# East European Quarterly/Volume 15/Number 1/Palacký and Havlíček: Their Political Relationship

* related portals: Czech lands.
* related authors: František Palacký, Karel Havlíček Borovský.
PALACKÝ AND HAVLÍČEK: THEIR POLITICAL RELATIONSHIP
Thomas G. Pešek Washington State University
During the nineteenth century one of central Europe’s more important, though lesser-known, political partnerships was that of František Palacký (1798–1876) and Karel Havlíček (1821–56). As the leading Czech liberals of their time, they contributed singularly to the formation of Austro-Slavism, the first modern Czech political program. In accord with that doctrine, they led the Czech struggle for the preservation and federalization of the Habsburg Monarchy and against the establishment of a Great German state. They also warned, with remarkable foresight, against the extension of Russian power into central Europe. Yet only a few scholars have examined their relationship in detail.
Judgments made in the last century by both admirers and adversaries of the two men have confused subsequent inquiries into their relationship. The Radical Democrat J.V. Frič, for example, saw little difference between them. Havlíček was strictly a junior partner of Palacky, and both were spokesmen for a middle class that was blind to social change.$^1$ Jakub Malý, an early historian of the Czech renascence, considered their relationship ambiguous. He accorded Palacký an important place in Czech politics, but categorized Havlíček as one whose attacks on his opponents hurt rather than enhanced the Czech political cause.$^2$ Later writers, such as Karel Tůma and T.G. Masaryk, wrote more positively. Tůma exonerated Havlíček from most of Maly’s charges, while Masaryk explained how the two could develop contrasting political styles and tactics and still maintain their ideological unity. But these later analyses, in the two or three decades before World War I, were themselves controversial. Masaryk’s supported a new, quasi-religious interpretation of the Czech national awakening which many historians considered untenable.$^3$ Tůma’s served the occasionally spurious purposes of the Young Czech Party as it vied in the 1880’s for leadership of the Czech people.$^4$
Judged strictly by their backgrounds. Palacký and Havlíček would seem to be unlikely political collaborators. They were reared in small, homogeneous Czech towns, remote from the Austrian Empire’s multinational cities. They received good educations, as well as strict religious upbringings (Palacký, Lutheran; Havlíček, Catholic). And they converted ​to the cause of Czech nationalism after having, as adolescents, suddenly and dramatically rediscovered their Czech heritage.$^5$ But Palacký was twenty-three years older. He belonged to a generation of Czech leaders who began their careers before the nation had fully clarified its goals or even begun to think politically. These circumstances forced them not merely to espouse, but to contribute actively to the development of a culture that was still in its fledgling stage. Thus, while it was a striking personal achievement, Palacký’s History of the Czech People (Dějiny národu českého) had the unique and salutary effect of stimulating an entire nation to rediscover its past. Knowledge of history in turn acquainted Palacký with the intricacies of constitutional law. This enabled him in the early 1840s to become an influential adviser to the Bohemian Estates, particularly on their legal relationship to the Crown.$^6$ By 1848, he had been a leader of his people for some years.
Havlíček, by contrast, was relatively unknown before the mid-century revolutions. A one-time seminarian, he had been expelled for excessive interest in things Slavic and had traveled to Russia (1843–44) to confirm his Russophile outlook. A seventeen-month residence in Moscow, however, dispelled his pro-Russian sympathies. Returning to Prague in 1845, he worked as a literary critic and spoke out intermittently against the Tsarist autocracy.$^7$ But it was only as a journalist in the immediate “pre-March” period that he achieved broad notoriety. By nature contentious, Havlíček engaged in numerous literary and political disputes during his public career. In time he also acquired anti-clerical and anti-aristocratic biases which led him on occasion to identify with the masses. None of these characteristics was present in the more reserved, statesman-like Palacký.
The two men first met in late 1845, through their mutual friend Pavel Josef Šafařík. It was a propitious meeting. Havlíček was seeking the editorship of a newspaper, following his polemics with Josef Kajetan Tyl over the use of patriotism in Czech literature; and it was on Palacký’s recommendation that Havlíček became, in January, 1846, the editor of Pražské noviny (Prague News).$^8$ During the next two years the two men cooperated by opposing the Slovak “linguistic separatists,” led by Ľudovít Štúr.$^9$ Finally, in 1848, what had been an occasional collaboration became a solid partnership based on the program of Austro-Slavism.
