek. Spalek’s great interest was antiquity, and Kaspar thus made progress in ancient poetry, although he regretted his inability “to construct any tolerable verse” himself.67 Kaspar’s day-to-day life with his parents was spent according to the “old school,” as he called it. His father, an old-fashioned military man, believed in physical training as much as, or probably more than, intellectual development. Every 42

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free hour was spent outside, regardless of the weather. Evenings with his parents were spent conversing in French, and Kaspar would read aloud from religious works, Rollins, and Roman histories. During the winters spent in Prague, Kaspar Sternberg attended public school there, and later remarked that his active participation in everything that public interest aroused was inspired “by his acquaintance with the youth of the middle class.”68 Tutoring could be more rigid, of course. Francis Joseph Kinský provided a detailed discussion of how to divide school days and when to introduce material to children that is reflective simultaneously of traditional elements of aristocratic education generally and the progressive nature of some of Kinský’s own ideas. According to his educational tract, the typical day for young boys would be divided as follows: nine hours of sleep, three hours for meals, and the rest of the day divided into rotating, fifteen-minute blocks devoted to catechism, exercise, ABCs, and so forth.69 Kinský was the firmest believer in rational education and language instruction above all.70 Although he supported the teaching of Czech as the logical “mother-tongue” of Bohemia, he advocated teaching Czech, German, and French simultaneously from the youngest ages, so that the student would grow to maturity accepting each of them with equal facility as his “native” language.71 At the youngest age, according to Kinský, children can be curious about the naming of different languages, while the abstracts of history and geography ought to wait. He scoffed at the notion that children would be unable to handle different languages: “Why should it be harder for children to know what one calls bread in Czech, German, and French, than that London is the capital of England and lies on the Thames?”72 The arguments Count Kinský made about language foreshadowed those the nationalists would make a hundred years later. Language, as much as knowledge of the world, would enable one to become intimately acquainted with the intellectual works of civilized nations.73 The list Kinský prepared of disciplines to be taught to young men was extensive. It included religion and morality, vernacular languages, mathematics, Greek, Latin, metaphysics, history, geography, logic, philosophy, natural history, botany, mechanics, physics, music, dancing, the fine arts, mechanical production, agriculture, law, fencing, tactics (for those destined for the military), outdoor life, and anatomy. All of these studies were to be supplemented by regular trips, on the one hand to poor houses and hospitals to convey a clear sense of how life was lived in these institutions, and on the other hand to manufactures and artisans’ studios to show the processes of production and technology.74 Along with practical knowledge, education needed to instill a proper code of conduct, a system of essentially “aristocratic” values that included honor, responsibility, and service. As Kinský asserted, “When the aristocratic world of the eighteenth century

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a young man has learned by his upbringing to reflect, when one has given him a taste for usefulness, and made him accustomed to find boredom in inactivity and idleness, one need not fear that he would avoid any responsibility—that he would not see the high value of virtue.”75 It was also a noble tradition to follow education at home with study at university, although often a very brief study, and to sit for public university exams.76 Kaspar Sternberg makes the point that before leaving for the Collegium Germanicum in Rome he had to prepare for the public exam at the University of Prague, after which he received his confirmation and initial ordination.77 Francis Sternberg returned from the Rhineland to study at the Prague Faculty of Law. Georg Buquoy, although born in Brussels, completed his studies at Prague University. The university population was not dominated by nobility, particularly as many nobles shunned the Jesuit-dominated higher institutions of the monarchy in favor of study abroad, but allowed noble and non-noble populations to interact in a setting of relative equality. Education at home and abroad was a critical aspect of the nobility’s cosmopolitanism. The cosmopolitanism or nonnational character of the Bohemian aristocracy is often used as a justification for their exclusion from membership in the national community. Arguably, cosmopolitanism would create a distance between aristocratic and national identity. As Emil Franzel described for a later period, “When one is a child of Europe . . . one cannot get excited about whether the street signs or menus in Pardubitz or Troppau are in German or Czech, or first Czech and then German.”78 The nature of aristocratic cosmopolitanism was debated by contemporaries—indeed Count Joseph Mathias Thun called its existence “chimerical”—but there were elements of an internationalism among the aristocracy that were based on the traditions of noble education, lifestyle, and diplomatic service.79 Kavaliersreisen, or grand tours, had in the seventeenth century been a standard part of the aristocratic upbringing and had contributed to the “Western” and cosmopolitan attitudes of the aristocracy.80 Although the tradition of the grand tour began to die out in the eighteenth century, aided by Joseph II’s strictures against it, the tour remained an aristocratic institution based on the assumption that urbanity and polish were acquired abroad. Grand tours involved more than just the absorption of Western culture, styles, and manners. Noble youth went abroad to finish their educations with matriculation at universities abroad, law studies, and the cultivation of political and social networks. The tradition of engaging in university study at northern German universities in particular promoted the spread of German Enlightenment philosophy and Romanticism in Bohemia. Aristocrats traveling to England were exposed to new industrial methods, as well as the social costs of implementing them. 44

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Not least, these tours encouraged in the aristocracy a lasting affiliation with the sophistication and refinement of the Italian and French cultural worlds— sometimes to their cost—and for those who ventured further, a lasting fascination with English political principles and cutting-edge modernization. Kinský himself warned against the example of “our poor Pariserböhmen” (Parisian Czechs), who were like “animals that could not swim, yet did not want to live on land.”81 After his marriage in 1781 to Theresa Schönborn, Johann Rudolf Czernin and his wife, for example, spent many months traveling through Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Holland, and England. This trip was to have a major impact on Czernin’s cultural interests, and in his tour abroad he acquired valuable art and engravings. Even those aristocrats like Kaspar Sternberg, destined for a career in the church, could enjoy a limited form of European tour, and Sternberg’s experience was only unusual in that he was restricted to touring in Italy. Receiving permission from his parents to stay in Italy for a year after his successful exams, Sternberg sought and received the necessary papal dispensation from the oath taken on entry into the Collegium, and left for Naples in July 1782. In his later recollection, the three months spent in Naples were the “happiest days of [his] life.”82 It was a time to spend completely immersed in ancient history and culture, to develop his sense of art, culture, and Italian heritage: all the things he felt had been missing in his isolated education. He attended the opera, toured historical sights, and visited the musical conservatories; “twenty-four hours were not sufficient to enjoy everything, especially for a young man who so little knew the world and who had spent 30 months nearly cloistered in the Collegium.”83 Kaspar Sternberg’s tour also made clear the importance of aristocratic family networks. In addition to her own intellect, his mother Anna Josepha, as a Kolowrat, had a large familial network. Her brother Leopold Kolowrat was a minister in Vienna, and gave his nephew access to powerful patrons— in Sternberg’s case, the empress Maria Theresa herself. Having been recommended by his parents to Bishop Gürtler, the Queen of Naples’ confessor, and having the powerful connection of his grandfather Minister Kolowrat, Kaspar made the acquaintance of well-connected Neapolitans. Although certainly making many social connections, he seldom entered into the “society of the limelight” of famous musicians, singers, and artists, feeling himself too shy and too provincially raised. He became acquainted with Sir William Hamilton, the English ambassador to the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, not yet comprehending Hamilton’s abiding interest in the nearby Vesuvius volcano, its eruptions, and the toll it had taken on the landscape of the surrounding area. At the end of September 1782, Kaspar returned to Rome. There were many the aristocratic world of the eighteenth century

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foreigners, especially English, residing in Rome at that time. He attached himself to this mixed group of expatriates in order “to see the important sights of the classical world yet one more time.”84 Through them he met many artists and “friends of the arts”: “Under the tutelage of such men, I learned to see better in three months, than had been possible before under much more intense exertions.”85 Aristocratic connections abroad reinforced Bohemian cosmopolitanism, so that aristocratic neighbors to the south and east seemed “rough” by comparison with their Western European counterparts and, by extension, themselves. Francis Sternberg’s uncle, Gundaker, remarked on the mores and trends of Russian life in St. Petersburg, especially the influences of French fashions and social etiquette.86 How a nation stood in relation to the French “ideal” was an important issue. When Kaspar Sternberg traveled to Hungary with Adam Sternberg in 1784, his observations were most telling of the prevalent attitude: “After what I had seen in Italy, my stay in this little-populated . . . and, compared to other nations, culturally backwards place made a great impression on me.”87 Sternberg was disdainfully amused by the appearance of Hungarian nobles attending a wolf hunt attired in native furs and traditional dress. This did not fit his notion of “progress,” and it was certainly not the contemporary trend in Bohemia. Among Sternberg’s Bohemian contemporaries, society’s mores had established an aristocratic tradition that was a mirror of the West, in language, dress, and custom. By the end of the century, the grand tour was less common and was limited to the sons of the wealthiest. Prohibitive cost was certainly one reason for the decline of touring. In addition, the improvement of education in the Habsburg lands after the dismantling of the Jesuit stranglehold on university studies made university education abroad less of a necessity for the elite. Noble academies established throughout the monarchy during the Theresian period supplied the military, diplomatic, and administrative expertise that the nobility would have previously acquired abroad.88 In addition, the growth of Vienna and Prague as significant cultural, political, and social European centers decreased the importance attached to the experience and polish acquired in the West. By the end of the eighteenth century, the desire for sophistication and urbanity, which previously had been acquired abroad, was combined with the development of an indigenous cultural style.89 Yet the Bohemian aristocracy continued to cultivate close ties with Western nobles and intellectuals, particularly at such “watering” spots as the famous spas in western Bohemia: Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary), Franzensbad (Františkovy Lázneˇ), and Marienbad (Mariánské Lázneˇ).

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Beyond the influences of land, education, and travel, there were institutional aspects to the Bohemian aristocracy’s relationship to the “outside” world—in the form of empire and church—that also profoundly affected traditional aristocratic identity. From the perspective of the Bohemian aristocracy, the imperial question in Bohemia had two distinct edifices, one the Holy Roman Empire and the other the dynastic monarchical government in Vienna. The Empire and the Monarchy, although closely connected and overlapping, were not coterminous.90 The differences between them are important to note, because these differences defined in part the response of the aristocracy to the dissolution of the one and the transformation of the other. The primary connection between the Monarchy and the Empire was, of course, the accepted union of the two thrones in the person of the Habsburg rulers. Although many have subsequently regarded the Holy Roman Empire as a completely moribund political structure, and there is considerable evidence to support this view, there has also been an effort to give the Empire credit as a guarantor of the medium and small German states. As T. C. W. Blanning writes, “Like every other successful polity, [the Holy Roman Empire] was maintained by law and culture. During its thousand-year existence, it had developed institutions, practices, and values which satisfied both the material and cultural aspirations of many of its inhabitants.”91 What matters for our purposes here is that perception was as important to identity formation as reality, and perception was all when it came to the influence and meaning of the Holy Roman Empire. Not only did the Empire protect the many tiny and, to modern eyes, unviable states within its borders, but it was protected in turn by the conviction of many of its denizens that it was a preferable political structure to that of the emerging nation-state. One can argue whether the Holy Roman Empire was a state or not, as others have done. It has been referred to variously as less a state than an institution “created by and embodying a system of ideas,” or as delicate and fragile, but nonetheless a recognizable state structure.92 Regardless of where one comes down on this debate, it is incontrovertible that the Empire served as an important testing ground for inter-German relations, and was the vehicle of Bohemia’s age-old connection to Germany.93 Over time, the Habsburg hold on the imperial throne contributed to the contraction of the imperial realm to the size of, essentially, Germany, and the Empire traded its universal pretensions for a mere precedence among European states and an ability to represent Germany. Whatever disappointments the imperial edifice might hold for the nascent German nationalist, it provided the entire raison d’être of the free imperial knights. The Empire had no common treasury, no means of coercing members, and no coherence, as its individual parts were ruled the aristocratic world of the eighteenth century

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“without any regard to each other.”94 In 1654, the Diet was permanently established at Regensburg, with envoys serving as the representatives of its members. In addition, France and Sweden became external guarantors of the Reich constitution, with all the subsequent meddling that this implied and culminating in the imperial election of the French favorite, the Bavarian Charles Albert in 1742, with disastrous results. Despite the long period of imperial decline, the shell that remained after 1648 served to guarantee the existence of the small and ecclesiastical states of Central Europe. The Empire’s survival was in fact predicated on the need for some authority that would protect the internal and external borders among states of such varied size and power. There was also the intangible legacy of imperial heritage and the implied connection to Roman and medieval greatness that thrived regardless of its real political power, or rather the lack of it. In these ways, the Empire was more than the sum of its constituent parts. For the nobility of Bohemia there was the added prestige of being the only kingdom in the Empire. The workings of the Diet, however, were painfully slow and dominated by the constant political quarrels of its various states: “When we ask for an account of the political life of Germany in the eighteenth century, we hear nothing but the scandals of buzzing courts, and the wrangling of diplomatists at never-ending congresses.”95 The Imperial Chamber, despite the various attempts on the part of emperors to reform it, was an inefficient and unwieldy institution. The fact that the root of the Empire did not lay in tangible political or military power, but in its abstract political and religious agenda, made it too vulnerable. For its adherents among aristocracy, clergy, and political thinkers, the Empire’s claim to maintaining Central European cooperation was its most vital aspect, and its importance for the future of Europe and Germany was celebrated. The imperial structure was wobbly, to say the least, but the very unsteadiness that robbed the Empire of overt political power paradoxically made it flexible enough to serve as the political umbrella for a bizarre collection of dissimilar states and individuals.96 Kaspar Sternberg’s career in the cathedral chapter at Regensburg showed many of the strains and weaknesses of the imperial structure. As Sternberg reflected on entering upon his career, “[Life] before had been divided between study and pleasure; now I would have to engage in relations and appear among an army of representatives in a political playground.”97 It is hard to envision the sleepy town of contemporary Regensburg as the buzzing, bustling hub that was dominated by international politics, but Regensburg was the permanent seat of the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire from 1663 until its dissolution. Although the Holy Roman Empire possessed no intact sovereignty as such—indeed, Frederick II referred to it as a shadowy organization whose 48

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members wasted their time like dogs baying at the moon—the Empire did preserve some measure of unity in the region.98 It also functioned, however, as an arena within which the German states, particularly Prussia and Austria, could further their individual goals. Imperial politics, heightened tensions among the German states, and constant political maneuvering for influence made it impossible for Sternberg not to be aware of the political stakes involved. The Imperial Diet, in its inflexible form established at the Peace of Westphalia, was divided into the “Corpus Evangelicorum et Catholicorum” or “essentially Prussia and Austria,” and these were fairly contentious parties. The opportunity for gross misunderstandings and rumor-filled machinations were so great that Sternberg determined to steer the middle course, what he called “utraquist moderation”: “I thought this the surest way to avoid the anxiety of partiality for one or another opinion; but in this I erred greatly.”99 The political jockeying between Austrians and Prussians in particular made him aware of his other status—that of Bohemian nobleman. The Catholic Church in the Holy Roman Empire was intricately connected to the politics and forms of the Empire, and an “essential, universal and Catholic tradition held the Old Reich together and provided the focus of its ancient loyalties.”100 The power of the Catholic Church in Central Europe and the longevity of the Holy Roman Empire were linked. As political power shifted to the secular states there was a concomitant decrease in the power and number of ecclesiastical states in the Empire, and the Empire had for centuries been “infected” with Protestantism, from the Catholic point of view. In addition, ecclesiastical boundaries in the eighteenth century did not correspond to political ones, and this created more problems for the Church as secular rulers sought to promote the notion of “national” or “royal” churches and to regulate the influence of Rome on local church hierarchies. The imperial Catholic Church of the eighteenth century was under constant siege on a variety of fronts: as a landholding seigniorial power whose tenure was being undermined, as state authority in ecclesiastical principalities while mediatisation—the absorption of the smaller states—was becoming the norm, and as a saver of souls in a progressively secular world. Above and beyond the Catholic Church’s place in the ideological edifice of the Empire, the political role of the Catholic clergy was based on landed wealth, and the clergy was integrated into the feudal system. Until the reforms of Joseph II dissolved many religious houses and the state expropriated religious property in the Habsburg Monarchy, the Catholic Church was a major land holder in Bohemia and the Empire, in both rural and urban areas. This amounted in 1700 to about one-sixteenth of the land in Bohemia. The real presence of the Church as local seignior could represent a conflict the aristocratic world of the eighteenth century

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of interest as well, particularly in areas where the Church acted much more effectively as overlord rather than as the source for religious succor. Despite the fact that according to theological doctrine, all would eventually stand for judgment as equals, the Church possessed an elaborate hierarchy that reflected ancien régime society. As the eighteenth century progressed, the inability or unwillingness of the Church to adapt to changing social circumstances was to inflict lasting damage on the institution and the nobility within it. For better or worse, the nobility was symbiotically connected to the Catholic Church and felt any decline in Church fortunes. The aristocracy, particularly the powerful magnates, had a long association with religious institutions. The high offices of the Church in the Empire, the Monarchy, and in Bohemia were held by noble sons. The Catholic Church, along with the high civil service, served as a great professional outlet for the younger sons of aristocratic families. The offices of archbishop, bishop, prelate, and canon were all dominated by the nobility.101 By German custom, which held true for the high offices in Bohemia as well, bishops were elected by the canons of the cathedral chapter and sixteen quarters of nobility were required for service in the chapter.102 From their elite position within the highest offices of the Church, the nobility acted as “guardians of the Church’s wealth, tradition, privilege, and grandeur.”103 Nobles destined for service in cathedral chapters within the Empire followed a well-trodden path to clerical service. After basic tutoring at home, candidates were sent to study in Rome at the Collegium Germanicum. After studying in Rome, or sometimes before, these candidates were awarded a benefice, and thereafter a canonry. Kaspar Sternberg’s parents, in accordance with the usual aristocratic tradition, had determined that Kaspar would pursue a career in the church, because both of his elder brothers had entered miliary service.104 When Kaspar Sternberg was eleven, Maria Theresa’s influence in Rome gained him a prebend in Freising, and another at the cathedral chapter in Regensburg followed. The prebends (Dompräbende) made Sternberg an honorary canon, and he was then attached to the cathedral staff at Regensburg. Sternberg’s vocation, or lack of it, was of little importance. As a child, Kaspar wanted nothing more than to join his brothers in the military, especially after the beginning of the conflict with Prussia in 1778. His parents refused to alter their plans for him, and his brother Johann assured him that “if I wanted to use my talents properly, it would be easy to reach a higher position and to forge a useful and respectable sphere of activity” in the cathedral chapter than living the constricted life of an officer in a time of peace.105 As Johann wrote to Kaspar from his winter quarters in Transylvania, “Do not worry if the sermons you deliver are legitimate or not, you must always 50

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keep in your heart that the purpose of the instructor is to shake everyone up and draw them to him.”106 In his vocational ambivalence Sternberg was not alone, and his situation highlights a chronic problem for the Church in its recruitment of nobles who used clerical office solely as an alternate source of wealth. Luckily for Sternberg, canons did not directly exercise the duties of the parochial cure of souls, a task that devolved onto the parish priest. The lack of vocation among the prebendal nobility had other consequences. Abuses and corruption of the position certainly occurred, including poor education, gambling, drinking, and a host of other potential courtly vices. In other words, “The prebendal nobility was deeply rooted in the courtly world of the baroque,” ranging in nature from lethargic and incompetent to skilled political operators and sophisticated cavaliers.107 The time that Kaspar spent as a theology student at the Collegium Germanicum in Rome was an influential period in his intellectual development, although theology was not the main formative influence. Indeed, his autobiographical notes are punctuated with comments of disaffection about his career in the Church, and surprisingly barren of any evidence of his interest in theological or church issues. Part of this disinterest was certainly determined by his mixed experience at the Collegium. The instructors in Rome were Dominicans from the cloister at Della Minerva, and, as Sternberg reflected afterward, did not provide the most liberal of intellectual environments. This had changed from the 1750s, when the Collegium, although controlled by the Jesuits, had also been a source of Jansenist thinking. Several important Austrian Jansenists received their training there, and returned to Austria committed to the Jansenist agenda.108 Although the reform movements within the Catholic Church will receive more complete treatment in the following chapter, it is important to note that the Jansenists enjoyed a prominent position in Vienna, despite the Church’s condemnation of the Jansenist position.109 One of Kaspar Sternberg’s formative episodes at the start of his time at the Collegium was his first disputation. He thought to excel and impress his instructors, so he laid aside his notes from his lectures in Rome and prepared using the theological texts he had acquired in Vienna before his departure for Rome. The differences in interpretation and theological arguments were considerable.110 It would not have taken much more, he claimed, for the professor to declare him a heretic. He had learned his lesson: that one ought not to write one line above that which the professor dictated. After he was so definitively slapped down in debate, and realized that free thinking and true theological examination was not particularly tolerated, he seems to have spent little mental energy thinking about theological matters in an engaged intellectual way. His intellectual curiosity was satisfied instead by the aristocratic world of the eighteenth century

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books smuggled in with the help of a Prussian classmate. Important above all other works was the permanent impression made by Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. The problems of the late-eighteenth-century Catholic Church were compounded by the reality of a Church whose wealth, power, and prestige resided in the cities. As Callahan and Higgs note, “In an overwhelmingly rural society, the church was urban.”111 If one looks at the number of religious institutions in Prague alone, this is borne out. The overwhelming presence of the cathedral chapters, monasteries, convents, educational institutions and charitable organizations within the four districts of Prague was extraordinary, rivaled in fact only by the massive presence in stone of the aristocracy. This urban presence, as impressive as it may have been for the citizens of Prague, was in stark contrast to the scarcity of clerical services in the country, and this ultimately affected how the nobles of the Church were viewed by the rural population. Already divided from the population by language usage, status, and seigniorial rights, the nobles in the Church added the distance of the urban/rural divide. Although the parish clergy in Bohemia did not in general take part in the Germanization of the local population and did in the interests of the Church maintain close ties to the populace, the nobility in the Church were yet again perceptibly removed from the realities and concerns of rural life. At the weakest, yet arguably the most important, point of Church life, namely the parish, the nobility were largely absent. Added to the conservative pull of the position of the Church and nobility on the land and in the cities was the international character of the Catholic Church. When Kaspar Sternberg left the fairly provincial world of his parents in December 1779 to attend the Collegium Germanicum, he had accepted that his life would, for the most part, be spent beyond the boundaries of his homeland. This was not unusual for someone who expected to pursue a career in the Church. The internationalism of the church shored up the cosmopolitan nature of the imperial nobility connected to it. The German connection, reinforced by the place of Bohemia in the Empire also contributed to the intellectual affiliation of the Bohemian nobility with German-speaking lands. The world of the Bohemian elite in 1700 included an intricate system of privileges and social mores that very effectively shaped aristocratic identity and gave structure to the political and social ambitions of the aristocracy. The political legacy of upheaval and encroaching Habsburg power, the mixed bag of ethnicity and language, had created a uniquely cosmopolitan Bohemian aristocracy with strong ties to Vienna and deeply invested in taking part in and being part of the culture of the West. Land and wealth, education, and a host of imperial and German institutions were buttresses for a sta52

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tus-dominated, hierarchical social system that gave absolute precedence at the start of the eighteenth century to the high aristocracy. On first glance, there seems little cause for the Bohemian aristocrat to reevaluate his privileged, cosmopolitan existence. However, by 1800, the claim to power that was obvious in 1700 was vulnerable in critical ways. The traditional world of the elites was open to challenge from both below and above. Although the challenges to aristocratic predominance are primarily the focus of the following chapter, it is possible to see the seeds of change even in the traditional aristocratic world. Rural life had been the source of aristocratic wealth if not sociability, and as rural life was altered by new technology in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Bohemian aristocracy learned to combine landed power with innovative industrial and agricultural techniques. Allied with new ideas on social responsibility, rationality, and progress, a different aristocratic approach to the uses of land could loosen the magnetic pull of traditional status and privilege. Education could also contribute to the eventual unraveling of old regime identities. Traditional noble education meant education at home, and this reinforced status and social insularity. The Jesuit hold on educational institutions and censorship in the Habsburg Monarchy had contributed to the stagnant intellectual atmosphere in Bohemia. After the dissolution of the Jesuit order (to Maria Theresa’s regret) in 1773, the quality and liberality of education was significantly improved. There were other elements of aristocratic upbringing that counteracted the Jesuitical influence as well. The tradition of home tutoring brought non-noble scholars and aristocrats together with important consequences for the national movement. The freedom of home tutoring also meant that the curriculum was limited only by the conservative views of parents. Finally, touring, a popular element of aristocratic education, could be a formative and positive influence on aristocratic identity. The cosmopolitanism that came with an aristocratic education and touring could paradoxically act as both national glue and solvent. The time aristocrats spent abroad to round off their education and perfect their personal “polish” could strengthen their nonnational affinities and encourage them as “citizens of Europe.” At the same time, travel abroad also exposed aristocrats to invaluable intellectual influences that had a profound impact on their activities at home and that reinforced the ways they were inexorably Bohemian citizens. Members of the aristocracy like the Sternbergs and Czernins were not a rebellious or openly subversive group. They were well aware of their position within the Monarchy and their status on the land, and this affected their actions vis-à-vis Bohemia and Czech national politics. Whatever members of the upper nobility felt about Bohemian autonomy and Czech identity, the aristocratic world of the eighteenth century

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even as a consciously Bohemian elite they could not really conceive of the map redrawn to the extent that Bohemia would be entirely independent of both the Empire and the Habsburgs, and this inevitably clouded their perception of a singularly Czech or Slavic identity. The dominance of the aristocracy on the land, and the ability of Bohemian aristocrats to maintain their local privileges, if not their national ones, has often been seen as the bedrock of aristocratic conservatism. This picture is of an aristocratic world of privilege within Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire. Aristocratic power and influence were certainly not an entirely “internal” Austrian or Bohemian affair. Although the essential position of the aristocracy, despite the incursions made by modernization, was maintained until the end of the nineteenth century, the pressures on aristocratic life produced a splintered response on the part of the aristocracy. The percolating intellectual and social environment of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the background for an aristocracy in transition. Landed privilege, the intimate connections between the aristocracy and the realms of church and empire, and the international and urban elements of elite life, were all interwoven parts of the identity of the Bohemian aristocracy, and all contained the seeds of new social identities beyond class or status. Within the Catholic Church of the eighteenth century, there were strong elements of reform and intellectual rejuvenation. The Holy Roman Empire, obviously a fossil of a peculiar political beast, had nonetheless functioned as a unifying point of identification. Its functional problems and ultimate dissolution in 1806 allowed a reevaluation on the part of its constituent individuals of where their loyalties and interests lay. For a Bohemian, to be an aristocrat in an electoral state, the only kingdom in the Empire, was a different matter than being simply a member of the Austrian nobility. Even within cosmopolitanism, the apparent antithesis to the solid development of national identity, it is possible to find the seeds of future national activity. International social networks that were based largely on status were exchanged to some extent for international intellectual networks. With every contact abroad there was the chance for the exchange of new ideas, scientific method, and productive techniques. The ostensible internationalism of the scientific community was not impervious to the language of national competition, and increasingly from the late eighteenth century, nation replaced man in the concerns of the intellectually engaged.

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c ha p ter two

The Challenges of Reform and Revolution

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n 1801, the prospects of the Bohemian aristocrat appeared fundamentally altered from the previous century. Reflecting that year on the stresses facing men in his position, Kaspar Sternberg wrote to a friend: Unhappiness to the man who lacks the courage to raise himself above events, if he falls in a century like our own. I see them every day, those who succumb under the weight of sorrows, because they have neither the strength nor the will to march with the spirit of the century, which they have not understood. I had the strength to make my personal revolution before the general revolution could reach me. I am now prepared for every eventuality. My state, my perspectives, my hopes are no longer those of this overthrown world. I am driven back to nature—nature and the natural sciences offer me an inexhaustible treasure, the life of a man is not long enough to grasp it, it is independent of men. . . .1

Sternberg’s reassessment of his personal plans and the challenges presented by “this overthrown world” were at the root of an essential revolution in aristocratic identity. For some nobles, the “spirit of the century” to which Sternberg referred represented a constant subversion of traditional noble status and identity. This chapter will explore Sternberg’s “general revolution”—the Enlightenment and its practical applications in Bohemia, the centralizing reforms of the Habsburgs, and the French Revolution—in an attempt to understand how and why Sternberg and others like him underwent a personal revolution in response. What was the impact on aristocratic identity when the traditions of aristocratic customs, power, and position were challenged?

This chapter addresses both positive and negative, if such subjective terms can be employed, influences on aristocratic identity and its relationship to the national community. Under positive one can count the intellectual currents prevalent at the turn of the eighteenth century, and the changes in sociability introduced by the entrance of the aristocracy into the world of Freemasonry. These influences were positive in the sense that the experiences and knowledge gained by aristocrats through their exploration of Enlightenment philosophy and political thought and Romantic literature encouraged them to reevaluate their world views. The continued interaction of aristocrats with other social strata on the relatively equal footing of secret societies, important components of the emerging public sphere, gave them an individual social alternative without directly attacking their collective social position. The Enlightenment emphasis on education and secular moral society, in combination with traditional aristocratic ideals of paternalistic responsibility and public representation, prompted some aristocrats to take an active role in confronting what they perceived to be Bohemia’s economic, social, and cultural problems. Directly challenging the foundations of aristocratic ascendency, the Habsburg program of centralizing reforms was a negative influence in that it prompted a defensive response and reinforced the tendency of some aristocrats to retrench. Yet this retrenchment was to be important for the definition of Bohemian statehood. Retrenchment meant a return to the past—a return to historic, pre-1627 Bohemia, with its ancient rights and constitution intact. Thus the pressures brought to bear on the aristocracy by the reforms of the Habsburgs and by the consequences of the French Revolution were negative, but encouraged interest in Bohemia’s culture and its historical distinctiveness. The Habsburg reforms, loosely and rather inappropriately labeled Josephinism, the French Revolution viewed at first from a distance and then brought to Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire in the course of the wars, and the dissolution of the Empire in 1806, appeared to many aristocrats to be cataclysmic events that confronted them in every aspect of their traditional world. The question posed here is not whether the aristocracy was or was not in decline. Despite the pressures placed on the institutions of aristocratic power both domestically and internationally, aristocratic predominance in Bohemia was maintained until the turn of the nineteenth century, if not until the establishment of the first Czechoslovak Republic in 1918. Although the question of aristocratic decline is important and will be addressed in the chapters that follow, the problem here is one of the aristocracy’s perception of their position and the questionable longevity of their elite status. Aristocratic identity, to the degree that it affected the private and public actions of 56

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individual aristocrats, was a matter of self-perception rather than an objective analysis of power and institutions. Jonathan Dewald has described the aristocracy of Europe as a flexible social group capable of adapting and maintaining status and power.2 Dewald’s argument is persuasive in hindsight, when one examines the representative institutions of the turn of the century, along with the economic and social strengths of the European elites. However, a century before the outlook for the maintenance of aristocratic position looked grimmer to aristocratic observers. Aristocrats saw a Europe besieged by revolution and war, and in Bohemia this came after decades of centralizing reforms that directly sought to undermine many institutions of traditional aristocratic predominance. For those aristocrats evaluating their situation, the social pyramid upon which they sat seemed considerably less sturdy. Even after the recovery of conservative power in the post-1815 period, Prince Friedrich Schwarzenberg compared the position of the nobility to that of the “Last Mohican,” whose decline was inaugurated by the “atmosphere of modern civilization.”3 For both conservative and progressive aristocrats, the Habsburg reforms and the French Revolution and its aftermath were the sources of serious apprehensions about the longevity of aristocratic dominance. The powerful personal fears and doubt engendered by these events have encouraged historians to conclude that status insecurity and defensiveness were the sole inspiration for patriotic activity. In fact, Liah Greenfeld has argued that in the east, nation formation took place as a result of “status insecurity and ressentiment.”4 She further suggests that in a given society a serious internal threat to the position of an elite group will force a transformation of that elite’s identity and allegiance in an attempt to preserve status and position. This transformation causes a switch of loyalties to take place; in the Russian case, this meant changing from an identity based on class to one based on nation: “One could be stripped of nobility, but . . . not of nationality. There was in nationalism an insurance of a modicum of an unassailable dignity that was one’s to keep. And so, Russian aristocrats were gradually turning into nationalists. . . .”5 This argument does resonate as a partial explanation of particularly conservative Bohemian opposition to the Habsburgs. However, there is an additional story that needs to be told here. Patriotic activity among progressive and Enlightenment-oriented aristocrats was not merely a cynical attempt to undermine Habsburg authority and reestablish local aristocratic control. There were positive forces at work that encouraged aristocrats to step beyond the mental and physical boundaries of their estates, and this was another element in the shift from empire to nation. the challenges of reform and revolution

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The Path of Enlightened Thought and Romantic Feeling The Enlightenment’s reverberations in the Austrian lands can be traced through two trends, both of which had an impact on the identity of the Bohemian nobility. On the one hand, the political philosophy of the Enlightenment spawned, or at least contributed to, the programs of monarchs interested in a rational, efficient, and centralized state. In the interests of promoting such a state, the Habsburgs, particularly Joseph II, pursued policies, like bureaucratic streamlining and Germanization, that seemed guaranteed to lead to increased disaffection with the imperial government among both local elites and their subjects. On the other hand, Enlightenment literature and its scientific precursors incited a growing dedication to scientific exploration, rationalism, and literary interest in the individual. In 1774, the end of the monopoly of education held by the Jesuits since the early seventeenth century also allowed a blossoming of intellectual exchange in the Monarchy. These trends contributed to an increase in commitment to educational reform, local linguistic development, and improved rural conditions. The impact of intellectual trends and movements are always difficult to assess, and this is certainly true for any discussion of the role of the Enlightenment in Bohemia, and the impact of the Enlightenment on the development of Czech national feeling.6 Certainly literary and philosophical tastes suggest that many educated aristocrats were closely attuned to the intellectual traditions developing in the capitals of Western Europe. These Bohemian aristocrats and their educated compatriots saw themselves as a part of Western tradition, citizens of the “Republic of Letters,” and even more so as co-inheritors of German intellectual tradition. Although imperial bans and censorship sought to limit access to Western literature, aristocratic travel abroad and international connections assured that the aristocracy continued to procure literature from the West.7 The resistance of the nobility to interference from the regime was not always successful. In an early case, Francis Anton Count Sporck ran afoul of the clergy-controlled censors in 1729.8 As Jaroslav Schaller related, some “jealous and evil-minded” individual had reported to the authorities that Sporck, a “generous philanthropic man,” had filled his library at Kuks with heretical texts that he was translating into German, printing secretly, and disseminating among his subjects.9 Despite being censured, Sporck’s procurement of Western texts was not unusual, and French literature, including works from classic Enlightenment and French Revolutionary documents like the “Rights of Man,” works of the German Aufklärung and Romanticism, and English political thought, formed a fairly constant intellectual current into the private libraries of the educated—and 58

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privileged—in Bohemia.10 Kaspar Sternberg mentions in his memoir that many banned books could be found in his mother’s collection, without the knowledge of his father. As in other fairly conservative households, there were many French works banned from Sternberg family perusal, according to the strictures of the Austrian authorities and the patriarch Johann Sternberg. Nonetheless, as one would expect of Anna Kolowrat, many of these banned books, notably editions of Voltaire’s theater, Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois, Rousseau, and various new German works had, as Sternberg wrote, “snuck into my mother’s library.”11 Although Joseph II had initially supported lifting press censorship, the dangers of press freedom became obvious to the government in 1789, as the news from the West got more and more alarming. The events in France served to increase the numbers of newspaper readers, and the police reports claimed that accounts of the French Revolution incited comparisons and “encouraged a rebellious mood.”12 In 1790, the Viennese government decreed that “all books and writings of such a content that they diminish obedience to the sovereigns, cause a lessening of the observance of civil or religious duties, excite doubt in religious matters, expose the servants of religion to ridicule and make them ridiculous or despicable will be most strictly forbidden.”13 However, the efforts of the regime to curb the influx of Enlightenment literature and, subsequently, any news about the French Revolution itself, were not very successful. Fines and prohibitions seemed to have little effect on either the importation or the printing of “suspect” material. Banned manuscripts could be sent abroad for printing and brought back to Bohemia, and it was impossible to monitor the activities of aristocrats abroad, despite the penchant of the regime for opening and reading mail. The catalogues of aristocratic libraries, often compiled by men who would become icons of the national movement, are further evidence that the works of the French Enlightenment were to be found in nearly every aristocratic library.14 It is also clear that noble libraries facilitated the access to and spread of Enlightenment literature among the non-noble population in Bohemia. Nearly all of the “national awakeners,” including František Palacký and Josef Dobrovský received their “Enlightenment education” in the houses and libraries of the aristocracy.15 Voltaire, as a writer and a popularizer of science, was increasingly popular in enlightened circles in Bohemia after the 1770s. The aristocracy had access to the writings of Voltaire and others from their youth, and several enlightened aristocrats corresponded with him.16 At sixteen, Baron Francis Ledebur, writing to his friend Francis Sternberg in a regular intellectual and personal exchange, wrote of reading John Locke’s “civil government” work, and remarked that he was returning Sternberg’s copy of Voltaire, “I read the challenges of reform and revolution

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little of it, but what I did read pleased me enormously.”17 Alongside the canon of the French writers was the importation of works of the Aufklärung from Protestant Germany, particularly through the efforts of Karl Heinrich Seibt, who taught at Prague University from 1762 until 1801.18 Anglophilia was also rampant among aristocratic readers. Montesquieu and his writings on England were very popular, in part because his writings were perceived as an endorsement of the right of the Estates to act against the absolute will of the monarch. In general how Voltaire and other writers of the Enlightenment were received by Bohemian readers varied considerably, but one of the most influential circles of Enlightenment thought were those involved in the publication of the Prager Gelehrter Nachrichten, a critical journal published by the Private Learned Society in Prague.19 As this publication made clear, influential individuals took ideas of reform and progress from abroad—Bohemia was not hermetically sealed from the West—but these ideas were molded to fit Bohemia’s unique context. There is debate in Czech historiography about the indigenous nature of Enlightenment thought in Bohemia, but the question itself is conditioned by the tendency of national historians to conflate the issues of Enlightenment and national revival.20 From a nationalist’s perspective, moving toward enlightenment implied a greater sense of truthful self-understanding, a higher sense of civilization that could be realized only if the nation was recognized and reached its true potential. If Enlightenment and revival were seen as virtually synonymous, it was important for more nationally minded writers to perceive the Enlightenment as a homegrown affair, rather than as an import from the West.21 Despite the problems in this approach, it is true that the history of the Enlightenment in Bohemia and the literary revival that followed it ought not to be explained purely in terms of Western development.22 The contribution of writers like Jan Nejedlý and Jaroslav Puchmajer, was crucial for enlightened thought in Bohemia. However, these writers were working in a period later than what we tend to ascribe to the era of Enlightenment in the West, and Nejedlý himself was already enunciating a “sentimental enlightenment” view of the nation, language, and state that would resonate powerfully in the nineteenth century.23 As Nejedlý wrote, “It is the duty of each of us to fiercely defend his homeland, that means his mother tongue. . . .”24 And Josef Dobrovský himself remarked that Enlightenment literature was available in Bohemia, “but nothing read as it did on its native soil.”25 An explosion of tracts and treatises appeared in Bohemia, particularly after the liberalization of the press under Joseph II, but ideas imported from abroad were filtered through the prism of the domestic social and intellectual tradition. Whether the issue was admiration for England, commentary on the abuses of church or 60

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state, or even social and political equality, all topics were evaluated from the standpoint of Bohemia, with its distinct social and political traditions. Despite the ambivalence about the impact of some Western philosophical ideas on the part of aristocratic readers, they were enticed by the new Enlightenment emphasis on reason, rationality, and individual edification. Francis Joseph Kinský made sure that rationalism was at the root of his educational instructions, and was convinced that teaching a noble youth to think rationally would guarantee the boy a useful and successful future, and prevent his being misled by wrongheaded philosophies.26 Kinský believed that if one spoke with reason under all circumstances, and studied the character of those under one’s care, morality and good would be the permanent gains of education.27 Kinský asserted that he supported Locke’s contention that although men might be born weak, they were also born without knowledge and were as blank as a “white sheet of paper.”28 There was no such thing as a bad character that had not been taught: If educated with reason and with proper methods, any student would show proper progress. Count Georg Buquoy, in the introduction to his philosophical essays, refers to his reason as the sole source of intellectual knowledge: “Through understanding and reason alone, through simple reflection and demonstration, I have reached a harmonic . . . vision.”29 Joachim Sternberg also “became a disciple” of rational tenets “in accordance with his natural eccentricity and under the fantastic influence of the eighteenth century,” according to Kaspar Sternberg.30 Enlightenment-inspired reason was not the only intellectual influence making waves in Bohemian learned circles. Romanticism, like the Enlightenment, made an appearance in Bohemia, but the reception of Romanticism among the aristocracy was also ambivalent. Strains of German Romanticism in Bohemia were to be found in the importation of J. G. Herder’s works, as well as that of authors like Goethe, who expressed a certain sentimentalism despite their position as “classical writers.”31 Kaspar Sternberg read Goethe while at the Collegium Germanicum in Rome, and felt that The Sorrows of Young Werther in particular defined the age, as well as his youth. He read the novel, which was banned at the Collegium, by hiding out in a bushy cypress tree, and “swam in tears” at the trials of Werther “while the cicadas announced the hottest hours of the day.”32 Romantic science, which developed in the German-speaking lands, determined that “to integrate nature is the point of man’s existence.”33 Romanticism also proposed a new, sentimental view of community that emphasized in particular the beauty and nuances to be discovered in folk culture. Herder’s writings inspired pride in the distinctiveness of the national community, and seemed to offer evidence that the national community was eternal: National identity was inherent the challenges of reform and revolution

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to the relations of man, and could not be imported, exported, or adopted.34 Herder placed emphasis on language as well as inherent national worth, and tied language to a people’s soul and sovereignty. Furthermore, in the German tradition language became the expression of political independence. To recognize a language other than the mother tongue as the official language was an “unbearable constriction of a people’s sovereignty.35 As Herder wrote, language was the “mirror of a nation’s history, works, joys, sorrows.”36 However, these views were somewhat less compelling for the Bohemian aristocrats who were distinguished by their cosmopolitan, and enlightened, character, and the impact of Romantic thought was more strongly felt among the new generation of national activists after 1830. Although Romanticism was less appealing to those who were committed to science, rationalism, and Enlightenment, it did offer a different perspective on the vibrant past of the national community that resonated with those looking to shore up that community. Many of the aristocrats engaged in enlightened activity understood the need for recognition of the “real” language of Bohemia, and others interested in reasserting Estates’ rights used language to reinforce their desire for increased regional autonomy.37 More importantly, Romantic ideals of the national community did resonate in the linguistic and historical activities of intellectual and academic societies, and were in some sense the source of the desire to provide a literary history, whether it was authentic or not. Whereas scientific method had influenced the definition of the geographical land and the development of historical inquiry, Romanticism encouraged the search for national heroes and the glorification of the national past. Romantic poetry in Bohemia went even further by emphasizing the mythical past, focusing on fabled figures like the famous Libuše, mythical mother of the Czech state.38 Romanticism encouraged national scholars like Václav Hanka, a student of the great enlightened writers and eventually librarian of the National Museum, to conjure a glorified, impressive, and culturally significant past by means of “newly discovered,” in other words, false, documents.39 For the nationalist, Romanticism essentially provided assurance that the nation had not died and never would die, and needed merely to be roused from slumber. The moral and spiritual reform suggested in Romantic writing could be applied to national reform as well: Only the need for a well-defined community remained.

meeting “on the level”: freemasonry and secret societies The practical application of Enlightenment thought and rationalism in Bohemia is most clearly seen in the foundation of a range of institutions: 62

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intellectual academies, learned societies, reading circles, and the expansion of Freemasonry in the Habsburg Monarchy, particularly after 1740. The relationship of the aristocracy to these societies and the impact they would have on social life, as well as the national movement, is treated in the following chapter, yet Freemasonry was a distinctive feature of pre-Revolutionary Europe, and was part of the changing sociability and altered political thought of that era. Freemasonry was an essential component of the “Republic of Letters,” and according to Robert Kerner, Freemasons were the “warriors of the new liberalism.”40 While implementing Enlightenment ideals, Freemasons “reached beyond reason and intellect to the essence of life, historic action.”41 The first Freemason lodge in Bohemia was established in 1726, and by 1785 there were seven lodges, including two in Prague.42 Although lodges varied considerably, Freemasonry’s values were in general the values of the age: freedom and “the belief in man’s ethical autonomy, capacity for improvement and common rationality.”43 Lodges encouraged strong, enlightened government and were dedicated to religious toleration. They espoused a wide range of enlightened ideals, including the promotion of individual education, reasoned discourse, secular morality, and constitutional government. Freemasonry’s core belief in rationalization could be, and was, used as a justification to support Germanization in the interests of rational government on the one hand, and Slavic revival in the interests of education and communication on the other. Freemasonry’s absorption of the tradition of Enlightenment thought that formulated a new “religion of nature” was important for the expansion of science and intellectual life in Bohemia.44 This religion of nature encouraged Freemasons to view the workings of the natural world as a road map for a prosperous and peaceful society. The aristocracy from across Europe, including the Habsburg Empire and Bohemia, were deeply involved in the Masonic movement, and in fact grew to dominate many lodges in Central Europe. One of Kaspar Sternberg’s defining experiences during his first residency in Regensburg was his involvement with a Masonic lodge there.45 Sternberg socialized with many other Freemasons, and was introduced by them into the “ritual life.” To Sternberg, Freemasonry represented a commitment to philanthropic beliefs and action, and this, about which the Freemasons in Regensburg were vocal, and the secrecy of the organization, were the hooks that pulled him in.46 Sternberg claimed to have joined the Regensburg lodge without the oath of membership, remarking somewhat defensively that the lodge was “innocent and charitable, and the secrets with which they were entrusted were in the end not sealed by any severe oath.”47 In addition, Sternberg claimed that they were free from any political fervor.48 The Freemasons appealed to men of Sternberg’s background for a variety of reasons. the challenges of reform and revolution

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Masonic lodges offered an “opportunity to create . . . a tolerant world where, if only briefly and of course secretly, ‘brothers’ from a variety of backgrounds could meet, as the masonic phrase asserted, ‘on the level.’ ”49 Within the Holy Roman Empire, Freemasonry was a social milieu of those impressed by British constitutionalism, stability, and prosperity, and it quickly found adherents in the highest echelons of court and aristocratic society.50 Meeting “on the level” was one of the basic values of Freemasonry: “Together with socially engaged nobility, active, self-assured bourgeois created here a place where, beyond the spheres of court and church, they could realize their drive for public engagement, their need for secular knowledge and enlightenment free from all religious connections, and not least a social life that practiced equality among men.”51 In addition, the individual, atomized society advocated in much of Enlightenment literature, and which was promoted by the Freemasons, did not take away the need for “community and membership in organized institutions.”52 Robert Micklus puts this very simply: Freemasonry was first and foremost a form of clubbing in an age of clubbing. We read so often about the anxieties that Freemasonry caused the church or state, or . . . about all the nefarious rituals that Freemasons reputedly conducted behind closed doors, that we tend to regard it as some sort of outcast, subversive organization, when, in fact, in an age when clubbing really was the thing to do, being a Freemason— to Freemasons, at least—was . . . a part of the normal social fabric of eighteenth-century life.53 The freedom advocated by lodges was the freedom of social equality, the right to interact independent of status and state.54 The organization of the lodges, their freedom and independence, “were possible only in a sphere where the influence of the church authorities as well as the political access of the ruling state power was withdrawn.”55 These qualities of Freemason association were evidence of Freemasonry’s importance in the emerging public sphere. Beyond the shadows of ritualized mystery, Freemasonry required its followers to meet independent of state authority to pass judgment on society’s ills. Freemasonry served to satisfy the feeling of common purpose in the pursuit of Enlightenment goals, whereas its ritual and aspect of mysterious secrecy filled a religious void. The Freemasons were, of course, not the only secret society, quasi-legal or otherwise, to exert an influence over the Bohemian aristocracy. The Illuminati, or Illuminists, had found considerable support in the Empire, particularly in Bavaria.56 Founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, a university law professor in Ingolstadt, the Illuminists were a “quasi-Masonic” organization, as 64

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nearly all Illuminists were simultaneously Masons. Weishaupt’s stated intent was to “help reason gain supremacy.”57 As a radical, rationalist wing of Freemasonry, the tenets of the Illuminatists were distinct from those of general Freemasonry, although the Illuminatists borrowed the symbols and organization of the Freemasons and even infiltrated and took over a number of Freemason lodges.58 In general the Illuminatists sought to foster Enlightenment principles, among them equality, individualism, and freedom. Their “chosen weapon” for the fight against irrationality and the problems of their communities was the “moral education of humanity,” and all Illuminists were expected to follow a strict moral code.59 The Illuminists believed that all men and women were capable of moral regeneration. As Weishaupt proclaimed, “The whole plan of the order is based on the education of men, not by declamation, but by promoting and rewarding virtue. . . .”60 Illuminist societies had a considerable core of noble and clerical adherents, like Kaspar Sternberg, despite the more radical Illuminist intention of avoiding “aristocratic pretension and the taint of pseudo-medieval Catholicism.”61 Members adopted special names for their interaction within the order, and thereby removed the most obvious and immediate symbol of their status, namely their title. Many famous and high officials, nobles, and literary figures are listed in the Illuminist registers, including Joseph von Sonnenfels, Goethe, Herder, and Karl von Hardenberg.62 Indeed, the Illuminists were closely linked at their inception to the Catholic intelligentsia of Bavaria, where they “concentrated on reason, natural law and a classless, cosmopolitan and republican world order within the concept of a totally emancipated new church.”63 Although the Illuminists did not promote any actions technically hostile to religion or state, they “sincerely believed that the existing religion and society were incompatible with the dictates of ‘natural’ religion and ‘natural’ society.”64 Illuminist lodges had a strict order of obedience, discipline, loyalty, and secrecy, and were far less tolerant and open than their Masonic counterparts. The immediate aims of Illuminism were to “promote the individual perfection of its members, and to reform society as a whole in accordance with the principles of Aufklärung,” and in their reform program the Illuminists explicitly linked Enlightenment ideals with political goals.65 Virtue, education, and knowledge were the bywords of Illuminist activities. In the final analysis, there was little actual revolutionary fervor among most Illuminists, and Weishaupt himself seems innocent of any concrete revolutionary plans, despite the rhetoric.66 Elaborate secrecy and the appearance of jockeying for political influence, however, made the Illuminists seem a threat to social and political stability.67 In the late 1780s, the Bavarian government issued a number of decrees against the Illuminists, and strenuously sought to eradicate the challenges of reform and revolution

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them. Karl Theodore of Bavaria, convinced that the Illuminists were plotting the assassination of all princes, banned the Illuminatists along with the Freemasons and all other secret societies in 1785.68 In the Empire, the Illuminists were also made illegal, and the Freemasons placed under police observance. According to Kaspar Sternberg, a priest from Munich named Johann Jakob Lanz was visiting in Regensburg in 1785, with Adam Weishaupt, when Lanz was struck by lightning (divine justice?) and killed.69 The authorities subsequently discovered a list of Illuminists among Lanz’s belongings. This began an intensive pursuit of Illuminists throughout the Empire, particularly in Mainz and Bavaria. Sternberg himself denied any formal connection to the Illuminists, but he was listed as a member of the Regensburg Illuminist lodge, “Karl zu den drei Schlüsseln” in 1783.70 In 1787, mired in the politics of the Diet at Regensburg, Sternberg reflected, “The perfection of humanity that Weishaupt preached seemed very desirable to me, I regretted only that it had not appeared on the agenda fifty years earlier.”71 Given that oaths had to be subsequently sworn by all officials and priests that they were not, nor ever had been, Illuminists, Sternberg’s repeated disavowal of affiliation with the Illuminists was understandable.72 Before the ban, the Illuminists had established lodges from Bremen to Vienna, including a considerable one in Prague, and at its height in 1784, Illuminism had between 2,000 and 2,500 members.73 The curbs on secret associations effectively ended the organized activity of the society, but it could not erase the close and abiding social connections formed in Illuminist societies, and these connections continued to exert influence in the region.74 Fifty years after the ban on the Illuminists, Sternberg still reflected on the worth of their agenda, even while denying any direct connection to them.

Habsburg Reform and the Nobility The political thought of the Enlightenment influenced more than the sociability and identity of individuals privy to it. Another practical application of Enlightenment thought was at the state level, and the attempts of the Habsburgs to rationalize state administration were to have a serious impact on the nobility, both practically and in terms of their perception of their social and political position.75 There are numerous debates about the cause and content of the Austrian Enlightenment, as well as about the reform policies of Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II.76 Joseph II was a truly committed enlightened monarch, and the apparent discrepancies between freedom and individuality on the one hand and absolutism on the other have often been 66

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attributed to Joseph’s primary concern—strengthening the state. As Joseph wrote in his first political memorandum, “Everything exists for the state; this word contains everything, so all who live in it should come together to promote its interests.”77 Joseph’s confrontation with the privileged orders in Bohemia and the rest of the Monarchy stemmed from his conviction that their status and privileges were unjustified and weakened the state. But Joseph did not start from scratch. His attempts to redress the balance between inherited privilege and state authority, and the response of aristocracy to these efforts, were related to his mother’s reform program and her not entirely amiable relationship with the Bohemian aristocracy. After the tempests of the seventeenth century, the Bohemian aristocracy was on the whole a faithful servant of the Monarchy, and the mid-seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries constituted the high point of their influence in Bohemia and Vienna. In this period the high Bohemian nobility closely resembled an imperial court nobility while maintaining a considerable amount of political, social, and economic autonomy, as well as being one of the richest nobilities in Europe.78 While the Bohemian nobility were at the pinnacle of their imperial influence, landholding patterns, court service, and intermarriage seemed to reinforce successfully their “trans-territoriality” and cosmopolitanism. One would expect this to weaken territorial particularism. Under Maria Theresa’s father Charles VI, however, the influence of Bohemians at court, particularly at the imperial level, receded, and the prominent position enjoyed by them was taken over by Italian nobles. Indeed, there is evidence that despite the power and prestige of the old Bohemian nobility, they were never treated by the Habsburgs as quite equal to their Austrian counterparts.79 The declining imperial influence of the Bohemian nobility in the early eighteenth century is a partial explanation for the lack of loyalty displayed by the Bohemian Estates in 1740. When Charles Albert of Bavaria, elected Emperor over Maria Theresa’s husband Francis Stephen, occupied Prague in 1741 at the start of the War of the Austrian Succession, over half of the nobles did homage to him.80 The majority of these were provincial, rather than royal office holders, evidence that the retreat of the Bohemian nobility from the imperial court had realigned a number of families with provincial interests.81 These events signified that “the Bohemian Estates neither reposed a great deal of confidence in Vienna nor felt any strong bonds of attachment to the monarch.”82 There were signs from the beginning of the eighteenth century that the nobility had begun to think increasingly in terms of the Bohemian Land, and developed a new sense of the Bohemian polity separate from Habsburg control.83 As Eila Hassenpflug-Elzholz states, “It is notable that despite the progress in integrating the Bohemian nobility the challenges of reform and revolution

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into the Monarchy there remained an even larger, independent block within the Bohemian nobility (Adelsnation) that continued to represent Bohemian interests.”84 In addition, by the eighteenth century, “foreign” nobles of recent Bohemian citizenship had held land and title for so long that they no longer associated their Bohemian presence with loyalty and service to the Habsburgs. Disaffection with the Monarchy and a rising tax burden, perceived as falling unfairly on Bohemia, contributed to the development of a nascent territorial patriotism which the events after 1741 did nothing to abate. The disaffection with which Maria Theresa regarded the Bohemians after 1741 contributed to her willingness to see their restricted autonomy limited even further. As Seton-Watson remarks, Maria Theresa “often showed great clemency, but she never forgave.”85 Within eighteenth-century Bohemia, centralizing policies and retribution against rebellion whittled a considerable amount of old-fashioned institutionalized political power from the Diet. Maria Theresa herself averred, “In discussions concerning the All-Highest commands, the Estates have not to debate the question ‘whether’ (ob), but only the question ‘in what way’ (wie).”86 Maria Theresa sought to reduce the influence of the Estates by creating parallel administrative institutions and encircling Bohemian particularism with a trained nonnational bureaucracy that would remain dependent on the crown for advancement. Needless to say, these policies did nothing to endear the central government to the local nobility. The episode of 1741 proved that the nobility had already moved away from an unquestioning support of the Habsburgs. Certainly Maria Theresa had loyal advisors drawn from the ranks of the Bohemian nobility, Wenzel Anton Kaunitz first and foremost among them.87 As Kaunitz remarked to Maria Theresa, “I cannot agree to lift up the nobility and the Estates once again. I am myself a Bohemian noble and a seignior, but my duty to Your Majesty stands above these.”88 Further efforts by Maria Theresa and her advisors, and later Joseph II, to “rationalize” the administration of the Monarchy at the expense of the nobility contained another motive as well, namely to “merge the individuality and national identity of Bohemia in that of the other provinces.”89 Rather than treating Bohemia as an autonomous kingdom with a long-standing independent role within the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburgs sought to absorb it into the hereditary lands by dissolving separate Bohemian institutions like the Bohemian Chancellory that had traditionally been controlled by the nobility. Not coincidentally, this Habsburg agenda developed in a period when the Bohemians themselves were increasingly interested in precisely that particularity which the Habsburgs sought to stifle. Even for conservative Bohemians, Habsburg policies made it seem that they had little to lose in finding a new common ground with compatriots closer to home. 68

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With a few notable exceptions, like Kaunitz and Rudolf Chotek, the Bohemian nobility as a whole did not regain their position at the imperial court after the 1740s, and were in fact replaced by a service nobility with much stronger Austrian loyalty and a German intellectual orientation. Haugwitz’s reforms in 1748–1749, opposed by Bohemians at court like Friedrich Harrach and Philipp Kinský, united the Austrian and Bohemian chancellories, thereby abolishing Bohemia’s autonomous administrative status, as well as the distinction of Bohemian noble title.90 These developments, although part and parcel of bureaucratic professionalization, did nothing to impede the Bohemian belief that the interests of the Bohemian kingdom and the Monarchy were diverging. This conclusion was to bear fruit in the subsequent formation of an aristocratic opposition in the 1780s. In the case of Maria Theresa, the drive for reform came from fiscal pressure rather than any deep belief in the tenets of the age.91 The loss of Silesia in the War of the Austrian Succession hurt both the fiscal health of the Monarchy and the royal pride of Maria Theresa.92 Convinced as she was that the loss of this rich province, nearly half of the territory of the Bohemian crown, was to be blamed on the poor state of the Monarchy’s finances and armed forces, she turned her attention to these areas immediately. The Empress sought to promote economic unity, industry, agriculture, communications, transportation, and administrative reform. Under the guidance of Friedrich Wilhelm Haugwitz, the Empress enacted a series of constitutional and legal reforms designed to streamline Austrian administration and make tax collection as efficient as possible.93 In addition to efficiency it became a matter of some concern to ensure that the population was in such a state that it could, in fact, pay, as was described in the previous chapter. For all the “gentleness” of their implementation, a number of these reforms had a direct impact on the nobility. The Habsburgs, both Maria Theresa and Joseph, sought to replace local noble and Estate offices with a loyal, controllable, professionalized state bureaucracy that would in effect supplant the importance of social origin with education and merit. Maria Theresa’s reforms began the drive toward bureaucratic professionalization and centralization, and sought to smudge the lines of Land particularity and, in the court’s view, replace the capricious noble administration of the local districts (Kreis/kraj ) with trained, royal officials. The offices of district captains (Hejtmann), once dominated by the nobility, were increasingly subordinated to royal administrators in political, economic, and military affairs, and in 1751 district officials, including the captains, were made salaried state servants. Members of the royal bureaucracy, another great noble enclave, were required to have legal training. In 1748, Maria Theresa put through a system of ten-year Kontributions in place of the the challenges of reform and revolution

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yearly negotiations, essentially removing the last real prerogative of the provincial Diets. The system of ten-year recesses was a death knell for the vitality of political action in the Diet, and as the institution seemed increasingly superfluous, the aristocracy deserted it. The government also put curbs on the Diet’s control of the assessment and collection of taxes, and of its recruitment of soldiers. Maria Theresa ordered new cadastres, or land registers (Kataster), to bring current the tax status of rustical and dominical lands, and assess the area and yield of productive land. In 1749, the Bohemian Court Chancellory, the highest administrative and judicial body in the Bohemian lands, was dissolved and replaced with a joint Directorium for Austria and Bohemia, a further attempt to create one administration for the “hereditary lands.” In 1752, Maria Theresa created a unified Bohemian-Austrian nobility, erasing the distinctiveness of Bohemian citizenship. One should not underestimate the impact of these changes on the Bohemians, who submitted to it, it has been suggested, out of a sense of guilt for the “disloyalty” of 1740–1741.94 For the first time, a unified chancellory would administer Bohemia as part of the hereditary lands. Whereas the relationship of Bohemia to the other Habsburg possessions had formerly existed only in the person of the monarch, Bohemia was constitutionally and administratively linked to the Austrian hereditary lands, and the unified “Bohemian crownlands” were replaced by individual imperial lands: the Bohemian Kingdom, the Margravate of Moravia, and the Duchy of Silesia.95 Although Haugwitz’s plans for a complete reform of local administration were not entirely successful, the reforms did seem to the nobility to be a “revolution in government.”96 Reforms extended to other arenas as well. Robot and other compulsory labor services and fees, varying in amount and degree literally from one estate to the next, were regulated, and royal agencies set up to protect peasants and handle peasant complaints. In 1769, patrimonial jurisdiction was more closely monitored, and cases of extreme punishment, incarceration, and land confiscation were to be reviewed by district officials. Reforms also addressed some seigniorial rights like monopolies, allowed a greater freedom of movement for the peasantry, began to replace the lord’s justice with that of the state, and allowed the peasant farmer to market his own produce.97 Despite being wary of the entrenched fiscal interests of the Catholic Church, the relationship of Maria Theresa to the Church in the Monarchy was generally one of unswerving support, but her advisors, particularly Kaunitz, and Joseph as co-regent, were able to prevail to gain some reforms that touched on the religious sphere. The number of religious days, hindering industry, was reduced.98 Most importantly, the Jesuits, who had held “a monopoly on education all over Europe” and were disbanded by Rome in 1773, were suppressed, however 70

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reluctantly, in the Monarchy as well.99 Maria Theresa followed this with a general school law (Allgemeine Schulordnung) in 1774 that established a three-tiered educational system, and made elementary education mandatory for all children between the ages of six and thirteen.100 The ouster of the Jesuits also fomented a major expansion of intellectual activity in the Habsburg Monarchy, and the 1770s were recognized by contemporary intellectuals, like Kaspar Sternberg, as a period of intellectual resurgence in Bohemia and the Empire. Despite Maria Theresa’s support of the Jesuits and resistance to their suppression, the nature of her regime at best encouraged, and at least did not entirely stifle, independent intellectual development. As the Jesuitical influence receded from the universities, the aristocracy began once again to complete their studies at home rather than abroad. Kaspar Sternberg acknowledged the positive influence of growing up during the “truly glorious reign of Maria Theresa, when all branches of knowledge had been seized by a joyful impetus.”101 There is no doubt that growing up in this environment affected the intellectual development of Kaspar Sternberg and others of his generation. “In all fields of knowledge a noble quest was noticeable, which a developing young intellect, who received much . . . to read . . . could not help but be touched by.”102 Although the success of the Theresian reform movement in terms of reach and impact was hampered by both domestic and international circumstances, the periods of reform in the 1740s and after represented a watershed in the Habsburg quest for modern government. Most importantly for the longevity of the reforms under Maria Theresa and during the period of her co-regency with Joseph, and in contrast with the subsequent experience of her son, Maria Theresa understood tradition and knew how to placate the conservative elements of clergy and nobility. In his autobiography, Kaspar Sternberg lauded the reforms introduced by the Theresian government, and the method of their implementation: anyone who would take the trouble to read through all the decrees issued under Maria Theresa would be convinced that she sought reform in all areas, but no revolution. . . . Acting cautiously with regard to people and even deep-rooted prejudices, without being conspicuous, she altered little in form, but a great deal in essence; and since she was personally beloved by all, she accomplished much more than her successor without occasioning the slightest upset in her vast lands. Sonnenfels had loosened the fetters of the intellect, and there were spirited men within the monarchy who followed his example.103 The reception of Joseph II and his reform efforts as sole ruler after 1780 was much more mixed. The period of the co-regency between 1765 and the challenges of reform and revolution

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1780 was a difficult one. The correspondence of mother and son is replete with explanations, apologies, and angry entreaties as each sought to pursue a different course with regard to reform and the Monarchy’s elites. With the death of Maria Theresa in 1780, Joseph was finally left to implement his programs without interference, and to promote the state’s interests against those of the entrenched elite. Joseph’s bywords were rationality and state power, and the history of his decade of self-rule is dominated by his attempts to govern the ungovernable rationally. Joseph refused to bow to deep-seated traditions and refused coronation in the separate kingdoms of his possessions. His desire to replace his imperial patchwork with a unified state encouraged him to go so far as to remove the Hungarian crown of St. Stephen, the Bohemian Crown of St. Wenceslas, and other coronation regalia to Vienna in 1785. From Joseph’s perspective, a modern centralized state could not have separate and distinct loci of power. As he wrote in his Pastoral Letter, “As the good of the state is always indivisible, namely that which affects the population at large and the greatest number, and as in similar fashion all the provinces of the Monarchy make up one single whole with one common objective, from now on there must be an end to all that jealousy and prejudice which hitherto has so often affected relations between provinces and between national groups. . . .”104 From the perspective of the regions, Joseph was threatening what was held most dear: provincial pride, heritage, distinction. Joseph’s attempts to erase regional distinctions for the “good of the state” were to have serious repercussions for his reform program and for national feeling in the provinces. It must be acknowledged that the process of Germanization that Joseph promoted was not done out of any particularly strong German identity on Joseph’s part, but whatever the reason, it backfired. The reforms undertaken in the decade between 1780 and 1790 were a reflection of Joseph’s principles. In 1781, Joseph issued the Toleration Patent, ending the ban on Protestantism and easing restrictions on Jews, in an attempt to attract and keep productive Protestants and Jews in the Monarchy. This sparked a wave of public declarations of Protestantism from Bohemia and Moravia, another sign that outward piety was little reflection of true religious feeling, and the Hussites and Moravian Brethren were still suppressed. Joseph had also determined that the contemplative orders, who he claimed had demonstrated that “they were useless and not pleasing to God,” provided no good to the state.105 In 1782, Joseph thus proceeded to liquidate the monasteries and convents deemed unnecessary.106 In the realm of the Habsburg Monarchy approximately 800 religious houses, or slightly over a third of the total number of monastic foundations, were closed down. For Bohemia, this meant 61 monasteries and 13 convents, or a total of over 1,300 clerics.107 72

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In 1781 Joseph also sought to redress the imbalance in rights between noble and serf. In the Serfdom Patent of that year he abolished the elements of personal bondage, so that serfs could move, learn a trade, and marry freely. Commoners were to become eligible for the office of district captain, and the managers of noble estates were required to submit reports to district offices. And not merely monasteries were deemed by Joseph to be unnecessary. He made no secret of his hostility toward the privileged orders, calling the Estates “children acting childishly” and referring to the Diet ceremonial as “peasant dances on an operatic stage.”108 In 1783, the Diet’s political control of the Gubernium, the highest political institution in Bohemia, was limited to electing two deputies from candidates put forward by the government, and the Diet lost the administration of the domestic fund. The Estates were restricted further to hearing royal propositions and expressing their views only at the request of the king. The ancient offices of the Bohemian kingdom were abolished, left vacant, or separated from real political affairs. These offices, which Kerner refers to as the “chief officials of the land,” included the offices of Grand Burgrave, Court Chamberlain, Marshall, Treasurer, Justice, and Chancellor, and had been held by noble families over generations.109 In 1784–1785, Joseph further removed district administration from the hold of the nobility by requiring that the district captains have legal training and moving to fill the offices of district captain with experienced civil servants rather than nobility. In 1788, seigniors were required to appoint and pay legally trained justices to man manorial courts. In 1789, Joseph fixed a permanent tax rate of all land at 12 percent and ordered a new cadastre.110 That same year he attempted his masterstroke: to abolish all labor dues and free the peasants entirely from their onerous responsibilities, converting all dues and services to money rent. The aristocratic response to Josephine reform was manifold. Kaspar Sternberg’s older brothers returned for a brief visit, and the Sternbergs spent Carnival in 1784 together in Prague. The entire city was buzzing with Joseph’s flurry of reform. As Sternberg wrote, “One spoke much of the new government of Emperor Joseph, which had caused a general upheaval in ways of thinking. . . .”111 In 1787, Sternberg returned from a trip to France “with [his] head filled with ideas of reform, to a Bohemia where they as yet found no inroad.”112 In Bohemia, rather than an inspirational push for reform, there “dominated a great displeasure, especially among the aristocracy and the clergy, and confusion in all Estates.”113 This confusion, as Sternberg terms it, was caused by the policies of Joseph II. For some observers, the litany of grievances against, or support for, Joseph was long indeed. Sternberg believed that Joseph II had been heavily influenced by the Physiocrats during his travels to France.114 the challenges of reform and revolution

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Joseph II adopted their ideas, but, as Sternberg and others noted, his natural abilities were compromised by his inability to understand people, to interact in society, and by his “mistrust of everyone.”115 Joseph attempted to implement changes in an “impossibly short time, without consideration of custom and tradition. For example, calling for a general Kataster of all hereditary land in two years, and attempting to melt four nations into one, so that he caused general disaffection and uneasiness, without attaining his goals.”116 This was a clear reference to the dissatisfaction engendered in both the nobility and the general population in Bohemia. More importantly, Sternberg recognized that the population of Bohemia was not, and could not be, German. Even for those who believed that enlightened absolutism offered “such a dazzling promise of progress without tears,” Joseph’s inconsistencies and arbitrary actions threw the entire enterprise into doubt.117 His good intentions were upset by the “disquieting hurry” of his “increased absolutism.”118 These were not the only grievances of the nobility against the Viennese government. Joseph II’s pronounced dislike for the privileged orders, as well as the cloistered, nonservice clergy, caused a considerable uproar. From Sternberg’s point of view, the problem lay not just in the dissolution of the monasteries and the curbs on the activities of the mendicant orders; “attacking” the religious orders, the protectors of cultural and historical artifacts, affected society more broadly. Sternberg decried the fact that the Emperor, who, he believed, “had no sense of art and science,” did not realize, nor care, that the dissolution of the religious houses would result in the drain of the great Bohemian art collections.119 This had already occurred in nonclerical cases, and there was a prevalent sense that Joseph cared very little for the artistic heritage of either Bohemia or Austria. Beyond art or noble privileges, Sternberg pointed out the more serious source of Bohemian opposition to Joseph II: the Emperor could not seem to avoid offending the Bohemians on every possible level. The Bohemians, in contrast with the Hungarians, had constantly been pressured by Habsburg policy to make Bohemia just another province of the Habsburg realm. Bohemia’s enduring connection with the Holy Roman Empire and its long history of German settlement (and tradition), gave the Habsburgs a political and social wedge against any Bohemian particularism. Nonetheless, the actions of the regime in Bohemia backfired to the extent that the lower classes, which should have been supportive given Joseph’s stance on rural labor reform, were alienated by the process of Germanization, whereas the conservative nobility felt their privileges and status under attack. The refusal of Joseph to be crowned king of Bohemia was another serious affront to Bohemians interested in preserving their particularity. Although southern Germans and Austrians always spoke 74

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of “our Emperor,” Bohemians, although part of the Empire, referred to the Emperor only as “our King.”120 When Joseph II cleared the royal castle in Prague in order to convert it to an artillery barracks, it was brought home to the Bohemians that “no King of Bohemia would live there any more.”121 Sternberg claimed that this profoundly affected his compatriots and “angered the entire land: thus spread dissatisfaction against the sovereign, who wanted to implement good in frantic haste.”122 In the later years of his life Sternberg clearly believed that reform was still necessary, but also believed, like many aristocratic liberals, that it must be controlled by the responsible elements of the populace. The period of unrest and war at the conclusion of Joseph’s reign compelled aristocrats like Sternberg to take notice of politics. Sternberg’s elder brother Johann took part in the campaigns against the Turks, and never quite recovered from a military engagement against the Turks at Semlin, finally succumbing to a deadly infection in the Romanian lands on February 12, 1789. War was a reality, and would become much more so as the French Revolution and its agenda moved beyond France. The chance for a type of “revolution from above” seemed to appear with the untimely death of Joseph in 1790. As the Estates were called by Joseph’s successor, his younger brother Leopold, it seemed to be a propitious moment to implement and reevaluate the political institutions of the country, and the relationship of Bohemia to the rest of the Monarchy. The success or failure of this enterprise, and the collision course between limited reform and the potential for revolution, was to set the tone for political action in Bohemia for the following half century.

