# The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 3/The Ancient Prague University

The Ancient Prague University
By Joseph Tvrzický.
A university that limits itself merely to the education of its students is a school and nothing more. The Czech University of Prague, one of the oldest universities, is far more than a school. The Czech nation has always placed ideals above material interests, in contrast to their Teutonic neighbors. And the Prague University has been from its foundation an exponent of the Czechoslovak idealism.
It was founded by Emperor Charles in 1348 and was thus the first university of Central Europe. It was founded not merely for the Czechs, but for the whole empire, that is to say, for the present Germany and for all the lands that are today in the hands of the Germans. Charles himself was a pupil of the University of Paris. He loved the Czech nation and realized that it was the best educated nation in Central Europe; this primacy he wanted to secure for Bohemia permanently by establishing in its capital a great school of learning.
Today the Prague University, its teacher Masaryk and his pupils carry on the cultural fight against materialsm taught in the state universities of Germany; they also carry on a political fight as well as a fight in a revolutionary armies—among them the famous Czechoslovak Army of Siberia.
The University of Prague, which is officially referred to as the “ancient” university, is worthy of its name. Emperor Charles established in it four faculties—of divinity, law, medicine and philosophy; a fourfold division which has been maintained to this day. He also divided it into “nations”, according to the nationality of professors and students. There was the Czech nation, which included students from the Czechoslovak lands, as they are known today, as well as from the Jugo-Slav lands; then there was the Polish nation constituted of Poles, Silesians, Russians and Lithuanians, then the Saxon nation, comprising the men from Saxony, Thuringia, Denmark and Sweden, and finally the Bavarian nation, among which were counted Austrians, Swabians, Franconians and men from the Rhineland. So the university was a cosmopolitan school, originally half Slav and half German. Later the Polish “nation”, after a university had been established in Cracow, ceased to be Polish and was composed of Germans from Silesia, Brandenburg and Pomerania, and thus Slavs became a minority.
Germans occupied the chairs of professors and by virtue of university priviliges they filled with their men the churches and schools of Bohemia. But the controversies that soon arose between the Czechs and Germans transcended the field of material advantages. Under the leadership of John Hus, twice rector of the university, and master Jerome of Prague the Czechs introduced a religious reform which was opposed by the German professors. The Czech idealism and the German reactionary materialism thus came into conflict. The Czechs, with Hus, defended freedom of conscience, the Germans maintained papal theocracy.
The fight was transferred from the university to the people and resulted in the war of Czech democracy, embodied in the Hussite army, against theocracy suported by the autocracy of German princes.
German students and professors left the University of Prague in 1409 and founded a university in Leipzig, hoping to make the old school in significant; but no German university, in spite of any achievements, became as the Prague University did become, the real leader of its nation.
After the Hussite wars up to the battle of the White Mountain in 1620, the Prague University continued to be the highest cultural institution of the Czech nation; it was a Hussite, that is to say, Protestant, university.
Ferdinand II. who defeated the Czech rebels, killed the leaders of the people and drove the Protestants out of Bohemia. With them went the old professors of Prague University and Ferdinand turned the university over to the Jesuits, who made of it a Roman Catholic college. Since that day the university bears, in addition to the name of its founder, the name of him also who took it from the nation and gave it to the German and Spanish Jesuits. Its official name has been the Carolo-Ferdinandea University. The education of Jesuits was very effective. As early as 1648, when Prague was besieged by the Swedes, students of the university led by the Jesuit Plachý fought against Swedish supporters of the Czech nation, fought for the Hapsburgs and against their own people.
Up to the days of Maria Theresa the university belonged to the Jesuits and had for its principal aim to make the Czechs Roman Catholics. In that it succeeded, but its second task, to Germanize Bohemia, was not successfully carried out, and the first sign of new days was the institution of the chair of Czech language in 1791. It was like the study of a dead language, for few people believed that the nation with its tongue and its ideals could arise from the grave dug for it by the Jesuits.
But the resurrection of the Czech nation came about, and the Prague University, although Germanized, had its share in it. Up to 1882 the language of instruction remained German, and yet ​professors who felt a strong Czech consciousness educated the whole generation of the present leaders of Bohemia. In 1848 students of the Prague University were leaders of the revolution and for a few days were masters of Prague, and since that time the Prague University has been the mainspring of opposition against German domination. And when finally the Czechs secured from the Austrian Government the concession that the ancient university should be divided into a German and a Czech university, the glory of the old school returned. In spite of the fact that the government refused to erect modern buildings for the Czech university and was stingy with its appropriations, while it was generous to the German universities of Austria, the Czech university of Prague numbered in recent years nearly 5000 students and became the center of education and of political and national life of the Czech people. The new Czech university in 1882 called to the chair of philosophy Dr. Thomas G. Masaryk. His nime came to mean to the new university what the name of Hus meant to the university of 500 years ago. Masaryk never became rector—who is elected annually—for the Austrian Government would never have consented to it, but in spite of that Masaryk has been the spiritual leader of this institution.
The Prague University again became an international school, or rather a new Slav school, and fully 10 per cent of the students came from Slav lands. Polan, Russia, the Ukraine, Jugo-slavia and Bulgaria. The leaders of every oppressed Slav nation have nearly all passed through a course of training in the Czech university and have felt the impress of Masaryk’s great mind.
In addition to its technical side the Prague University cared for the education of the masses of the people by giving university extension courses in all the cities of Bohemia and Moravia. Thus when Masaryk declared fight on Austria, the whole university, its graduates and the whole nation were back of him. The fight for Czechoslovak independence is thus not merely a political fight, but also a cultural fight against the German kultur.
In the provisional Czechoslovak Government, all three members were connected with the Prague Universty: Masaryk as professor, Dr. Beneš, the Foreign Minister of the provisional government, as associate professor, and General Stefanik, Minister of War and a noted astronomer, as a graduate of the university. The movement among the Czechoslovaks in the United States was led by two former students of the Prague University, Dr. Fisher, president of the Bohemian (Czech) National Alliance, and Joseph Tvrzický, its former secretary.
The commander of the Czechoslovaks in Russia is Dr. Gajda, a graduate of the medical school of the university, and practically all the Czechoslovak officers in Russia are professors, physicians, lawyers, who graduated from the same school.
The faculty of the university was early in the war called upon by the Austrian Government to deprive Masaryk of his title of professor and to repudiate him, but it refused to comply with the demand. When two Czech leaders, Kramář and Rašín were found guilty of high treason and deprived of all their honors and titles, the university conferred upon them once more the degree of doctor of law.
Thus the history of Prague University is but a condensed history of the nation. This scholarly institution is the living document of the Czech people. In addition it has exerted a tremendous influence on other nations, especially the Jugoslavs. It may be said without exaggeration that the inspiration of the fight of the opressed nationalities of Middle Europe against German domination came from the university of Prague.
There is no doubt that the free Czechoslovak Republic will finally erect worthy buildings for the school which has meant so much for its people. And from Prague currents will radiate east, southeast and northeast by which the best culture of Bohemia and Western Europe will be communicated to the East.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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