The significance of Austro-Slavism as a link between Palacký and Havlíček is that it demonstrates their agreement on a complex and, at the time, controversial point of ideology: that the Czechs had no political future outside Austria. Each man, reflecting largely personal experiences, wrote a classic analysis of the Austro-Slav creed. Havlíček’s appeared ​first, early in 1846, in a series of articles titled “Slav and Czech” (Slovan a Čech).$^{10}$ The continued existence of the Austrian Empire, he argued, was indispensable to the protection of Slav rights in central Europe. The Russians, long admired by many Czech intellectuals as potential liberators of central European Slavs, were an expansion-minded people who thought of other Slavs “in no brotherly fashion, but dishonestly and egotistically.”$^{11}$ As such, there could never be an all-Slav unity, not even through a common literary language. Western and South Slavs, on the other hand, could and had to cooperate for their mutual benefit. Czechs and Croats especially, but Slovaks and Slovenes too, shared a common past within Austria and, more important, a readily definable community of present interests. Under the circumstances, none posed a danger to any of the others. The sole condition of Slav support of the Habsburgs was the decentralization and federalization of the Monarchy. That accomplished, a rejuvenated Austrian state of equal nationalities would grow in power, making even more secure the future of the Austro-Slav peoples.$^{12}$
Two years later, in his celebrated letter to Frankfurt (April, 1848), Palacký reiterated Austria’s need to exist. A universal Tsarist empire, he said, threatened all of the smaller peoples of central Europe.$^{13}$ And only the Habsburg Monarchy could thwart Russian expansionism. Consequently, he could not participate in the work of an assembly which sought Austria’s destruction in order to create a liberal German state. The message was the same as Havlíček’s, but Palacký’s approach differed from that of his younger colleague. The latter had written two years before the fall of Metternich, when censorship precluded overt discussion of politics or engagement in political activities. His remarks had been primarily and necessarily philosophical. And personal. They stemmed from an experience of life in Russia which few Czechs, including Palacký, had had prior to 1848. This gave Havlíček’s analysis, including his condemnation of the Slavophiles and Kollár’s literary Pan-Slavism, a unique ring of authority, but one limited to its pre-revolutionary time.”$^{14}$
Palacký’s letter, on the other hand, was a document of revolutionary urgency. Written after Metternich’s fall and addressing concrete political issues, it was more of a plan of action, despite its apparent preoccupation with “principles.” It also lacked the strident Russophobia of Havlíček’s articles, for Palacký actually wished the Russians well, after warning against Tsarist imperialism.$^{15}$ Most important of all, Palacký showed himself a man of vision by placing events in Austria within the necessary and broader context of revolutions that were affecting other parts of Europe.
But if the two men differed on points of Austro-Slavism, they shared a comprehensive liberalism that bolstered their political compatibility. This ​liberalism was two-fold: it derived from the Enlightenment, and from a perception of problems peculiar to Austria and the Czechs. In 1848 the Enlightenment tradition led all central European liberals to oppose absolutism as contrary to Natural Law. Accordingly, they stressed the need for a constitution to limit the authority of the ruling dynasty. Reason became the preeminent guide to truth and, if applied properly, would guarantee human progress.$^{16}$ Owing, though, to Austria’s slow industrial growth (compared to western Europe’s) and to her ethnic diversity, central European liberalism developed at least two features not found in its west European counterpart. It was not strongly laissez-faire in its approach to economics. And, among non-Germans at least, it sought guarantees of “nationality” as necessary complements to political freedoms, whether corporate or for the individual citizen.
Both Palacký and Havlicek blended freely the liberals’ demand for political liberty with the narrower requirements of nationality. For Palacký, the key agent in all of history was the nation.”$^{17}$ More than the individual, it nurtured the great ideas that gave purpose to life. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, one such idea had been religious liberty, the primacy of conscience over ecclesiastical authority. And the Czechs had been the first to proclaim it, a century before [[AuLuther, in the Hussite movement. In the seventeenth century, the Czechs had waged a fierce, though unsuccessful, struggle for the preservation of their autonomy against the inroads of feudal Habsburg power. And in the nineteenth, together with other nationalities, they opposed the centralizing and Germanizing reforms initiated by Joseph II.
In each chronological period, Palacký detected elements of a Slav-German conflict which, he believed, gave Czech history a distinctive quality. The nation did not achieve its end unopposed. Rather, it engaged in a dialectic, faintly Hegelian to some scholars, where Germanic ideals confronted its own and where success was matched by frequent failures.$^{18}$ The process was a painful one, but it alone measured a nation’s progress, just as it alone made progress possible.