Aristocratic Opposition: Too Little, Too Late? The death of Joseph II on February 20, 1790, and the accession of his brother Leopold II to the thrones of the Empire and Bohemia, created the backdrop for provincial unrest and calls for reform. Kaspar Sternberg reflected: Here (in Prague) the pressure of the Emperor Joseph on the Estates had awakened a nationalism which lay dormant for a long time. Joseph, who had wanted to centralize everything, had also sought to suppress the Czech tongue; no people would allow themselves to be robbed of this palladium of nationality. Unplanned, one heard Bohemian spoken in the assembly rooms of the castle by all who commanded the mother tongue. Emperor Leopold, whose government in Tuscany had given him a very favorable reputation, understood well the state of the challenges of reform and revolution

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things, and showed himself willing to protect the rights of the nation; negotiations were begun. . . . It was a restless time. The Bohemian Estates had collected themselves in a rather loud Diet. Emperor Leopold, who wanted to appease this land above all the hereditary lands, had taken back the last decrees of Emperor Joseph.123 As Sternberg describes, Leopold’s entry into the imperial office was quickly followed by a flurry of decrees rescinding the final burst of activity on Joseph’s part that had resulted in the tax and urbarial patents of 1789. In an attempt to quiet his various provinces, Leopold called on the Estates to submit their grievances regarding taxes and robot, the constitution, and the role and place of the Estates in a series of three desideria. By doing so, Leopold hoped to deflate the rising opposition in the four corners of the Monarchy and prevent the type of unrest that was already taking place in the Austrian Netherlands and in Hungary. In the spring of 1790, the four Estates—clergy, nobles, knights, and royal town representatives—met as a “Little Diet” in Prague to plan the presentation of their grievances and demands.124 A deputation sent by the Bohemian Diet to Leopold at the beginning of April stressed the Estates’ desire that Leopold be formally crowned King of Bohemia in Prague, with its attendant ceremonials. The Great Diet convened at the castle in Prague during July, August, and November of 1790, and finally in January, 1791. The Diet promised to end its deliberations by the end of the year, as the government in Vienna was getting increasingly nervous about the events in France and the possibility for their repetition in the urban centers of Bohemia. It was the largest Diet assembled since the 1620s, and the first that introduced parliamentary procedures such as voting by the whole house rather than by Estate. Moreover, the Diet was an unusual site for opposition, given its moribund political presence in previous decades. In fact, the Diet had been so decimated by Joseph, and had met so infrequently and with so little purpose, that the records of the previous years could not even be found in 1790.125 In regard to the second desiderium pertaining to the constitution, the initial agenda of those attending the Diet was to restore the rights the Estates had enjoyed under Maria Theresa. However, as the desideria were formulated, it became clear that the attached grievances were going to stretch back further than fifty years. Although the Diet initially presented the Renewed Land Ordinance, the edict imposed by Ferdinand II in 1627, as the founding document of the Bohemian constitution, the Diet suggested that a few clauses within this document were “unnecessary, unsuitable, or insulting,” and thus in need of revision.126 This indirect approach, pursued to prevent Leopold from taking 76

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legal refuge in the Renewed Land Ordinance, sought to obscure the fact that these “minor” revisions would essentially turn the clock back and reinstate a modified form of the pre-1627 Bohemian constitution. The Diet quickly split into factions, the upper nobility dominating all of them due to the underrepresentation of knights and the post-Josephine weakness of the clergy. On one side stood the defenders of imperial authority and on the other those who sought to recapture Bohemia’s historical autonomy, led by Johann Buquoy, a member of the Diet’s executive committee. Buquoy, Adalbert Czernin, and Francis Kolowrat had been the ringleaders of a series of secret meetings that took place in Prague in the last months of Joseph’s life. These men, and those like Francis Sternberg who supported them, were interested in issues other than those framed by the desideria, including “the abolished constitution, the suppressed rights of the Estates, . . . the ruined financial credit of the country, the insignificant trade, the decreased business, and agriculture impoverished and exhausted. . . .”127 These nobles, possessed of a “dangerous spirit of innovation,” believed firmly that they legitimately represented the interests of the country and its people, and were not limited solely to protecting their own interests.128 To potential reformers, Leopold, by calling the Diet, had provided the opportunity to reestablish the Bohemian constitution on a wider political basis and to extend the activity of the Diet to include a wider swath of citizens.129 Attempts by Czernin to keep the public informed of the proceedings, if not to open them to the public, were defeated only by the Viennese court’s fear of the public response.130 These reformers requested that the judiciary and central administration of the land be returned to the control of the Diet and that the executive committee (Landesausschuss), which Joseph had abolished along with all other forms of Estate association, be reestablished. In order to return local administration to the hands of the Estates, the Diet sought influence in the appointment of officials, the old land offices were once again to be filled, and the Diet asked that the councillor for Bohemia in the chancellory be a Bohemian. The Diet also requested that only inhabitants of the country would be allowed to sit and vote in the Diet. In addition, the right to legislate and to grant Bohemian citizenship was to be returned to Bohemia, and an independent administration should be guaranteed by the return of the domestic treasury to Bohemian control.131 The reformers in the Diet further requested that the Renewed Land Ordinance be replaced by a legitimate constitution, and in the second desiderium, Count Buquoy and his followers expressed the desire for “an indestructible constitution.”132 The aristocrats of the opposition repeatedly voiced the concern that the Renewed Land Ordinance was a punitive settlement forced on a vanquished the challenges of reform and revolution

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people, and that the Bohemians deserved a constitution—a free contract between the king and the nation.133 Count Chotek called the Ordinance a “penal sword still reeking with the blood of the nobility,” and declared it unacceptable as a constitutional document because it had never proved to be binding on the Habsburgs.134 And as Buquoy wrote, it would be a calamitous fate for the land to be under an absolute monarch, “to whom law was not holy, civil freedom a monstrosity, and whose will alone appeared to him to be something important.”135 In an opinion strongly reflective of Montesquieu, Buquoy argued that a constitution would ensure that the power held by the monarch was checked by a contractual relationship with an alternate source of power, namely, the Estates. This written opinion was signed by, among others, Francis Joseph Czernin, Joseph Czernin, Adalbert Czernin, Francis Joseph Kolowrat, Frederick Nostitz, Francis Sternberg, and Joachim Sternberg. This is not to suggest that there was no conservative side to this debate, and this surfaced particularly in regard to the issues of taxation and robot. Although the Diet was to consider how robot might be changed to money payments, many aristocrats merely sought to ensure that Leopold’s abolition of the new tax system imposed by Joseph was a permanent decision, and that the peasants on their lands return to their responsibilities, or “be drafted into the army so that their stubborn spirit might be broken.”136 Both progressives and conservatives concurred that the right to agree to taxation, a right eroded by both Maria Theresa and Joseph in their decennial recesses, must be returned to the Diet. Conservatives also supported a formal constitutional agreement that would legally bind the Habsburgs to respect the traditions and privileges of the Estates in Bohemia. Leopold’s decisions on the desideria showed some willingness to compromise, but in the final analysis, the Diet itself had little political capital to force acquiescence. Leopold refused to grant the Estates the right to legislate, but agreed that they might make representations on important legislation. He also agreed to call the Diet each spring, but declined to make himself constitutionally bound to do so as the Diet had requested. The Viennese court resisted the notion of a contract between the sovereign and the people, as such a binding would limit the power of absolute rulership. Leopold also refused to recognize the Estates as representative of the interests of the nation, and would not grant any rights that were based on this recognition. The king also retained his power to grant inkolát or citizenship, and at the same time refused Bohemian insistence on a Bohemian minister in the Court Chancellory. The lost opportunity of the Diet of 1790–1791 has been condemned ultimately as the failure of the Bohemian aristocracy as a whole to become part of the Czech nation, and has generally been negatively judged.137 It is a histori78

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cal moment peculiarly revealing for the identity of the aristocracy. Given the opportunity to meet as a body and deliberate about the relationship of Bohemia to the Habsburgs, the majority of aristocratic members of the Diet acted on their political heritage as the representatives of the “national” interest. Only some, including Francis Sternberg and his circle, understood that the time had come to reevaluate the notion of representation. Despite the political limitations of the Diet, Anna Drabek and others have pointed out that the discourse of the proceedings had a fundamentally constitutional character that rested on the same beliefs in natural rights and politically informed ideology as in other European states of the period.138 Relying on the writings of Rousseau and Montesquieu and committed to the concept of natural rights in the relationship of sovereign and people, the reformers of 1790 sought to promote the “general good” by concluding with the king a free and voluntary contract that would be unalterable without the agreement of both parties. As they wrote to Leopold, this contract would be “the foundation for the future happiness of the Bohemian state,” for it was self-evident that “the happiness of a State can only be as permanent as the constitution and basic laws on which she rests are solid and unshakeable. . . .”139 The story of the Diet of 1790–1791 made clear that although perhaps not the majority, there existed in Bohemia a group of enlightened aristocrats, as well as bourgeoisie, who had been profoundly affected by the French Revolution and who subsequently worked for liberal, constitutional principles in politics.140 Eugen Lemberg suggests that the issue for the aristocratic opposition was not a lack (or overabundance) of Czech or German national allegiance, but that the unifying principles of aristocratic identity vis-à-vis Bohemia were solely political rather than cultural.141 To some degree this is legitimate, most obviously in that the focus of many aristocrats on the political issues of citizenship, administration, and landholding allowed the inclusion of “nonnative” aristocrats like Baron MacNeven and Buquoy in the Bohemian opposition. As Baron Janovský remarked at the time, of all those in the Diet clamoring for the ancient rights of Bohemia, there were few whose forefathers had actually participated in securing these rights.142 The aristocracy were conditioned to represent the interests of the Land, namely Bohemia, against a monarch ruling from outside, and to fall back on the traditions, rights, and freedoms of Bohemia’s ancient constitution. However, this return to the past was to have a profound effect on the emerging national movement, as history and a historically developed conception of the Bohemian state became the basis for ideas about Bohemian territorial autonomy.143 The political institutions of Bohemia’s historic autonomy were put through the prism of eighteenth-century political thought. Furthermore, aristocratic opposition in the the challenges of reform and revolution

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1780s and 1790s gave a higher political profile to language and Bohemian distinctiveness than had ever been the case before. In the political search for Bohemian particularity, even conservative aristocrats could rely on Bohemia’s distinctive Slavic language and heritage, developing what Lemberg refers to as a “corporate cultural policy.”144 Furthermore, the very failure of the political enterprise in 1791 led many aristocrats to turn to science and culture as an alternate form of public action. Ultimately, the failure of the Diet to effect any long-term reforms in favor of the disenfranchised in Bohemia can be ascribed on the one hand to a seriously divided, rather than a uniformly reactionary, aristocracy, and on the other to the pressure of international circumstances brought by revolution in France. As the revolution played out, reports of the attendant violence discredited even modest proposals for constitutional change. Opposition to the regime in the light of the French experience took on a very different hue. As Sternberg remarked, “Former lost privileges were much discussed and much was promised that was eventually forgotten in the subsequent time and events.”145

Dissolving Empire and Beheading Aristocrats: The Impact of the French Revolution Liberal aristocrats visiting France in the 1780s viewed the drive for reforms there positively, with no sense of what was to come. Sternberg himself wrote of the political awakening experienced in Paris, where he heard and saw so much that made him “for the first time aware of the political situation in Europe.” He acknowledged long after the events that the political and social ferment of the 1780s could not remain without “consequences,” but that he could not at the time perceive the ultimate outcome of the vocal political opposition taking shape in Parisian society.146 In 1787, Sternberg was invited to accompany Count Thurn to Paris, and arrived in Paris in August, three days after the Parlement had been dissolved because of the refusal to register the land tax. The moment was interesting; great excitement dominated the city, one constantly spoke of deficit, and the calling together of the Notables: alone the opposition, which was organized in general, had not yet pulled the masses of people behind the interests of the parties. A mob had gathered at the Royal Palace, but a guard of 24 Swiss had arrived to disperse it. . . . One heard talk only that, in agreement with the Sovereign, the Notables had curbed abuses, and that a better financial system would be introduced. The 80

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first signs of the Revolution carried the external appearance of true reform, which seemed at the time very necessary, and which would also possibly have succeeded if selfishness and passionate partisanship had not intervened. I sensed nothing evil in all I saw and heard there, rejoiced much more in the progress of the human spirit. . . .147 Sternberg’s view in 1789 was decidedly different. The death of his brother Johann, the subsequent deterioration of his mother’s health, and the death of his good friend Baron Diede’s daughter shook Sternberg. These events were then combined with constant reports from his cousin Louise Sternberg of revolution in “Paris, Lüttich, and Spaa; all Viennese letters spoke of the poor health of Emperor Joseph, and of the unrest in all provinces, especially in the Netherlands.”148 Because of the constant strain, Sternberg contracted a “nerve fever” and lay essentially unconscious for six weeks in September 1789. “My strengths returned gradually; the physical man was restored, the moral one, though, was embroiled in new confusion.”149 In pursuit of quiet and rest, Sternberg returned to Freising, to his rooms at the chapter house that afforded him a glorious view of the upper Bavarian mountains, where he could set up an office and reflect “on the path of the political world, where a decided advance in knowledge had in no way allowed a moral improvement of humanity. . . .”150 By 1792, and in the midst of taking care of chapter business, Sternberg realized that the international situation was no longer to be ignored. Indeed, the situation, both within the borders of the Monarchy and from without in the form of revolutionary France, were soon to burst in upon the lives of those in Bavaria as well as Bohemia. After successfully pacifying his varied lands, Emperor Leopold died on the first of March, 1792, and as Sternberg remarked, “his sudden death was conspicuous enough to set off a series of arrests . . . in Vienna.”151 Francis II succeeded his father Leopold as emperor, and this was to spell the end of the reform era in Austria and Bohemia. Francis was indeed a different type of ruler, whose motto was “govern and change nothing.”152 Francis reacted sharply against both the ideals of his uncle and father and the revolution in France. Despite the fact that Sternberg was at the time close by in Wiesbaden, he had no desire to attend the coronation ceremonies in Frankfurt, nor those that followed in Prague. The revolution in France and the beginning of the revolutionary wars marked the onset of a new, defining period in Kaspar Sternberg’s life. There had been a flood of emigrés from France in 1789, but the revolutionary government began to crack down on emigrés as fears of an emigré-led invasion permeated the government in Paris. The increasing threat to the lives of the French king the challenges of reform and revolution

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and the queen, who was, of course, Austrian, augmented Habsburg hostility toward the French. In 1791, the French closed the frontiers and decreed the arrest of all travelers desiring to leave France. Despite this, large numbers of officers emigrated.153 Between November 1791 and February 1792, the revolutionary government in Paris urged the king to secure the dispersal of emigré troops, to sequester emigré property, and to declare cooperation with the emigrés as lèse-nation. In addition, the French government requested that Francis II cease arming the emigrés. “At the end of April, the French declared war on the King of Hungary and Bohemia.”154 Emigrés had flooded through Germany from the Rhine and Mosel, and many went to Regensburg, where they “contributed to the confusion of ideas by the differences in their extreme views. . . . All hovered in uncertainty of what would occur.”155 Throughout this entire period of uncertainty, Sternberg continued to dabble in science, exhibiting a wide range of interests, among them forestry, botany, and even bizarre medical cases of sleep disorders. The war had in the meantime begun to intrude as the Prussian army retreated from Mainz, Kassel, and Frankfurt in the face of General Adam Philippe Custine. As Sternberg reported, December saw the retaking of Frankfurt by the Prussians and the Hessians, “and a great part of the Austrian army marched through Regensburg. . . . The situation for Germany worsened steadily, and the people were grieved by the constant passage of armed troops.”156 French and German emigrés were another source of disquiet in Regensburg social circles. Gossip and innuendo were the social norm, and divided every gathering: “One was labeled an ultraroyalist by one and a Jacobin by another. . . .”157 Sternberg claims to have held himself aloof from these machinations. Money was flowing to the armies on the left bank of the Rhine, but, before anything significant could be undertaken, the gruesome scene in Paris reached its apex and King Louis XVI was guillotined. The news was spread at Count Hohenthal’s soirée. “Everyone was shocked. Only the Bishop of Bristol said . . . ‘Voilá la première fois que les Français ont été conséquents!’ ”158 However, as Sternberg relates, this opinion was so roundly condemned by outraged listeners, that the Bishop was shunned and ultimately left the city in disgrace. Despite the attempt of the government in Vienna to curtail the importation of news from abroad, information seeped through: “Before the end of the year, the head of the Queen of France also fell, completing the cannibalistic scenes in the degenerated nation.”159 As Sternberg commented, “Under Robespierre’s government the rights of man were proclaimed, the English and Hannoverian prisoners massacred, Princess Elizabeth, the sister of the king, and many hundreds of aristocrats guillotined. . . . I continued my usual life, although uneasy with myself, whether I should adhere to my plan 82

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and make my way in my chosen rank, or choose another. Over 400 priests, either exiled or fleeing from the guillotine, were at this time in Regensburg; we gathered and begged where we could in order to sustain their poor lives.”160 Regensburg was not the only asylum. As the war continued Prague became a center of displaced French and German emigrés, particularly after Prussia’s defeat in 1807. Prague in fact became a center for German patriots. The writer Heinrich von Kleist lived for a time on Mostecká (Brückengasse) in Malá Strana, and spent many evenings at the house of Francis Anton Kolowrat. Baron Heinrich Karl Friedrich von Stein was a well-known visitor among the Sternbergs, Stadions, Thuns, Nostitzes, and Czernins.161 Mingled with the uncertainties of the military situation and the horror of watching from abroad the extremes of revolutionary fervor in Paris was the additional uncertainty about the future of the German monarchies, and more ambiguously, of the honor of the dynasties. Prussia had signed a separate peace with the French at Basel in April 1795. The conditions of the peace made it clear to observers that the Empire was completely empty of all influence, and that the divergent interests of the Habsburgs and the Hohenzollerns would dominate German affairs to the detriment of the rest of the states in Central Europe. This was a rude awakening for nobles who had in their status as imperial knights counted on imperial intervention to even the playing field. Polish affairs had distracted and separated the two dominant German powers as each attempted to prevent the other from enjoying the spoils of a dismembered Poland. Mistrust and the volatile military situation meant that the fight against France was put aside by both German powers, and the Prussian alliance with the Austrians abandoned in favor of dominance against the Austrians in Poland. Kaspar Sternberg cites this as the turning point of his life: Until then I had followed the plan that I would advance in my office to the dignity of Imperial prince and bishop. To hold such an office in Germany could seem desirable and honorable; indeed without the consequences of the revolution it would have been difficult for me to escape it. But that the two most powerful princes in the empire, who held together both religions and the different political interests, would be estranged and commit such an outrage against an innocent nation made clear that in the collision of inner factions and outside pressure, Germany was lost without hope of salvation.162 Even more unsettling than the political circumstances was the direct threat implied in the challenge of the revolution to the social system. With each military victory of the French came news of the spread of revolutionary the challenges of reform and revolution

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fervor throughout the more economically advanced regions of the German West.163 And the revolution brought a warning to both aristocrat and clergyman: “The spirit of the revolution, no longer contained within the borders of France, but spreading to Italy, even Rome itself, as well as along the Rhine, had pronounced itself against noble and clergy. . . . All the former possibilities of my status seemed doubtful to me from then on. Although I could not immediately give up hopes so long cherished, I decided to live less for the outer life and to dedicate myself to the sciences, which graced every livelihood and were useful in any walk of life.”164 The news of battles fought and often lost served as a confirmation of Sternberg’s choice of a “new direction” in intellectual life. Sternberg “took [these developments] to heart and pursued [his] academic studies,” becoming a member of the Regensburg Botanical Society in 1797.165 With his membership in the Botanical Society, Sternberg began his movement away from official clerical life. Upon the death of his father Johann in 1798, Kaspar went to Bohemia to confer with Joachim about familial affairs. Having laid out all his plans for scientific study, Kaspar claimed that Joachim “agreed with all my opinions about the disastrous events which confronted us and supported me in all my plans.”166 During the initial confrontations of the Wars of the French Revolution, Austria had continued at least nominally to fight the French in the name of the Holy Roman Empire. As the situation worsened, and certainly after Napoleon’s rise to power, it became clear that the Habsburgs, like the Prussian Hohenzollerns, were acting according to their own interests. In the negotiations for the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797, although the Austrians ostensibly reaffirmed the territorial integrity of the Empire and acknowledged the cession of Belgium to France, they secretly agreed to French annexations along the left bank of the Rhine in exchange for Austria’s claim to Salzburg and some Bavarian territory.167 Even more important than Campo Formio were the negotiations to decide the real future of the Empire conducted at the Congress of Rastadt from November 1797 to April 1799. “The Congress in Rastadt, which was called together to negotiate an imperial peace and allegedly to preserve the integrity of the Empire, turned really on two points: France wanted the left bank of the Rhine for a border, and the German secular princes should be compensated for their losses with the secularization of church land and the absorption of the free imperial territories.”168 More than any other gathering, Rastadt was a reflection of the changes that had taken place in European society, and it most emphatically brought those changes home to those who observed or attended. At Rastadt, the French formally offered territorial compensation at the expense of the ecclesiastical states, and “the signal for plundering had been given.”169 The Empire 84

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had, for all intents and purposes, expired. Sternberg himself considered the Congress a “tragedy.” When the issues raised by Rastadt were to be settled in 1802, Sternberg was so indignant as to leave the city rather than meet any of the deputies taking part in this division of church property. Sternberg’s dealings with the French further depressed his hopes. He was chosen to represent the clerical estate in the deputation sent to the headquarters of Marshall Moreau in an attempt to lighten the burden of imposed war taxes and quartering of troops in an already overburdened city. “In these headquarters I understood the French spirit, Germany’s danger, and the approaching fate of the clergy.”170 Convinced that the old world was undone, Sternberg returned to Bohemia to find Joachim Sternberg overseeing the defensive positions of the Bohemian Legion on the Bohemian-Bavarian border, at the behest of Archduke Charles.171 Sent again in 1801 as the clerical member of a deputation dispatched to Moreau in Salzburg, Sternberg’s observations are most telling: “While Moreau’s army was more disciplined than others, it was not less oppressive and throughout the ranks ran Jacobin-republican sentiments, which Moreau encouraged in order to separate himself from the despotism of Bonaparte. . . . Everything that I saw and heard on this journey strengthened my intentions,” namely to pursue science and abandon plans for a permanent career in the Church. 172 This decision was further confirmed by Sternberg’s trip to Paris in the company of Chancellor Karl Theodore Dalberg for Napoleon’s coronation: “The Consul Bonaparte, the Master of Revolution, the Heir of the Republic that he buried, aware of his superior power, was able to order the Pope to Paris to participate as Master of Ceremonies, while he himself put the crown on his own head.”173 Kaspar Sternberg used the opportunity of Napoleon’s coronation to see Paris once again, and in particular to meet other academics, especially botanists.174 Despite his experiences in the war, Sternberg obviously retained a great fascination for the French and admired especially the “liberal scientific sensibility of the French naturalists.”175 Whether this was his intended result or not, Sternberg’s entire account of his encounter with the French scientists spoke volumes about what he believed to be the basis for any true permanent peace. One of the French botanists brought out two German essays, one of them naturally by Sternberg, and “from then on we were friends, as if we had lived together on another planet.”176 A planet, clearly, where the true value of nature and life would have legitimate precedence over the bellicosity of the usual political relations of humanity. In France, Sternberg began his work in paleobotany, an interest that would later define his career as a natural scientist. In Malmaison, Sternberg made the acquaintance of Empress Josephine, herself an avid botanist, and the two exchanged seedlings and botanical observations. the challenges of reform and revolution

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Unfortunately, the military and political situation worsened for the Austrians. The second campaign against the French in 1805 did not go well, and peace was concluded at Pressburg after the terrible defeat at Austerlitz. The treaty at Pressburg made Napoleon into a “factory of kings” and led to new territorial losses for the imperial lands. “If Prussia had grabbed the sword rather than the quill when the French marched through . . ., it could have saved Austria and the German Empire much blood and money. . . .”177 As it was, the treaty “brought to ruin that part of the German Empire that the Deputation had forgotten. It must have been clear to any objective observer that as long as the fortunes of war were unchanged, the German Constitution and hierarchical institutions were totally in the hands of the Emperor of France. . . .”178 And Sternberg added, “The belief in the preservation of the higher clergy in the terms of the old imperial constitution had put down no deep roots in my soul, the belief in the preservation of a German constitution was shaken more strongly every day.”179 Increasingly forced to disagree with Dalberg’s actions courting Napoleon for his own agenda, Sternberg resigned his post in Regensburg on September 17, 1806. In his resignation letter to Dalberg, Sternberg clearly stated his ambivalence about his position, and his need to reevaluate his life choices. He reiterated that he had been willing to give up much in the service of the “small, but not for that uninteresting,” state of Regensburg, namely his desire for a quiet life, as well as his interest in the sciences, because of the propitious and happy circumstances of Regensburg: its neutrality and its just and unselfish leadership.180 However, unhappy circumstances had conspired to change all that. “In the moment when Germans might soon have to fight against Germans in order to loose their own binds, a just man’s feeling . . . and spirit is encouraged to seek quiet and rest. Only in the abstraction of humanity, on the warming bosom of irreducible, constant nature, in the far fields of the exact sciences can the hardened or suppressed sentiments in such times live again.”181 Sternberg promised that he would remain engaged in the salutary pursuit of scientific activity, and “was prepared to serve the Muses and the Fatherland at any moment.”182 He explained his actions to his cousin Louise: “I flatter myself that you will end up on my side, when experience has proved to you that a quiet man who does not pursue ambition and who does not absolutely lack means will find the ability to pass time as usefully in the study of nature and with the offspring of Flora in a calm retreat as in his actions in office.”183 When Francis II laid aside the imperial crown in 1806, Bohemia ceased to be an electoral state, the only kingdom, of the Empire, and its centuries-long constitutional connection with Germany was broken. The year 1806 was the 86

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culmination in a process of centralization from the 1740s that had tried to replace the purely dynastic connection between Bohemia and her monarchs with a newly conceived concept of the state. Despite Sternberg’s intention to quit his post in Regensburg, he agreed to remain until a more propitious moment for his exit arrived. However, the Prussian defeat at Jena once again changed the political balance and Sternberg’s plans. Instead of returning to Regensburg, Dalberg had sent orders from Frankfurt that a Te Deum for the “victory” at Jena was to be rung out from the cathedral. On that day, Sternberg sent in his final notice to Dalberg. “I still feel the internal desire to achieve something in the realm of science and I must use the time for those activities in which physical powers are in balance with moral fortune.”184 Dalberg agreed to let Sternberg go: “In your sole remaining career, as a warm friend of the truth and an illuminating carrier of the sciences, you will be of use to humanity.”185 Sternberg was indeed on a new path as he remarked, “In the active refuge of my future career, to which inborn inclination and the spirit of the times powerfully drives me, I will never cease keeping the goal in front of me that has led me to this point.”186 The intellectual and political challenges to traditional aristocratic identity, although not permanently dissolving the bases of aristocratic power, did permanently affect the way many aristocrats thought about their social and political position. The intellectual influences of the Enlightenment and of Romanticism served to reorient these aristocrats away from corporate identity toward individualism on the one hand, and the nation on the other. Eighteenth-century political thought infiltrated the circles of the educated in Bohemia, and the concepts of natural rights and contractual political arrangements changed political discourse. Enlightenment thought also permeated the social circles of Freemasonry, encouraging aristocrats to engage with their fellow citizens in terms of relative equality in the interest of critical public action. The reform efforts of the Habsburgs elicited a mixed response from Bohemian aristocratic observers. Although some conservatives were virtually apoplectic at any reduction of their manorial or administrative power, others understood the crucial need for serious reform of the administration and of the political institutions of the state. However, many agreed that these reforms ought not to be completed at the expense of Bohemian autonomy, as the aristocratic opposition in the Diet of 1790 made clear. The attempts of the Habsburgs to dismantle this autonomy had many consequences for Bohemian aristocratic identity. The removal of the aristocracy from positions of power at the center of monarchical government encouraged them to turn back to provincial interests. The administrative reforms of the Habsburgs and the language policies of the government reinforced a new commitment the challenges of reform and revolution

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to the vitality of the Czech language. The opposition to the Viennese government of the aristocracy, who sought to strengthen their arguments for Bohemian autonomy, began the process whereby the concepts of language and nation were fused. In addition, aristocratic claims for the unification of the increasingly disparate Bohemian crownlands were linked to language and culture. The juxtaposition of reform and revolution was especially important for aristocratic observers, and was a common reflection in aristocratic writing in the period following the French Revolution. Travelers to France in the 1780s, including Kaspar Sternberg, were in favor of what they perceived to be the reform impulses of the French nobility and bourgeoisie. After the fact, they reflected on the omens of the subsequent destructive revolutionary malaise that struck the French after this initial, acceptable period of reform. The pervasive fear among aristocrats was whether there was anything inherent in reform that would not or could not be contained, and would, therefore, spill over into a much more radical unraveling of state and society. Many worried that the road from reform to the guillotine was all too straight. Undoubtedly, these challenges were to have a concrete impact on the history of national institutions in Bohemia.

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c h a p ter three

I

Patriotic Science and the Weal of the Nation

n 1808, Joachim Sternberg published an account of his travels through Hungarian mining villages the previous spring. In justifying his choice of destination, he explained, “Since nearly all of Europe’s roads are strewn with corpses, I have chosen this time a place where the thirsty plants do not yet drink the blood of men, so that I might, despite destiny, move among happy people.”1 Sternberg made clear that he undertook these travels to find some respite from war in science and nature, specifically by furthering his studies in metallurgy and meteorology. Sternberg’s explanation highlights an important aspect of the relationship of this generation to science, and understanding that relationship is critical to understanding the growth and agenda of scientifically oriented institutions. For the aristocratic generation mature in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, science was an alternate realm both separated from the dangers of modern political and social life and yet able to provide the solutions for political and social problems. Joachim Sternberg and his compatriots, as they retreated from political life in the face of both revolution and restrictive politics, sought refuge in institutions of learning established in the flush of Enlightenment principles and turned to science to provide answers for the ills of the national community. Scientifically oriented institutions, by virtue of their emphasis on learning and scientific contributions, were ground zero for changes in sociability as well. Although aristocrats were definitively involved in the establishment and growth of new institutions, the institutions reflected a different type of social networking as members were drawn in by intellectual interests. This “new society” in turn comprised a set of institutions at the forefront of intellectual activity that served to fashion national identity. Within these institutions,

aristocrats and their compatriots raised arguments about progress, national competitiveness, historical legacies, industrialization, and other questions critical to national development. Despite its loosely international quality, science in the eighteenth century served as an early catalyst of patriotic activity, just as scientific culture had “proved a distinct force in shaping the reforming philosophy” of the Enlightenment.2 Science, and its institutional edifices, provided the intellectual backdrop for the substitution of intellect and nationalized science for status and Estate self-interest. Many of these learned institutions were not created as expressly national institutions, but by the turn of the eighteenth century, they had changed their purposes to reflect growing national concerns. The work of the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus and his followers, for example, encouraged the development of a national approach to classification. Linnaeus, defying the notion of international science despite his attempts to implement an international system of classification, sought to use science in the interests of modernization and autarky. Essentially, one could codify and define the wealth of the nation, and use science to substitute where nature had shortchanged the nation.3 This trend, in combination with the policies of cameralism pursued by the monarchs of Central Europe, put the nation in the scientific eye.

The Potential Power of Science To the “converted,” the avid aristocratic believer in science, scientific discovery was, and had been, the source of social improvement and progress from the printing press and Columbus’s discovery of the New World, to Linnaeus and Newton.4 Scientific discoveries and the advances made in science and math since the Renaissance conditioned ideas about progress for humanity generally, as educated elites extrapolated from scientific ideas to redefine the place that learning, social hierarchy, and knowledge had in national communities. Newtonian philosophy provided not just a structured universe, but one that allowed for both order and hierarchy in nature, and thus “made an argument for order, stability and progress in human affairs.”5 As Margaret Jacob argues, “ideas about nature—its physical manifestations and metaphysical properties—bore relation to the way people . . . understood the social and moral order.”6 Intellectuals in Bohemia pointed to the apparently steady upward trajectory of scientific knowledge and articulated an unquenchable belief in the benefits of that progress. Scientific systems and method would allow one to “find a clear way to the discovery of the truth,”7 and, as Kaspar Sternberg wrote to Goethe, “the truth, which an enlightened mind seizes 90

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and puts forward with brilliant force, will clear the way forward to posterity and backward to the primeval world.”8 According to this view, explorations in science, including geology, botany, and meteorology, could yield answers about not just the past, but could conceivably illuminate solutions to tensions within society and the body politic of the future. Or, in a loose interpretation of Montesquieu, examining the scientific conditions of a political realm might yield clues to its proper political and social organization. Men like Sternberg believed that science held all the answers: It could educate, enrich, build industry, and heal. For aristocrats who were committed scientific practitioners, science was linked to reformed education, better health, improved and more efficiently used resources, and a population less hostage to the weather. Even conservative aristocrats were willing to focus on science and agriculture in the hope that if the tragic elements of rural life could be improved, the rural population, seen as backward and childlike, could also be kept docile. Agricultural improvements and technology would ease the burden of rural dearth, and with strides in medicine there was hope that the ever present waves of sickness and disease could be controlled. Many aristocrats believed that the success and wealth of Britain was evidence of this, without recognizing the new social costs attending industrialization. Kaspar Sternberg greatly admired the British for what he saw as their admirable ability to put technology to good use, and as his correspondent Goethe concurred, “The English are in this our inimitable model. . . .”9 Joachim Sternberg was fascinated by the English manufactures and iron works, and completed innumerable notes and drawings of manufactures, machines, geographical maps of canals, and iron works while on a trip to England in 1802, the duration of which was, he claimed, one of the happiest periods of his life.10 Johann Rudolf Czernin’s trip to England profoundly influenced his attitudes toward technology, manufactures, gardening, and art. Other circumstances also contributed to the belief in science and its connection to national well-being. As described in the previous chapter, the French Revolution, experienced at a distance until the wars began, cultivated an awareness among the nobility that customary privileges and traditional social relationships could not provide security, nor were they permanently guaranteed. Kaspar Sternberg claimed he “saw the evident fall of the higher clergy . . . and decided to acquire [his] future needs through efforts in the sciences after everything else had gone to pieces.”11 Only scientific and intellectual endeavors, he felt, allowed one “to create . . . some sort of permanent independent existence.”12 Strife was to be avoided; science, and the practical application of scientific endeavors, could ensure the progress necessary for social stability. Although intellectuals of a scientific bent could appeal to patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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Enlightenment values of personal edification and morality, they also suggested that the timelessness of natural formations, plants, fossils, and rocks were the perfect antithesis to the dangers and uncertainties of political life and social unrest. In addition, scientific endeavors could provide a space wherein the tensions within and among the social estates were erased. In viewing the Bohemian past, Sternberg believed the most productive “golden eras” of Bohemia were the times when individuals of every estate were infected with intellectual excitement: Sovereigns surrounded themselves with learned and artistic men, and aristocrats and professors enriched themselves with travel and knowledge gained abroad. Sternberg especially emphasized that aristocrats could be, and had been, honored as much for their own intellectual talents as for their patronage of others.13 Elites’ faith in science and its impact on the nationalization of public life was a result in part of the broad interpretation of the nature of science and the scientific method. Science inspired a new approach to history and linguistics, as well as technology and industry. The scientific impulse fed a desire to “translate the scientific spirit into . . . a systematic study of human endeavor.”14 “Rationalist” history writing sought to present the “truth” independent of the state authorities’ account.15 The cosmopolitanism of early scientific work was increasingly pushed into the background as attention became focused on the genesis of the nation and national history.16 Patriotism led not only to a call for an exploration of domestic resources, but to the application of rationalism to a scientific study of the Bohemian past. Francis Joseph Kinský was an early advocate in this, as in his focus on Czech. Although he believed in teaching general history, as he concluded in his educational tract Erinnerung über einen wichtigen Gegenstand von einem Böhmen, “It would be an injustice to believe that I hold Fatherland’s history as less important. This should always have precedence, because according to my Slavic prejudices I cannot imagine anything but that a Bohemian should first know Bohemian history.”17 Kinský also conspicuously linked the distinct fields of geography and history, calling it a “great error against logic” when one “split the teaching of history and geography.”18 According to Kinský, history had to reflect the customs of the land, the traditions inherited from its geographical position, and must acknowledge “the spirit of the people.”19 Furthermore, patriotic writers believed that if they presented history clearly and systematically, they could improve the reputation and international standing of the nation, and both German and Czech speakers offered a specifically Czech national historical picture.20 Historians and other intellectuals saw in their pursuits the creation of a new community of scholars based on their shared national heritage. In the 1790s, historical inquiry was given another push by the desire of the 92

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Estates during the reign of Leopold II to emphasize Bohemian heritage and claim its history for political purposes. The connection to language and communication is particularly important. Scientific exchange demanded a certain level of rational discourse, and the desire to spread literature and knowledge, even if it only involved proper pruning techniques or bee-keeping tips, encouraged scholars to judge critically the language norms promoted by the authorities.21 Kaspar Sternberg also remarked on this, believing that rational scientific discourse needed, obviously, to be mutually understandable, first and foremost. Gains made in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and other areas were of little use if they could not be implemented by the majority, and thus rational action demanded that these and other scientific advances be communicated in Czech.22 Scientific texts translated and published in Czech, encompassing the classification of regional foliage, minerals, and resources, new techniques for mining, industry, and husbandry, were projects to be completed for the good of the Fatherland and thus for the ultimate good of humankind.23 There were, however, debates about whether the Czech language could, in fact, support works on technical, scientific, or natural philosophical matters. The educated elite were accustomed to thinking of German and French as the languages of educated, scientific discourse, and one of the primary impetuses behind the need for linguistic work in the Czech language was to convince the public that it was possible to converse about any subject, scholarly or otherwise, in Czech. In this sense, very basic scientific work had ramifications beyond its immediate scientific application. All of these intellectual impetuses contributed to the foundation of scientific and learned institutions in eighteenth-century Central Europe, and in this the Bohemians could look to the West for institutional paradigms. The Western societies and academies, most notably the Royal London Society of Sciences and the French Academy of Sciences, represented the beginning of science as a recognized professional activity. Scientific enterprises were crucial for the spread of social acceptance for scientific concerns, so that by 1800, governments were convinced of the benefits to be had by supporting scientific endeavors.24 More importantly for our purposes here, science as it was practiced in academies and societies was “by definition not a lone enterprise but a collective endeavor” that required intellectual exchange.25 This was aptly described by the Bohemian Society of Sciences in the diploma sent to Francis Sternberg upon his election as a member: “As our final goal lies in the cultivation of the useful sciences by common endeavor, and in so far as it lies within our power, to expand them through new discoveries, it is necessary that we have the mutual agreement of many collaborators and friends in all patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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areas, who adopt with shared enthusiasm our intention to benefit the public, support us with their works, news, and observations. . . . ”26 This socialization of science was to have an impact on nation building as well. As scientific societies became the accepted arbiters of public knowledge, their interests and methods were also more readily accepted by the public at large.27 In their efforts to do good, and to serve utilitarian purposes, the societies were inevitably drawn to local concerns, and their continued emphasis on reason, rationality, and scientific understanding shaped public discourse. Even while maintaining international connections, these societies became increasingly imbued with patriotic rhetoric.28 Even in a field like botany, its practitioners were able to redefine “objective” science in terms of the national debate. “Friends of nature” and their support for works of natural history were linked increasingly to the activities of “eager patriots.”29 Progress in science implied advantage for the Bohemian homeland, and, whether aristocratic or not, scientists made reference specifically to the domestic benefits science had brought and would continue to bring. The concern of these societies to provide useful information to the state and the national community cut across the different institutional boundaries between learned and agricultural societies. In the case of the former, natural philosophy, history, linguistics, and political philosophy were more prevalent. Agricultural societies, on the other hand, had a more circumscribed target: to improve the productive capabilities of the land, and by extension, the weal of the state and the nation.

“Enlightened Bohemian Farmers”: The Patriotic-Economic Society The establishment of agrarian societies, a pan-European trend from the middle of the eighteenth century, implied more than just the obvious interest in increased agricultural production, and agrarian societies often delved into intellectual areas beyond their initial charters.30 The problems of agriculture and the individual’s relationship to the land occupied the energies of the aristocrats engaged in science, particularly when dearth and even periods of famine were not distant historical memory but within the realm of the possible. Agrarian societies, even when they existed in a close relationship to the state, were an important element in the development of modern society. Despite their focus on the land, agrarian and economic societies were another piece of the increasingly complex network of urban, social institutions that comprised the public sphere. Moreover, agrarian societies occupied an important 94

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transitional space between the state and local communities, as they actively engaged to educate the population about more than farming and to modernize and socialize rural populations. The Patriotic-Economic Society (PES) in Bohemia was established with royal sanction in 1770 as the Society of Ploughing and Free Arts to institutionalize scientific and technical investigations into agriculture. Maria Theresa and her advisors had pushed for the establishment of agrarian societies in the hope that these groups would improve agricultural production, and thus by extension improve the lot of the peasant and the tax intake of the state.31 As the founding members stated in the original meeting of the PES, they were ready for “patriotic participation” and to offer “their desire to serve in all occurrences.32 In the protocols of the Society, in which the PES’s secretary recorded their deliberations, the Society’s members made clear their wish that, freely, independently, and “out of patriotic love,” they would serve “the public, the state, and the lord on high.”33 The founding members, Count Francis Joseph Pachta as Director, Count Adam Sternberg, Herr von Wanzura, Herr von Scotti, Herr von Steinberg, Herr Stepling, and Professor Matheseo, had more at heart than a dilettantish interest in new technology and increased potato yields. What was meant by “agrarian” and “agriculture” encompassed an entire worldview of the relationship of the individual and the state to the land. The acculturation of the land, what the land could or should sustain, and out of this, the shape that society would take—its potential for growth, failure, sustenance—were within the defined interests of the Society. New technology, constantly explored and accepted or rejected by the Society’s members, represented not just curious tinkering, but instead offered real possibilities for economic change and by extension social change. Fields, forests, water sources, and lowlands—everything was taken into account. The PES was concerned with every aspect of the land’s prosperity, from honey to crops to the succor of widows—its members insistent on improving conditions on the land “out of love for the next person, as true patriots.”34 The enduring belief that a thriving rural economy would ensure social peace and prosperity shaped the PES’s interests and activities. The reclamation of unfertile land, rural taxes, constraints on the development of machines, solving fuel and wood shortages, mining, and rural poverty all fell within the realm of agrarian concerns. As fear of famine receded after the second decade of the nineteenth century, the organization also underwent a metamorphosis. What changed in 1770 to the Imperial Royal Agricultural Society in the Kingdom of Bohemia became the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture and the Liberal Arts in Bohemia, which was altered in the 1780s to become the Patriotic Agricultural Society, patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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and then the Patriotic-Economic Society in the 1790s. The Society existed in a quasi-official relationship with the Bohemian government, responding to government inquiries on issues pertaining to the land.35 Although the PES maintained this relationship with the government, it also assumed the enormous task of educating the rural population about agricultural methods and new farming implements and techniques. Some have argued that the historical achievement of agricultural societies “resides less in the introduction of new crops, in the application of technical aid, or in the promotion of trade and manufactures, but rather far more in the education, practice, and consolidation of new models of acting and interacting.”36 This argument is well illustrated in the Bohemian case. How the PES functioned as an organization and its attempts to reach the rural population in practical and moral ways signaled a new social understanding that emphasized the need to traverse the divisive gaps in society, primarily through education. The PES emphasized repeatedly the personal and social benefits that education and social interaction would bring, and regularly issued almanacs for the country population that included information on the care and education of children to buttress this agenda. The PES was composed of a core group of sitting members, who attended meetings, set the agenda, and elected new members. The institutional structure of the Society included a protector (i.e., figurehead patron), a director, the sitting or attending members, and the local or regional members.37 The Society solicited reports from these correspondent members and affiliates in order to monitor the condition of various sectors of agricultural and economic life. Most of these reports were very practically oriented: weather statistics, seed production, apiary culture, the state of cow farming, the quality of forests and pastures, and so forth. The Society then compiled statistics and distributed almanacs, calendars, and pamphlets on farming information and techniques. In addition, the Society would decide on the worth of new technology and machine investment, and publish opinions on the management of population, governmental policies, and statistics. Publications were available in German and Czech after 1806.38 Although the information distributed seems on first glance to be limited to agriculture and its related problems, the scope of the PES’s work was in fact much more widespread. In one almanac divided into recommended activities for each month and intended for public reading, the authors emphasized that education was their duty and intent, and they made explicit that they were engaged in a “project of improvement.”39 The intended improvement meant not only better living standards for the rural population, but the “project of improvement” overall meant the socialization of the rural population and the creation of citizens, or Bürger, 96

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out of the rural population. From the perspective of the PES, rural problems needed to be addressed on multiple levels: No improvement in Bohemia’s situation could be expected if the population of the countryside was left to wallow in moral and practical ignorance or if the farmers lacked the opportunities and means to improve their situation and, by extension, the rural economy. Both the people and the land needed to be reclaimed. The Society sought to target agricultural sectors that were manifestly unproductive and that represented vulnerable economic areas in terms of economic autarky. Curiously, the economic independence of the Monarchy as a whole or even of the Austrian-Bohemian side was only partially the issue. Even more significant were serious remarks about the state of the Bohemian economy and its ability to compete. In his attempt to convince the Society and the Gubernium that a beekeeping instructor was critical to apiculture in Bohemia, one member remarked on the fact that it was “unfortunately a too well known truth that Bohemian beekeeping had as yet made no advances to improving apiculture overall,” and “precious honey and wax, which one is forced to purchase from abroad” at a loss of money, ought to be a primary concern for the government. The Society’s members urged the government to appoint a “practical bee teacher” who could instruct all those with apiaries on the proper handling of bees, the plants necessary for their survival and propagation, and the seasonal tasks required of beekeepers in order to have flourishing apiaries. In the Society’s petition to the Gubernium, they requested the placement of Joseph Munzberg as a public bee teacher, or at the very least that Munzberg be given a position on the government’s estates, and that the care of the plants and forests necessary to the bees be protected. From the PES’s perspective, their educational mandate was clear: Munzberg could be ordered to write a practical manual on beekeeping to describe clearly to others the most advantageous and profitable means of keeping bees, and thus contribute to the gradual growth and improvement of a critical segment of agricultural production in Bohemia. It was not solely for the good of apiculture or similar topics that the Society focused on individuals like Munzberg. According to the members of the Society, part of the nature of national progress for Bohemia had to be cultivating not just the land, but the talents of those who worked and were familiar with the land and its profitable uses. It was untenable to PES members that individuals like Munzberg, who had experience and talents that ought to be applied in the Fatherland, should be tempted or forced to go abroad because they could not “live as honest men” in the country of their birth. Society members also articulated the need to create salaried positions for individuals in possession of agricultural knowledge gained by years of patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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experience, and concluded that “it would be a shame to let such a man . . . go to ruin.” Ruin in this sense also encompassed emigration. In the discussions on regional expertise, the society’s reports made clear that if these individuals left Bohemia for lack of opportunity, the Fatherland would sustain a double wound: loss of agricultural expertise for Bohemia, and a relative gain for Bohemia’s competitors abroad. The ability of the PES to act as institutional guide in the quest for progress was inevitably hampered by being an institution “in between.” It was neither wholly government controlled nor entirely independent. Although the PES has been criticized as being an institution controlled by nobles seeking to contain agricultural changes, the rosters of PES members reflect a varied membership that included nobles, local bureaucrats, and non-noble agronomists and scientists, though few peasants.40 As the Society wrote to Kaspar Sternberg after his election to the PES in February 1815, “The Society is convinced that their endeavor to promote agriculture of every kind in their Fatherland is best accomplished when men of practical knowledge, fruitful activity, and proven love of the Fatherland are united in the Society.”41 The political leanings of the PES have also been criticized, based on the attempt of the Habsburgs to merge the PES with the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences. Although this move was resisted by both institutions, some have chosen to see this episode as an attempt by the PES, which had government links, and the government, to stifle the free intellectual inquiry of the Society of Sciences.42 The government’s request that the two societies be merged was in part an attempt to centralize and extend government control over private societies, as well as oversee the work of quasi-public institutions like the PES. From the perspective of those engaged in the PES, to fold the two societies into one did not represent progress for either, and particularly not for the PES. As one member, Dr. Zauschner, weighed in on the debate, he emphasized that, “The union of these two societies ought not to take place. First, the Society of Sciences is not practical. Second, the union cannot be viewed as beneficial since the Society of Sciences is concerned with algebraic, theoretical-mathematical problems, topics of life, historical antiquity and so forth, that would rob the Agricultural Society of its time—which ought to be devoted to the actual conditions of agronomy—without being able to contribute to its essential goals.”43 He reiterated that the Society of Sciences was interested in completely different questions, even when they investigated the problem of agricultural production. Professor Herget concurred with this opinion, insisting that the two societies would only be able to cooperate meaningfully in the monitoring and reporting of the weather, and the agrarian society would be “robbed” of its time in regard to all other 98

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potential collaborations.44 Other members described the necessity of each society maintaining its essential identity and tasks, which could be construed as complementary, but did not overlap. In the final discussion and vote, the members of the PES overwhelmingly rejected the government’s request. Having fobbed off this union with the Society of Sciences, the PES changed its name from the Society for the Advancement of Agriculture and the Free Arts to the Patriotic Economic Agricultural Society, and again turned its attention to the problem of reaching the public. In April 1789, the Society discussed plans for how they might publish an economic monthly or an economic almanac, a task sitting members admitted would “fulfill the wishes of the highest authorities.”45 The PES made clear that the most important element of any almanac or monthly was that it contain “fundamental” and practical information that would contribute to general knowledge of the best agrarian methods and techniques. The discussions between the Viennese government, its representatives in the Prague Gubernium, and the PES illuminate the extent to which this type of institution functioned as an intermediary between central authority and local populations. Furthermore, this was a dialogue that served to reinforce local notions of identity. The PES refused to act as a clearinghouse for local bureaucrats—who would need to prove their economic and agricultural knowledge and practical credentials before being allowed into the Society.46 The PES was neither fish nor fowl: It was in a limited sense a representative of officialdom in its tasks of validating agronomists’ claims of expertise and collecting the appropriate government fees for these validations, while at the same time it sought to represent objective knowledge in the dissemination of information about crops and livestock. The PES’s agenda was set as much by the Gubernium, as by the internal interests of its members, a relationship very different from other more broadly conceived scientific societies that had been established across the continent. The problem of field usage was illustrative of their bizarre position. The government’s push to introduce proper crop rotation was not terribly successful, and the PES was enlisted to improve the government’s chances of reaching the population on the need to alter the field system. The three-field system still dominated in the crownlands, and the PES found it difficult to introduce the issue of land use without directly confronting the problem of landholding and peasant obligations. The PES avoided direct confrontations with entrenched landed elites on this issue, preferring to take refuge in yet another publication. Agronomists had long recognized the importance of clover and nitrogen-rich fodder crops in the successful implementation of crop rotation. In April 1789, the Gubernium requested that the PES produce a patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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short, comprehensible instruction for successful harvesting and storage of clover for livestock feeding, and the PES complied in the hope that spreading the word would be sufficient. “Since the intention of the government is primarily directed at educating the peasantry as to how clover can be protected from spoilage and rot” it was appropriate to see that works on clover were distributed in both Czech and German.47 The Society also served as an intermediary in the struggle over common lands and pasture rights, but with little success. The Society commonly received reports from different quarters about the illegal pasturing of sheep at night, “carried out with the greatest cunning,” but with no means to rectify the situation. The PES regularly reported to both the Gubernium and to Vienna on the struggles taking place between common rights and the “progress” of land enclosure and cultivation. Those steeped in the principles of stabling of livestock and crop rotation found it hard to bring the message to peasants deeply distrustful of the PES’s motivations. The unwillingness of the PES to engage in any overtly “political” discussion vis-à-vis land use was on the one hand a practical reticence about rocking the boat that allowed it to continue to function with governmental approval, but on the other hand hampered its ability to appeal to the rural population as an objective organization. In one discussion of the rights of servants, for instance, the Society’s minutes stated bluntly that “political observations were out of order,” though the Society would not allow complaints to pass in total silence.48 In this respect the imperfect position of the PES betwixt and between was readily apparent. The Society urged the government to republish and adequately publicize the regulations governing rural labor dues and household labor duties, and to punish those exceeding established limits. But, the PES refrained from commentary condemning landlords publicly, despite the obvious rural problems that had erupted in the 1770s, and despite the fact that most landlords recognized that unfree labor was not sufficiently profitable. Curiously enough, regardless of its real focus on the land, the PES was in essence an urban society. It met regularly in Prague, and members of the PES recognized their distance in real and social terms from the land and those who worked it. The Society constantly cast about for the names of “worthy and useful farmers living in the country.”49 The PES was conscious that its primary target remained the “common man,” and that there were many obstacles in reaching this proverbial common man. In discussions on publications like farmers’ almanacs, the Society stressed that any work had to be short or it would no longer be of practical use to the regular farmer: “Each member must put together those principles and truths which he deems of greatest interest to the Bohemian husbandman in concise, short, clear language.”50 100

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Manuals were rejected if PES members felt they were too costly for the “common man” or if they contained too many “foreign phrases.”51 Conspicuously and surprisingly missing from the Society’s references to “the common man” is anything resembling a Romantic glorification of those who pursued life “in the country.” There was instead considerable frustration with the rigid unwillingness on the part of rural populations of different backgrounds to embrace change of any kind. More than once the PES chose to avoid recommending works for publication not because they were poor theoretically, but rather the contrary. Works that advocated a too radical shift, even those that were the best methodologically speaking, were unlikely to make an impression on the “country man,” who was not amenable to changing his system.52 This argument surfaced in criticisms of manuals on everything from the nature of beehives to clover storage and pasture rights. As one member wrote, the peasant “is against every conspicuous innovation—and is the more suspicious the more it deviates from his accustomed way.”53 The Society sought to overcome these obstacles through its own attempts at social improvement. Almanacs intended for farmers stressed repeatedly the need to send children to school, and paternalistically and preemptively scolded farmers for a variety of perceived sins, including thievery, drunkenness, begging, and susceptibility to rumor, lore, and myth. Rural parents were also charged with the responsibility of “properly” raising their children. This meant not just preventing them from eating strange roots and tending to them while sick, but more importantly to cultivate in children habits of diligence and usefulness that would benefit them as individuals and society more generally. The PES members’ belief in social progress and the power of enlightenment was very evident in this direct appeal to parents. Although the authors may have struggled against the perceived stubbornness of the rural population, they urged farmers to effect a generational change. If the farmers themselves had “learned nothing” in their youth, they could make the future different for their own children.54 Even the choice of the monthly almanac as a means of education implied the belief that progress in agriculture for the Bohemian peasant was not to arrive in a flash of insight, but rather to be achieved through gradual enlightenment, as the Society sought to bring peasants “to the light” by incremental revelations. For any work intended primarily for the peasant, the PES opined that it was “necessary to take into account his habit, stubbornness, and prejudice.” And certainly, the language had to be appropriate. This was not a matter of Czech versus German, but a matter of highbrow versus low, and all who contributed to manuals destined for the provinces were urged to use “popular” or common language to elucidate their theories. Joseph patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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II’s attempts at language uniformity notwithstanding, in terms of language choice the PES emphasized that communication, not Germanization, was the intent, and in 1790 the PES specified that at least two-thirds of almanac printing was to be done in Czech.55 The PES also urged the government to influence the population, by example, as a model landowner. For instance, the Society urged the state to set up model public tree farms—“for the good of the Bohemian farmer”—that could serve as the source and inspiration to improve the cultivation of fruit trees in particular.56 Agrarian reform within the kingdom was of course not limited to Bohemia alone. Similar dialogues about agricultural change and the nature of landholding took place in other regions. The Moravian-Silesian Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Natural History, and Regional Studies was established in 1768 under similar circumstances. The Moravian Society had a particular mission in attempting to overcome the extreme loss of Silesia resulting from the War of the Austrian Succession. The Moravian Society consciously promoted the diversity of the Moravian economy, attempting to find ways to variegate further an agricultural base that included brewing and viticulture, as well as mining, textiles, and other nascent industries. The chroniclers of the Moravian Society explicitly referred to the reign of Maria Theresa as a fundamental turning point for Moravian economic development, when “the great Theresa” shined the “light of the morning on the lot of the farmer.”57 The Moravian Society acted as the extension or continuation of policies that had already improved the security of peasant landholding, reshifted the tax burden, lightened and regularized labor obligations, and encouraged major growth in sericulture, apiculture, sheep herding, and textiles.58 Agrarian societies like the PES and MSS were concerned with far more than we can term “simply” agriculture. They arose in an intellectual climate that based notions of economic prosperity on the land and the population, but were also profoundly aware that agriculture and the economic realm implied far more than just crops. Mining, industry, machinery, and the like were all elements of the economy, and closely connected to the productivity of the land. Members of agrarian societies struggled with reconciling competing uses of the land, and competing claims. The Moravian Society, like the PES, was also marked by an ambivalent relationship to both landowners and peasants. As one historian of the Moravian Society wrote, “The people were entirely uneducated, rough, wild, unkempt; filled with the darkest superstition so that they became the rich sacrifices of witches and sorcerers, wounded and robbed by beggars . . . and gypsies.”59 From the perspective of members of the Moravian Society who were “in the middle,” the combination of greedy and/or reactionary landlords and ignorant, superstitious peasants 102

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was a powerful obstacle to prosperity. To counteract this, the Moravian Society, like the PES, placed emphasis on the need for education, reiterating the salutary social benefits that would be attached to improved rural conditions, modernized agrarian techniques, and the emergence of enlightened, rational citizens out of the uneducated in the countryside. It is very difficult to assess the direct impact of the agrarian societies on rural productivity. Although cautious in the approach to new technology and sometimes fearful of what agricultural change would mean for social relations in the countryside, the PES did act as a force for modernization, albeit slow and controlled modernization. However disappointing their results, the members of the PES and MSS hoped to improve rural life and to act positively as a force for rural change, and it is in their intentions and the publication of their intentions that their true influence lay. Agrarian and economic societies contributed directly to a public discussion of education and communication, and connected change and progress in the provinces and rural areas to overarching questions of enlightenment, rational government, and national competition. Moreover, these societies were important in their own right as transitional social institutions wherein men of different backgrounds and different political agenda were brought together for a similar purpose. Although there was inherent tension in the position of the PES as a “way station” between society and the state, this “in-betweenness” encouraged members to act on the behalf of both the state and society broadly construed. In part because of their efforts, the rhetoric of local, agrarian reform ultimately became part of the larger public dialogue on the comparative strength of the nation. In this discussion about strength and competitiveness, the agrarian societies of the period reflected the concerns taking shape within the larger scientific community, and certainly within the institutions of that community.

