The rise and fall of the Przemyslid Dynasty

With the Great Moravian Empire out of the way, the Przemyslid family succeeded in laying the foundations of a Czech state somewhere around the the end of the ninth century. They did this mostly by ridding themselves of all of the things that were standing in their way, like the Vrsovic and Slavnik clans - which the Przemyslids murdered in a particularly bloody manner.The only Vrsovec to escape the massacre of his family was Adalbert, but it didn't do him much good. Adalbert was so thankful for his salvation that he became a Christian missionary and headed northwest (to the area of today's northeast Germany) to spread the Word. No sooner did he arrive at his destination than he was brutally roasted and eaten by the inhabitants. Adalbert (or Vojtech, as he is known in Czech) is another of the Czech nation's patron saints today. 


But Vojtech was not the only early Czech guy to be made a saint thanks to the Przemyslid's bloodthirstiness. On the contrary - the Przemyslid rulers were rather a mixed bag, and when they ran out of rival clans to murder, they started murdering each other - resulting in some more early saints for the Czechs.

Wenceslas I, the fourth Przemyslid Czech ruler, was made a saint soon after his murder in 929 or 935. This Wenceslas (in Czech, Vaclav) is the Good King Wenceslas of the Christmas carol, and it was during his reign that the Czech lands entered into an alliance with Saxony, thereby laying the foundations for closer relations with the restored Roman Empire.

This mischievous affability on Wenceslas' part towards the Czechs' western neighbors is a main reason that he was killed by his brother, who wasn't very good (in fact he is known as "Boleslav the Cruel.") Another reason might be that Boleslav was a pagan, and he felt that Wenceslas was frittering away too much time with this new Christian fashion he'd picked up -- though lust for power probably also played a role in Boleslav's motive for the murder, which took place at the very door of the church in Stara Boleslav, where Wenceslas was trying to seek refuge.

Incidentally, Boleslav and Wenceslas' Grandmother (on their father's side) was also murdered, and also made a saint. It is said that she was either smothered to death with a pillow or choked to death - this time, the killer was her daughter-in-law (Boleslav and Wenceslas' mother), and the motive was, again, power (Drahomira wanted to place Wenceslas on the throne.)

Things didn't get much better within the Przemyslid family, it is suspected that . Interestingly enough, the Przemyslids are remembered rather fondly in the Czech Republic today, as it seems that most people are blissfully unaware of the family's murderous streak.

Maybe that is because the Przemyslids occasionally took time off from their favorite sport to increase Bohemia's power and prestige. In typical early feudal fashion, this meant that they went out killing people in other countries instead, expanding their empire to Moravia and Silesia, as well as the upper reaches of the river Vistula and parts of western Slovakia. In Moravia, they set up a system of dukedoms, with the office of "Margrave" (ruler of Moravia) sometimes being held by the Bohemian Dauphin, sometimes by a rival for the Bohemian throne. In this way the Przemyslide dynastic killings were stayed, and both Bohemia and Moravia came to be regarded as hereditary lands of the Przemyslid dynasty. All the while, the expansion of the Przemyslid Dynasty's power went hand in hand with the spread of Christianity in the region.

This growing Przemyslide state maintained its sovereignty, though it formally recognized the feudal supremacy of the Roman-German Empire. The Czech lands ranked among the most advanced of the European feudal states, being at the forefront of economic power and cultural achievement at the time. In keeping with this growing importance, the territory was officially recognized through the granting of a royal crown to the Przemyslid Dynasty in the eleventh century (it was made hereditary in 1212 by the Golden Sicilian Bull) and the granting of the title of 'emperor' for Czech rulers. 

The 1100s and 1200s were a very busy time in this part of Europe, and colonization, trade and cultural activity were steadily on the increase. Prague, which lay smack dab in the middle of several continental trade routes, flourished. Prague's Old Town was founded in 1234 as the first of Prague's five towns, and the Lesser Quarter was founded in 1257. Border forests were settled and towns and fortresses were founded and fortified. These sweeping changes literally transformed the country, and in keeping with these physical changes, the social structure of the territory also evolved. From about this time, aristocrats, burghers, and serfs were to be spotted in the Czech lands - as were German settlers, who were invited to colonize previously uninhabited (mostly border) regions of Bohemia and Moravia. The German settlers, whether burghers or peasants, did not form a homogeneous or politically separate group, and they soon became part of the local community, identifying with Czech statehood and sharing in the development of the Czech and Moravian lands as fully enfranchised members of the population, but mostly but keeping their native language (in addition to learning Czech.) Many, many, many, many centuries later, the places that they settled would come to be known as the "Sudetenland."

From the thirteenth century, the Czech kingdom was one of the most robust states in all of Europe, with a growing population and a vigorous economy. This, in turn, made the Czech nobility and rulers all the more rich and powerful, and enabled king Przemysl Otakar II to expand his territory rather extensively (if briefly). Otakar II was quite well-known in his time, and he even makes an appearance in Dante's Divine Comedy. Otokar II, also known as the "King of Gold and Iron" (because of his considerable wealth and his considerable military might) defeated the armies of the Hungarian king in 1256 and again in 1260. This military victory allowed him to annex the Alpine countries (today's Austria and beyond) - extending his territories all the way to the Adriatic Sea. Some people claim that this brief period - in which Bohemia controlled territory bordering on the sea - is the basis for Shakespeare's infamous 'Bohemian seacoast' from his play, "The Tempest."

Well, while the Czech lands were gaining power, prestige, oceanfront property and other things, a powerful rival appeared in Germany in the person of the newly-elected ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, Rudolf Habsburg - a member of a previously unimportant family from the Rhineland. This Rudolf formed an alliance of German princes and - after the Czech King Przemysl Otakar II was killed in battle in Moravia against the combined Roman and Hungarian forces on August 26, 1278 - Rudolf took possession of the abovementioned Alpine lands, which later became the basis of the Habsburgs' power - ie Austria.

The late Czech King Przemysl Otakar II was succeeded by his son, Wenceslas II (1278-1305). Under his reign, the mining of Czech silver at Kutna Hora and the minting of the Czech silver groschen - one of the hardest European currencies of the time - flourished. Wenceslas II also created a confederation between Bohemia and Poland. For a short time, Hungary - under the rule of Matthias Czak Trenciansky, who held absolute rule over most of Slovakia as well - also joined this confederation.

The Polish-Czech union was strengthened under the brief rule of Wenceslas III. Had it survived, it might have contributed to the creation of a more advanced region in Europe as the earlier Czech- Austrian union had. However, this was precluded by the death of young Wenceslas III (in 1306, when he was just 17 years old). Wenceslas III was the last male member of the Przemyslids line, and after his death the Czech-Polish union fell apart.

Przemyśl

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Przemyśl


 

Administration

Pays

Pologne Pologne

Maire

Robert Choma

Voïvodie

Basses-Carpates

Code postal

37-700 à 37-720

Indicatif téléphonique

(+48) 16

Immatriculation

RP

Géographie

Latitude

title="Montrer la localisation sur une carte interactive" class=noprint v:shapes="_x0000_i1029">49° 47′ 00″ Nord
       22° 47′ 00″ Est

Longitude

Superficie

44,1 km²

Démographie

Population

66 128 hab. (2007)

Localisation

Internet

Site de la ville

http://www.przemysl.pl

Przemyśl (en ukrainien Перемишль, Peremychl) est une ville du sud-est de la Pologne (Voïvodie des Basses-Carpates).

Sommaire

 [masquer]

·                     1 Situation géographique

·                     2 Histoire

·                     3 Climat

·                     4 Liens externes

·                     5 Notes et références

Situation géographique [modifier]

Przemyśl doit son développement à une situation géographique particulièrement intéressante. La ville occupe une position clé dans le couloir reliant les Carpates à la plaine. Elle a été le carrefour de routes commerciales au centre d’une région très fertile. Elle est traversée par le San, un cours d’eau navigable.

Histoire [modifier]

Przemyśl (Peremychl) est une des villes de la pologne actuelle (avec aussi Sanok et Chełm) qui fut fondée par des princes ukrainiens.

Przemyśl est la deuxième plus vieille ville du sud de la Pologne après Cracovie. Elle est fondée au viiie siècle et fait partie de la Grande-Moravie. Des traces archéologiques attestent déjà d'une présence monacale au ixe siècle. L'invasion de la Grande-Moravie par les Magyars vers 899 pousse les habitants à se mettre sous la protection de la Rus' de Kiev. Depuis cette époque, Przemyśl est devenu un sujet de contentieux entre la Pologne, la Rus' de Kiev et la Hongrie. La première mention historique de la ville date de 981 et concerne cette rivalité.

Du ixe au xiie siècle, Przemyśl est la capitale de la Ruthénie rouge. La ville est incorporée à la Pologne dans la deuxième partie du xiiie siècle. A cette époque, elle obtient les privilèges urbains (droit de Magdebourg) confirmés par le roi Ladislas II Jagellon en 1389.

Durant la Renaissance, la ville prospère en tant que grand centre commercial. Polonais, Ruthènes, Juifs, Allemands,Tchèques et Arméniens cohabitent. La ville commence à décliner au milieu du xviie siècle en conséquence de la guerre avec laSuède et de l'effondrement de l'Union polono-lituanienne. Ce n'est qu'à la fin du xviiie siècle que la population retrouve son importance d'antan.

En 1772, à la suite du premier partage de la Pologne, Przemyśl est annexée par l'Autriche. En 1861, une ligne de chemin de fer est construite et relie la ville à Cracovie et à Lwów. Au milieu du xixe siècle, en raison des tensions grandissantes entre l'Autriche et la Russie au sujet des Balkans, Przemyśl devient une ville d'une importance stratégique considérable pour les Autrichiens. Pendant la guerre de Crimée, la ville est transformée en un camp fortifié, entouré par une ceinture d'une circonférence de 15 km contenant 30 forteresses. Les progrès réalisés par l'artillerie pendant la seconde partie du xixe siècleont très vite rendu ces fortifications obsolètes. De 1888 à 1914, les Autrichiens construisent une deuxième ceinture de 45 kmde circonférence contenant 44 forts tandis que l'anneau intérieur est renforcé et modernisé. Après Anvers et Verdun, Przemyśl devient la troisième ville la plus fortifiée d'Europe. Elle peut accueillir 85 000 soldats et 956 canons.

En août 1914, au début de la Première Guerre mondiale, les Russes prennent l'avantage sur les Autrichiens et avancent rapidement en Galicie. Przemyśl remplit complètement sa mission en arrêtant l'armée russe forte de 300 000 hommes. A partir d'octobre 1914, les Russes assiègent de nouveau la ville. Faute manque de vivres, les défenseurs de la ville, épuisés, déposent les armes le 22 mars 1915 après avoir détruits les fortifications. Les Russes font 126 000 prisonniers et s'emparent de 700 pièces d'artillerie. Les Empires centrauxreprennent Przemyśl le 3 juin 1915. Les combats dans la région ont fait 115 000 morts, blessés ou disparus.

Après la guerre, la ville fait l'objet d'un conflit entre la Pologne et l'Ukraine. Le 12 novembre 1918, la ville est entièrement aux mains des Polonais.

Population de Przemyśl en 1931

Catholiques

39 430

(63,3%)

Juifs

18 376

(29,5%)

Uniates

4 391

(7,0%)

Autres

85

(0,2%)

Total

62 272

 

Source: Recensement de 1931

En 1931, la ville compte 62 272 habitants. En 1939, après l'invasion de la Pologne par l'Allemagne et l'URSS, la ville de Przemyśl se trouve à la frontière séparant la zone d'occupation allemande de la zone d'occupation soviétique. De nombreux Juifs réussissent à passer dans la zone d'occupation soviétique. En juin 1941, l'Allemagne attaque l'URSS et prend le contrôle de toute la ville. Le 20 juin 1942, un premier groupe de 1 000 Juifs de la région de Przemyśl est envoyé au camp de travail forcé de Janowska. Le 15 juillet 1942, les nazis créent un ghetto et y enferment 22 000 Juifs. Ils seront pratiquement tous exterminés à Auschwitz et à Belzec. La résistance polonaise et juive réussira à sauver 415 Juifs. L'étude des archives allemandes révèle que 568 Polonais de la région ont été exécutés pour avoir aidé des Juifs.

La ville est libérée par l'Armée rouge le 27 juillet 1944. Le découpage territorial d'après-guerre place Przemyśl en bordure de la frontière avec l'URSS, privant la ville d'une grande partie de son ancienne aire d'influence. En raison de l'extermination des Juifs et de l'expulsion des Ukrainiens, la population de la ville s'est effondrée. Cette perte va progressivement être compensée par l'arrivée de milliers de réfugiés polonais d'Ukraine.

Après tous ces désastres, la croissance de la ville s'est arrêtée. La dissolution de l'URSS en 1991 et la création d'une Ukraine indépendante et démocratique ouvrent de nouvelles perspectives à Przemyśl.

Les unités (première idée-- non définitive)



 


par Firelord_70

Les unités (première idée-- non définitive)
Ce peuple ayant une culture slave, des influences germaniques et une religion catholique dût faire face à de grandes menaces tant intérieures que venue de l'extérieur. Dès le début du Ve siècle ils furent envahis par les Huns. Quelques siècles plus tard ce fut au tour des Hongrois d'être attiré par ces terres. Puis un siècle après un conflit intérieur qui déchira ce pays entre les ambitions des Slavnikides et des Premyslides. Ce conflit pris fin par la prise du pouvoir de ces derniers en 995. Ainsi commence l'histoire du Duché de la Bohème.
Il faudra un dirigeant fort et capable d'unir son peuple pour garder l'autonomie de ce duché, entre les ambitions du Saint-Empire à l'ouest, des Hongrois et des Polonais au nord. Leur atout est une situation géographique favorable et une culture de farouche guerriers.
par PantherosII

Periods in the History of Bohemia




General Observations . Many historical accounts subdivide Bohemian history by dynasties (Przemyslid 9th century-1310, Luxemburg 1310-1437, Habsburg 1437-1458, Podebrady 1458-1471, Jagiellonian 1471-1526, Habsburg 1526-1618, 1620-1918). While this criterion is legitimate, it uses genealogical events of coincidential nature as cornerstones for epochs, and it fails to identify moments in time when changes of structural nature occurred. Also, this chapter aims to describe the history of the Duchy / Kingdom of Bohemia, not the history of the dynasties who ruled Bohemia; the latter, since 1076, ruled a complex of territories (the Lands of the Bohemian Crown), since 1310 often were parts of larger territorial complexes (Luxemburg, Jagiellon, Habsburg Dynasties). A history of Bohemia focussing on the dynasties will emphasize the foreign policies of the kings, and thus deviate from the line this chapter is to focus on. 