Palacký saw the great nineteenth century contest as one between governments seeking to centralize power and nationalities striving to preserve their individuality. Political centralization was but a modern, secular counterpart to the pre-Reformation ideal of religious universality. And it was stronger than its antithesis, for it enjoyed the advantages of science and technology. Nationalities, by contrast, had limited resources and had been roused only recently to a sense of their worth, by Herder and other Romantics. Though they might strive for independence or for unification with kinsmen in other states, nationalities had ​eventually to accept federalization as a compromise.$^{19}$ The alternative was subjugation to the dictates of their governments.
Havlíček, too, considered independence for the Czechs unthinkable and federalization the sole positive alternative: “At the present time,” he wrote, “when immense empires have risen in Europe, total independence for us Czechs would be a naked misfortune. We would always be weak, dependent on others, . . . But in conjunction with the other Slavs of Austria, we can utilize as a distinct Czech kingdom every kind of autonomy and still enjoy the advantages . . . of a powerful state.“$^{20}$
Indeed autonomy, guaranteed constitutionally, could alleviate the Czechs’ concern for their national integrity. And to Havlíček the unhindered development of nationality, particularly through an improved official status for the Czech language, was the greatest of all privileges. “To what end has English liberty benefited the Irish? . . . Wherever your language, your nationality, has no [specific] rights, you are oppressed in even the freest countries. Freedom of speech and press, to be sure, are the bases of many other freedoms. But where your language is barred from public offices and schools, . . . a greater freedom is taken from you than through the police and censorship.”$^{21}$
This did not mean that federal governments would have no important jurisdiction. Nor did it license unrestrained opposition to authority. As Chalupný points out, Havlíček regarded total, unabated opposition to the State as unnatural.$^{22}$ Government had a proper function that was regulatory. (Palacký spoke of a “strictly juridical state”–stát pouze právní.)$^{23}$ It was that agency which, through the application and enforcement of laws, had at all times to balance collective and individual rights, to curb “libertinism” without destroying that “independence natural to the human spirit.”$^{24}$ This led Havlíček and Palacký alike to reject the negativism of west European liberals who, in distrusting most forms of government, sought maximum restrictions on governmental powers. At the same time, neither man subscribed to the “étatiste” school of liberalism. The latter, born in Jacobin France and with adherents as far east as Russia, considered the State not merely the chief guarantor but the ultimate source of liberty.$^{25}$ Under certain circumstances the State might actively prescribe forms of liberty rejected by an unenlightened citizenry. To Palacký and Havlíček, such an idea was inadmissible. Individual and national rights per force relected popular will and had first to be secured through a fixed rule of law. Only then could the State govern as an auxiliary power.
When revolution broke out in Prague on March 11, 1848, neither Palacký nor Havlíček became immediately involved. Like other liberals, ​they distrusted the Czech and German radicals who dominated the first meetings at the St. Wenceslaus Baths and who, as members of the secret Repeal Club, had sought to link the end of absolutism to an early resolution of social issues.$^{26}$ On March 12, one day before the fall of Metternich, the radicals formed the Svatováclavský výbor (St. Wenceslaus Committee) to coordinate their challenge to the Crown. And shortly thereafter they dispatched a petition to the emperor, calling among others for equality of the Czech and German nationalities, freedom of the press and religion, guarantees against arbitrary arrest, and a restoration of the legislative and administrative autonomy of the Bohemian kingdom.$^{27}$ Liberals meanwhile publicized the need for a constitution and agitated for a broadening of the committee’s membership.
It remained for Palacký’s letter to signal, and partly cause, a major shift in the Bohemian revolution. At the middle of March, Czech and German liberals were united in their opposition to absolutism, but momentarily outmaneuvered by the radicals. By the end of the month they had gained control of the Svatováclavský výbor and reduced the radicals to a minority faction, only to divide along nationality lines. Palacký did not alone precipitate the split by writing to Frankfurt.$^{28}$ But in focusing attention on hitherto unexamined aspects of the Anschluss question, he underscored its complexity and thereby forced Bohemian German liberals to clarify their own positions.
Poet Alfred Meissner was the first to attack Palacký’s stand. He denied that Austria could survive the revolution if transformed into a federation of equal nationalities. The “law of nature” was driving Germans to unite, in a Bund reconstituted along liberal, national lines. And that precluded the continuation of an Austria with traditional territorial and multi-national components,$^{29}$ Palacký’s opposition to the political reorganization of central Europe was philosophically unsound. Further, it was an attempt to frustrate the inevitable.