The Bohemian Society of Sciences In 1769, a distinguished company of men began meeting in the home of Count Francis Anton Nostitz in Prague’s Malà Strana.60 Between 1771 and 1772 they published a circular entitled “Prager Gelehrte Nachrichten” that critically examined new literature for domestic consumption. The expulsion of the Jesuits in 1773 and the impact of educational reform breathed new life into the intellectual community in Bohemia, particularly in Prague. Suddenly intellectual leadership was opened up, and the Bohemian scholars involved in the Nostitz salon began regular meetings to brief each other on the latest scientific findings and intellectual events, and purposefully to patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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develop scientific learning in a bid to contribute toward the betterment of the Bohemian lands. Forming the Private Learned Society, these men assembled to share knowledge and encourage scientific advances, and to make some progress in lessening the appalling state of public ignorance in Bohemia. At first the Society numbered under a dozen, but included some of the most famous scholars in Prague: Ignac von Born, Gelasius Dobner, Josef Dobrovský, Francis Joseph Kinský, Johann and Joseph Mayer, Francis Martin Pelcl, and Nicholas Voigt.61 In the 1770s, the original Learned Society that had met in the Nostitz palace was reconceived as an expressly Bohemian society that was to promote science and Bohemian history. Ignac Born and the other founding members of the Society had envisaged the creation of an independent center for research and learning, along the lines of those established in other European cities. As Born explained in the first published volume of the Society’s activities, Discourses of a Private Society in Bohemia for the Development of Mathematics, Fatherland’s History, and Natural History, in 1775, “Various of my friends have often complained of the lack of public institutions in our region through which the individual observations of scholars might be collected and shared with the public. We saw how harmful it must be to the glory of our nation, that, while every little university in the Germanies has established its own learned society, here in our enlightened age, we have neglected to create such a thing.”62 The journal, edited by Born, was a reflection of the Society’s commitment to enlightened ideology and the experimental sciences, as well as commentary and criticism on contemporary scholarly publishing. Six volumes of the journal appeared from 1775 to 1784. As Born described in the second volume: Bohemia—which has always distinguished itself from the other imperial states of the hereditary lands by the productivity of its learned men— should also in this case serve as a model, and by doing so encourage the learned of Austria, Hungary, and the other sprawling provinces to meet just as unselfishly to fill in the gaps of their native history, to work on the natural history of their region and the physical and mathematical sciences, and to share their discoveries with the educated world. With this we may make up for the fact that the establishment of public academies of science is yet viewed as very unnecessary, and the benefit that would extend from this to the whole nation is not once taken into respectful consideration.63 The Private Learned Society received partial official sanction and became public as the official Bohemian Society of Sciences in 1784. Although Joseph II refused the Society’s request for full corporate status and royal 104

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seal, he approved their bylaws allowing the Society to admit members and use a hall at Prague University for their formal meetings.64 In the bylaws written to govern their activities, the Society made their protocols, interests, and intentions clear. As the authors of the bylaws wrote, they desired to see the Society established on a firm footing, and by agreement of the assembled members, only theology, law, and fine arts were beyond the scope of the Society’s activities. Karl Egon Fürstenberg was elected president of the Society, for his “great personal talents, learned service, and especially his brilliant service for the Fatherland, the Enlightenment and the spread of the sciences.”65 The main goal of the Society was “to study by common effort the useful sciences, and as far as it was within her power, to spread new discoveries.”66 To this end, the Society would choose members known for their service to the Fatherland, their achievements in the learned world, and for their previous work in the Private Learned Society. The first law of the Society of Sciences stated explicitly that the Society was set on the principle of complete equality regardless of rank, and that they would be vigilant in the observance of this law or risk “shaking the ground” on which they stood, thereby seriously weakening the Society.67 In the rules of conduct the Society also reserved the right to bar from active participation any member who violated this principle of equality, whether openly or subversively. In 1791, the Bohemian Society of Sciences was able to take advantage of Leopold II’s interest in science, and the Society planned a special plenary session on September 25 in honor of Leopold’s coronation, attended by the king. At that meeting, Josef Dobrovský delivered his subsequently famous speech on the service the Slavic populations had given to the Habsburgs, entitled “On the Devotion and Submissiveness of the Slavic Peoples to the House of Austria.” Thereafter, the Society was able to append the coveted “Royal” to its name, and deposit 6,000 florins from the court treasury, which Leopold had donated to show his appreciation. This gift was “for the continuation of useful travels, experiments, and local descriptions with the intent . . . that these will turn their patriotic efforts excellently towards those subjects that will perfect national industry, spread useful knowledge, and thereby be able to promote in a practical manner the best for human society overall and the weal of Bohemia in particular.”68 Although royal status conferred legitimacy, the Society strove to maintain its independence in scholarly matters.69 After debating the best use of the money given by Leopold, the Society chose to send someone “of the historical class” to seek out Bohemian manuscripts lost in the conflicts of the seventeenth century.70 Josef Dobrovský was to receive 1,000 florins of the patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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money donated by Leopold to travel to Sweden in search of literary treasures taken from Bohemia. Dobrovský’s task was to locate these documents, to examine their value and authenticity, and to procure copies. If he decided that any documents were “indispensable” for the nation, he was to explore the possibility of acquiring them. This was not the first time Bohemians had attempted to reclaim their lost documentary heritage. Anton Johann Nostitz had begun the process of reclamation while serving as ambassador in Sweden. During his tenure there, from 1685 through 1690, Nostitz redeemed 133 documents and manuscripts and deposited them in the Estates’ archive.71 Further attempts by Karl Egon Fürstenberg and Christian Sternberg enjoyed limited success. Dobrovský’s purview was to discover what of their heritage they might expect to retrieve from Sweden, with his concentration resting on the documents from the periods of Charles IV, the Hussites, and George of Podeˇbrady. Joachim Sternberg volunteered to accompany Dobrovský on the northern trip, albeit at his own cost and with a different agenda. In the summer of 1792, Joachim Sternberg informed his brother Kaspar that he was undertaking the journey with Dobrovský to Denmark, Sweden, and Russia.72 Joachim had become increasingly involved in the study of higher math, meteorology, and astronomy. Since taking over the Sternberg family properties near Radnitz, he had expanded his scientific experimentation and become involved in various projects to improve agricultural and industrial technology, particularly in mining and metallurgy. Many of his subsequent journeys were inspired by these interests, his scientific pursuits put him in contact with many other intellectuals in Bohemia, and he had been elected to the Society of Sciences in 1790. By the 1790s Joachim Sternberg was one of the foremost natural scientists in Bohemia, and he was famous for his theoretical and practical work on the groundbreaking oxidation theories of the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier.73 On the occasion of his election into the membership of the Society, Joachim Sternberg referred to the feelings “of which an honorable Bohemian is capable of, when he is counted among the number of a patriotic society.”74 Sternberg also financed the publication of Dobrovský’s speech for Leopold II, including the sections that had been censored by the Gubernium for their muted criticism of Habsburg Germanization policies. Joachim Sternberg’s interest in the northern trip centered on a plan, “according to which a not inconsiderable use for national industry is to be expected.”75 Sternberg was determined to turn his attention to “not just the subject of general natural history, but also to that of agriculture, factories, manufactures, industrial institutions, and so forth.”76 Dobrovský and Joachim Sternberg left Bohemia from the Sternberg estate near Radnitz for Sweden on May 15, 106

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1792, accompanied by the chemist Lampadius.77 Sternberg and Dobrovský spent only part of the trip together, as they had very different agendas in the completion of their missions in Scandinavia, and in Russia. They did meet in Russia, after Dobrovský reached St. Petersburg in August. The differences between the agendas defined by Dobrovský and Sternberg highlight another facet of aristocratic intellectual activity, one often criticized by those evaluating the early period of patriotic activity.78 The aristocracy has been faulted for being interested solely in science, machines, and industry, while they left their nationalist, and bourgeois, compatriots to occupy themselves with language and history. Thus, although Dobrovský was engaged in the reclamation of distinctly Slavic Czech national treasures, Sternberg chose to interest himself in hard science, mineralogy, meteorology, and the connections between industrial development and national competitiveness. That aristocrats were more likely to engage in hard science is not disputed here. However, these divergent interests were less a function of the aristocracy’s lack of affection for the Czech national community than the fact that their interests were structurally rooted in their upbringing. Whereas language, any language, was fluid and not a primary identifying marker for the aristocracy, land was not, and aristocrats were educated to think in terms of the land they owned and what could be done with it.79 Although Joachim Sternberg had long been engaged in scientific issues, his serious studies turned to natural and mining history after he had rebuilt the iron works at Darowa, and he wanted to acquire a more rigorous knowledge of the earth’s formation.80 That the focus on language and history would subsequently be viewed as the crucial spark for the national movement should not diminish sincere wishes on the part of aristocrats to improve the relative industrial and economic position of Bohemia, desires viewed by contemporaries as equally patriotic. In addition, the policies of the central government since the 1770s had encouraged the industrial development of Bohemia, a program that the aristocracy seized on, and this also influenced their interests. Joachim Sternberg had great plans for touring the vast regions of the Russian Empire, but these desires were to remain unfulfilled. Without realizing that he was under suspicion, Sternberg had made public his plans to travel to China with an English ambassador via the Russian territories in the east. The Russian authorities refused to grant Sternberg a traveling visa, arresting him in Kronstadt, and forcing him to return to Bohemia via Poland. The authorities were convinced that Sternberg was spying and having official, secret, reports of his observations sent via courier to Vienna.81 Of course, the Russian authorities were partially correct in their suspicions, as Sternberg had in fact sent a report back to Emperor Leopold entitled “Militärische, soziale, patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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und wirtschaftliche Abhandlung über Schweden” from Upsala on August 9, 1792.82 Sternberg’s observations on Russia were concentrated on geographical, meteorological, and other scientific observations. His remarks also touched on the political and social problems generated by the sheer size of Russia, the benefits brought by Peter the Great, and the influences of Peter’s reforms on art, trade, and society. Sternberg criticized the standard travel accounts of Russia because writers failed to see anything beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg. He determined that he would travel to the “rough and wild of this place.”83 He also, however, made many socioeconomic observations, particularly remarks on the brutal living conditions, as he saw them, of the non-noble rural population. Sternberg clearly recognized that the degradation of the peasantry he perceived in Russia was to be attributed to its system of serfdom.84 As he remarked, “The sense of this creature is so oppressed and has become so blunted. . . . This complete denial of the spiritual energies means, for some, to be happy; they are proud that the Russian, half naked and plagued by hunger, can be happy. What shifting fate is such a serf not subjected to! If the owner is an evil landlord, he will sell these people, and they are almost always offered for sale; if the serf falls into the hands of a profiteer, he uses the bodily strength of this poor creature to the utmost.”85 Sternberg made it clear that given a change in his circumstances, namely the appropriate social connections and opportunity, the Russian will “make quick progress”: “With the clearest conviction that he has the happiest disposition to learn all arts and sciences, the constitution of the land in which he lives, however, does not allow this to germinate.”86 This and many other statements reflect the tendency of Sternberg, and travelers like him, to come to Russia to chronicle its ills—its barbaric qualities—as they perceived them. In Sternberg’s description was the unstated assumption that Russia was fundamentally different from Bohemia and that their own circumstances belonged to one and the same better, Western, world. Despite the wretched condition of some Bohemian peasants, Sternberg bemoaned the state of the Finnish peasants living under Russian lords, describing them as extremely poor with barely the clothes necessary to cover themselves. Their housing was in his estimation hardly fit for animals, and Sternberg noted that these meager huts in fact were shared by whatever livestock the family tended. Sternberg saw the peasants essentially as slaves, living in the most appalling conditions and existing for the most part on bread made of tree bark. He understood that the ability of the peasant to rise above his circumstances at home and abroad was seriously curtailed the more desperate his physical state. As he noted in his travels, “The standard by which we measure, is found within ourselves; how can a man, who has lost his sensibility because 108

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of a burden of perpetual pressure, have a susceptibility for moral code which lies beyond him, when the physical can no longer rouse him.”87 Joachim Sternberg’s travel writings in Russia and elsewhere reveal a picture of his and his fellow Bohemian aristocrats’ sense of self-identification, and the fluidity of their nationality. Sternberg referred to himself as both German and Czech, or more precisely, as a “Böhme,” and despite his own commitment to supporting the Czech heritage of Bohemia, and adamant belief that a Czech be appointed parish priest on the family holdings at Radnitz, in his Bemerkungen über Rußland, he more than once directed his remarks to the comparative notice of “we Germans.” This was, more than anything, an imperial category, rather than a commentary on his own ethnicity or cultural identity. It was an acknowledgment of Bohemia’s political association with the German Empire, and in other contexts, for instance while attending a peasant wedding in Russia, he remarked that he wanted to watch in order to compare the rituals with “our old Slavic ones.”88 Although Sternberg himself might have moved rather seamlessly between identities, within the Bohemian Society of Sciences, however, national issues and Slavic, Bohemian identity were increasingly brought to the forefront of the Society’s activities. Members of the Society met as scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians interested in the greater good—an at times nebulous goal that scientific progress was ostensibly to promote. The list of initial members of the Society also provides further evidence of the links between Freemasonry, aristocracy, and learned societies. The majority of the men involved in the establishment of the Bohemian Society of Sciences, including the educator Francis Joseph Kinský and Ignac von Born, were prominent Freemasons.89 The writings of the Society, particularly Ignac von Born’s satirical works, emphasized discourse within an “intellectual aristocracy” (as opposed to a political, social, or legal one) and made it clear that education and learning were more highly valued, and occupied a higher level, than privileged background and status.90 The work of the Bohemian Society of Sciences was manifold, and its membership increasingly diverse. It became involved not just in scientific study, but also in other far-reaching projects not initially within its scientific purview. The Society periodically held formal sessions that met, after 1784, in the aula of Prague University. Society members also conducted informal meetings to present material, the results of scientific experiments, and to discuss recent literature and future projects. The Society’s members were divided between two classes: physical sciences/mathematics and patriotic history. In practice, their interests overlapped, and very little was outside either section’s potential scope of inquiry. Studies in mineralogy, botany, and mathematics, discourses on births and deaths, petrified remains, and astronomy, as well as philology, patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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Slavicism, and history were just a fraction of the represented work of the Society’s members.91 A sketch of some of the topics presented to the Society in 1785 reveals the members’ diverse interests: “An Historical Treatment: On the Probable Origin of the Double Eagle in the Shield of the Emperor Wenzel” (F. Pelcl); “How One Can with Hindsight Use the Oldest Sources of the Fatherland in Different Branches of History.” (J. Dobrovský); “Chronological History of Hungarian Geology” ( Johann Sternberg); and Gelasius Dobner’s “A Critical Examination: Whether Christianity was Established in Bohemia through the Latin Bishops and Priests, or the Slavic Apostle Methodius and His Mission, and Whether in the Beginning a Public Slavic Rite Existed in Bohemia?”92 In addition to an array of historical discourses, the Society actively promoted concrete scientific studies and sought the application of a systematic method of researching the “nature” of Bohemia with a view to the needs of industry, agriculture, and commerce. In the transactions of 1804, the Society published work on wave theory, the narcotic strength of coccinella septempunctata, a report on the discovery of heathen graves in Bohemia, a numismatics essay on medieval coins, and an essay by Josef Dobrovský on the attempt to purify older Bohemian history of falsifications.93 This concern for “useful” knowledge was a central element of the Society’s charter, and Emperor Leopold II had, in fact, requested that the 6,000 florins he presented to the Society at the time of his coronation be dispersed for the pursuit of useful work that would support industrial development in Bohemia. Essay contests, a ubiquitous feature in scientific societies and academies across Europe, were one way to promote knowledge and stimulate research, with an eye on the practical application of scientific progress. It was customary for the Society to award a monetary prize to the winning essayist, as well as pay for the publication and distribution of the winning essay, usually by engaging an aristocratic sponsor to fund the contest. The topics of these contests were wide-ranging, but there were several themes that were common, not only within the Society, but across various societies’ programs. Watershed historical events and heroic figures, the economic and industrial development of the Fatherland, and descriptions of provincial areas were customary themes. Contest topics and responses focused on questions that would stimulate research and inquiry into the flora, fauna, and natural and cultural wealth of Bohemia. For instance, the contest in 1785–1786 posed the questions, “How are the raw materials in Bohemia mined, and how have they been manufactured and used throughout different ages? And what progress have arts and manufactures, factories and trade had? To what degree might these be perfected, and what obstacles stand in the way of their improvement?”94 In 1806, the Society thanked “its worthy member Joachim 110

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Count Sternberg for new evidence of his equally lively enthusiasm for the Society and for the culture of the Fatherland, which induced him to offer the following essay question”: In the conviction that the description of the progress of the human intellect is tremendously beneficial for the revival of the arts and sciences in a cultured state, and (with particular view of the Bohemian Kingdom) an enumeration of the scientific measures and merits, with which our respected forefathers and their descendants have distinguished themselves up until the present, must bring about a estimable emulation in every patriot, Mr. Joachim Count Sternberg has promised a prize of 300 florins for the best answer to the following query: “Which educational and artistic establishments can be found in Bohemia from the oldest times until the year 1804? Which men have been educated through these, or otherwise been distinguished with superior acclaim?” His wish is to receive a short and faithful overview of the contributions in the Fatherland in the sciences and arts—with consideration of the famous Prague University, of notable men in every field—and of native inventions.95 Despite his sponsorship in 1806, Joachim Sternberg left the judgment of the essays up to the Society. Submissions for most contests could be made in either German or Latin, even for patriotic topics—Czech was not seriously entertained as a possibility, though not because they were hostile to it—and a distinct period for submissions was defined.96 The language issue was not limited to aristocrats. Francis Martin Pelcl himself remarked, “I confess that I do not trust myself to write a book in Czech, because I am more accustomed to the German, even though Czech is my mother tongue.”97 Two other contests were sponsored along with Joachim Sternberg’s proposed question. Five hundred florins and 500 printed copies were offered for the best answer to the following: “By what means and ways can the diverse adulterations of all food stuffs besides legal investigation be abolished or at least lessened?” Similar prizes were offered “[f]or the best critical examination and appreciation of all the sources of Bohemian history, along with a report and evaluation of the best Bohemian historical works.”98 Even accounting for the problems inherent in the essay contests—inappropriate responses, no responses, and so forth—the institution of the essay contest was an important component of the interaction between learned societies and patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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the public.99 The contests were open and advertised, and the winners received free publication for the distribution of their essays among the reading public. Although essay contests could reinforce the boundaries of the international “Republic of Letters,” their increasingly national concentration meant that the contests reinforced only the domestic “status of letters” instead. If one leaves aside the chronicle of the Society’s activities, it is useful to attempt to find some ultimate sum of purpose and intent that might shed light on its eventual importance for the public and the nation. Although it is problematic to infer direct connections between the inquiries undertaken within institutions and the impact of these activities on individuals within the Society or the wider public, it is nevertheless clear that in the work of the Society of Sciences, the primary public concern was the possibility for science to help define and elevate the community. The correspondence of the Society, from scholars at home and abroad, attests to a continuing fixation with the place and position of Bohemia in the wider scientific and cultural world. In addition, by nature of their involvement with science in the Fatherland, members of the Society were de facto patriots, and addressed each other as such. General notices to the membership would read, “To mathematical patriots . . . ” and like-minded sentiments.100 Even in the context of the scientific academy, progress, the conceptual standby of enlightened, universalist, humanist thought, was taken out of the universal realm, viewed through the lens of Romanticism, and reflected back onto the local community.

Technology and National Competitiveness The desire of the members of the Society of Sciences to increase the reputation of the Society and of science in Bohemia extended to proving to the government the crucial role scientific knowledge would play for the proper development of domestic industry and competitiveness. The Society wished to ensure that their work would be, if not supported, then at least not hindered by the government. By the second decade of the nineteenth century, Kaspar Sternberg pointed to the great range of public learned institutions in Bohemia, reflecting, “Few lands could boast of having accomplished so much . . . for art and sciences as our Bohemia.”101 Furthermore, even during the “stress of stormy times,” Kaspar felt that the Bohemians had proven that “honorable citizens” did not neglect to support the “soaring aspirations” of the Fatherland, amidst the “clash of weapons.”102 Although the trend was even more prevalent after the Revolutionary wars, it is not uncommon to see references to Bohemia’s status earlier. As a correspondent wrote to the Society 112

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of Sciences in 1785, “In recent times the useful sciences and the Fatherland’s literature in Bohemia have made such huge strides, and won such quick advancement, that it is not just placed in competition against many nations, but can also boast of a glorious victory”: “The benefit, which the sciences provide to the state, is so important and clear, that one can conclude with certainty from the blooming and growth of the former, the well-being of the latter, even more clearly when one puts the current state of nations before an inquiring eye, revealing the history of this inseparable connection. So did our beloved Fatherland Bohemia and Moravia bloom in peace and quiet, even more so after the flowering of the sciences there. . . . ”103 Francis Joseph Gerstner, a member of the PES and one of the founders of the Polytechnical Institute in 1806, was more pessimistic. In his efforts to direct the funds awarded to the Society of Sciences by Leopold II in 1791, Gerstner worried that Bohemia was lagging behind and that no one came to Prague to study technology. Gerstner claimed that the “neglect of science was not only throwing shame on Bohemia but positively harming the country,” and continued, “Only the scientist who was conscious of the true interests of his country could not go astray.”104 And in 1803, while in Paris for scientific and scholarly meetings, Joachim Sternberg complained that despite his excellent reception among the foremost French scientists, he was forced to acknowledge the lack of standing of Bohemia among the general public there: “It was exceedingly painful that I had to notice the particular ridicule and contempt that is harbored against the Bohemian nation. It was also impossible for me to reach the point, where announcements of one’s arrival—which are always accomplished in a loud voice—in which one should have referred to me in accordance with my instructions as the Count Sternberg of Prague; this is deemed a degradation, however, and it is always put—rather than Prague—Vienna.”105 Competition, and the role of a nation as one among many, also set the tenor of the debate in the public sphere, such that concern about the “others” inside and outside the political territory was echoed in the criticism of state (or elite) authority. Mercantilism had put on the table the notion of a “national” territory—as well as encouraged the development of an administration and bureaucracy to promote its wealth.106 In the early nineteenth century, individual economists like Georg Buquoy redrew these concerns in term of national economy and international competition.107 Extrapolating from the natural philosophy debate on civilization versus nature, Buquoy argued that there were benefits and dangers for nations, as well as individuals, as they sought a higher level of civilization. A more civilized nation required, according to Buquoy, that it preserve its independence from outside influences—its individuality—and that it be prepared to defend itself from outside attack. patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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The benefits of this preparation against attack were that “individual members of the nation would be more tightly bound together” and in their concern for the common good of the state, be encouraged to perform their civic responsibilities: “The national feeling that would arise from this would be not just a moral means of defense, but would spill over into the peaceful activities of citizens, and would give all civil activities their own value.”108 Buquoy based the need for a theory of national economy on the fact that civilization engendered institutions necessary to guarantee security to people and property, and these institutions needed to be financed out of the wealth of the nation: “The good condition [of the nation’s economy] is therefore a fundamental requirement for the undisturbed . . . pleasure of the individual, for raising the spirit through art and science, and for the fulfillment of all goals that lie in men.”109 The “patriot”—the “man of true feeling”—must, according to Buquoy, be concerned with the national economy, which could provide a “richly cultivated nation” with “present happiness and the hope of ever-improving conditions.”110 As Herman Freudenberger points out with regard to Bohemia, “Here was a country well aware and conscious of its underdeveloped economy and ready and willing to use every means to catapult itself into the strong economic position that it believed its physical potential allowed and its political pretensions required.”111 The impetus behind this was the weak economic position of the Monarchy and the need of the Habsburgs to increase revenue despite the painful financial loss of Silesia. Cameralism inspired policy makers to think in economic terms about the logical borders of the state: economic self-sufficiency within the borders of the Monarchy. Cameralism also encouraged industrialization as the Habsburgs sought to improve their financial position vis-à-vis their trading partners. Most of the high-quality and luxury goods consumed within the Habsburg Monarchy were imported, and the Habsburgs wanted to redress this imbalance, making the Monarchy a “veritable self-contained little world.”112 Cameralism suggested also that the manufactures of a state should depend on the resources of the home country.113 Knowledge, in this case of raw materials and domestic and acclimatized flora, was to be put at the public’s disposal. Mikuláš Teich refers to many Bohemians who believed that “there is no sense in studying organisms and minerals in foreign countries because they could not possibly be of any use to Bohemia.”114 As Sternberg wrote in 1817, “The first attention must be given to a Flora Bohemica,” the groundwork for which had already been laid by botanists in the districts of Bohemia who “issued a circular for the collection of Bohemian plants.”115 Many scientists also continued to investigate plants and animals that might be successfully transplanted to Bohemian soil. 114

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With the desire to develop land and industrial potential, the Habsburgs found the nobles were willing partners who hoped to exploit their holdings to the fullest extent. In this at least the Habsburgs and their local elites were able to “make common cause,” and noble entrepreneurs worked within new scientific institutions to gain much needed technical advice and expertise.116 Joseph Kinský, President of the Bohemian Technical College, brought foreign masters to his estates in Bohemia to train his peasants in manufacturing techniques, and then often made the peasants a present of the equipment necessary to continue their new skills.117 Although nobles had exploited the resources of their lands in the centuries before, between 1750 and 1790 there was an explosion in the number of industrial enterprises on the estates of the nobility. Earlier economic activity on the estates was based primarily on the produce of the land, particularly brewing and wine making, wool, lumber, and other money-producing ventures that allowed landlords to take full advantage of serf labor. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, mining, glass making, and above all, textiles, became the primary industries of the region. Unlike some other regions of Europe, there was no stigma for a noble to be involved in industry if the industry originated in the noble’s exploitation of his own properties. In fact, material profit earned by engaging in the world of business was “one medium by which the name of the family could acquire new lustre.”118 Although enjoying only a limited success, these manorial enterprises encouraged the growth of more permanent ventures and laid a critical foundation for Bohemia’s successful industrial development.119 Announcing Bohemia’s new industrial and technical accomplishments through exhibitions was another aristocratic venture to promote Bohemia’s reputation and competitive strengths. In 1791, the Bohemian governor Henry Francis Rottenhan, himself an industrialist, put together an industrial exhibition in Prague in honor of Leopold’s coronation, and was instrumental in the 1806 establishment of the Polytechnical Institute under the auspices of the Estates. This exhibition was one of the earliest industrial fairs on the continent. Rottenhan organized the industrial exhibition to “point with pride to the achievements of industry and inferentially to use it as a means of encouraging emulation by others.”120 The exhibition was also intended as an advertisement for Bohemian goods. The Polytechnical Institute, established by the Estates in 1806, was an attempt to take deliberate steps to use education to shift Bohemia to the forefront of industrial nations by promoting the knowledge of industrial techniques and the practical application of science. Advances made in machines, manufacturing, and canals in Britain in particular influenced the industrial development of noble estates and Anglophilia was a characteristic shared by many noble entrepreneurs. The ideas progressive patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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aristocrats took from their travels to the West, particularly Britain, encouraged many of them to look at their estates, and Bohemia, differently. The progressive nature of some of the Bohemian aristocrats was a direct result of their desire to bring Bohemia to the economic and intellectual level of Britain and the West. The work of Georg Buquoy is evidence of the entrepreneurial nature of some of the Bohemian aristocrats. Buquoy, the son-in-law of Rottenhan, was instrumental in the construction in 1806 of the first steam engine in Bohemia at the Polytechnical Institute and worked to promote the adoption of this engine throughout Bohemia.121 Buquoy, while simultaneously a great landowner, was recognized as an entrepreneur well versed in industrial concerns, and known for his significant scientific erudition and for introducing new scientific methods. Recognizing English superiority in the matter of steam power, Buquoy worked on the construction of many steam engines in 1810, and tried to simplify and propagate steam power in Bohemia. In particular, Buquoy hoped to convince the authorities of the need for steam engines, and in 1811 and 1814 he published essays to this end.122 Buquoy and others who worked for the introduction of new technology constantly reiterated the need to improve Bohemia’s relative position in the competitive array of nations. The constant worry about the relative strengths of nations was also the inspiration behind Joachim Sternberg’s report on Sweden in 1792, the report that subsequently caused him so much trouble with the Russian authorities. Originally written in French, Joachim Sternberg’s report, “Military, Social, and Economic Treatise on Sweden” was an overview of Sweden’s strengths, primarily military, both real and potential. In the military equation Sternberg included productive strength—agricultural and industrial—as well as the size and amount of military equipment, ships, cannon, the age of armaments, and the number and quality of the fighting force. Sternberg’s assessment of Sweden’s fleet and military: at the most, 40,000 men, a third of whom were used in agriculture.123 Sternberg went on to assess the population of Sweden overall: the acculturation of fields, condition of forests, land tenure, manufactures, law, and government. The Swedes had considerable ore deposits, which they mined, forged into wrought iron, and sold to the British for steel. Although Sternberg in general lauded the Swedish system of law and justice, he noted other problems: “The ban on Hungarian wines and the great tariffs placed on French wines, increase the consumption of distilled spirits, which is greatly deleterious to the health.” In sum, “the State is thus much weakened, but it has considerable inner strength, resources to rejuvenate it, if only they are properly recognized and used.”124 Sternberg’s observations on iron mining technology in Sweden focused on the productive uses of iron ore slag and how these might be adapted for use in Bohemia. 116

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Concerns about the ability of Bohemia to compete were echoed in the desire for improved education, an issue that crossed over with the absorption of enlightened and Masonic ideals. One of the most important effects of the Enlightenment on science was its commitment to the education of the individual. Joachim Sternberg, who had “accomplished so much for the sciences, and supported especially the Bohemian muses,” established with 10,000 florins a fund to enable talented young people to study.125 Anton Nostitz, in the introduction to his work on the establishment of charities, emphasized that “among the most important subjects for humanity, education takes the first place.”126 Ultimately, concern for individual education was parlayed into what was also best for the nation. Kaspar Sternberg’s reply to the General Direction on their concerns about sending young Bohemian scientists abroad for study in manufactures is evidence of this.127 The government had voiced various objections to the enterprise, namely, that Bohemia did not have qualified individuals to undertake these studies, that these individuals would never acquire the necessary training nor be able to penetrate the secrecies of foreign manufactures, and that it was likely that these individuals would either ply their knowledge elsewhere rather than returning to the Fatherland or use their “secret” knowledge improperly. Sternberg refuted all of these claims. On the availability of qualified applicants, Sternberg wrote that if all were already qualified, the need for such training would be superfluous. In addition, the secrecy in which foreign firms seemed to operate was impossible for these firms to maintain, particularly in the large concerns—the Bohemians sent abroad need only be clever in order to obtain knowledge in these places. While he advocated what was essentially industrial espionage, Sternberg’s strongest counterarguments were saved to refute the possibility that these individuals would somehow forsake their homeland. He believed that it was completely unnecessary to devise some additional means of binding individuals to the state: “Since they would be Bohemians, they . . . would a priori be bound . . .” to the land.128 To have nine individuals return with knowledge while the tenth stayed away was no problem, but to keep the nine at home in order to make sure of the tenth would be, in Sternberg’s words, “a calamity.”129 If the individual learned anything, “he would bring honor to his Fatherland,” and the society would have made a contribution to humanity. The individual was, in this sense all important, because “men were destined for self-edification.”130 Importantly, cultivating an individual’s potential would bring benefit to more than the individual. In Sternberg’s opinion, an individual man’s knowledge could be used in the service of the Fatherland, and the state would surely benefit when an individual is exposed to all things and learns to see for himself how to better his situation. Far more patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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is accomplished by relying on an individual, for the spread of knowledge was based on committed men bound not by force, but by knowledge. As Sternberg concluded, “The less coercion and limitations placed on industry, the more trade and industry will blossom.”131 Here, then, was nascent economic liberalism in the service of Bohemia. Interest in competition and technology among the aristocracy also extended to developing the industrial infrastructure of Bohemia to improve trade, transportation, and communication. The duration of the peace after 1815 and the lack of social unrest made affluent Bohemians more inclined to invest in these ventures.132 In March 1828, a concern was formed to clear the riverbeds and improve and enlarge river trade and travel. The committee of this concern comprised those interested in improving Bohemian infrastructure: Francis and Kaspar Sternberg, Georg Buquoy, Francis Gerstner (cofounder of the Prague Polytechnical Institute), Rudolf Kinský, Francis Klebelsberg, and Joseph Mathias Thun, among others. Francis Anton Thun was successful in having a railroad from Prague to Dresden pass through Deˇcˇín, and was an old-fashioned rationalist in that he believed that his chief function was to educate his people and assure their welfare.133 A joint-stock company was formed in 1827 in order to build a rail line from Prague to Pilsen, and Kaspar Sternberg was elected president. Several major roads out of Germany ran to Pilsen, creating a large market there, and the company hoped that inexpensive rates would lure even more cargo to be shipped to Prague. There was also a wealth of raw materials, particularly coal, wood, and iron, to be mined along the proposed rail to Prague, and the new line would allow them to take advantage of these resources.134 The entire project was put in jeopardy, however, with the revolution of 1830 in France. Too many of the investors had memories of the last time the French rebelled, and investors and the government became jittery at the prospect of investment when the future looked uncertain. Although the revolutionary spirit never spread to Bohemia, many of these industrial plans were delayed for a decade or more. Ultimately, the industrial activities of the aristocracy in Bohemia were crucial for the rise of manufactures and industry during this period.135 With their involvement in the development of industry and their desire to see Bohemia compete successfully in the international arena, progressive aristocrats were classical examples of “transitional man.” As Daniel Lerner analyzes the transition of traditional society to modernity, he describes the activities of transitional men who work to improve roads, technology, and industrial infrastructure. In the process of transition, precedent and custom lose their hold, and “knowledge and economic gain become the touchstones of action.”136 Even more important, although progressive Bohemian aristocrats exhibited 118

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the inconsistencies and ambivalence between “old traditions and new aspirations” so characteristic of transitional figures, their desire to improve Bohemia through the mechanisms of science and education involved precisely that level of innovative change that defined modern society. Anthony Smith, paraphrasing Lerner, describes this as a “new type of personality structure”: “Men must no longer see life as ordained and their status as ascribed; the future must now appear manipulable, their advancement as achieved. A pragmatic and purposive rationality must replace the older cyclical fatalism.”137 The increasing fluidity of social interaction in Bohemia, based on the rationality of scientific and learned discourse, reflected this “personality structure.”

The Sociability of the Intelligentsia: The New Public One of the most important consequences for Bohemia of the nature of scientific work as a collective endeavor is that it brought together for a common purpose a group of individuals from diverse social backgrounds. Viewed at the most basic level, a scientific society in the eighteenth century was “primarily a group of men, intellectually curious and congenial, who met together to talk.”138 Bernard Fay makes the point that although public meetings of these societies rarely appeared productive, “Much more serious and interesting were the ordinary private sessions, when the savants talked among themselves, when technical explanations were made, when they were occupied with correspondence with the literati of their own or foreign countries, where they prepared publications, or chose subjects for competitions, and judged manuscripts submitted.”139 This interaction, determined by science, was at the heart of the new public. Salons and informal gatherings began to set the tone for elite sociability, and the members of the aristocracy threw open their doors to house new, and what were to become public, institutions. Or, in the words of Friedrich Nostitz, the secretary of the Patriotic Friends of the Arts, to Francis Sternberg, “I and my house stand ready for orders.”140 As Kaspar Sternberg related, by the late 1770s the intellectual climate was changing in Prague, led by the intellectual gatherings inspired by Ignac von Born and furthered by men like Josef Dobrovský and Johann Mayer, “one of the most enlightened heads in Prague.”141 Anyone who strove for education, whether noble or not, was to be found in these circles. “These were the first signs of a transformation in the Zeitgeist. . . . I sought to find my way into this new state of affairs.”142 Sternberg himself understood the importance of the interaction between men of different social backgrounds. In his autobiography he related that patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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everything useful that he learned about the world he gained from his interactions with the non-noble students in school in Prague, and while addressing the Society of Sciences before the establishment of the Fatherland’s Museum, he emphasized that “true patriots must work together” toward the same goals if the “sleeping energies of the nation” were to be awakened.143 He constantly returned to the notion that Bohemia would thrive only when those concerned with the enlightenment of the national community met together to discuss and solve national problems. The attitude of the authorities seemed to underscore the need for private citizens to promote science and intellectual life. Kaspar Sternberg believed that Joseph II had little inclination actively to support the sciences, ascribing to the Emperor a tendency toward benign neglect at a time when individuals like Dobrovský, Mayer, Kinský, and Born were involved in the encouragement and spread of scientific knowledge. As Sternberg described it, “The sciences, although supported little, developed of their own volition, since there were few obstacles in the way and many educated men were on hand. . . . The Private Society was established first, and later, under the aegis of the Grand Burgrave Prince von Fürstenberg, the Bohemian Society of Sciences.”144 Kinský and Born traveled extensively together in the pursuit of common scientific knowledge.145 In Prague, Kaspar Sternberg spent his time in the company of Johann Mayer, in whose house “from eight to ten the intellectual men of all Estates came together.”146 Johann Mayer (1754–1807) was a physician in Prague, the original secretary of the Society of Sciences, and a close friend to many of the most prominent intellectuals in Prague. Francis Sternberg, who came to know Johann Mayer after his return to Bohemia in 1787, visited Mayer nearly every day when he was in Prague. In fact, Sternberg kept to a very small social circle that included the Mayers, Josef Dobrovský, and Tobias Gruber.147 Francis Sternberg’s relationship with Gruber was indicative of the social mixing that took place within learned societies, a social interaction that continued beyond the halls of learning to the fireplaces and dinner tables of the educated and well-heeled. Gruber was the Secretary of the Bohemian Society of Sciences, and a colleague of Sternberg’s in his interest in numismatics and art. He also acted as an intermediary for Sternberg in his pursuit of art and coins for the Fatherland’s Museum and the Gallery of the Patriotic Friends of the Arts.148 Gruber was a close friend of not just Francis Sternberg, but of the Czernins, Clam-Martinitzes, and the Wrbnas, all noble families. Joachim Sternberg was also an intimate of the Mayer salon, appearing there in the “circle of his friends at Doctor Mayer’s, with whom he remained in closest contact,” even on the evening of his ballooning accident. 120

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In the autumn of 1790, the French balloonist Jean Pierre Blanchard, who, with the American John Jeffries, was famous as the first to cross the English Channel in a hot air balloon, came to Prague. Joachim Sternberg convinced Blanchard to take him up in his balloon, and came prepared to a field outside of Prague with a host of scientific instruments to record his flight. Unfortunately, once they were airborne, the balloon was hit with a severe stormy gust of wind that upended the gondola, sending all of Sternberg’s instruments flying. Unable to control or right the balloon, Blanchard punctured it, and turned off the brazier, causing the balloon to sink swiftly. They landed on a cultivated field, but the ricochet of the landing burst a vein in Sternberg’s left leg, and he emerged from the balloon with blood streaming from his nose and ears. The experience might have dampened his enthusiasm for flight, but not for science: As his eulogy explained, “Since he had no success in the air, he decided he would pursue his well-being on the ground.”149 Engaged intellectuals in Bohemia, whether aristocratic or not, hoped (and believed) that science and intellectual communication would promote and encourage unity among the intellectual elite. Knowledge could become, and within the new intellectual world did become, the great equalizer. Although scientific exploration did not entirely erase social distinctions, men of “high birth” actively sought to engage with and learn from those of other Estates. In 1784, Kaspar Sternberg decided to learn as much as possible about regional forestry, and turned to the foresters on the family estate. His parents had assigned the care of the familial forests to two engineers, the Jirasek brothers, the elder of whom was very involved in mineralogy and botany. Kaspar became their tutee, learning as much as possible about domestic forest growth, culture, and maintenance. Francis Joseph Kinský opened his mineral collections to the public as early as the late 1770s and laid the groundwork for the establishment of a public library. His “patriotic enthusiasm inspired him to bring not only the Kinský family library to Prague,” but to add his own personal library to this, “that his Fatherland might use it.”150 Science, like Freemasonry, was an aristocrat’s ticket into the world of the intelligentsia, as “membership in scientific societies constituted entry into a professional cadre with its own standards and values.”151 In the case of Kaspar Sternberg, the events of 1792, the worsening of the international situation and the news from the West, contributed to his growing desire to find “another lifestyle,” namely one dominated by scientific learning and intellectual communication. The method of Sternberg’s choice of scientific exploration was both happenstance and, to some degree, evidence of the dilettantish character for which aristocratic pursuits were so often condemned. In 1795, Kaspar Sternberg literally just happened to meet Francis Gabriel de Bray, an ambassador in patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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Regensburg, on the street in town. Bray, President of the Regensburg Botanical Society, was carrying a shrub, having just returned from a botanical excursion with Professor Amaury Duval. Duval offered to take Sternberg on as a student of botany, and in retrospect Sternberg chose to see this as “a sign of Providence.”152 Embarking on his “new life,” Sternberg began his botanical studies with Duval in earnest, and renewed his study of forestry as well, cultivating all those plants of the forest that thrived in the “German climate.” Despite the almost accidental character of his initial scientific work, Sternberg, and his scientific compatriots, ought not to be viewed as dilettantish amateurs. As Max Weber writes, “The dilettante differs from the expert . . . only in that he lacks a firm and reliable work procedure.”153 Moreover, there were very few professional scientific experts, as this was a period of transition to professionalization, a process in which scientific societies played a significant role.154 Once begun on his scientific course, Sternberg rigorously pursued his botanical studies and became an internationally recognized scientist. By the 1820s, he was acknowledged as an expert in several other fields as well, and in 1829, Kolowrat called on Sternberg as someone with theoretical and practical knowledge of mining to assist him in preparing a course for the technical college.155 Scientific study provided Sternberg with a completely different outlook, and a new circle of friends and acquaintances. He writes of his excursions with his “new botanical friends” and of meeting academic men everywhere. His scientific studies also put his relationship with his brother Joachim on a new level, as they made many trips together through Bohemia and Bavaria in the interests of scientific inquiry. The time they spent on the family estates was dominated by scientific study—“mineral collections leisurely gone through, chemical experiments conducted”—and these experiences forged the beginning of a scientific correspondence between the two.156 Kaspar Sternberg admits to the “new voice awakened in him by his new life.” As he wrote to a friend in January and February 1796, “I do not leave my office willingly but I give way before the strength of the circumstances without hesitation or complaint. The most disturbing thing, the fight with oneself, . . . is over. Follow fate willingly: even if you do not want to, you must. . . . You cannot believe what a source of enjoyment the study of botany is. . . . I have the hope yet to be happy, and no longer to shy away from the future.”157 Sternberg spent the winter of 1806 experimenting with galvanism, engaging in a varied scientific correspondence with academics, and working extensively in his gardens in Regensburg. In May he returned to Prague, partly because of the state of health of Johann Mayer, who Sternberg referred to as one of his “most trustworthy friends,” who had “accomplished so much for the blossoming of the sciences in Bohemia.”158 122

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Kaspar Sternberg’s recollections about his new life in the sciences are replete with descriptions of the mixed social milieu in which he began to move. Both Kaspar and Joachim Sternberg spent the fall of 1806 traveling for scientific purposes, Kaspar in the Alps and Joachim in the Carpathians and the Hungarian mountain villages. At this time Kaspar Sternberg began to work on the Saxifrage monograph that would make his reputation as a paleobotanist. The growing season was spent in the garden, along with a troupe of scientists and travelers passing through, in a Romantic idyll of intellectual life. Kaspar’s regular companion, Georg Felix, worked with Sternberg in the garden and the library, as friends gathered to listen to lectures on the physionomy of plants, draw, roam, and drink tea. On clear nights, astronomical instruments were brought out, and the stars explored “in all their magnificence,” as in 1807, when a comet could be seen from Sternberg’s roof with a “Reichenbach Achromatenon.”159 Science was the center around which the activities of Sternberg and his acquaintances revolved. Margaret Jacob makes the point that enlightened individuals, specifically Freemasons in her case, turned the “vast and ordered universe of the new science and its Grand Architect (Newton) into an object of worship.”160 In tune with that sentiment, Sternberg made plans to build in his garden a monument to Johannes Kepler. The monument was constructed as a temple with a bust of Kepler at its heart.161 The monument was finally completed and dedicated with great fanfare, versifying, and festivities, on the anniversary of Kepler’s birthday, December 27, 1808. These were idyllic moments for Kaspar Sternberg, but his life was about to take a dramatic turn. He was himself rather sanguine that the future would be as he hoped—away from politics and intellectually engaged. As he wrote in later years, “All too often man is wont to believe what he would like [to believe]. The general quiet, almost stillness, that had descended after the storms of the previous years led me to hope that a new era had begun. . . .”162 Indeed, a new era in Sternberg’s life was soon to begin: The end of his canonical office, the end of his belief in the old order of things, the end of his residency abroad, and the end of the wars meant that Sternberg could reorganize his time and interests. With his permanent return to Bohemia Sternberg dedicated his personal resources to travels that furthered scientific inquiry and to his gardens, scientific collections, and the development of mining enterprises on the estate. His continued residence in Bohemia strengthened the connection between Kaspar and his cousin Francis Sternberg. More importantly, Kaspar continued to expand his social network based on his intellectual interests, particularly botany. A longtime colleague and traveling companion of Sternberg, J. T. Lindacker, agreed after becoming ill to unite his mineral collections with Sternberg’s, and moved in with him at Brˇezina.163 This did patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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not last long, as Lindacker unfortunately succumbed to a consumptive attack in 1816. He and Sternberg had agreed that the combined collection would be left to some public institution after their deaths, and despite Lindacker’s sudden demise, “the collection was saved for the Fatherland.”164 In 1817, Sternberg took apartments adjacent to the Sternberg palace on Malá Strana Square, and became a permanent fixture in his cousin Francis Sternberg’s immediate family circle in Prague. Sternberg continued to live with his cousin and the extended family until Francis’s death in 1830, and “spent many pleasant hours in the lap of this worthy family, as a member of the same.”165 The friendship between these two men was a powerful boon to the development of patriotic institutions in Bohemia, and the Sternberg household became one of the most well known salons in Prague.166 František Palacký also described evenings spent conversing late into the night in the company of the Sternberg cousins and Dobrovský at the Sternberg Palace.167 The 1820s marked another seminal development in Kaspar Sternberg’s life reflective of his new social circle, namely the beginning of his friendship with the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Sternberg had a longstanding admiration for Goethe, ever since his youth, and had wanted to be introduced for some time. Goethe himself, an avid botanist in his later years, was also very eager to make Sternberg’s acquaintance. Sternberg’s regular visits to the Bohemian spa towns, as well as his constant contact with the German-speaking intellectual community that often recuperated at Karlsbad and Marienbad, were the backdrop for this friendship: “[W]e were only 11 years different in age, had lived through and had not left unobserved similar world events, and had come in contact with many excellent men of our time. . . . The stones of the region that filled his room were the first intermediaries; soon however the more important moments of our mutual life experience were discussed, the present glanced at, and we felt that we belonged closer together.”168 The two men struck up a close friendship during their stay in Marienbad in 1822, living “under one roof,” dining together, walking, and “staying up for hours after dinner in his room.”169 Goethe and Sternberg were joined in the last days by Johann Emanuel Pohl and J. J. Berzelius, both natural scientists and Dr. Pohl recently returned from an expedition to Brazil. Many local excursions were made, chemical and geological experiments conducted, and “a bond of mutual devotion was formed.”170 Throughout this period Sternberg intensified his work on prehistorical plants and fossils, taking part in long European excursions to push his work forward and to complete new volumes of the Flora der Vorwelt, and continuing to expand his scientific network. In 1819, his two-volume work on botany, Abhandlung über die Pflanzenkunde in Böhmen, was published in Czech. Kaspar 124

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Sternberg, and others like him, did not lose ties to court society altogether, but it no longer provided a focus for their sociability. Instead Sternberg used his status to benefit his scientific interests. Because of his “unassailable” position as a member of the aristocracy, Sternberg attempted at various times to motivate the Emperor Francis II, always a questionable undertaking, to take a more active part in the progress of scientific knowledge. Sternberg journeyed to Vienna in 1823 in the hope of convincing Francis II to promote the publication and exhibition of Dr. Pohl’s findings in Brazil. The glitz of court life, however, Sternberg had certainly left behind, and indeed seemed to consider the court’s presence as completely detrimental to real intellectual life. As he wrote to Goethe in 1824 when he was forced to postpone a visit, “Well beckoned the spring—inviting one cheerfully to cozy travels through the blossoms of newlyrevived nature and to the even higher enjoyment of intellectual blossoms and fruits at the side of my friend, when suddenly May brought an autumn-like chill and the arrival of the court demanded an immediate halt.”171 All of these are examples of the fruitful interchange between intellectual aristocrats and the non-noble educated in Bohemia. The result of this social interchange was the formation of a tight intellectual bond initially based simply on intellectual affinity. This intellectual affinity, however, resulted in the establishment of societies that institutionalized the scientific and increasingly national focus of these intellectual bonds. The principles of equality among men of education were written directly into the bylaws of these institutions, and this profoundly changed the way scholars interacted. Ultimately, learned societies and the friendships and intellectual connections formed within them eroded the Estates-based society at the same time that they provided a crucial institutional hub from which the activity of the national movement radiated. Beyond the impact of this social interaction was the influence of the scientific and intellectual activities that took place within learned institutions. The attempts of these institutions to engage directly with the educated, and to increase the number of the educated in Bohemia through the mechanism of literary activities, public meetings, topographies, and the like, was an important part of the emerging public sphere. In his review of the work of the Bohemian Society of Sciences, Joseph Kalousek pointed to the efforts of the Society to make knowledge accessible in order to reach beyond the learned to the greater population.172 Kaspar Sternberg referred to the reading public, the “Lese=Publico,” and admitted the debt that scholars owed to the public, who were necessary for critical reading and dialogue with scholars.173 Despite its apparent international character, Enlightenment-inspired science and the institutions in which it was practiced, had significant patriotic science and the weal of the nation

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ramifications for both social development and for the nationalization of political and social life. In Bohemia, the opportunity for new learning, for linguistic rejuvenation, and for historical inquiry were all important missions of the Private Learned Society and its successor, the Bohemian Society of Sciences. In academies like the Bohemian Society of Sciences, scientific universalism was at first complemented, and increasingly replaced, by science in the interest of the national community. The aristocracy, in occupying such a central role in the formation and sustenance of these new institutions, served as a critical bridge in the intellectual leap from humanist science to nationalized science, revealing crucial links between enlightenment and national identity. In doing so, the aristocracy also effectively put a permanent stamp on general public conceptions of the national community and what it included. The glories of Bohemian history, pursued for political and cultural reasons within learned societies, had a significant impact on the way the nationalized public was to view its history and community. Institutions of learning and research conferred respectability on these inquiries, making patriotic history part of the public discourse in the process. Aristocrats who took part in learned and scientific societies, although engaged primarily in scientific endeavors, were a crucial part of the rise of national feeling in these new public institutions. As committed intellectuals, they dedicated their productive abilities to improving the lot of Bohemia and her people, for in their travels they had become well aware of the differences between nations, of the place of Bohemia in this “ranking,” and they were determined to ensure that Bohemia receive its due place in terms of heritage, industry, and prosperity. In addition, institutions established to further scientific and intellectual activity had, like Freemasonry, an overarching commitment to equality among their members. Intellectuals within these institutions were judged not by birth and status but according to their intellectual merits. There is no question that a scientist like Joachim Sternberg was a legitimate and deserving member of the Bohemian Society of Sciences, and his progressive ideas and work for industrial modernization placed him in the forefront of Bohemia’s scholars. Competition among nations, so important to many of those involved in learned societies, also extended from the realm of the economic and scientific to include the accouterments of mature nationhood: art, artifacts, and taste.

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c ha p ter four

A Cultured Nation Art, Gardens, and New Social Spaces

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embers of scientific and agrarian societies, in the thrall of new philosophical thinking, reflected on the condition of Bohemia and its citizens and applied science and rational thinking to open up new fields of knowledge. The participation of the aristocracy in that Enlightenmentinspired project of national reclamation represented a significant change in attitude among progressive aristocrats willing to dedicate their abilities to the betterment of Bohemia. This attitudinal change contributed to the professionalization of science and technology and fostered new work in history and linguistics. The realm of science opened up new social and rhetorical spaces that continued to emphasize ability and intellectual pursuits over status and social hierarchy. The underlying motivation for scientific activity was personal, in the sense that aristocrats like Kaspar Sternberg viewed science as a refuge and an alternate venue for socializing, and patriotic, insofar as science was a practical response to the perceived needs and problems of the Bohemian lands. For aristocrats interested in scientific advancement, scientific knowledge was a key to Bohemia’s prosperous future, to her ability to compete in practical scientific and economic terms, and to establishing her reputation in the first rank of nations. Those motivations played an important role in the shifting constellation of artistic institutions as well. Because of the increasingly pervasive rhetoric of national competition, aristocrats began to place art, like science, in the service of the national community. High culture—art, theater, gardens—was no longer simply the preserve of the elite. High culture was one more mechanism to develop the abilities of the nation, and patterns of patronage reflected this incipient concern for the

place of Bohemia in European culture. For the aristocracy, in order to command respect in the international cultural arena, it was necessary to preserve and protect Bohemia’s European heritage, to achieve cultural prominence through prestigious art institutions, and to cultivate a civilized population attuned to taste and aesthetics. In this view, Bohemia needed to recapture the international cultural standing it had enjoyed under Rudolf II, a golden age for Bohemian art, and a time when Bohemia had indeed been the heart of Europe. Art institutions, theaters, and gardens could serve simultaneously to add a new social dimension, a new location for mixed socializing, while also being sites to explore and develop local talent, ideas about the national community, and commitment to progress. Like royal houses, aristocratic families had a long tradition of artistic patronage, and one of the elements of aristocratic social life was artistic consumption. Although status was of course measured legally, display of status through consumption was a crucial part of being aristocratic. As with travel, staffing a large manor, land ownership, and so forth, artistic patronage and having the means to commission work and support artists was a sign of social predominance. Art, whether fine art, music, theater, or gardening, had traditionally served to highlight the cultural refinement and social position of the family. Because a critical aspect of artistic consumption was to reinforce status, art consumption was a curious mix of public and private. Although art was produced for and enjoyed within the household and the family circle, it was even more habitually a centerpiece for social interaction beyond the family. There was, after all, little social payoff in demonstrating status through art and collecting only to the family. However, by the turn of the eighteenth century, patronage as a function of status had been amended and augmented to include the notion of service to the nation. Artistic patronage did not serve to set the aristocracy socially apart, as had been previously the case, but instead patronage demonstrated the degree to which they belonged to the community. Patronage with the intent of improving the nation’s cultural patrimony was a new measure of nobility: family status reinforced by service to the nation. Thus, although traditional elements of aristocratic artistic consumption remained in play, a critical number of noblemen, many of them also engaged in intellectual and scientific societies, began to reevaluate the role of art and patronage. In 1796, a number of nobles, under the leadership of Francis Sternberg, established the Society for the Patriotic Friends of the Arts, an enterprise that included the creation of a permanent art collection for public display in Prague. The Society for the Patriotic Friends of the Arts, although part of the larger development of public institutions discussed 128

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above, reflected changes in the traditional world of aristocratic patronage and art consumption. Certainly the principle of collecting art was ancient, but even in the “traditional” world of art, enlightened norms of individual and public edification had profound effects on the display and public consumption of art. Intellectual changes and different concepts of patronage and its purposes led to a host of new institutions that drew heavily on the collections of the aristocracy, both in administrative and artistic terms. Moreover, the estates of the aristocrats were due for an overhaul, as new garden design opened up green spaces both aesthetically and socially. In the case of art exhibitions and theater, patriotic patrons hoped they could confer legitimacy on Bohemia by providing the necessary elements of cultural sophistication and maturity. These elements they defined as the possession of internationally recognized cultural institutions, invaluable works of art, and gardens of international renown. The altered world of patronage, with its new publicly accessible institutions of high culture, began a migration of art collections from the realm of the private to the possession of the public. Examining the motivations and mindset behind the establishment of public art institutions and the creation of new social spaces for debating the relative merits of the nation reveals the degree to which the migration of art from private to public and the reconception of green spaces conduced to the growing debate about national identity in Bohemia.

Traditional Aristocratic Collecting and Patronage Art museums share an institutional genealogy with scientific institutions, both types having their origin in earlier traditions of aristocratic and royal collecting. Collections in the Renaissance were established as “cabinets of curiosities,” or “Wunderkammern,” and in the case of royal collections, they were often offshoots of the royal treasury, the Schatzkammer.1 Wealthy and well-connected individuals amassed these collections in order to demonstrate their own splendor by their possession of the great, the rare, and the exotic.2 Cabinets of curiosities, like the famous cabinet created by Emperor Rudolf II in Prague at the turn of the sixteenth century, were a “hodge-podge of objects,”3 their diverse contents evidence of “an ambitious attempt to recreate the infinite variety of the universe within the compass of a single collection.”4 The intent behind these collections and the manner in which they were displayed varied, but generally they were a massive, overwhelming cramming together of art, precious and/or bizarre objects, and even “freaks of nature,” their worth determined by the “desire to dazzle and astonish a cultured nation

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the viewer.”5 As Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann describes it, “In a Kunstkammer fine paintings, sculpture, drawings, books or what may be called objets d’art might be gathered at times in apparently haphazard manner, alongside stuffed animals, birds, and fish, or their skeletons, fossils, clocks, automata and scientific instruments.”6 In concert with a religiously inspired desire to reunite the wonders of God’s creation, collectors put together these cabinets of curiosities in response to “man’s desire to bring as many things together as possible under one roof.”7 Regardless of the spiritual or intellectual motivations that inspired the creation of novelty cabinets, the nature of these collections reflected the humanist desire to recreate the universe in miniature; collectors brought diverse and apparently unrelated objects together in a “systematic attempt at understanding the universe.”8 In the case of imperial collections like those of Rudolf II, the quest for completeness also included pursuing objects that could highlight the uniqueness of the family and underscore its divinely determined right to rule.9 Natural oddities, like a naturally inscribed agate basin housed in the cabinet, underscored the divine will, as “God himself seemed to have spoken to the imperial family through the work of nature, inscribing an object that gave testimony to all who beheld it that theirs was a divinely inspired reign.”10 In evaluating the depth and breadth of Rudolf’s collection, Eliška Fucˇíková argues that despite the amazing range and apparent lack of “order,” Rudolf’s collection represented the beginning of collections used as a source of learning. For those who were allowed access, which appears to have been easier for scientists and artists than the high born, the collection was a “genuine paradise.”11 The Kunstkammer of Rudolf II was meant to be encyclopedic in its completeness, certainly, but unlike other Kunstkammer, its intent was not to overwhelm the viewer with immediate awe. Much of the collection was hidden away, or arranged such that the collection required careful perusal, time, and extensive knowledge in order to be understood as intended.12 The reputation of the Rudolfine collection in Prague became the central element of the reputation of Rudolf himself, as rumors of the Kunstkammer’s wonders echoed around the Empire and abroad, and eminent visitors hoped to curry imperial favor by adding their own gifts to the collection.13 Novelty collections of religious objects, as well as objects collected solely for their intrinsic value or strangeness, eventually gave way to the systematic ordering of collections intended for scholarly use.14 Classification and ordering represented an attempt to bring order to the world as well as to the cabinet of curiosities, and early collectors “took it upon themselves to create what we may call microcosms forever reflective of a higher macrocosmic order.”15 Despite the appearance of random acquisition, early collectors 130

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quickly absorbed the movement toward a new spirit of scientific inquiry and investigation.16 One of the more unusual aspects of the novelty cabinets was the mixing of the artistic, the scientific, and the merely bizarre. The foundation of new scientific institutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the related development of institutions of fine arts, led to a schism in the collections of the novelty cabinets. The momentum to classify plants and animals also contributed to the division of collections into scientific and artistic.17 Both, however, were critical for national development, but in very different ways. The drive for specific, rather than universal, collections led to the eventual establishment of permanent exhibitions of art. The nature and purpose of these collections also changed. Although the late eighteenth century witnessed the emergence of the museum as a public institution in Prague and elsewhere, earlier collections were largely private projects. The purpose of these collections had been in part to emphasize the wealth and personal glory of individuals and families. Likewise, monarchs used their collections to reinforce public displays of power, in a sense reinforcing legitimacy through the extent of their possessions. In this way, early collections were a part of the “machinery of display” and a field for negotiating social distinction.18 Royal collections were thus the tangible presentation of the monarch’s overwhelmingly preponderant command of resources, wealth, and worldly goods, and as such were a testimony to his legitimacy and hold on the throne. Although hampered by a more limited access to resources, the intent and content of early aristocratic collections were similar to royal ones. Aristocratic collections of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in Prague were weighted heavily toward Italian and Dutch masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.19 The works of Czech and German artists were also common in collections, mostly due to the fact that they were more readily available, rather than that they were equally valued.20 The subjects of artistic works collected and commissioned by aristocratic families varied considerably, ranging from popular historical, religious, and mythological themes to portraiture, still life paintings, and landscapes. The popularity of portraiture was due both to a desire for a visual representation of a families’ ancient lineage and to the role of portraiture in the marriage market. Additionally, portraiture could serve to represent visually (and permanently) a family’s relationship to the royal house. Commissions for royal Bohemian “portrait cycles” for display in aristocratic palaces were very popular. One of the most famous of these portrait cycles representing the medieval and early modern Kings of Bohemia hangs in the Sternberg castle Cˇastolovice. The collections of the nobility, the Kunstkammer of the early modern period, reflected the eclectic style of the royal collections, where, in the words a cultured nation

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of one traveler, one can see an “extraordinary number of outstandingly rich, curious, strange and priceless works.”21 This was a particularly apt description of the Czernin collection, which was famous for its priceless art. Humprecht Czernin (1628–1682), the son of a minor branch of the family, was a knowledgeable collector, and it was his wealth, interests, and artistic sensibility that shaped the original family collection.22 In 1651, Czernin inherited the fideicommiss of his great grand uncle Herman Czernin of Chudenice. Subsequently assigned in 1659 as imperial envoy to Venice, Humprecht Czernin used his position in Italy to acquire an extraordinary art collection, composed mainly of major Italian and Dutch works. While in Italy, Czernin also commissioned a large number of canvasses, particularly of Greek mythology and Old Testament scenes.23 After his return to Bohemia in the late 1660s, Humprecht Czernin began construction of the immense Czernin Palace above the castle in Prague. The new palace was to serve as a family residence and to provide adequate space for Czernin’s collection of paintings.24 The palace’s size and location were no accident, as “the overriding priority applied to the construction of his own residence was to evoke a monumental appeal and overwhelming grandeur . . . which should compete in splendor with the Prague seat of the Emperor.”25 The Czernin collection was one of the most famous, but part of a general expansion of aristocratic consumption. Living ostentatiously, proving loyalty to the church, and decorating noble residences all contributed to a boom in art, music, and architecture. Aristocrats employed retinues of artists, musicians, and artisans. Prominent families, like the Czernins, also employed artists as family painters, who were responsible for a range of activities, including decorating and gilding, making copies, and curating picture collections. After the Thirty Years’ War, collecting and artistic patronage focused on magnificent display were used by the nobility as expressions of their social and material standing. The explosion in palace construction in Prague was an offshoot of the aristocratic desire for display and a natural corollary to the aristocratic building craze was an explosion in noble cultural patronage. Collecting reinforced the cultural aspirations of Bohemia’s old and new elites, and art patronage reflected the desires of important noble families to represent and display their wealth publicly.26 After Humprecht Czernin’s death, the palace exterior at the Hrad was completed and the art collection installed by his son Herman Jakub. The Czernin art collection reached its pinnacle under the family stewardship of the grandson of Humprecht, Francis Joseph Czernin, who augmented the collection and finished the sumptuous interiors of the palace by employing a large retinue of Prague’s most famous artists.27 The reputation of the Czernin Palace and art collection grew to the point that 132

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Francis Joseph Czernin gave standing orders that uninvited guests were not to be admitted to the palace, a classic example of art consumed in private. This was aristocratic artistic consumption in its most “traditional” form. In the end, not even the Czernins could maintain this level of splendor and spending, and the specter of bankruptcy confronted Francis Joseph Czernin by the 1720s. The palace at Hradcˇany, already a huge financial drain, was made even more financially burdensome by the damage the palace sustained during the French and Bavarian occupation in 1742 and the Prussian bombardment of Prague in 1757. In 1777, the death of Prokop Adalbert Czernin caused the dispersal of the art collection itself, a fate it was to share with the famous Rudolfine art collection. The Czernin tradition of patronage and art collecting was taken up again by Johann Rudolf Czernin at the turn of the eighteenth century, but would result in a collection amassed not just for family and personal reputation and interests, but for public edification and the cultivation of public taste. The emergence of the public art museum was linked to the intellectual agenda of men like Johann Rudolf and was in part their answer to the problems of art patronage and collecting. The challenges the Czernins confronted in maintaining their original collection in the face of wars and financial woes were matched by the fates of other famous collections. The growing Central European art market expanded opportunities for aristocrats who needed to generate funds by cashing in on family collections.28 For Johann Rudolf Czernin, Francis Sternberg, and other aristocrats involved in art and collecting, support for the arts on behalf of the public was inspired by the desire to preserve national treasures and reflected their belief in the benefits that art collections and cultural education would bring to the national community. Ultimately, the emphasis on education prompted a switch in the private and public uses of collections as public access to important collections created a sense of national cultural patrimony. Museums contributed to a discourse about collective ownership and the notion of the national community as “deserving.”29 The claims of patrons and artists acting on behalf of the national community took part in the development of the public as an active partner in the construction of national identity. As Thomas Crow remarks, “A public appears with a shape and a will, via the various claims made to represent it; and when sufficient members of an audience come to believe in one or another of these representations, the public can become an important . . . actor.”30 All public cultural events contributed to the further refinement of the community’s identity, and though art museums continued some of the activities and traditions of private collections, public art museums were set apart by their “deliberate and self-conscious identification with the public sphere.”31 The same way that the Fatherland’s Museum a cultured nation

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would seek to display the nation, the contents of the Gallery of the Society for Patriotic Friends of the Arts also came to reflect a vision of the national community. However, whereas the Fatherland’s Museum would emphasize Bohemica and Bohemian distinctiveness, the “civilizing” and educational mission implicit in the exhibition of art was designed to bring Bohemia to the level of the cultured states of Europe. Thus, although collecting tastes varied over time and among collectors, those in Prague who supported the establishment of a national gallery assumed that the possession and display of old Italian, Dutch, and German masters would provide further evidence of Bohemia’s place in European culture. In this agenda, aristocratic collections were vital. If Bohemia were to be the cultural mecca it deserved to be in the minds of its patriots, it had to possess both recognizably important art and a population that recognized its worth.