Antiquity (2nd Century B.C. to 5th Century A.D. . Bohemia is a region defined by geography. It is surrounded by mountain ranges on four sides - northeast (Sudeten), northwest (Elbsandstein Mountains), southwest (Bohemian Forest, Bavarian Forest) and south. The border to Moravia is formed by the less formidable watershed between the Elbe/Moldau basin and the March basin. 
In Antiquity Bohemia was inhabited by the Celtic Boii, many historians believe Bohemia to derive from "home of the Boii". In the early centuries A.D. the country was inhabited by a succession of Germanic tribes, the Marcomanni, Quadi, Bavarii (the part of the Marcomanni not placing themselves under Roman protection believed to have been absorbed into the Quadi in the 4th century; the Quadi believed, together with other Germanic peoples, to have merged into the Bavarii; recorded for the 6th century). In the course of the Barbaric Peoples' Migration the Bavarii left Bohemia and moved into Bavaria. 

Slavic Settlement, Pagan Religion (5th to 10th Century) . Bohemia is believed to have been settled by pagan Slavic groups in the later 5th century A.D. The early history of Slavic Bohemia is nebulous due to the scarcity of written records. Bohemia is recorded as being a vassall of the Frankish / East Frankish Kingdom since 817.
A first attempt to convert Bohemia to (Orthodox) christianity, in the 9th century, after initial successes, was foiled by Magyar incursions, which caused the collapse of Greater Moravia (c. 905). 
In the 10th century Bohemia converted to Catholicism, and the Przemyslid family acquired the position of hereditary dukes. The Diocesis of Prague was established in 973. 

Early Christian Bohemia (973 to 1200) . The Przemyslid Dukes of Bohemia, while for most of the time loyal to the East Frankish (Roman) King respectively Emperor, pursued their own dynastic ambitions, and temporarily extended their authority over Moravia and other areas. Vysehrad castle near Prague was constructed in the 10th century; the Przemyslid Dynasty, while maintaining a Slavic identity, adopted the lifestyle and politics of Frankish (German) higher nobility. 

Era of Development (1200-1400) . By 1200 Bohemia was among the largest political entities within the Holy Roman Empire, rich in economic potential and poorly developed. France and the western regions of the Holy Roman Empire had seen rapid economic development ever since technological developments such as the introduction of the iron plough, dyking and draining techniques permitted to take fertile clay soil under the plow, to drain swamps and to protect lowlands against inundation. The Urban Revolution had begun here. By 1200, both hardly had made an impact on Bohemia. 
The Przemyslid rulers of Bohemia, and from 1310 onward their successors of the Luxemburg Dynasty, wanted to introduce these novelties into their country, in order to raise their revenues. Groups of settlers were called into the country to cultivate stretches of land which hitherto lay idle, to found cities where there were none before. These settlers, which happened to be German, were given privileges, thus legally separated from their Slavic neighbours. Thus, Bohemia became a country of two cultures, the Slavs who dominated the countryside of the central Bohemian plain, and the Germans who dominated in the Sudetenland (the hill rim of the Bohemian basin, and the cities). Prague, the capital, was an exception; it combined three elements, the Czech, German and Jewish communities. Bohemia's mining industry flourished in the 13th and 14th centuries; the technical know-how had been brought into the country by immigrant German miners. 
Politically, Bohemia became the center of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown; Moravia was a sideland of Bohemia since 1182, Silesia since 1335, Lusatia since 1076. The Luxemburg Dynasty, since 1310, chose Prague as their residence. 
Under Emperor (and King of Bohemia) Charles IV., the Diocesis of Prague was elevated to an Archdiocese (1344), and the city became seat of a University (1348); Prague Castle was reconstructed. 

Religious Disputes (1400-1620) . Jan Hus, master at Prague University, by preaching in vernacular and criticizing abuses within the church, gained a large followership among Bohemia's Czechs - the Hussites. When Hus was burnt as a heretic by the Council of Konstanz in 1417, this did not deter the Hussites. The Luxemburg Dynasty lost control of central Bohemia; the Hussites not only defeated a series of crusades launched against them, but undertook raids into the countries from where the crusaders originated. The Hussites were not defeated by their enemies; peace was restored in 1434 after a Hussite civil war, in which the moderate Utraquists won over the radical Taborites. 
Bohemia had been the site of an early reformation, which had not spread beyond Bohemia and Moravia because of two reasons - the limitation of the Czech language, and Gutenberg's single letter printing technique not having been available yet. 
The Luxemburg Dynasty lost control of Bohemia; the country was ruled by 'Hussite King' George of Podebrady (1458-1471), who was succeeded by two kings of the Jagiellonian Dynasty (1471-1526). They again were succeeded by the Habsburg Dynasty (1437-1458, 1526-1618, 1620-1918). In 1485 King Vladislaus II. granted the Bohemian Estates vast authorities regarding the administration of the country. Habsburg Kings Ferdinand (1526-1564) and Rudolf (1576-1611) resided in Prague; Ferdinand in 1556 called the Jesuits to Prague. By the mid 16th century, Bohemia had become a religious caleidoscope, consisting of 4 christian communities : Catholics, Utraquists (moderate Hussites readmitted into the Catholic Church in 1433; mostly Czechs), Bohemian Brethren (successors to the Taborites or radical Hussites, mostly Czechs) and Lutherans (mostly Germans); to these, the country's Jews have to be added as a 5th religious community. 
In 1617 Duke Ferdinand of Styria, a staunch supporter of the Counterreformation, was elected King of Bohemia; a number of Bohemian aristocrats rebelled and in 1618 staged a coup d'etat (Defenestration of Prague).
From 1618 to 1620, Bohemia was a noble's republic, under an elected, nominal king. 

Counterreformation Bohemia (1620-1711) . The Habsburgs being victorious in the Battle of the White Mountain 1620, they had the rebellious Bohemian aristocrats executed and their estates auctioned off. In effect, Bohemia got a new nobility, partially of German, partially of Italian background, all of them Catholics. The printing of books in Czech language ceased; the Jesuits were given a free hand in implementing the Counterreformation. Large numbers of Bohemian protestants fled the country. Economically, the country suffered - from war as well as from maladministration. Czech historians refer to this period as the Dark Age of their history. 
Within the territories of the Austrian Habsburgs, Bohemia still was the economically most versatile and productive region.
 

18th Century Bohemia (1711-1792) . In 1683 the Austrian Habsburgs narrowly escaped disaster; the Ottoman siege of Vienna was broken, by 1699 Hungary liberated. The Austrian Habsburgs, throughout the late 17th and into the 18th century, in order to fight their many wars, heavily depended on foreign subsidies. Austrian economists wanted to improve the Emperor's finances and suggested policies such as lessening the burden on peasants and introducing taxation on nobility. Still, in 1775 the country saw a peasants rebellion. Also, new forms of production, such as manufactures, were promoted. Bohemia was the most versatile and productive economy among the territories of the Austrian Habsburgs (the Austrian Netherlands and Milan disregarded). 
Repeatedly, Bohemia was the battleground of wars (War of Austrian Succession 1740-1748, Seven Years War 1756-1763; War of Bavarian Succession 1777-1778). 

19th Century Bohemia (1792-1918) . In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, the Kingdom of Bohemia declared integral part of the Austrian Empire (1806). Czech and German nationalism emerged. The Habsburg administration were reluctant to concede political authority to the estates, to extend the franchise. The Industrial Revolution affected Bohemia stronger than any other region within Austria. In 1848, Prague saw a revolution, and was the seat of the 1st Pan-Slavic Congress. The revolution was suppressed, but serfdom abolished in Austria (including Bohemia). 
The Industrial Revolution resulted in changes in society; the growth of a railroad network increased social mobility. Persons from the (Czech) countryside migrated into cities, many of which used to be of an ethnic German character; the Germans, over time, found themselves being reduced to a minority. 
Improved education resulted in increased circulation of newspapers, both in Czech and German; these, despite press censorship, often were edited by liberal patriots of either ethnicity. Among the Bohemian Czechs, demands for a Czech politically autonomous entity comprising of what was left of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown (Bohemia, Moravia, Austrian Silesia), where Czech was official language, was made. Pan-Slavists hoped for the formation of a Czecho-Slovak state. Bohemia's Germans feared such visions, but many hoped for an extension of the franchise, political liberties. 
Bohemia's Jews, in the 19th century, assimilated into the German culture. 
The Austrian administration, only for short term goals, searched the support of one or the other political groups, making minor concessions in order to get it. By the late 19th century, dissatisfaction with Austrian rule was widespread, especially among the Czechs (who saw similar privileges to those they demanded granted to Hungary (1867) and to the Pols in Galicia (1867). 
When World War I broke out, many Bohemian Czechs followed the motto "this war is not our war". The number of Czech soldiers deserting on the Russian front was so large that, in Russi, a Czecho-Slovak Legion could be formed. Jaroslav Hasek, in his novel "The Good Soldier Svejk", immortalized this Czech attitude toward World War I. For Bohemian Jew Franz Kafka, the changes which came with World War I were of a catastrophic nature and formed the background of his works. 

Czechoslovakia (1918-1992) . In 1918 the Czechoslovak state was established. Ethnic Germans in Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia, ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia found themselves marginalized in a state which emphasized its Slavic origin. The Czechs (Slav Bohemians and Moravians) outnumbered Slovaks 2:1; the old Bohemian capital of Prague was capitl of the entire state, Czechia the more politically and economically developed part of the entire country. While the Czechs identified with the Czechoslovak Republic and regarded themselves part of a Czechoslovak Nation, the Slovaks were split into Czechoslovaks and supporters of a Slovak autonomy. 
In 1938, Germany annexed the Sudetenland; from 1939 to 1945 it occupied core Czechia (then referred to as the Reichsprotektorat Böhmen und Mähren). This was a period of ruthless opression. 
In 1945 Czechoslovakia was restored, the country's ethnic German minority (c. 3 million) forcibly expelled. In 1948 Czechoslovakia became a socialist people's republic. An attempt to introduce Socialism with a Human Face (Spring of Prague 1968) was suppressed by Warsaw Pact troops. Until 1989 the country was ruled by concrete head communist politicians. Drastic political and economic reforms then resulted in the peaceful break-up of Czechoslovakia. 

Czech Republic (since 1993) . Joined NATO (1999), EU (2004). 
ČESKÝ ČASOPIS HISTORICKÝ
THE CZECH HISTORICAL REVIEW
4/2008 


OBSAH / CONTENTS

 

STUDIE A MATERIÁLY / STUDIES AND ARTICLES



BAR Přemysl
Vratislavský vévoda Jindřich IV. Probus a poslední Přemyslovci 
(The Wroclaw Duke Henryk IV. Probus and the Last Przemyslids)
s. 753-787

Despite the fact that the fortunes of the Wroclaw Duke Henryk IV. Probus (1258-1290) coincided several times with the fate of the Przemyslid Dynasty, to whom this member of the Piast Dynasty was related, Czech historiography has merely showed a marginal interest in this personality compared to Polish and German historiographies. The author of this study analyses historical sources to document the progress of the Wroclav Duke’s relations with the Przemyslids. At the same time he strives to demonstrate the impact of family relationships, dynastic and political links upon the formation of power politics in Central Europe. Much attention is devoted to collections of papers and forms, though still a much discussed and disputed type of historical resource, since what they show, once critically assessed, in this case fits logically into an entire historical context. 
Henryk IV. Probus had probably stayed for a short time at the Prague Court before 1271, despite the fact that the evidence of written sources seems to be rather obscure on this point. On the other hand, thanks to diplomatic documents we do not have any doubt regarding Przemysl Ottokar II’s suport as he installed his vassal on the Wroclaw ducal throne. As long as the Bohemian King lived, the Duke of Wroclaw enjoyed his patronage, while being his loyal ally at the same time. The adolescent Duke became more involved in politics beyond the boundaries of Silesia proper only after the death of this Przemyslid in the Battle of Marchfeld (Morava Field) in 1278. His attempt to have the government of the Bohemian Kingdom and protectorate over the young Wenceslas, heir to the Bohemian throne, entrusted to him, failed, yet at that time Henryk IV Probus became friendly with the German King Rudolph I of Hapsburg. He also had warm relations with Duke Henry, the Margrave of Moravia, and Nicholas, the Duke of Opava (Troppau), so that a longer „pre-history“ of their friendship can be assumed. 
After 1288 the activities of the Wroclaw Duke and the King of Bohemia, as well, were mainly motivated by their attempts to capture the principality of Krakow, which also led to heightened rivalry between these two rulers. Henryk IV. Probus was more successful during the first stage of their struggle, yet he did not enjoy the conquest of Krakow for long as he died suddenly on 23 June 1290. Though sources make it possible to speculate about the alleged participation of Wenceslaus II in the Duke’s demise, the more important fact seems to be that the King of Bohemia claimed, although only formally, the rights of succession after this now deceased Silesian Piast. The unique testimony to this fact are three privileges from Rudolph I. of Hapsburg from 1290, by which Wenceslaus II. was granted the Wroclaw principality and further unnamed territories, which Henryk IV.
Probus had used to govern as an imperial fiefdom.