Journalist Anton Springer spoke more to the issue of Russia. He agreed that Tsarist imperialism threatened central Europe, but saw it as a danger to Germans and Czechs alike. Would not a new Germany, more than a moribund Austria, deter Russian expansion? Certainly a united Germany would be economically more viable and politically and militarily stronger than a divided one. And it would guarantee Czechs nationality rights equal to those of the Germans, despite the former’s inferior numbers.$^{30}$
The fundamental historical rebuttal came from economics professor Franz Makowiczka. He rejected entirely Palacký’s argument that ​Bohemia’s tie to the German Bund was purely dynastic and voluntary, and that it implied no obligation on the part of Czechs to participate in Frankfurt’s deliberations. “Bohemia is indissolubly linked to Germany,” he countered. “Her connection with Germany is as old as her history.”$^{31}$ As far back as the fourteenth century, kings such as Charles IV already considered themselves more German than Czech; and by the beginning of the eighteenth century, under Joseph I, Bohemia was declared an inseparable part of the imperial lands. Voluntary association did not exist, and if it ever had, the distinction had become obscured by the time the Holy Roman Empire was transformed into the Bund, following the Napoleonic wars.$^{32}$
Havlíček led the defense of Palacký, strengthening his own claim to leadership among Czech liberals. Writing in Národní noviny (National News), he admitted that Austria had been shaken by the revolution. Yet she might survive, he observed, because Slav support of her was constant, even if liberal German was not.$^{33}$ What confused the situation was the growing attraction of Frankfurt for certain Austrian government ministers. Unlike middle class German intellectuals, they did not regard Austria’s demise as inevitable. To the contrary, they shared Metternich’s dream of Austrian domination of all central European German states, and they realized that the goal would be frustrated if they ignored Frankfurt and its labors subsequently proved fruitful.$^{34}$
These Austrian designs on the German Confederation, and even Italy, fostered, according to Havlíček, a serious misunderstanding of Austria’s destiny. Two hundred years earlier the Habsburgs had ignored Wallenstein’s warning that excessive preoccupation with the Protestant threat was jeopardizing Austria’s ability to defend Europe’s south-eastern flank. The result was a second, nearly disastrous Turkish siege of Vienna (1683). Now in the nineteenth century, Austria was again acting against her true interests and mission–to serve as an “association of diverse peoples with equal dignity.”$^{35}$ “O irony of fate! The Czechs are more Austrian than the Austrians themselves! We in Prague, we in Zagreb, have cared better and more persistently for your welfare [than have you, the Austrian government] . . . . Wallenstein fell, sacrificed to the Jesuits. But what did not happen two hundred years ago [Austria’s disengagement from the Bund] can still be realized today.”$^{36}$
Throughout the spring and summer of 1848, Havlíček expanded his support of Palacký. By late April the Frankfurt controversy had split the bi-national Svatováclavský výbor into rival Czech and German organizations. Palacký became chief policymaker, Havlíček journalistic ​spokesman, of the Czech-dominated Národní výbor (National Committee).$^{37}$ In May, Palacký helped to organize the Prague Slav Congress, to counteract Great German nationalism and Magyar separatism and to reaffirm Slav loyalty to the Monarchy. Convinced of the correctness of the policies that underlay the move, Havlíček endorsed the congress and publicized it enthusiastically in the press.$^{38}$ In mid-June, the Whitsuntide uprising forced an end to the congress, and both men condemned the revolt.$^{39}$ Armed insurrections invariably provoked military reaction, they believed, and were antithetical to stable, productive change. For that reason, too, they condemned the October student rebellion in Vienna and efforts by the anarchist Bakunin to topple all legally established European governments.$^{40}$
Nevertheless, the two men gradually developed some differences, and in some areas the differences were more than incidental. Palacký, for example, had a sophisticated appreciation of almost all aspects of governmental reform. As the greatest Czech constitutional thinker of the nineteenth century, he recognized in 1848 the difficulties of drafting a constitution that would provide Austria the decentralization of authority demanded by revolutionaries and, at the same time, be acceptable to the Crown. In three constitutional drafts, he struggled to reconcile contradictions between the principles of “historic state-rights” (Staatsrecht) and “nationality,” the most frequently mentioned criterial for determining the nature and scope of federalization.$^{41}$ As we know, he never resolved the problem. But his failure resulted more from factors beyond his control than from any lack of insight or from a lack of trust in him by authorities who appointed him to the imperial constitution-drafting committee.$^{42}$