The Patriotic Friends of the Arts Despite all appearances to the contrary, modern museums are not faceless, but are established by individuals with backgrounds and agendas. As Andrew McClellan rightly argues, “There is nothing natural or necessary about the way museums are organized or works of art displayed within them. Nor are museums neutral spaces: they ‘frame’ their contents as certainly as a picture frame circumscribes a canvas.”32 Public art and natural history or national museums, like their earlier seventeenth century relatives the novelty cabinets, carried a “heavy symbolic load” on behalf of those who sponsored them.33 The National Gallery in Prague was no exception to this, in that its purpose and institutional shape were profoundly influenced by its founders. Goethe had referred to the excellent example of Francis Sternberg and the Society for the Patriotic Friends of the Arts, claiming that “[i]f a German looked around himself at what was noteworthy and exemplary that had been established during the worst of times . . ., he would certainly think about what the city of Prague owes to the Bohemian Estates. These namely have the actions of the worthy Count Sternberg, who, as a noble friend of the arts and a patriot, exhibited his own important collection of paintings for public contemplation.”34 Sternberg had been explicit about the need to make art publicly accessible in order to provide a forum for public aesthetic development. If art was consumed only in private, and only for the benefit of the few, public taste would suffer; indeed, it already had. In justifying the establishment of the Patriotic Friends of the Arts to the Grand Burgrave, Henry Rotten134

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han, Francis Sternberg argued in his letter to Rottenhan in 1796 that “[w]e are witnessing a decline in artistic taste in Bohemia, with artists lacking both the chance and material support for their further education.”35 He also reflected on the broader concerns about cultural patrimony, claiming in the same correspondence that “there are fewer and fewer works of art left here, because they are being sold abroad.” Sternberg’s focus on taste was a theme he returned to repeatedly in his work for the Patriotic Friends of the Arts. In summing up the Society’s first nine years of activities, Sternberg, then the President of the Society, addressed Emperor Francis II by saying that the Society, including its school and gallery, “stimulates good taste, which could not have been cultivated until its foundation, due to hidden works of art; awakens respect for historical monuments, which would otherwise fall into oblivion, while preventing them from being exported; and presents works of art both to domestic and foreign visitors, encouraging those involved in artistic activities towards still harder work, while increasing commerce and tourism by attracting foreigners to Prague. Moreover, it enables living artists to gain respect through reviving a new sphere of social life.”36 Francis Sternberg, the primary mover behind the Society’s establishment, was born in 1763 in Prague. Sternberg, from a different branch of the family than his cousin Kaspar, was educated from 1775 to 1782 in the Rhineland, the seat of his mother’s family, the Manderscheids. Francis Sternberg’s education during this period was overseen by Francis Ferdinand Wallraf, a cathedral canon well known for his intellectual abilities and habits of collecting.37 Wallraf and Sternberg developed a close friendship, and there is little doubt that Wallraf’s interests in history, art, and collecting informed Sternberg’s. After his return to Bohemia and the completion of a law degree at the Prague Faculty of Law, Sternberg became a regular visitor at the Mayer salon, and a close associate of Joseph Mayer. Beyond the colleagues he met there, his closest friends included the art historian Jan Quiran Jahn, as well as Friedrich Nostitz. Beginning with his studies in the Rhineland, Sternberg harbored a lifelong interest in art criticism and history that he continued to pursue after his return to Bohemia. His huge and rich collection of art, coins, and engravings was a result of his time in the Rhineland and the Low Countries, as well as his extensive travels through Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. The importance of social networks in the establishment of new intellectual and cultural institutions was very evident in the Patriotic Friends of the Arts, as it was for the Private Learned Society and subsequently the Fatherland’s Museum. Along with Sternberg, Johann Rudolf Czernin (1757–1845) was a critical force in the establishment of different cultural institutions, among them the Patriotic Friends of the Arts. Czernin, Francis a cultured nation

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Sternberg’s brother-in-law, was one of those “leading personalities of public life who cultivated the arts and sciences, and induced a scientific and cultural expansion.”38 He was born in Vienna, and attended school in Salzburg under the watchful eye of his maternal uncle, the Archbishop of Salzburg, Hieronymous Colloredo. While completing his law studies, Johann Rudolf also intensively pursued his interests in music and art, becoming proficient especially in the flute.39 After his marriage to Theresa Schönborn, the sister of Francis Sternberg’s wife, Francisca Schönborn, Czernin and his wife took a long European tour through Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Holland, and England. This trip profoundly influenced Czernin’s cultural interests and tastes. During these travels Czernin acquired his priceless collection of engravings, as well as many other works of art, and began work on his study, “Masterpieces of Art.” After inheriting the nearly ruined estates at Schönhof (Krásný Dvu˚r) and Gestütthof, Czernin turned these estates into showcases of high culture in Bohemia, famous for their art collections and gardens. After twenty years of avid collecting, Czernin had assembled one of the most important collections of art in the Monarchy. Czernin’s universally recognized expertise in art led to his appointment as president of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in 1823. Czernin was a member of most of the important patriotic institutions in Bohemia: the Polytechnical Institute, the Conservatory of Music, the National Museum, the Society for Friends of Music, and others. After his appointment in 1824 as highest chamberlain, Czernin was instrumental in the establishment of the imperial “natural cabinet,” the imperial art collection, the imperial theater, and the botanical gardens at Schönbrunn.40 Johann Rudolf Czernin was a transitional figure, in that his interests, his habits of cultural consumption, and connection to the public community served as a bridge between the traditional and the modern world. He pursued his interests in both the Bohemian and the imperial spaces and was a “cavalier in the fullest sense of the word.”41 Although Czernin was a high noble whose “first and last love was ceremony,” he was at the same time a talented critic, artist, and musician.42 More importantly, Czernin reflected the general tendency of aristocrats of this generation to count education and urbanity as important attributes of “true nobility.”43 Like his compatriots who were so committed to, and famous for, their scientific practices, Czernin crossed from being a patron to a practitioner of the arts. In the theater and the museum, Czernin “valued and treasured” the artists and writers with whom he worked “not as servants, but as professionals.”44 Both Sternberg and Czernin were concerned for the future of art and cultural heritage in Bohemia, and the previous decades had justified their 136

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concerns. They could point to the history of the royal collection in Prague as an infamous case of the “loss” of art, and placed the emphasis on the fact that these artistic works were popularly perceived to be “rightfully” Bohemia’s. The royal art collection in Prague had been assembled primarily by Rudolf II, who, despite his intense reclusiveness and health problems, had been an astute and active collector.45 After enduring massive looting by the invading Swedish army at the close of the Thirty Years’ War, the Prague Art Gallery had been slowly rebuilt, in the seventeenth century, but the Habsburgs then subjected the collection to a second, systematic dismantling in the eighteenth century. Starting in 1721, Charles VI, regarding the Prague Castle collection as part of his personal property, “without paying heed to the principle on which it had been built, namely that it belonged to Prague Castle and to the Kingdom of Bohemia,” began a massive shift of artworks from Prague to Vienna.46 The collections in Prague were further decimated by the War of the Austrian Succession and Maria Theresa’s subsequent sale of art to supplement the treasury.47 Although Maria Theresa had expanded the castle compound in Prague, her artistic interests remained at Schönbrunn, and she was disinclined to respect any collections or institutions that reinforced “provincial” identity. By 1766, the Prague castle gallery had ceased to exist as an autonomous institution.48 In 1781 and 1782, by imperial decree, many of the remaining items were auctioned off for ludicrously low sums, and patriotic patrons of the arts could only mourn the “pauperization of the Kingdom of Bohemia.”49 Art holdings were also affected by the dissolution of the monasteries under Joseph II and Josephine religious reform had further contributed to the decimation of art collections in Bohemia. Joseph II viewed the contemplative religious orders as drains on the productive energies of state and society and ignored their institutional roles as patrons and collectors of art and artifacts. As Kaspar Sternberg and others noted, the dissolution of monastic houses put a number of priceless collections in jeopardy, and despite the government’s attempts to regulate the monastic holdings, much artwork was lost in the process. Thus, although Bohemian observers could see some benefits for Bohemia in the dissolution of the monasteries under Joseph II, they also voiced criticism of the government, which Kaspar Sternberg later echoed in his writings. The loss of the monasteries as holding houses and particularly as patrons of the arts was devastating to the Bohemian cultural scene. The dismantling of the royal and monastic collections was symptomatic of the financial stresses facing collectors. It also underscored the degree to which Prague had become a second-tier provincial or marginal capital vis-à-vis the Habsburgs. The kind of collections that had made the reputation of the city as a sumptuous center of art and collecting gave way to the Habsburg tendency a cultured nation

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to use the Bohemian collections for their own purposes, cherry-picking art for their own use in Vienna or selling it abroad. The Czernin collection had also been dismantled, and although the original, famous seventeenth-century Czernin collection had been lost, Johann Rudolf Czernin spent his life amassing a new collection to carry on the tradition of his family and appease his own collecting mania. But he did this with a new twist. In 1796, as a founding member of the Patriotic Friends of the Arts, Czernin loaned nineteen of his own paintings to seed a new gallery, and the Czernin Palace provided the first home of the gallery of the Patriotic Friends of the Arts, between 1796 and 1809.50 Like the Czernins, the Nostitz family had put together a large and impressive collection of art, beginning with the patronage and collecting interests of Johann Hartwig Nostitz in the seventeenth century. Upon the death of Anton Johann Nostitz in 1735, the collection comprised 1,400 paintings, most divided between the walls of the Nostitz palace in Malá Strana and the Nostitz seat at Falkenau. Friedrich Nostitz continued the important cultural involvement of his father, who built the Nostitz Theater, becoming a founding member of the Patriotic Friends of the Arts with his compatriots Johann Rudolf Czernin and Francis Sternberg. Although the original Nostitz collection had suffered from the strains of finances and loss, a kernel collection remained when Friedrich took over as trustee of the family’s fideicommiss, which included a large part of the art collection, in 1794. Friedrich, like other prominent noblemen of his generation, had been tutored by Pelcl and Dobrovský, and his interest in and concern for Bohemian history and art were influenced by his early education. While journeying to Constance in the company of Dobrovský, Nostitz made a tour of the landmarks of Jan Hus’s martyrdom, echoing the interests of many Bohemian patriots in reclaiming Hus as a great Czech hero.51 As a member of the Patriotic Friends of the Arts, Friedrich Nostitz also lent paintings to the Society’s new gallery, paintings that he had specifically acquired at auction for the Society’s use. The decimation of the most important Bohemian collections, and the apparently constant stream of artwork from Bohemia to Germany and further abroad, led many aristocratic observers of cultural life to conclude that Bohemia would never regain its cultural place or produce cultural creators and famous artists, if she could not provide the proper aesthetic and educational environment to nurture the talented. For Sternberg and Czernin, the Society for the Patriotic Friends of the Arts, its gallery, and its art school would fill this critical national void and become the institutional locus for national aesthetic development. The Society’s agenda was twofold: to mount a permanent exhibition that would serve simultaneously to educate the public and 138

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to raise obstacles to the flow of art out of Bohemia and to set up an art school that would teach art to a new generation. Both men recognized that aristocratic collections were subject to the same financial pressures and personal vicissitudes as royal collections. By putting together a type of “consortium” of concerned citizens, Francis Sternberg sought to unite other collections with his and to create a financial structure that could support the collections and prevent the outflow of art and artifacts from Bohemia. His hope was to mount a permanent collection that was for Bohemia, distinct from the rest of the Habsburg “possessions.” The collection would improve the Bohemians and bring glory to Bohemia, rather than heightening the reputation of Habsburg imperial culture centered in Vienna. In this vision, aristocrats, or anyone else for that matter, who possessed notable art works could lend or donate them to the Society for public display. The public nature of the collection served several purposes and was absolutely central to Sternberg’s agenda. Public display would contribute to the cultural edification of the nation and simultaneously increase the renown of both Bohemia and its important patrons. This collection, beyond the founders’ stated purpose in educating the populace about beauty, could therefore enrich the cultural heritage of the nation. Mounting a permanent exhibition and supporting the acquisition of important works of art would also, Sternberg hoped, stem the flow of art out of Bohemia. Thus although the purposes, intents, and goals of collecting varied from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, certain central elements remained the same in the shift from family and royal ideas about magnificent display to display for national glory. The principal of display was constant, but individual or family glory was gained from the retention and private display of cultural objects, rather than from the contribution and donation of those objects to a public patriotic institution. The Society for the Patriotic Friends of the Arts first met in Prague’s Malá Strana on February 5, 1796, attended by close friends and associates of Francis Sternberg’s: Friedrich Nostitz, Charles Clam-Martinitz, Tobias Gruber, Francis Wrtba, and Joseph Cˇ ejka. At this meeting, the founding members drafted statutes for a new society, composed of financial backers and art experts who would seek to preserve and display important works of art for Bohemia. As the statutes read, “The ultimate aim, which this society seeks to attain by its efforts, shall be in general to awaken aesthetic taste, which has declined, to provide . . . artists with models, direction, and support, and lastly to put a stop to the migration of art located here.”52 The patriots drafting this document understood the limits and problems they faced, and if they could not establish an “impressive art collection” and “laudable Academy,” their modest establishment would at least serve to bring the artists and the arts in a cultured nation

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Bohemia a “relative and ever more important gain.”53 The Society planned to meet their goals by building a permanent exhibition—comprising donated, lent, or purchased artworks, particularly paintings—which was to be open for “public admission.”54 The bylaws of the founding members of the Society for the Patriotic Friends of the Arts stipulated the requirements for members, dividing potential supporters and participants into four groups, and seeking in the administration of the collection to marry individuals of means with those of expertise. The first group of patriotic patrons included those who agreed to lend artwork from their personal collections for public display and for the use of artists. The second designated group comprised supporters who, though perhaps not well versed or interested in aesthetics, wished to contribute to the enterprise, and were willing to donate a minimum of 100 florins annually (a group that included Joachim and Kaspar Sternberg). Third were those who both lent art and contributed funds. The final group of members was composed of the artists and art connoisseurs who would judge the artworks. The membership of the Society reflected the merger in one public institution of patrons and practitioners, united in their stated purpose of improving the Bohemian public’s aesthetic sensibility, and providing the cultural infrastructure necessary to establish Bohemia’s high cultural reputation internationally. To carve out an international position, or to “regain” the cultural prominence that Bohemia had enjoyed at the turn of the sixteenth century, patriots determined that Bohemia had to boast internationally recognized artists and internationally celebrated works of art. This latter desire had been undermined by the steady erosion and dismantling of some of the most famous Bohemian collections. The Society’s intention was to keep the art work lent to the Society’s permanent exhibition out of the market place. Although the Society’s “borrowed art” was to remain the unfettered legal property of noble and bourgeois lenders, these lenders had to agree that they would wait six months for art they wished to reclaim.55 The Society thus hoped to prevent families from using the sale of art as a quick financial fix in times of unexpected hardship. The Society also agreed to the maintenance and upkeep of all art in its care. For any patron who voluntarily promised his or her art to the Society for a ten-year period, the Society promised to restore these artworks at the Society’s cost, to be paid for out of the membership’s subscription fund. The Society insisted that the order of restoration work, as well as the nature and method of display of individual pieces of art, were entirely and solely within the Society’s discretion, and were “independent of the owner.”56 In this way, much the same as with scientific and learned societies, the primacy of social standing was displaced by new criteria for social interaction. 140

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Even in the sphere of art, a realm notoriously limited to men and women of elite status because of the wealth required to collect and maintain art, aesthetics and the cultural needs of Bohemia encouraged the Society to honor and treat all donors, lenders, and artists equally, irrespective of their social circumstances. Members of the Society who contributed a minimum of 100 florins a year were required to notify the Society a year in advance of the termination of their support, so that the Society could balance the needs of the collection with its actual income. The 100 florins for Society membership, paid quarterly, was a sum that de facto limited the social pool of financial contributors to those who had significant financial liquidity—the nobility. The presence of the aristocracy in the formation of this institution was reflected in the makeup of the committee created to oversee the Society’s activities. Half of the seats were reserved for the nobility, and the other half was to be elected from the members. In April 1796, Francis Anton Kolowrat was elected president of the committee. Under the auspices of the Society, an art academy was also to be established in Prague. Finally, in 1800, Joseph Bergler, a German artist, was hired to direct the newly established art school.57 The main efforts of the Society, however, concentrated on the establishment of a public art gallery in Prague. The original site of the new gallery established by the Society was at the Czernin Palace above Prague Castle, a site the gallery occupied until 1809. In 1796, Francis Sternberg lent his entire graphic art collection, comprising some 15,000 prints and concentrated especially on Bohemian masters of the Baroque, to the newly established gallery.58 Sternberg, in his collecting of art as well as coins, was always concerned with preserving particularly Bohemian works, and in preserving these collections for domestic consumption. By the end of 1796, the Society had managed to collect, primarily by loans, over 500 canvasses for public display, and a considerable financial backing.59 The range of contributions varied, from a total contribution from Francis Sternberg of over 9,000 florins (surpassed only by Ferdinand Toskánský’s lifetime contribution of 10,500) to a onetime donation of 75 florins.60 Although over 20 percent of the Gallery’s collection was purchased by the Society, the aristocrats who supported the gallery donated a large percentage of its collection.61 Rudolf Czernin lent nearly 50 works to the gallery, Georg Buquoy over 70, and Francis Sternberg over 300.62 In 1803, after the end of Kolowrat’s tenure as president, Francis Sternberg was elected as the second president of the Society of Patriotic Friends of the Arts. The roster of committed individuals who served as constituent members of the Society’s administration is a list of the most patriotically engaged of the intellectual aristocracy, including not just Francis Sternberg, a cultured nation

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but Georg Buquoy, Friedrich Nostitz, Joseph Mathias Thun, Anton Isidor Lobkowitz, and Joseph Kinský. It is not a coincidence that many of these individuals were later members of the Society of the National Museum as well. Conceptions of public art consumption were conditioned by the norms of society and sociability in Prague at the end of the century. Prague society was in turn shaped by the city’s history as an imperial residence, as well as its position as the bureaucratic and administrative center of the kingdom. The increased urbanization of the eighteenth century further influenced life in the city, so that the upper strata—namely, nobles, churchmen, intellectuals, and other notables—formed just under 20 percent of the population of the city at the end of the century. This is a significant percentage, compared to the actual percentages these groups formed in the general population. Given the preponderance of this elite in Prague, it is natural that they were the backbone of high cultural activity, and it was really only this group who could hope to have the power and the wealth to reverse the flow of artwork out of Bohemia.63 As in the case of other aristocratic patriotic activities, earlier traditions of patronage created an aristocratic culture of responsibility. Whereas many aristocrats were articulating, and being deflected from an overtly political agenda in the 1790s, some sought to bypass political obstacles by means of their patriotic activities and public engagement. Many of the politically liberal aristocrats who had sought to push the aristocratic reforms in new directions in 1790–1791 were founding members of the Patriotic Friends of the Arts, including Francis Sternberg, Johann Rudolf Czernin, and Johann Buquoy. In the Patriotic Friends of the Arts, the appearance of women as important benefactors was one characteristic that distinguished the institutions of high culture from that of primarily scientific institutions. The list of patrons and donators to the Patriotic Friends included many countesses from important Bohemian noble families, and some of the most important and influential collectors in Bohemia, as well as Austria, were women. For some, the timing of the Society for the Patriotic Friends of the Arts was critical, particularly given the subsequent years of war and upheaval. As Goethe remarked on the Society’s twentieth anniversary celebration, the “highly influential” Patriotic Friends of the Arts managed to provision the collection and “happily prevailed through the last dangerous and sad years.”64 Beyond the art collection, the yearly subscriptions of the Society for the Patriotic Friends of the Arts aided and sustained the “technical” schools of art and drawing founded by the Society and placed eventually under the directorship of Joseph Bergler. The hope of the founders was that Bohemian graduates of the art and drawing schools would become internationally recognized artists and thereby contribute to Bohemia’s international reputation as a wellspring 142

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of civilization and learning. At the same time that art presentation and display were connected to the principles of classification and history, art themes also began to reflect emerging interest in Bohemia, past and present. Ludvík Kohl, born in 1746, had studied under Gelasius Dobner and the Piarists in Prague. As he began his artistic career, Kohl pursued his interests in Bohemian historical themes, landscape, and architecture, notably in a cycle of “Bohemian history in pictures” that focused on seminal events in Bohemia’s past. In order to capture and define Bohemia’s (and Prague’s) distinctiveness, Kohl sought out scenes that were both “worth seeing and characterized by history.”65 Collectors applied notions of historicism and scientific principles of order and classification, just as they were developing in scientific societies, to the history of art and the practice of collecting. The emphasis in Enlightenment thought on education affected public discourse to the degree that museums reflected the desire to educate as well as conserve. Displaying to dazzle, as was true in cabinets of curiosities, gave way first to arrangements according to pictorial style, and then to a hanging system that demonstrated the “historical evolution within national schools.”66 New public art museums “required a new philosophy and a new iconography which would draw upon the idea of classification inherited from the previous century. . . .”67 The increasingly mixed background of those engaged in high culture inspired the rationale that all cultural activity should contribute to a “clear increase in knowledge and understanding.”68 In other words, a “walk through the galleries was a walk through art history” and in some cases, a walk through the greatness of the Bohemian past.69 In 1815, the “General Historical Encyclopedia of Artists for Bohemia, and partly for Moravia and Silesia,” collected and edited by Gottfried Johann Dlabacž, was published by the Haase Press in Prague. The publication was hailed by patriotic collectors as a great achievement, and was valued and employed by all who were interested in the arts.70 Francis Sternberg, not content merely to study the Lexikon, assembled an invaluable collection of notes on the work, providing it with even more precision and detail and revealing his long-standing fascination with Bohemian artists. The establishment of the Society for the Patriotic Friends of the Arts, its gallery, and its drawing school mirrored the growth of public art museums in other European states. As Andrew McClellan argues, public art museums “serve the cause of nations in two ways. First, they foster feelings of collective belonging by providing a space dedicated to shared enjoyment of treasures in the public domain and in which equality of access renders citizenship transparent. Second, through their contents and strategies of display, museums identify the nation-states that sponsor them as heirs to Western Civilization and adherents of the modern tradition.”71 In the late eighteenth century, a cultured nation

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many famous collections sponsored by European royal families were opened to the public, and even prior to this, noble tours of Europe took in the most well known collections across the continent and England.72 As Zdeneˇk Hojda points out, the Enlightenment fundamentally changed the principles behind collecting and collections; the dynastic and representative elements receded and collections were reoriented toward education and science, becoming in the process more accessible to the public.73 The drive for education would fuel the desire for “completeness,” but in a different sense than had applied to the cabinet of curiosities. As art collections aimed for “completeness,” pictures were classified according to school, style, and type, in order to be presented and taught coherently.

The New Aesthetic of Gardens, Parks, and Public Spaces The desire of aristocrats like Francis Sternberg to develop public taste as an aspect of national achievement influenced more than the creation of the Patriotic Friends of the Arts and its gallery. Taste was also a critical element of the changes aristocrats brought to their gardens and estates. Many aristocrats used the garden both to display their own heightened grasp of the finer aspects of aesthetics and taste and to encourage in their countrymen the development of similar taste: Exposure would encourage emulation. Taste, or the ability properly to exercise aesthetic judgment, was not merely a matter of recognizing the value of high culture. To possess taste or aesthetic judgment was to have moral judgment as well. These beliefs found their most eloquent expression in the writings of Prince Charles-Joseph de Ligne, who viewed the garden as a didactic space in which visitors could be taught the essence of taste, the cultivation of which would be evidence of their social and personal progress and their achievement of a higher form of civilization.74 This discussion of the cultivation of public and individual taste mirrored that taking place in the Society for the Patriotic Friends of the Arts. For Bohemia to be a kingdom of the first order, to be able to compete in all arenas including culture, the elites would need to develop in themselves and encourage in their compatriots a heightened sense of aesthetics, taste, and cultural consumption—the marks of civilization. The garden would be another location for this national refinement. Gardens in fact reveal critical elements of visual culture, and many of the changes we associate with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment were played out in green spaces across Bohemia and the other Habsburg lands. Gardens have long been critical sites for the display of contemporary social, political, and religious beliefs, even before the clear portrayal of royal 144

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sovereignty in the grounds of Versailles. Gardens are “rhetorical landscapes” that can be read for content and effect, and in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the garden was an expression of status, of belief in familial and social order.75 For all intents and purposes, the garden was society writ small. Far more than being an aesthetic afterthought—a green backdrop to manor and farm—aristocratic and royal gardens, parks, and preserves were malleable spaces wherein designers could explore and display a range of intellectual issues: the relationship of man and nature, knowledge of the world and the wondrous diversity of creation, the legitimacy of the political order, the morality of state and society, the history of the local community, and the edification of the individual.76 As inquiry into these areas expanded in the eighteenth century, so did attitudes to gardens shift to reflect new enlightened ideals. In addition, just as the Enlightenment was a varied, diverse, but still pan-European intellectual phenomenon, so were changes in garden styles inspired by the Enlightenment a manifestation of a shared European cultural space whose patterns, influences, and networks can be traced. That there were only a handful of truly renowned garden experts and theorists also makes it easier to trace the lineage of garden construction and styles, as European garden design can with some caveats be distilled into a few predominant forms. Greatly simplified, the aesthetic competition in the eighteenth century was between formal, geometric, architectural garden design, designated the French or baroque style and reaching its apotheosis in the formal gardens at Versailles, and what became known as the English garden—asymmetrical, serpentine, unexpected, “natural.” The French garden celebrated order, symmetry, and hierarchy. The English garden highlighted naturalism, sentiment, and new concepts of color, art, and beauty. The plantings, shapes, design of the earlier baroque garden represented the height of artifice over nature, which was of course part of the original appeal of this style: unruly nature so clearly brought to heel by the power and innovation of the ruler.77 However, the Enlightenment, and increasing fascination with all things English, encouraged garden designers to view the formal, geometrical artificiality of the French garden as “an expression of an undesirable absolutist system of government to be contrasted with unfettered nature as the expression of liberty.”78 That the baroque garden in no way resembled anything that would grow naturally in the world meant that new attitudes that celebrated untrammeled nature, which many writers link to the influence of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s novel Julie, ou La Nouvelle Heloise, condemned the stylized formality and symmetry of the baroque garden. The countryside beyond the garden wall was no longer wild, chaotic, disordered, but the true source for human inspiration. As De Ligne himself a cultured nation

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admonished his readers, “Do not force the visitor to reflect, but assist the lazy. Let thinking be increased, expanded, and inspired.”79 Whereas the baroque garden had represented and reinforced a vision of hierarchy, order, and power, the new landscape was “an expression of certain ideals of freedom” and as Rousseau suggested, the garden could contribute to a revision of the social order.80 The motivation for both garden reform and for the opening up of green spaces within urban centers was thus more than just aesthetic, but implied a view of social improvement and community. The garden became both the site of and the focus for the consumption of Enlightenment ideals. The link to Rousseau was made explicit in the case of the Habsburg lands through the direct references noble garden planners made to Rousseau’s work and to his approaches to nature. Prince Charles-Joseph de Ligne was one of those who used Rousseau as inspiration, and Karl Zinzendorf’s lectures on Rousseau, Voltaire, and Alembert at Kahlenberg Mountain near Vienna were well known.81 As opposed to the stultifying “evils” of unmediated urban living or constrained baroque formality, the new garden was a refuge that would liberate the creative forces in man and “lead to the delights of inspiration, if not genius.”82 According to proponents of the “enlightenment garden,” the new garden would not just “enhance” or reveal nature, but would also give its owners and visitors the chance to enjoy the moral and physical renewal of country life—Arcadia rediscovered. This view included a romanticized notion of land and rural life, and demanded that agriculture and those who engaged in it be honored and respected. In this mindset, encounters with the common man—in all his innocence—would engender new feelings and ways of thinking in those “bored with their vice and intrigue.”83 However, the attitude of the aristocracy toward the rural population was ambivalent. Despite the recognition of the garden as a new social space and the active enshrinement of the ideal of pastoral life within the new designs, the desire for an enlarged natural landscape abutting the manor could entail the displacement of the dwellings of the less fortunate and the removal from the vista of the park of anything to do with rural labor and agriculture that was not pleasing to the eye. Even progress and modernization, so intrinsic to eighteenth-century Enlightenment values, could be less than beneficial to the rural population within the context of the garden, as “improvement” from the aristocratic landlord’s perspective could entail running roughshod over the traditional rural household and arable economy.84 By the turn of the eighteenth century, English garden style, as understood in Central Europe, was supplemented with the painterly notion of the picturesque. Art, in all its meanings, was critical to this reimagining of space. 146

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Practitioners increasingly viewed gardening as art, not architecture, and understood that landscape painting and gardening were two halves of the same artistic coin. As would be true for landscape painters, landscape design in the garden was meant to use art (in this case, in the sense of technology) to enhance nature. Whereas the focus of the Baroque garden had been the geometric shapes of the foreground, the new garden emphasized vista and long perspective: the rolling hills, serpentines, and geological structures (both real and man-made) in the distance. The picturesque style added a sense of wonder and mystery to the openness of the garden, and the incorporation of faux gothic/medieval or ancient ruins stimulated sentiment and nostalgia for lost civilizations. For all the ink spilled about theories of aesthetics and the sublime, planners generally recognized that the countryside was not like a blank canvas that they could decorate at will. Gardens had to be lived with and had to incorporate aspects both of utility and pleasure. Thus, for a variety of reasons, not least of them rising Anglophilia and the desire to improve the state of the countryside in Central and Eastern Europe, the English garden style predominated by the end of the eighteenth century, and a significant redesign and rebuilding of outdoor spaces took place between the 1760s and the 1830s.85 By the end of the eighteenth century, a large number of gardens across Europe had scaled down geometric formalism in favor of picturesque garden elements, displaying the passion for English style that moved even Catherine the Great to declare that she “despise[d] straight lines” and hated “fountains that torture water.”86 Within Bohemia, the development of landscape parks and gardens was interrupted by war. As De Ligne remarked, “Almost everywhere in Bohemia, instead of battlefields we now see fields of flowers, thanks to the absence of war.”87 The new type of garden of the late eighteenth century in Central Europe was not the fabricated, intricate scrolls of plantings associated with French style and absolutist government, but the curvilinear, irregular garden that blurred the lines between garden and countryside. The competition between French and English garden styles and the stylistic triumph of the latter also signaled a shift in more than just the aesthetics of plantings in that the purpose of the new garden also altered. The new garden was less about the display of power than about creating an indispensable venue for contemplation, friendship, and improved morality. Although Bohemian aristocratic clients might have been unaware of the political implications of the landscape garden, they actively sought to include its principles in their garden projects. English attitudes toward nature, and the implications of English understandings of space, openness, and naturalness, were well known and widespread across Central Europe. Here, as in other a cultured nation

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areas of cultural transfer, travel patterns and habits were significant in the shift in taste. The increased tendency of aristocrats to journey to England in addition or instead of the traditional grand tour to Italy certainly influenced Bohemian aristocratic ideas about taste, heritage, and progress.88 In some cases, aristocrats learned English style firsthand, as with Johann Rudolf Czernin’s direct importation of English garden principles after his tour there in 1779. The decades following his return marked a major renovation of the Czernin gardens at Schönhof and Petersburg in the English style, making them among the earliest English gardens in the region. The spread of garden ideas was also facilitated by the increasing popularity of house touring across the continent.89 Guidebooks outlined not just opening times, fees, and rules of visitation, but elucidated the aesthetic accomplishments of estate owners, taking note of their commitment to taste, enlightenment, and open-mindedness.90 Others gained appreciation for the new style from popular works like the multivolume Theorie der Gartenkunst by Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld, which appeared simultaneously in French and German between 1779 and 1785. Hirschfeld’s influential treatise described in theoretical and practical terms the new English approach to landscaping, emphasizing the aesthetics of ruins and the means by which the new picturesque could be integrated into the garden. Rather than an expression of state or aristocratic power, the new garden would celebrate unconstrained nature in its (theoretically) uncultivated state, and the garden would be the arena against which individual edification and sentiment could be explored. Hirschfeld maintained that gardening, as one of the visual arts, exerted a moral influence on people that needed to be promoted with design.91 Beyond aesthetics, Hirschfeld argued that experience of the natural world was a basic right of everyone, and gardens needed to be publicly accessible.92 If the decorative and architectural baroque garden had been the perfect expression of the victory of man’s artfulness over nature, the reaction against its rigid geometric form was both a celebration of nature as beneficent and perfect in its unadorned organic state and a challenge to the traditional hierarchy represented by baroque garden style. Within the realm of the garden, planners could present arguments and conclusions about their changing views of nature and man’s relationship to it, their new conceptions of history and memory, and their understandings of morality and proper political and social order. Even more readily than in the household or in their public spaces in town, aristocratic “gardeners” found in the garden a space to display openly their attitudes toward community, their willingness to see open, accessible natural space as a source for moral development, their passion about the local past in the form of ruins and follies, and their sophisticated consumption and display of the exotic plants and styles of the New World and the Far East. 148

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The eighteenth-century drive to make the ideal landscape therefore drew on a number of influences, including literary sources like Rousseau, whose much-vaunted passion for nature eschewed the constricting formality of the baroque garden, and the changing aesthetics of art and landscape painting that began to emphasize the degree to which the landscape could be an art form. The mindset of landscape designers was in essence to approach perfection in the land, and perfection was to be found not in overcoming nature, but in locating its Eden-esque purity. Nature was no longer the unwanted wilderness beyond the garden wall, but the source for the ideal reimagining of space, as landscape gardens incorporated a new understanding of the beauty of the local countryside. If baroque gardens imposed a hard vision on the land around the villa or manor by forcing plantings into mathematically precise shapes, the landscape park celebrated what was unique about the local, using it to craft a landscape that tied the beautiful to the organically “natural.” In Alexander Pope’s celebrated phrase, garden planners had to consult “the genius of the place” if garden design was to approach natural perfection.93 Knowledge of the “genius of the place” meant recognizing the beauty and the natural advantages—the specificity—of the local. Attempting to capture the “genius of the place” reoriented aristocratic attention away from the motifs of universality and imperial grandeur in the baroque garden to what was distinctive and worth celebrating about their land. Thus, although the hand of man, the artistry of man’s control over nature, was a defining feature of the geometric French garden, in the “natural” garden, man’s hand was hidden, used to enhance rather than dominate the inherent beauty of the local countryside. In redesigning their gardens, aristocrats were no longer compelled to turn Bohemia into Italy or France in the space of the garden, but to celebrate what was gorgeously, distinctively Bohemian. Of the many Bohemian examples of this celebration of the local natural heritage, among the best were the Czernin gardens at Schönhof and Petersburg (Petrohrad) and those constructed by the Liechtensteins at LedniceValtice. De Ligne saluted the gardens at Schönhof, claiming they “glorified” the country, not least because of the taste exhibited by the incredible mixing of styles that made the Schönhof gardens neither park, nor garden, nor forest, but a pleasurable mix of all three. As De Ligne described, “They are the only garden that has the extraordinary merit of not being enclosed. Hares, foxes, boar, travelers, the sick who leave the baths at Karlsbad for those at Toeplitz—all go there, enter, and stroll about at their leisure. It is blessed for such openness, and the strange thing is that there is no danger or destruction. The very animals seem more discreet than elsewhere. They eat a cultured nation

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nothing, they spoil nothing, they steal nothing, and they are delighted with Count Czernin.”94 De Ligne described the Schönhof gardens as a series of painterly scenes, some quiet, and others mysterious, rustic, or wild. The Schönhof gardens included classic picturesque elements like temples, a hermitage, ravines, caverns, tombs, a Gothic church, and an ornamental farm (ferme ornée) in the Dutch style. Schönhof had it all: “Alpine or agricultural, Gothick or mandarin. . . . The richness of the exotic plants and the follies and the maintenance of the paths exceed by far the best I once saw in England and France.”95 Most important, the estate was a model for the integration of taste and practical use, a characteristic that appeared in more than one reformed garden at the end of the century. There are two important social aspects to highlight in this union of taste and use. Aristocrats like Czernin and Chotek used the popular ornamental farm and even the new garden architecture to put on display a vision of idealized local rural life that included the practical display of agricultural methods and machines. The visitor to the garden was meant to participate, to be instructed. Second, the follies of the English garden, like that at Veltrusy, reinforced the notion of the garden as a space perfectly designed to foster community and particularly friendship. When de Ligne claimed that “only in the country is it possible to be human,” he was emphasizing the need for the estate owner to be vigilant about the condition of those who worked to make the garden and estate thrive.96 In his opinion, aristocrats and their agents ought to worry about their workmen and to understand the consequences and constraints of poverty on the rural population. More even than making the garden a showplace of the new sensibility, new garden design was for de Ligne and others a way to reinvest the aristocracy in the local. The Liechtenstein gardens, built primarily in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, reflected the contemporary revolution in taste and mindset that accompanied garden renovation in this period. Like the Czernins at Schönhof, the designers of the grounds at Lednice, one of the largest parks in Central Europe, allowed the countryside to come right up to the chateau, and the grounds included a significant number of romantic follies and exotic structures, among them a minaret, an obelisk, a Chinese pavilion, and a hunting lodge from 1801 in the style of a ruined medieval fortress. The park created by the Choteks at L’Isle (Veltrusy) was one of the oldest picturesque parks in Bohemia, and it owed its final form to the influence of C. C. L. Hirschfeld. However, the extensive changes at Veltrusy were possible in part because of the estate’s location on the banks of the Vltava. The tendency of the estate to flood required the Choteks periodically to rebuild the grounds. Rather than requiring a wholesale shifting 150

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of earth and forest to establish a landscape park, a method which by and large was not favored by the Bohemian aristocracy, the land was rearranged by the river itself. The Choteks had initially cleared the alluvial forest for the manor and its gardens, but continued flooding in the 1760s destroyed the French gardens that had originally complemented the Baroque chateau. When Rudolf Chotek rebuilt the grounds after the flood, he enlarged the park land, began incorporating characteristics of English landscaping, and increased the amount of the park that celebrated “artless” nature rather than formal design.97 His work to “naturalize” the estate was continued by his heir, his nephew Johann Rudolf, whose impetus to improve was again helped along by flooding on the estate in the 1780s. Johann Rudolf Chotek, a friend of de Ligne, had, like many of his contemporaries, spent time in Western Europe, taking part both in the traditional social tour and, more important, using the trip to gain much-needed knowledge about English gardening, mechanics, canal building, and so forth. Upon his return to Bohemia it was clear that he had absorbed not just English gardening styles, but had learned new methods of agriculture, control of water flow, and manufacturing and marketing techniques.98 All of these would be incorporated into the estate at Veltrusy. The refurbished gardens that Chotek created there were a model of the picturesque, including an array of romantic follies: pavilions dedicated to the military commander Laudon and Maria Theresa, Egyptian- and ancientinspired structures, a cave with a ruin, a Chinese pheasantry, and a “Temple of Friends of the Country and Gardens.” The ornamental farm on the estate was both for use and for show, as it explored agricultural innovation as well as romanticized pastoral life. In the case of urban garden spaces, the hope of creating a long, rolling natural countryside was moot. But the landscape ideals and particularly the picturesque style affected garden planning within the city, despite the obvious constraints of urban space and geography. The aristocratic gardens that abutted the hillside castle complex in Prague had been the perfect setting for the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century predominance of formal garden design that relied on intricate terracing in relatively small, hilly spaces. The Wrtba, Fürstenberg, and other gardens near the Prague castle had been jewels of baroque geometric style. In response to the new aesthetics, aristocrats slowly and in a piecemeal fashion incorporated picturesque, or modern, elements even into these gardens, but maintained the terracing structure. The walled gardens of the castle complex are only one part of the garden story in Bohemia. Elsewhere in Bohemia and in the green spots of the major cities, new spaces that emphasized informality and that were designed to highlight the importance of individual experience and perception laid a cultured nation

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the groundwork, if not entirely for the democratization of society, then at least for more informal social interactions.99 As Virgilio Vercelloni argues, “a nobleman’s private garden was no longer sufficient to cope with the complex behavioral patterns of the ruling classes. Public gardens came into being as the meeting place of aristocrats, intellectuals, and the rich bourgeoisie in response to the interdependent requirements of taste, fashion, eroticism, culture, and cosmopolitanism.”100 Whereas baroque outdoor space imparted a vision of power and an ordered society, and provided the theatrical scenery for baroque spectacle, gardens in the new style occupied center stage. In theory, the meandering lanes, serpentine waterways, and wooded paths were adversative to formal, hierarchical socializing. De Ligne urged his readers to construct a garden of taste not to paralyze socializing, but to facilitate it. Designers should create open spaces, public promenades, and buildings to appeal to the diverse interests and purposes of visitors.101 Ideally, the new garden had the capacity to surprise, and in order to be successful in its purpose, the garden must leave something to the imagination. The re-creation of pure, uncorrupted nature in the garden would encourage contemplation, instruct, and perhaps allow visitors to experience the sublime. As suggested above, there was more at stake in the garden than aesthetics, not least because gardens were unusual spaces located between public and private. Describing gardens as “powerful arenas of cultural debate,” Hillary Taylor argues that in “mediating between the public and private world,” gardens were a “manifestation of personal and historical ideology.”102 Although considered to be part of the manor household, estate parks were accessible to many, particularly as the garden tour became an increasingly popular undertaking in the eighteenth century. Gardens were essentially publicly accessible private spaces, and used for a host of purposes and by a variety of social actors. In addition, although we can see shifts in garden culture as primarily phenomena of aristocratic consumption and lifestyle, we can also witness the genesis of the modern public park in the style transformations described above. One of the first public park grounds was the opening of the Prater in Vienna in 1766 by Emperor Joseph II. The Prater had been part of the royal hunting grounds, and Joseph’s decree transformed it into the pleasure park of the Viennese population. The Prater’s woods, waterways, fields, barns, and promenades were in tune with the new landscape style and expanded popular access to the grounds invited a new type of social mixing. As de Ligne described it, “Just beyond the city limits in Vienna is the premier garden of all on an immense island where twelve thousand people, two thousand carriages, and five hundred head of deer go about together. . . . Everything there is arranged in perspectives: river mountains, cabaret, dance halls, gam152

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ing rooms, towers, does, boar, greensward, and forest.”103 De Ligne’s primary criticism of the Prater was that it did not entirely extend the forest into the city. In social terms, however, it was a place in the city where people “of every nation and condition” came to relax.104 Likewise, in the case of the Viennese Augarten, which Joseph opened to the public in 1775, the link between the garden and new social understanding was made explicit in its renovation and in its entryway, which bore an inscription from Joseph II: “Place of pleasure, dedicated to all men by their friend.” Joseph intended that the Augarten would be a new space for sociability, and although it had originally been built as a classic baroque pleasure garden, Joseph II enlarged it, and in 1780 turned the new fielded areas into an English landscape park.105 Although Joseph had long been attached to the imperial grounds in the Augarten, his interest in updating and improving the park stemmed from what he saw to be the wide public health and moral benefits of general access to green spaces for pleasure and relaxation. The Augarten was a new venue not just in terms of access to green space, but also as a site to promote sociability through public access to cultural events and the availability of food and drink within the park. Public concerts, the first famous one by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1782, became a regular morning feature of the garden. The garden wall had been breached in more than one sense as the Augarten and the Prater were no longer open to only the select elite. In the case of the Kingdom of Bohemia, there was a similar transition as the public benefited from the dissolution of the monasteries after 1782 that Joseph enacted as part of his reform program. In Brno, Joseph transferred the Jesuit lands to the care of the people—the populo—to create the public park Lužanky in 1786. Similarly, though delayed by the conflict with Napoleon, new public gardens, Denis’s Gardens, were created in Brno by converting the old baroque bastions below the Petrov cathedral. Though these new public gardens represented a type of “anglicization” of the Jesuit baroque style, they incorporated a number of holdover features from earlier garden design, including the orangery, obelisk, and fountains not normally found in English gardens. Importantly, Denis’s Gardens included a botanic garden as a didactic space, with the express purpose of cultivating provincial plants and using the gardens for experimentation with cultivation, for the good of local agriculture.106 The assumption of Joseph II and like-minded garden planners was that public green spaces would contribute to the moral and physical well-being of the general population, binding the population through shared leisure space and the judicious use of literary, philosophical, and historical symbols to educate them about their common heritage. As with other public parks, the garden would both instruct and delight, and act as an image of a a cultured nation

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virtuous society, elevating “the personal and public character of urban dwellers.”107 De Ligne himself had argued, somewhat facetiously, that love of gardens would displace social dissension; gardens would trump physical and moral corruption, and the work required for garden maintenance would dissuade and distract their keepers from political malfeasance.108 This was, in a sense, preventing revolution by means of plant propagation. More broadly, the didactic purpose of the garden was manifold: to encourage self-discovery and contemplation; to teach about methods, plants, trees; and to remind the visitor of the great intellectual and historical legacy of the region. In Prague, green spaces were also changing in response to new attitudes toward gardens and toward the “general public.” Count Joseph Emanuel Canal created the Canal Garden (Kanálka) in Vinohrady, the area of the old vineyards to the south and east of old Prague center, to beautify the abandoned vineyards and to have a natural forum for agricultural experimentation. The Canal garden, destroyed in urban building and expansion at the end of the nineteenth century, represented a “physiocratic, romantic” garden typical of the early nineteenth century.109 Canal himself, concerned about the state of Bohemian agriculture, used the garden to educate and demonstrate crops and methods, hiring local experts like Johann Emanuel Pohl to give regular lectures and courses at the gardens on agriculture and the natural sciences. On the other side of the city, one of the earliest spaces in Prague, not just opened to the public but built and designated as a public park to give the general public access to open spaces, was the creation of the Chotek gardens below the Summer Place at the Hrad. The Bohemian administration also clearly recognized the need for publicly accessible green space. Like the Viennese Prater, the royal hunting preserve in Prague, known now as Stromovka Park, became part of green public patrimony at the turn of the eighteenth century. The preserve had enjoyed a developmental heyday under Rudolf II but was subsequently destroyed in the War of the Austrian Succession. The Bohemian Estates undertook to renovate the preserve, opening it to the public in 1803. Changing notions of man’s place in and relationship with nature also affected the building and raison d’être of botanic gardens. Like other green spaces, botanic gardens had economic, scientific, and aesthetic functions, but the earliest botanic gardens were far less about science and medicine than representative of an attempt to re-create the Garden of Eden.110 In their encyclopedic nature, they “symbolized the recovery of knowledge by man.”111 By the time Kaspar Sternberg established his small botanic garden at Brˇezina, attitudes toward the enterprise of the botanic garden reflected the fact that whereas the early modern garden planner had understood the world of species 154

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to be static, those of Sternberg’s generation and their successors had begun to recognize “the mutability of natural phenomenon.”112 The environment mattered to plants and trees, and it mattered to man, which meant that the geography, climate, soil, and essence of homeland and of place were also significant in the construction of the national community. As Therese O’Malley argues, “If external factors such as the environment could affect the person, the perfected environment could form the perfect citizen.113 This was part and parcel of the relationship between the naturalization of the nation and the nationalization of nature.114 The characteristics of gardens and public green spaces reflected political and national culture. As Gerrit Komrij argues, “In the conflict between the English and French gardens . . . and in the emergence of the pastoral idyll . . . is reflected, with regional and political nuances—nuances of national character and power. . . .”115 More particularly, the fascination of Romantics with the “life force” of nature, of sublime wilderness, as superior to artful, rational, civilization had its echoes in nationalist rhetoric. Nations could be perceived as organic outgrowths of nature, with particular, immutable characteristics drawn from the land itself. At few places was the link between nature and national history made more explicit than in the conversion of the ruined Gothic rock castle at Malá Skála into a rocky pantheon in 1820. The pantheon, perched on the banks of the Jizera River, commemorated iconic figures of Bohemian history: Libuše, Prˇemysl Ottokar II, George of Podeˇ brad, the emperors who fought Napoleon, and others.

Theater: Literary Heritage beyond Language The changes in garden design and use were reflective of new ideas about art, nature, and education, and were a new type of social theater. However, the altered mindset that gave rise to the grotto and meadow in the garden also affected theater, opera, and the public consumption of literary works on the stage. Traditionally, aristocratic cultural consumption, including music performance, operettas, and theatrical performances had been located primarily within the household. Music and theater as entertainment were a staple of aristocratic entertaining and sociability. Music and theatrical performance were also coveted skills among the aristocratic and royal set. The court under Maria Theresa had been known not just for musical virtuosos like the Mozarts, who hoped to gain favor and prosperity with the connections to or performances at the court, but for the theatricals mounted by the imperial family itself. The turn of the century changed the institutional constellation of theaters and public performance. The construction and dedication of the Estates’ a cultured nation

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Theater, or the Nostitz Theater, in the open Fruit Market (Ovocný trh) just beyond Old Town Square in Prague reflected in microcosm the ambivalence of the elites of the Estates to the national question in Bohemia. Francis Anton Nostitz, the builder of the theater, was a well-known philanthropist and enlightened man.116 Born May 17, 1725, in Mieschitz, Bohemia, Francis Anton was highly educated, finishing his studies at the Hochschule in Prague and Leipzig. He entered the imperial army and saw military action in Naples, Spain, and Italy. Francis Anton was by all accounts a decent landlord who participated wholeheartedly in the reform of the schools on his Bohemian properties and attempted to lessen the burden of rural poverty.117 In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect state honors and offices, among them becoming Privy Councillor. In 1765, Francis Anton became the trustee of the Nostitz fideicommiss, which included the famous Nostitz picture gallery. Nostitz was Grand Burgrave and President of the Land Government from 1782 until 1787, and in 1783 received the Order of St. Stephen from Emperor Joseph II, with whom he had developed a close friendship. Above and beyond his official presence, Nostitz was closely aligned to the intellectual elite in Prague. His home had provided the initial comfortable setting for the Private Learned Society in the 1770s, and the Nostitz salon was a regular meeting place for aristocrats, intellectuals, and artists. Francis Martin Pelcl, the topographer Jaroslav Schaller, and Josef Dobrovský resided in the Nostitz palace in Grand Prior Square in Malá Strana for years, using the famous Nostitz library and tutoring the Nostitz children. In the late eighteenth century, the Nostitzes began to make the transition from private connoisseurs to public patrons. The house in Malá Strana, with its invaluable library and artistic and scientific collections, was increasingly opened to interested scholars and laymen, thus helping to provide an education in aesthetics to those who could not afford to go abroad. In 1781, Nostitz constructed, at his own cost, a new theater in Prague.118 Taking as his model the theater constructed in Hamburg, Nostitz sank over 100,000 florins into the construction of the theater, known initially as the Nostitz Theater until its purchase by the Estates at the end of the century.119 As Hugh Agnew notes, the building of the Nostitz Theater in Prague “symbolized the beginning of a new epoch in the history of theatrical life in Bohemia.”120 Nostitz, like other patriotic aristocrats, had undertaken this enterprise not in the explicit support of Czech language and literature, but in the hopes of providing Bohemia with a famous forum for the public performance of international drama and opera, and German theater in particular. Theater was simultaneously a venue for improving public access to the edify156

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ing works of great drama and thereby serving as a moral and social compass and a way to prove Bohemia’s cultural maturation. Echoing concerns about Bohemia’s cultural position vis-à-vis other countries, Nostitz proclaimed in his announcement to the Prague populace, “A Bohemian who traveled through Europe and who could see in every major city a splendid theatrical building must, on his return to his Fatherland, discover with an aggrieved heart how far we are from foreign lands in this. . . . In order to redress this and to provide my beloved city Prague, one of the greatest capital cities, with a desirable ornament and to ensure a secure place for the future, I resolved to build at my own cost and my own risk a completely new . . . theater.”121 It was no coincidence that carved into the entrance to the theater was the motto, “Patriae et Musis,” signifying the hope that within the theater, the fruitful link between the Fatherland and the muses would achieve its greatest potential. Although not established primarily in the interest of, and for the performance of, Czech language works, indeed the first performance was of a drama by Lessing, the theater did give Czech dramatists a foothold—a potential place for the public performance of Czech works.122 As Agnew has shown, the manager of the Nostitz Theater, Pasquale Bondini, and the director, František Bulla, were open at least initially to the employment of Czech actors and the staging of Czech performances.123 Theater, even more directly than science or art, could ostensibly directly engage a public in the process of national representation. Yet, as Loren Kruger writes, “The idea of representing the nation in the theatre, of summoning a representative audience that will in turn recognize itself as nation on stage, offers a compelling if ambiguous image of national unity, less as an indisputable fact than as an object of speculation. The notion of staging the nation, of representing as well as reflecting the people in the theatres, of constituting or even standing in for an absent or imperfect national identity, emerges in the European Enlightenment.”124 Despite the contested nature of national representation in the theaters, the process of staging national or even international literature provided another institutional component of the public sphere. The ups and downs in the fortunes of Czech productions suggest that the relationship of Czech literary and theatrical productions to those best able to support them was mixed. In 1798, the Nostitz Theater was purchased by the Bohemian Estates and renamed the Royal Estates Theater.125 Ultimately, the cultural climate under Francis II would prove too unyielding to allow for a significant expansion of Czech-language theater, and the performances of the Estates Theater reflected that. If one can trace the significant shifts among learned men in terms of sociability, intellectual interests, and commitment to provincial identity and a cultured nation

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public activities, that shift was reflected in urban spaces and architectural forms. Changes in Prague in particular were also connected to rebuilding efforts necessary after the Prussian bombardment. But the nineteenth century would be an era that recast the use of space in the national interest, as nationally minded patrons constructed new buildings that were purposefully patriotic. This transformation was essentially the difference between a borrowed space to house the collection of the Fatherland’s Museum to the construction of the National Museum and the National Theater—buildings justified by their purpose in providing the architectural backdrop of national cultural maturity. These investments in the nation’s edifice came from a variety of sources, including the patronage of aristocrats and city councils, and took a number of different forms. The significance for the national movement in the rise of the modern art museum lay not in the patronage of Bohemian art in particular, but in the desire of the founders of the Patriotic Friends of the Arts to provide Bohemia with cultural heritage. Likewise, the justifications for new theatrical establishments were less about linguistic patrimony than connecting to famous and established European literary traditions for the good of Bohemia. The discourse of deserving nationhood that surrounded the wartime “acquisitions” of the French are evidence of how important it was for a nation to see itself and be seen as culturally significant, as the inheritor and conservator of the best and most valuable of man’s cultural heritage. To be without “significant” and internationally recognized art was to be bereft of proper international standing and to be relegated to cultural insignificance. For those concerned with Bohemia’s place, particularly as they were aware of her previous history as a cultural mecca, it was unacceptable to watch art disappear and to see Prague reduced to a provincial backwater. Francis Sternberg and the other members of the Society for the Patriotic Friends of the Arts believed that the collections that they mounted, along with the schools they supported, would bring Bohemia to the level of her neighbors. Taste, the great province of the aristocracy, was to become a public commodity, and only truly great European art was the proper instructional tool in matters of taste. Sternberg felt that if he and his colleagues were unable to stem the flow of art from Bohemia, they would witness the permanent decline of Bohemia’s cultural life and of her ability to produce artists of international renown. In addition, the exhibition mounted by the Patriotic Friends of the Arts for the public in Bohemia was further public affirmation of Bohemia’s rightful place as an entity separate from Vienna. The art museum, like scientific institutions and museums, was one “apparatus” within civil society that allowed people to define identity. According to Karp, civil society is defined as “more 158

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than a mosaic of communities and institutions,” it is a “stage and arena in which values are asserted and attempts at legitimation are made and contested.”126 The art collections, famous gardens, and Estates Theater conveyed national legitimacy—and in an indirect fashion also put forward a vision of the authenticity of the national community as they acted as repositories for knowledge, taste, and culture. The educational mission of the collections in Prague, the engagement of the public in the presentation of what was valued, and the right of the community to the ownership of these works, were important national cultural narratives. Works of art, like fossils, were collected as integral elements of the nation’s cultural patrimony and part of Bohemia’s justification for autonomous existence. The most fundamental change in the nature of patronage and access to art was the literal switch from the private to the public. More specifically, for the first time, aristocratic patronage was expressly devoted to the service of the nation. Much the way that art had served to glorify individual families, these families used art to glorify the nation. Although emphasizing the educational importance of art museums, aristocrats involved in the establishment of these institutions also brought their traditional sense of acquiring objects of cultural and “inherent” value and importance to bear on the museum endeavor.

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c h a p t er five

I

The National Museum

n 1829, addressing the Society of the National Museum, Count Kaspar Sternberg reflected on the goals and purpose of the institution he had worked so hard to establish over ten years earlier.1 Focusing on the museum’s larger purpose, Sternberg linked a nation’s “level of culture” and its “whole energy” with general “moral fortitude,” arguing that the main intention of the museum was “the development of intellectual intelligence and the exact knowledge of all that the Fatherland offers—what it was, is, and still can be.”2 Sternberg claimed in his autobiography that the need for a new institution to unite all the intellectual efforts in and for Bohemia had become obvious to him by 1810. During the Napoleonic Wars, his manor house Brˇezina, on the Sternberg estate near Radnitz, had become a meeting place for botanists and other scientists. Sternberg’s collections, his reputation, and his open door to men of intellect had essentially turned the family house into a “public” museum and library. However, the limitations of Brˇezina’s size and location as a small manor in the country convinced Sternberg that he and like-minded intellectuals required a new model: a centrally located, urban institution, accessible to all and for the benefit of all Bohemia. Looking at the history of Bohemia’s art and scientific collections, as well as the fate of private collections dismantled and destroyed, Sternberg saw the need for a new institution whose existence as a critical hub of teaching, learning, preservation, and research would serve the collective good. Unlike vanity collections, a museum for Bohemia would put the great collections and knowledge, and production of the Fatherland beyond the whims of great men and their politics. Sternberg believed that if the great collections, his own included, could be protected and made to serve the interests of the Fatherland, he was doing

Bohemia a great service that would surely benefit it beyond the brief span of his own part in creating the museum. The museum as a project was both backward and forward looking. On the one hand, it was to celebrate all that the Bohemians had achieved and that was inspirational and unique in their culture and history, seeking to preserve in particular the distinctive culture and language of the Czechs. On the other hand, the museum was also to provide the tools to enable future national intellectual development, cultural production, and scientific achievement. The key to both of these agenda, and the heart of the museum project, was in essence to endow an institution that was built on fostering national self-awareness. Men like Sternberg, invested in the museum’s creation, combined two important concepts for national identity, namely, that the nation had an immutable existence that could be uncovered, displayed, preserved, and celebrated, and that the nation could and should be changed—improved, expanded, educated. Intellectual academies like the Society of Sciences undoubtedly engaged in important scientific work for the good of the national community. However, whereas learned academies remained somewhat bound in that they were composed of and for the community of the educated, the National Museum in Bohemia incorporated an explicit public outreach. Part of its purpose was to overcome that inherited divide between educated and not, particularly in regard to national identity. In this, the National Museum was qualitatively different from earlier scientific enterprises, but part of a growing number of national institutions across the European continent. The role of science or scientific methods was an important aspect of these institutions, at the same time giving intellectual heft to their endeavors while obscuring the degree to which their programs were subjective. All museums have a history, but their enterprise entails an attempt to conceal it, “to transform . . . History into Nature.”3 This is particularly true for a “national” museum, an institution whose primary purpose is to confer legitimacy on the nation and to provide it with an unquestioned national past. National museums are an institutional projection of the national community, claiming to display while taking an active role in shaping popular perceptions about the form and characteristics of the nation. The national museum’s purpose is in part to make the origins of the nation appear organic, legitimate, and, in some cases, ancient. This was longevity as the precursor to sovereignty. Science and its methods provided the tools for fulfilling that purpose. Science, even in the eighteenth century, imparted a sense of objectivity, truth, and rationality. National museums, like museums of natural history or science, often based their operation on a system of classifying and displaying objects, in the process positing those objects as representative and inherently valuable. Although museums could present the 162

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classification of objects and specimens as an independent or objective process, classification “always takes place . . . within some externally constructed field, such as the ‘nation.’ . . .”4 Classification was particularly important for national museums, as it enabled them to create a patina of objectivity around displays about national heritage. In addition to incorporating scientific display methods, national museums have traditionally mediated public cultural debates, not least involving how to present the national past. Given their mission to preserve national heritage, museum committees worried about how the past was “sequestered from forgetfulness; exposed, gathered, formulated, and reformulated in discourse; presented and displayed in specially designated areas.”5 Like classification and science, displays and the paraphernalia associated with them imbued objects with value and authentication. Putting “the nation” on display contributed to the construction of the viewer’s identity and, by extension, the public’s.6 Thus natural history museums qua national museums, bastions of classification and apparently objective science, were configured in their formative years to reflect an attempt to capture a specific geographic space, in this case, Bohemia, and to shape the public’s relationship to it. As Dominique Poulot and Daniel Sherman have argued, “nation-states, emergent bourgeois elites, and wealthy individuals have used museums to legitimate their hegemony with the aura of culture. In the process these groups have endowed museums with considerable authority to define and to represent the cultural sphere.”7 The goals of the Bohemian National Museum, which incorporated ideas about the advancement of science and improved communication among men of science, also included the collection and display of scientific and natural objects, and most important, the opening of those collections to the public. Although perhaps less user-friendly than today’s museums, the Bohemian National Museum at its inception took part in a dialogue with the public about the identity of the national community. By establishing an institution of this sort, the museum’s founders attempted to draw the public into selfidentifying with the nation as the museum represented it. Moreover, woven into the rhetoric about the Fatherland and patriotic aspirations, the founders, particularly Kaspar Sternberg, articulated a clear belief in the power of science to solve society’s problems. In natural history, Kaspar Sternberg believed, society and its ills would find the necessary solutions, and it was with this in mind that he promoted the National Museum: “Only through such an institution was it possible to collect and preserve the fragments of our history, and to awaken a new life in the natural sciences. . . . May the strong young . . . also fasten on the ideas that the worth and happiness of nations the national museum

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rests on the basis of their intelligence and morality.”8 The museum founders intended an institution that would represent Bohemia in all its different facets, whether natural, linguistic, literary, historical, artistic, or productive. It was no accident that the institutional focus was specifically Bohemian, and Slavic as well. The museum was an institution concerned with classifying and exhibiting the output of Bohemia, prehistoric and contemporary. In this work, the museum’s founders drew on a European legacy that included the national taxonomy made famous by Carolus Linnaeus, the father of modern classification, and the Linnaean inspired interests in hierarchy and autarky. The museum’s scholars took part in a wide range of activities, and accrued collections across many disciplines, in the concerted effort to collect, categorize, and enshrine the nation. Archaeology and journeys of national discovery conveniently revealed a national past that was “there all the time,” but merely hidden, buried, or asleep. Creation and invention also had a role to play. The wave of fabricated documents in the nineteenth century, some of them by very respected scholars, was an outgrowth of this phenomenon—giving new meaning to Eric Hobsbawm’s notion of “invention of tradition.”