Abstrakt: 

Studie obsahuje analýzu narativních a diplomatických pramenů, které vypovídají o proměnlivém vztahu vratislavského vévody Jindřicha IV. Proba k přemyslovské dynastii. Písemné prameny sice nedovolují vždy jednoznačnou interpretaci a mnoho otázek zůstává stále nejasných, přesto je možné na základě dosavadního výzkumu konstatovat, že vztah vévody k posledním Přemyslovcům osciloval mezi vazalstvím, spojenectvím a rivalitou. Důvodem této proměnlivosti byly jednak rozdílné osobnosti přemyslovské dynastie, které přišly do styku s vévodou tak i širší dějinný kontext, který znamenal v poslední třetině 13. století posílení habsburského vlivu na dění ve střední Evropě.

This study analyses narrative and diplomatic sources which provide an account of the changeable relationships of the Wroclaw Duke Henryk IV Probus towards the Przemyslid Dynasty. Written resources do not, however, always allow for an unambiguous interpretation and many questions still remain unanswered. Yet, based on research carried out thus far, it is possible to state that the Duke’s relationship towards the last Przemyslids oscillated between vassalage, alliance and rivalry. This changeability was the result, firstly, of the Duke coming into contact with different personalities of the Przemyslid Dynasty, and also followed from the wider historical context which in the final third of the 13th century was marked by a strengthening of the Hapsburgs’ influence upon events in Central Europe.

Key words: Silesia, Bohemia, Wroclaw, Poland, Henryk IV. Probus, last Przemyslids, Silesian Piasts, 13th century, vassal relationships


SUŠOVÁ Veronika
Politika jako oficiální znalost. Politická socializace v Předlitavsku a evropském Rusku v letech 1875-1917/1918 v komparativní perspektivě
(Politics as Official Knowledge.
Political Socialisation in Cisleithania and European Russia in Comparative Perspective during the Years 1875-1917/1918)
s. 788-822

This study focuses upon an analysis of the official vision of politics, as presented in the textbooks for Cisleithanian and Russian primary and secondary schools. Its starting point is the utilisation of the concepts of political socialisation and political literacy in order to grasp historically the official perspectives of politics. During the 19th and 20th centuries, multinational states, such as Austria-Hungary and Russia attempted to construct a patriotic identity. They were relatively successful in using the educational process for the cultural reproduction and maintenance of the existing order. This study monitors, amongst others, the contradiction between the old vision of politics (as presented in the official curriculum, i.e. by the state) and the new vision of politics (as defined by national communities). 
Using textual analysis of contemporary textbooks of history and geography, civics and readers published between 1875–1918, the author has focused upon the formation of a relationship with the political sphere as part of the cultural transfer of the official vision of politics. Namely, she analyses historical narration (seen as a tool for the legitimatisation of the Empire) and visions of the Empire in terms of the requirement for unity; political actors and finally citizenship understood normatively. 
Both Empires adopted different strategies for the preservation of their respective existence using the process of political socialisation. The differences can be observed especially in the case of historical narration and the portrayal of the vision of the Empire as the political motherland. The Cisleithanian concept was based on the discourse of unity, which respected national differences and which partially integrated national histories within an all embracing history of the Empire. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was understood as the wider family for all the Emperor’s nations without any bias. On the other hand the Russian case was dominated by the discourse of conquest as the principal narration of Russian history, which dispersed histories of territories conquered or gained by Russia within the history of the construction of Russia as an Empire. Russia was then interpreted as an Empire with the dominant state nation, comprised of Russians, Ukrainians and White Russians (the latter two nations were not considered to be independent national communities but part of the Russian nation). The ethnic hierarchy in Russian textbooks of geography attempted to maintain this superioty of the Russians over the otherwise ethnically heterogeneous Russia.
The political-socialisation strategies of both states concurred in the area of the construction of policy movers. The Cisleithanian and Russian textbooks in general accentuated traditional political actors (rulers and military commanders from the ranks of the aristocracy) to the detriment of newer political actors (for example political parties and movements), who were overlooked in textbooks. Indeed, in the case of Cisleithania, the specific role was given to the Emperor and the King, in case of Russia it was the accentuation of autocracy. Citizenship itself was in the Cisleithanian case defined with an emphasis upon its passive content (payment of taxes, doing military service, obedience and a fulfilment of one’s obligations). In Russia, citizenship was a relatively novel concept, which only appeared after 1905 and continued to be mixed with the traditional view of politics and the dogma of autocracy.
Both Empires showed relatively great interest in the political-socialisation arena but they were unable to accommodate the contents of these strategies with modern times. Their attempts clashed with the political and social reality of national communities and their democratization potential. This study argues that this specific situation led to contradictory or dichotomic views on politics, which, in some cases, have remained part of the mental heritage of Central and Eastern Europe until present times.

Abstrakt:
Studie se věnuje otázkám politické socializace a obsahům politické gramotnosti v kontextu mnohonárodní říše na příkladu Předlitavska a evropského Ruska mezi lety 1875-1917/18. Vzdělávací proces je pojímán jako komunikační prostor pro přenos oficiálního vidění politiky, které je analyzováno na základě textové analýzy čítanek a učebnic dějepisu, zeměpisu, občanské nauky a vlastivědy. Autorka se zaměřila na několik okruhů výzkumu: na dějepisnou naraci, na obrazy říše s ohledem na požadavek jednoty, na politické aktéry a na konstruování občana a občanství. Pomocí jejich analýzy se studie snaží o pochopení oficiálních definic a vidění politické sféry a dotýká se otázek kulturního a mentálního dědictví „imperiální“ politické kultury ve střední a východní Evropě.

This study deals with the issues of political socialisation and the contents of political literacy within the framework of a multinational empire, using the examples of and European Russia during the period 1875-1917/18. The educational process is understood as communicative space for the transfer of the official vision of politics, which is analysed through textual analysis of reading books and the textbooks of history, geography, civics and homeland study and geography. The author has focused her attention upon several research areas: historical narration; visions of the Empire in terms of the requirement for unity; polical actors and the formation of citizen and citizenship concepts. Through their analysis she has attempted to gain an understanding of official definitions and visions of the political arena. She also touches upon the issues of cultural and mental heritage of the „imperial“ political culture in Central and Eastern Europe.

Key words: polities, political socialisation, political literacy, official knowledge, textbooks of history, modern politics, Austria, Cisleithania, Russia


KRAHULCOVÁ Zuzana
Integrace a působení vyhnanců v hesenské politice v padesátých letech 
(The Integration and Impact of the Expellees in Hessen Politics in the 1950s)
s. 823-858

Although the state of Hesse was not one of the main target destinations for post-war expellees and refugees, their influx into this federal state was far from negligible: by 1949 this federal state had accepted more than 650 thousand expellees from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which proved a heavy drain on its economy and social structure. Similar to other federal German states, attempts to establish supra-partisan expellee associations and organizations along party-political lines, soon took place. They aimed to promote active participation in political life and political representation and the implementation of the specific interests of the expellees and refugees. However, the origins and development of expellee organisations in Hesse differed from other federal states in three important directions: namely, an atypically weak position of expatriate compatriot groups compared to expellee associations; the early establishment of a unified expellee organization in the form of the Union of Expelled Germans, and finally the unambiguous social direction of the Hessen Land organization of the Union of the Expelled and Disenfranchised, which resulted in long-term successful co-operation with the SPD. 
Although the situation of the Hessen expellees resembled in many aspects the situation in neighbouring Bavaria, where the leading role among the emerging expellee organizations was undertaken by the Sudeten German Expatriate Association, the development differed in Hesse as the expellee associations became the dominant form of supra-partisan political representation of expellees there. In Hesse, the party-political organisation of the expellees had been significantly restricted by the ban on independent expellees organizations. Yet, hand in hand with the relaxation of conditions for the activities of political organisations for the expellees by the American occupying authorities, independent expellee organization, based on party lines, in the form of electoral associations of the expellees began to form in Hesse. Over a period of time, in Hesse, like in other federal Lands, the Bloc of Expellees and Deprived of Rights (Bund der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten, BHE) has become the leading party-political organization of expellees.
While at the federal level Bloc of Expellees and Deprived of Rights gradually shifted to the right of the party spectrum, in the Hessen BHE during 1951 trends towards socially-oriented politics prevailed and the party gravitated towards the SPD. This rapprochement resulted in the long-term and successful co-operation of both parties at governmental level, lasting from 1954 until 1966. The main cause for the emergence of close links to Social Democratic Party can be found in the fact that the Hessen Bloc of Expellees and Deprived of Rights realized that the implementation of its own political aims and the fulfilment of its voters’ aspirations could not be achieved without the consent of the ruling SPD. This shift towards a socially-oriented policy and rapprochement with the Social Democratic Party were not, however, unanimously embraced by the party. They led to internal disputes not merely within the Hessen party organization as such, but also in relation to the federal leadership of the party. 
Yet, despite an effort to incorporate the standing up for the specific interests of the expellees within a wider context of social and economic policy, the Hessen BHE primarily remained the party of the expellees and failed to address its „local“ population. As the integration of the expellees into Hessen society has increased, the arena in which the BHE could address the expellees as their target group of voters has diminished since the second half of the 1950s. Nevertheless, the evident social policy of the Hessen Bloc of Expellees and Deprived of Rights and their successful ruling coalition with the SPD can be seen as one of the main reasons for the fact that in West Germany the BHE preserved its position and political existence in the Hessen Land Parliament for longer than anywhere else.

Abstrakt: 
Studie „Integrace a působení vyhnanců v hesenské politice v padesátých letech“ se zabývá průběhem integrace vyhnanců v politické oblasti a jejich působením v hesenském politickém životě v padesátých letech. Úvodní část studie pojednává postavení vyhnanců po jejich příchodu do Hesenska a počátky jejich politické integrace v podobě vyhnaneckých svazů, krajanských sdružení a prvních stranickopolitických vyhnaneckých organizací. Hlavní pozornost je pak věnována roli a působení vyhnanců v hesenské politice v padesátých letech se zřetelem na hesenský Svaz vyhnaných a zneprávněných (Bund der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten, BHE), politickou reprezentaci vyhnanců v hesenském zemském sněmu a úspěšné uplatňování jejich koaličního potenciálu v podobě dlouholeté vládní spolupráce s hesenskou SPD.

This study deals with the process of integration post war expellees in politics and with their involvement in Hessen political life in the 1950s. The introduction is devoted to the status of the expellees after their arrival in Hesse and with the origins of their political integration in the form of expellee associations, compatriot groups and the first party-political exile organizations. Attention is then focused upon the role and involvement of the expellees in Hessen politics in the 1950s with regard to the Bloc of Expellees and Deprived of Rights (Bund der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten, BHE), to the political representation of the expellees in the Hessen Land Parliament and the successful implementation of their coalition potential in the form of a long-term ruling co-operation with the Hessen SPD.

Key words: expellees, Hesse, post-war Germany, political parties, expellee organizations, integration

 

DISKUSE / DISCUSSION


NEŠPOR Zdeněk R.
Katolická církev v Československu 1945-1989 .
(The Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia 1945-1989)
s. 859-868

Abstrakt:

Ani bezmála dvě desetiletí po pádu komunistického režimu nejsou náboženské a církevní dějiny českých zemí ve druhé polovině 20. století dostatečně zpracovány, proto je velice významným počinem vydání Balíkovy a Hanušovy syntézy Katolická církev v Československu 1945–1989, nad níž se autor zamýšlí. Při hodnocení této knihy zdůrazňuje prolínání historické a sociologické („mentalistické“) perspektivy, stejně jako její přínos pro formování katolické identity ve svobodné společnosti, upozorňuje však i na nedostatky zvoleného přístupu a na skutečnost, že rozhodně nemusí být všeobecně přijat.

Almost two decades have passed since the fall of the Communist regime and the religious and ecclesiastical history of the Czech Lands in the second half of the 20th century have not yet been adequately documented. Thus, the author reviewing Balík and Hanuš’s synthesis Katolická církev v Československu 1945–1989 (The Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia 1945-1989) considers its publication to represent an important milestone. When assessing this volume he emphasizes the juxtaposition of the historical and sociological („mentalist“) perspectives, as well as its contribution towards the formation of a Catholic identity in a free society, yet the shortcomings of the chosen approach and the fact that this might not be generally accepted are also acknowledged and outlined.

Key words: Czechoslovakia, 1945-1989; Church; Catholicism; religion and state; ecclesiastical history; sociology of religion 

OBZORY LITERATURY / REVIEWS



Přehledy bádání a historiografických studií 

TOMEŠ Josef
Biografický slovník českých zemí. Tradice a výhledy české biografické encyklopedistiky (The Biographical Dictionary of the Czech Lands. Traditions and Perspectives of Czech Biographical Research)
s. 869-882 

Abstrakt:

Článek přehledně shrnuje historii české biografické lexikografie, zaměřené na národní dějiny, od druhé poloviny 19. století po naši přítomnost. Blíže se zastavuje u mezery, kterou v české biografické encyklopedistice způsobilo téměř půlstoletí totalitních režimů v letech 1939–1945 a 1948–1989, a u snah o její překonání na přelomu 20. a 21. století, završených postupnou realizací Biografického slovníku českých zemí.

This article provides a lucid summary of the history of Czech biographical lexicography, focused primarily upon the national history, from the second half of the 19th century until the present time. It pays a close attention to the gap caused in Czech biographical encyclopaedic research by nearly a half-a-century of totalitarian regimes throughout 1939-1945 and 1948-1989. It also recognizes attempts to overcome this hiatus at the turn of the 20th century, which have culminated in the gradual compilation of this Biographical Dictionary of the Czech Lands. 