Havlíček, in his constitutional thinking, more closely resembled the average Austrian citizen. Sometimes interested, sometimes not, he was often confused. Already in March, 1848, he had warned that “constitution” was an evasive word, variously interpreted, and easily misunderstood.$^{43}$ Yet in commenting on constitutional issues, he favored first Staatsrecht, then “nationality,” and sometimes both simultaneously, as the basis of Czech autonomy.$^{44}$ When finally in December, 1849, he endorsed Palacký’s scheme for an Empire of eight autonomous ethnic units, he did so to revive an already dead revolution, rather than from a conviction that the plan was the best possible one.$^{45}$
Other differences were due to contrasts in personality or to occasional disagreements over tactics. Palacký’s temperament enabled him to get on well with most persons. Among his friends he counted Slavs and non-Slavs, bourgeois, aristocrats, and ecclesiastics. His zealous ​participation in Reichstag debates, both in Vienna and Kroměříž (Kremsier), earned him some enemies. But most of his associates, friend and foe, respected him. Particularly attractive was his willingness to compromise, when purely ideological solutions to problems were impossible and when the need to be realistic did not require abandonment of principle. Thus in the wake of the Whitsuntide events he supported Leo Thun, governor of Bohemia, against the hated General Windischgrätz.$^{46}$ Thun was no champion of the Czech cause, but as a guardian of Habsburg interests he was preferable to the man who had crushed the uprising with great force and imposed martial law on Prague.
Havlíček’s acerbic temperament, as noted earlier, involved him in numerous disputes. It affected, too, his journalistic prose, which was alternately blunt and simple, colorful and vulgar, designed as much to infuriate as to persuade his adversaries. Like Palacký, he served in the Reichstag, but made few speeches; and finding the haggling in the imperial assembly tiresome, he eventually resigned his seat (December, 1848).$^{47}$
As for tactics, Havlíček could and did change them, at times dramatically. In April, 1848, during a meeting of the Národní výbor, he told poet Moritz Hartmann that, were the Czechs to be faced with certain domination by either Germans or Russians, he would prefer “the Russian whip to German ‘freedom’.”$^{48}$ And after 1848 he wrote to Palacký that the Czechs had acted too timidly by trusting the imperial government, while separatist Magyars and grossdeutsch liberals openly defied it.$^{49}$ Such statements resulted perhaps from the stresses of the revolution and did not necessarily reflect permanent changes of attitude. But they did contradict Havlíček’s and Palacký’s insistence on other occasions that political oppression transcends nationality and that opposition to absolutism requires moderation.
In the end, such dissimilarities were never so great as to disrupt the essential cordial relationship between Palacký and Havlíček. Even with the return of absolutism they maintained political contacts and strengthened their personal ties. In March, 1849, Palacký supported his colleague when Havlíček attacked Stadion’s Oktroi constitution and was brought to trial in the first anti-press litigation of the Schwarzenberg era.$^{50}$ He did so again in January, 1850, when Havlíček was forced to halt publication of Národní noviny, in part for publicizing Palacký’s own criticism of the government’s centralization program (December, 1849).$^{51}$ Later, when Havlíček moved to Kutná Hora and established Slovan (The Slav), Palacký urged his friend not to close the newspaper ​when government officials attempted to influence its editorial policy.$^{52}$ And he stood by Havlíček when the latter was arrested and exiled to Brixen in December, 1851.
The harsher absolutism of 1851-60 forced an end to even limited collaboration among revolutionaries. Separated physically and under police surveillance, Palacký and Havlíček reduced their contacts to infrequent exchanges of letters. This correspondence was largely non-political, but both men spoke occasionally of the failure of the revolution, and even of plans for the future. Late in December 1851, Havlíček confided to Palacký his intention to dramatize the deterioration of justice in Austria by satirizing the circumstances of his arrest.$^{53}$ And the following summer he wrote of his desire to escape to Serbia.$^{54}$ Palacký, in turn, urged his friend not to abandon hope of release and to spend his time writing a nationalistic novel which could counteract the resurgence of absolutism in the Czech lands.$^{55}$ Of these particular plans only Havlíček’s satire of Austrian police practices–Tyrolské elegie (Tyrolean Elegies)– was ever accomplished. Declining in health for over a year, Havlíček died of tuberculosis in the summer of 1856. Palacký lived another twenty years, but his later political involvements were never extensive.