From Private Collection to Public Museum: The Foundation Prior to the eighteenth century, coins or fossils, like art collections, had been virtually the exclusive possession of noble (and royal) families and were housed and viewed in private.9 Family posterity, private enjoyment, status, and cultural values were the driving forces that shaped aristocratic collections without reference to any larger community or social obligations. In addition, faddish hobbies pursued by the aristocracy, like taxidermy, coin collecting, the fascination with antique weaponry and armor, and so forth, were followed for their novelty or cultural value without the sense of a disciplined, overarching purpose. However, just as the art gallery was drawn into the debates about national culture and international stature, so, too, were other modes of collecting and representation affected by the rhetoric of nation building. The public museums of the nineteenth century reflected aristocratic desires to change the purpose and function of family and personal collections. Increasingly, these collections went from being private, familial possessions to being publicly displayed proof of the national community’s value and were reflective of its sophistication. In addition, aristocrats sought to solidify their own connection to the national community by the tangible possession and donation of bits of Bohemia’s heritage. Coins, choral missives, swords, and skulls were more than 164

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curious objects—they became the mechanisms through which intellectuals, including aristocrats, defined the nation and their place in it. Kaspar Sternberg had long nursed the hope of using his own scientific collections as the basis for a new style of scientific institution. Sternberg’s motivations came directly from his personal experiences and the connections he had made with other intellectuals in Bohemia, throughout the German lands, and abroad. He had no desire to see his painstakingly assembled collections fall into ruin or be dispersed and removed from his homeland.10 His concern was heightened by the impact of war, which had of course significantly affected his own prospects. His “previous life,” and his plans for it, had been radically altered. He no longer held a clerical position, no longer lived in Regensburg, no longer had any immediate family, and was no longer a noble of the Holy Roman Empire. His public life would no longer be within the institutions and confines of either the Church or its administration. “As I broke with the present, gave up all earlier dreams, took leave of all my dear acquaintances and my beloved plants . . . , so I left this place, where I had lived through the best and happiest years of my youth, and, as I believed then, the stormiest days, and willingly followed fate, which led me in my fiftieth year back to my homeland to find there the independent existence I had sought since the outbreak of the revolution.”11 The next few years set the tenor of Sternberg’s new life in Brˇezina. Little by little, despite the swirl of military activity and political uncertainty, Sternberg strove to establish a cultural and social world within which he could pursue his scientific interests.12 He spent considerable time with his family in Prague, with other scientists, and traveled regularly: to Vienna, to Bavaria, to Regensburg, and often to the mountains for research. Sternberg resisted the attempts of his friends to interest him in conjugal life, replying that he had lived his bachelor existence for too long to alter it.13 Georg Felix resided habitually at Brˇezina as well, setting up and working in the library there as he had in Regensburg. As Sternberg noted, “Here we led a quiet happy life, though currents of blood flowed in the north and the tide turned against Emperor Napoleon.”14 Sternberg made contact with other naturalists in the area, especially Johann Lindacker and Johann Preissler.15 These two helped him in the construction of the iron and coal works on his property, as well as with the cataloguing of his brother Joachim’s invaluable mineral collections. In the years following Sternberg’s permanent return to Bohemia, Brˇezina became a center of scientific ventures “visited by many travelers” and was the backdrop for constant intellectual activity.16 However, Sternberg felt that Brˇezina’s rural location and relative distance from major capitals made it an unlikely place to mount any permanent collection and was too the national museum

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remote to be a regular meeting place for scientists. The combination of urban culture, the tradition of having centers of learning, and the tendency of the enlightened aristocracy to congregate in “cultured” cities contributed to Sternberg’s determination to establish a national institution in Prague: “My library and natural history collection were rich enough to form a kernel around which . . . concentric rings would form.”17 In his social relations at Brˇezina and in his subsequent plans for the museum, Sternberg reiterated his belief that access to scientific materials, interaction with other scientific specialists, and the opportunity to supplement theory with practical scientific experimentation, were all of the utmost importance for the well-being of scientific enterprise in Bohemia.18 According to Sternberg, the increase in public knowledge and expanded exposure to science and collecting would in turn benefit the whole population, in that moral and societal well-being were, in his estimation, linked to intellectual development. Scientific and social gatherings, the two intimately connected, continued at Sternberg’s estate, and Sternberg proceeded with his quest to establish a regular forum for botanists. As Sternberg later wrote, it was a propitious moment, for “great rulers” would be turning their attention to “the fruits of the peace, the arts and sciences, inner culture, agriculture, etc.”19 Sternberg additionally hoped to create a new scientific forum to operate within the German intellectual sphere. Indeed, the Assembly of German Naturalists and Doctors, which Sternberg began to participate in during the 1820s, closely resembled this plan. Interestingly enough, when discussing the possible locations for such a meeting, Sternberg did not include Prague, but mentioned instead the great capitals of German learning and power: Berlin, Vienna, and Munich. This “oversight” reveals both Sternberg’s continued links to the German intellectual community, as well as general perceptions about the Bohemian community. It was increasingly difficult to see Prague as a German city, but the Czech language was still not viewed as possessing the necessary vocabulary and sophistication to capture and describe scientific and technological ideas and research. Although scholars recognized that it was necessary to improve the “native” language and reclaim it from its state of linguistic disrepair, German remained for them the language of science, literature, and ultimately progress. Thus, even before Waterloo, Brˇezina had evolved into a meeting place for scholars, and had “grown into a charming museum.”20 After 1814, with the worst of the conflicts in Europe apparently over, Sternberg could concentrate uninterrupted on his scholarly life, and his small museum at Brˇezina continued to grow. As the Habsburg army arrived in Paris, Sternberg went to Prague to take part in the public euphoria at what “seemed to promise a 166

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lasting peace.”21 Otherwise, politics intruded rarely into his scientific world, and Sternberg seemed to have little desire to alter this. With the wars over, it was possible to turn to his prime agenda, namely the establishment of some kind of permanent scientific collection in Bohemia. It worried Sternberg that individual scientific collections were too often destroyed and dispersed after the death of the original owner, and that they too often ended up in “foreign lands,” as had been the case with Linnaeus.22 To prevent this, Sternberg had originally planned to leave his scientific collections to the Botanical Society in Regensburg, which he then thought to be his permanent residence. The circumstances of the war and his family encouraged him to change his mind, and to dedicate them to his “first” Fatherland of Bohemia. From 1814 onward, Sternberg began to make contact with others of a like mind to lay the groundwork for a public institution based on individual collections: a Fatherland’s Museum of science and natural discovery. In the summer of 1814, he traveled to Graz in order to observe the organization, collection, and institutional setup of the Johanneum, a regional natural history museum in Steiermark. The Johanneum had been established with the help and patronage of Archduke Johann, and included the Archduke’s own natural history collection. The Johanneum was one of several new institutions that Sternberg saw as a possible model for the establishment of a similar institution, but in Bohemia this institution would not be based on royal support. Contemplating the type of institution he hoped to see established, Sternberg reiterated that a scientifically based collection would be of the utmost importance if Bohemia were to make great economic and developmental strides in the postwar era. A museum such as he envisioned “could bring only good to a land where industry developed so quickly, since the study of the exact sciences formed the basis for industrial education.” The museum would be a cornerstone of Bohemian revival: its “rich collections” a source of industrial learning and possessing a library “for all fields of natural science.” Sternberg’s argument was that “only in a National Museum,” wherein one found “incomparable collections, books of every type . . . , books that followed the spirit of the age and presented everything new that appeared in those fields in Europe” could provide the aid and venue of learning needed by scholars and students.23 The first years of the peace were not easy ones for the Bohemian countryside, and this further delayed Sternberg’s plans for the museum. The destruction of troops had a lasting impact on the harvests of the immediate postwar years, and the weather worsened the situation, with widespread failure of the harvests of 1816 and 1817. As Sternberg described, “The harvest lay in the water, and when a day appeared when we could have brought it in, there were no horses at home.”24 Provisions and supplies had been seriously the national museum

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depleted, and taxes were increased to help offset the costs of the war. Despite these initial obstacles, Kaspar Sternberg continued to work for the establishment of the museum, believing that this type of institution was a solution to the crises that had preceded the wars across the continent as well as their consequences. He extended his scientific contacts in Bohemia, was elected as honorary member of the Society of Sciences in Prague, and continued to experiment and publish botanical treatises. Between 1818 and 1822, Sternberg’s desire to see a national museum established in Bohemia was fulfilled.25 This institution, created for the good of the Fatherland, would ensure that the valuable collections, his own and those of his colleagues and compatriots, would remain a legacy and repository of knowledge for future generations.

Displaying the Nation: The Mission and Agenda of the National Museum The agenda of the Bohemian National Museum was threefold: to collect, preserve, and promote. The mission of the museum integrated these different purposes, simultaneously pursuing the preservation of ancient heritage, the fascination for the exotic, and furthering prevalent interests in scientific inquiry, collecting, and classification. As the founding documents attested, “The Fatherland’s Museum should encompass everything in the area of national literature and national production, and unify everything that nature and human diligence have created in the Fatherland.”26 In addition to a commitment to public education and preservation, the museum was to provide a central, accessible, convenient institutional hub that would bring together the greatest minds of the scientific community. The museum would publish, disseminate and collect information, provide institutional support for scientific work, and unite the varied collections of its members for the good of public knowledge and consumption. Part of the impetus was also to preserve the best and the brightest of the nation’s heritage against the ravages of time and indifference. Collecting literary and historical icons was “saving in its strongest sense, not just casual keeping but conscious rescuing from extinction—collection as salvation.”27 The call for support for the creation of a patriotic museum was published under the aegis of the Grand Burgrave Francis Kolowrat in the Prager Zeitung on April 18, 1818. This public notice was drafted by a founding, or provisory, committee composed of Kaspar and Francis Sternberg, their cousin Francis Klebelsberg, Prokop Hartmann, Anton Isidor Lobkowitz, and the Grand Burgrave Francis Kolowrat. Francis Anton Kolowrat was a classic example of 168

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an aristocrat buffeted by circumstances into patriotic activity. Born in Prague in 1778, Kolowrat became Stadthauptmann of Prague in 1807 and was Grand Burgrave of Bohemia and President of the Bohemian Estates from 1811 until 1826. Kolowrat became associated with liberal ideas after taking over the Staatsrat in 1826, but retained great sympathy for the resistance of nobles to an encroaching professionalized bureaucracy. Kolowrat’s social circle during the wars of liberation had been frequented by German writers and patriots like Heinrich von Kleist. He was, however, won over to the new recognition of Bohemian rights and Bohemia’s Slavic heritage, and became known as an “enthusiastic Czechophile.”28 In addition to his support for other Czech cultural activities, Kolowrat was a powerful supporter of Sternberg’s museum project. In his public notice, Kolowrat made clear the spirit and intentions behind the establishment of this new patriotic institution.29 The mission of the museum was in fact to embody the Bohemian land in all its different facets, whether natural, linguistic, historical, artistic, or productive. In the Prager Zeitung, Kolowrat appealed for supporters and patrons of patriotic science to contribute whatever they could, through scientific or financial means, to the establishment of this new institution. The documents soliciting additional support emphasized the “honorable and useful” nature of the institute, attributing to potential supporters a “true patriotic sensibility” that would inspire them to support such an undertaking as “patrioticminded Bohemians.”30 Addressing the public as “the Patriotic (Fatherland’s) Friends of the Sciences,” Kolowrat’s “call to arms” drew an historical sketch of the history of the sciences in Bohemia: The history of all peoples describe epochs in which . . . the power of the Nations turned inward in times of peace, when the Muses, neglected during stormy times, were again at peace, and the arts and sciences were elevated to a new blossoming. Our Fatherland history shows us what Charles IV, founder of Prague University, and its first chancellor, the pious and educated Archbishop Arnestus, have achieved in the Fatherland for the sciences; the sciences in Bohemia reached new heights of cultivation during the reign of Rudolf II, at whose court the most excellent scholars assembled, after the storms of the fifteenth and half of the sixteenth century; a true golden era for arts and sciences had begun.31 In addition, Kolowrat noted that the end of the Seven Years’ War brought its own positive development in the patriotic sciences—in the second half of the eighteenth century both the Society of Sciences in Prague and later the Patriotic-Economic Society had been founded. He described evidence that attested the national museum

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to contemporary currents of intellectual advancement: The Bohemian Estates were responsible for the establishment of a Polytechnic Institute, “the first of this kind in the Austrian Monarchy, [and] which already had educated useful pupils of science for the state.”32 Private interests, on the other hand, had created the Academy of Fine Arts, along with the important National Gallery, and a Music Conservatory, the students of which “had already reaped the gratification of the public.”33 Kolowrat emphasized that as important, laudable, and successful as those institutions were, there remained much to be done in order to assure the future of Bohemia’s education, cultivation, and civilization. He pointed out that there was as yet no complete Bohemian literary history, no Monumenta Bohemica so important for any elucidation of the Fatherland’s history, no natural history of Bohemia, no geognostic discourse on a land “so exceedingly important for geognosy.”34 Above all, as valuable as the possessions and materials of Bohemia’s past and present were, their scattered existence made practical use of them virtually impossible. Echoing Kaspar Sternberg, Kolowrat emphasized that it was necessary to centralize and make attainable the incomparable scientific and historical wealth of the land: “only the establishment of a Fatherland’s Museum can unite these individual materials, and clear the way to fill in individual lacunae” in their national collections. As he continued, “So long as all energy had to be concentrated outward on the preservation and saving of the State before foreign pressure, the establishment of such an institute was impossible: now, however, with long lasting peace achieved and with the hope of a better future at hand, it seems to be the time to carry out a work . . . for which in our Fatherland considerable offers of whole collections as well as individual contributions from many patriotic thinking men have already been made.”35 In the public announcement, the founding committee offered a blueprint for the organization, interests, and mandate of the museum. As the committee stated, “The Fatherland’s Museum should encompass all subjects that belong to the area of National Literature and National Production, and oversee the union of all that Nature and human diligence have produced in the Fatherland.”36 The museum would include the following: (1) a collection of deeds, documents, and charters pertaining to the Fatherland; (2) a collection of copies or drawings of all those monuments, grave stones, inscriptions, statues, bas-reliefs, and so forth found in the Fatherland; (3) a collection, as complete as possible, of weapons, seals, and coins of the Fatherland (or at least imprints); (4) a collection of maps and plans, including geographical and statistical views, as well as old mining maps of Bohemia; (5) a complete cabinet of specimens from all three natural realms with particular emphasis on the 170

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Fatherland, so that next to the general mineralogical and petrified collections a special topographic-geognostic collection of the sixteen districts of Bohemia would be represented, as well as a “Flora of Bohemia” with Czech [böhmische] names and a general herbarium; (6) a library specifically devoted to Bohemica, broadly defined, as well as the “so-called . . . Sciences exactes.” Bohemica comprised all books and manuscripts written in Czech [böhmische Sprache], written by a Bohemian, or published in Bohemia, as well as all those that were about Bohemia. The collections of the exact sciences were to include all mathematical and physics texts of domestic and foreign production. Lastly, the museum would mount an exhibition of domestic production, described as a “Hall of Products,” in which all the Fatherland’s manufactures, works of art, folk craft, and discoveries or their models would be collected and displayed. The setup scheme made clear the need for a spacious building in which to house the collections and enable public access, as well as for a staff to maintain them. In the employment of a permanent staff, including scientists, librarians and archivists, the museum contributed to the growing professionalization of intellectual pursuits. The founding committee determined that the projected growth and continuous expansion of the collections would be assured by a fund set up for the establishment of the institution, and by a yearly sum for its upkeep. “Several individual patriots have already committed to this as well, and it can with confidence be expected that patriotism in Bohemia will strongly support an institution whose primary goal is to expand knowledge for practical life, to promote the improvement of industry, and to bring the treasures of the Fatherland to a more expedient use.”37 As Kolowrat made clear in his proclamation, individuals could contribute on a variety of levels, whether by lump sum, yearly subscription, or the donation of scientific materials and equipment, books, documents, and “patriotic” historic collections. At the end of his announcement, Kolowrat included an appeal to the claims of posterity: “All those who take part in one way or another in the establishment and preservation of this institution will be seen as Founders of the Fatherland’s Museum, and their names will be entered in the Foundation Book for all posterity” to see.38 This claim and others made clear that fame and status would accrue not by birth, but by action. Kaspar Sternberg and Francis Klebelsberg were put in charge of keeping track of the donated collections. As Count Saurau reported in Number 60 of the Prager Zeitung on May 22, 1818, the response had been very positive, but the museum committee continued to have problems finding appropriate lodgings for the collections. Donated collections were kept initially in part in the Minorite Monastery of St. James in Old Town, as well as in private homes. The first permanent seat was in the Sternberg Palace at the Prague Castle, where the the national museum

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Patriotic Friends of the Arts, in residence at the Sternberg Palace, lent part of their premises for the National Museum to mount its collections.39

Convincing the Government and Corralling the Public In order to succeed at establishing an institution truly representative of the nation, it was absolutely crucial that the founders have not only the sanction of the government in Vienna, but also the committed support of the local authorities and the Church in Bohemia. To have couched the goals of the museum in overtly radical terminology of exclusion, even if this had been their desire, would have defeated their purpose and alienated their potential patrons. Indeed, social and national inclusion on virtually every level was the stated agenda of the National Museum—“Bohemia” most broadly interpreted. To succeed, the museum had to be an explicitly public institution, with public participation. But what public? The language the founders used to talk about the museum and its agenda is indicative of the perplexity, of the relative newness of the enterprise. In the documents of its early years, it appears variously as Fatherland’s Museum, Patriotic Fatherland’s Museum, Fatherland’s National Museum, Royal Bohemian Museum, National Bohemian Museum, National-Institute, National Museum, and Patriotic Museum, among others.40 These varied terms also reflect the fluidity of the language used to designate the Kingdom of Bohemia. Although “Fatherland” was most commonly used, “nation” also appears regularly in the museum’s founding documents, though with a decidedly different meaning than would be true today. In the drafts of the founding committee on the museum’s establishment, nation and Fatherland were used virtually synonymously, just as had been the case in the bylaws of the Bohemian Society of Sciences. This was not uncommon. Even František Palacký, well aware of national politics, superimposed these terms: “The more strongly the spirit of his nation lives and works [in a man], the more deeply true love of his Fatherland animates him, the more earnestly he will study the history of his nation, because he will wish to see and understand the spirit of his nation.”41 From the early drafts of the museum’s inception until the finished versions, all “foreign” (i.e., French or Anglicized) words were changed to their German equivalents. Yet Czech was also not abandoned. Sternberg and the other founding committee members insisted that all members of the museum committee be “born Bohemians” who understood Czech, and the secretary of the committee had to read and write Czech fluently.42 The claims that its founders were willing to make for the National Museum and for what it was 172

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to accomplish for Bohemia were built into their original public appeal to the Bohemians for support for the museum enterprise. Those on the committee of the museum were committed to educating the individual and providing an institutional home for the collection and display of the heritage and worth of the nation. The nature of the collective effort was paramount, for in a national museum, intellectuals could pool resources and scholarly efforts to benefit the greater good. In addition, the impetus for the museum came from the aristocracy, was supported by them and the Estates, and was dedicated to and for the Fatherland. The founders of the museum were certainly mindful of the impression they were creating in Vienna. The decades after the Congress of Vienna were dominated by economic, social, and political paralysis, the latter two fostered by the Habsburg administration. Any initiative—political, social, or cultural—was potentially suspect. The founding committee kept in relatively close contact with the Viennese authorities, and made sure to keep Chancellor Metternich abreast of their plans—what the museum would look like and hope to accomplish. In a letter to Metternich in the spring of 1818, the committee wrote that it had enough money and material to ensure the “imminent execution of this institute.”43 The committee constantly framed the museum project in terms of the good that the museum would accomplish for the state and the community, goals the committee insisted were synonymous with those of the government in Vienna itself. The successful establishment of the museum would support “not only purely scientific purposes,” but more importantly further “the stated goal of the wise Austrian government, namely the general intellectual tendency of the nations to guide education and use the fruits of peace. . . . ” The museum, “which could be so useful and fruitful for the state as well as the individual,” deserved the “powerful support of the greatest men in the state.” Likewise, for the Habsburg state to “promote and participate in everything great and good,” it must promise the necessary support and materials for the establishment of the museum in Bohemia.44 Members of the museum committee explained to Habsburg authorities and to the public that the cultivation and education of the community in Bohemia was in the better interests of the larger state structure. Peace, and taking advantage of it, was a constant refrain. The committee correspondence tried to stress that for “higher education in the Fatherland, something clearly of the greatest importance and use,” the members of the government as such had a duty to pledge their attentiveness, protection, and promotion to an institution of this nature.45 Parallels to other statesmen and great Czech leaders were a deliberate literary attempt to appeal to the government’s sense of greatness, historical legacy, and achievement: the national museum

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What influence did the apostle of the Slavs, the holy Adalbert, have on the edification of the nation, and with what success did he penetrate the darkness of his century and change brutality into gentler custom? Was not Bishop Severn already known as a zealous protector of Slavic literature in the Fatherland? . . . And above all others on humanist ground shines the pious and learned Archbishop Arnestus. In his tireless enthusiasm for promoting the sciences, to broaden obedience and morality throughout the whole nation . . . he guaranteed better pedagogy, . . . the establishment of Prague University . . . and paid for, out of his own purse, the Codicco Arnestini. . . . 46 The image of Arnestus was a powerful one. Arnestus, “himself a scholar, sought to support all scholars of his era with money” as well as with the endowment of positions and continuous recommendations.47 Moreover, no one would suggest that these men of the Church were subversive, and mimicking their support for science and learning could be undertaken without fear. The founding committee suggested that the museum’s collections would include not just all the artifacts linked to the history of the nation, but would at the same time enshrine the works of those illustrious Czechs like Arnestus who had contributed so much to the intellectual development of Bohemia. As they argued, “Much common good in the Fatherland has depended on the united powers of patriotic men; we flatter ourselves that also this one [the museum] will be happily implemented, especially when men are united by their honors and personal attributes.48 The committee had to walk the proverbial fine line, to excite potential supporters and engage them in the museum’s rather vast agenda for the nation, while presenting its aims as circumspectly as possible to the government. For the government, the museum was hailed as beneficial to the state. An institution that celebrated science and knowledge, both critical for the industrial development, prosperity, and competitiveness of the state, was a project the founders felt no one could question. The museum committee also thought to deflect potential concern on the part of the Viennese court with the argument that the museum, like other cultural endeavors, would serve to preoccupy men whose public activities might otherwise turn to political opposition.49 In addition to a broad appeal to the intellectual and social elite of Bohemia, the founders made concerted efforts to garner support from civic and town authorities and to establish links with other regional or national museums. Kaspar Sternberg had already made clear his interest in the Johanneum in Austria. Secretary Berger of the Museum Committee contacted the National Museum in Pest, as well as scientific institutions in Weimar and Jena. National agendas 174

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and identities were negotiated even in the relations between these institutions. The director of the Musei Nationalis Hungarici sent the Hungarian museum’s charter and mentioned the possible collaboration of the two institutions and the exchange of material collections in the interest of science and nation. As he wrote to the committee, “History teaches us that Hungary and Bohemia stood in close contact until the second half of the seventeenth century. This was an epoch discussed in the sources and by the writers of both sides. Even today old colonies from Bohemia remain.”50 As prosaic as this might seem, this was a loaded nationalist statement. To refer to the Slovaks in Hungary as Bohemian colonists was a clear disavowal of Slovak identity and a rejection of any “permanent” Slovak claim to Hungarian territory, in effect giving the Slovak “settlement” in Hungary a transitory character. This feeling reflected what became very powerful national sentiment as the Hungarian national movement increased in strength. The “Bohemians” living in Hungary were not viewed as Slovaks by Hungarian nationalists, but rather as Czech Hussite renegades who were advised to return to Prague if they did not want to become Hungarian. Regardless of this difference of opinion between Czechs and Hungarians on the matter of Slovak identity, the Hungarian director was enthusiastic about the Bohemian museum, and claimed that helping to increase the Bohemian collections would pose no problem for the Hungarian Museum, as it was “an independent institute.”51 This was not the only instance of institutional cooperation. Institutions found it easier to cooperate as their search agenda were complementary—the drive behind the acquisition of new collections was not just a search for something old, but a search for something national. Each institution sought to find, acquire, and possibly trade foreign coins and artifacts for domestic ones. As far as provincial support was concerned, the committee did indeed try to drum up support not just from local aristocracy, but from clergy and provincial bureaucracy as the provincial populations most likely to be literate and educated. Aristocrats like Kaspar Sternberg used their local influence to pull individuals and institutions, such as the philosophical teaching establishment in Pilsen, into a closer relationship with the museum.52 The dynamics of how the museum was to become a truly national institution are associated with these early institutional and personal connections. As important as public appeals were, the behind-the-scenes pressure of personal networks were a major source of institutional support. These personal bridges, whether between cousins like the Sternbergs, brothers-in law, or district governor and priest, were ultimately the strength behind the larger national or civic movement. This is not to suggest that there were not other, more radical approaches to the institutionalization of the nation. An alternate “plan” for the establishment of the “Nazional Museum” was submitted to the Committee in April the national museum

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1818. The authors of this scheme, Count Berchtold and Joseph Jungmann, put together a slightly different plan for the museum’s makeup, entitled Exempla Trahunt: “The powerful and praiseworthy striving in individual lands of the Austrian Empire—divided by original peculiarities—to collect and unify their antiquities, literature, art and natural treasures so that their representation will be elevated. . . . ” was to be the main focus of this institution.53 This alternate plan more explicitly linked—and limited—the Bohemian project of the museum to the Czechs as a national linguistic community rather than focusing primarily on domestic science and a more inclusive conception of Bohemian nationhood. The heightened Slavic spirit of the Jungmann/Berchtold plan was submerged in the founding documents of the museum. By 1818, the original founders were not ignorant of the potential divisiveness of linguistic questions within the Bohemian community. Although a more conservative vision for the National Museum ultimately won out over the Berchtold/Jungmann plan, it is clear that the museum, even in this less overtly ethnolinguistic conception, was part of a process whereby a cohesive and apparently seamless history and cultural past was grafted onto political territory. The aristocrats engaged in the museum gave the museum project social legitimacy and historical continuity. In other words, as the museum set about tracing and displaying the nation, its wealth, and its history from “time immemorial,” the aristocracy donated their sense of political heritage and boundaries, as well as their scientific collections. From a social perspective, the museum also served as an important interclass hub. Kaspar Sternberg had worked so diligently for the establishment of this institution out of a desire to centralize and unite the Bohemian community’s intellectual efforts within one institution. The founding committee’s attempts to bring in scholars from the faculty at Prague University, as well as upper schools in Prague, were a part of this agenda. For the enterprise to be a “legitimate” intellectual center, it was important that the museum attempt to incorporate all those working in intellectual circles in Bohemia and to make critical connections to scientists and their institutions abroad.54 The attempt to do this further contributed to the social mix so characteristic of this type of endeavor. The museum committee approached scholars not according to “social standing,” but according to their contributions, previous and potential, to the Fatherland and its intellectual advancement. As these documents confirm, social and political “rollback” was not the agenda of these aristocrats. As intellectuals they were committed to scientific learning and used their position to further the same within an institution that sought to give shape to Bohemia’s mixed, but particularly Slavic, heritage. Even though the founders of the museum occasionally appealed to their cohort 176

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through old-fashioned calls for patronage, they created out of this a different institution and an important piece in the nation-building puzzle.55 The establishment of the museum was a microcosm of the debate surrounding the composition of the national community and its representation. Initially the National Museum had no limiting raison d’être beyond the task of displaying Bohemia, and its public appeal for help from the community for the formation of its collections engaged the public in the dialogue about what could legitimately represent Bohemia. Ultimately, the museum was more than the sum of its parts and was more significant than a simple collection of domestic stones, fossils, plants, and pots. As Schweizer argues, the National Museum and institutions like it across the Habsburg lands were symbolically critical for their attempts to promote “at all levels of society a consciousness of their distinctive identities.”56 The spirit behind the enterprise as revealed in the correspondence of the establishing committee attests to their attempt to garner support for the project on the basis of individuals’ personal relationship to the community. The appeal went out to several potential supporters that they “as Bohemian[s], as Bohemian representatives,” ought to take part in this important national undertaking.57 How indeed did the committee determine what should or should not be a part of this collection that was to represent the essence, the spirit, or Geist, of the Fatherland?

In Search of the Past: The Museum Collections In his appeal for the establishment of the museum, Francis Kolowrat described his call to action as a “call to the whole public.”58 Once the museum was established, a museum society was to be formed to oversee the different sections of the museum and provide for the growth of its collections and membership. The founding members were then to decide if they wanted to continue as working members of the museum society and to elect the committee for the museum’s oversight. The scientific and intellectual interests of the founding committee, particularly Kaspar Sternberg, defined the museum’s original collections. Those initial acquisitions, donated predominantly by participating aristocrats, went from private objects to being the complete possession of the “Bohemian nation.”59 Amassing the natural history and heritage collections remained the preoccupation of the aristocrats responsible for the museum’s initial establishment, its endowment, and of those responsible for enlarging and maintaining its collections. According to Kaspar Sternberg, the initial public call for the museum’s establishment was successful. As he wrote later, “A true patriotic cooperation among all Estates was very soon manifested.”60 the national museum

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The founding members of the museum society were more than traditional patrons and did much to define the museum’s collections and to influence the nation on display. The original collections of the museum had been their collections and their scientific writings. Existing aristocratic collections, originally private, were put at the disposal of the nation, as in the case of Francis Sternberg’s invaluable coin collection. The great push by the members of the museum society to collect everything that might reveal a facet of Bohemia, of Bohemian life and history, was an impulse inherited from the eighteenthcentury nationalization of science. What was new was the institutionalization of local history, its display, and the intent to affect public ideas about the constitution of the nation. According to the Prager Zeitung of May 22, 1818, the following collections had been received by the committee for the museum: Kolowrat’s mineral collection, Prokop Hartmann’s petrified and mineral collections, Hartig’s zoological collection, Kaspar Sternberg’s botanical collection and library, Lindacker’s mineral collections, Joachim Sternberg’s natural and petrified collections, a Fatherland’s herbarium from Seidl, Berchtold and Joseph Conrad, Clement Paulas’s mineral and geognostic collection, Fürstenberg’s drawings and notes of Bohemian monuments and gravestones, August Ledebur’s library, Joseph Wratislaw’s mycological and pomological collections, Wratislaw’s Bohemian chronicle from 1585, Arabic manuscripts, minerals, taxidermy, Francis Anton Count Desfours’s seventeenth-century glass painting collection. And this was just the beginning. Funds for the initial creation of the museum were promised by a large number of individuals.61 The faculty of the university, more strapped for resources, promised intellectual support. Others, like Counts Wrtby, Clam-Gallas, and Klebelsberg, promised yearly sums for the museum from the beginning. Eventually proving to the central government that the museum would indeed survive, the committee received official, royal sanction in 1822, and Kaspar Sternberg was elected as its first president, Prince August Longin Lobkowitz director, and Francis Sternberg treasurer. In Sternberg’s plenary address to the society of the museum, he expressed his hopes for the good that the museum might bring to Bohemia, “I would have approached the path assigned to me with uncertainty and anxiety . . . if I had not noticed in the Bohemian nation . . . the earliest awakening of the sciences after darkened centuries; [in Bohemia] this holy spark spread its light, now, as then, a pure and lively inspiration for everything that is beautiful and good, a loudly proclaimed sense for scientific edification, a harmonious work in the establishment of institutions for the public good.”62 As the last of Sternberg’s collection was packed and sent to Prague that year, and he observed 178

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his empty rooms and cabinets, Sternberg remarked, “Though I did not wish to be parted from these true life companions that had guaranteed consolation and diversion in the cloudiest times, I did not repent of my . . . intention, for they had to become useful for the Fatherland—but I followed the crates to Prague.”63 As Sternberg proudly recounted to Friedrich Münter, “This scientific institution is only a few years in existence and was endowed by voluntary contributions. It comprises two parts: Bohemica in the widest sense and . . . the sciences exactes. The library, which already holds 10,000 volumes, is adapted towards these two parts.”64 In the 1820s, the museum’s collections were organized as follows: a Bohemian geognostic-topographic collection oriented on the Müller map and divided into the regular mountain ranges of the sixteen districts; a general collection of fossils; a collection of all Bohemia fossils; a petrified collection of the animal and plant kingdoms; a zoological collection with general and Bohemian sections, including entomology and skeletons for comparative anatomy; a botanical collection divided into general, Bohemian, and Hungarian specimens along with an herbarium; a coin collection separated into general and Bohemian sections; an antiquities collection of objects of Bohemian origin or those collected in Bohemia; and a products collection, which included inventions and manufactures. The library with its Bohemica section was also set up. As Sternberg wrote to Münter, “My library and collections have formed the basis for this museum, and much has since then been added to it. The laws of the society have been confirmed by His Majesty our King, the property of the whole museum is recognized as national property. The actual goal of this institution is to collect in the greatest possible completeness the material which is absolutely necessary . . . to advance to the present equal position in the sciences as other nations. . . . For the nation, however, [it is] to create a home in which she can with confidence place the remains, saved from the storms of the times, of a more flourishing past.”65 This excerpt reveals the tension between two not always congruous elements of the museum’s mission. The museum was supposed to on the one hand promote national interests in order to bring Bohemia to the intellectual and cultural level of her neighbors, and on the other hand save the remnants of Bohemian heritage, the true wealth of past glory days, from destruction. One of the greatest problems for the museum committee, which had been charged with the monumental task of collecting from the four corners of the nation all that was of national importance, was its inability to procure historical documents and ancient charters. As Sternberg wrote to the district captain in Pilsen, “The document collection is not large, although from all parts of Bohemia one or two well-preserved documents from 1289 until the the national museum

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present have been located.”66 Bohemica in the form of ancient, historical Slavic documents was not so easy to find. Time was not the only culprit. Bohemia had endured severe hardships and ruin in the wars of the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, and lost much of her documentary heritage in the process. As Sternberg reflected in 1826, “Antiquities of some importance are rare by us, besides barbaric or Slavic coins, bronzed, engraved rings, lance tips. . . . It is exceedingly rare to excavate anything that is older than the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. . . . Nature left us a richer endowment than art, our literary treasures were stolen by the flames in the cloisters and the noble castles during the religious wars; much was also taken abroad by emigration, and what the Hussites left, the Thirty Years’ War took away; this much must the museum attempt, that what little remains be more carefully collected and kept than before.”67 However, the museum committee persisted in its searches for documents and other artifacts that could give physical, tangible shape to Bohemian history as it was to be exhibited in the museum. One of the reasons the committee sought to maintain contact with educated individuals across the kingdom was in the hopes of acquiring better artifacts. The Church in particular was seen initially as a potential gold mine of old missives and documents, but this did not turn out to be true. In the case of Pilsen, for example, old choral books from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were found in a parish church, but not too much else.68 Adalbert Sedlácˇek, a professor in Pilsen helping Kaspar Sternberg with museum acquisitions as well as with the ordering of the old Pilsner archive, undertook to trawl for documents in rural farm villages during his vacation. The museum had limited success in these searches. As Sternberg wrote on June 26, 1828, “The museum strides gradually forward, collections and library are filled more every day, only with the collection of antiquities does it not move ahead as it should; from the oldest inhabitants of the land one finds nothing beyond fortifications . . . , black urns with or without ashes, bronze rings, etc.”69 This was admittedly problematic, given the desire of the museum’s curators to emphasize medieval Bohemia, and its Slavic heritage.70 Even more important than the actual success in the search for sources was the long-term effect of the search itself. Activities like the collection of historical documents, folk music, and artifacts constantly emphasized and promoted the distinctive culture of the region. Value was placed on more than just age or scientific interest—an object’s historical connection to the Fatherland was enough to impart value to it.71 Even when it came to trilobites, the value for the museum and by extension the nation was not a straightforward question of how old the fossil was, or what sort of plant or animal had been 180

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captured in stone, or what the discovery meant for the archaeological time line. It was a question of Bohemian origin—where any given object was found, how old the place as well as the specimen was, who found it, and what it told the investigators about the settlement, history, and development of their land. On one occasion, Sternberg noted that “these fossilizations, generally made known by Linnaeus, were first discovered in Bohemia by Count Kinský,” placing emphasis on the Bohemian, rather than the purely scientific, connection.72 The search for Incunabula, or evidence of the “cradle of the race,” compelled scholars like Sternberg to comb the byways and paths of well-traveled European cities like Graz, Salzburg, and other Central European cities for Bohemica.73 Despite the apparent dearth of actual material (excluding that which was manufactured as authentic national heritage), the process of looking itself was an important enterprise. The museum encouraged local communities to ferret out any material connection that linked province, region, and nation. Although the Habsburgs had mounted a concerted effort to deny the legitimacy of the larger Bohemian border as being representative of an historical, political, and national unit and to break down any institutional autonomy, activities sponsored by the museum and other institutions actively counteracted this effort.

Reaching Out to the Literate Public: The Library and Publications The negotiations for the establishment and development of the Bohemian museum as a national institution are indicative of the nature of national cultural discourse. The museum’s inception, the goals enunciated by the original founders, and the language of the presidium under František Palacký’s influence reveal the birthing pains of the nineteenth-century “modern” national movement. When the museum was originally established, the aristocrats on the founding committee clearly kept the parameters for the institution within what their own scientific interests would proscribe. Luckily, this base was quite broad, given their sundry interests, and certainly regarding Kaspar Sternberg, there was hardly any section of the museum that did not benefit from Sternberg’s private collection. The estimates for the value of Sternberg’s donations vary, but Wenzel Nebeský estimated their worth at over 100,000 florins.74 Sternberg’s donations included not just financial support, but also a large part of his library from Brˇezina, his entire herbarium, his brother Joachim’s valuable mineral and natural history collections, Lindacker’s collection, as well as other acquisitions purchased for the museum at his own the national museum

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expense.75 It was inevitable that Sternberg’s scientific interests set the tone for the museum’s initial collections. Despite Sternberg’s primary orientation toward the hard sciences, he was also committed to the museum’s literary and historical collections, and concerned about the condition of the Czech language.76 With the question of library acquisitions and literary output—an important facet of the museum’s public outreach—the issue of linking language and identity came to the forefront. However, the founding committee stressed a broadly defined Bohemian heritage in the formation of the library collections, and the museum library reflected their desire for breadth and inclusiveness. While concentrating on Bohemica and the exact sciences, the original plan was to make the museum and its library a “thesaurus of sources for a critical writing of Bohemian history.”77 The library also reflected Sternberg’s collection at Brˇezina, which was wide-ranging and deep. It covered encyclopedias, gardening and economics, literature, literary history and philosophy, language, classics, mythology, travelogues, maps and atlases, belletrie, poetry, drama, archaeology, history, technology and virtually all scientific fields, and the all-important Bohemica.78 In particular, Sternberg donated virtually his entire collection of works on the exact sciences to the museum. Bohemica was a separate category that represented a broad and inclusive grouping of virtually everything in any field pertaining to Bohemia, written by a Bohemian, or written in Czech. Connection to the Fatherland was the unifying thread in a diverse collection that included material like Bohuslav Balbín’s Tabularium Bohemogenealogicum, Dlabacž’s writings on art and music, or Nachrichten über böhmische Schriftsteller und Gelehrten from Kalina von Joetherstein. Although Bohemica did include scientific, topographical, and other nonliterary works, the fields of literature, poetry, and history were heavily represented. The sheer volume of works from the non-noble Czech intelligentsia, many of them active participants in the museum, like Francis Martin Pelcl, Josef Dobrovský, Francis Pubitschka, Anton Puchmayer, and Pavel Šafarˇík was further evidence of the institution’s commitment to the “true” language and literature of Bohemia. In addition to literary heritage, Bohemica collections embraced documents that could “shed light’ on distinctively Bohemian history and experience. The periods of the medieval Czech kings, especially Charles IV, the Hussite rebellions and wars, and the White Mountain debacle were important topics within Bohemica collections, as these periods and events were rightly perceived by intellectuals as watersheds in Bohemian history that defined the Bohemian past and gave shape to its present. Charles IV, although raised in the West and only half Czech, was instrumental in solidifying Bohemia’s place of precedence within the Holy 182

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Roman Empire, created a cult of royal regalia, instituted highly ritualized coronation ceremonies in Bohemia, and was entirely co-opted by the nationalists as a great Czech monarch. There was also an attempt under the aegis of these literary and historical acquisitions to “rehabilitate” certain Czech historical figures, particularly Jan Hus, by giving them precedence in the display of Bohemica worthy of a patriot’s pride. Important Bohemica thus included any evidence or work on the settlement of the region, the constitutional or legal history of the state, any information on Bohemia’s social groups, the history of famous Bohemians and Bohemian rulers, Bohemian church manuscripts, any works in any language that treated Bohemia’s language or literary history, and all works on Bohemian production and inventions.79 All of these topics, but certainly the focus on political documents and texts, were part of the continuing effort of the museum and its curators to emphasize Bohemia’s distinctiveness, by providing the documentary evidence of Bohemia’s political and cultural history and displaying it as unified, independent of other collections. The desire to present a unified picture of Bohemia and to shape the public’s conception of it was also highlighted by the museum’s publishing and scientific ventures. Museum support for a new topography of Bohemia in the 1820s is an excellent example. Topographies were graphic delineations of the natural and man-made features of a region. In the nineteenth century, they included descriptions of the population, industry, geography, and climate—capturing the land and its people in depth and breadth. One standard topography of the nineteenth century included sections on borders, size (of Bohemia), physical characteristics (mountains and mountain ranges, geological formations, geognostic elements, waterways, lakes, and swamps), climate, mineral and plant life, population (number, physical characteristics, character, habits, language), productivity (agriculture, forestry, industry, trade, manufacturing, postal infrastructure), education, charitable institutions, religion, constitution, and laws of land tenure.80 The purpose of the new topography in Bohemia sponsored by the museum was to provide a “historical-topographical description of our Fatherland.”81 Above and beyond the normal interest such an activity would inspire, as a national presentation of the geographical ordering and political/social layering of Bohemia, the mechanics of putting a topography together was a crucial national enterprise. The project was designed by Professor Joseph Eichler, but was funded and logistically supported by the National Museum, which undertook to print, mail, and sort all the questionnaires necessary to collect the appropriate information for the topography.82 The National Museum was responsible for contacting local authorities, who would collect the information, fill out the the national museum

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necessary forms, and categorize the various districts. Topographies like this were significant in that they encouraged scholars to think critically about Bohemia—what its borders did and did not contain—as well as about the nature of its population and constitution. The method of collecting information for topographies reinforced the connections among the disparate parts of Bohemia, as the topographies dealt in what was similar, rather than different, about Bohemia’s citizens and their customs. Moreover, the creation of a topographic map, under the guidance of Franz-Xaver Zippe and others, was more than a simple geographic tool. It was a mechanism for establishing Bohemia’s reputation abroad, particularly in the German states, and raising “a monument to Bohemia’s natural resources.”83 Like the topographies, science was a means of cultural and political consolidation. As would also be true of the National Gallery’s approach to European art, the scientists at the National Museum felt that acquiring important scientific collections, like Berzelius’s Brazil collection, would increase the importance of the museum and the respect due to it, and by extension, put a sheen on Bohemia’s reputation as a cultural and intellectual center. Kaspar Sternberg and the other botanists associated with the museum used their new patriotic institutional home to acquire “objectively” important botanical collections, scientific instruments and research, fossils, and minerals. In the 1820s the museum’s curators also began to contemplate various literary projects designed to enhance the literary scene and provide institutional support for a rejuvenated Czech language. In 1823, Dobrovský suggested that the National Museum publish a new volume of Scriptores Rerum Bohemicarum in Czech, and the museum committee agreed. The museum intended for this volume to comprise all the ancient rights of Bohemia. To catalogue and present these documents in the national language was to present Bohemia itself as a nation with untarnished heritage and rights. Once the National Museum was an accepted and trusted institution, it was much easier to shift and expand its mission, and committee members were willing to support new national efforts spearheaded by František Palacký and others. Palacký himself recognized the need to funnel his efforts through the official channels of the museum, and even in some cases through the mouths of the aristocrats. His connection to members of the aristocracy as patrons in some cases, and as intellectual progressives in others, made his relationship with the museum a successful boon for increasing Czech national feeling, and Palacký acknowledged the debt he owed to Francis and Kaspar Sternberg.84 Censorship and money remained a problem for those outside such official institutions, but within them various obstacles could be avoided. The question of literary publications by the museum is one case in which the 184

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museum afforded protection for more than Sternberg’s plant fossils. As Sternberg remarked, “In 1827 the museum will begin to publish two newspapers, a German monthly and a Bohemian quarterly, in order to excite the public of both tongues for the Fatherland and the sciences; history shall be particularly considered. . . . ”85 Czech publications, which could be viewed as subversive given their intended effect, were provided with the smoke screen sanction of the museum as an officially accepted institution run by aristocrats who were often friends or acquaintances of Chancellor Metternich. This was security by association. Metternich had given money to the museum, after all, and in its form and original public intent, it resembled other provincial institutions. Metternich had also met and purported to admire Kaspar Sternberg. That the cumulative influence of this institution would be different, given its location in a non-German province was perhaps not clear. What Palacký was doing, and what Sternberg and the presidium allowed, even encouraged him to do, was to impart to the museum a new character, and to involve it in linguistically oriented activities that would ultimately separate it in all essentials from these other “harmless” institutions. Sternberg, making a speech in 1826 to the presidium on the need for two journals in Czech and German, gave a stamp of respectability to an enterprise that, according to Palacký’s idea of different content for each journal, could have intellectually and conceptually separated the German-speaking population from the rest. It is not that the literate did not already read different materials. The question is what the effect on the population would have been to have such an institution promoting these differences. The German journal was to provide literary, esoteric discussions of scientific discoveries and history, whereas the Bohemian language journal was created specifically to encourage and develop the Czech language and knowledge of Czech history. As Sternberg wrote, “The particular goal of this publication would be to shape the language, together with the people (Volk), and to put a stop to the rampant linguistic confusion caused by the excessive ‘purism’ of a few Bohemian writers, by presentation of firm principles, models and examples.”86 Czech, or rather “Bohemian,” was presented by scholars, even those who spoke little or no Czech, as the real, historical national language and the language of the majority of the population. Sternberg and Palacký said it was undeniably the most important and valuable legacy left by Bohemian antiquity to later generations: “It was through language that the Bohemians first formed an individual nation, and achieved their own history, which will hold a brilliant space in the annals of the world forever,” as a people and a country far beyond what their number and power would suggest.87 German, on the other hand, was referred to as the customary colloquial language of the national museum

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the educated, or the local “Umgangsprache.”88 This approach, determined by the aristocracy’s ambiguous sense of their own linguistic habits as a facet of identity, sent an ambivalent message. Language was inextricably linked to identity in the case of Czech, but it was presented as unimportant that the educated elite spoke German. German speakers were not yet excluded from the nation, and the museum’s supporters claimed that German was spoken out of habit, de-emphasizing the fact that the elite did not (or could not, in many cases) speak Czech. The Czech and German journals were (paradoxically) both to work for unity—to represent the union of all the different ways of life in Bohemia— despite the fact that they would appeal to very different audiences. The Bohemian journal was to present all the information of the German one, but with a “more popular tone.”89 The museum committee intended for these journals to be “the particular painting by which others could glimpse the true form of the Bohemian.” For the Bohemian, however, “they would be the mirror of true Bohemian nationality, so that the individual could recognize himself in the whole,” and thus would his patriotic feeling be awakened.90 As Sternberg wrote to his cousin Francis in June 1827, there was considerable support for their desire to concentrate on Bohemia in the German monthly. As he claimed, it was “sensible that we limit ourselves to Bohemia, by which our publication will differ from others that attempt to undertake everything, and thus cannot be distinguished one from the other beyond whether they have better or worse contributors. . . . While cosmopolitan, [ours] is all the more interesting the more it appears national.”91 Sternberg referred to these proposed journals as essential for the fulfillment of the main goal of the museum, namely, the spiritual and intellectual education of the nation. The museum as an institution ought to bring the entire nation toward the pursuit of useful knowledge. “Our endeavor is also to preserve the Slavic tongue in its original purity or bring it back to this state.”92 That Sternberg believed there was a pure language of origin is clear. For him, the museum should attempt to awaken the honor of the nation by using the “memory” of the past, presented in the museum’s displays and collections, to excite a desire for the higher fulfillment of the nation’s promise in the future. Sternberg suggested that members of the museum society would be regarded at home and abroad as carriers and representatives of Bohemian national culture: The museum would fulfill its role when it “collected all the intellectual manifestations of the people, all the individual beams of light, in one focal point, where they together will shine not only more brightly, widely and for longer, but will reach through to enrich . . . previously barren intellectual soil.”93 In his speech, although emphasizing the need to encour186

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age Czech, Sternberg also stated that the position of the museum was not to promote one language over another, but to influence both. Sternberg insisted that the journals would reveal the worth of the museum and serve as the representative and carrier of national culture, “to which one is in general accustomed to giving precedence before the other lands of this monarchy.” He continued, “It would be established as a founding principle, that the journals must have a national inclination, which is self evident, given that they would be organs of an institution dedicated to intellectual national interests.94 In 1828, Sternberg was proud of work included in the journals, “in which are imprinted as yet unpublished documents from the time of Sigmund, the Interregnum, and George of Podeˇbrady.”95 There is little doubt that Sternberg’s interest in and promotion of the journals was heavily influenced by Palacký. In fact, in some instances it is obvious that Sternberg took his official “lines” verbatim from Palacký’s notes. But it was Sternberg who wrote to Sedlnitzky, the police minister, for publication permission. It was Sternberg who met with the Gubernium officials in Prague and Vienna. It was Sternberg, as president of the museum, who communicated with the Grand Burgrave and won his support. Getting permission for the two journals was not easy in the contemporary political climate, even for someone of Sternberg’s eminence. He explained the necessity for the publications to the police minister Sedlnitzky by claiming they filled the void left by the fact that intellectuals were not allowed to read many foreign journals. Regardless, it was the personal connection and professional, intellectual respect owed to Sternberg, irrespective of his status, that allowed most of this to take place. This is one of many ways in which Sternberg and other aristocrats like him were able to shield national activity. This shield extended beyond the traditional types of patronage such as financial support in the form of a pension for Dobrovský, a job for Palacký, or a library for Pelcl that provided him with access to the great Enlightenment thinkers. It was a personal support and commitment on the part of the aristocrats that combined with bureaucratic and even church protection, and enabled national activists and scholars to prosper. In the long term, however, the national movement had little room for aristocrats it perceived as too tied to state authority and too murky in their links with the German cultural world. Although Kaspar Sternberg himself was included in the Pantheon of great Czechs within the new National Museum building on Wenceslaus Square, most aristocrats were shut out by the language of exclusion implicit in the goals enunciated by Palacký. The reasons for this are complex and lie much more with the history of the 1840s and after. Once the focus on language and linguistic development the national museum

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was accepted, the fault lines of the national movement itself were created. Yet, there was nothing in the earlier history of the national movement, in the nature of its social basis or the level of its commitment to reform that made the nineteenth century breakdown inevitable. Although scholars like Ernest Gellner have argued that the national movement in the Czech lands was Catholic, Romantic, and in a sense reactionary, it was also Enlightenment-inspired, as revealed in the national mission institutionalized by the National Museum. For aristocrats engaged in the nation-building process as it took place in the museum, nationality was an issue not of exclusion, but rather a question of the relationship of the individual and the community to the processes of progress and enlightenment. For František Palacký and his compatriots, on the other hand, the switch to “Romantic” nationalism was easier. He already relied on the community as the bearer of enlightenment, for edification and the weal of humanity came not so much through the spirit of progressive enlightenment and the individual good, as from the individual “Völkerschaft.” The patriots involved in the museum were all interested in national rejuvenation, in learning, and in promoting the good of the population. The difference was how this was to be accomplished and deciding on who constituted the nation. Palacký was at least publicly convinced that the Czech language needed support, not museum “preservation” as if it were already extinct.96 The ultimate fulfillment of this would be for every province, indeed every “peculiarly constituted” people, to have its own voice. History, nation, and identity were all shaped by language: If the language were to disappear as a living one, the people would be missing as well, and the only clue to their spiritual and intellectual character would be the complexity and worth of the literature left behind.97 Certainly the Czechs were not alone in these concerns about linguistic and real extinction, and Palacký recognized that the “smaller” nations in Europe were all engaged in linguistic activity, and used this to support the Czech case. As he remarked in defense of the journal project, for instance, “At a time when almost all the peoples of the second rank in Europe are returning to their previously neglected national languages as the most sacred palladium of their existence, and endeavoring to protect them with prominent and expensivelyendowed institutions (think only of the Poles, Magyars, Danes, Finnish, etc.), it is not fitting for the Bohemian to get left behind.”98 The subsequent history of these two journals is indicative of the changes taking place in national politics in Bohemia, many of these changes brought about by the intellectual ferment and social exchanges taking place in national institutions like the museum. The German publication, riddled with the difficulties of the censor board and an apparent lack of interest on the part 188

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of the German-speaking population, folded after four years of publication. When Minister Sauer inquired about the rapid sinking of the German journal, he came to the conclusion that either the Germans in Bohemia were not interested in intellectual issues or, more important, that there was too much sympathy for the emerging Czech literary scene.99 The Czech journal, on the other hand, was reorganized and formed the basis for what became the Matice Cˇeská in 1831, also under the aegis of the museum. Some aristocratic influence continued there as well, as Rudolf Kinský was one elected curator of the Matice Cˇeská at its inception.100 The participation of the public in the formation of the museum and its collections, and therefore in its display of the national community, is also revealed by the constant flow of paper and even individuals from Prague to the local communities, prodding these communities for support, and for national and scientific findings. This participation stretched beyond the connections formed between museum representatives and local officials, and could reach right down to the land itself. In their great desire to collect the fragments of the nation’s heritage that lay waiting to be discovered, patriotic scientists feared the possible damage being done to apparently “worthless” objects dug out of the ground and either broken or thrown away by people unaware of their real value as pieces of the cultural and social heritage of the nation. Intellectuals requested that the local population be made aware of what they might be digging out of the ground.101 Scientists also requested that the museum, as an institution representing the nation, take the initiative in the protection of Bohemian heritage. The attachment to, or at least awareness of, the larger community was strengthened by this activity. As rural populations were drawn into the search for the past, however slight the initial attempt, their relationship to the nation, or rather to the “imagined community” as Benedict Anderson has termed it, was given tangible shape.102 The National Museum in Bohemia, like others of its type, had three basic institutional purposes: collecting, analyzing, and displaying. Established with the fervent support of a number of scientifically minded aristocrats, the National Museum set itself the task of displaying the past and present accomplishments of the nation, pulling together a collection that would serve as evidence of Bohemia’s timeless existence and proud heritage. In an age of curtailed political activity, the National Museum also served as an important, centralized intellectual institution wherein the liberal aristocracy and the non-noble intellectuals worked together to fulfill the museum’s mission. The aristocracy’s participation in the museum, its endowment, and maintenance was an outgrowth of their commitment to scientific work and to the enrichment of the nation. Under the aegis of the National Museum, the national museum

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non-noble intellectuals, who had often earned their keep within the households of the aristocracy, were given the means to pursue their profession within their own “house.” In addition, the negotiation among developing conceptions of Bohemia took place within the museum. That the museum should stand simultaneously for authenticity and scientific integrity on the one hand and the national interest on the other was increasingly challenged by those, like its librarian Václav Hanka, who clearly believed that everything should serve national interests, including historical truth and documentary “evidence.” That the museum was unable to sustain a unified and balanced approach to the language communities in Bohemia was a sign of how successful its program to reorganize the public around the issue of the national community had been, and was a sign of how divisive this was to become. The National Museum, by seeking to define and display the nation as coherently and “permanently” as possible, worked to fuse “Bohemian” and “Czech,” two identifying markers that had been separate in the eighteenth century. Thus, as an institution, the National Museum could no longer appeal to that part of the Bohemian population that sought membership in an alternative cultural community—and who subsequently found it across the border in Germany. In addition to its celebration of Bohemian natural wealth, the National Museum as an institution also used the force of display to show the cultural maturity of the national community, much the way the National Gallery had sought to provide Bohemia with its due cultural place in the ranks of states. The endowment of patriotic cultural institutions—ensuring that the nation had an appropriate level of cultural wealth—would soon leave its mark on the political scene in Bohemia. What began as a discussion of science and culture would be subsumed by the political debates of the 1840s and ultimately, by revolution.

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c h a p ter s ix

R

Political Opposition and Revolution

eflecting with bitterness on the revolution of 1848 that resulted in his ouster from office, Chancellor Clemens Wenzel Metternich condemned the prerevolutionary activities of the aristocracy in Bohemia and Austria, saying, “To the list of symptoms of a sick, degenerate age belongs the completely false position which the nobility too often adopts. It was they, nearly everywhere who lent a hand to the confusion that was being prepared.”1 This sentiment was echoed by Karl Friedrich Kübeck, the president of the General Court Chamber, who wrote in 1850 that the “revolution devoured the nobility and democracy both, from whose union it had originated. . . . ”2 Both of these observers were referring to the liberal opposition fomented by aristocrats in the Diet in Bohemia as a fundamental cause for the political atmosphere of malaise they perceived prior to the revolution in 1848. The cultural work of the late eighteenth century and early decades of the nineteenth century had engendered a new generation of proto-liberal reformers interested in more widespread political and social improvements. This reform movement, with deep connection to cultural institutions and ideas, targeted a host of areas for prescriptive change, including legal codes and norms, land use and serfdom, language, constitutionalism, economic development, and political accountability and access. However, as in earlier historical moments of political upheaval, aristocrats who supported reform in the 1840s found their commitment profoundly challenged by revolution once again. Although the aristocracy’s role in creating the destabilizing conditions of the prerevolutionary years may have been clear to Metternich and Kübeck in hindsight, the political situation before the 1840s would have given an independent observer a very different impression. Thanks in large part to

intellectual aristocrats, the cultural and intellectual life of Bohemia had continued despite the stagnant atmosphere cultivated by Metternich. Politics was another matter. Oppositional political activity in or out of the Estates was virtually nonexistent in the decades after the Napoleonic Wars, an era the Habsburg historian Robert Kann referred to as “apolitical” in that “no parties, no pressure groups substantially influenced the course of government.”3 However, by the 1840s, this political quiescence on the part of Bohemia’s elites had given way to a new willingness to address Bohemia’s problems through expressly political means. In the course of the 1840s, a number of aristocrats articulated a liberal platform of political reform, organizing an opposition within the Estates to the policies of the Viennese court. Moreover, the national rhetoric cultivated in learned institutions, and the proselytizing that these institutions had done for the national movement, meant that emerging debates about political solutions were highly nationalized. Despite the fact that national identity was more fluid than nationalists hoped and that commitment to the nation was concentrated among intellectual elites rather than spread deep and wide, the nature of the political debates of the 1840s suggests that the nationalists had been very successful in creating a hegemonic discourse so that political issues were de facto national issues. Bohemian nobles interested in reform were faced with a number of issues raised by the patriotism of cultural work and the new nationalized rhetoric of politics. The divide between the constituent peoples of Bohemian society, a divide that barely registered the century before, had been refined by the emphasis on Bohemia’s essential Czech character within patriotic institutions. This was potentially problematic for Bohemian aristocrats who chose to acknowledge the special Czech character of the kingdom while remaining themselves primarily German speaking and hoping to keep German as a “nonthreatening” dialect of the region. But of course the same rhetoric of nationhood that had successfully united Czech language and identity in the Bohemian context accomplished the same distillation for the German one inside and outside the kingdom. The powerful rhetoric and growing popularity of German cultural nationhood across the border in the German states highlighted the fact that the identity chasm in Bohemia was as likely to widen as to shrink, whatever eighteenth-century scientists had hoped. Demanding that cultural “justice” be done in terms of the Czech language also opened up other issues, particularly about the relationship between language and national belonging, and how the imbalances between the Czech and German languages were to be righted, if at all possible. With the growing focus on language as a critical identifying marker, language use became a test of loyalty, of membership, in the nation. The importance of language as a 192

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marker had previously shown up in the aristocratic opposition to Joseph II and Leopold II. The anecdotes describing the use of Czech in the halls of the Diet was language use as a signal of aristocratic opposition: The elites of Bohemia were set apart from Vienna in critical ways. However, that was a quarrel about elite rights and local power brokers that the aristocrats intended to see played out in the arena of the Estates, the traditional site of aristocratic social and political dominance. In 1848, the notion of language as opposition went far beyond the hallowed and limited confines of the Diet. In political terms, aristocrats also had to confront the problems of inherited institutions in any bid to reform the system without overthrowing it. In other words, although many aristocrats assumed their political right to speak on the populace’s behalf was natural to their position, there were new questions about whether it was possible to bring about significant change under the auspices of the Estates, an inherently undemocratic political institution. Ultimately, the limits on reconciling status and nation, on moving beyond the Estates’ society of the eighteenth century, were given starkest expression by the collapse of the political reform agenda of the nobility in 1848.