Key words: Czech Lands, Czech Biographical Research, Biographical Dictionary, Encyclopedias


Recenze

BERÁNEK Karel – BERÁNKOVÁ Věra (edd.), Regesta Bohemiae et Moraviae aetatis Venceslai IV. (1378 dec.–1419 aug. 16.), Tomus V. Fontes Archivi nationalis, pars I, Litterae monasteriorum, Fasc. 1 (1378-1397); Fasc. 2 (1398-1419), (Zdeňka Hledíková) s. 883 - MUCHEMBLED Robert, Dějiny ďábla (Kateřina Pražáková) s. 888 - ZONTA Claudia A., Schlesische Studenten an italienischen Universitäten. Eine prosopographische Studie zur frühneuzeitlichen Bildungsgeschichte (Martin Holý) s. 891 - EBELOVÁ Ivana – ŘEZNÍČEK Michal – WOITSCHOVÁ Klára – WOITSCH Jiří, Etnografický atlas Čech, Moravy a Slezska, V. Židovské obyvatelstvo v Čechách v letech 1792–1794, eds. WOITSCH Jiří – BAHENSKÝ František (Iveta Cermanová – Alexandr Putík) s. 894 - FRANKL Michal, „Emancipace od židů“. Český antisemitismus na konci 19. století (Ines Koeltzsch) s. 900 - KOLB Eberhard, Der Frieden von Versailles (Jiří Pešek) s. 902 - ALBRECHT Stefan – MALÍŘ Jiří – MELVILLE Ralph (edd.), Die „sudetendeutsche Geschichtsschreibung“ 1918-1960. Zur Vorgeschichte und Gründung der Historischen Kommission der Sudetenländer (Jiří Pešek) s. 907 - CORNELIßEN Christoph – HOLEC Roman – PEŠEK Jiří, Diktatura – válka – vyhnání. Kultury vzpomínání v českém, slovenském a německém prostředí od roku 1945 (Doubravka Olšáková) s. 914

·  Slavs

·  Bulgars

·  Poles

·  Czechs

·  Serbs:

·  Magyars:

·  Romania:

Bust of John of Luxembourg, father of Charles IV, from the triforium of St.Vitus's Cathedral: a work of Peter Parler's workshop, 14th century.

With the demise of Wenceslas III, the last of the Przemyslid rulers of the Czech lands, the difficult question of who should rule next had to be answered. And answered it was - by 14-year-old John of Luxembourg, the first of the Luxembourgs to occupy the Czech throne (1310-1437). John of Luxembourg gained this position with the support of the Czech nobility by marrying 18-year-old Eliska (Elisabeth) Przemyslova, the sister of the late Wenceslas III.


Under John of Luxembourg's rule, more territories - including the regions of Cheb, Lusatia and Silesia - were joined to Bohemia. All of these regions together, under the rule of John of Luxembourg, came to be known as the "Lands of the Czech Crown". So you see, there never was an easy "one-word" way (like 'Czechia') to describe this part of the world, not even way back in the 14th century.

John of Luxembourg was a good king, but he had a fatal weakness for chivalry, knighthood, honour - and especially, for battles. He loved to fight. When there weren't any battles in his immediate neighborhood, he went abroad to help his friends fight their battles. And so it happened that he fell at the battle of Crecy in 1346, fighting on the side of his French friend and distant relative Charles, against the Black Prince. He was succeeded by his young son, Charles IV (born on 14 May, 1316 in Prague).

 Portrait of Charles IV (17th century, with Karlstejn Castle in the background) 

Charles IV was just as noble - but much more practical than his caravanting father had been, and he took a keen interest in all aspects of rule over the Czech lands. Charles IV was not really named Charles: he was named Wenceslas IV - but he had been reared at the French court, where he studied free art at the then Paris University. He also devoted his attention to learning languages and eventually had a mastery of Latin, German, French and Italian. When he was baptised he took the name of his godfather, the French king Charles IV. (His son, who succeeded him on the Czech throne, was also named Wenceslas IV, and this sometimes leads to some confusion.)

From 1331 to 1333 Charles worked as the administrator of the Luxembourg domains in northern Italy. In 1333 a part of the Czech aristocracy persuaded John of Luxembourg to allow Charles to reign in Bohemia. And so he returned to Bohemia after ten years. In 1346 John of Luxembourg lost his life in the Battle of Crecy and one year later Charles was crowned, being acknowleged by the Diet as the successor to the Czech throne. He was crowned with the St. Wenceslas crown, which he had made for the occasion and which was placed on his head by the Bishop of Prague, Arnost of Pardubice. When Charles IV came to power, he was still very young. Since he'd been raised in France, he didn't speak Czech. Wicked advisors surrounded the young king, and attempted to usurp the real rule of Bohemia while leaving young Charles IV in place as a figurehead.

Young Charles IV saw through the transparent plans of the wicked advisors who surrounded him. He quickly learned Czech, and took over rule of his own land himself. Charles IV may have been young, but he was no dummy. He not only spoke five languages fluently (at a time when many crowned heads could not even read and write) - he was a masterful diplomat too. He also had friends in high places - Pope Klement, who was elected during Charles IV's reign, had been the Czech sovereign's tutor at the court in Paris.

Charles IV was very clever, very devout, and very savvy. He was also a lover of art and a collector of holy relics (which he kept under lock and key all year long except for Easter, when he paraded them through the country like a travelling circus).

Prague, A.D. 1493 



Charles IV followed the example of the Premyslid (Przemyslid) heritage in practically all aspects. The first important thing he did was to raise the Prague bishopric to an archbishopric in 1344. The most significant year of his founding activity was 1348, this date marking, apart from the founding of Karlstejn Castle, also a whole number of important documents and the foundation of other institutions and buildings. In this respect we can mention, for example, the founding of Prague University, now Charles University, the New Town of Prague, Emmaus Monastery in Prague with the Slavonic liturgy and others. Charles devoted great attention to his town of residence. During his reign changes also came about at Prague Castle, where he had the Royal Palace adapted and continued in the building of St. Vitus's Cathedral. He had a new bridge erected across the River Vltava (Moldau), which now bears his name. Above-lifesize statues of Charles IV and his son Vaclav have been preserved on the Old Town Bridge Tower.

In 1346 Charles was elected and crowned Roman king. He was crowned Roman emperor in Rome on 5 April, 1355. From this position, too, he devoted great attention to the Czech kingdom, which he regarded as the core of his family heritage. In the Golden Bull, the imperial code of 1356, Charles legalized the priority position of the Czech king and the Czech state in the empire and specified the number of profane and sacral electors and their mutual order. He was an excellent diplomat, employing especially negotiations for the achievement of his aims and a marriage policy for the widening of his domains. Charles IV died on 29 November 1378 in Prague. His bodily remains were placed in the royal tomb below St. Vitus Cathedral at Prague Castle, where they have remained to the present. At Karlstejn Charles IV is commemorated every year by a solemn mass held in the Church of Our Lady on the day of the anniversary of his death.

The medieval Czech state reached the zenith of its power and importance under Charles IV. He was the King of Bohemia, later also Holy Roman Emperor, and today he is known as the Father of the Czech Nation. When speaking about the life of Charles IV it is necessary to mention the fact that he is regarded as the most important medieval ruler on the Czech throne.

Charles was a very good king, and he paid attention to detail. It was he who made sure that the status of the "Lands of the Czech Crown" - the territories his father had gathered together under his rule - was legally fixed (this task was made all the easier since he was Holy Roman Emperor). He initiated a number of building projects in his reign, especially in Prague. It was at his behest that Charles Bridge and St. Vitus' Cathedral were built, and the "Hunger Wall" that he commissioned (remnants of which still stand today on Petrin Hill in Prague) is thought to be the first works-project in the world, as he had it built to create employment for the poor and hungry masses (hence the name). Charles IV personally planned Prague's "New Town" district, where Charles Square - which is also named for him - lies. Karlstejn Castle and Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad) are also named after Charles IV. 

Many of the building projects initiated by Charles IV still stand, and most are perfect examples of the Gothic style of architecture, which is characterized by clean simple lines and solid structure - like the Charles Bridge and its towers, the Carolinum, or the Old-New Synagogue.

Charles IV also founded Charles University, the first center of higher education in all of Central Europe. During his reign, Prague was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire (a gilded sign on the Old Town Hall still proclaims "Praga Caput Regni" today), and he successfully lobbied to have the Prague bishopric made an archbishopric (this task was actually quite easy, as the privelege was granted him by his former tutor, now the Pope.)

Apart from Karlstejn, Charles IV founded other castles, some of which also bear his name in their designation. As examples can be mentioned Kasperk (Karlsberg) and Radyné (Karlskrone), which originated as administrative centres, and Karsfried Castle, which was built for the protection of duty on the provincial route. However, it was only Karlstejn that acquired exceptional importance connected with Charles' status as Emperor of the Roman Empire. 

It was Charles IV, too, who brought the cultivation of the grape and the wine industry to the beer-drinking Czech lands. That isn't to say that he neglected the beer industry - under his reign, stiff prison sentences were meted out to those caught exporting cuttings of prize Czech hops - essential to the brewing of great Czech beer - abroad.

Charles IV had no fewer than four wives, and any number of progeny, both legitimate and illegitimate. Of these, his oldest legitimate son, Vaclav IV, was naturally chosen as his successor. 

 

 

Moravia - Administrative History




Great Moravia . A Moravian state appears in Frankish sources in 822 A.D.; under Prince Mojmir (830-846) it annexed the Principality of Nitra (in modern western Slovakia) in 833. Svatopluk I. (871-894) was the first ruler of Great Moravia to use the title of king; he conquered southern Poland (874), Silesia (880), the Theiss (Tisza) valley (881), the Balaton Principality (883), Bohemia (except for her western region, held by the Przemyslids) and Lusatia (890). Upon Svatopluk's death, Great Moravia was split among his sons. Quarrels among the sons, pressure by the Franks and most notably the arrival of the Magyars in the Pannonian Basin in 895 resulted in the rapid decline of Great Moravia. With Mojmir II. (894-906) ended the line of the Princes/Kings of Great Moravia. 

Moravia proper during the Early and High Middle Ages . For the years 907 to 955 we have little information about the history of the region. As the Magyars, during these years, established their residence in the Carpathian Basin (modern Hungary), and from there undertook raids into the Byzantine Empire, Italy and the East Frankish Kingdom, we may assume that they did not tolerate an independent political organization in Moravia proper. 
Following the Magyar defeat by the East Franks in the Battle of Lechfeld in 955, soon-to-be Emperor Otto I. granted Moravia to Boleslaus I., Duke of Bohemia. Moravia thus became a possession of the Przemyslid Dynasty. From 999 to 1019 Moravia was held by King Boleslaus I. of Poland, then reverted to Przemyslid rule. The Przemyslids partitioned their lands among the sons of the duke; in 1035 Duke Bretislaus, already ruler of Moravia, also became Duke of Bohemia. In 1054 he introduced primogeniture, i.e. he assured that the Bohemian Lands (Bohemia, Moravia, Lusatia) would remain under one and the same ruler, as only the first-born son would inherit his father's possessions. 
In 1063, the Diocesis of Olomouc was separated from the Diocesis of Prague, an event indicating the autonomy of Moravia. In 1182, Moravia was elevated to the status of Margraviate. 

Moravia during the Later Middle Ages . In 1158 the Duchy of Bohemia was elevated into the Kingdom of Bohemia; Bohemia and her sidelands (Moravia, Lusatia, later Silesia) came to be referred to as the Lands of the Bohemian Crown. With the transition from a state based on the feudal levy to a taxation-based state, in the individual Lands of the Bohemian Crown, including Moravia, diets emerged. The Moravian diet, upon convocation by the King of Bohemia, was to convene and discuss the king's proposal of a bede (extraordinary, one-time tax) to be collected. In the diet, the country's (higher) clergy, nobility and the representatives of the cities were represented. 

Moravia from the 15th to the 19th century . Moravia, until the administrative refirm of 1848, was subdivided in 6 circles : Brünn / Brno, Hradisch / Uherske Hradiste, Iglau / Jihlava, Olmütz / Olomouc, Prerau / Prerov, Znaim / Znojmo. In 1782 Austrian Silesia was annexed into Moravia, adding two more circles (Teschen / Cesky Tesin, Troppau / Opava). In 1849 Austrian Silesia was restored as a separate territory; within Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia the circles were abolished, replaced by much smaller units - Gerichtsbezirke (court districts) and Bezirkshauptmannschaften (district captaincies), over 100 respectively over 50 for Moravia. 

Moravia within Czechoslovakia, 1918-1992 . During the First Czechoslovak Republic, while the districts of later Habsburg years were maintained, circles were created as larger administrative entities, 5 within Moravia, except for Brno and Olomouc which enjoyed separate status. 
During Communist administration, reforms in 1949 reorganized Czechia (Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia) in 13 circles (plus Prague); a number of these circles included both Bohemian and Moravian respectively Silesian and Moravian territory.
In 1960 Czechia was reorganized into 7 circles (plus Prague), equally disregarding the territorial integrity of Moravia. 

Moravia within the 
Czech Republic, since 1992 . In 2001 another administrative reform reorganized Czechia in 13 circles (plus Prague), which do not coincide with those of 1949. Again, a number of circles include both Bohemian and Moravian respectively Moravian and Silesian territory. 

The savaging of Poland by the Mongols since 1241/42 never took place in TTL. Thus, the competent prince of Silesia, Heinrich / Henryk the Pious managed not only to live longer, but also getting crowned king Henryk II of Poland, first one since 1079. Although many Piast princes continued to reign in other parts of Poland, his family could keep the king's title. In 1293, Poland attacked the Russian princedom of Halicz-Volhyn, taking about one third of the latter's territory.

But now, Poland felt increasingly threatened by the Germans and the Przemyslids. The king tried to fight them in 1301 to break free, but this only lead to a coalition of the Teutonic Order, Bohemia, Moravia and the HRE under king Otto IV of Brandenburg formed against him. The war between Germans and Poles ended in 1308, not to the latter's favor. The Teutonic Order acquires Pommerellen (OTL West Prussia, the Poles also call it Eastern Pomerania), Silesia became a German fief; the western third went to Brandenburg, which earlier had acquired the Lower Lausitz / Lusatia, the rest was divided between the two Przemyslid lands, Bohemia and Moravia. As a consequence, king Boleslaw V was toppled by discontent nobles, who elected Kazimierz III new king, who made an "everlasting alliance" with the (in many ways still independent) rulers of Mazovia. In 1363, when the Anjou dynasty in Hungary died out, the nobles there elected Wladyslaw IV of Poland new king. But in 1371 already, this influence ended with the death of incompetent king Kazimierz IV.

editRise to power

In 1394/95, the Black Death hit Central Europe. Although Poland was also affected, by imposing a quarantine it was mostly saved and didn't have to pay such a high toll as its neighbors. Many persecuted Jews fled to Poland. This development proved to be a great advantage: In 1404 Poland attacked the Teutonic Order, won the first Teutonic-Polish war; Pommerellen became Polish again, thus gaining an important access to the sea. 1426,Boleslaw VI of Poland and Birger II Eriksson allied against the Teutonic Order. 1432 they were victorious again; Poland kept its conquests from the last war and also gets Wolhynien, Sweden got Estonia (that's only the northern half of OTL Estonia, though). In another war 1432-35, Poland conquered the princedom of Smolensk.