Neither man realized his goal of the federal reorganization of Austria. Each advocated tactics which, though justifiable, proved ineffective; for the Austro-Slavs’ insistence on non-violence and on fidelity to the Habsburgs earned them a reward no different from that of the Magyars after Világos. Still, the two men’s achievements were not inconsequential. Together they transformed earlier, amorphous Pan-Slav ideals into a narrower and more feasible program of reform. The result, Austro-Slavism, was not new. But Palacký’s and Havlíček’s approach to it was unique. They were the first to appreciate its full political application, as a means of reconciling liberty for individual peoples with the common good of a large, multi-national state.
Individually, Palacký contributed his constitutional labors and a moral leadership based on conciliation and his own irreproachable character. Not always the best politician, he was still the only person who in 1848 commanded the respect of all politically active groups in Czech society. Havlíček’s special contributions were his early analyses of the Russian question, his constant support of Palacký, and his attempts through journalism to increase the political consciousness of apathetic citizens. It was the combination of a shared ideology and the application of different but mutually complementary individual talents that made the two men compatible, if not always successful, political allies.
NOTES
1. Josef Václav Frič, Paměti (3 vols.; Prague, 1957–63), I, pp. 305–06. The memoirs were published originally in 1891.
2. Jakub Malý, Naše znovuzrození: přehled národního života českého za posledního půlstoletí (3 parts in one volume; Prague, 1880), I, pp. 69, 74, 76.
3. Tomáš G. Masaryk, Karel Havlíček: snahy a tužby politického probuzení (Prague, 1904), pp. 268–90. Cf. Masaryk, Česká otázka: snahy a tužby národního obrození (Prague, 1908). For criticisms of Masaryk’s interpretation see Arnošt Denis, Čechy po Bílé hoře (6 vols.; Prague, 1911), IV, pp. 301–02; and Zdeněk V. Tobolka’s review in Naše doba, XI (1904), pp. 787–89. Also enlightening is the Masaryk-Tobolka polemic, “Havlíček skutečný a fiktivní,” Naše doba, XII (1905), pp. 78–80, 237–40.
4. Karel Tůma, Karel Havlíček: nejslavnější publicista českého národa (Kutná Hora, 1885). The study was intended to help the Young Czechs expand their political arsenal by showing the compatibility of the party’s program and tactics with those of the popularly revered Havlíček. The result was an exaggeration of Havlíček’s radicalism through a reduction of his philosophy to political liberalism, anti-Germanism, and anti-clericalism.
5. The “conversions” occured in 1813 and 1839, respectively. See Joseph F. Zacek, Palacký: The Historian as Scholar and Nationalist (The Hague, 1970), p. 16; and Havlíček to M. Příborský, January 16, 1839, in Ladislav Quis, ed., Korespondence Karla Havlíčka (Prague, 1903), p. 725. Hereafter, KH Korespondence.
6. Antonín Okáč, Český sněm a vláda před březnem 1848 (Prague, 1947), pp. 78–81.
7. The best of the detailed studies of Havlíček’s early life is still Václav Zelený, “Ze života Karla Havlíčka,” Osvěta, II (1872), pp. 320–36, 477–94, 642–62, and III (1873), pp. 14–30.
8. Zdeněk V. Tobolka, Literatura česká devatenáctého století (3 vols, in 4 parts; Prague, 1902–07), III/1, p. 583.
9. There have been several studies of this important controversy, which led to the abandonment of Czech as a literary language by young Slovak Protestant intellectuals. Among the more balanced accounts are V.A. Frantsev, Cheshsko-slovenskii razkol i ego otgoloski v literature sorokovych godov (Warsaw, 1915); Milan Hodža, Čezkoslovenský rozkol: príspevky k dejinám slovenčiny (Turciansky Sv. Martin, 1920); and Jan Novotný, O bratrškě druzbe Čechu a Slováků za národního obrození (Prague, 1959).
10. Pražské noviny (hereafter, PN), February 15–March 12, 1846; reprinted in Zdeněk V. Tobolka, ed., Karla Havlíčka Borovského politické spisy (3 vols. in 5 parts; Prague, 1900–03), I, pp. 32–101. Hereafter, KHPS.
11. Ibid., p. 64.
12. Ibid., p. 69.
13. Bohuš Rieger, ed., Františka Palackého spisy drobné (3 vols.; Prague, 1898–1902), I, p. 19. Hereafter, FPSD.
14. The best treatment of Czech-Russian relations in the first half of the nineteenth century is Josef Jirásek, Rusko a my: studie vztahů československých-ruských od počátku 19. století do r. 1867 (Prague, 1929). For information on the ​Czechs who did go to Russia before 1848, see pp. 12, 128–30, and 247. Also Ivan Pfaff and Vladimír Závodsky, Tradice česko-ruských vztahů v dějinách (Prague, 1957), p. 111.