The Political Vacuum: The Politics of the Pre-March The Great Bohemian Diet of 1790–1791, the last revolutionary era attempt to revisit the relationship between the Habsburgs and the Bohemian elites, had failed to bring about any lasting reform. Its failure was due largely to the shrinking political arena of the revolutionary period and the shifting political expectations of the impossibly short reign of Leopold II. Leopold’s successor, his son Francis, was a far less imaginative ruler than either Joseph II or Leopold II. As R.W. Seton-Watson writes, “The accession of Francis II ushered in a period of stark reaction. . . . For two whole generations there was both political and intellectual atrophy. . . . ”4 When Francis was confronted by the news of the escalating violence of the revolution in France and by the national armies of France on the territory of the Holy Roman Empire, his already evident distrust for the enlightened principles of reform celebrated by his predecessors matured into an acute fear of change. Francis rejected the notions of constitutionalism that Leopold had been willing to explore, instead combining “unqualified faith in the doctrine of complete Monarchic absolutism” with a rejection of “any form of novelty whatever.”5 Moreover, the tools for instituting a system of widespread intellectual and political stagnation were already in place. Whatever the commitment of Joseph II and Leopold II to enlightened government, both understood the dangers of allowing political opposition and revolution

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unrestricted criticism of the government and the Viennese court. Although Joseph II had experimented with loosening press control and censorship, his conclusions about the benefits of a more open society were decidedly ambivalent, and both emperors had a deep distrust of the potential dangers of secret societies and “unmonitored” social institutions. As a result, Joseph and Leopold left behind an institutional edifice that Metternich and Francis readily used to expand police and bureaucratic control and thus monitor, censor, and stifle political and social debate. The defeat of Napoleon and the apparent victory of the conservative forces in Europe signaled the beginning of a period of complete political stagnation in the Monarchy and Bohemia—a desirable situation from Francis’s perspective and a political condition carefully nurtured by Metternich. Political quiescence was also supported initially by aristocratic conservatives at court who saw the preservation of a strict hierarchical monarchical system as the best possible bulwark against modernization, constitutionalism, and revolutionary contagion. Although the Estates in Bohemia did meet—in stultifyingly useless sessions—these meetings were poorly attended and accomplished virtually nothing beyond rubber-stamping government documents and fiscal requests. As Count Lützow related, it became common to refer to a dull party as having been “as quiet as a meeting of the Estates.”6 Although the Diet, as a time-honored institution, continued to function in a limited sense, there was no chance that it could mutate into anything actually representative. Any hint of popular sovereignty, or of real political rights accruing even to an ancient institution like the Diet, was anathema to Francis, who simultaneously denied the pull and legitimacy of national feeling. As Macartney argues, for Francis, phrases like “rights of nationality” and “nationalism” were a “mask for revolution,” and Francis categorically denied that national sentiment gave the populace any rights over the structure and nature of the state.7 This restricted political climate—the result of the suppression of independent political life under Metternich—made the cultural and intellectual activities of learned institutions an even more important site for the emerging public sphere. However, even intellectual activities that appeared to be socially and politically innocuous were monitored for political content or potential political application, and the police kept a close eye on all intellectual and scholarly gatherings, using the precedent of the Karlsbad Decrees to justify their restrictions. At the Karlsbad meeting in August 1819, in part a result of the assassination of August von Kotzebue by a nationalist student, Metternich had taken the lead in imposing government control of intellectual and university activities. Even before the Karlsbad meeting, Francis II had taken concerted action to control the content of education and the loyalty 194

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of teachers and restrict public discourse on a number of issues. Censorship was ramped up, restricting not just all printed commentary that endangered public stability, but also barring commentary on legislation and anything positive about the French Revolution. Restrictions extended to institutions that had promoted the exchange of new ideas: Reading rooms, circulating libraries, and literary reviews were all forbidden.8 Intellectuals were careful to keep on the good side of the police if they hoped to continue their activities. The government kept strict tabs on professors and students at home and in Germany, and decried the corrosive influence of the abroad, where ideas like popular sovereignty, liberty, and liberalism originated. Kaspar Sternberg, who began to attend the yearly Symposium of the German Doctors and Naturalists in the 1820s, wrote regular reports to Police Minister Joseph Sedlnitzky about the meetings to attest to their lack of political importance. Writing about his reports in his memoir, Sternberg recounted that in his correspondence with Sedlnitzky, he insisted that no one ever even remotely touched on anything of political importance whatsoever in the course of the nearly weeklong meeting.9 Overall, intellectual life was made significantly more difficult by the strictures of the government, but this did not prevent the continued exploration of national culture. Indeed, although the government suppressed any hint of political engagement, its attitude toward Czech cultural work was in general positive in the shortsighted belief that allowing the study of national culture would divert men’s interests away from politics.10 Political jitters and hopes within the Habsburg lands were heightened in 1830 by news of revolution in France and the consequent unrest in Italy, Belgium, and Poland. If nothing else, news of the revolution revealed the cracks in the system of control and stability to which Metternich had lent his name. The news of the revolution caused Metternich himself to declare that his “whole life’s work is destroyed!”11 Politics abroad could not be controlled, the drive for independent states in the south continued, and political sentiments like liberalism and constitutionality remained on the table. From the perspective of the aristocrats in Bohemia, it was better to be safe than sorry—railroad and bridge investment schemes and other plans for modernization and development were shelved as all waited to see the consequences of French unrest. The high aristocracy in Bohemia, however, continued to nurture hopes for renewed local control through the medium of the Estates. Emperor Francis’s concerns for the stability of the Empire were also heightened with the news from France. As Kaspar Sternberg wrote in his autobiography, “The July Days in Paris shook the external and internal peace of Europe. . . . The Revolution in the Netherlands came up to increase the political opposition and revolution

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confusion and to excite the spirit of the people. The French July-Revolution had a political goal, the people who created and supported it knew what they wanted: but the sheep’s imitation in Germany, paid for by foreigners, was nothing more than the desire for unrest and excess united with personal revenge. Never before had the German mob so belittled itself as in these last days.”12 However, Francis’s response was typical of his attitude toward reform. Reacting to advisors who suggested in 1831 that there was widespread public conviction that the political system was the “enemy” of the people’s happiness and requiring change, Francis replied, “This is no time for reforms. The people are like men who have been badly wounded. One must not keep touching and irritating their wounds.”13 In 1835, Emperor Francis died, leaving the reins of government in the hands of his ill, feebleminded son Ferdinand “The Good.” Francis had insisted on a strict observance of dynastic succession, although there were far more able men in the line of succession. Francis and his advisors, besides their dislike of deviating from any path, believed that changing the succession would have opened up the Habsburg dynastic claim in Hungary and Bohemia, and possibly resulted in an unwanted negotiation with the Estates of those regions. In addition, there were too many potential claimants, and Francis felt that deviating from a strict succession would have resulted in power struggles within the Hofburg, another possibility that the Monarchy could ill afford. Metternich, of course, had his own reasons for supporting a feeble heir’s claim to the throne. Alan Sked claims that the sacred nature of imperial power in large measure explains the continued support, particularly among the crowds, for Ferdinand the “Good,” despite his inability to rule properly. In addition, the assumption of the Emperor’s benevolence was matched by the distrust of the bureaucracy and the advisors who surrounded him, who were thus held accountable for the Empire’s problems. Although Sked argues that the person of the Emperor was still sacred in Austria in 1848, there is a considerable body of evidence to the contrary.14 Indeed, Bohemian aristocrats like Count Eugene Czernin, although loyal and kaisertreu, recognized the difficulties inherent in an autocratic Monarchy that had no able autocrat on the throne. Decades before 1848, Czernin lamented the likely future of the Monarchy on observing the nature and abilities of Ferdinand as Crown Prince. After relating another embarrassing incident involving Ferdinand, he remarked, “One laughs about it, one should instead weep bitter tears. Should this poor 24 year old weakling really rule 30 million, and given the current mood of the people, will this not trigger a terrible storm! What a sad future stands before us!”15 The challenges for reformers operating in the early decades of the nineteenth century was to continue cultural work, emphasizing the natural, innate, and 196

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inevitable qualities of national belonging without exciting the notice of censors and bureaucrats. That the institutions of the public sphere—the museums, scientific and learned societies—strove for “apolitical” activities does not mean that their long-term influence was separate from politics. In the Bohemian learned societies, the “simply” cultural and intellectual activities being pursued by intellectuals—to define Bohemia, her borders, history, and constituent peoples—were shortly to have serious political consequences for Metternich. Gradually, opposition to “Germanic” central authority and to the extreme censorship instituted by Metternich became the focus of political activity in Bohemia and Austria, and to this was added the desire among many intellectuals in Bohemia that Bohemia’s autonomy be recognized by the establishment of parity between the Czech and German languages in official life.

Negotiating National Pitfalls: Linguistic Reform and Austroslavism As discussed in the previous chapters, much has been made of the Bohemian nobility’s apparent unwillingness, as a group, to promote Czech, and of their inability and disinterest in speaking it themselves. There were, however, concrete examples of aristocrats who attempted to go against the flow, for instance, Francis Sternberg’s desire to find a tutor to teach his daughters Czech or Theresa Czernin’s attempts to master it herself. Dobrovský in fact advised Eugene Czernin to seek the advice of his “kind and respected” wife Theresa, who as a “diligent student of Czech,” would be able to help Czernin in his translations of old Bohemian documents. Admittedly, the aristocrats’ approach to Bohemian heritage could sometimes lack a certain gravity, as, for instance, when Theresa Czernin attended a costume ball in 1826 attired as Libuše, the mythical mother of the Czechs. Of course, as Dobrovský remarked later to Eugene Czernin, it probably helped that no one could possibly know what Libuše should look like.16 Czernin was committed to promoting Czech interests. Beyond taking part in more than forty voluntary associations, he established the Slovanská Beseda (Slavic Club) in Vienna to organize the Czech minority there.17 Both aristocratic and middle-class proponents of language reform focused primarily on the question of the official use of Czech, stressing the need to achieve parity with German in schools and public life overall. In his correspondence with Franz von Pulszky, a Hungarian patriot, Count Leo Thun, a disciple of Alexander de Tocqueville, stressed that language was crucial as the carrier and promoter of national culture and particularity: “The power of a political opposition and revolution

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state rests upon the development of the spiritual forces of its peoples; for the spiritual development of the Bohemian people a Slav national feeling and the revival of the Czech language is a necessary, indispensable means; and this is why we believe that this . . . , so far from endangering the Austrian Monarchy, would increase its strength.”18 Although Leo Thun’s reputation among Czech patriots suffered due to his actions during 1848, he possessed a long-standing interest in the Czech language and its vitality, and he made clear that he felt himself to be Czech as well. However, like many other aristocrats, Thun’s national affinity, and the associated desire for language reform, was presented in careful political terms that reflected his continuing association with the Monarchy overall. Thun’s comments also suggest a type of delusion about the political consequences of promoting Czech national feeling that echo Metternich’s hope that encouraging interest in cultural nationalism was a potentially diversionary political tactic. According to Thun, the well-being of the Austrian state rested on allowing the individual national communities within it the free expression and use of their national languages, and full protection for their nationalities. In Thun’s opinion, any pressure to quell national development would serve to excite more vociferous national feeling in the community. He recognized, at least by 1842, that language would become one of the salient issues of Bohemian society, claiming that “the revival of the nationality of a people gives the impetus to the development of a completely new realm of thought, which, little by little, takes on all questions of public life.”19 It was the “little by little” that defined the general aristocratic response to the Czech national agenda, despite the important support of men like Leo Thun and Eugene Czernin. Paradoxically, aristocratic support for the establishment of the Czech language in bureaucratic, intellectual, and cultural life—a potentially divisive issue—was also one element of the effort on the part of some aristocrats to stave off the impending disintegrating force of national identity. The Thuns in particular hoped that increasing public knowledge of and interest in the Czech language among German speakers would deflate any hostile response to the Czech program. Thus, aristocratic interest in promoting Czech language use was tinged with a conciliatory tone toward the German community. Leo Thun’s cousin, Joseph Mathias Thun, was another vocal member of the Estates’ opposition as well as a steadfast supporter of Czech language rights. In a volume of translated poems, Gedichte aus Böhmens Vorzeit, Joseph Mathias Thun sought to provide for the German-speaking public a positive vision of the Slavic character and heritage of Bohemia.20 He swore to the authenticity of the Czech poems 198

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as a member of the Committee of the National Museum, though given the Museum’s record on forgeries this is not so inspiring in retrospect. The Thuns hoped that the recognition of the Czech language’s linguistic maturity, vitality, and richness would engender respect and toleration, and bring about a shift in the focus of identity in Bohemia. Both Thuns believed that a rejuvenated Czech language, as the symbol of and spur to a “revitalized” national culture, would serve as a bridge between Bohemia’s national groups. Allowing Czech to flourish, and precipitating cultural understanding between the national groups, would overcome nascent national divisiveness in the region and defuse the national bomb. Even Pavel Joseph Šafarˇík, a primary figure in the Czech national movement, noted in his introduction to Joseph Mathias’s volume of translated poems, “The perfect structure of the poetry, like all art in general, is a benefit to humankind, it is a bind between nations in the interests of humanity.”21 To some degree the Thuns fancied themselves as saviors of “the people” and couched their support for Czech in terms that likened their national participation to that of Hungarian patriots like István Szechenyi, who was, in fact, a correspondent of Joseph Mathias Thun, and whose father had been a regular guest of the Sternbergs in Malá Strana Square in Prague.22 Others, like Eugene Czernin, were less sanguine about the possibility for any permanent settlement of the national question that was not based on a fundamental shift in the political culture, if not constitution, of the Habsburg Empire. Czernin’s personal observations confirmed that the grievances of the people from the constituent parts of the Empire, whether from a German in Tyrol, a Pole in Galicia, a Magyar, or a Czech from “beloved Bohemia,” would make it impossible for these peoples to celebrate a despotic regime that had committed so many offenses, including the “bloody subjugation of the Bohemian lands.”23 A birthday celebration for the Empress in 1818, at which “God Save our Emperor” was sung, prompted a litany from Czernin on what the nations of Austria had to sing about: “It is said that this song should become a universal anthem, therewith exciting in our people the same enthusiasm as in other nations, who sing out ‘God Save the King’ or ‘Rule Britannia’ without being coerced. Certainly it cannot be called a national anthem, since it is not desired that we should be a nation. Indeed, it is an anthem of slaves. With the cane one can well incite voices of complaint and misery, but surely not enthusiasm and praise.”24 From Czernin’s vantage point, the case for universal adoration was bleak, as the Monarchy’s peoples had little reason to celebrate the continued reign of despotism from Vienna. The issues of Czech linguistic reform and support for a liberal conception of state authority contributed to the definition of a particularly Austrian program political opposition and revolution

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for the (re)organization of the Monarchy that would take into account the national aspirations of the Monarchy’s Slavic populations. This program, referred to as Austroslavism, was particularly popular among many Czech supporters in Bohemia, as it allowed Czech proponents to reconcile cultural Czech identity with strong imperial loyalty. Joseph Mathias Thun defined this position when he wrote, “An Austrian nationality is as chimerical as cosmopolitanism. The Empire is, if not a confederation, then certainly a league of nations. The Italian, the Hungarian, the Slav will never become a German, but also the German from Tyrol and Steiermark will never deny his province. The Empire can find its solid support only in the self-awareness of these different nationalities; only in association with a powerful Empire can Bohemia protect its nationality.”25 With these conclusions Thun revealed both the success and the limitations of the patriotic institutions’ work of previous decades. Most successful in particular was the notion that national belonging was not negotiable or flexible, but rather an indelible imprint from which individuals could not escape while at the same time sketching out overlapping loyalties to province and empire. Austroslavism had various incarnations, but broadly speaking it was a program for the reorganization of the Monarchy that would give equal rights to all nationalities within its borders. For some of the reform-minded nobility, Austroslavism—properly controlled—was the answer to the burgeoning, and potentially unruly, national question. Some, like Friedrich Deym, went even further, supporting an Austroslav agenda that would allow for a federal restructuring of the Monarchy. The grand schemes of equality and Slavic fraternity trumpeted by the program of Austroslavism were not entirely in the spirit of Slavic brotherhood in Bohemia. Czech proponents of Austroslavism were especially concerned about reserving a preeminent position for Bohemians within this idealized, predominantly Slavic Austrian Empire. Leo Thun, “who felt Czech himself,” was one of the primary proponents of Austroslavism, but like his cousin Joseph Mathias, he at the same time used his literary activities on behalf of the development of the Czech language to allay German fears about the Slavic agenda. Echoing an older generation of aristocratic intellectuals, Leo Thun stressed in 1846 that “nations, even if different by language, are internally connected by knowledge and life, and must strive toward one goal: intellectual and humane development.”26 Aristocrats of various political stripes promoted Austroslavism to strengthen the loosening ties of the Empire. The premise behind this was that the Czechs, allowed to protect their national rights and given linguistic equality, would remain a steadfast and loyal imperial nationality. The Czechs could subsequently serve as the “nationalized” imperial glue to bind the other Slavic nations to the Empire, preventing the further growth of incipient, potentially destructive, anti-Habsburg, Pan-Slavic feeling.27 200

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Proponents of Austroslavism did not for the most part believe that the nationalities within the Empire were alike or ethnically the same, nor did they argue for unity on this basis. Rather, Austroslavism was a result of the realization that different Slavic ethnic groups had cultural elements in common, namely Slavicism, but that their own, more important, particularities would be lost if they were vulnerable to absorption by either of their much stronger neighbors, in other words, Germany and Russia. The primary goal of Austroslavism was to prevent this from happening. Aristocratic proponents of Austroslavism, like Leo Thun, responded vehemently to the arguments put forward by German and Hungarian patriots that Russia alone would be the ultimate heir of any greater Slavic movement. Leo Thun emphasized that although Russia might seek the opportunity, the reality was that Russian interests did not coincide with those of non-Russian Slavs. His conviction was that this disparity of interests alone would ensure that the Slavs of the Austrian Monarchy would remain indifferent to Russian attempts to create Slavic cultural hegemony. In his opinion, history showed no example of a people willing to fall under the influence of a state whose interests were so clearly contrary to their own. The Slavs were so culturally distinct, their histories, languages, and religions all so divergent, that Pan-Slavism under overwhelming Russian leadership was an unattractive alternative. Additionally, the brutal reprisals of the Russians against the Poles in the course of the nineteenth-century revolts seemed to prove that discomfort with Russian Slavic leadership was justified. Proponents of Austroslavism argued instead that Slavic brotherly feeling worked within the context of the Austrian Empire, in which the Slavs could potentially make common cause and fashion the Empire in their image while preserving their distinctive cultures. Those hopes were most clearly expressed in the planning for a congress of Austrian Slavs, to take place in the spring of 1848. The Congress, more about which below, was organized and did meet, but its agenda was quickly hijacked by revolutionary events.

Confronting the Metternich System: The Proponents of Reform In the 1840s, political opposition to Metternich, who was seen by many in the Monarchy as the architect of the government’s policies, brought once more to the forefront the issue of the power of the Estates. Political activities and organizations had been actively suppressed by the Viennese government, but little could obscure the fact that the Habsburg system of governance under Ferdinand was fraying at the margins. The opposition to the Viennese government political opposition and revolution

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that arose within the Estates appeared in not just Hungary, where it was a permanent facet of political life, but in the Estates of Lower Austria, Bohemia, and Lombardy-Venetia. In the Bohemian Diet, many aristocrats became proponents of reform in the 1840s, but out of a variety of occasionally conflicting motives. Some aristocratic reformers, like Friedrich Deym, were genuine liberals who sought reform for progressive reasons. Others proposed reform as a means for diffusing social conflict and thus preserving the basic social and political foundations on which the Monarchy rested. Count Kolowrat, who admitted that as an aristocrat “by birth and outlook,” he believed in conservative objectives, wrote to Metternich in 1833, “Our views . . . differ as to the means. Yours are a forest of bayonets and a shrill insistence on that which is. In my opinion, this attitude merely plays into the hands of revolution. . . . We must suppress all abuses and excesses, but we must also welcome among us capable new men, for we can strengthen ourselves only through the acquisition of fresh elements. This alone can save us. Your way will lead us to ruin, perhaps not in a year, but still soon enough.”28 Among Bohemian opponents to the Viennese government there were also supporters of ancient Bohemian Staatsrecht, who sought to turn the clock back both politically and socially and hoped to reestablish strong aristocratic dominance in the administration of Bohemia. Even nobles in favor of liberal reform were adamant about the need to keep reform on a carefully charted and cautious course. To expand the institutional basis, to allow an expansion in favor of true representation, would endanger this approach and leave the door open for more radical and unstable political agitation. Although profoundly influenced by what he had seen during his life of the consequences of revolution, Kaspar Sternberg still believed that reform could be beneficial, but that it had to be properly introduced and controlled: There is no doubt that there exists a party to introduce representative government in Germany; it was this idea that made half of the armies march in 1813. If the sovereigns and the ministers had the time to reflect on the past and the future, they would seize this idea, which is already widespread in Germany, and give it the measured scope that it must receive to be salutary for the state. . . . It would not be difficult for them [the sovereigns] to arrange a way for it to be a safeguard for the throne and a guarantee for the nations. But if one does not put one’s hand to it oneself, others will take hold of this increasingly popular idea and this could result in a great evil.29 Holding back the tide of reform would serve to destabilize the political situation rather than the opposite. As Sternberg argued in the aftermath of the conflicts with Napoleon, “the people, tired of the long tribulations of war, 202

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were gladdened by the peace but were not satisfied, for of everything that they had hoped for and expected, as yet nothing had been attained.”30 The liberal reform program varied according to the concerns and interests of the individuals involved. Much of the reform agenda focused on a restructuring of the rural economy: abolition of peasant dues and services, reorganization of the tax structure and a different distribution of tax burden, establishment of a credit bank, municipal reform, and the introduction of an income tax. Political and social issues included the extension of elementary education, abolition of military conscription, expanding the representation of non-nobles in the Estates, public budgets, and increasing the consultative powers of the Diet in Bohemian affairs. Up to 1848, general opinion among aristocrats conceded that the agrarian questions of unfree labor and landholding must be solved, but nothing had been officially accomplished as no agreement was reached between the government and the landlords on the issue of compensation for the loss of peasant land and labor, compensation to landlords which the peasantry in general could not afford. Although the approach to agrarian reform depended on the social inclinations and political convictions of individuals, as well as the quality of landholdings, a considerable number of aristocrats were in favor of abolition of the robot.31 Already in the early 1830s, Kolowrat had assured Francis II that the majority of Bohemian landowners were in favor of commutation of peasant service, but Francis II had prevented reform from taking place under the government’s auspices, and Metternich had argued that it was “no time for innovations.”32 On the other hand, aristocrats had long begun implementing new policies on their own lands. The Thuns on their estates at Tetchen were an excellent example of a family that had larger political goals, and in the pursuit of these were willing to reach mutual agreements with the peasants to replace robot with monetary compensation.33 The reform program extended beyond political questions of local power and administration to take in larger social and judicial problems as well. Eugene Czernin, for example, supported a reform of the justice system and Leo Thun wrote on the need for a moral reform of the system of incarceration. For some landlords, reform of the judicial system was a moral question, to others an uncomplicated question of finance. The seigniorial court system had simply become too expensive to maintain, or rather their profits from it no longer covered its expense. Aristocratic reformers were happy to see the state take over this particular element of aristocratic power. The reform position of the Estates was given a boost with the publication and popular reception in 1842 of Baron Victor von Andrian-Werburg’s anonymously published Austria and Its Future. Andrian-Werburg suggested that the bureaucracy was at fault for Austria’s ills, and the remedy must be the strengthening of the political opposition and revolution

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provincial Diets. According to Andrian-Werburg, local Diets must be given the power to vote provincial taxes, choose officials, have representation from the lower and middling classes, and petition the monarch. In addition, an Imperial Diet, formed from representatives of the provincial Estates, must be called to represent the Empire as a whole. As Andrian-Werburg stated, “We stand now where France stood in 1789. Very soon it will be decided whether we are to stand as a warning to those who believe that a mere individual can stop the turning wheel of history.”34 This pamphlet was extremely popular among the liberal aristocrats looking to bolster their arguments against the central government, and it unleashed an avalanche of pamphlets, including from the Bohemian elite: Baron Schirnding, the Counts Leo and Joseph Mathias Thun, and Count Friedrich Deym. Understandably, reform literature did not usually criticize the Habsburg dynasty. In fact, the Emperor was generally adored in the literature, whereas the bureaucracy was held responsible for the problems of state and society. This was both prudent and necessary, given the political climate of the prerevolutionary years. This demonization of the impersonal and amorphous bureaucracy allowed reformers to criticize contemporary circumstances while remaining steadfastly loyal in print to the Emperor. Criticism could thus be couched in terms of pro-imperial support for the monarch. Eugene Czernin, for example, who was himself an imperial councilor, was deeply suspicious of the bureaucracy’s intentions, an opinion expressed clearly in AndrianWerburg’s text as well. Czernin believed that corruption had warped the sensibilities of bureaucrats to the degree that money and only money was dominant in the bureaucracy, from “the highest to the lowest” office.35 Liberal writers also wanted to do away with the more egregious elements of state control exhibited by the police and censorship laws, a system that had been set up by Francis II. Reformers wanted established toleration, better civil servants, a decentralization of the bureaucracy, and a reform of the tax laws. The liberal opposition was thus “both loyal and limited.”36 In short, liberal demands could have been granted without any serious disruption or challenge to monarchical rule in Austria. How, then, did the liberal program become a political agenda in the Diet? In the summer of 1844 there was a series of riots by the textile workers in Prague and Liberec, who protested a reduction in their wages. After the worker unrest of 1844, Friedrich Deym and Joseph Mathias Thun led an organized opposition, an “aristocratic fronde,” as R. W. Seton-Watson terms it, in the Estates that led to the ouster of Count Chotek as governor.37 Chotek had been caught out in the apparently illegitimate disposal of the Domestic Fund, the administration of which was supposed to be controlled by the 204

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Estates. More than this, the Domestic Fund was to some degree a political symbol that represented autonomy and the right of Bohemians to govern themselves separate from Vienna. The Domestic Fund scandal set the stage for a wider Estates’ inquiry into what was legitimately within the purview of the Estates on fiscal matters and the general Estates’ privileges of review and approval.38 Although the reformers’ agenda subsequently expanded, its core concern remained the desire for limited structural change within the existing institutions of the state. In 1845, the aristocratic opposition, led by Friedrich Deym, upped the ante, publishing their position in a “defense of rights,” which included the union of the Bohemian crownlands under one court chancellery, the appointment of an Austrian archduke as royal lieutenant in Bohemia, and the equality of the Czech and German languages in public life. In May 1847, Deym’s proposals were accepted by the whole Diet, and the onslaught of aristocratic reformers against the Viennese-controlled bureaucracy continued. Prince G. J. Lamberg introduced a strong petition against the government’s control of censorship and sought to coordinate Estates’ opposition in Bohemia with that in other provinces of the Monarchy.39 In August 1847, the Bohemian Diet refused to sanction the proposed taxes, and the Diet was dissolved by the central government. The course of the liberal reform program highlights the fact that the years before 1848 were dominated in Bohemia by three significant issues: the agrarian question, the economic crisis and social dislocation engendered by industrial transition, and the increasing division of national interests. The government’s apparent inability to provide effective leadership in the realms of economic and social policy contributed to increasing public disaffection. These problems, which came to a head in 1848, decreased the chances for the successful implementation of a limited reform program. The political sphere of action, the room to maneuver, continued to shrink, as it was feared that any action would lead to an adverse reaction in one of these areas. However, because the government’s solution seemed to be to keep a lid on these emerging tensions, the liberal and national programs were given common cause and were able to unite temporarily, creating the revolutionary conditions of the pre-March era.

Shattering Reform: Facing Revolution in 1848 In 1847, while Metternich was entertaining a foreign diplomat, he described his concerns for the future: “I am not a prophet and I don’t know what will happen, but I am an old physician and can distinguish between temporary and political opposition and revolution

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fatal diseases. We now face one of the latter. We’ll hold on as long as we can, but I have doubts about the outcome.”40 Whereas Metternich may have erred about the source of the coming political instability, he was certainly correct about its arrival. In February 1848, crowds in Paris gathered in the streets to protest against the French government. The people erected barricades, and the inevitable clashes with the military ensued. The unrest did not stop at the French border, spreading in February and March across Central Europe. In Bohemia, incipient revolutionary unrest coincided with the planning for the first pan-Austrian Slavic Congress in Prague. Austroslavism, in the form articulated by its Czech proponents, was the defining ideal of the 1848 Slav Congress. The costs of the Slav Congress were met by private subscription, a sizable proportion of which came from the pro-Czech nobility, particularly Counts Thun and Neuberg. In his discussion with Pavel aŠfar kˇí on the plans being laid in Prague to call the Slav Congress, Baron Neuberg distilled the basic position of the pro-Czech nobility. Neuberg felt that the revolutionary events in Germany that had culminated in the preparatory committee for the Frankfurt Parliament were an immediate danger to Austria as well as to the Slavs. A new force must be created to preserve Austria, and “this force can only be found among the Slavs. . . . The Congress will establish a strong counterweight to Germany. [It] must guarantee the integrity of Austria and the Slav nationality. . . . ”41 Joseph Mathias Thun was chosen to serve as the Chairman of the Preparatory Committee for the Congress, and Neuberg was to be Vice-Chairman. Although support for the Austrian Empire was subsequently characterized as a particularly aristocratic position, as Lawrence Orton makes clear, firm support for the continued health of the Austrian Empire was not solely an aristocratic attitude. Loyalty to the dynasty and the desire to preserve the Empire for the sake of Bohemia were paramount for others as well. As František Palacký worded it in the final declaration issued to the press by the Slav Congress Preparatory Committee: “Our national independence and unity can only be served by the continuance of the integrity and sovereignty of the Imperial Austrian state.”42 In Neuberg’s own statement addressed to “Austria’s Eighteen Million Slavs,” he reiterated these sentiments: “your hearts are beating for a great constitutional Austria. . . . Austria is in danger, [and] you must save her; Austria must be more firmly rooted [and] secured from foreign domination.”43 The Slav Congress was not in general a big draw for the Bohemian aristocracy or the general public, but it was a large, vocal, public gathering that presented the Slavic communities of the Empire as a relatively unified group. It was a visible, public performance of Slavic identity, and as such spurred a vehement response from German nationalists inside and outside Bohemia’s 206

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borders. However, even among the Congress’s supporters there were differences of opinion as to its purpose and agenda, and there were serious conflicts between different national representatives. The Viennese authorities were also wary of the Congress’s purpose. Leo Thun, in his new position as Governor in Bohemia, was ordered by the Viennese government under Francis Pillersdorf to keep the Slav Congress from attempting to take on the role of a constitutional body that could challenge the legitimate authority of the state’s institutions. When the Congress met, Thun thus wanted assurances that the representatives had no plans to expand their “purely cultural” deliberations into the “real” political realm. Not everyone agreed with Thun’s cautious approach and others were willing to make the implied leap between cultural work and political agenda. As Neuberg responded, “We have a guiding principle: national equality. With intellectual matters we are not concerned here, only with political ones!”44 Although preparations for the Slav Congress continued apace, the news of the events of February in France reached Bohemia, causing a seismic political shift. In Prague, the primarily non-noble proponents of change, both Germans and Czechs, who had been meeting under the “apparently harmless” auspices of the Repeal Club, called for a public meeting at the St. Václav Baths on March 8 to decide on the contents of a petition to the Emperor, and they formed the St. Václav Committee to represent Bohemian interests and demands to the Viennese and Bohemian governments.45 This was the beginning of the shift of political authority away from the Estates. Whereas the Estates had sought to keep the program of reform in their control, revolutionary events bypassed traditional institutions and those unrepresented in the Estates challenged the Estates’ claim to represent the nation. Count Deym, one of the few aristocratic members of the St. Václav Committee, was an advocate of the more moderate program of the Estates, and he sought to emphasize historic political rights for Bohemia, rather than an overtly Czech-oriented program.46 For other aristocrats, the shift of authority dictated by revolutionary events meant their traditional avenues for influencing Bohemian politics were closed off. The prior failure of the Estates to become more than a political institution for the elite, combined with the abrogation of the members of the Estates of direct political responsibility in the pre-March period, made any attempt to regain authority in the face of revolution unsuccessful. Although the political situation for the authorities deteriorated in Bohemia, in Vienna protests were also incited by the news of the revolution in France. On March 7, the Lower Austrian secretary J. B. Freiberger entreated Kolowrat to abolish the stamp and the sales tax in order to ease economic hardship. By the middle of the month, a series of street protests in Vienna led to the call political opposition and revolution

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for the abolition of censorship and the reorganization of the police.47 On the night of March 15, the news reached Prague that under pressure Metternich had stepped down in Vienna, and that Emperor Ferdinand had promised press freedom and a constitution for all the provinces of the Empire. Rudolf Stadion publicized the news that the government had abolished censorship, agreed to the imminent publication of a press law, and had called together the Estates of the German and Slavic lands. Ferdinand’s proclamation, finally published in the German circular Bohemia on March 17, did include freedom of the press, the establishment of the National Guard, and a murky, ambiguous promise to call a combined Diet for the preparation of a constitution. Back in Prague, the petition generated by the St. Václav Committee included first and foremost demands for the equal place of German and Czech in Bohemia and, more hazily, demands for the security of the “Bohemian nationality.” On March 19, a Prague deputation was sent to Vienna with two petitions, one from the majority of the St. Václav Committee and a more moderate one appended by Count Deym. The demands in the petitions to the Emperor included freedom of assembly, emancipation of the peasantry, equality of Czech and German before the law, and some other limited social reforms. Any further desire for Bohemian autonomy was not clearly enunciated at this point. On April 8, after a visit from a second Bohemian delegation, a handwritten document from Emperor Ferdinand granted considerable concessions. In this “Bohemian Charter,” the Emperor promised the establishment of a separate, constitutionally responsible authority for Bohemia in Prague, and committed to summoning a reformed Diet with real legislative power, to the abolition of robot, and to instituting full equality for the Czech language in all branches of administration and education.48 As the revolution in Vienna heated up in the spring and summer of 1848, the Emperor and the court fled to the Tyrol, setting up residence in Innsbruck. According to the Constitutionelle Allgemeine Zeitung von Böhmen, a liberal newspaper, the Bohemian deputation was one of the first to follow the Emperor, and claimed that the Bohemians, like people from all the other provinces, dreamed of having the imperial court take up residence in their city. For German liberals looking at Bohemian proposals, there was only one possible conclusion: The Bohemians “dreamed of a Slavic Austria. . . . The Camarilla seemed to misunderstand this movement and thought to find, in a Prague overflowing with the aristocratic element, a solid base for absolutism in Bohemia.”49 The Bohemian aristocracy, influenced by the events in Hungary that had won such a degree of autonomy for Hungary, tried under the leadership of Count Thun to persuade the court or at least the Emperor’s brother Francis Charles, as its acting head, that Bohemia should have a constitutional 208

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existence separate from Vienna. That Bohemian administrative autonomy had been erased by Habsburg reforms in the 1740s had remained a thorn in the side of those who hoped for greater local autonomy. In May 1848, Thun used the opportunity presented by the uprisings in Vienna and the subsequent escape of the Habsburg court to Innsbruck to establish a Bohemian national government based on the Bohemian Charter of April 8, claiming, “that since its imperial counterpart had lost control of both the capital and its authority, it had also lost the right to govern Bohemia.”50 Thun, convoking the Diet of Bohemia, claimed that the government in Vienna, increasingly in the control of the “mob,” no longer enjoyed political legitimacy.51 These actions were followed by the immediate dispatch of a Bohemian delegation, consisting of Count Nostitz and F. L. Rieger, to the court. In Innsbruck, however, Archduke Francis Charles decided that yielding to Bohemian demands, no matter how politely and loyally they were phrased, would mean the breakup of the Monarchy. The Bohemian requests for autonomy—even if a result of imperial loyalty—were refused. Believing that national pride was far more important than political freedom in Bohemia, the royal advisors around the Emperor allowed the Bohemians the illusion of greater autonomy and circulated the rumor that the Emperor was interested in residing in Prague. Despite the appearance of defiance, Leo Thun’s actions in the attempt to establish a separate Bohemian government were inherently conservative. The view from Bohemia, and from Thun’s perspective, was that the government in Vienna had become unsupportable by its actions against monarch and empire. Thun’s actions in 1848 against the post-March Viennese government were inspired by his cautious patriotism and his loyalty to Emperor Ferdinand. In his view, the Viennese radicals were not a legitimate government that the Bohemian ministry ought to obey. The right to rule Bohemia remained with the court, absent from Vienna. For others, the increasingly vocal support of the Viennese revolutionaries for the national movement in Germany gave an added impetus to their desire to distance themselves from Vienna and to shore up the Monarchy, such as it was. Whereas the liberal press called for unity with the revolutionary groups in Vienna, and the revolutionaries described their actions as a universal fraternal movement, in Vienna and Prague loyalty to the Emperor remained steady, as the overwhelming majority demanded freedom and freedom of the nation, but within the framework of the Monarchy. This, however, was a short-lived unity. As competing national claims in Bohemia split the revolutionary movements apart, it became increasingly clear that national freedom and progress were not inseparable ideas. The year 1848 witnessed the divergence of the liberal and national agendas in Bohemia as elsewhere, in the sense that what German writers viewed as the political opposition and revolution

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inevitable ascendance of German political claims was naturally seen by Czech nationalists as oppressive. Liberals interested primarily in reform struggled to keep nationality from dividing the movement and weakening the momentum gained by revolutionary events. Both German and Czech liberals could agree that the old system of legally binding privilege and hierarchy should be dismantled, but each had a fundamentally different conception of the political stage on which reform would be achieved. As a liberal writer in the Constitutionelle Allgemeine Zeitung von Böhmen concluded, “We know that the noble will and must lose his privileges of birth. But we also know that men . . . who when faced with a constitution that rests on the widest democratic base will not allow a path of justice and fairness. . . . I am resolved that the culmination of civic happiness has been achieved when the citizen honors the citizen, whatever the stratum in state and constitutional relation to which he belongs.”52 For the German nationalist looking at the possibility of fundamental political and social reform, reform would come within the context of a new German-dominated state, an outcome abhorrent to the Czech. Sovereignty was shifting for both Czech and German, but as its new location was the nation, compromise became increasingly difficult. In reporting on the actions of the Prague city government, which included Count Deym, the Constitutionelle Allgemeine Zeitung von Böhmen called for Germans to remain calm in the face of popular Slavic sentiment. The editors of the newspaper reiterated that the St. Václav Committee in Prague wanted only equality of language, and that educated Germans would be making a serious error should they fall prey to the anti-Slavic hysteria being fostered by reactionaries. The suspicious attitude of these liberals on the position of the aristocracy was clear. As the editors of the Constitutionelle Zeitung wrote, “In order to . . . secure this class, theories were created which viewed the aristocrat as the natural intermediary between monarch and people, as the stable element of the state, as the brake on the all too rash movement of the other classes.”53 In liberal opinion, both the aristocracy and the Church had revealed their true colors after March 15. Liberal writers viewed the Church and the aristocratic assemblies with suspicion as inherently undemocratic medieval institutions.54 Neither aristocrats nor clergy were to be trusted as representatives of the people.55 For liberals, German or Czech, the aristocracy served as a political nemesis: The course of the revolution in Prague seemed to prove that the aristocracy, “confused” in their nationality, had, in conjunction with the bureaucracy they dominated, contrived to destroy the good intentions of the Emperor vis-à-vis Bohemia. Thun, at the head of the Gubernium, was seen as especially guilty. Those with “extreme” national views, and those, like the aristocracy and members of the Catholic Church, who were thought to 210

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have none, were also suspect and responsible for the deteriorating situation, according to the liberals. Not only internal developments exacerbated the level of national rhetoric. The view from outside was obviously colored by the increasingly shrill tone of national discourse. The Kronos Zeitschrift from Jena, in describing the course of Bohemian events in general and the members of the Czech National Guard (Svornost), declared that “the wildest hatred towards Germany was the first and only condition for entry into Svornost.” The journal asserted that membership in the Czech National Guard included “not only Czechs, but also Poles, Italians, and renegade Germans of the high aristocracy, like the Counts Thun, Bouquoi, Valine and others, who out of wretched self-interest, in order to preserve their Estates’ privileges and lordly rights, become traitors to the Fatherland and murderers of its people.”56 Much of the German press was filled with vituperative comments on the position of the Bohemian aristocracy, which was perceived as having sold itself to the “Slavic horde” in order to save for itself the spoils of the kingdom. The anti-Slavic message also highlighted an imaginary fissure in Europe between the civilized West and the uncivilized East. The Slavs were en masse a “horde,” as readers were informed that “the Slavic nationality has discarded the culture of Europe and revealed itself in the character of Asiatic barbarity.”57 The German nationalist press chose to portray the strength of the “Slavic propaganda” as residing in professors, students, and aristocracy. According to this opinion, the Slavic movement, by preparing for the inevitable (and desired) Russian invasion, was the enemy of German unity and freedom. For Bohemian observers, the obvious ignorance of the German press as to the real nature of events in Bohemia was further proof that Prague could never be in Germany, only in Austria. The Slavs would be the greatest prop of the Austrian Empire, and “only in the general association of the Austrian states could Slavic freedom blossom.”58 Liberals within Bohemia believed that the national problem existed due to the aggravation of reactionaries who misused nationality to stop freedom and turn the tide of progress. For liberals, Germans and Slavs had a thousand reasons to be united, and awaited only the opportunity to understand each other. As moderate voices responded to national concerns in the Constitutionelle Zeitung, they explained the “Slavic position”: “It was never the intention of Slavdom to exercise power over another nationality; we want to be Slavs, but free Slavs! It is especially not in the interest of Bohemia to practice such a supremacy. We Slavs are deeply in the German element, we must be afraid; behind the German element stands all of Germany, behind the Slavic element stands all of Slavdom, and Bohemia, which lies in the middle, must therefore go to the dogs! Here in political opposition and revolution

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Bohemia is the bridge where two free peoples can reach out a hand for the preservation of freedom.”59 Despite the fears of nationalists on both side of the national divide in Bohemia, the revolution in Prague was not the result of a unified movement of purpose, or at least had far less unity of purpose than either the monarch or the military men like Alfred Windischgrätz supposed. Passions were extremely high, and were further excited by the granting of freedoms that had not even been demanded. Freedom without struggle, rather than deflating the crowds, seemed to inflame the situation as the students took control of the revolutionary movements in the cities. In the end, Windischgrätz himself provided the tinder for popular revolt. He had stepped up patrols and the garrison presence in Prague, and had made derogatory comments about the new constitution. On June 12, after a peaceful protest, there was a violent exchange between students and Windischgrätz’s imperial soldiers. This led to an escalation of the violence, protestors erected barricades, and fighting in Prague continued for six days. On June 17, Windischgrätz bombarded the city and ousted the insurgents. This was the end of the political revolution in Prague, but the beginning of contested national politics in Bohemia. The aristocrats who had supported the Czech program in Bohemia found themselves deeply conflicted by the course of nationalist politics in 1848. Eugene Czernin, a longtime friend and associate of Palacký and a nephew of Francis Sternberg, attempted to express this uncertainty in his correspondence with Palacký. Palacký had been invited by the Frankfurt Parliament to represent Bohemia in its deliberations for a united, constitutional Germany. In Palacký’s negative reply on April 11, he explained his refusal to attend a political meeting that sought to draw Bohemia into a unified Germany. Palacký rightly claimed he had no mandate, and he laid out the principles of the Czech national agenda within the Habsburg Monarchy. Expressing this with his now famous phrase, “I am a Bohemian of Slav descent,” Palacký continued, “and with all the little I own and possess I have devoted myself wholly and for ever to the service of my nation. That nation is small it is true, but from time immemorial it has been an independent nation with its own character; its rulers have participated since old times in the federation of German princes, but the nation never regarded itself nor was it regarded by others throughout all the centuries, as part of the German nation.”60 Eugene Czernin heard Palacký’s reply to the German invitation, and responded with a long letter to Palacký himself. Czernin’s letter perfectly crystallized the ambivalence of the Bohemian nobility, even those who were explicit in their Czech identity. He assured Palacký that he had heard the reply in the Czech Club greeted with “general applause” and that he himself 212

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approved of the “Slavic call” with a full heart. Czernin continued, “As a friend of the truth and the Czechs, who were so long suppressed, I can do nothing else. You have spoken noble, powerful words, dear Palacký, and proven that you can not only write history, but understand how to intervene in the wheel of fate that now tears through the world.” But despite his agreement with Palacký’s position, Czernin expressed significant reservations about the reply to the Germans, asserting that “despite my full acceptance of that which you announced to the Germans, I have in my heart no small concern and apprehension for the results of your communication, and in general for the plan of our compatriots.” Although Czernin acknowledged that Bohemia had been “slandered” in the Viennese press and lowered in general opinion my misinformation spread by her enemies, he argued that the rash actions of the Prague radicals had also done significant damage. Czernin urged Palacký to consider that “the simple voicing of the truth is not enough” and that the truth itself, that the Czechs had legitimate demands, could be “even sometimes very dangerous when it is not done at the right time.” Czernin suggested that his concerns were augmented by the incapabilities of the government itself, which had in no way acted in the interests of the people or indeed shown itself cognizant of its own political interests. For Czernin, the fact that the German tricolor flew from the windows of the imperial palace and the government was willing to bow to German political interests in Frankfurt suggested that it had abrogated responsibility. But the answer was not to force the issue with the Germans. As Czernin wrote to Palacký, “What remains for the rational man to do under these conditions? I am of the opinion that for the good of millions it is absolutely necessary that between two barely distinguishable evils, the lesser be chosen. The lesser is for now understood to be the renunciation of the desired separation from Germany, with, however, . . . parity . . . of both nationalities in the land. The greater evil on the other hand is the ever stronger development of mutual hate and the final intensification of this into a bloody civil war.”61 Czernin stated further that each of them must do his part to avoid this violent dénouement, and urged Palacký to do what he could to promote conciliation between Bohemia’s two peoples: “I beseech you, in the name of the whole land, to do this. The history of centuries teaches us the result when the Slav is called into conflict with the German. You know this better than any other. . . . Besides the foreign Germans we have to take into account in particular the million of our domestic brothers who . . . will become our bitterest antagonists if we want to sever completely the connection with Germany. . . . We should not overvalue our strength. . . . I know well that you will oppose me. A union with the partially republicanized Germany must, in your opinion, lead to ruin.”62 Czernin chided Palacký for political opposition and revolution

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his lack of faith, and reiterated that a far more dangerous situation would ensue should the German and the Czech be placed opposite one another as opponents. The “inflammatory frenzy of national enthusiasm” must be given no spark, no excuse for action. As regards national development, Czernin firmly believed that only war and its consequences would spell disaster for the Czechs, because “no one could rob us of the development of our internal nationality, our Czech language and literature during peacetime.”63 It was therefore of the utmost importance for the survival and vitality of the nation, Czernin felt, that the Czechs protect themselves from conflict above all. Confronted by political unrest in 1848, the hopes of many aristocratic reformers lay in their desire to separate the cultural aspects of nationhood from concrete political aspirations—to leave politics for a more auspicious moment. The fulfillment of the national agenda need not, for Czernin and others of his status group, imply any significant political upheaval. Successful, in other words, peaceful, opposition to Germany, was possible in Czernin’s opinion only with the support of a strong government. Czernin sought to deflect the public pride in the national community, which the Czechs wanted to turn into political capital, into a defense of internal identity. In this sense, a Bohemian could be and ought to be Czech in heart and soul, but must remain German politically. As Czernin continued in his April letter to Palacký, the “courageous tribes of the magnificent Slava” rightly deserved protection by an “inner strengthening.” Devotion would be shown “at every opportunity,” but “the prominent quarrel that would spell disaster and ruin” would be avoided. Czernin voiced the firm belief that the internal nature of national identity would only be temporary. As he argued, “The moment will come, it is perhaps not far, when the united Slavic peoples bring help and salvation to the state and emerge victorious over external enemies.” In the present, however, encouraging a break with Germany was to “throw oil on the flames and must undoubtedly further the interests of the threatening eastern colossus. Only our common enemies will benefit from the bloody discord of the Austrian Slavs with the Germans. Therefore, once more, peace and harmony!”64 After the defeat of the revolution in Prague, the desire to assign blame made rumors and innuendo rampant. An anonymous pamphlet called “Die Hochverräther,” which claimed to unveil a conspiracy to betray Austria to the Russians (the Slavic villains), singled out Counts Deym and Buquoy, as well as Baron Villani, as paramount conspirators. Deym had served on the St. Václav Committee and the Bohemian National Committee in the course of the revolutionary year, and Villani was the leader of the Czech militia Svornost. All three of these noblemen were arrested by a committee established 214

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by Windischgrätz to investigate the uprising, in the hope of the counterrevolutionaries that some firm link between the Slav Congress and the uprising could be established. Georg Buquoy himself was banished from Prague for his connection to the revolution. Leo Thun, bitter over the consequences of the revolution both personally and politically, blamed the radicals of the Slav Congress for inflaming the situation and defended the actions of the imperial investigators, though he never believed that there was any direct link between the Congress and the uprising in Prague, nor was any link found.65 Thun’s bureaucratic loyalty and his devotion to law and order set the tone for his response both in 1848 and afterward. Echoing Czernin, Thun believed that Czech national identity, something which he supported and purported to share, was an internal, personal affair. The politics of 1848 forced men like Thun to bring that identity question into the open, however grudgingly. Although in the end not forced to choose due to the reestablishment of Habsburg power and the temporary defeat of the liberal unification drive in Germany, they were made aware that sitting on the fence in terms of nationality was perhaps not a viable long-term solution. The course of the revolution and the imperial response spelled the beginning of the end of any attempts to use Austroslavism as an ideological basis for political action. In the aftermath of 1848, with bitter recriminations dominating press and public life, the connection of moderate programs for reform with conservative aristocrats like Thun, or even more open-minded supporters like Deym, led to a more general condemnation of the ideals of Austroslavism, a program definitively defeated by the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. Thun, in his justification for his actions in the spring of 1848, sought to propagate the belief that the revolt and its defeat were not an episode of national politics, but an illegal rebellion against the legitimate government, the quelling of which was necessary to return peace and order to a population that essentially supported the government. Those who had hoped for some long-lasting restructuring of the Monarchy, or at least for substantive permanent gains for the Austrian Empire’s Slavic peoples, were disappointed at the outcome and the intransigence of the regime under Francis Joseph and Alexander Bach, an erstwhile proponent of reform. Non-noble reformers partly blamed the association of the Czechs with the Bohemian nobility, whom they portrayed as hopelessly Germanized and reactionary, for the failure of either reform or revolution. In response, Thun himself blamed the more radical elements of the Slavic Congress, who in his opinion had led to the Congress’s demise by their vehement expression of anti-Austrian sentiment, and František Palacký, for allowing them the upper hand. Leo Thun was dismissed as governor in July, finishing out his career as Minister of political opposition and revolution

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Education. He remained bitter about the circumstances of 1848 and the public criticism of his actions, convinced that his career had been ruined through no fault of his own. Despite his accusations about the fateful dominance of radical elements in the Congress, and his defense of his own position, Thun asserted that there was no evidence that the Congress had anything to do with the June uprising in Prague. He continued to support the basic premise that the Congress was a peaceful union of the Empire’s Slavic representatives, who sought only equality and justice for the Slavs. In Windischgrätz’s attempts to find evidence of a grand conspiracy in Prague against the Austrian state, high status alone was not enough to prevent arrest. By the end of 1848, the conservatives were once more in control in Austria and Bohemia. As Friedrich Engels remarked, “The first act of the revolutionary drama on the continent of Europe has closed. The ‘powers that were’ before the hurricane of 1848 are again the ‘powers that be.’ ”66 Ferdinand had been forced to abdicate, and the reins of government were firmly in the hands of Francis Joseph and his advisors, Felix Schwarzenberg and Alexander Bach. The lessons of 1848 had been well learned, and Schwarzenberg deprived the nobility as a whole of any significant role in governing the Monarchy. From the perspective of neo-absolutists, the government would no longer seek to base its support on the aristocracy. In Hungary, Poland, and Italy the nobility remained a potentially revolutionary class, and in Austria and Bohemia they were untrustworthy allies. As Schwarzenberg wrote to Windischgrätz, “I know of not a dozen men of our class with sufficient political wisdom or with the necessary experience to whom an important share of power could be entrusted without soon having to fear for it. Democracy must be fought and its excesses must be challenged but in the absence of other means of help, that can only be done by the government itself.”67 Whatever the desired end result, the different proponents of reform contributed to a political climate that was both stagnant and unstable in the decades before the revolution. Not surprisingly, the revolution of 1848 in Bohemia was not led by the aristocracy, but members of the aristocracy made a significant contribution to the debate on reform of the Empire and on local questions of political, economic, and social reform. It was only in the face of potential revolutionary change that aristocratic liberals were faced again with choices about not only status, but also national allegiance. The majority of aristocratic proponents of reform could not make the leap to revolutionary activity. Their social identity, bound as it was by respect for the emperor and the legitimate institutions of the state, made it difficult for most of them to find common cause with a revolutionary movement that they could not control. The actions of the German-speaking population within Bohemia, as well 216

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as the German nationalists sitting in Frankfurt, served to crystallize what had been relatively easy for the majority of aristocrats to blur in their national identity. Those who truly felt themselves to be part of the Czech community could still not overcome their fear of the potential strife for Bohemia of Czech national politics, and were thus encouraged in their conciliatory approach to German national politics. In response, aristocrats crafted a new division between the personal and the political, assigning Czech identity to the former while making political expediency the reason for continuing to support German cultural and political claims. The problem for many was thus not so much the lack of proper Czech identity, as the fact that this was permanently tinged by the political culture of a group who continued to be associated with state authority. From the perspective of the Bohemian aristocrats, 1848 presented them with a choice—a choice about status and nation. Even when cynicism about the capabilities of the monarch surfaced, as the remarks of Eugene Czernin reveal, political commitment to the Empire and fear of the alternative were the defining elements of aristocratic political identity in the face of revolution. Though the aristocracy had already imprinted their own vision of Bohemia’s past (and future as well), thanks to the cultural and intellectual engagement of the previous generation, their ability to act decisively in the context of the revolution was determined less by their national identity than by their fear.

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Epilogue

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here is no doubt that the revolution of 1848 and its outcome exposed, and subsequently caused, deep fissures in Bohemian society. The reality of revolutionary violence, the temporary, limited victories of the revolution, and its ultimate defeat by the imperial forces showed the degree to which Habsburg society in general, and Bohemian society in particular, were (or were not) successfully negotiating the new political demands of a modernizing nationalizing society. What the revolution also revealed was the degree to which the cultural and scientific work and societal changes of previous decades had become profoundly political, national, and conflictual. Elites in the eighteenth century had celebrated the possibilities for achieving some measure of a better life for Bohemian citizens and worked to articulate ways of delineating and promoting national identity as a way to define the space of their activities. They acknowledged that there were status, economic, political, linguistic, and religious differences in the kingdom, and part of their work entailed chronicling and exploring those differences as critical aspects of Bohemia’s rich historical, intellectual, and cultural heritage. Patriotic elites celebrated that diversity, or at least the differences between Slavic and Germanic heritage, as a way to define the kingdom and set it apart from the Germanic imperial and Habsburg space. They also assumed that education, knowledge, and science, although not entirely “leveling the playing field,” would bring sufficient prosperity that Bohemians could overcome internal divisions and would thereby guarantee a more peaceful and prosperous future. The authority of the Habsburgs, built on the imperial legacy, family heritage, and increasingly on the power of the centralized state, challenged the cherished, emerging sense of the local promoted by the Bohemian intelligentsia. The disjuncture between

Bohemian dissatisfaction with court access and Habsburg hopes for increased cohesion among their territories was in evidence already in the Bohemian response to the War of the Austrian Succession. The subsequent reforms of the Habsburg state apparatus, inspired in part by the desire for efficient and rational government, were read correctly at the Bohemian level as an assault on Bohemia’s distinctiveness and royal legacy. The attempts by Maria Theresa and Joseph to improve tax collection, professionalize and expand the bureaucracy, control land use, interject sovereign authority into local bureaucratic and legal matters, and erode the local bases of elite power that impinged their own authority acted as a spur, encouraging Bohemian elites to emphasize those elements of Bohemia’s culture that were dissimilar from the Habsburgs, not least of which was its Slavic character. Despite the highly visible roles in crafting Habsburg policies played by some Bohemian nobleman, among them Haugwitz and Kaunitz, the Habsburg reform efforts tended to unsettle Bohemian elites at multiple levels: as local (and traditional) political players, as landowners, as Bohemians. Even aristocrats, like Kaspar Sternberg, who supported the imperial government’s desire to increase wealth, improve agriculture, and modernize and strengthen the education, economy and society of the Habsburg dominions lamented methods of implementation that seemed to discard the good with the bad and as a result to destabilize both Bohemian society and the reform program as well. In the search for uniqueness and a basis on which to make claims for local political authority, the Czech nature of Bohemia became absolutely central. Although eighteenth-century aristocrats had celebrated a type of plural, polyglot identity that they reconciled with their claims about the Bohemian cultural space, their search for a limited and definable public arena for improvement led them to privilege the Slavic character in Bohemia as a counterpoint to the German imperial space and to insist on Bohemia’s “essential” Czech nature. But the very process of putting cultural and linguistic markers down set the terms of the debate about who belonged and what Bohemia should be. Vocal proponents of Bohemian particularity vis-à-vis the Habsburgs ultimately, and in some cases unintentionally, set down the road map to exclusionary national identity. By the 1840s, men like Eugene Czernin worried about the potentially explosive nature of Bohemian identity politics in a European era that increasingly defined political authority itself as overwhelmingly national. In the postrevolutionary age, the Habsburgs remained as monarchs, but legitimacy and sovereignty had begun to shift. The cultural, linguistic, and historical work of previous decades that had breathed new life into the Czech language and had successfully linked language and territory also convinced many Bohemians that the patria encompassed far more than the village or 220

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estate. Although identity was never as fixed as nationalists supposed, by the later nineteenth century, national identity had certainly rigidified compared to the relative fluidity of the eighteenth century. National institutions and the patriotic aristocrats who operated within them had succeeded in presenting to the public the case that national identity on the one hand and language, land, and culture on the other were mutually constitutive and, in the case of national identity, intrinsic to everyone. In Critique and Crisis, the German conceptual historian Reinhart Koselleck argued that the eighteenth century, more specifically the Enlightenment, was an historical watershed, the moment when the Absolutist order was dismantled and Europe transformed into the recognizably modern.1 Koselleck argued that the Enlightenment’s impact went far beyond the realm of ideas, stemming from his notion that society only exists if concepts are shared. The dismantling of the old order, which Koselleck associated with the self-aware ascendance of the bourgeoisie, is recast here as the transition to nationalized society. The steady spread of national identity as a salient feature of social and political life in Bohemia had to do with the propagation of shared social conceptions regarding identity and status formation and the ways those conceptions were changing. Status, under assault by government policies, political philosophies, and contemporary circumstances, no longer shored up received wisdom, political and economic practices, or even legal norms. In the face of uncertainty, and in the hope that science, philosophy, and/or culture could provide a better future, public debate suggested that what bound individuals together was not status, but nation. Public opinion—the colloquies in different social forums about political legitimacy, progress, community, identity and status—profoundly informed early patriotic conceptions of the nation. Moreover, conceptual changes were given tangible articulation in the proliferation and diversification of public institutions. These institutions reflected the shifting ideas of elites about the community as well as gave the nonaristocratic public expanded access to institutions of culture and learning. Shifting conceptions also resulted in the rebuilding and redefinition of public spaces, as art, theater, and music were made to serve the public good. The modern transformation of European society, involving questions of state power, social structure, the expansion of literary media, economic development, and consumption, were all critical for the emergence of a nationalized society. Intellectual trends that we associate with the Enlightenment and Romanticism; the eighteenth-century Habsburg reform of state, bureaucracy, law, education, fiscal regimes, and noble privileges; the shock of the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon; all of these spurred a critical reevaluation of social relationships in the Habsburg lands. To the degree that sociability was epilogue

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conducted differently within institutions and urban intellectual circles, or traditional social hierarchies held less purchase, it allowed elites to find new common cause across social lines and to understand community in fundamentally new ways. Status did not disappear, but it was trumped by knowledge. Intellectually engaged aristocrats based their claim to speak on behalf of their community not on inherited familial status or personal property, but on their own critical faculties and abilities. New public institutions in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries changed the intellectual landscape, recast notions of the public good and the understanding of community, encouraged social fluidity, and thus became sites of modernization. The Enlightenment and Romanticism, intellectual currents whose meanings remain contested, did not have a simple and clear-cut impact on the worldview of intellectuals. Although there were many practitioners of both enlightened ideas and romantic sentiments in Bohemia, neither were homegrown affairs, but rather imported sets of expectations about progress, the individual, the identity and culture of community, and so on. Moreover, the ideas we associate with the Enlightenment (rationality, secularism, the emphasis on individual edification and improvement, commitment to progress) and Romanticism (which was attached to the myth of the past and the rejuvenation of “authentic” local culture) did not become part of the debates among Bohemian elites as distinct or oppositional intellectual “trends.” Instead they were overlapping and absorbed irregularly, but with great effect, into the circles of the Bohemian elite in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Enlightenment, in its native and imported currents, subverted traditional estate hierarchies, encouraged social integration, and promoted ideas about individual and collective improvement, as well as scientific exploration of the community. These notions found institutional expression in the academy and eventually the National Museum. The research, data collection, and publications generated within these institutions promoted local, provincial, and royal Bohemian culture and history, and contributed to debates about the boundaries of Bohemia and what it did or did not contain. Even before the upheavals at the turn of the century, intellectual trends set the stage for a reimagining of the “local” as more than village and region, and for a new sense of cultural identity tied to an emerging sense of the nation as the legitimate community. All of these influences had a profound impact on the identities of patriotic aristocrats. The uncertainty of aristocratic fortunes, combined with positive intellectual catalysts and the fear of oppositional politics, created a climate within which aristocratic energy could be directed elsewhere: to the university, the learned society, and the museum. Generally being individuals of 222

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means, aristocrats were uniquely well placed to make abstract ideas of the public good tangible in endowed institutions and to redefine private spaces as public and national ones. The activities of intellectual aristocrats were determined to some extent by class, but to a much larger extent by historical circumstances, and there was a considerable element of contingency in the evolution of aristocratic identity. Being aristocratic made these individuals neither automatically susceptible to enlightened tenets nor provided them with a commitment to learning. Eighteenth-century ideas did not serve as a handbook on social action or intellectual involvement. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, aristocrats continued to worry about dwindling wealth and eroding status, but they no longer relied on perceived or legal aristocratic status as the sole inspiration for their public pursuits. Whatever their concerns about the longevity of aristocratic privilege, aristocrats did not automatically limit themselves to traditional roles. Aristocratic salons and the meetings hosted by middle class intellectuals like the Mayers in Prague created a host of venues wherein men assembled for reasons beyond traditional status. The informal salons and intellectual fermentation in learned societies set the stage for subsequent collaboration that provided the social connections necessary for national activity. Kaspar Sternberg’s interests, for example, despite the overwhelming predominance of the natural sciences, ranged far and included the “realm of human endeavor and the historical assumptions” of the present.2 In this he perfectly exemplified so much of what had changed in Central European society: he pursued an early career in the church, but began to reevaluate religion; he started an aristocrat, but ended a scientist; he was reminiscent of the dilettante, but became a respected scientist and paleobotany expert; he was interested in limited reform and national progress, but feared and distrusted the mob. Moreover, the trajectory of Sternberg’s scientific career dovetailed with a general trend toward the professionalization and compartmentalization of knowledge, a development to which he himself contributed. Sternberg, like his scientific compatriots, was representative of the enlightened scientist who had turned his efforts toward enriching the national community in every aspect. In his various guises—Bohemian noble, cleric, scientist, patriot—he demonstrated not only the varied quality of “aristocratic” identity, but the influences that led someone like him to an abiding support for his “Fatherland.” Upbringing, personal experiences, intellectual influences, and social uncertainty all contributed to the final product: a patriotic Bohemian aristocrat. The positive and negative experiences of intellectual ferment and political upheaval were not experienced by Sternberg and his compatriots without some measure of ambivalence. Many of them had a sincere belief in the epilogue

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possibilities for reform and for the rejuvenation of the community that was embedded in scientific and enlightened convictions. However, many of these ideas were challenged by the experiences of the revolutionary period and the compression of political and public life under Francis II. Whereas science had previously worked as an invigorating and positive catalyst of modernization, it also served to some extent as a retreat after the turn of the eighteenth century for those who feared the possible revolutionary outcome of political challenges to authority, or of reforms, that they could not control. The dread of revolution, combined with the policies of a conservative regime, forced a reevaluation of political stances: Freemasonry, political commentary, and opposition to the Habsburgs all became more problematic. Science and intellectual endeavors, on the other hand, still provided a viable alternative to overt political action. Despite these caveats, science was not pursued without social and political consequences, and cultural work had an impact beyond the hallowed halls of the museum. Scientific societies trumpeted the basic tenets of universal progress, rationality, education, and the existence of bodies of knowledge there for all to explore. At the same time, science was increasingly used to discover and increase the national wealth and resources of individual regions and nations. Systems of classification that defined the local ecosystem and voyages of discovery that unearthed the strange as well as the familiar in the abroad served to emphasize both what “belonged” locally and what it would take to establish national autarky. History likewise was approached with new methods, intent, and intellectual rigor. The influence of Romantic thought helped turn historical focus to the medieval origins and greatness of the national community and learned institutions expended enormous effort in discovering, using, and sometimes creating the documentary evidence of a rich Bohemian past. Sternberg’s social and intellectual activities reflected the varied concerns and interests of learned institutions. His commitment to science was rooted in both a sincere lifelong interest and a belief that science and education could provide the basic ingredients for a peaceful national existence. He adhered to that hope even more tenaciously in the face of the political and social upheavals of the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. The institutions he helped to establish and those within which he worked grew out of his dual commitments to science and to community. They reflected Sternberg’s desire to preserve the national heritage and to promote national rejuvenation. Scientific and intellectual activity, combined with earlier political experiences, created in Sternberg and those like him a new type of aristocratic experience. What it meant to be an aristocrat, with the privileges, duties, and wealth that implied, 224

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were no longer to be taken for granted by individuals of Sternberg’s generation. Although some certainly became entrenched and steadfastly refused to sign away any particle of their traditional privileges and status, others, like Sternberg, sought to define a new public space for themselves. In public activity they worked in positive concert with individuals of other Estate and class, in the interest of their own security as well as the greater good. If the writings of the Enlightenment that trickled into Bohemia led to an alteration of elite conceptions of intellectual life, community, and progress, the French Revolution brought other issues to the forefront—debates about the rights of man, citizenship, freedom, political legitimacy, constitutionalism, radicalism, and violence—that would remain fixtures of political life across the continent. In Central Europe, the perceived excesses of the Revolution also tainted and problematized contested ideas about the Enlightenment and its application to state and social reform. The apparent “outcome” (even if temporary) of the Revolution for some aristocrats, namely violent social breakdown, regicide, and rule by the mob, made renewed Catholicism and conservatism more palatable than the alternative of uncontrolled revolution, even for those who had been initially wooed by Enlightenment thought. That loyalists, aristocrats, and priests had been executed in the name of France and the Republic and that noble reform efforts had descended into violent revolution suggested to many Bohemian elites that reform itself was inherently unstable and contained potential threats to their lives and livelihoods if it exploded into uncontrollable revolutionary fervor. The responses of the Habsburg elites to what they heard of France and what they feared at home were varied, and depended in part on education and social attitudes, as well as on ideas about state power and reform. If there was a pervasive fear among aristocrats that reform could not be contained and was likely to spill over into a much more radical transformation, in other words, violent revolution, they also recognized the degree to which the Revolution challenged the social order far beyond the borders of France. States could reorganize and work to hoard sovereignty, but ultimately the “people” had a longer memory. Official promises of constitutional reform, of constitutions, made in the moment of stress during the wars did not merely recede as historical curiosities. Contemporaries experienced the Revolution (at a distance) and the wars that followed as transformative, affecting their long-held conclusions about progress (for the individual, society, and the state) as well as civic belonging, community, and status. On the other hand, significant parts of Austrian society were committed to a reactionary reestablishment of the prerevolutionary organization of politics—or at the very least to containing to the utmost the damage of revolutionary sentiment. epilogue

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Fear of revolutionary contagion and the imminent threat of war dashed aristocratic hopes for a new constitutional arrangement between the Habsburg Emperor Leopold and the Bohemian Diet. After the 1790s and the failure of the Diet in Prague to bring about any significant reform in the face of revolution, aristocrats moved away from overt political activity and from any hint of political sentiment beyond complete loyalty to the monarch. Although this meant the end of real political opposition for another fifty years, the cultural work that built the institutional edifice of national identity on which national claims rested continued in the decades before the revolutions in 1848. For aristocratic intellectuals the response to social and political challenges based on new political and social claims was not simply to retrench to traditional aristocratic identity, but to craft a new set of expectations and norms that vested the nation with ultimate legitimacy. They turned to culture and continued to pursue scientific and historical work in order to set Bohemia apart from the rest of the Habsburg territories by history, culture, and language, making a permanent contribution to the public rhetoric that fused land, language, and politics into the bedrock of Czech national claims in the decades after 1848. Institutions founded by and with aristocrats after the 1790s joined earlier learned societies in the spirit of controlled reform, knowledge, and the national interest. These were the new salons of the postEnlightenment cultural world, in which an astounding mix of talents and a variety of social backgrounds could meet on equal terms as intellectuals. Romantic sentiment also came into its own in these decades. An inchoate intellectual movement, it was simultaneously the heir and the opponent of enlightened thought, and achieved its greatest impact in the desire to engender intense feelings and sentiment about the national community and to “rediscover” the (mythical) national past. It is clear from the history of the Metternich era and the 1848 revolutions that not all aristocrats jettisoned traditional aristocratic society and privileges. Nor were aristocrats uniform in their intellectual involvement and accomplishments. There were adequate numbers of aristocrats to host lavish parties, to insist on privilege, and to staff the court and oversee the policies of Francis and Ferdinand—policies that were based on purposeful social and political stagnation. Some indeed fought determinedly to maintain legal and economic privileges. But, even the most reactionary aristocrats recognized that the world had indeed changed, and that status and privilege could not be taken for granted. New conceptions of political legitimacy, of cultural development and competition, of status and social function challenged old regime society in fundamental ways. By the 1840s, those less interested in constructing bulwarks to contain these changes incorporated 226

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them instead into a broader call for political and socioeconomic reform, a movement that was explicitly liberal as well as vocally national. The policies of neo-absolutism that Alexander Bach and Felix Schwarzenberg pursued after the 1848 revolutions were an effort to turn back the clock, to recapture some measure of ascendance against political forces that could not be contained and that would prove incendiary in the context of the Habsburg territories. The apparent victory of the antiliberal forces masked again what had seemed obvious to the generation of the 1790s and that of the 1840s: Customary privileges and traditional social relationships were no longer guarantors of security. That uncertainty, coupled with relatively new ideas about the possibilities of collective as well as individual improvement so popular in progressive learned circles, had encouraged aristocrats to pursue public intellectual life in the early nineteenth century as an alternative to the performance of aristocratic status. It was precisely within the new institutions established and supported by these men that the national idea found such ready support. Museums, learned societies, collections of art and science, and so on furnished the institutional landscape for a mature national community, and aristocrats invested in these institutions out of the patriotic hope that Bohemia could successfully compete in the international arena, in both cultural and economic terms. Although the scientists and intellectuals within these institutions were interested in universal progress within certain contexts, what primarily drove them was defining, supporting, and improving Bohemia. For these patriots, Bohemia was Czech in its essence, if bilingual in its practice. Intellectuals hoped that their activities would serve not only to improve the circumstances of Bohemians and make the kingdom noteworthy for its economic, technical, and cultural achievements, but also to provide the tools through that learning and culture to overcome whatever social and political fissures remained within Bohemian society. What the politics of the post-1848 period revealed is the degree to which they were successful in crafting national sentiment, but of a type that demanded a choice, a political commitment to Bohemia’s Czech character and that passed primary leadership of national politics to a new, nonaristocratic generation.