In the 2nd half of the 15th century however, the power of the Polish kings shrunk, and in 1470 the young king had to accept a new constitution, which gave every noble (15% of the Polish population!) the right to vote in the parliament, and introduced separation of powers. 1472-76, the Polish-Bohemian War took place; after the death of king Vaclav IV the Mad, the Poles had hoped for an easy victory, but the new king Jan II lead the Czech armies surprisingly well and drove the Poles back. OTOH, in 1503 the Slovakian estates made an alliance with Poland, after Hungary was conquered by the Rum-Seljuks.

King Boleslaw VII and his successor Boleslaw VIII now started a policy with the aim of strengthening the power of Poland and themselves: They built many printing presses and several universities, founded colonies (in 1539, Poland took OTL Trinidad and Tobago; and when in 1544 inHaraldsborg, the (almost) last colony of Denmark, chaos ensued after the mother country had fallen into civil war, Poland sent soldiers to the city, occupying it) and reformed Poland in various ways. 1533-35, they fought off the Russians in the former princedom of Smolensk who had asked the Grand Prince for help against Poland. In 1538, Poland secularized church property, which helped them gain money for the reforms.

editThe elected kings

In the following half century, the Polish nobles elected various kings of other countries, the most famous among them Alasdair IV and Henry V. This, so they thought, was the best way to be defended against the Russians. However, when Polish king Ludwik felt angered by the new Czar and wanted to get rid of the Russian threat, started a preventive war against Vladimir-Suzdal in 1604. But the Polish army was destroyed in the battle of Kostroma 1610, and in the Peace of Thurau 1612, Poland had to cede the former princedom of Smolensk back to Vladimir. Finally, in the English-Polish War 1613/14 Poland lost its colonies of OTL Trinidad, Haraldsborg to England.

When François IV rose in Europe, they joined his side. 1637, Poland joined the HREGN, to be better protected against the Russians, and even got one electoral vote. (Its German neighbors secretly claimed that this wes for keeping them in check.) Thus, they also fought on France's side in the anti-French War; but 1686, Vladimir-Suzdal entered the war, although fighting only against Poland. In the peace of Minsk 1690, Poland ceded the former Prussian province Wolhynien (the old Russian princedomsTurov-Pinsk and parts of Halicz-Volhyn) to Vladimir, which left the war. And now, the Baltic League installed Jakub of Sulkowski as Polish anti-king, which threw Poland into Civil War. In the peace of Amsterdam, he was vindicated.

1715, Poland entered the war between Vladimir and Novorossiya, won Wolhynien back.

In 1762, the very capable Stanislaw III became king. 1764, he had the first telegraph in Poland built. 1772, he was elected Holy Roman Emperor, the first Pole to achieve this. He lost the title in 1784 when the HRE was dissolved officially, but 1788, after the heirless death of Kristian V, last Welf king of Denmark-Braunschweig, he started the regency for said country.

editDecline

However, under his reign Poland also fought for the cause of monarchy in the French Republican Wars, so he lost this country too in the peace of Frankfurt 1793.

Things went down further: 1806, Novorossiya and South Russia attacked Poland, took the former Russian lands back. Poland east of the Vistula stayed occupied. After the Poles rose up against Russian occupation 1838/39, Novorossiya attacked and conquered all of Poland. The last king fled to Sweden, later to Britain.

editUnder occupation

A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY

3rd-2nd century BC

A Celtic tribe, the Boii, settles in the region (Boiohaemum = home of the Boii)

5th-6th century AD

Arrival of Slav tribes

1st half of 7th century

Samo's Empire

833-906/7

Greater Moravian Empire

874-891

Reign of Prince Bořivoj I, the first known Przemyslid ruler

935

Prince Wenceslas murdered; declared the country's patron saint later in the 10th century

1061 - 1092

Reign of Prince Vratislav II (becomes the first king of Bohemia in 1085)

25.9.1212

Sicilian Golden Bull confirms the inheritability of the crown for Bohemian sovereigns

1253-1278

Reign of King Przemysl Otakar II; Bohemia becomes a European power

26.8.1278

Battle of Marchfeld, death of Przemysl Otakar II

4.8.1306

King Wenceslas III, the last Przemyslid, murdered in Olomouc

1310-1437

House of Luxembourg reigns in Bohemia

1344

Prague becomes an archbishopric; commencement of the construction of St. Vitus' Cathedral

26.8.1346

Battle of Crecy, death of Kingjohn of Luxembourg

1346-1378

Reign of emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg

7.4.1348

Foundation of Charles University in Prague

6.7.1415

Jan Hus burnt at the stake in Constance

30.7.1419

First Defenestration of Prague: start of the Hussite Revolution

1471-1526

Reign of the House of Jagiellonian

29.8.1526

Battle of Mohacs, death of Ludwig Jagiellonian, king of Bohemia and Hungary

23.10.1526

Ferdinand I, a Hapsburg, elected king of Bohemia

1526-1918

Reign of the House of Hapsburg in Bohemia

8.11.1620

Battle of White Mountain, defeat of the uprising of the Bohemian estates against king Ferdinand II

21.6.1621

27 Czech lords, members of the Bohemian uprising, are executed

1740-1780

Reign of Maria Theresa

1780-1790

Josef II is king of Bohemia

2.12.1805

Battle of the Three Emperors at Austerlitz

1848-1916

Reign of Franz Josef I

18.11.1883

Opening of the National Theatre in Prague

1914-1918

First World War

28.10.1918

Establishment of an independent Czechoslovak Republic

29.9.1938

Signing of the Treaty of Munich on the hand-over of border areas to Germany

1939-1945

Second World War

16.3.1939

Establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; country occupied by Germany

8.5.1945

End of the Second World War in Europe; restoration of the pre-war Czechoslovak Republic

25.2.1948

Communist take-over

21.8.1968

Invasion of the country by troops of the Warsaw Pact nations: end of the "Prague Spring"

Nov.- Dec. 1989

"Velvet Revolution": end of Communist Party rule

1.1.1993

Establishment of an independent Czech Republic

12.3.1999

The Czech Republic was admitted to the NATO

1.5.2004

The Czech Republic was admitted to the EU

The first inhabitants of the Czech lands were prehistoric fish. That's because the country, at the time, was covered by a prehistoric ocean - thanks to which it is possible to find some very nice fossils of trilobytes in the Czech Republic today.

Today's Czech Republic was later populated by dinosaurs of all sorts, and later by neanderthals and even by mammoths. The prehistoric settlement of the present-day Czech Republic by people culminated in the fourth century B.C. with the arrival of the Celts, the first modern human inhabitants of this territory that we know of. In fact, the Latin name for the Czech lands, "Boiohaemum" (Bohemia), is derived from the name of the Boii Celtic tribe; and the Czech name for the Moldau River (which flows through the capital city of Prague) is Vltava - which is said to come from the Celtic "Vlt" meaning wild, and "Va" meaning water.

The Czech Celts were in part chased out of the region and in part assimilated by the next peoples to inhabit the area: the Germanic Marcomanni and Quadi tribes from the west and the Romans from the south. (The Romans didn't actually occupy Czech territory - they only got as far north as the Danube River, which flows from Germany - through Austria along its border with Slovakia - and then over to Hungary before continuing on to Yugoslavia, and so just misses the Czech lands.) During the Migration of Peoples - roughly from the 3d to the 7th centuries AD - Slav colonization spread westward from the Steppes of the East (probably from Panonia) all the way to the territory of the present-day Czech Republic and up to Poland and down again to Yugoslavia. From probably the sixth century AD on, the Slavic peoples settled, in several waves of migration, into the regions which had been conveniently abandoned by the Germanic tribes.

This is the way that it all came to be - according to popular Czech legend: Once upon a time there were three brothers: Czech, Lech and Rus. One day, they decided to find a new place to live, and so they and their tribes set out on a journey. They got as far as the Dnieper River when Rus said, "This is the place for me and my tribe!" and there the Russians stayed. Czech (who is known as "Praotec Cech," or Ancestor Czech in these parts) and Lech continued. Soon, they came upon a rich land overflowing with milk and honey and Czech climbed to the top of Rip hill in Bohemia and decided that this was the place for him and for his tribe. Lech and his people continued their journey and settled in present-day Poland. Other versions of the legend have 7 brothers in all, with the addition of other Slav nations like the Croats (who have a similar legend about 7 wandering brothers) and some others whose names are not remembered anymore. One modern interpretation of the story has the Czechs spending some time in Greece before finally heading north and settling, and this would actually conveniently explain the similarities between certain Czech legends (like that of Bruncvik's odyssey or of Sarka and her band of women warriors) with Greek ones.

Czech legend goes on to say that Cech's people were happy in the Czech lands, and after a few generations and some time had passed, the Slavs of Bohemia had a new leader - a guy by the name of
Krok, who lived at Vysehrad (which means "high castle" and is today the site of the Czech National Cemetery). Probably the most important thing about Krok were his three very beautiful daughters, who were named Kazi, Teta and Libuse. The last of these, Libuse, had special powers which allowed her to see the future (Kazi, the oldest, was a healer who knew the secrets of the plants and herbs, while Teta was high priestess).

Libuse's talent came in particularly handy when it came time for her to marry. According to legend, she inherited rule over the Czech tribes from her father, Krok. As ruler of the lands, she was also the highest 'court of appeal' for disputes among the people. It is said that a guy who did not like one of her decisions as judge started a stink about the fact that the Czechs were ruled by a woman. And so Libuse had a vision - and sent her white horse, accompanied by a group of her subjects - to go out and find a guy ploughing in his field. After a journey of some days, the horse and the humans did indeed come upon just such a man (and nobody seemed surprised at all at this - neither the humans nor the horse nor even the man himself) and
Przemysl Ploughman (Premysl Orac in Czech) came to Vysehrad and married Libuse and took over the job of ruling the unruly Czechs and he and Libuse together started the Przemyslid Dynasty, which ruled over the Czech lands till the 14th century.

One day, not long after the wedding, Libuse had a vision in which she foretold of the glory of the Czech capital. Standing atop Vysehrad hill, she went into a trance and told her vision to the people even as the gods sent it to her. She said that on the seven hills of Prague a fair city would grow, the fame of which would rise to the very stars. And all that she saw and all of which she foretold really came true. Of course!

Now, while Cech and Libuse are the stuff of imaginative Czech legend, it is believed that Samo - who may or may not have ruled this part of the world in the first half of the seventh century AD - was probably a real person. It's hard to tell, though, since nobody is sure of minor details like where Samo was from, where Samo lived, or where Samo ruled - if, that is, he existed at all. If he did, he is thought to have been a Frankish merchant who placed himself on the side of the Slavs against the wicked Avar tribes of Hungary. He is mentioned in early chronicles, where his address is given as Wogastisburg Fortress. Nobody today knows where this Wogastisburg Fortress was - but it's believed by Czechs to have stood on Rubin hill in Bohemia.

Wherever Samo's home base really was, his rule seems to represent the first successful attempt at uniting the Slavic tribes - and since the Slavs are not exactly known for their brotherly love for one another (then again, who in Europe is?), this was quite a feat. The reason for this unification under Samo was, predictably, quite pragmatic. The Slavic tribes cooperated in order to withstand attacks by the Avars, a powerful Asian tribe whose home was on the plains of Hungary.

The Royal Odrowaz Line
Written and researched by Margaret Odrowaz-Sypniewska

The Odrowaz family is associated with Mazovia of Mazowsze. The Czechslovakian and Polish language are very similar because of their early association. In their early history the Slavs were dominated by the Cechove (Czechs). The Czechs moved into Bohemia by the first centur A.D. The East Slavic leader was Mojmir I. Mojmir united the Great Moravian Empire under Svatopluk (869-894) which included what is now Czechoslovakia consisting of Saxony, southern Poland, and Eastern Hungary (Pannonia). The Magyars destroyed the empire in 907. Slavokia passed to Hungarian rule until 1`918, when it became part of Czechoslovakia. Power then changed to Bohemia where the Premyslid united the tribes by the end of the tenth century.

The Czechslovakian Republic included:

1.   Bohemia -N.W. Czech. Praha is largest city, 49:48, 17:55E.

United with Moravia in 1029. Vratislav (Vaclav)II was made their first king in 1088.