15. FPSD, I, p. 20.
16. There is no satisfactory study of liberalism as it affected the western Slavs. A balanced interpretation of Austro-German liberalism is in Georg Franz, Liberalismus: die deutschliberale Bewegung in der Habsburgischen Monarchie (Munich, 1955).
17. Josef Fischer, Myšlenka a dílo Františka Palackého (2 vols.; Prague, 1926–27), I, pp. 147–48.
18. Ibid., p. 163.
19. Ibid., pp. 218–21. Also helpful is Zacek’s discussion in Palacký: The Historian as Scholar and Nationalist, pp. 83ff.
20. “Korouhev naše,” PN, March 19, 1848, KHPS, I, p. 241.
21. “Naše politika,” Národní noviny (hereafter, NN), April 12, 1848, KHPS, II/1, p. 14. He expressed similar thoughts in “Daniel O’Connell,” PN, June 13–27, 1847, and in “Výklad hesla Národních novin,” NN, July 4, 1848. Cited in KHPS I, p. 194ff, and II/1, pp. 67–69.
22. Emanuel Chalupný, Havlíček: prostředí, osobnost a dílo (Prague, 1929), p. 398.
23. “Politický aforismus o státu,” FPSD, I, pp. 7–8.
24. PN, December 27, 1846, KHPS, I p. 148.
25. S.V. Utechin, Russian Political Thought (New York, 1963), pp. 105ff.
26. Karel Slavíček, Tajná politická společnost Český Repeal 1848 (Prague, 1947), pp. 73–117 passim. Also, Karel Kazbunda, české hnutí roku 1848 (Prague, 1929), p. 38.
27. The complete list of demands is in Jan Černý, ed., Boj za právo: sborník aktů politických u věcech státu a národa českého od roku 1848 (Prague, 1893), pp. 12–17.
28. The other causes are diverse and difficult to interpret because they involve charges, some biased, made by both nationalities during the revolution. To the Germans, some Czechs, including Havlíček, created a dangerous misunderstanding of Czech intentions when they urged their fellow nationals to tear down German signs in Prague and to replace them with Czech language posters. See PN, March 19, 1848, KHPS, I, p. 235; and K.J. Beneš, ed., Rok 1848 v projevech současníků (Prague, 1948), pp. 54–55. Also offensive to Germans were the activities of the Svatováclavský sbor (St. Wenceslaus Corps), later renamed Svornost (Unanimity). As a paramilitary civilian guard, the corps committed itself to defend always and everywhere the Czech nationality”, and some of its members incited riots and intimidated persons considered unsympathetic to Czech aspirations. Such activities may have suggested to the Germans a Czech desire for exclusive control of the Bohemian revolution. Additional information is in Josef Toužimský, Na úsvitě nové doby (Prague, 1898), pp. 157–59, and in W.W. Tomek, Paměti z meho ziwota (2 vols.; Prague, 1904–05), I, p. 259.
The Czechs, for their part, objected to the wearing of the Great German tricolors in Prague which, in early April, produced a number of violent clashes between Czech and German partisans on the avenue Příkopy. See Palacký’s concerned remarks before the Národní vybor on April 13 and 14, FPSD, I, p. 38. In addition, it is clear that there was strong pro-Frankfurt sentiment in Bohemia already weeks before ​Palacký’s letter or the formal Czech-German split, and German leaders only briefly discouraged its spread. See Reichenberger Wochenblatt, April 1, 1848; Prager Zeitung, April 5, 1848; and Černý, ed., Boj za právo, p. 82. On most accounts, Czech and German liberals shared responsibility for the deterioration of their relations.
29. “Ein Brief an Herr Franz Palacky,” Constitutionelles Blatt aus Böhmen, April 18, 1848. The response was written on the fifteenth, published three days later.
30. “Böhmen und das Frankfurter Parliament,” ibid., April 19, 1848. Cf. Heinrich Reutter, “Eine zweite Stimme über Oesterreichs Anschluss an Deutschland,” Prager Zeitung, April 18, 1848.
31. “Offenes Sendschreiben an meine Landsleute,” Bohemia, April 20, 1848.
32. Ibid.
33. “Rakousy,” NN, April 19, 1848, KHPS, II/1, pp. 17–18.