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notes

Introduction 1. Count Leo Thun, 1843, quoted in Seton-Watson, A History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 182. 2. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 144. 3. Nebeský, Geschichte des Museums, 1. 4. Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere, 7. Geoff Eley, “Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century” in Calhoun, Habermas and the Public Sphere, 289. Quoted from Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 49. 5. For a recent example of this, see Godsey, Nobles and Nation in Central Europe. 6. Outram, The Enlightenment, 25. 7. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6. Citation of Hugh Seton-Watson appears in Anderson’s footnote. 8. J. P. Eckermann to Johann Wolfgang Goethe, June 20, 1827, in “Gespräche mit Goethe.” Quoted in Bratranek, Briefwechsel zwischen Göthe und Sternberg, 9. 9. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 9. 10. Lipset, Political Man, 311.

Chapter 1 1. K. Sternberg, Leben des Grafen Kaspar Sternberg, 35. 2. Goethe, Collected Works (Volume Four), 28. 3. This view was subsequently adopted by non-Czech historians as well. Robert Kann and R. W. Seton-Watson, although not being quite so explicit, repeated the view that the nobility was unreservedly reactionary and ultimately responsible, along with the Habsburgs, for the period of “darkness” after 1620. There have been attempts to reevaluate the role of the nobility, along with other national issues. See in particular Agnew, “Noble Natio,” 50–71; Rak, Bývali Cˇechoveˇ; and Melville, Adel und Revolution. 4. This is also true of the Austrian nobility and their access to privilege and power. See MacHardy, War, Religion, and Court Patronage.

5. Evans, Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 205. 6. František Palacký, Sternberg genealogical notes, ANM/ŠM/191/5. 7. Bérenger, Habsburg Empire, 261. 8. Bérenger, Habsburg Empire, 263. 9. Evans, Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 197. 10. Bílek, Deˇjiny konfiskací, vol. 1, CL. Bílek puts the estimate at closer to threequarters. 11. Evans, Habsburg Monarchy, 195–216. 12. Melton, “Nobility of the Bohemian and Austrian Lands,” 114–116. 13. Evans, Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 204. 14. Procházka, Genealogisches Handbuch, 1990, XVI. 15. As described above, an exception was at first made for Protestant nobility who had remained faithful to the Habsburg cause, but the 1627 law made it clear that “cryptoProtestantism” would be stamped out. In Bohemia, noble clergy had previously voted with their secular estate in the Diet. In Moravia, the clergy were part of the town estate. See Procházka, Genealogisches Handbuch, 1990, 19. 16. Wright, Serf, Seigneur, and Sovereign, 13. For a detailed discussion on the history of the Bohemian inkolát, see Mischler and Ulbrich, Österreichisches Staatswörterbuch, 897–904. 17. Evans, Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 199. See also Kerner, Bohemia, 17–18. 18. Procházka, Genealogisches Handbuch, 1990, 16–17. 19. In 1708, Joseph I reaffirmed that imperial titles did not translate without royal certification through the Bohemian chancellery. Only in 1773 was this undone. In the union of the Bohemian and Austrian Chancellories, Maria Theresa made Austrian titles of equal status in Bohemia. See Procházka, Genealogisches Handbuch, 1990, 17; Pinsker, Cˇeský Stav Panský. 20. Evans, Habsburg Monarchy, 231. 21. Melton, “Nobility,” 124. 22. Evans, Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 205. 23. Evans, Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 205–209. Evans provides short synopses of the experience of these powerful families during the Thirty Years’ War. As regards the spelling of noble names, I have in general adopted the spelling most favored by the family members at the turn of the eighteenth century. Often this is a Germanized spelling, but this is not a comment by the author on these families’ ethnicity or identity. 24. Polišenský, Aristocrats and the Crowd, 49. 25. According to Roman Procházka, the oldest actual “Order of Nobility” (Herrenstandsordnung) from 1501 fixed that in the Kingdom of Bohemia one could not be admitted to the lordly estate unless he had four generations of knightly descendants behind him. In addition, no one could enjoy the rights and privileges of nobility unless recognized and dignified as such by king and nobles. The status of families was strictly recorded. The list of the thirty old noble families was ranked in their order of precedence, and was reprinted in the Cˇasopis Cˇeského Museum, 1831. In 1501, only the Sternbergs made the list—at number 3. This system remained in place until the reordering of rank and estates in 1627. Procházka, Genealogisches Handbuch, 1990, 15. 26. František Palacký, ANM/ŠM/191/5. 27. C. Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon, vol. 38, 250. 28. K. Sternberg, Leben, 2.

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29. See also Haubelt, Kašpar M. Šternberk, 22. 30. Stekl, Österreichs Aristokratie, 107. 31. Lemberg, Wege und Wandlungen, 113–114. 32. Johann Mader to Francis Sternberg, ANM/ŠM/65. 33. Polišenský, Aristocrats, 61. 34. Lemberg, Grundlegen des nationalen Erwachens, passim. 35. Kinský, Erinnerung über einen wichtigen Gegenstand, 131. Kinský uses the word “böhmisch” of course, to indicate Czech. It was not until much later, particularly in the nineteenth century, that Germans began to differentiate in German between “böhmisch” and “tschechisch.” Kinský was a Generalmajor in the military, served as Director of the Theresian Military Academy after 1779, and was influential in Masonic and intellectual organizations. 36. Kinský, Erinnerung, 132. 37. Kinský, Erinnerung, 133. 38. Melton, “Nobility,” 110–143. 39. Evans, Habsburg Monarchy, 214. 40. Evans, Habsburg Monarchy, 214. Evans asserts this for the seventeenth century, but it remained by and large true through the following one as well. 41. In his brilliant Inventing Eastern Europe, Larry Wolff relates anecdotes of Westerners, most notably W. A. Mozart, who were particularly struck by the Slavic nature of Bohemia and Prague. Some of these anecdotes refer specifically to the discomfort felt by visitors who could not understand the Czech spoken by the lower classes on the streets. 42. Dewald, European Nobility, 23. Dewald bases his numbers on Thomas Winkelbauer, “Krise der Aristokratie?” 337–40. 43. Although exact numbers are difficult to obtain, some estimates show that the number of knightly families fell from 600 in 1600 to 100 by 1750. See Bílek, Deˇjiny Konfiskací. 44. Melton, “Nobility,” 117. There is some debate about whether the members of this service nobility were ever accepted into the ranks of the high aristocracy. Hannes Stekl claims that the Habsburgs, particularly Maria Theresa, ennobled a great number, but that the newly ennobled formed a different strata within the noble class. Stekl, “Zwischen Macht,” 144–165. 45. The Theresian cadasters, or land surveys, had been drawn up partially to counteract this. The cadasters divided rustical land by the holding size. The categories of peasant holdings ranged from under 1 strich to over sixty strich. (One strich is approximately .72 acres). The majority of peasants held between 1.1 and 30 strich. Chalupa et al., Tereziánský Katastr Cˇeský. 46. William Wright makes the point that these two land classifications were not mutually exclusive, and peasants often worked lands in both categories. There were also peasants who held no land, including cottagers and day laborers. 47. Wright, Serf, Seigneur, and Sovereign, 14. 48. There were a series of robot patents under previous rulers in 1680, 1717, and 1738, all attempting to curb the worst excesses of the manorial system. These were not particularly effective, as evidenced by the need for the government to keep issuing them. The Habsburgs also sought to regulate the confiscation of rustical land by seigniors and make certain that they were taxed on this land. In 1738, taxes were levied on demesne land. In the same patent, robot was limited to three days per week, hauling time was regulated, notes to pages 32–37

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arbitrary rent increases were forbidden, and district captains were given the right to intervene on the behalf of abused peasants. Wright, Serf, Seigneur, and Sovereign, 24. 49. The degree to which the Bohemians had begun a process of contract labor in place of robot, remains unclear. Ralph Melville has persuasively argued that by the nineteenth century at least one can see labor determined on an estate-by-estate basis, and that paid labor was fairly widespread, despite what the legal mechanisms would suggest. 50. See Toegel, Prameny k nevolnickému povstání, for a collection of documents on the rebellion. 51. Bush, Noble Privilege, 193. 52. ANM/ŠM/124/22. 53. Others have also noted that the adversarial relationship between Estates and monarch has been overemphasized, as both worked together in terms of taxation as well as reform. As H. M. Scott notes, “Crown and Estates were partners rather than opponents.” Scott, “Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy,” 157. 54. Bush, Noble Privilege, 46. 55. Wright, Serf, Seigneur, and Sovereign, 35. 56. Melton, “Nobility,” 126. 57. Macartney, Habsburg Empire, 52. The term “bench” is used by Macartney to distinguish these separate ranks. In Bohemia, the first Estate was that of the great prelates ever since the defeat in 1620. 58. Macartney, Habsburg Empire, 52, 2 ff. 59. Bush, Noble Privilege, 108. 60. Macartney, Habsburg Empire, 51. 61. It was possible for the monarch to ennoble for service rendered the monarch and the state, and this was done with more frequency than has previously been thought. Between 1701 and 1918, there were 12,408 ennoblements. See Stekl, “Zwischen Macht,” 146. 62. SOA/Jindrˇichu˚v Hradec/RA Cˇernín/Johann Rudolf/414. 63. Stekl, Osterreichs Aristokratie, 113. 64. Both of Kaspar Sternberg’s elder brothers were engaged in scientific study, and both were member of the Bohemian Society of Sciences. Joachim was an influential practitioner of chemistry, metallurgy, and meteorology. 65. K. Sternberg, Leben, 2. 66. Johann entered the military as a lieutenant in 1773, after completing his law studies. Johann Sternberg is always described as highly educated and intellectually engaged. The sources for him, however, other than the work he did as member of the Society of Sciences, are not extensive, especially given his early death at the age of 36. In the local Prague archive, where some of the Sternberg family records are kept, there is a letter from his military adjutant in 1789 that explained that Johann’s diary and other personal papers and belongs were all burned per Johann’s request. SOA/RA Šternberk/12. Joachim, like Johann, had settled on a military career, and began military service the year after Johann. However, unlike Johann, Joachim could not seem to abide the military during peacetime, seeming as little able to concentrate on military exercises as he had been able to concentrate on his studies. He eventually decided to leave the military in 1785 and set up permanent residence on the family estate at Brˇezina in Bohemia. 67. Sternberg, Leben, 4. 68. Bratranek, Briefwechsel zwischen Göthe und Sternberg, 16. 69. Kinský, Erinnerung, 152.

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70. Kinský believed that the problems stemming from education lay in the outdated desire to “hide” inappropriate topics (Deism, etc.), and that knowledge, exposure and preparation were the only defense: “Whoever knows men is aware that reason most easily errs when it is surprised, not however, when one has given it the time to prepare.” Kinský, Erinnerung, 45–46. In addition, to counteract arguments against explorations in physics and the natural world, Kinský countered that all of these disciplines provided ample proof of the existence of God. 71. Kinský, Erinnerung, 154. 72. Kinský, Erinnerung, 122. 73. Kinský, Über die Hofmeister, 91. 74. Kinský, Erinnerung, 73. 75. Kinský, Erinnerung, 115–116. 76. Stekl, Österreichs Aristokratie im Vormärz, 111. 77. ANM/ŠM/199a/Skizze. 78. Franzel, “Der Adel in der Geschichte Böhmens,” 123. 79. Thun, Der Slawismus in Böhmen, 10. 80. Kühnel, “Die adelige Kavalierstour,” 1. 81. Kinský, Über die Hofmeister, 17. 82. Sternberg, Leben, 12. 83. Sternberg, Leben, 12–13. 84. Sternberg, Leben, 14. 85. Sternberg, Leben, 13–14. 86. ANM/ŠM/86/Section 2/25. 2. 1777. 87. Sternberg, Leben, 21. 88. The Theresianum was established in 1746 to train civil servants, the military academy at Wiener Neustadt was established in 1751–1752 to prepare young noblemen for the officer corps, and the Oriental Academy was established for the training of future diplomats. 89. Melton, “Nobility,” 140. 90. Throughout this section, “Empire” refers to the Holy Roman Empire, and “Monarchy” to the Habsburg Monarchy, as distinct from the Holy Roman Empire. 91. Blanning, Joseph II, 8–9. 92. Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, 2; Blanning, Joseph II, 8–9. 93. Prior to the fourteenth century, the status of Bohemia, long the only kingdom among the electors, as an electoral state was disputed because the kingdom was not “properly German.” In 1356, Charles IV issued the Golden Bull, a fundamental law of the Empire that permanently established Bohemia’s claim to the electoral vote and its precedence as the first of the secular states in the Empire. 94. Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, 392. 95. Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, 397. 96. For a discussion of the impact of the Empire’s dissolution on the religious and political identity of the Free Imperial Knights in Germany, see Godsey, Nobles and Nations. 97. Sternberg, Leben, 18. 98. Quoted in Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, 405. 99. Sternberg, Leben, 18–19. 100. Benecke, “German Reichskirche,” 78–79. Benecke goes so far as to suggest that the real mistake made by German politicians was using the Enlightenment to dismantle notes to pages 43–49

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the edifice of universal religious tradition that had managed to keep the peace in Central Europe. See Jedin, History of the Church, 144. 101. Of the eighteen canons in the cathedral chapter of St. Stephen’s in Vienna, fourteen were chosen by the Emperor from the nobility. Bérenger, “Austrian Church,” 88. Although the dominance of the aristocracy in the upper ranks of the clergy is certain, P. G. M. Dickson has proven that this was not uniformly true in the case of abbots and heads of monastic orders. See Dickson, Finance and Government. 102. Bérenger, “Austrian Church,” 90. 103. Benecke, “German Reichskirche,” 80. 104. Although Johann the elder did not hold his estates in entail, and could therefore dispose of them as he chose, there was a general pattern of primogeniture when it came to inheritance. There was also, however, a tradition of providing some sort of property or monetary remuneration to younger children. The estates of this branch of the Sternberg family were relatively modest compared to some others, and it was both probably necessary as well as custom for all three sons to pursue careers, although the eldest son Johann would inherit his father’s estates. Interestingly enough, the clergy was usually promoted as a career to prevent the further dissolution of family resources in the provisioning of the families of younger children. In the Sternberg case, none of the sons had children. 105. Sternberg, Leben, 6. This episode of ambivalence about his future career was certainly not the end of his uncertainty. Kaspar’s relief was palpable when Maria Theresa assured him in 1779, prior to his departure for the Collegium Germanicum in Rome, that he need not become a cleric if he had no vocation. Later in Rome, when faced with an oath at the college that he would take vows, he reassured himself that “proximity to the Pope must make a dispensation easier to acquire.” Sternberg, Leben, 7. 106. Johann Sternberg to Kaspar Sternberg, October 10, 1787. SOA Prague at Benešov/RA Šternberk/1068. 107. Jedin et al., History of the Church, 150. 108. Bernard, Jesuits and Jacobins, 13–14. See also Hersche, Der Spätjansenismus; Kovacs, Katholische Aufklärung; Winter, Josephinismus. 109. Jansenism, a movement begun in France in the seventeenth century, defended the doctrine of predestination and advocated austere piety and strict morality. This went against the standards of baroque religiosity practiced by the Jesuits. 110. Haubelt, Kašpar M. Šternberk, 18–19. 111. Callahan and Higgs, Church and Society, 4.

Chapter 2 1. K. Sternberg, Leben des Grafen Kaspar Sternberg, 54. 2. Dewald, European Nobility. 3. Stekl, “Zwischen Machtverlust und Selbstbehauptung,” 144. 4. Greenfeld, “Formation of Russian National Identity,” 549–91. 5. Greenfeld, “Russian National Identity,” 568. 6. There is an immense literature on the Czech national revival. For a representative sample see Agnew, Origins of the Czech National Renascence, a good introduction in English to the vicissitudes of Czech historiography. See also Bacˇkovský, Z našich dob vlasteneckých; Brock and Skilling, Czech Renascence of the Nineteenth Century; on contemporary terminology

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see Drabek, “Der Nationsbegriff ”; Gellner, “Reborn from Below,” is a discussion of the religious, Catholic origins of the national revival; Hanuš, Národní Museum a Naše Obrození, is one of the only positive accounts of aristocratic involvement in the national revival; Havránek, “Development of Czech Nationalism”; Krofta, Nesmrtelný národ od Bílé Hory k Palackému. Two Marxist accounts are Kocˇí, Cˇ eské národní obrození, and Kutnar, Obrozenský Nacionalismus; Lemberg, Grundlegen des nationalen Erwachens; Novotný, Obrození Národa, is an excellent collection of documents from the writers of the revival; Petrán, Pocˇátky Cˇeského národního obrození, is a more recent attempt to cover this period. See also Pražák, Cˇ eské obrození. Refer to the bibliography for further sources and materials. Two very important works analyzing the role of class and social consciousness in the growth of national feelings in the region are Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival, and Chlebowczyk, On Small and Young Nations in Europe. 7. There is a considerable literature on censorship and banned books in the Monarchy. See Bernard, Jesuits and Jacobins; Gnau, Die Zensur unter Josef II; Goldfriedrich, Geschichte des Deutschen Buchhandels; Klingenstein, Staatsverwaltung und Kirchliche Autorität im 18; Sashegyi, Zensur und Geistesfreiheit unter Joseph II. For a contemporary account: Schaller, Kurzgefaßte Geschichte der k.k. Bücherzensur. The Jesuits were instrumental in the restriction of a large proportion of literature of “noxious character.” Censorship was prevalent under Maria Theresa, although relaxed somewhat under Joseph II. The government through the offices of religious censors tried to control for moral, social, and political content. For example, in 1749, the Historische und Geographische Beschreibung des Königreiches Böheim was publicly burned in Prague because of its critical analysis of the Austrian-Prussian War. See Mašek, Libri Prohibiti. 8. F. A. Sporck (1662–1738) is one of the more famous unconventional representatives of the nobility. The family was newly ennobled in the late seventeenth century, and Count Sporck himself expended considerable energy tweaking the noses of his fellow nobles, particularly regarding their exploitation of the less fortunate. Sporck alleviated robot demands on his own properties, and was very involved in the establishment of charities and hospitals, so that he became known as the “father of the poor.” For a collection of stories about the legends surrounding Sporck, see Laufrová, Prˇibeˇhy hrabeˇte Šporka. 9. Schaller, Kurzgefaßte Geschichte der k.k. Bücherzensur, 6–7. Of course the accusations against Sporck were almost certainly true. Sporck was a “notorious” free-thinking individual who challenged both nobility and regime. He was an important influence on the development of intellectual life in Bohemia. 10. Minárˇ, Voltaire v naší Spolecˇnosti a Literaturˇe, 22. See also Mašek, Libri Prohibiti, 2. 11. K. Sternberg, Leben, 20. English books were also a valuable commodity. The correspondence of Francis Sternberg makes it clear that they were both desired, and not so easy to come by. See ANM/ŠM/91. 12. Wangermann, Austrian Achievement, 164. 13. Schaller, Geschichte der Bücherzensur, 10. 14. ANM/ŠM/178/Catalogus. This is a contemporary catalogue of the Sternberg library at Brˇezina. See also Lokalní a Inventarní Katalog Zamecké Knihovny, for individual catalogues of castle libraries. Pelcl and Dobrovský compiled catalogues of the famous Nostitz library as well. 15. Minárˇ, Voltaire v naší Spolecˇnosti a Literaturˇe, 24. 16. Voltaire was banned in the Empire, but was translated into German in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The first Czech translations were by J. Jungmann notes to pages 58–59

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and K. H. Borovský in the middle of the century. See Minárˇ, Voltaire v naší Spolecˇnosti a Literaturˇe, 66. 17. ANM/ŠM/65. Francis Ledebur to Francis Sternberg, September 1783 and November 1783. Baron Ledebur is perhaps less an Enlightenment figure than a romantic one along the lines of Goethe’s Young Werther. In the late 1780s Ledebur entered the military, constantly overspent his income, and was perpetually requesting aid and Sternberg’s intercession on his behalf with the Ledebur family. After an unhappy love affair, and in debt to the tune of 8,000 florins, Ledebur died on duty at the age of 26, perhaps purposefully not dodging gunfire, as he had threatened in a letter to Sternberg. 18. Seibt also profoundly influenced Johann Buquoy, a leader of the Estates’ opposition in 1790/1791. The correspondence between the two encouraged Buquoy to pursue his concerns about school and poor relief reform. In 1772, Buquoy established a model provincial school on his manor at Kaplice. 19. The Private Learned Society was the precursor of the Bohemian Society of Sciences, and will be discussed in chapter 3. 20. This tendency is not limited to Czech historians, of course. See Bojtár, “Die Aufklärung in Mittel- und Osteuropa.” The union of Enlightenment and revival can also be seen in such works as the Porter/Teich volume, The Enlightenment in National Context, and the Sziklay volume on Aufklärung und Nationen im Osten Europas. Revival, awakening, and renascence are all terms ascribed to the literary and cultural Czech activities at the beginning of the nineteenth century that the Czechs refer to as the národní obrození. All of these terms have built in assumptions about the timelessness of the national community. Bradley suggests that the origin of the Czech term “obrození” is found in Josef Jungmann’s account of the beginnings of Czech nationalism as the resistance of the Czechs to Germanization and the need to “revive” their language and nation in order to do so. Bradley, Czech Nationalism, 2. 21. This problem applied even to those historians attempting a legitimate historical examination of the period of the revival. J. Pekarˇ sought to explain the interest in the nation as a natural development of domestic processes that had little to do with European thought and culture. See Pekarˇ, Deˇjiny Cˇeskoslovenské. As John Bradley argues, at the turn of the century it became very important to seek out the explanation for the national revival at the beginning of the century, and to prove one’s own direct connection to this earlier period of national literary awakening. See Bradley, Czech Nationalism, 2–5. 22. Niederhauser, “Einige Probleme,” 58. Niederhauser attempts to strike a middle ground between the two interpretations, claiming that despite the influence of French and German thought, to a measured degree the Enlightenment in Eastern Europe was autochthonous. Niederhauser, 63. 23. See Lemberg, Wege und Wandlungen, 152. 24. Quoted in Sziklay, Aufklärung und Nationen, 76. 25. This referred to Rousseau in particular. As one can imagine, Bohemian readers were cautious and selective about how French and German ideas could be applied to the Bohemian situation. Teich, “Bohemia,” 161. 26. Kinský, Erinnerung an einen wichtigen Gegenstand von einem Böhmen, (Prague, 1773), 116. 27. Kinský’s remarks in the Erinnerung as well as the supplement Über die Hofmeister were clearly inspired by the Enlightenment, with some curious deviations. His commitment to reason in education was paramount, but he felt that morality ought not

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to be taught catechistically. This was “too cold” and left too much to reason, and not enough to the heart. Kinský, Über die Hofmeister, 32. 28. Kinský, Über die Hofmeister, 52. 29. Buquoy, Anregungen für philosophische Forschung, 3. 30. Bratranek, Briefwechsel zwischen Göthe und Sternberg, 15. It was Joachim who first introduced Kaspar to science, particularly chemistry and mineralogy. Joachim was self-taught in these areas, saving up his pocket money to purchase the desired books, especially alchemy books. Kaspar then followed his older brother around as assistant, helping him catalogue his rocks. 31. Engelhardt, “Romanticism in Germany,” 110. 32. K. Sternberg, Leben des Grafen Kaspar Sternberg, 9. 33. J. W. Ritter, quoted in Engelhardt, “Romanticism in Germany,” 111. 34. Herder’s influence in the region far outlasted his death in 1803. See Sziklay, “Die Anfänge,” 15–49. 35. Winter, Romantismus, 36. 36. J. G. Herder, quoted in Menzel, Die Nationale Entwicklung, 48. 37. Winter, Romantismus, 36. 38. Libuše is said to have chosen Prˇemysl her husband by prophesy, and also by visions determined the location for what was to become Prague (Praha). The legends say that she sent her followers to find the curve in the Vltava where a man would be hewing out a threshold (práh) in the woods, and there the castle would be built. 39. Lemberg, Wege und Wandlungen, 155. 40. Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, 41. Kerner overstates the opposition of the Freemasons to the established Church. The Masons were not opposed to Christianity so much as the overly mystical and baroque approach to religion that had been cultivated for popular religion in the century before. Many Masons were churchmen as well, and they supported a reformed church as an important moral bulwark. 41. Jacob, Radical Enlightenment, 20. 42. Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, 315. 43. Black, Eighteenth Century Europe, 397. 44. Jacob, Radical Enlightenment, 23. 45. There is a large literature on Freemasonry in Europe. For a few representative works, see Abafi, Geschichte der Freimaurerei; Klaus Epstein, Genesis of German Conservatism; Michael Fischer, Die Aufklärung und ihr Gegenteil; Irmen, Die Protokolle der Wiener Freimaurerloge; Jacob, Living the Enlightenment; Jacob, Radical Enlightenment; Lennhoff, Die Freimaurer; Reinalter, Aufklärung und Geheimgesellschaften. 46. ANM/ŠM/199a/Materialien. 47. K. Sternberg, Leben, 20. Sternberg, upon sober reflection and the fact that the Freemasons were illegal by the reign of Leopold, put the entire experience down in his memoirs as the curiosity of a naive young man. 48. ANM/ŠM/199a/Bruchstücke. 49. Jacob, Radical Enlightenment, 26. For a breakdown of the social background of lodges, see Hüber, “Zur Sozialstruktur,” 173–187. 50. Helmut Reinalter suggests that one of the particular characteristics of Freemasonry in Central Europe was the speed with which it was co-opted by court and court society. Francis Stephen, the husband of Maria Theresa, was a committed Mason despite the opposition of the Catholic Church to the order and the Church’s condemnation of notes to pages 61–64

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Freemasonry in 1738. He was inducted as a Mason at Robert Walpole’s country estate in 1731, and his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor in 1745 incorporated elements of Masonic rituals. This altered considerably under Joseph II, who had no patience for the “mumbo-jumbo” of ritualized secret societies. Reinalter, “Josephinismus, Geheimgesellschaften und Jakobinismus” 63. 51. See von Dülmen, Der Geheimbund des Illuminaten, 18. 52. Epstein, Genesis of German Conservatism, 84. 53. Micklus, Deism, Masonry, and the Enlightenment, 128. 54. Reinalter, “Josephinismus, Geheimgesellschaften und Jakobinismus,” 63. 55. Koselleck, Kritik und Krise, 49. 56. See Epstein, Genesis of German Conservatism, 87–104; Fischer, Die Aufklärung und Ihr Gegenteil, 215–242; Rachold, “Geheimgesellschaften.” 57. Black, Eighteenth Century Europe, 399. 58. Weis, “Der Illuminatenorden,” 89. See also Epstein, Genesis of German Conservatism, 92. 59. Wangermann, “Reform Catholicism,” 138. 60. Quoted in Wangermann, “Reform Catholicism,” 139. 61. Epstein, Genesis of German Conservatism, 88. 62. Schüttler, Die Mitglieder des Illuminatenordens, 222. 63. Benecke, “The German Reichskirche,” 87. 64. Epstein, Genesis of German Conservatism, 90. 65. Epstein, Genesis of German Conservatism, 89; Reinalter, “Josephinismus, Geheimgesellschaften und Jakobinismus,” 65. 66. The seriousness of their rhetoric is debated. Helmut Reinalter claims that the order was far more subversive and politically dangerous than Epstein suggests, and that the order sought to infiltrate state organizations to accrue power and bring its social agenda to fruition—to establish a “cosmopolitan republic, where enlightened reason would reestablish the freedom and equality of the state of nature.” Reinalter, “Josephinismus, Geheimgesellschaften und Jakobinismus,” 66. 67. It is also true that there was a link between the members of the lodges (Masonic and Illuminist) and the membership of the Jacobin clubs in the Empire. These Jacobin clubs would leave the reform program of Josephinism behind in favor of a more radical reordering of state and society. Reinalter, “Josephinismus, Geheimgesellschaften und Jakobinismus,” 64. 68. Epstein, Genesis of German Conservatism, 100. 69. Sternberg related this story as an event that occurred in 1783. The actual date of the incident, which was documented by others, is 1785; 1783 is the year of Sternberg’s induction into the Regensburg lodge. 70. Schüttler, Die Mitglieder des Illuminatenordens, 150. See also Haubelt, Kašpar Šternberk, 21–22. 71. K. Sternberg, Leben, 26. Yet another indication that Sternberg was far more sympathetic and connected to Weishaupt and the Illuminists than he later claimed. 72. Epstein, Genesis of German Conservatism, 102–104. 73. Schüttler, Die Mitglieder des Illuminatenordens, 10. 74. Epstein, Genesis of German Conservatism, 104; Schüttler, Die Mitglieder des Illuminatenordens, 10. 75. There is a considerable amount of scholarship that has picked up on the other important sources for reform, among them what Scott refers to as traditional deductive

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philosophy, cameralism, and Italian reformist ideas. Although the entire reform agenda ought not to be explained solely in terms of the French Enlightenment, it is clear that French and German political thought had a profound effect on Joseph II as well as on the enlightened advisors surrounding Maria Theresa. See Scott, “Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy.” 76. For representative accounts see von Aretin, Der Aufgeklärte Absolutismus; Beales, Joseph II; Ignaz Beidtel, Geschichte der österreichischen Staatsverwaltung; Paul Bernard, Jesuits and Jacobins; Blanning, Joseph II and Enlightened Despotism; Brader-Rottmann, Die Reformen Kaiser Josephs II; Drabek, Plaschka, and Wandruszka, Ungarn und Österreich unter Maria Theresa und Josef II; Fejtö, Joseph II; Müller, “Der Aufgeklärte Absolutismus”; Padover, Revolutionary Emperor; B. Rieger, “Císárˇ Josef II a Cˇeský tru˚n,”; Rozdolski, Die Grosse Steuer- und Agrarreform Josefs II; Scott, Enlightened Absolutism; Walter, Die Geschichte der österreichischen Zentralverwaltung; Wangermann, From Joseph II to the Jacobin Trials. 77. Quoted in Blanning, Joseph II, 57. 78. Scott and Stores, “Introduction: The Consolidation.” 79. Evans, Habsburg Monarchy, 233. Evans also makes the point that the relative lack of princely Bohemian families was evidence of this “slighting” of the Bohemians. 80. Hassenpflug-Elzholz, Böhmen und die böhmischen, passim. 81. Hassenpflug-Elzholz, Böhmen und die böhmische Stände, 434. Based on a statistical treatment of the Bohemian Estates in 1741–1742, Hassenpflug-Elzholz concludes that it is incontrovertible that the great majority of nobles tied exclusively to Bohemia, in other words, those who represented Bohemian interests, stood by Charles Albert of Bavaria. 82. Wright, Serf, Seigneur, and Sovereign, 31. 83. Wright, Serf, Seigneur, and Sovereign, 25. 84. Hassenpflug-Elzholz, Böhmen und die böhmische Stände, 434. 85. Seton-Watson, History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 143. 86. Seton-Watson, History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 144. 87. For an excellent biography of the Chancellor, see Szabo, Kaunitz and Enlightened Absolutism, passim. 88. Quoted in Stekl, “Österreichs Hocharistokratie,” 148. 89. Seton-Watson, History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 145. 90. This undid the system that had been in place since 1627, and which had protected the autonomy and particularity of Bohemian nobility. See Procházka, Genealogisches Handbuch, 1990, 17. 91. Hufton, Europe, 167. 92. Maria Theresa lost Silesia but retained Opava, Krnov, and Lisa. The Czech ethnic core of the Bohemian lands was retained, despite the large territorial loss, with the remaining lands corresponding roughly to the territory held under the Prˇemyslids. 93. Haugwitz was himself a student of Austrian cameralism, and shared Emperor Joseph’s hostility toward the provincial Estates. See Scott, “Reform,” 152. 94. Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, 36. 95. Menzel, Die nationale Entwicklung in Böhmen, 25. 96. Prince Joseph Khevenhüller-Metsch, quoted in Scott, “Reform,” 155. Scott makes clear that the Seven Years’ War was the real undoing of the reform program, as it left the finances of the Monarchy in ruins, which de facto returned some political power back to the provincial Estates by virtue of their right to approve taxes. P. G. M. Dickson also provides evidence that the financial weakness of the Monarchy, exacerbated by the notes to pages 66–70

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Seven Years’ War, allowed the nobility to regain its footing in the bureaucracy somewhat as well. See Dickson, Finance and Government. See also Szabo, “Reevaluating the Habsburg Monarchy.” 97. Melton, “The Bohemian and Austrian Nobilities,” 143. 98. The reduction of feast days agreed to in 1751 was supported by a reforming papacy until the death of Benedict XIV in 1758. His successor, Clement XIII, was less inclined to support these “innovations.” Wangermann, “Reform Catholicism,” 129. 99. K. Sternberg, Leben, 4. It has been suggested that the educational reform was not purely for the good of the illiterate. Education was, in effect, a method of social discipline and absolutist control. See Melton, Absolutism, passim. 100. This school reform is an important component in many accounts of the national revival in Bohemia. The spectacular success, as James van Horn Melton calls it, of the educational reform in Bohemia meant a new, literate, population that was willing and able to absorb nationalist ideology. The number of parish schools in Bohemia increased from 1,200 in 1772 to 2,400 by 1790, so that roughly two-thirds of all school-age children were attending. Melton, “From Image to Word,” 96. 101. K. Sternberg, Leben, 4. 102. K. Sternberg, Leben, 5. 103. K. Sternberg, Leben, 5. Joseph Sonnenfels (1733–1817) was an important figure of the Austrian Enlightenment, as well as a fantastic social climber, and had many connections, both friendly and hostile, among the Bohemian nobility. Sonnenfels was a member of the Viennese Masonic lodge “Zur wahren Eintracht,” was president of the Royal-Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, and published “Der Mann ohne Vorurtheil” in 1765. Sonnenfels’s career is indicative of the period in that he could move according to his abilities, despite being first generation Catholic and noble, yet was not truly a member of his varied circles. In addition, he had a serious falling out with his Masonic brother Francis Joseph Thun-Hohenstein, a powerful Bohemian noble, about the creation of a “national” Austrian lodge. See Sonnenfels, Aufklärung als Sozialpolitik, 9–18. 104. Quoted in Blanning, Joseph II, 59. 105. Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, 42–43. 106. For a complete discussion of the dissolution of the holdings of the clerical houses in Bohemia see T. Bílek, Statky a jmeˇní kollejí jesuitských klašteru˚. For a series of essays on the impact of reform and the relationship of the church to the state and civil society, see Seibt, Bohemia Sacra. 107. Menzel, Die nationale Entwicklung in Böhmen, 30. Kerner claims that of 154 monasteries belonging to 25 orders in Bohemia, Joseph closed 39, reduced 31, scheduled 14 more for reduction, and left 67 alone. Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, 43. 108. Blanning, Joseph II, 65. 109. Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, 154. 110. Good, Economic Rise of the Habsburg Empire, 34. 111. K. Sternberg, Leben, 20. 112. K. Sternberg, Leben, 27. 113. K. Sternberg, Leben, 27. 114. Physiocrats believed that wealth of the state rested on agriculture. Joseph believed that smaller landholdings would be more productive, and yield more for the state as well. The magnates, of course, differed in their opinion, and even Sternberg believed that Joseph misunderstood some basic agricultural tenets.

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115. K. Sternberg, Leben, 27. See also Fejtö, Joseph II. 116. K. Sternberg, Leben, 28. 117. Wangermann, From Joseph II to the Jacobin Trials, 137. 118. Kaspar Sternberg/ANM/ŠM/199/Materialien. 119. K. Sternberg, Leben, 28. 120. Menzel, Die nationale Entwicklung in Böhmen, 24. 121. K. Sternberg, Leben, 28. 122. K. Sternberg, Leben, 28. 123. K. Sternberg, Leben, 34, 38. 124. One of the most important sources for the Diet and the tenor of the spring opposition was Francis Sternberg’s diary of the event. Both Robert Kerner, in his work Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, and Czech works like Prášek, Cˇesko-Moravská Kronika, relied heavily on Sternberg’s recounting of these events. Unfortunately, this source is not available, and may be permanently lost. 125. See Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, 86, 102. 126. Second desideria, quoted in Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, 125. 127. Journal of the Diet, March 9, 1790. Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, 88. 128. Count Clary, quoted in Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, 86 and 110. There were others, Count Chotek among them, who understood that the Estates were not truly representative, and as such were only a small part of the nation. 129. Drabek, “Die Desiderien der böhmischen Stände,” 133. 130. Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, 104. 131. Drabek, “Die Desiderien der böhmischen Stände,” 135. 132. Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, 131. 133. Kann, Peoples of the Eastern Habsburg Lands, 195. 134. Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, 133. 135. Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, 132. 136. Johann Buquoy, quoted in Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, 93. 137. Marxist historiography condemned the claims of the Diet as purely feudal attempts at reestablishing privileges. See, for example, Kutnar, “Prˇedehra velkého leopoldovského.” For an alternate, more positive interpretation, see Drabek, “Die Desiderien der böhmischen Stände,” and Antonín Okácˇ, Cˇeský Sneˇm a vláda prˇed brˇeznem 1848. Drabek claims that the actions of the Diet have been condemned because they are viewed from the perspective of the liberal, bourgeois parliamentarianism and representative democracy of the interwar period. 138. Urfus, “K vzájemnému pomeˇru cˇeského státoprávního programu”; Drabek, “Die Desiderien der böhmischen Stände,” 133. 139. Historische Aktenstücke, quoted in Drabek, “Die Desiderien der böhmischen Stände,” 134. 140. Kutnar, “Prˇedehra,” 684; Drabek, “Die Desiderien der böhmischen Stände,” 133. See also Korˇalka, Prˇehled deˇjin Cˇeskoslovenska. 141. Lemberg, Wege und Wandlungen, 101. 142. Reported in the diary of Francis Sternberg. See Kerner, Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century, 70. 143. Lemberg, Wege und Wandlungen, 101. 144. Lemberg, Wege und Wandlungen, 107. 145. K. Sternberg, Leben, 34. notes to pages 74–80

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146. K. Sternberg, Leben, 29. 147. K. Sternberg, Leben, 27. Sternberg also remarked in his notes that what appeared to be considerable unrest in 1787 would be seen as perfect calm in the second decade of the nineteenth century. To observers like Sternberg, it was impossible to perceive the coming excesses. ANM/ŠM/199a/Materialien. 148. K. Sternberg, Leben, 31. 149. K. Sternberg, Leben, 32. 150. K. Sternberg, Leben, 35. This remark is reminiscent of the Illuminist writings of Weishaupt. Knowledge could be beneficial only when paired with moral regeneration. 151. K. Sternberg, Leben, 38. 152. Quoted in Epstein, Genesis of German Conservatism, 431. Epstein refers to Francis as a “stupid and unimaginative defender of the status quo.” 153. Jones, Longman Companion to the French Revolution, 195. 154. K. Sternberg, Leben, 38. Francis was not crowned Holy Roman Emperor until July. 155. K. Sternberg, Leben, 39. The bulk of emigration took place after 1793. Interestingly enough, when the breakdown is analyzed, 58 percent of the emigrants were from the Third Estate, versus 25 percent clergy and 16.8 percent nobility (10 percent of whole were military). See Jones, Longman Companion, 199. 156. K. Sternberg, Leben, 40. Count Custine was recalled to Paris after a series of defeats, and was imprisoned and executed in August 1793. See Jones, Longman Companion, 336. 157. K. Sternberg, Leben, 41. 158. K. Sternberg, Leben, 41. 159. K. Sternberg, Leben, 42. 160. K. Sternberg, Leben, 43. 161. Menzel, Die nationale Entwicklung in Böhmen, 52–53. 162. K. Sternberg, Leben, 44. By Germany Sternberg meant the Holy Roman Empire. 163. See Blanning, The French Revolution in Germany. 164. K. Sternberg, Leben, 44. 165. K. Sternberg, Leben, 47. 166. K. Sternberg, Leben, 49. 167. Sheehan, German History, 241. 168. K. Sternberg, Leben, 48. 169. Ritter von Lang, Memoiren, quoted in Sheehan, German History, 241. Sheehan also quotes E. R. Huber’s Dokumente that by 1803, when the final settlement was reached, only three ecclesiastical territories remained. On the right bank of the Rhine, three electorates, nineteen bishoprics, and forty-four abbeys were gone. Sheehan, German History, 243. 170. K. Sternberg, Leben, 52. 171. SOA/RA Šternberk/13/157. Joachim Sternberg was not to hold these positions on his own, and was to have complete control from the civilian authorities, although he was no longer active in the military, and certainly commanded no army. It is a curious blending of the circumstances of war and the need to protect the border, and the obvious traditional relationship of the monarch to the nobility. 172. K. Sternberg, Leben, 53–54. 173. K. Sternberg, Leben, 63. 174. He met most of them through the connection of Alexander von Humboldt, another influential German friend of Sternberg’s. By name, Laplace, Bertholet, Lacepede, Cuvier; and the botanists Ventenat, Desfontaines, De Candolle, Du Petit-Thouars, and Thouin.

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175. K. Sternberg, Leben, 64. 176. K. Sternberg, Leben, 64. 177. K. Sternberg, Leben, 66. 178. K. Sternberg, Leben, 67. 179. K. Sternberg, Leben, 68. Emphasis original. 180. ANM/ŠM/199a/Materialien. 181. K. Sternberg, Leben, 74–75. 182. K. Sternberg, Leben, 75. 183. ANM/ŠM/199a/Materialien. 184. K. Sternberg, Leben, 78. 185. K. Sternberg, Leben, 79. 186. K. Sternberg, Leben, 80.

Chapter 3 1. J. Sternberg, Reise nach den ungarischen Bergstädten, iv. In July and August of 1808, Kaspar Sternberg traveled and hiked with Joachim, who had already been in Carinthia and the Italian Alps, around Klagenfurt, arriving back in Brˇezina on the September 10, and, after a short halt, Kaspar returned to Regensburg. Whether from these strenuous activities or as a result of old injuries, Joachim Sternberg contracted a fever (Zehrfieber) that worsened steadily. He had often suffered from bouts of fever, as well as severe rheumatism. Sternberg claimed that his brother was stubborn where doctors were concerned, and that Joachim preferred consulting his own books and trying to heal himself, especially once Johann Mayer died. Joachim died unexpectedly on October 18, and suddenly Kaspar was responsible for the family estates. For the first time, he found himself in independent possession of an Oekonomie-Gut that possessed manufactures as well, and plans for the next year had to be made. Sternberg immediately made plans to plant a garden and build greenhouses, but his plans were halted by the imposed conditions of the war. 2. Jacob, Radical Enlightenment, 21. 3. Koerner, Nature and Nation. See also Sörlin, “National and International Aspects.” 4. In his autobiography, Kaspar Sternberg cited these as momentous intellectual watersheds. K. Sternberg, Leben des Grafen Kaspar Sternberg. See also his remarks to the Meeting of German Naturalists and Doctors, 1836. ANM/ŠM/199b. 5. Jacob, Radical Enlightenment, 31. 6. Jacob, Radical Enlightenment, 22. 7. K. Sternberg to Goethe, January 1824. Briefwechsel, 77. 8. K. Sternberg to Goethe, January 1825, Ausgewählte Werke des Grafen Kaspar von Sternberg, 103. 9. Goethe to Sternberg, November 1827, Briefwechsel, 148. 10. Abhandlungen der k. böhmischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, vol. II (1811). 11. ANM/ŠM/199a/5/18. 12. ANM/ŠM/199a/5/20. 13. Kaspar Sternberg made these remarks to an assembly of naturalists in Prague in 1836. ANM/ŠM/199b. Notice, “men of every Estate” was still just a slice of the population, as the fourth Estate were royal town representatives, and the mass of Bohemians lay for all intents and purposes off the status scale altogether. 14. Jacob, Radical Enlightenment, 246. notes to pages 85–92

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15. Schamschula, Die Anfänge der tschechischen Erneuerung, 114. 16. Köpeczi, “Vorwort,” 8–9. For an excellent discussion of the beginnings of modern historical writing in Bohemia see the first chapter, “The Presence of the Past,” in Agnew, Origins of the Czech National Renascence, 19–50. For a detailed treatment of the impact of learned societies on the writing of history in Central Europe see Kraus, Vernunft und Geschichte. 17. Kinský, Erinnerung, 206. 18. Kinský, Erinnerung, 203–204. 19. Kinský, Erinnerung, 201. 20. Schamschula, Die Anfänge der tschechischen Erneuerung, 114. 21. This coincided in the 1780s with increased Germanization. German was imposed as the language of instruction at Prague University in 1784. 22. ANM/ŠM/199b. 23. In this scientific societies retained their universalism. Benefits that accrued to the nation were in the interests of all. See Crawford, Shinn, and Sorlin, “Nationalization.” It must be noted that societies preserved some measure of internationalism by virtue of the fact that all had foreign members, and that the members of the Bohemian learned societies were at the same time members of foreign societies as well. 24. J. McClellan, Science Reorganized, xxii. 25. J. McClellan, Science Reorganized, xvii. 26. SOA/RA Šternberk/14. 27. For an exploration of the eighteenth-century nexus of science and cultural beliefs see the essays in W. Clark, Golinksi, and Schaeffer, Sciences in Enlightened Europe. 28. Bernard Fay explains this by suggesting that the learned and scientific societies were all molded by Masonic influences, and the Freemasons combined the sometimes contradictory ardent beliefs in nation and humanity. In the eighteenth century these need not be contradictory as both were seen as “legitimate forms of public spirit.” Fay, “Learned Societies,” 265. 29. These are the terms Kaspar Sternberg used to describe the proponents of scientific advances in Bohemia. ANM/ŠM/181. 30. The phrase “enlightened Bohemian farmers” comes from Schnabel, Statistische Darstellung von Böhmen, 28. Parts of this section draw from my previously published article “Mediating Progress in the Provinces”. 31. Špatný, Strucˇný deˇjepis c.k. vhs, 3. 32. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/1770. 33. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/1787/61. 34. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/1787. 35. See Fuss, Geschichte der k.k. ekonomisch-patriotischen Gesellschaft. 36. Schindler and Bonß, “Praktische Aufklärung-Ökonomische Sozietäten,” 256. 37. Schnabel listed the members as thirteen honorary, forty-one actual, and eighty-six correspondent members. Schnabel, Statistische Darstellung von Böhmen, 29. 38. Cˇasopis a Kalendarˇe. 39. SUA/VHS/carton 39/190–191. 40. SUA/VHS/Knihy. See also Volf, Významní cˇlenové. 41. ANM/ŠM/181/Diplomy. 42. See Teich, Královská cˇeská spolecˇnost nauk. 43. SUA/VHS/Kniha 3/1788 (88–115).

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44. SUA/VHS/Kniha 3/1788 (88–115). 45. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/99. 46. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/107–108. 47. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/110. 48. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/122. 49. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/126. 50. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/128. 51. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/132. 52. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/132. 53. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/133. 54. SUA/VHS/carton 39/190–191. 55. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/167. 56. SUA/VHS/Kniha 1/163. 57. D’Elvert, 2. 58. Or as d’Elvert reports, the standard quip for Bohemia was “Schaferei, Brauhaus und Teich machen die bohmischen Herren reich.” These changes were built on the important improvements introduced earlier, particularly the standardization of weights and measures, the slow improvement and construction of roads, improvement of the postal system, and the removal of internal tolls. 59. D’Elvert, 6. 60. Francis Anton Nostitz was also the builder of the Estates’ Theater in Prague in 1781. See chapter 4 in this volume. The actual date of the Society’s establishment is debated in the literature. This debate is based on an incongruent report in the Society’s records on when the first literary reports were printed, and the documents in the Society’s archive do not shed much light on the problem. For an overview of the debate and what has been written on this question, see Kalousek, Geschichte d. b. Gesellschaft, and Jaroslav Prokeš, Pocˇátky cˇeské spolecˇnosti nauk. This was not the first learned society in the Czech lands. In 1746, Joseph Freiherr von Petrasch established the Societas incognitorum in terris austriacis in Olomouc. See Vávra, “Die Olmützer Societas.” 61. Ignac von Born (1742–1791) was a lesser noble educated by the Piarists and Jesuits. Influenced greatly by his friendship with Joseph von Sonnenfels, he studied law in Vienna and Prague, and worked as an assessor in the state mint in Prague. By 1770, he was a brother of the Prague lodge “Zu den drei gekrönten Säulen.” He was increasingly interested in natural history and mineralogy, and by 1788, his house in Bohemia included a “priceless coin collection, a choice library, a theater and a botanical garden.” In 1786, Born became “Meister vom Stuhl” of the Viennese lodge “Zur wahren Eintracht,” and prefect of the Illuminati in Vienna. Schaller, Topographie des Königreiches Böhmen, 155. Francis Joseph Kinský (1739–1805) was the educator who appears in the previous chapters. Johann Mayer (1754–1807) was a famous doctor in Prague, who had also been a councillor to the last king of Poland. Joseph Mayer (1752–1814) was Johann’s elder brother and the first professor of natural history at Prague University. Gelasius Dobner (1719–1790) was a Piarist, and published one of the first critical history texts examining Hájek’s chronicle. Francis Martin Pelcl (1734–1801) was the tutor of both the Sternbergs and the Nostitzes, and occupied the first Chair for Czech language at Prague University. Josef Dobrovský (1753–1829) was a famous Slavicist and an intimate of the Mayer, Czernin, and Sternberg households. Nikolaus Voigt (1733–1787) was also a Piarist, and was best known for his work in Bohemian numismatics. notes to pages 99–104

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62. Quoted in Zacˇek, “Virtuosi of Bohemi,” 151. 63. Abhandlungen einer Privatgesellschaft in Böhmen, Introduction. 64. Joseph claimed that the time was not right for such a Society to be established, especially as there was no other such institution in the Monarchy. This seriously disappointed and angered the proponents, particularly Johann Mayer, who went as one of the Society’s members to plead their case before the emperor. Mayer was furious at what he saw as Joseph’s specious reasoning. According to Mayer the time could not be better, considering the Society was already flourishing. 65. Cˇ SAV/KCˇ SN/1. Einrichtung und Gesetze, 4. 66. Cˇ SAV/KCˇ SN/1. Einrichtung und Gesetze, 5. 67. Cˇ SAV/KCˇ SN/1. Einrichtung und Gesetze, 6. 68. Quoted in Teich, “Joachim Sternberg,” 440. 69. This was at the heart of the Society’s refusal to merge with the Patriotic-Economic Society. 70. Dobrovský, Reise, 2. 71. Dobrovský, Reise, 2. 72. For historical accounts see Beˇlina, “Cesta Hrabeˇte Šternberka na Rus”; Teich, “Joachim Sternberg,” 439–456. Joachim Sternberg himself published accounts of different aspects of the journey: Bemerkungen and Reise. Johann Mayer also serialized Joachim’s letters from Petersburg in the Sammlung physicalischer Aufsätze. 73. Beˇlina, “Cesta hrabeˇte Šternberka,” 23. 74. Cˇ SAV/KCˇ SN/1/1790. 75. “Bitte und Empfehlungsschreiben für Dobrovský und Graf Joachim Sternberg,” quoted in Teich, “Joachim Sternberg,” 440. 76. “Bitte und Empfehlungsschreiben,” quoted in Teich, “Joachim Sternberg,” 440. 77. Lampadius became a professor of chemistry in Freiburg, and in 1797 won the essay contest of the Bohemian Society of Sciences for his work on iron ore processing. Teich, “Joachim Sternberg,” 441. 78. Teich suggests that the only reason for aristocratic involvement in scientific activity was that it was essentially in their interest—that they were the section of the population who stood to benefit the most from the alliance of science and manufacturing. For the slightly later period see also Hroch, “Social Composition.” 79. Kinský had also advocated that young nobles choose to be educated particularly in mineralogy, as they could expect the most use from this field compared to any other. Bohemia was an important center for mining and mining research, and nobles needed to take advantage of this. Kinský, Erinnerung, 221–222. 80. Abhandlungen der k. böhmischen Gesellschaft den Wissenschaften (1811), 51. 81. Although the authorities had their concerns about Sternberg’s activities, they had left him alone through most of his journey, but the scientific instruments and letters he had sent to Kaspar never arrived, and it was assumed that the Russians confiscated everything. 82. SOA/RA Šternberk/13/15. This report will be discussed further below. See the section “Technology and National Competitiveness.” 83. J. Sternberg, Bemerkungen, 10. 84. Teich, “Joachim Sternberg,” 441. 85. J. Sternberg, Bemerkungen, 72–73. 86. J. Sternberg, Bemerkungen, 132.

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87. J. Sternberg, Bemerkungen, 17. 88. J. Sternberg, Bemerkungen, 88. 89. Kalousek, Geschichte d. b. Gesellschaft, 11. Reinalter, “Ignac von Born,” 159. For Ignac Born in particular the link was more than implicit, and he worked to create a Masonic academy of sciences within the Viennese lodge, “Zur wahren Eintracht.” See also Ernest Krivanec, Die Freimaurerei in Prag zur Zeit der strikten Observanz 1764–1780. 90. Reinalter, “Ignac von Born,” 160. 91. Cˇ SAV/KCˇ SN/33/57/20. The society would send out invitations announcing the topic to be discussed. For an overview of the work the Society published, particularly in the hard sciences, see Mikuláš Teich, Královská cˇeská spolecˇnost nauk a pocˇátky výdeckého pru˚zkumu pˇrirody v Cˇ echách. 92. Cˇ SAV/KCˇ SN/33/57/60. For a complete discussion of the papers presented to the society see Kalousek, Geschichte d. b. Gesellschaft. 93. Abhandlungen der k. böhmischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (Prague, 1804). 94. Cˇ SAV/KCˇ SN/33/57/61. 95. Historische Preisaufgabe. Cˇ SAV/KCˇ SN/33/57/60–65. 96. Kalousek, Geschichte d. b. Gesellschaft, 24. As Joseph Kalousek writes, “No one at that time considered the submission of writings of the Society in Czech; this was a result of the terrible state and complete backwardness of this language. . . . The educated man, even if he was a born Bohemian and the best patriot, did not know how to express his scientific thoughts in his mother tongue. . . . ” 97. Quoted in Kalousek, Geschichte d. b. Gesellschaft, 25. 98. Cˇ SAV/KCˇ SN/33/57/60. 99. Voss, “Die Akademien,” 64. For a discussion of the impact of the prize competitions on the Prussian academy, for example, see Grau, Die Preußische Akademie, 103–105. 100. Cˇ SAV/KCˇ SN/33/57/64. 101. ANM/ŠM/181 (1817). 102. ANM/ŠM/181 (1817). 103. Cˇ SAV/KCˇ SN/33/57/18. 104. Quoted in Teich, “Royal Bohemian Society of Science,” 172. 105. Quoted in Teich, “Joachim Sternberg,” 444. 106. Obviously, not only Bohemia was the focus of the mercantile agenda, and in fact the Habsburgs worked for the well-being of the “Gesammtmonarchie.” Austrian scientists involved in the establishment and maintenance of the imperial “Naturialien Kabinette” made explicit references to the need for this naturalist collection to reflect and improve Austrian stature. See Kaspar Sternberg’s notes to Count Wrbna, ANM/ŠM/185 (1806). For discussion of mercantilism as nationalizing force, see Szporluk, Communism and Nationalism. 107. Buquoy, Das Nationalwirtschaftliche Prinzip. 108. Buquoy, Die Theorie der Nationalwirtschaft, 2. 109. Buquoy, Nationalwirtschaft, 2. 110. Buquoy, Nationalwirtschaft, 3. 111. Freudenberger, “Industrialization,” 347. 112. This was how Philipp von Hoernick described the ideal state for the Monarchy in his patriotic, mercantilistic tract, Österreich über alles, wenn es nur will. Quoted in Freudenberger, “Industrialization,” 349. Hoernick had questioned why a state so rich in resources had lagged so far behind. Only a mismanagement of economic affairs could notes to pages 109–114

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explain it, and Hoernick proposed methods for increasing specie surplus. For a discussion of Hoernick’s principles, as well as the proposals of other mercantilists, see Klíma, “Mercantilism in the Habsburg Monarchy.” 113. This was what Linnaeus sought to redress by his attempts to adapt foreign crops and more importantly to identity indigenous plants that might serve as a substitute for imported ones. See Koerner, Nature and Nation, iv. 114. Teich, “Royal Bohemian Society of Science,” 167. 115. Sternberg, Address to the Society of Sciences, 1817. ANM/ŠM/181. 116. Teich, “Royal Bohemian Society of Science,” 165. Here we have accepted Herman Freudenberger’s use of “entrepreneur,” which he has taken from Joseph Schumpeter, namely, that an entrepreneur is someone who, through his desire for innovation, represents the “endogenous force that pushes an economy away from its more or less stationary state and propels it instead into the realm of economic growth.” Freudenberger, “Progressive Bohemian and Moravian Aristocracy,” 119–120. 117. Freudenberger, “Industrialization,” 353. 118. Myška, “Der Adel der böhmischen Länder,” 180. 119. Freudenberger, “Industrialization,” 355. 120. Freudenberger, “Progressive Aristocracy,” 120. 121. Freudenberger discusses why Buquoy promoted a wood steam engine, which James Watt had already shown to be unusable for any duration. Freudenberger, “Progressive Aristocracy,” 122–123. 122. For a further discussion of Buquoy’s efforts vis-à-vis steam power in Bohemia, see Ederer, “Snahy Buquoyovy.” 123. SOA/RA Šternberk/13/156. 124. SOA/RA Šternberk/13/156. 125. Abhandlungen der k. böhmischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (1811), 57. 126. Nostitz, Versuch über Armenversorgungsanstalten, iii. 127. This document is undated. 128. ANM/ŠM/181. 129. ANM/ŠM/181. 130. ANM/ŠM/181. 131. ANM/ŠM/181. 132. K. Sternberg, Leben, 136. 133. Freudenberger, “Progressive Aristocracy,” 117. 134. ANM/ŠM/114/3: Entwurf der Statuten der k.k. Priv. Prager Eisenbahngesellschaft. 135. Myška, “Der Adel der böhmischen Länder,” 181. 136. Smith, Theories of Nationalism, 90. Based on Lerner, Passing of Traditional Society. 137. Smith, Theories, 91. 138. Fay, “Learned Societies,” 260. Fay claims that they often did nothing more than talk. 139. Fay, “Learned Societies,” 260. 140. ANM/ŠM/64. 141. ANM/ŠM/199a/Bruchstücke. 142. ANM/ŠM/199a/Materialien. 143. ANM/ŠM/181. 144. K. Sternberg, Leben, 28. 145. For a discussion of Kinský’s relationship with Born see Haubelt, “František Josef Kinský,” 560–577.

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146. ANM/ŠM/199/Materialien. 147. ANM/ŠM/190. Francis Sternberg, a gifted numismatist and scholar, was also president of the Patriotic Friends of the Arts, which will be discussed in the following chapter. 148. There is a whole series of letters from Gruber to Sternberg detailing the negotiations he was conducting for different collections and possessions. ANM/ŠM/64. 149. Abhandlungen der k. böhmischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (1811), 52. 150. Abhandlungen der k. böhmische Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (1811), 23. 151. McClellan, Science Reorganized, xxv. 152. K. Sternberg, Leben, 44. 153. Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” 136. 154. McClellan, Science Reorganized, xxv. 155. October 12, 1829. ANM/ŠM/181/Diplomy. 156. K. Sternberg, Leben, 47. Once Kaspar was firmly engaged in the pursuit of his new scientific world, the letters between the two are virtually all on scientific experiments and plans for future investigations. ANM/ŠM/190. 157. ANM/ŠM/199a. 158. K. Sternberg, Leben, 81–83. 159. K. Sternberg, Leben, 84. 160. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment, 147. 161. It was apparently a considerable fest, and Sternberg describes the fashions, music, verses read, and so forth. ANM/ŠM/188. 162. K. Sternberg, Leben, 104. 163. Sternberg had gotten to know Lindacker in his work on the coal mining board. Béla Pražáková, Kašpar Hrabeˇ Šternberk (Prague: Literární Archiv Památníku Národního Pisemnictví, 1987). 164. K. Sternberg, Leben, 106. 165. K. Sternberg, Leben, 108. Kaspar describes being taken on by Francis in his “kleines Haus.” This was an apartment in the Sternberg palace in Malá Strana. The palace at Hradcˇany housed the collections of the Patriotic Friends, and is to this day the primary national collection of European art. See chapter 4 in this volume. 166. See Palacký, Die Grafen Kaspar and Franz Sternberg. 167. It was here on a December night that the plans for the journals were laid down, with the particular support of Francis Sternberg. Zacˇek, Palacký, 19. 168. K. Sternberg, Leben, 120. 169. K. Sternberg, Leben, 120. 170. K. Sternberg, Leben, 121. 171. Sternberg to Goethe, May 26, 1824. Briefwechsel, 83. 172. Kalousek, Geschichte d. b. Gesellschaft, 24. 173. Kaspar Sternberg, Botanische Wanderung in den Böhmer-Wald (Nuremberg, 1806), 4.