2.   Moravia -(see above)Brno/Brun is a city in Moravia 49:12N, 16:38E.

3.   Silesia - S.E. part of Prussia, 48:12M, 16:38E. Troppau/Opava is located in Silesia. 49:58N. 15:55E.

4.   Slovakia - Bratislava (Pressburg), 48:45N, 20E

5.   Ruthenia (Carpatho-Ukraine), formerly Czech now Ukraine, 48:25N, 23E

The Premylid Dynasty of Bohemia

01. 871-894......Count Borivoj I
02. 894-895......Count Spithnjew I
03. 895-912......Duke Spithnjew I
04. 912-925......Duke Vratislau
05. 926-928......Regent Drahomire, von Stoder
06. 928-935......Duke Wenceslaus (Wenzel, the Holy)
07. 935-967......Duke Boleslaw I
08. 967-999......Duke Boleslaw II
09. 999-1003...Duke Boleslaw III
10. 1003-1035..Duke Vladivoj of Poland
11. 1035-1055..Duke Bretislav I
12. 1055-1061..Duke Spithnjew II
13. 1061-1092..Duke Vratislav II (King in 1088)
14. 1092-1100..Duke Bretislav II
15. 1100-1107..Duke Borivoj II
16. 1107-1109..Duke Swartoplik
17. 1109-1125..Duke Ladislas I
18. 1125-1140..Duke Sobijuslaw
19. 1140-1158..Duke Ladislas II
20. 1158-1173..King Ladislas II
21. 1193-1230..King Ottokar I d. 1230
22. 1230-1253..King Wenceslaus II (Wenzel) d.1253
23. 1253-1278..King Ottokar II d. 1278
24. 1278-1305..King Wenceslaus II d. 1305
25. 1305-1306..King Wenceslaus III d. 1306
26. 1307-1310..King Henry d. 1335

Luxembourg Dynasty

27. 1310-1346..King John the Blind d. 1346
28. 1346-1387..John Charles (1316 - 1378). Son of John of Luxemburg.
29. 1387-1400..King Wencelaus IV of Bohemia (1361-1419)
30. 1419-1437..King Sigismund of Hungary (1368-1437), brother of Wenceslaus.
31. 1437-1439..King Albert of Austria (1397-1439)
32. 1440-1457..King Ladislas Posthumus (1420-1457)
33. 1458-1471..King George of Podebrad (1420-1471)
34. 1469-1471..Rival King Matthias of Hungary (1440-1490)
35. 1516-1526..King Ladislas II (Vladislav) (1456-1516)
36. 1526-1564..King Ferdinand I of Austria (1503-1564)
36. 1619-1620..King Frederick V of the Palatine (1596-1632)

GENERATION ONE:

Przemysl Ottokar II was a member of the Premyslid Family, and he was born in 1230/3. He was the King of Bohemia (1253-1278) and Duke of Austria (1253-1276), d. 1278. Ottokar II married (1)Margaret of Austria in 1252, in the Pankratius Chapel , on the Schlossberg.. Margaret was the daughter of Leopold VI, Duke of Austria. She was born in Hainburg Castle. Przemysl and Margaret divorced in 1260. Duke Leopold VI (1176-1230) was nicknamed "the Glorious." He was an Austrian ruler. Leopold VI was the son of Leopold V. His uncles were Margrave Henry II (1114-1177) of Austria, who reigned from 1141-1156 and Duke Frederick II, "the Fighter." He ruled Austria from 1230-1246. Frederick's nephew-in-law, Herman von Beden was Duke of Austria from 1248-1250. This left no male heirs and anarchy reigned from 1250-1253.

Ottokar II then married (2)Kunigunde of Halicz on October 25, 1261. Kunigunde (1245-1281) was the daughter of Rosticlaw, Prince of Galicia..

The Altstadt of Konigsberg grew up around the castle built in 1255 by the Teutonic Order, on the advice of Ottokar II. King of Bohemia, after whom the place was named. Its first site was near the fishing village of Steindamm, but after its destruction by the Prussians in 1263 it was rebuilt in its present position. It received civic privileges in 1286, the two other parts of the present town—Lobenicht and Kneiphof—receiving them a few years later. In 1340 Konigsberg entered the Hanseatic League. From 1457 it was the residence of the grand master of the Teutonic Order, and from 1525 till 1618 of the dukes of Prussia.

GENERATION TWO:

King Wenceslas II, grandson of King Henry Probus, son of Henry II of Silesia, King of Poland 1298-1290, reigned from 1253-1278, and died in 1305. He was proclaimed King of Poland in 1300. He was the legitimate son of Ottokar II and Margaret of Austria.

Nicholas I (illegitimate son of Ottokar II by Margarareta von Chuening?), Duke of Troppau, married Adelaide ____. The Duchy of Troppau (Silesia/Austria) was established in 1278. Most likely on the death of Ottokar II of the Przemyslid Dynasty.

At this time, Rudolf I (1218-1291), a Habsburg took the throne in 1273. Rudolf was the son of Albert IV of Hapsburg. He was Duke before his reign as Austrian King (1276-1282).

King Wenceslaus III was born in 1273. He was King of Poland and Hungary in 1305, and he died shortly after. II.

Elizabeth ("Eliska") was the second daughter of Wenceslas II. She claimed the Bohemian crown after marrying John of Luxembourg.

GENERATION THREE:

Nicholas II, Duke of Troppau (Opaya) (1318-1385) and Ratibor after his marriage to (*1st)Anna of Silesia-Ratibor circa 1340, he married (2nd) Hedwig of Ols, in 1342 or 1345 (3rd) Jutta von Falkenburg after 1405.

King Henry reigned from 1307-1310, and died in 1335.

GENERATION FOUR:

Eupremia of Troppau (c. 1319- bef. 1352) married Ziemowit III (a Piast) Duke of Mazovia, in 1335.

GENERATION FIVE:

John I (1383-1429) Duke of Mazovia married Anna of Lithuania shortly before 1383.

GENERATION SIX:

Boleslaw III (1385/6-1428) married (before 1413) to Anna Holczanski (d. 1458)

GENERATION SEVEN:

Boleslaw IV son of Boleslaw III, Duke of Mazovia(Mazowisze) was born in 1421, and died September 10, 1454, married Barbara, a Russian Princess (c. 1446). Mazovia was not a part of Kingdom of Poland until 1529. Warsaw was the largest city in Mazovia, in the past.

GENERATION EIGHT:

Conrad III (Konrad Mazowiecki) Duke of Mazovia (1449-1503), married (1) Magdelena Stawrot (2) before July 20, 1477 to NN (3)*Anna, Princess Radziwill.

GENERATION NINE :

Anna of Mazovia (1497/98 - after January 1, 1557). married Stanislas Odrowaz von Sprowy (d. 1545) around 1536.

GENERATION TEN:

Sophia Odrowazowna married Jan Kostka

GENERATION ELEVEN:

Anna Kostezanka married Alexander, Prince Ostrogski, son of Constantine Basil, Prince Ostrogski and Sophia, Countess Tarnowska.

GENERATION TWELVE:

Sophia, Princess Ostrogska married Stanislaus, Prince Lubomirski.

GENERATION THIRTEEN:

George (Jerzy) Sebastian was born in 1616, and died on December 31, 1667, in Wroclaw (herbu Szreniawa), Prince Lubomirski married Konstance z Bobrku Ligezianska

GENERATION FOURTEEN:

Alexander Michael, Prince Lubomirski married Katharine Anne, Princess Sapieha.

GENERATION FIFTEEN:

George Alexander, Prince Lubomirski married(1) Joanna von Starzhausen and (2) Aniela Teresa Michowska.

GENERATION SIXTEEN:

(maternity uncertain) Stanislas, Prince Lubomirski married Louisa Honorata Pociejowna

GENERATION SEVENTEEN:

Jozef, Prince Lubomirski married Louisa Sosnowska

GENERATION EIGHTEEN:

Frederick, Prince Lubomirski married Francoise, Countess Zaluska

GENERATION NINETEEN:

Casimir, Prince Lubomirski married Zenaide Holynska

GENERATION TWENTY:

Marie, Princess Lubomirska married Rene Lannes de Montebello. A Jean Lanner was Duke of Montebello (1769-1809) was a French Field Marshall.

GENERATION TWENTY-ONE:

George Ernest Casimir Lannes de Montebello married Emilie d'Aviles

GENERATION TWENTY-TWO:

Andre Roger Lannes de Montebello married Germaine Wiener de Croisset

GENERATION TWENTY-THREE:

Guy Phillippe Lannes de Montebello (b. 1936) the New York head of the Metropolitian Museum New York City, New York. married Edith Bradford Myles

SOURCES:



At some point, Charlemagne joined in the battle against the Avars in this part of the world, cooperating either with Samo or with the state structure that came after him - the Great Moravian Empire.

Again, reports on the Great Moravian Empire are fuzzy. According to period chronicles, the people living along the Morava River at the time were already known as "Moravians," and their short-lived empire existed "somewhere" between today's Slovakia and Germany, and Poland and Austria (that is, somewhere in today's Czech Republic) in the 8th and/or 9th century. Just like Wogastisburg Fortress, it's claimed to have stood in different places by all the people who live in those different places.

At some time during the ninth century, Greater Moravia was ruled by the Moravian prince Svatopluk and had grown to include today's South Moravia, the southernmost bits of present-day Poland and Silesia, the western part of Hungary and, for a short time, the whole of Bohemia. Perhaps the most important thing about the Great Moravians is that theirs was the first legal sort of state structure in the area to accept Christianity, and the cultural development of the Greater Moravian Empire is inseparably linked to the spread of the eastern Byzantine liturgy of Sts Cyril and Methodius, who came to these parts in 863. They were invited by the Moravians - who were interested in Christianity but couldn't understand the language in which it was preached at the time. Cyril and Methodius were chosen for the mission because they understood and were able to speak in the Slavic tongue (again lending weight to the theory that the Slavs of these parts had not long before been spending some time in Greece).

Some buildings from around about this time still stand - mostly Romanesque basilicas like the one on Rip Hill (the very hill that Great-Granddad Czech liked so much!), at Vysehrad, in Prague's Old Town, and at other places. It was Cyril and Methodius, too, who brought the written word to the region (the Cyrillic alphabet is named for Cyril even though his real name was not Cyril but Constantine). The beginning of a written Slavic language was to be of enormous importance to Slavic nations in the Middle Ages. On the downside, the introduction of Christianity to this territory was so overwhelmingly successful that we know very little today about the pre-Christian religion of the pagan Slavs.

The Greater Moravian Empire disintegrated thanks to the Hungarian invasion of 903 or 904 and political intrigue in the early days of the Holy Roman Empire. After that, the Slavic mission in Moravia - which had been established by the missionaries Cyril and Methodius - collapsed, and the population reverted to tribal conditions. The Christian heritage of the Greater Moravian Empire, however, was to be preserved with the ascent of the Przemyslid dynasty to the throne of Bohemia.

With the Great Moravian Empire out of the way, the Przemyslid family succeeded in laying the foundations of a Czech state somewhere around the the end of the ninth century. They did this mostly by ridding themselves of all of the things that were standing in their way, like the Vrsovic and Slavnik clans - which the Przemyslids murdered in a particularly bloody manner. The only Vrsovec to escape the massacre of his family was Adalbert, but it didn't do him much good. Adalbert was so thankful for his salvation that he became a Christian missionary and headed northwest (to the area of today's northeast Germany) to spread the Word. No sooner did he arrive at his destination than he was brutally roasted and eaten by the inhabitants. Adalbert (or Vojtech, as he is known in Czech) is another of the Czech nation's patron saints today.


But Vojtech was not the only early Czech guy to be made a saint thanks to the Przemyslid's bloodthirstiness. On the contrary - the Przemyslid rulers were rather a mixed bag, and when they ran out of rival clans to murder, they started murdering each other - resulting in some more early saints for the Czechs.

Wenceslas I, the fourth Przemyslid Czech ruler, was made a saint soon after his murder in 929 or 935. This Wenceslas (in Czech, Vaclav) is the Good King Wenceslas of the Christmas carol, and it was during his reign that the Czech lands entered into an alliance with Saxony, thereby laying the foundations for closer relations with the restored Roman Empire.

This mischievous affability on Wenceslas' part towards the Czechs' western neighbors is a main reason that he was killed by his brother, who wasn't very good (in fact he is known as "Boleslav the Cruel.") Another reason might be that Boleslav was a pagan, and he felt that Wenceslas was frittering away too much time with this new Christian fashion he'd picked up -- though lust for power probably also played a role in Boleslav's motive for the murder, which took place at the very door of the church in Stara Boleslav, where Wenceslas was trying to seek refuge.

Incidentally, Boleslav and Wenceslas' Grandmother (on their father's side) was also murdered, and also made a saint. It is said that she was either smothered to death with a pillow or choked to death - this time, the killer was her daughter-in-law (Boleslav and Wenceslas' mother), and the motive was, again, power (Drahomira wanted to place Wenceslas on the throne.)

Things didn't get much better within the Przemyslid family, it is suspected that . Interestingly enough, the Przemyslids are remembered rather fondly in the Czech Republic today, as it seems that most people are blissfully unaware of the family's murderous streak.

Maybe that is because the Przemyslids occasionally took time off from their favorite sport to increase Bohemia's power and prestige. In typical early feudal fashion, this meant that they went out killing people in other countries instead, expanding their empire to Moravia and Silesia, as well as the upper reaches of the river Vistula and parts of western Slovakia. In Moravia, they set up a system of dukedoms, with the office of "Margrave" (ruler of Moravia) sometimes being held by the Bohemian Dauphin, sometimes by a rival for the Bohemian throne. In this way the Przemyslide dynastic killings were stayed, and both Bohemia and Moravia came to be regarded as hereditary lands of the Przemyslid dynasty. All the while, the expansion of the Przemyslid Dynasty's power went hand in hand with the spread of Christianity in the region.

This growing Przemyslide state maintained its sovereignty, though it formally recognized the feudal supremacy of the Roman-German Empire. The Czech lands ranked among the most advanced of the European feudal states, being at the forefront of economic power and cultural achievement at the time. In keeping with this growing importance, the territory was officially recognized through the granting of a royal crown to the Przemyslid Dynasty in the eleventh century (it was made hereditary in 1212 by the Golden Sicilian Bull) and the granting of the title of 'emperor' for Czech rulers.

The 1100s and 1200s were a very busy time in this part of Europe, and colonization, trade and cultural activity were steadily on the increase. Prague, which lay smack dab in the middle of several continental trade routes, flourished. Prague's Old Town was founded in 1234 as the first of Prague's five towns, and the Lesser Quarter was founded in 1257. Border forests were settled and towns and fortresses were founded and fortified. These sweeping changes literally transformed the country, and in keeping with these physical changes, the social structure of the territory also evolved. From about this time, aristocrats, burghers, and serfs were to be spotted in the Czech lands - as were German settlers, who were invited to colonize previously uninhabited (mostly border) regions of Bohemia and Moravia. The German settlers, whether burghers or peasants, did not form a homogeneous or politically separate group, and they soon became part of the local community, identifying with Czech statehood and sharing in the development of the Czech and Moravian lands as fully enfranchised members of the population, but mostly but keeping their native language (in addition to learning Czech.) Many, many, many, many centuries later, the places that they settled would come to be known as the "Sudetenland."