34. Robert Maršan, Čechové a Němci r. 1848 a boj o Frankfurt (Prague, 1898), pp. 73–75.
35. NN, April 19, 1848, KHPS, II/1. p. 18.
36. Ibid., pp. 18–19.
37. The German-dominated counterpart was the “Verein der Deutschen aus Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien zur Aufrechthaltung ihrer Nationalitat.”
38. NN, May 19, 1848, in Václav Žáček, ed., Slovanský sjezd v Praze roku 1848: sbírka dokumentů (Prague, 1958), pp. 53–54. See also Václav Čejchan, “Ke vzniku myšlenky slovanského sjezdu,” Slovanský přehled, XX (1928), pp. 401–02. For attitudes of other Slavs toward the congress, see Jaroslav Šidak, “Austroslavizam i Slavenski Kongres u Pragu,” Historijski pregled, III (1960), pp. 210–13.
39. FPSD, I, p. 51. Josef Fischer, ed., Z politického odkazu Frant. Palackého: výbor statí (Prague, 1926), pp. 57–58, and 193. NN, June 29, 1848, KHPS, II/1, pp. 62–64.
40. FPSD, I, pp. 65–67. NN, October 25, 1848, and January 21, 1849, KHPS, II/1, pp. 187, and 274–76.
41. FPSD. I, pp. 59–64, 69–74, 112–20. Also Fischer, Myšlenka a dílo, I, pp. 225–26.
42. The reasons for the failure of constitutional government in Austria in 1848–49 are discussed in A.J.P. Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy (London, 1960), pp. 71–85.
43. PN, March 19, 1848, KHPS, I, p. 239.
44. There is evidence of vacillation between Staatsrecht and “nationality” in practically all of Havlíček’s writing on constitutional government. In 1842, even before he embarked on his public career, he viewed the Bohemian kingdom as a legally indivisible unit comprised of all its historic units, including Silesia. See his map in Fond II T4–14, Literární archív Památníku národního písemnictví v Praze (LAPNP). The fact that the kingdom had lost the greater part of Silesia was due to the “illegal Prussian seizure” of 1742. NN, April 7, 1848, KHPS, II/1, p. 7. Early in the revolution, even as he spoke of Staatsrecht, he supported the plan of Oesterreichische Zeitung for a monarchy composed of ethnically homogenous, federal autonomous units. The latter clearly violated Staatsrecht, See “Die Völker Oesterreichs,” OZ, April 1, 1848; and NN, April 7, 1848, KHPS, II/1, pp. 5, 7. For additional information and contrasts see the issues of Národní noviny for the following dates: April 18 and August 1, 1848, and October 28 and November 8–9, 1849. KHPS, ​II/1, pp. 15–17, 89, and II/2, pp. 748–49, 789ff. One of the best commentaries on the subject is in Chalupný, Prostředí, osobnost a dílo, pp. 382–95.
45. See Havlíček’s remarks to Palacký in the preface to Duch Národních novin, a collection of editorials which Havlíček dedicated to his friend in May, 1851. Also Palacký’s letter to Havlíček, May 2, 1851, KH Korespondence, p. 631.
46. Palacky in 1872 denied that he had had any personal antipathy toward Windischgrätz. He laid the blame for the bombardment of Prague more on the general’s subordinate officers. FPSD, I, p. 346.
47. NN, December 14, 1848, KHPS, II/1, p. 238.
48. Toužimský, Na úsvitě nové doby, p. 331. Cf. KHPS, II/2, pp. 1012–13.
49. March 16, 1853, KH Korespondence, p. 682.
50. Havlíček was eventually acquitted of charges that he had slandered the government. The trial transcript is in KHPS, II/2, pp. 416–55.
51. NN, December 23, 1849, ibid., II/2, pp. 854–66.
52. Palacký’s letter has apparently been lost. See Havlíček’s reply of July 21, 1851, KH Korespondence, pp. 638–39.
53. Ibid., p. 644.
54. Havlíček to Adolf Pinkas, February 28, 1852, ibid., p. 564. Also Havlíček to Palacký, August 25, 1852, ibid., p. 654. This contrasts with earlier plans to buy a farm and eventually retire to the countryside around his native Německý Brod. II T4-2, LAPNP.
55. Palacký to Havlíček, January 28, 1852, KH Korespondence, p. 648. The following August, Havliček rejected the idea on grounds that he had neither the peace of mind nor the necessary information for such a novel. Ibid., p. 650.
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