Chapter 4 1. For a discussion of the German case see Hoffmann, “German Art Museum.” 2. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann refers to this “prodigious consumption” as a “doctrine of magnificence,” that rationalized the collecting of art and objects as a critical way to shore up the prestige of the prince. Kaufmann, Court, Cloister and City, 173. notes to pages 120–129

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3. Fucˇíková, “Collection of Rudolf II,” 53. 4. Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs, 148. 5. Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs, 148. 6. Kaufmann, Court, Cloister and City, 171. 7. Balsinger, “Kunst- und Wunderkammern,” 3. 8. Balsinger, “Wunderkammern,” 4–5. See also Kaufmann, Court, Cloister and City, 178. 9. Duindam, “Courts of the Austrian Habsburgs,” 182. 10. Findlen, “Cabinets, Collecting and Natural Philosophy,” 212. 11. Fucˇíková, “Collection of Rudolf II,” 53. 12. Bukovinská, “Kunstkammer of Rudolf II,” 206–207. 13. Findlen, “Cabinets, Collecting and Natural Philosophy,” 209–211. 14. Balsinger, Wunderkammern, 13. 15. Balsinger, Wunderkammern, 17–18. Andrew McClellan also discusses the new debates about museum practices that emerged in eighteenth-century Paris in regard to classification, display, and preservation. McClellan, Inventing the Louvre, 1. 16. Balsinger, Wunderkammern, 20. 17. Because production of the visual arts entailed rules and learned principles, it was regarded as a Wissenschaft in Central Europe. See Kaufmann, Court, Cloister and City, 168. 18. Kaufmann, Court, Cloister and City, 170–171. 19. For a discussion of the overarching trends in art and art criticism, see Chambers, History of Taste. 20. Slavícˇek, “Artis Pictoriae Amatores,” 98. 21. The Dutchman Karel van Mander, quoted in Trevor-Roper, Princes and Patrons, 121. 22. This discussion is based on several sources. See Pekarˇ, Kniha o Kosti, and Slavícˇek, Artis Pictoriae Amatores. 23. Slavícˇek, “Artis Pictoriae Amatores” in Artis Pictoriae Amatores, 134. 24. The size of the art collection was impressive. At the turn of the seventeenth century, the collection comprised some 749 works of art. Slavícˇek, Artis Pictoriae Amatores, 380. 25. Slavícˇek, Artis Pictoriae Amatores, 378. 26. Wirth, Doba beˇlohorská a Albrecht z Valdštejna, 172–192. 27. Slavícˇek, Artis Pictoriae Amatores, 135. 28. For a discussion about changes to the German art market, see Ketelson, “Art Auctions.” 29. McClellan, Inventing the Louvre, 7. 30. Quoted in Karp, Kreamer and Lavine, Museums and Communities, 13. Taken from Crow, Painters and Public Life, 5. 31. Sherman, Worthy Monuments, 13. See also Karp, Museums and Communities, 21; Rosenblum, Transformations. 32. McClellan, Inventing the Louvre, 12. 33. McClellan, Inventing the Louvre, 2. 34. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quoted in the introduction to Sauer, Ausgewählte Werke des Grafen Kaspar Sternberg, xxiii. Goethe himself, as much as he admired the work that Francis Sternberg had done in Bohemia, never actually met him. 35. Quoted in Hojda, “Patriae et Musis,” 310. 36. Hojda, “Patriae et Musis,” 310. 37. Wallraf was subsequently the founder of the Cologne Museum.

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38. Stanislava Nováková, Chronolog, SOA Trebon-Jindrichuv Hradec, RA Cernín, 4. 39. Czernin was not alone in this. Joachim Sternberg was reputed to be a very gifted flutist as well. 40. Beyond his obvious accomplishments in the cultural sphere, Czernin was also known for his services during the wars against Napoleon. Three times during the wars he converted his opulent palace beyond Prague Castle into a hospital, and in 1809 he established a defensive militia. His services were recognized by his acceptance into the Order of the Golden Fleece and his appointment as privy councillor in 1824. 41. Quoted in Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon. 42. Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon. 43. Slavícˇek, Artis Pictoriae Amatores, 63. 44. Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon. 45. Niels von Holst writes that Rudolf’s knowledge of art and restoration was “overpowering” and that Rudolf made Prague a center for collectors and dealers, even throwing open the doors of the castle to allow dealers to hold art markets in the “hallowed” halls of the Vladislav Hall. Holst, Creators, Collectors and Connoisseurs, 108. 46. Slavícˇek, Artis Pictoriae Amatores, 34. 47. For a discussion of how German collectors benefited by these sales, see CannonBrookes, “Patrons and Collectors.” 48. Slavícˇek, Artis Pictoriae Amatores, 35. 49. Slavícˇek, Artis Pictoriae Amatores, 35. 50. Slavícˇek, Artis Pictoriae Amatores, 143. 51. Slavícˇek, Artis Pictoriae Amatores, 180. 52. SOA/JH/Cˇernín/JR/404/1796. 53. SOA/JH/Cˇernín/JR/404/1796. 54. SOA/JH/Cˇernín/JR/404/1796. 55. SOA/JH/Cˇernín/JR/404/1796. 56. SOA/JH/Cˇernín/JR/404/1796. 57. On Bergler’s tenure as director, see Volavka, Cˇeské malirˇství, 17–23, and Kotalík, Almanach Akademie vytvarnych umeˇní. 58. Hojda, “Patriae et Musis,” 405. 59. The founding contributors in 1796 were Georg Buquoy, Charles Clam-Martinitz, Rudolf Czernin, Jan Harrach, Francis Hartig, Francis Kinský, Dutchess Kurenská, FrancisAntonin Kolowrat-Novohradsky, Adolf Kaunitz, Antonin Lobkowitz, Joseph Lobkowitz, Alois Lichtenstein, Václav Mayer (the prelate of Strahov), Friedrich Nostitz, Václav Paar, Heinrich Rottenhan, Archbishop Wilhelm Florentin Salm, Francis Sternberg, Joachim Sternberg, Joseph Schwarzenberg, Joseph Thun, Rudolph Wrbna, and Francis Wrtba. 60. Bouzková, Cˇinnost SVPU, appendix. As Bouzková has shown, the list of significant contributors from the 1790s to the 1830s was nearly 150 patrons. 61. Hojda, “Patriae et Musis,” 406. 62. ANG/AA1519, Bouzková, Cˇinnost, appendix. 63. Hojda, “Patriae et Musis,” 403. 64. K. Sternberg, Ausgewählte Werke, xxiv. 65. Kotrbová, Ludvík Kohl, 80. 66. McClellan, Inventing the Louvre, 3–4. 67. Pearce, On Collecting, 126.

notes to pages 136–143

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68. Pearce, On Collecting, 126. 69. Pearce, On Collecting, 127. 70. F. Sternberg, Beiträge und Berichtigungen, introduction. 71. A. McClellan, “Nationalism,” 29. 72. Hojda, “Patriae et Musis,” 401. 73. Hojda, “Patriae et Musis,” 401. 74. De Ligne, Coup d’OEil, 56. Prince Charles-Joseph de Ligne, a well-known essayist and traveler, was sent into exile from his estate on the Rhine, Beloeil, in the course of the wars of the French Revolution. He eventually became a staple of Viennese society, and wrote extensively on the gardens of Central Europe. 75. Moore, Mitchell, and Turnbull, The Poetics of Gardens, 49. 76. The garden was a site for the great debate on reconciling scientific truth with religious belief, and this was most spectacularly true in the Neptunist-Volcanist debate on the nature and causes of geological change in the formation of the earth’s surface. Those who were willing to recognize the role and power of volcanic activity represented the volcanic mountain formation within the garden, whereas those who believed in a water-based, more gradual formation of the earth’s surface, the Neptunists, designed spaces accordingly. Volcanism represented the possibility of violent change, and this was associated by intellectuals like Goethe with the unsavory prospect of revolutionary change, an outcome that was for them equally as unappealing as an exploding volcano. Goethe saw in the earth’s surface what he wanted to see in its human communities: gradual, peaceful, progressive change. See Umbach, “Visual Culture,” 110–145. 77. This desire to subdue nature was present in earlier Renaissance gardens as well. The ability of the ruler to rearrange the face of the landscape, to deny its “natural” formation, and to control the flow of water was celebrated in the garden as a visible manifestation of absolute command. This included not just the subjection of nature to the will of the ruler, but even the subjection of time itself, as orangeries and glass houses allowed gardeners to defeat the exigencies of the seasons and establish eternal spring. The sovereignty of the ruler lay beyond the disorder of the natural world and the demands of the seasons. See Zimmermann, “Iconography.” 78. Reinhardt, “German Gardens,” 301. 79. De Ligne, Coup d’Oeil, 121. 80. H. F. Clark, “Eighteenth Century Elysiums,” 186. 81. Hajós, “Picture and Poetry,” 208. 82. De Ligne, Coup d’OEil, 24–25. 83. Saint-Lambert, “Les Saisons,” quoted in de Ligne, Coup d’OEil, 29. 84. This problematic notion of improvement is described clearly for the British case in R. Williams, Country and the City. 85. Pacáková-Hošt’álková et al. Zahrady a Parky. This is an encyclopedic treatment of gardens and parks in the Czech lands, and includes reference to a large number of gardens subsequently destroyed or lost to urban development. Although a large number of gardens retained elements of the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century geometric garden, a startling number were updated to be “in style” with the new English models. Brian Knox has also discussed the influence of increasing regard for “Englishness” and the desire for rejuvenation of the countryside. He has also argued, however, that there was only tentative acceptance of the English style in Bohemia, but the volume above suggests that his conclusion, based primarily on an older work by Z. Dokoupil, P. Naumann,

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D. Riedl, and Ivan Vesely, entitled, Historické Zahrady v Cˇechach a na Moraveˇ, needs to be reevaluated. See Knox, “Arrival of the English Landscape Garden.” 86. Roosevelt, Life on the Russian Country Estate, 79. 87. De Ligne, Coup d’Oeil, 236. 88. John Dixon Hunt ties the importance of travel and knowledge of other places to a shift in garden patronage from the nobility to the increasingly well-to-do bourgeoisie in the British case. The shift in patronage for him meant a shift in garden art and architecture away from that which emphasized and required the classical learning acquired on the Italian Grand Tour to a “universally translatable” sentimental style in the picturesque. If classical learning was elitist, “feelings” were “common to all mankind.” See Hunt, Gardens and the Picturesque, 122–136. 89. Steenbergen and Reh, Architecture and Landscape, 253. 90. De Ligne, Coup d’OEil, 58. 91. Albers, “Perception of Gardening,” 163–174. 92. Hirschfeld, Theorie der Gartenkunst. 93. Moore, Mitchell, and Turnbull, Poetics of Gardens, 1. 94. De Ligne, Coup d’OEil, 236. 95. De Ligne, Coup d’OEil, 237. 96. De Ligne, Coup d’OEil, 264–266. 97. Fiala, Hrady, Zámky, a Tvrze v Cˇechách, vol. 3, 506. 98. Pacáková-Hošt’álková et al., Zahrady a Parky, 413. 99. Steenbergen and Reh, Architecture and Landscape, 246. 100. Vercelloni, European Gardens, plate 87. 101. De Ligne, Coup d’OEil, 114–116. 102. Taylor, “Urban Public Parks,” 201. 103. De Ligne, Coup d’OEil, 134. 104. De Ligne, Coup d’OEil, 235. Similarly, the depictions of the Prater were heavily featured in the new landscape painting beginning to hold sway at the Viennese Academy. The Prater was the site for the exploration of and new depictions of nature and man’s place in it. See Pötschner, Wien und die Wiener Landschaft. 105. Géza Hayós has argued that the English garden was incompatible with hierarchical absolutist society in the Habsburg lands and that the French style lasts in order to facilitate police surveillance. However, although there is plenty of evidence that both Emperor Joseph II and his successor Leopold II were interested in police surveillance, it does not follow that garden styles derived from this. Adherents to the new style increased at every level of society, and included Emperor Joseph II himself. Moreover, there were physiocratic, scientific, and moral reasons to support the new English style. That Joseph II wanted the dense woodlands of the Prater closed “for fear of mischief and misuse” is not necessarily an indication of his attachment to absolutism in practice or in garden style. For the alternative argument, see Hajós, “Picture and Poetry.” 106. Pacáková-Hošt’álková et al., Zahrady a Parky, 67–68. 107. Taylor, “Urban Public Parks,” 213. Some even believed that gardens had quasi healing powers, calming visitors, soothing them, and even healing drunkenness. See Frank Clark, “Nineteenth-Century Public Parks from 1830” in Garden History, vol. 1, no. 3 (Summer, 1973), 31–41. 108. De Ligne, Coup d’Oeil, 153.

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109. Pacáková-Hošt’álková et al., Zahrady a Parky, 300. 110. Prest, Garden of Eden. 111. O’Malley, “Art and Science,” 284. Those who constructed botanic gardens strove for completeness, for unifying all that the world had to offer in it exotic diversity, much as the garden’s institutional counterpart, the cabinet of curiosities, had striven to be “the whole world in a chamber.” Prest, Garden of Eden, 44. 112. O’Malley, “Art and Science,” 290. 113. O’Malley, “Art and Science,” 302. 114. Eric Kaufmann explores this link in his article, “Naturalizing the Nation.” 115. Quoted in Steenbergen and Reh, Architecture and Landscape, 16. 116. The Nostitz family were an old noble family that stemmed originally from Lusatia, just northwest of Silesia, and they took their name from the Lusatian village of Nostic. The family moved to Silesia, where a portion remained, and then to Bohemia in the sixteenth century. One of the earliest remaining accounts of Nostitz forebears are the records of Dietmar of Nostitz, who was Archbishop of Salzburg from 1026 to 1041. Various members of the family appear in service to kings of Germany, Hungary, and Poland. The Nostitz family, particularly the Nostitz-Rieneck branch, were one of the most prominent, respected, and wealthy families of Bohemia, and they played an important role in the diplomatic and intellectual history of Austria and Bohemia. The family, with some exceptions, gained considerable honors and property in the period after the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, benefiting from their compatriots’ losses. ˇ ehlovice, and the palace in Prague To the family properties at Sokolov, Jindrˇichovice, R were added estates at Pakomeˇ rˇice, Líbeznice, Trmice, Cˇernodeky, and other properties abroad. They held the highest orders, most notably the Order of the Golden Fleece and the Maria Theresa Order, and they formed connections, marital and otherwise, with the most powerful old Bohemian families, among them the Kinskýs, Lobkowitzes, and Kolowrats. 117. Weiss, Geschichte der Theresianische Schulreform, 183, 255–256. 118. Slavícˇek, Artis Pictoriae Amatores, 182. 119. Tichý, Vývoj Cˇeského divadla, 8. The Estates Theater, as it is once again known (after a stint as the Tyl Theater) has been restored to mint 1780s condition. 120. Agnew, Origins, 129. 121. Quoted in F. Cˇerný, Tylovo Divadlo, 4. 122. Agnew, Origins, 130. 123. Agnew, Origins, 132. See also Jan Hýbl, Historie cˇeského divadla. For a detailed discussion on the fate of Czech theater performances in Prague in the late eighteenth century, see Agnew, Origins, and Tichý, Vývoj cˇeského divadla. 124. Kruger, National Stage, 3. 125. Agnew, Origins, 146. 126. Karp, Museums and Communities, 6.

Chapter 5 1. The name of the museum changed over decades, and public figures and publications referred to it variously as the Fatherland’s Museum, Patriotic Fatherland’s Museum, Fatherland’s National Museum, Royal Bohemian Museum, National Bohemian Museum, National-Institute, National Museum, and Patriotic Museum. To keep the text clear,

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I generally use the term National Museum, the name it would eventually adopt and which remains the name of the institution at the top of Wenceslaus Square, although in its earliest incarnations it was more commonly referred to as the Fatherland’s Museum. 2. K. Sternberg, Cˇasopis Cˇeského Muzea, 103. 3. Sherman and Rogoff, Museum Culture, x. 4. Sherman and Rogoff, Museum Culture, xi. 5. Azoulay, “With Open Doors,” 88. 6. Sherman and Rogoff, Museum Culture, xii. 7. Sherman and Rogoff, Museum Culture, xvii. 8. K. Sternberg, Leben, 123. 9. There was a long tradition of collecting by the royal houses and noble families that took the form of cabinets of curiosities. Cabinets of curiosity conferred respect and value on their owner, and were used as entertainment as well. For information on these earlier collections, see Beck et al., Antikensammlungen; Balsinger, Kunst- und Wunderkammern; Impey and MacGregor, Origins of Museums; Brožková et al., Sbeˇratelství; Schlosser, Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern. 10. K. Sternberg, Leben, 108. 11. K. Sternberg, Leben, 94. 12. ANM/ŠM/188. 13. ANM/ŠM/188/1808. 14. K. Sternberg, Leben, 95. 15. Ultimately, the National Museum was to reap the benefits of Sternberg’s connections with important Bohemian scientists. His connections to the non-noble scientists and to the rich noble patrons allowed him to amass huge collections, which he donated to the Museum. These collections included over 4,000 books, more than 42,000 diagrams and drawings, a herbarium of 9,000 specimens, and 30 cartons of mineral specimens. Cˇasopis spolecˇnosti vlastenského museum, I, 115. 16. K. Sternberg, Leben, 107. 17. K. Sternberg, Leben, 107. 18. Sternberg made this explicit in his essay, “Über die gegenwärtigen Standpunkt der botanischen Wissenschaft und die Notwendigkeit das Studium derselben zu erleichtern” written at Brˇezina in March 1814. ANM/ŠM/181. 19. K. Sternberg, Leben, 101. 20. K. Sternberg, Leben, 107. 21. K. Sternberg, Leben, 98. 22. ANM/ŠM/199a/Materialien. 23. ANM/RNM/A/1/15. 24. K. Sternberg, Leben, 97. 25. On the establishment and early years of the museum see Hanuš, Národní Museum; Kop, Národní Museum; Wenzel Nebeský, Geschichte des Museums; Burian and Špeˇt, 150 let Národního Musea. 26. ANM/RNM/A/1. This quotation is from the archival Registratura, the founding documents of the museum. 27. Elsner and Cardinal, Cultures of Collecting, 1. 28. The rumor in Vienna was that an applicant had only to say, “My name is Wenzel and I’m a Czech” to get an appointment. Related in Macartney, Habsburg Empire, 238.

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29. ANM/RNM/A/1/15. The date of the proclamation is April 15, and it appeared in Number XXXXV of the Prager Zeitung. The drafts were all written by committee members, most notably by Kaspar Sternberg and his cousin Francis Klebelsberg. Klebelsberg is cited as author in several Czech secondary texts, although drafts in different hand, notably Sternberg’s appear in the Sternberg family archive, suggesting the work was more conferral. 30. ANM/RNM/A/1. 31. ANM/RNM/A/1. 32. ANM/RNM/A/1/15. 33. ANM/RNM/A/1/15. 34. ANM/RNM/A/1. 35. ANM/RNM/A/1. 36. ANM/RNM/A/1. 37. ANM/RNM/A/1. 38. ANM/RNM/A/1. 39. See Sršenˇ, Budova Národního Muzea. In 1846, the collection moved to the Nostitz Palace on Na Prˇíkopeˇ, purchased for the museum. The current building on the top of Wenceslaus Square was started in 1885, and not completed until 1891. The cost of the project, around 2 million guilders, was financed by the Czech Diet and controlled by the Provincial Committee. The building includes a Pantheon of “great Czechs,” a sketch of which already appeared in Palacký’s sketches of the 1840s. The Pantheon, a huge domed copula, is the “ideological center of the entire building. . . . It serves to pay homage to and glorify Czech history, culture and science and their most important personalities.” Sršenˇ, Budova, 99. 40. This is especially evident in the early statutes and correspondences of the museum and committee members. ANM/RNM/A/1. 41. Quoted in Zacˇek, Palacký, 30. Insertion is Zacˇek’s. 42. ANM/ŠM/181/Punctation. This is in contrast to the Bohemian Society of Sciences, where Czech was made an official language in 1875, although it was used in plenary sessions, and appeared in publications at mid-century. 43. ANM/RNM/R/12. 44. ANM/RNM/A/1/9. 45. ANM/RNM/A/1/9. 46. ANM/RNM/A/1/10. 47. ANM/RNM/A/1/10. 48. ANM/RNM/A/1/12. 49. Claudia Schweizer, “Migrating Objects: The Bohemian National Museum and its scientific collaborations in the early nineteenth century” in Journal of the History of Collections, vol. 18, no. 2 (2006), 189–190. 50. ANM/RNM/A/1/16. 51. ANM/RNM/A/1/17. 52. ANM/RNM/A/1/19. 53. ANM/RNM/A/1/22. 54. Schweizer, “Migrating Objects,” 190. 55. For an analysis of the relationship of the museum to forms of patronage during this period, see Rak, “Vlastenecké Muzeum.” 56. Schweizer, “Migrating Objects,” 189.

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57. ANM/RNM/K/1/12. 58. ANM/RNM/A/1/1. 59. Hanuš, Národní Museum, 32. 60. K. Sternberg, Leben, 113. 61. Prager Zeitung, No. 60, May 22, 1818. Subscribers included Francis Hildprandt, Francis Waldstein, Francis Hartig, Kaspar Sternberg, Franz Sternberg, Joseph Millesimo, Anton Hochberg, Louise Sternberg, Leopold Spork, Johann Henninger, Johann Nostic, Girtler von Kleborn, Franz Haßlinger, Johann Rasim, Michael Karel Kaunitz, Joachim Woraczizky, Joseph Mathias Thun, Joseph Colloredo, Karl Paar, Ignaz Chorinsky, Sidonie Lobkowitz, Johann Miechura, Rudolph Chotek, Johann Adam Schramm of Orslawitz, Pötting, Johann Thun, Windischgrätz, Anton Isidor Lobkowitz, Johann Pergen, Rosenbaum, Friedrich Karl Schönborn, Ernst Harrach, August Lebedur, Leopold De Laing, Wenzel Levenehr, Francis Anton Desfours, Mrs. Von Sagen, Joseph Wratislaw, and others. 62. December 23, 1822. ANM/ŠM/181. 63. K. Sternberg, Leben, 122. 64. Sternberg to Friedrich Münter, June 6, 1825. ANM/ŠM/188. 65. ANM/ŠM/181. 66. ANM/RNM/A/1/19. 67. June 25, 1826. ANM/ŠM/188. 68. In fact, the materials in question were acquired only with the promise that they would be exchanged for needed religious materials. ANM/RNM/A/1/19. 69. June 26, 1828. ANM/ŠM/ 188. 70. For a discussion of historical mission, see Rak, “Koncepce Historické.” 71. Palacký, “Die Grafen Kaspar und Franz Sternberg” speech delivered to the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences, December 15, 1842, published as addendum to Palacký’s edited version of Sternberg, Leben, 209. See also Schweizer, “Migrating Objects,” 190. 72. ANM/ŠM/178/1. 73. ANM/ŠM/199b. 74. Nebeský, Geschichte des Museums, 16. 75. Prager Zeitung, No. 60, May 22, 1818. 76. These concerns were repeated more vociferously later by other aristocrats concerned with linguistic reform, especially Leo Thun. See especially Thun’s Denkschrift and Über den gegenwärtigen Stand, as well as his cousin Josef Mathias Thun, Der Slawismus. 77. ANM/RNM/A/1. See also Rak, “Koncepce Historické.” 78. Kaspar Sternberg provided a catalogue for the library holdings at Brˇezina. ANM/ ŠM/178. 79. ANM/ŠM/190/Bohemica. 80. Topographie des Saazer Kreises, Manuscript room, Klementinum. 81. J. Eichler, 1825. ANM/RNM/R/15/8. 82. ANM/RNM/R/15/2. Eichler was a Professor at the Prague Gymnasium in Mala Strana. This project was to be a revision and update of the topography completed by J. Schaller in 1802. 83. Schweizer, “Migrating Objects,” 193. 84. Palacký, Die Grafen. Palacký’s biographical essay on the Sternbergs was written for a speech to the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences in 1842, but was also included in his edition of Sternberg’s autobiography republished in 1868 for the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the National Museum. notes to pages 177–184

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85. June 25, 1826. ANM/ŠM/188. 86. ANM/RNM/R/15/13. 87. ANM/RNM/R/15. 88. ANM/RNM/R/15/13–15. 89. ANM/RNM/R/15. 90. ANM/RNM/R/15/13. 91. ANM/ŠM/190. 92. ANM/RNM/R/15/13. 93. ANM/RNM/R/15/13. 94. ANM/RNM/R/15; ANM/ŠM/181. 95. June 26, 1828. ANM/ŠM/188. 96. Zacˇek, Palacký, 19. 97. ANM/RNM/R/15/13–15. 98. ANM/RNM/R/15/13–15. 99. Winter, Frühliberalismus, 112. Winter makes the point that the failure of the German journal was a result of Palacký’s indirect lack of commitment to it. In other words, only a journal that exhibited the opinions of romantic nationalism could have been successful, and there was no way for a good Czech patriot like Palacký to edit such a German journal. Only in Germany could this enterprise have been successful. 100. See Kimball, “Matice Cˇeská,” in Skilling and Brock, Czech Renascence; and in the same collection, Hroch, “Social Composition.” 101. ANM/ŠM/181. 102. Anderson defined the nation as “an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6.

Chapter 6 1. Cited in Sked, Decline and Fall, 57. 2. Quoted in Polišenský, Aristocrats, 71. 3. Kann, Habsburg Empire, 282. 4. Seton-Watson, History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 163. 5. Macartney, Habsburg Empire, 148. 6. Lützow, Bohemia, 330. Lützow took this from Baron Helfert’s account in Die österreichische Revolution. 7. Macartney, Habsburg Empire, 191. 8. Macartney, Habsburg Empire, 162. 9. ANM/ŠM/199a/Materialien. 10. Macartney, Habsburg Empire, 218. 11. Macartney, Habsburg Empire, 233. 12. K. Sternberg, Leben des Grafen, 152. 13. Macartney, Habsburg Empire, 234. Quotation from Kübeck’s diary. 14. Sked, Decline and Fall, 55. 15. SOA/JH/E/Diary, January 20, 1818. 16. Dobrovský to Czernin, February 12, 1826, SOA/JH/E/426/1819–1827. 17. Svatonˇ , Eugen Cˇernín. 18. Count Leo Thun, quoted in Seton-Watson, History of the Czechs and Slovaks, 182.

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19. L. Thun, Denkschrift; Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv, Vienna/Staatskanzlei/ Böhmen/8. 20. Thun claimed to translate the poetry himself, although there is some question as to his ability in Czech. J. Thun, Gedichte aus Böhmens Vorzeit. 21. J. Thun, Gedichte aus Böhmens Vorzeit, introduction. 22. Eduard Winter suggests that at the end of the Napoleonic period, one can clearly perceive the transition to Romantic nationalism in Bohemia, a transition that Szechenyi witnessed. Winter, Frühliberalismus, 44. 23. SOA/JH/E/Diary, vol. I, February 8, 1818. 24. SOA/JH/E/Diary, vol. I, February 8, 1818. 25. J. Thun, Der Slawismus in Böhmen, 10. 26. Quoted in Winter, Frühliberalismus, 181. 27. Orton, Prague Slav Congress, 10–11. 28. Quoted in Polišenksý, Aristocrats and the Crowd, 42. 29. K. Sternberg, Leben, 102. 30. K. Sternberg, Leben, 107. 31. Sked claims that by 1848, the majority of aristocrats would have been happy to see it go. See Sked, Decline and Fall, 77. See also Macartney, Habsburg Empire, 303, and Jan Havránek, “Development of Czech Nationalism,” 243. Even after the reimposition of the old order in 1848–1849, the aristocracy did not contest the reform of peasant dues and services that the revolution had brought about. 32. Macartney, Habsburg Empire, 234–235. 33. Prinz, Geschichte Böhmens, 52. 34. Quoted in Polišenský, Aristocrats and the Crowd, 40. 35. SOA/JH/E/Diary, February 7, 1818. 36. Sked, Decline and Fall, 55. 37. Seton-Watson, Czechs and Slovaks, 185. Prinz, Geschichte Böhmens, 50. 38. See Okácˇ, Cˇeský Sneˇm. 39. Winter, Frühliberalismus, 184. 40. Quoted in Sheehan, German History, 657. Sheehan suggests that the malaise that Metternich and others saw in society at large was actually a distinguishing characteristic of those in power and that the fatalism exhibited by those in power contributed to the outbreak and initial success of the revolution. 41. Orton, Prague Slav Congress, 37. 42. Orton, Prague Slav Congress, 39. 43. Orton, Prague Slav Congress, 40. 44. Orton, Prague Slav Congress, 59. 45. Winter, Frühliberalismus, 186. There is some debate as to the role played by the Repeal Club. The Bohemians who constituted the Repeal Club, a classic example of the public sphere in action, had been meeting in pubs in the Old Town in Prague. Although the legend of this group grew was burnished by patriots after the fact, others have suggested that it was little known. In 1847, František Havlícˇek published a series of articles on the Irish, and the Bohemians adopted the name Repeal for themselves as well. Polišenský, Aristocrats and the Crowd, 67. 46. As Hugh Agnew mentions, the Estates hoped to meet in order to keep control of the revolutionary situation. See Agnew, “Noble Natio and the Modern Nation,” 65.

notes to pages 198–207

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47. For a complete presentation of the Austrian events of 1848, see Rath, Viennese Revolution. 48. Winter, Frühliberalismus, 187. 49. CAZB, August 17, 1848. 50. Sked, Decline and Fall, 59. 51. Seton-Watson, Czechs and Slovaks, 187. 52. CAZB, September 17, 1848. 53. CAZB, September 17, 1848. 54. On the blame levied against the aristocracy in the German liberal press see Loewenheim, “German Liberalism.” 55. The Bohemians ended up returning a large number of clergy as representatives to the Imperial Diet. 56. Kronos Zeitschrift, cited in CAZB, nr. 76, September 27, 1848. 57. Kronos Zeitschrift, cited in CAZB, nr. 76, September 27, 1848. 58. Lípa Slovanská, October 27, 1848. 59. CAZB, nr. 106, October 27, 1848. 60. Quoted in Kohn, Absolutism and Democracy, 177. 61. Cˇernín to Palacký, April 17, 1848. Transcribed by Svatonˇ, Evžen Cˇernín, 43–45. 62. Cˇernín to Palacký, April 17, 1848. Transcribed by Svatonˇ, Evžen Cˇernín, 43–45. 63. Cˇernín to Palacký, April 17, 1848. Transcribed by Svatonˇ, Evžen Cˇernín, 43–45. 64. Cˇernín to Palacký, April 17, 1848. Transcribed by Svatonˇ, Evžen Cˇernín, 43–45. 65. See L. Thun, Nachtrag zu dem offenen Schreiben an Herrn J. Slawik. 66. Engels, “Germany,” 123. 67. Sked, Survival of the Habsburg Empire, 208.

Epilogue 1. Reinhart Koselleck, Critique and Crisis, The Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society (MIT, 1988), 6. 2. Bratranek, Briefwechsel, 22.

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index

absolutism, 66, 74, 145, 147, 193, 208, 216 agrarian/agricultural societies, 10, 94–95, 98, 102, 103, 127. See also industrialization agrarian improvement and methods, 99, 101, 103, 150–151, 153, 154, 203, 205 agriculture, 43, 53, 69, 77, 91–96, 98–102, 106, 110, 116, 146, 153, 154, 166, 183 ancien régime, 3, 4, 5, 19, 50, 226 Anderson, Benedict, 14, 189, 203, 204 Andrian-Werburg, Victor, 203, 204 anglophilia, 60, 91, 116, 147 apiculture, 96–97 aristocracy, Bohemian Bohemian Diet and, 70, 75–80, 191, 195, 202, 210 Catholic church and, 50 centralization and, 56, 67, 73 collections of, 129, 131–134, 139, 164, 178, 255n9 competition and, 118, 127, 128 decline of, 9, 17, 24–28, 30, 36, 56, 57 dilettantism, 9, 121–122, 164 empire and, 47–48 Enlightenment and, 56, 59, 166 Freemasonry and, 56, 64, 109 gardens of, 129, 136, 144, 145, 151 households of, 12–13, 42, 132, 190 identity of, 5, 7, 10, 19, 20, 24–25, 28, 30–35, 41, 52, 54, 109, 136, 164, 217, 223, 224

industrial development and, 118 institution building and, 11–12, 89–90, 165, 173, 176, 185, 188 internationalism of, 44, 47 judicial power of, 37–38 landholding, 36–37, 67 landed power of, 35–39, 47 legal privileges of, 24, 29, 38, 41 libraries of, 13, 41, 59 lifestyle, 9, 19, 24, 41, 44, 128, 152, 155 lineage of, 28, 31, 32, 230 loyalty of, 67, 196, 206 National Museum and, 177–184, 189 opposition, 26–27, 29, 53, 73, 75–80, 88, 191, 193, 205 paternalism, 12, 37 patronage, 12–13, 20–21, 128, 129, 158, 159 privileges of, 10, 19, 24, 29, 35–41, 50–54 provincial identity of, 87, 150, 175 reform movement and, 12, 21, 51, 54, 56, 142, 191, 202–205 relation to West, 46, 58, 116 Romanticism and, 61 science and, 89–92, 94, 107, 121, 127, 246 See also individual topics aristocracy, European, 57, 63 Aufklärung, 58, 60, 65. See also Enlightenment

Augarten, 153 Austrian Succession, War of, 67, 69, 137, 154, 220 Austroslavism, 21, 197–201, 206, 215 Bach, Alexander, 215, 216 Balbín, Bohuslav, 182 Bavaria, 64–67, 81, 84, 85, 122, 133, 165 Berchtold, Friedrich, 176, 178 Bergler, Joseph, 141, 142 Blanchard, Jean Pierre, 121 Bohemian Charter, 208, 209 Bohemian Society of Sciences. See Society of Sciences Bohemica, 114, 134, 170–171, 179–184 Bolzano, Bernard, 33 borders, 15–16, 47–48, 81, 84, 85, 114, 181, 183, 184, 190, 197, 200, 201. See also territoriality Born, Ignac von, 104, 109, 119, 245n61 botany, 11, 13, 18, 82, 85, 91, 94, 109, 121–124, 161, 166–168, 178, 179, 184 bourgeois, 6, 13, 40, 64, 79, 88, 107, 140, 152, 163 Bray, Francis Gabriel de, 121–122 Brˇezina, 38, 123, 154, 161, 165, 166, 181, 182 Brno, 153 Buquoy, Georg, 44, 61, 113–114, 116, 118, 141, 142, 214, 215 Buquoy, Johann, 8, 77, 78, 79, 142 Buquoy family, 8 bureaucratic reform and administration, 40–41, 58, 69, 169 cabinet of curiosities, 129–131, 134, 143, 144 cadastres (kataster), 38, 70, 73, 231n45 cameralism, 90, 114 Campo Formio, Treaty of, 84 canals, 91, 115, 151 Canal, Joseph Emanuel, 154 Canal Garden (Kanálka), 154 Cˇastolovice, 38, 131 Catherine II, Tsarina, 147 Catholic Church, 19, 26, 49–52, 54, 65, 70, 210, 234n101 and reform, 19, 51 censorship, 53, 58, 59, 184, 188, 194, 195, 197, 204, 205, 208, 235n7

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Central Europe, 206, 223, 225 art market in, 133 conceptions of, 4, 10, 48, 83 garden style in, 146, 147, 150 centralization, 7, 19, 20, 24, 40, 55–58, 68–69, 72, 75, 87, 91, 209. See also reform Charles, Habsburg Archduke, 85 Charles Albert, Emperor, Elector of Bavaria, 40, 48, 67 Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, 25, 26, 32, 106, 169, 182 Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, 67, 137 Chotek, Rudolf, 69, 151 Chotek family, 78, 204 gardens of, 150, 151, 154 citizens, 96, 103, 112, 114, 120, 139, 155, 184, 210 citizenship, 28, 68, 70, 77–79, 143. See also inkolát civil society, 11, 158 classification, 90, 93, 130, 131, 143, 144, 162–190, 224 coins, 110, 120, 135, 141, 164, 170, 175, 178–180 collecting, history of, 20–21, 128–144, 161, 163–164 Collegium Germanicum, 17, 18, 44, 45, 50–52, 61 competition, 21, 54, 103, 113, 118, 126, 127, 144, 226 competitiveness, 21, 90, 103, 107, 112, 115, 116, 174 Congress of Vienna, 173 conservatism, 7, 8, 10, 19, 52, 53, 54, 57, 59, 68, 71, 74, 78, 80, 81, 194, 202, 209, 215, 216 constitutionalism, 7, 56, 63, 64, 70, 76–80, 86, 183, 184, 191, 193, 194, 195, 199, 206–210, 212, 225. See also Renewed Land Ordinance Constitutionelle Allgemeine Zeitung von Bohmen, 210, 211 consumption, 9, 19, 21, 103, 116, 128–133, 136, 141–144, 148, 152, 155, 168 coronation ceremonies, 183 in Frankfurt, 23, 81 Joseph’s refusal of, 72 of Leopold in Prague, 76, 105, 110, 115

of Napoleon Buonaparte, 85 cosmopolitanism, 3 18, 19, 32, 34, 44, 46, 52–54, 67, 92, 152, 186, 200 Counter-Reformation, 34 crops, 95, 96, 99, 100, 102, 154 culture, 4, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, 17, 21, 34–36, 45, 47, 56, 61, 80, 88 aristocratic, 36, 142 European, 128, 134 garden, 152 high, 22, 127, 129, 136, 142–144, 152, 159 imperial court, 139 national, 13, 17, 21, 155, 161–164, 180, 186, 187, 190, 195, 197, 199 political, 199, 217 urban, 36, 152 Western, 35, 44, 52, 211 Czech artists, 131 Czech history, 14, 15, 28, 42, 62, 92, 109, 162 Czech identity, 4–8, 16, 19, 25, 28, 31, 32, 35, 53, 54, 58, 78, 79, 109, 169, 174, 182–185, 190, 220. See also Slavic identity Czech language, 4, 8, 21, 30–34, 43, 75, 88, 92, 93, 96, 100–102, 111, 124, 166, 171–172, 182–186, 188, 192, 198–200, 214, 220. See also language use; linguistic reform Czernin, Adalbert, 77, 78 Czernin, Eugene, 196, 197, 198, 199, 203, 204, 212–215, 217, 220 Czernin, Francis Joseph, 78, 132, 133 Czernin, Humprecht, 132 Czernin, Johann Rudolf, 91, 133, 135, 136, 138, 131, 132, 148, 149, 150 Czernin, Teresa (née Schönborn), 45 Czernin, Theresa, 197 Czernin family, 13, 30, 32, 38, 53, 83, 132, 133, 138, 150 art collection of, 45, 132, 133, 138 Czernin Palace, 132, 141, 251n40 Dalberg, Karl Theodore, 85–87 desideria, 76–78 Deym, Friedrich, 200, 202, 204, 205, 207, 208, 210, 214, 215 Diet, Bohemian, 26, 28, 29, 39, 40, 68, 70, 76–80, 87, 191, 193, 194, 202–205,

208, 209, 226. See also aristocracy, Bohemian, opposition; aristocracy, Bohemian, reform; Estates; reform Diet, Imperial, 18, 48, 49, 66, 204 Diet, Provincial, 70 Dobner, Gelasius, 104, 110, 143 Dobrovský, Josef, 33, 59, 60, 104–107, 110, 119, 120, 124, 138, 156, 182, 184, 187, 197 Domestic Fund (treasury), 73, 77, 204, 205 dominical land, 37, 70. See also aristocracy, land holding education, 51–53, 56, 58, 59, 61, 63, 65, 69–71, 91, 92, 96, 97, 101, 103, 109, 111, 115, 117, 119, 125, 135, 155, 219 of Bohemian aristocracy, 9, 11, 13, 17, 33–35, 40–41, 44–47, 51, 135, 136, 138 cultural, 133, 134, 138, 156, 159 and Enlightenment, 143, 144 public, 168, 170, 173, 183, 186, 194, 203 public sphere and, 11 See also Francis Joseph Kinský; reform, education; taste emancipation of the peasantry. See land use; peasantry, land tenure and use; reform; serfdom Engels, Friedrich, 33, 216 England, 44, 45, 60, 91, 136, 144, 145, 148, 150. See also Anglophilia enlightened absolutism, 74 Enlightenment, 3, 5, 8, 11, 13, 17–20, 44, 55–66, 87, 89, 90, 92, 105, 117, 125, 127, 157, 187, 188, 222, 225 and education, 143 effect on collecting, 144 effect on gardens, 144–146 and patronage, 134, 154–156 See also Aufklärung Entail. See fideicommiss essay contests, 13–14, 110–112 Estates, 7, 10, 13, 19, 25, 28, 29, 30, 34, 37, 39, 40, 60, 62, 67, 68, 73, 75–78, 92, 93, 106, 115, 120, 121, 125, 169, 170, 173, 177 1840s opposition of, 192, 198, 201, 202, 204–205

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Estates (Continued) and 1848 Revolution, 207 loss of rights, 28–29, 232n53 and Pre-March, 192–194 reform and, 41, 195, 203 See also Diet, Bohemian; White Mountain, Battle of Estates Theater, 157, 159. See also Nostitz Theater; theater ethnicity, 3, 5, 15, 25, 28, 30–32, 34, 52, 109, 201 Exempla Trahunt, 176 expropriation of land (after 1620), 27 famine, 37, 94, 95 Fatherland’s Museum. See National Museum Ferdinand I, Emperor, 196, 201, 208, 209, 216, 226 Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, 26, 29, 76 fideicommiss, 37–38, 132, 138, 156, 234n104 folklore, 11, 61 Francis Charles, Habsburg Archduke, 208, 209 Francis II, 12, 81, 82, 86, 125, 135, 157, 193, 194, 203, 204, 224, 226 Francis Stephen, Holy Roman Emperor, 34, 40, 67 Frankfurt Parliament, 206, 212, 213, 217 Franzensbad (Františkový Lazneˇ), 46 Frederick, King of Bohemia, 27, 28 Frederick II, King of Prussia, 48 Freemasonry, 8, 10, 56, 62–66, 87, 109, 121, 123, 126, 237n40, 237n45, 238n50 French culture, 32, 45, 46 French language use, 32, 33, 93, 116, 172 French literature, 58–60 French Revolution, 18, 20, 24, 56–59, 75, 79, 80–88, 91, 195, 225 Fürstenberg, Karl Egon, 105, 106, 120, 178 gardens, 20, 91, 122, 123, 182, 252n76, 252n77 baroque or French, 145, 147, 149, 151, 155 botanical, 136, 153, 154 landscape or English, 145–155, 252n85, 253n105 urban, 146, 151 George of Podeˇbrad, 155, 187

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Germanization, 7, 30, 34, 52, 58, 63, 72, 74, 102, 106, 215 German Naturalists and Doctors, Assembly of, 166, 195 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 18, 23, 24, 41, 52, 61, 65, 90, 91, 124, 125, 134, 142 grand tour (Kavaliersreisen), 44–46, 148 Greenfeld, Liah, 57 Gruber, Tobias, 120, 139 Gubernium, 40, 73, 97, 99, 100, 106, 187, 210 Gutsherrschaft, 37. See also aristocracy, Bohemian, land holding; land use; privilege Habermas, Jürgen, 10 Habsburgs, 3–5, 7, 10, 12, 14, 16, 19, 21, 24–30, 35–36, 38–40, 47, 52, 53, 55–58, 66–69, 74, 78, 79, 83, 84, 87, 98, 105, 114, 115, 137, 166, 173, 201, 204, 209, 215. See also individual rulers; centralization; reform Hamilton, Sir William, 45 Hanka, Václav, 62, 190 Harrach, Friedrich, 69 Haugwitz, Friedrich William, 7, 69, 70, 220 Herder, J. G., 61, 62, 65 Hirschfeld, Christian Cay Lorenz, 148, 150 Hobsbawm, Eric, 5, 164 Hoernick, Philipp, 247 Holy Roman Empire, 16, 24, 35, 36, 47–49, 54–57, 64, 66, 68, 71, 74, 75, 80–84, 86, 165, 193 Hroch, Miroslav, 16 Hungarian National Museum, 175 Hungarian nationalists, 175, 197, 199, 200, 201 Hungary, 46, 72, 74, 76, 82, 89, 104, 110, 116, 123, 175, 196, 202, 208, 216 Hus, Jan, 14, 25, 138, 183 Hussites and Hussitism, 28, 29, 72, 106, 175, 180, 182 Illuminism, 64–66, 238 industrialization, 90, 91, 107–110, 114–116, 118, 126, 174, 205 industrial methods and techniques, 44, 53, 106, 115, 117, 167, 174 industrial societies, 8, 106. See also learned societies; competition; competitiveness

inkolát, 28, 29, 78. See also citizenship intellectual life and development, 32, 33, 35, 41, 42, 51, 53, 54, 56, 58, 59, 60, 63, 69, 71, 84, 87, 89–93, 102–103, 107, 119–120, 129 intellectual networks, 54, 93, 103, 125. See also public sphere intellectuals, 24, 46, 71, 91, 92, 106, 120–121, 126, 141, 142, 152, 156, 161, 165, 173, 176, 182, 187, 189, 190, 195, 197 intellectual societies, 41, 62, 63, 91, 128, 135, 162. See also learned societies intelligentsia, 5–6, 11, 15, 22, 65, 70, 71, 109, 119, 121, 156, 182 l’Isle (Veltrusy), 150, 151 Jansenism, 51, 234 Jesuits, 26, 44, 46, 51, 53, 58, 103, 153 Jindrˇichu° v Hradec, 38 Johanneum, 167, 174 Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, 36, 37, 41, 44, 49, 58–60, 66, 68, 71, 73–75, 104, 120, 137, 152, 153, 156 Josephine, Empress of France, 85 Josephinism, 56 judicial reform, 70, 77, 203 Jungmann, Joseph, 176 Kanálka (Canal Garden), 154 Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary), 11, 46, 124, 149, 194. See also spas Karlsbad Decrees, 194 Kaunitz, Wenzel Anton, 7, 68, 69, 70, 220 Kepler, Johannes, 123 Kinský, Francis Joseph, 33–34, 42–43, 45, 61, 92, 104, 109, 120, 121, 231n35, 233n70 Kinský, Joseph, 115, 142 Kinský, Philipp, 69 Kinský family, 30 Klebelsberg, Francis, 118, 168, 171, 178 Kleist, Heinrich von, 83, 169 Kohl, Ludvík, 143 Kolowrat, Francis Anton, 77, 83, 122, 141, 168–171, 177, 178, 202, 203, 207 Kolowrat, Leopold, 45 Kolowrat, Philipp, 32 Kolowrat family, 30 Kolowrat-Krakovsky, Anna-Josepha, 32, 45, 59

Kontribution, 37, 69. See also taxes Koselleck, Reinhart, 221 Krasný Dvu° r. See Schönhof Kreis administration and structure, 41, 69 Kronos Zeitschrift, 211 Kübeck, Karl Friedrich, 191 Kunstkammer, 130–131 landscape, 20–21, 45, 131, 143–147, 149–153 Landtafel, 29, 39 land transfers, 27, 30, 31, 34, 36. land use, 3, 15, 19, 33, 36, 37, 39, 49, 99, 100, 191 privileges associated with, 7, 19, 24, 30, 35–39, 47, 52–54 language use, 3–5, 8–9, 13, 15, 21, 30–35, 44, 60, 62, 80, 87, 88, 102, 111, 155–158, 186, 192, 193, 198 See also Czech language; linguistic reform learned societies, 8–9, 11, 13–14, 22, 63, 104, 109, 111, 120, 125, 126, 127, 140, 162, 192, 194, 197, 223, 224, 244n28 See also agrarian societies; industrial societies; Private Learned Society legal codes, 69, 191 Lemberg, Eugen, 33, 79, 80 Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, 32, 38 Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, 23, 75, 93, 105–107, 110, 113, 115, 193, 226 Leopold Order, 41 liberalism, 8, 17, 21, 63, 75, 79, 80, 85, 118, 142, 169, 189, 191, 192, 195, 199, 202–205, 209–211, 215, 216 See also aristocracy, Bohemian, identity; progressive aristocrats; reform librarians, 12, 13, 62 libraries, 41, 58, 59, 121, 123, 156 Libuše, 62, 237 Liechtenstein family, 149–150 Ligne, Charles Joseph de, 144–146, 147, 149–154 Lindacker, Johann, 123, 124, 165, 178, 181 linguistic reform, 21, 33–35, 58, 62, 92–94, 126, 127, 166, 165, 185, 187, 188, 197–199 See also Czech language; language use; reform

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Linnaeus, Carolus, 90, 164, 167, 181, 248n113 Lobkowitz family, 27, 28, 30, 36 Lobkowitz, Anton Isidor, 142, 168 Lobkowitz, August, 178 Malá Skála, 155 Malá Strana, 13, 38, 83, 103, 124, 138, 139, 156, 199 Maria Theresa, Empress, 7, 32, 34, 36, 38–40, 45, 50, 53, 66–72, 76, 78, 95, 102, 137 court of, 155 pavilions for, 151 See also centralization Marienbad (Marianské Lazneˇ), 46, 124 Martinitz, Jaroslav, 26 Martinitz family, 28, 30, 120, 139 Matice Cˇeská, 189 Mayer, Johann, 13, 104, 119, 120, 122 Mayer, Josef, 13, 104 Mayer salon, 120, 135 mediatisation, 49 merit, 11, 20, 69, 111, 126, 129 Metternich, Clemens Wenzel, 173, 185, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 201, 202, 203, 205, 226 mineral collections, 165, 171, 178, 181, 184 mineralogy, 107, 109, 121, 183 mining, 89, 93, 95, 102, 106, 107, 115, 116, 122, 123, 170 modernization, 19, 45, 54, 90, 103, 126, 146, 194, 195, 222 Montesquieu, Charles, 59, 60, 78, 79, 91 Moravia, 70, 72, 102, 103, 113, 143, 135 Moravian–Silesian Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Natural History, and Regional Studies, 102, 103 museums, 14, 21, 129, 131, 133, 134, 136, 143, 158, 159, 162–164, 174, 197 See also learned societies; National Museum; Patriotic Friends of the Arts Munzberg, Joseph, 97 Musei Nationalis Hungarici. See Hungarian National Museum Napoleon Bonaparte, 24, 84, 85, 86, 155, 165, 194

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Napoleonic Wars, 18, 20, 24, 40, 153, 161, 169, 192, 202 National Gallery, 134, 170, 184, 190 National Guard, 208, 211, 214 nationalism, 4–6, 21, 57, 75, 188, 194, 198 nationalists, 25, 26, 30, 35, 42, 43, 47, 57, 60, 62, 107, 155, 192, 194, 206, 210, 211, 212, 217 nationality, 7, 15, 26, 31–33, 57, 75, 109, 186, 188, 194, 198, 200, 206, 208, 210, 211, 214, 215 National Museum, 6, 8, 9, 10, 14, 18, 21, 62, 120, 133–136, 142, 158, 222, 256n39 collections of, 177–181, 255n15 establishment of, 164–168, 172–177 library of, 62, 171, 179–183 names of, 254n1 publishing of, 183–189, 258n99 purpose of, 161–189 See also Kaspar Sternberg; museums National Theater, 6 nation building, 5–6, 11, 17, 21, 33, 94, 164, 177, 188 natural history, 43, 94, 102, 104, 106, 134, 162, 163, 166, 167, 170, 177, 181 Nejedly, Jan, 60 Newton, Sir Isaac, 90, 123 nobility, 5, 7, 8, 13, 15, 17, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 35, 38, 39, 40, 48, 54, 58 and 1848, 191–193 Catholic church and, 50–52 collections of, 131 composition of, 35, 36 cosmopolitanism and, 44 identity, 25, 28, 32, 35, 64, 67, 91, 136, 215 industrial development and, 115 landholding of, 38, 67 lower nobility (knightly class), 25, 27, 28, 36 marriage, 35 naming of, 31, 230n23 nonnobles and, 42 office holding, 40–41 and Patriotic Friends of the Arts, 141 patronage of, 128, 132 Protestantism and, 25, 26, 230n15 reform and, 38–39, 66–74, 200, 206 status of, 41, 91 taxes, 38

titles, 40, 230n25 upper nobility, 28, 30, 53 See also under aristocracy; citizenship; cosmopolitanism; inkolát; language use; patronage; privilege; reform Nostitz, Francis Anton, 103, 156, 157, 245n60 Nostitz, Friedrich, 78, 119, 135, 138, 139, 142 Nostitz family, 13, 30, 42, 83, 138, 156, 209, 254n116 collecting, 106, 138, 156 library, 156 salon, 103, 104, 156 Nostitz Palace, 138, 156 Nostitz Theater, 138, 156–157. See also Estates Theater Palacký, František, 13, 31, 33, 59, 124, 172, 181, 184, 185, 187, 188, 206, 212–215 Pan-Slavism, 201 Patriotic–Economic Society, 8, 94–103, 113, 169 Patriotic Friends of the Arts, Society for the, 8, 138, 144, 172 establishment, 128, 134, 135, 138–142 gallery, 134, 138, 144, 158 patriotism, 7, 15, 24, 57, 68, 92, 127, 129, 136, 137, 139, 141–143, 156, 158, 163, 168–170, 174, 177, 184, 186, 192, 209 patronage, 13, 20, 21, 25, 26, 30, 32, 92, 127–133, 138, 142, 158–159, 167, 177, 187. See also aristocracy, nobility peasantry attitudes toward, 34, 37, 39, 52, 73, 78, 101–102, 108, 146 Catholic church and, 52 condition of, 37, 70, 95, 108, 150, 156 emancipation of, 208 labor of, 37, 73, 99, 146, 203 land tenures and use of, 37–39, 70, 99, 100, 102 rebellion of, 37, 78 rural reform and, 39, 70, 203 Pelcl (Pelzel), Francis Martin, 42, 104, 110, 111, 138, 156, 182, 187 physiocrats, 73, 154, 240n114 Piarists, 143, 245

picturesque, 146–148, 150, 151 Pohl, Johann Emanuel, 124, 125, 154 Poland, 83, 107, 195, 216 police, 59, 66, 187, 194, 195, 204, 208 Polytechnical Institute, 113, 115, 116, 118, 136, 170 population theory, 69, 72 Prager Gelehrter Nachrichten, 60, 103 Prager Zeitung, 168, 169, 171, 178 Prague art collections in, 128–131, 134, 137, 141, 159 bombardment of, 133 castle, 132, 141, 151, 171 coronations, 76, 81 defenestration of, 25 gardens in, 20, 151, 154 as German city, 166 industrial exhibition, 115 institutions in, 8, 60, 63, 66, 100 occupation of, 67 perceptions of, 35, 113, 158, 166 railroad, 118 revolution in, 4, 205–212 as seat of power, 39, 76, 99,132, 187, 208 theater in, 156 and Thirty Years’ War, 27 tourism to, 135 urban culture of, 46, 103, 113, 119, 132, 137, 142, 143, 189 urban landscape of, 6, 36, 52, 132, 158 urban society of, 13, 36, 43, 52, 73, 83, 104, 120, 142, 156, 157 See also Malá Strana Prague University, 42, 44, 60, 105, 109, 111, 169, 174, 176 Prater, 152–154 Preissler, Johann, 165 Prˇemyslids, 32, 155 private, 9–11, 20, 56, 120, 128–134, 139, 152, 156, 159, 164, 170, 171, 178, 181 Private Learned Society, 8–9, 11, 60, 104, 105, 126, 135, 156 privilege, 5–9, 19, 24, 29, 35–41, 50–54, 67, 74, 78, 80, 91, 109, 210, 221. See also under aristocracy, Bohemian; nobility; status professionalization of bureaucracy, 69, 169

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professionalization (Continued) of culture, 136 of science, 93, 121, 122, 190, 171 progress, 5–10, 13, 19, 20, 46, 53, 60, 61, 74, 81, 90–100, 103, 104, 108–112, 115, 125, 128, 144, 146, 148, 166, 188, 209, 211 progressive aristocrats, 57, 78, 115–116, 118, 126, 127, 176, 184, 188, 202 prosperity, 63, 64, 95, 102, 103, 126, 155, 174, 219 Protestantism, 25–30, 49, 60, 72, 230n15 public, 3, 14, 19, 77, 93, 94, 95, 99, 113, 125, 129, 133, 136, 139, 140, 144, 153, 154 art, 142, 143 consumption, 21, 155 discourse and debate, 5, 6, 9, 11, 143, 149, 163, 177, 189, 195, 197, 215, 216, 226 display, 128, 129, 131, 132, 139, 140, 141 education and outreach, 129, 133, 134, 138, 162, 166, 168, 182 gardens, 20, 148, 152–155 good, 13, 20, 92, 112, 114, 178, 221 institutions, 4, 5, 9, 11, 92, 98, 104, 112, 119, 124, 126, 128–134, 138–144, 163, 167, 171–172, 222 museums, 161, 164 opinion and interest, 5, 6, 10, 14, 43, 77, 103, 126, 159, 178, 185, 196, 205, 214, 221 performance, 9, 21, 155–157, 206 political participation and, 39–40 religiosity, 29 spaces, 5, 6, 8, 9, 144, 148, 154, 155, 221 sphere, 5–12, 16, 18, 19, 22, 56, 64, 80, 87, 94, 113, 119, 125, 128, 133, 143, 152, 157, 159, 194 taste, 133, 134, 140, 144, 158 See also Jürgen Habermas Rastadt, Congress of, 84, 85 rationalism, 8, 43, 53, 58, 61, 62, 63, 65, 68, 72, 92–94, 103, 118, 119, 127, 155, 213, 222 reform, 7, 8, 12, 18, 19, 21, 55–58, 60, 62, 65, 80, 81, 87, 88 administration, 38–41, 48, 55, 58, 66–70, 87

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agrarian, 102–103, 203 Catholic church and, 25, 51, 72 constitutional, 63, 64, 69, 75, 77, 79, 80 educational, 58, 91, 103, 156, 240 garden, 146, 150 justice system, 70 taxes, 38 land use, 70 labor, 70, 74 national movement and, 188 Pre-March, 191–197, 201–205, 207, 208, 210, 215, 216 religious houses and, 49, 51, 70, 72, 137, 153 Russian, 108 See also individual Habsburg rulers; aristocracy, Bohemian, reform; aristocracy, Bohemian, opposition; centralization; Diet, Bohemian; education; Estates; liberalism; linguistic reform Regensburg, 18, 48, 50, 63, 66, 82, 83, 86, 87, 122, 165 Regensburg Botanical Society, 84, 167 Renewed Land Ordnance, 28–30, 76–78. See also constitutionalism; White Mountain, Battle of representation, 29, 56, 57, 68, 76–79, 131, 133, 157, 164, 176, 177, 202–204 Republic of Letters, 19, 58, 63, 112 revolution, 55, 57, 65, 70, 71, 75, 81, 88, 89, 154 fear of, 75, 79, 80, 84, 88, 217, 225, 226, 252n76 of 1830, 118, 195, 196 of 1848, 4, 6, 16, 21, 41, 190, 205–216, 219 French (see French Revolution) Rhineland, 32, 44, 82, 84, 135 Rieger, F. L., 209 “Rights of Man”, 58, 82 robot, 70, 76, 78, 203, 208, 231, 232. See also peasantry, labor; reform; serfdom Romanticism, 44, 56, 58, 61–62, 87, 112, 101, 123, 150, 151, 154, 155, 188, 222, 224, 226 Rottenhan, Henry Francis, 115–116, 135 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 59, 79, 145, 146, 149 Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences. See Society of Sciences

Royal London Society of Sciences, 93 Rudolf II, Habsburg Emperor, 128–130, 133, 137, 154, 169 Rudolfinum, 6 rural life, 146, 150, 189, 203. See also peasantry rustical land, 37–38, 70. See also peasantry, land tenure and use; land use; land transfer Šafarˇík, Pavel Joseph, 182, 199, 206 salons, 10, 11, 13, 103, 119, 120, 124, 223, 226 Saxifrage, 123 Schaller, Jaroslav, 58, 156 schemes, 13 Schlik family, 30 Schwarzenberg, Felix, 216, 227 Schwarzenberg, Friedrich, 57 Schwarzenberg family, 27, 32, 41 Schönborn, Teresa (Czernin), 45, 136 Schönbrunn, 136, 137 Schönhof, 136, 148, 149, 150 science, 9, 12, 18, 20, 33, 55, 59, 61, 62, 63, 74, 80, 82, 84–87, 104–105, 108, 154, 157 as escape, 89, 91, 107, 127 nationalization of, 178, 179, 184 and objectivity, 162, 163 patriotism and, 90, 94, 112, 127, 162, 169, 175, 178 progress and, 90–92, 127, 163, 166, 167, 174 socialization of, 94, 119–121, 127, 144 See also learned societies; National Museum; Patriotic–Economic Society; Society of Sciences scientific methods, 9, 54, 162. See also competition, competitiveness, industrial methods and techniques scientific societies. See learned societies Sedlnitzky, Joseph, 187, 195 seigniorial administration, 39, 68, 70, 73, 203 seigniorial rights, 7, 9, 29, 36–39, 49, 52 serfdom, 7, 37, 73, 108, 114, 191, 203. See also peasantry, labor of; robot Serfdom Patent, 73 Seton-Watson, Hugh, 14 Seton-Watson, R. W., 68, 193, 204 Shakespeare, William, 41

Silesia, 69, 70, 102, 35, 143 Slav Congress, 201, 206–207, 215–216. See also Austroslavism, Pan-Slavism Slavic Club, 197 Slavic identity, 31–35, 54, 63, 80, 92, 105, 107, 109, 110, 164, 169, 176, 180, 206, 220. See also Austroslavism; Pan-Slavism; Czech identity Slawata, Wilhelm, 26 Slawata family, 28, 30 Slovaks, 175 Slovanská Beseda. See Slavic Club sociability, 3, 8, 10–13, 36, 53, 56, 63, 66, 89, 119–121, 125, 142, 152, 153, 155, 157, 221. See also learned societies social networks, 8, 44, 54, 89, 94, 123, 124, 135, 145, 175 Society of Ploughing and Free Arts. See Patriotic–Economic Society Society of Sciences, 93, 162, 168, 172 activities of, 109, 125 establishment of, 103–105 and Freemasonry, 109, 112 and national competition, 113 relationship with Patriotic–Economic Society, 98–99 Sweden journey support, 105–107 See also Private Learned Society Sonnenfels, Joseph, 65, 71, 240 sovereignty, 15, 24, 48, 62, 78, 79, 145, 162, 194, 195, 206, 210, 220, 225 Spalek, Johann, 42 spas, 3, 46, 124 Sporck, Francis Anton, 58, 235 status, 6, 9, 10, 14–19, 22, 24, 26, 29, 32–38, 41, 49, 52–57, 64, 65, 67, 74, 83, 84, 90, 109, 112, 119, 125–128, 141, 145, 164, 171, 193, 216–217, 221–223. See also aristocracy, Bohemian; nobility Sternberg, Adam (seventeenth century), 26 Sternberg, Adam (eighteenth century), 46, 95 Sternberg, Christian, 106 Sternberg, Francis, 8, 13, 33, 44, 59, 77, 78, 79, 93, 119–120, 123–124 and art, 128, 133–135, 138, 139, 141–144, 158 and Czech language, 197 education, 135 family and social circle, 136

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Sternberg, Franz Damien, 38 Sternberg, Gundaker, 46 Sternberg, Joachim, 42, 61, 78, 85, 89, 91, 106, 110, 113, 117, 120, 123, 237, 242, 243 and Blanchard, 120–121 collections of, 165 criticism of Russia, 108–109 essays, 110–111 identity of, 109 Northern journey, 106–108 Sweden report, 116 Sternberg, Johann (father), 38, 59 Sternberg, Johann (brother), 42, 75, 232 Sternberg, Kaspar, 17–18, 23, 24, 32, 33, 38, 41–52, 55, 59, 61, 71, 73–75, 80, 195 and botany, 114, 122, 154 collections of, 161, 165, 166, 178 family circle, 123–124 and Freemasonry, 53–66 and French Revolution, 80–88, 165 and Goethe, 90, 124 on intellectual climate, 119, 120 and language, 93 library of, 178–179 and National Museum (see National Museum) and Patriotic Friends of the Arts, 140 as PES member, 98 and public good, 117–118 on reform, 137, 202, 224 and revolution, 121, 195 sociability, 125 understanding of science, 91, 92, 112, 122, 127, 224 Sternberg family, 8, 13, 26, 30, 31, 32, 38, 42, 53, 59, 83 household of, 42, 50, 124 Stromovka Park, 154. See also gardens, urban St. Václav Committee, 207, 208, 210, 214 Svornost. See National Guard Sweden, 48, 106, 116, 137 taste, cultivation of, 3, 22, 35, 58, 128, 133–136, 139, 144, 148–152, 159. See also under public taxes, 7, 29, 37–39, 40, 68, 69, 70, 73, 76, 78, 80, 85, 168, 203–205, 207 technology, 33, 43, 53, 91, 92, 95, 96, 102, 103, 106, 127, 147, 182

290

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and competition, 112–113, 116, 118 territoriality, 5, 14–16, 67, 68, 69, 79, 84, 113, 176, 220 textiles, 102, 115 textile workers revolt, 204 theater, 18, 20–21, 127–129, 136, 155–157. See also Estate Theater; Nostitz Theater Thirty Years’ War, 26, 32, 132, 137, 180. See also White Mountain, Battle of Thun, Francis Anton, 118 Thun, Joseph Mathias, 44, 118, 142, 200, 204, 206 Thun, Leo, 4, 197–201, 203, 207–210, 215, 216 Thun family, 83, 199, 203 toleration, 63, 199, 204 Toleration Patent, 72. See also Joseph II; reform, religious houses topographies, 125, 183, 171, 179, 182, 184 urban culture, 158, 166 urban living, 146, 151, 154, 158 urbanity, 136 urbanization, 142, 146, 154 Veltrusy, 150–151 Versailles, 145 Vienna, 3, 7, 51, 52, 66, 67, 72, 76, 81, 82, 166, 168 court, 3, 24, 47, 100, 107, 125, 137, 209 gardens, 20, 152 government in, 172, 173, 187, 193, 199, 205 revolution in, 207–209 social life, 36, 146, 197 status of, 113, 137, 139, 158 viticulture, 112 Voltaire, 59, 60, 146 Waldstein family, 27, 30, 31 Weber, Max, 122 Weishaupt, Adam, 64–66 Westphalia, Peace of, 7, 14, 49 White Mountain, Battle of, 25–31, 34, 36, 40, 182, 229n3 Windischgrätz, Alfred, 212, 215, 216 Wrtba, Francis, 139 Wrbna family, 120 Wunderkammer. See cabinet of curiosities Zinzendorf, Karl, 146