From the thirteenth century, the Czech kingdom was one of the most robust states in all of Europe, with a growing population and a vigorous economy. This, in turn, made the Czech nobility and rulers all the more rich and powerful, and enabled king Przemysl Otakar II to expand his territory rather extensively (if briefly). Otakar II was quite well-known in his time, and he even makes an appearance in Dante's Divine Comedy. Otokar II, also known as the "King of Gold and Iron" (because of his considerable wealth and his considerable military might) defeated the armies of the Hungarian king in 1256 and again in 1260. This military victory allowed him to annex the Alpine countries (today's Austria and beyond) - extending his territories all the way to the Adriatic Sea. Some people claim that this brief period - in which Bohemia controlled territory bordering on the sea - is the basis for Shakespeare's infamous 'Bohemian seacoast' from his play, "The Tempest."

Well, while the Czech lands were gaining power, prestige, oceanfront property and other things, a powerful rival appeared in Germany in the person of the newly-elected ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, Rudolf Habsburg - a member of a previously unimportant family from the Rhineland. This Rudolf formed an alliance of German princes and - after the Czech King Przemysl Otakar II was killed in battle in Moravia against the combined Roman and Hungarian forces on August 26, 1278 - Rudolf took possession of the abovementioned Alpine lands, which later became the basis of the Habsburgs' power - ie Austria.

The late Czech King Przemysl Otakar II was succeeded by his son, Wenceslas II (1278-1305). Under his reign, the mining of Czech silver at Kutna Hora and the minting of the Czech silver groschen - one of the hardest European currencies of the time - flourished. Wenceslas II also created a confederation between Bohemia and Poland. For a short time, Hungary - under the rule of Matthias Czak Trenciansky, who held absolute rule over most of Slovakia as well - also joined this confederation.

The Polish-Czech union was strengthened under the brief rule of Wenceslas III. Had it survived, it might have contributed to the creation of a more advanced region in Europe as the earlier Czech- Austrian union had. However, this was precluded by the death of young Wenceslas III (in 1306, when he was just 17 years old). Wenceslas III was the last male member of the Przemyslids line, and after his death the Czech-Polish union fell apart.

With the demise of Wenceslas III, the last of the Przemyslid rulers of the Czech lands, the difficult question of who should rule next had to be answered. And answered it was - by 14-year-old John of Luxembourg, the first of the Luxembourgs to occupy the Czech throne (1310-1437). John of Luxembourg gained this position with the support of the Czech nobility by marrying 18-year-old Eliska Przemyslova, the sister of the late Wenceslas III.

Under John of Luxembourg's rule, more territories - including the regions of Cheb, Lusatia and Silesia - were joined to Bohemia. All of these regions together, under the rule of John of Luxembourg, came to be known as the "Lands of the Czech Crown." So you see, there never was an easy "one-word" way (like 'Czechia') to describe this part of the world, not even in way back in the 14th century.

John of Luxembourg was a good king, but he had a fatal weakness for chivalry, knighthood, honour - and especially, for battles. He loved to fight. When there weren't any battles in his immediate neighborhood, he went abroad to help his friends fight their battles. And so it happened that he fell at the battle of Crecy in 1346, fighting on the side of his French friend and distant relative Charles, against the Black Prince. And so he was succeeded by his young son, Charles IV.

Charles IV was just as noble - but much more practical than his caravanting father had been, and he took a keen interest in all aspects of rule over the Czech lands. Charles IV was not really named Charles. He was named Wenceslas IV - but he had been reared at the French court, and everyone there called him Charles, and so the name stuck. (His son, who succeeded him on the Czech throne, was also named Wenceslas IV, and this sometimes leads to some confusion.) When Charles IV came to power, he was still very young. Since he'd been raised in France, he didn't speak Czech. Wicked advisors surrounded the young king, and attempted to usurp the real rule of Bohemia while leaving young Charles IV in place as a figurehead.

Charles IV may have been young, but he was no dummy. He spoke 5 languages fluently (at a time when many crowned heads could not even read and write), and he was a masterful diplomat. He also had friends in high places - Pope Klement, who was elected during Charles IV's reign, had been the Czech sovereign's tutor at the court in Paris.

Young Charles IV saw through the transparent plans of the wicked advisors who surrounded him. He quickly learned Czech, and took over rule of his own land himself.

Charles IV was very clever, very devout, and very savvy. He was also a lover of art and a collector of holy relics (which he kept under lock and key all year long except for Easter, when he paraded them through the country like a travelling circus).

The medieval Czech state reached the zenith of its power and importance Charles IV. He was the King of Bohemia, later also Holy Roman Emperor, and today he is known as the Father of the Czech Nation.

Charles was a very good king, and he paid attention to detail. It was he who made sure that the status of the "Lands of the Czech Crown" - the territories his father had gathered together under his rule - was legally fixed (this task was made all the easier since he was Holy Roman Emperor). He initiated a number of building projects in his reign, especially in Prague. It was at his behest that Charles Bridge and St. Vitus' Cathedral were built, and the "Hunger Wall" that he commissioned (remnants of which still stand today on Petrin Hill in Prague) is thought to be the first works-project in the world, as he had it built to create employment for the poor and hungry masses (hence the name). Charles IV personally planned Prague's "New Town" district, where Charles Square - which is also named for him - lies.
Karlstejn Castle and Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad) are also named for Charles IV.

Many of the building projects initiated by Charles IV still stand, and most are perfect examples of the Gothic style of architecture, which is characterized by clean simple lines and solid structure - like the Charles Bridge and its towers, the Carolinum, or the Old-New Synagogue.

Charles IV also founded Charles University, the first center of higher education in all of Central Europe. During his reign, Prague was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire (a gilded sign on the Old Town Hall still proclaims "Praga Caput Regni" today), and he successfully lobbied to have the Prague bishopric made an archbishopric (this task was actually quite easy, as the privelege was granted him by his former tutor, now the Pope.)

It was Charles IV, too, who brought the cultivation of the grape and the wine industry to the beer-drinking Czech lands. That isn't to say that he neglected the beer industry - under his reign, stiff prison sentences were meted out to those caught exporting cuttings of prize Czech hops - essential to the brewing of great Czech beer - abroad.

Charles IV had no fewer than four wives, and any number of progeny, both legitimate and il. Of these, his oldest legitimate son, Vaclav IV, was naturally chosen as his successor.

Wenceslas IV (1378-1419), son of Charles IV and heir to the Czech and Roman crowns, was a weak and ineffective ruler. He was also mean, a drunk, and wildly unpopular. He was imprisoned twice during his reign. Had times been different, this may not have mattered much. As luck would have it, however, he became king during a particularly turbulent time in Czech history.

Unfortunately, Wenceslas IV was much more interested in drinking than in ruling. He was terribly spoiled, and even as an adult he would throw fits when people didn't do exactly as he wished them to. He is remembered by history today in two ways: sometimes as a wishy- washy, good-for-nothing drunkard, and sometimes as a benefactor of the common man. The way in which this latter reputation was earned is usually explained in this way: Wenceslas IV used to go around Prague dressed as a commoner. He would go to pubs and shops this way, and whenever he found a merchant giving the public short measures, he would punish them by having them thrown off Charles Bridge into the river to drown. If this legend is based on fact, then it is probably likely that Wenceslas IV pursued this hobby not so much to help the common man, but rather from the pleasure he derived from having people thrown into the river.



Probably the most famous person Wenceslas IV had thrown into the river was an insignificant court clerk by name of John of Pomuk. During the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church recovered the story of John of Pomuk's death and entirely overhauled it - making John's name John of Nepomuk, making his job the confessor to the Queen (instead of an office clerk), and making the reason for his execution the "fact" that John refused to divulge the Queen's secrets - told in Confession - to the king. John of Nepumuk was eventually made a saint on the basis of this story, but the Vatican rescinded the decision in 1961, explaining that testimony of his miracles and other evidence of his deeds was "fishy."

It's hard to say what the common people of the time really thought of Wenceslas IV, as common people don't usually have much of a say in the writing of history. It is known that he was wildly unpopular with the nobility, who had him imprisoned not once but several times during his reign.

He wasn't exactly revered by his brother, Sigismund, either. Even as the careless blood of his grandfather, John of Luxembourg, coursed through Vaclav IV's veins - so did the power-hungry blood of the early Przemyslide rulers flow freely through the arteries of Sigismund. In short, he wanted to be king, and it was he who was behind at least one of the conspiracies to imprison King Vaclav IV.

While this court intrigue was going on, things couldn't really have been all that good for the common man, else he'd not have been spending much of his leisure time listening to the rabble-rousing preachers who started travelling around the country at this time, full of criticism for the excesses of the Catholic Church.

One such religious reformer was to play a pivotal (though posthumous) role in deciding the country's fate for the next several hundred years.

Jan Hus had been greatly influenced by the writings of John Wycliffe, and he began conducting his sermons at Bethlehem Chapel in Prague in Czech rather than in Latin, so that the common man could understand them. He also advocated the giving of communion in both species, and was critical of the church for its excessive policies - of amassing wealth, selling indulgences, and allowing the rich to tithe their way out of even mortal sins.

Even as these ideas were gaining popularity in the Czech lands, they were becoming most wildly unpopular in other areas of the Holy Roman Empire (especially the Vatican.) This led to the burning of Master Jan Hus at the stake at the Council at Constance on July 6, 1415 when he refused to recant his words and despite that he had letter of safe conduct from Wenceslas IV's brother, Sigismund).

The brutal killing of Jan Hus only served to incense and unite his followers, who came to be known as the Hussites.

The Hussites were highly critical of the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church, and, in the Four Articles of Prague, they demanded that 1) all believers be permitted to receive Communion in both species; 2) all mortal and public sins be punished equally, regardless of the sinner's status 3) the Word of God be freely preached; and 4) the clergy give up their worldly wealth.

This situation culminated in 1419 with the First Defenestration of Prague, in which Hussites threw 7 members of the Czech Town Council out of Prague's New Town Hall window -- and to their deaths on the points of Hussite-weilded pikes below. To make the situation more interesting, King Wenceslas IV had an apopleptic fit and died of a heart attack upon learning of the defenestration.

But even after the death of his brother, Wenceslas IV, King Sigismund of Luxembourg, who also inherited the title of Holy Roman Emperor never really got to be king of Bohemia. The situation with the Hussites had gone too far, and he spent the rest of his life fighting them in the hopes of taking control of the throne he'd inherited from his brother. When his initial attempts to do this met with failure, he beseeched the Pope to send help.

The mighty Hussites, led by the one-eyed military genius, Jan Zizka, defeated five waves of crusaders in a row: in 1420, 1421, 1422, 1427, and in 1437.

Actually, the fifth army of crusaders sent to battle the Hussites turned tail and fled before even catching sight of the famed warriors - because they were so terrified at hearing the refrain of the terrible Hussite battle song, "Ye Warriors of God." It was either that, or maybe just that the warriors didn't sing very well.

Well, in addition to fear-inspiring songs and the other tricks the Hussites had up their sleeves, they also had the thing that matters most - conviction that their cause was the Just one. Their symbol was the chalice and their motto, "Truth Prevails." (this motto was later used by the first President of Czechoslovakia, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, as well as by a later President of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel - during the Velvet Revolution).

Well, despite this and despite their brilliant military successes, all was not well within the Hussite movement itself. From the very start, the Hussite movement had been divided into factions - the most prominent division was along economic lines.

A number of peasant Hussites were nothing more than hooligans at best - terrorists at worst - who joined the cause only so that they could have a good excuse to go around robbing churches and setting them aflame with Catholics inside. These practices were considered to be rather in poor taste by the aristocratic Hussites. Over time, the movement splintered even more - even spawning an early nudist sect, the Adamites. The history books usually divide the Hussites into radical "Taborites" - named for the town of Tabor, a city the Hussites founded for the occasion of the Second Coming, which many considered imminent - and the moderate "Utraquists" - derived from the Latin "sub utraque specie" for their belief that communion should be given "in both kinds" - made up mostly of the nobility. In reality, though, the situation on the ground just was not that simple.

This infighting came to a head at the Battle of Lipany on May 30, 1434, at which the Czech Hussite factions fought among themselves. This battle is considered by some to be the single most tragic event in all of Czech history.

Well, the victory at the Battle of Lipany went to the moderates, and this paved the way for an agreement to be reached between the "Utraquist Hussites" of Bohemia and the Roman Catholic Church.

The Basel Compact, ceremoniously announced in 1436, permitted the "Utraquist Hussites" to take Communion in both kinds, to have their church services conducted in the Czech language, and absolved them of having to pay dues to Rome. The Pope later refused to recognize the agreement, but not before it had served to bring an end to the costly Hussite wars.

The extremist "Taborite Hussites" were not a party to this agreement, and refused to accept it. While the moderates stayed in the Catholic Church, the extremists went underground, forming their own church, ordaining their own bishops, pioneering public education, sending out missionaries (even to the 13 original American colonies) and secretly printing Czech-language copies of the "Kralice Bible" - named for the town of Kralice in which it was printed. This translation is still in use in the Czech lands today, despite that it is often hard for modern speakers of the language to understand.

Slovakia all this while was known simply as "Upper Hungary." Though the Czechs and the Slovaks had been next-door neighbors since the time that Ancestor Cech and his brothers had come to the area, they have historically had very little in common (until 1918).
Similarly, neither country has historically ever had much to do with Poland, which borders both to the north. It is at this point in history - beginning in the 14th century, however, closer cultural contacts between Slovakia and Bohemia were formed. Especially during the turbulent Hussite period of the 15th century, many Hussite followers found refuge and support in the Slovak lands, and some of the Slovak nobility fought on the side of the Hussites.

After the Compact of Basel forced King Sigismund of Luxembourg to concede to the Hussites' demands, the position of the regional nobility and of the towns (a grouping known as the "Estates") was strengthened, to the detriment of the centralized royal authority. For some time after Sigismund's death in 1437, anarchy reigned in Bohemia.

Then, after the very brief rule of Ladislav the Posthumous (1453-7) - so named because he was born after his father had died - the Bohemian throne was occupied by the "heretic" King George of Podebrady (1458-71). George, also known as the "Hussite" King, was the first freely-elected Czech ruler. He was chosen as Czech King from among the country's nobility without regard to any previous agreements, hereditary claim to the throne, family connections or dynastic origin. George of Podebrady won recognition throughout the Lands of the Czech Crown through his skillful diplomacy, and gained the respect of all of Central Europe. He also, in the 15th century, authored an ambitious "Peace Plan" for all of Europe, sort of a medeival equivalent to a NATO-like organization.

But few people then, as now, were interested in peace, and nobody subscribed to his plan. On the contrary - the Hungarian monarch at this time, Matthias Corvinus - with the support of the disgruntled Czech Catholic opposition, who didn't like the idea of a Protestant on the throne - declared war against George of Podebrady, who happened to be Matthias' father-in-law. The Hungarian campaigns against Bohemia ceased only after the death of the beloved Hussite King, George of Podebrady, and the ascent of Vladislav Jagellon to the throne.

Czech-Slovak relations were strengthened at this time with the forming of the Czech-Hungarian union under the Jagellons after the death of Matthias Corvinus in 1490; and after the Kralice Bible began to be used by the Slovak Evangelical Church.

In spite of conflicts both foreign and domestic, and even under the rule of the Jagellon dynasty's two Catholic kings, Vladislav and Ludwig, religious pluralism and freedom of religion were maintained in the Czech lands, with Protestants and Catholics living together in harmony. All during this time of weak royal leadership, the power of the nobility and towns (the Estates) continued to increase - even as central authority diminished.

With the death of Ludwig Jagellon (he drowned in a swamp running away from the Turks at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526), the short-lived Czech-Hungarian Union fell to pieces, leaving both the Bohemian and the Hungarian thrones unoccupied.

What a window of opportunity for the Austrian Habsburgs! That Ferdinand I of Habsburg, also happened to be the late Ludwig Jagellon's brother-in-law helped his claim to the Bohemain and Hungarian thrones. In Bohemia, the weakened central authority did, too. At first, Ferdinand made concessions to the ever-powerful Estates. Soon, however, he began systematically to weaken the authority of the regional nobility and towns. His attempts to increase the central power of the Crown naturally met with the opposition of the Estates, and the whole situation culminated in an unsuccesful rebellion of the Estates in 1547.

The Estates' failure was Ferdinand's gain. He used this victory to increase royal authority and to weaken the position of the Estates and the towns even more. He also invited the Jesuits to come to the Czech lands, though they never held any inquisitions here and generally did not meddle in public affairs. Ostensibly fighting to maintain freedom of religion in the Czech lands against the resolutely Catholic policies of Ferdinand, the Estates struggled to regain their former power and influence.

These conflicts simmered under the surface of things as the Renaissance swept through the Czech lands.

Ferdinand was succeeded by Maxmilian II, who was succeeded by Rudolf II. After assuming the Austrian throne, the Habsburg ruler and patron of the arts and sciences, Rudolf II (1576-1611) moved his court from Vienna to Prague - making him the last crowned King of Bohemia to live at Prague Castle. Rudolf II was a real character. He had a pet lion, he collected great art - including works by Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, and Rafael - he supported scientists such as Tycho de Brahe, Johannes Kepler as well as artists like Spranger and Von Aachen, and he was a personal friend of the legendary Prague Jewish leader, Rabbi Loew. It is said that he also financed the work of any number of quack alchemists (on his invitation John Dee and Edward Kelley spent time in Prague), and that he was a little soft in the head. It's possible that the Legend of Faust (who lived in Prague) originated at this time of scientific exploration.

The architectural style of the time was Baroque, which - like Rudolf II himself - was round and robust, flamboyant and a little gaudy. Baroque buildings like the Loreto and St Nicholas Church in Lesser Town Square are massive and grand. The statues that top them appear so heavy that they seem likely to fall and crush innocent passers-by.

Rudolf II, who suffered periods of dementia because of his acute case of syphilis, was forced by his family to resign in 1611. He had been forced during his reign to concede religious freedom to the Czech Protestants, and when his brother and successor, Matthias, tried to rescind them, mounting political tensions led the Czech Estates to rebel against the Habsburgs once again.

They began their rebellion in grand Czech style, with the Second Defenestration of Prague in 1618. In this second defenestration, two vice- regents of the Austrian monarch and some governors of the Czech lands were thrown out of a tower window at Prague Castle. They were not killed, however, as they fell onto a pile of garbage (mostly straw) which had accumulated in the castle moat. So it can be said that they (at least the non-Austrian of the throwees) were the world's first bouncing Czechs. To add insult to injury (or perhaps insult to insult?) the Bohemian diet of the Estates then elected Frederick V of the Palatinate (also known as Frederick Faltz or as "the Winter King") as their ruler, thinking that his father-in-law - the English King James I - would come to their aid. They could not have been more wrong.

This rebellion of the Czech Estates was particularly unsuccessful. It culminated in the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620, in which the Estates were incontrovertibly defeated by the Habsburgs. They had been successful only in sparking the Thirty Years' War, which was to devastate much of Europe. Incidentally, the then-mercenary, later-philosopher Rene Descartes fought at the Battle of the White Mountain on the side of the Habsburgs.

Well, the Habsburgs, quite understandably, did not appreciate these disturbances which were emanating from the northern reaches of their empire. But the methods that they used to subdue the protestant Estates after the Battle of the White Mountain were extraordinarily harsh.

First, they executed 27 nobles - leaders of the Estates who had fought on the losing side against the Habsburgs at the Battle of the White Mountain - in Prague's Old Town Square in May 1621. Some of the heads of the decapitated leaders of the rebellion were then hung strategically around Prague - for instance, on the Old Town bridge tower of the Charles Bridge - to serve as an ominous reminder to the people of Who was Boss. (It is said that every year, at the exact hour and on the exact day that they were killed, the ghosts of the 27 wrongly-executed nobles can be seen haunting the spot where they lost their heads. The place today is marked by 27 crosses in the cobblestones of Old Town Square, next to the Astronomical Clock.) The heads hung there for 11 long and lonely years, before finally being taken down and given a proper burial by the Saxons, who occupied Prague in 1632 in the course of the Thirty Years' War.

The Thirty Years' War, which had begun in Prague, ended there, too. In 1648, the Swedes had succeeded in capturing the Lesser Quarter and plundering it and Prague Castle (carrying off many valuable artworks which decorate Swedish castles and palaces to this day). They were defeated by a ragtag force of Czech university students and residents of Prague's Jewish town on the Charles Bridge in the last battle of the Thirty Years' War. It is said that the Swedes were beseeched to come by the exiled Protestant leader, Comenius (Jan Amos Komensky) - he had wanted them to come to the aid of the by-now utterly defeated Protestant forces, but by the end of the war it was already too late.

As a result of all this tumult, the Czech lands lost the power to elect their own rulers, and the Czech crown was made hereditary for Habsburg rulers. The Habsburgs banned all religions other than Catholicism. The property of Protestant members of the nobility was confiscated and handed out to loyal Catholics.

Those Czech Protestants who weren't already in exile were forced to convert to Catholocism. Only a very few had the courage to continue to practice their religion in secret.


The population of the country had been halved by the sundry aftermath of the Battle of the White Mountain, and as fewer people also means fewer people paying tax, taxes were raised.

Things were pretty bad all around. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the economy went into a deep recession. Luckily, it was high time for the Enlightenment to make an entrance. The administrative reforms of Maria Theresa and her son, Joseph II, did much to alleviate the situation.

These two rulers reduced the privileges of the now all-Catholic nobility (who are also - perhaps to confuse us all - known as the Estates, as the formerly Protestant nobility had also been called). They expelled the Jesuits in 1773, and they attempted to end social oppression by abolishing serfdom in 1781. In the same year, they issued the Edict of Tolerance, which permitted the free exercise of religion and the secularization of education, science and art. Prague's Jewish town is called "Josefov" to this day in honor of Josef II.

The Industrial Revolution, as most revolutions do, started off small at the end of the 18th century, and then really picked up steam - so to speak - in the 19th century. It was to have a monumental impact on the Czech lands.

The first factories in the Austrian Empire were built in the mountainous border regions of the Czech lands, where there was no shortage of water power from rushing streams and rivers to run them. While it did not take long for steam power to be harnessed, the industrial boundaries had been drawn, and these regions remain predominantly industrial to this day.

Railway lines were laid (in the Czech lands, by Jan Perner - who met his death when he hit his head against a pole while leaning out of the window of a moving train - an activity which has been forbidden in this country since the Czech railway pioneer's tragic accident.) Trams (mostly constructed by the "Czech Thomas Edison," Frantisek Krizik) began to carry people around on their errands in and between major towns (in those days, tram lines connected the cities of Bratislava, Budapest and Vienna to each other - about a one-hour ride). It was at this time, too, that Gregor Mendel was conducting his famous experiments on hereditary with peas in a monastery in Moravia, and that Jan Evangelista Purkyne peered into his microscope one day to discover a cell looking back at him (he was the first person to recognize it as such).

The major architectural styles of the time were Classicist and Empire, both of which used classical Greek and Roman motifs in a balanced and simple design. Two buildings which are closely associated with Mozart's stay in Prague in the late 18th century are excellent examples of these styles: the Estates Theatre, in which Mozart conducted the premier of Don Giovanni, is Classicist and the Bertramka villa, where he stayed with the Dusek family, is one of the purest examples of Empire that exists in the Czech Republic. But we digress.

Industrialization was not the only big change taking place in the Austrian Empire at this time. The Czech nation, like most of the others under Austrian rule, was also going through political and cultural changes, leading to demands for greater autonomy and self- determination for the different nations under Austrian rule.

In this country, the push for autonomy was known as the Czech National Revival movement (Narodni obrozeni). The dominant political leaders of the movement - Frantisek Palacky, Frantisek Ladislav Rieger and Karel Havlicek Borovsky - were "liberals." This meant that they wanted reforms within the Austrian monarchy, but did not want independence for the Czech lands. This brought them into conflict with the "democrats," who were republican and fiercely anti-Monarchy.

But the Czech National Revival movement almost had more to do with culture than with politics. Frantisek Palacky and Karel Havlicek Borovsky, who are mentioned above for their political efforts, were both writers. Czech Literature enjoyed a Golden Age during the Czech National Revival, as the Czech language - which had all but died out under Habsburg rule - was rediscovered. Other notable writers of the time include Bozena Nemcova, Karel Hynek Macha (who published the epic lyrical poem "Maj," then died of pneumonia he caught while fighting a fire one month before he was to be married), and Josef Jungmann - who put together the first modern Czech dictionary.

Many popular books retelling the old Czech legends of Libuse and Sarka and Bivoj and Bruncvik were published at this time, and some of the leaders of the Czech National Revival even falsified "ancient 13th century texts" of these legends, which they claimed to have found in a cave somewhere. Perhaps the only authority in the movement who publicly denied the authenticity of the texts was a young university professor by name of Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, and he was passionately detested by the other leaders for doing so.

But we digress yet again. France had its infamous revolution in 1848. In the same year in the Czech lands, the feudal system was abolished, leading to waves of emigration, much of it to the New World - particularly to the United States. In June 1848, a Pan-Slavic Congress convened in Prague to consider possible ways of convincing the Habsburgs to transform their empire into a federative state of equal nations (something like a 'United States of Austria'). Suddenly, the discussions were interrupted by an aimless rebellion inspired by the French Revolution and including dramatic baracades in the streets, which was led by bored students and the most radical of the radical democrats.

The rebellion was effortlessly put down by the local Austrian leader, Prince Windischgratz - who declared martial law and, on June 16, 1848 even bombarded Prague from Petrin Hill. In this way both the revolt and the Pan-Slavic congress both came to a premature end, leaving the question of the future shape of the Austrian Empire utterly unresolved. In a strange aside to this episode, Prince Windischgratz's wife lost her life in all this commotion - shot through a window while she was in her apartment. To this day, nobody knows who did the shooting or why.

Scared by both the French Revolution and the summer rebellion in Prague, Austria introduced something akin to martial law in the whole of the Empire to discourage republican efforts at independence. Autonomy movements throughout the Austrian Empire were suppressed. But as revolutionary movements have a tendency of doing, this one did not die down; it just sat around simmering below the ostensibly calm surface of things. Tensions did not decrease. On the contrary.

The Austrian Empire of the time was massive, and contained the territories of many modern-day countries. Most of these nationalities were clamoring for autonomy.

In the 1860s, this pressure led the Habsburgs to transform the Austrian Empire into the dualist Austro-Hungarian constitutional monarchy. This was just hunkey-dorey by the Hungarians, but was not exactly appreciated by most of the other ethnic nations within what was now the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The Czechs were united in their opposition to the new dual system, but they were divided among themselves as to what they wanted to do about it. These divisions grew deeper as the 19th century progressed.

There were a number of rival political factions: the Czech National Party (split into two camps: the conservative Old Czechs and the liberal Young Czechs); the Czech Social Democratic Party (founded in 1878); the progressives (who favored the policies of Tomas Masaryk); the Agrarian party; the Christian Socialists; the National Socialists; and the Radical Progressives.

The majority of the Czech political parties supported a program calling for the restoration of the Czech state in its historical borders - but within the framework of the Austrian Empire. Again, each party had a different idea of exactly how this goal should be accomplished.

The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was characterized by growing economic and political freedom for the Czechs and by outstanding acheivements on the part of Czechs in culture, medicine, and science. Architectural trends at the end of the century were romantic copies of past styles, like Neo-Gothic. These romantic enthusiasts sometimes did more harm than good, as in the case of the reconstruction of Karlstejn Castle (It is because of this ill-fated reconstruction that Karlstejn does not qualify for the UNESCO World Heritage list today.) In other cases, they just did silly things like build fake "ancient" ruins in Prague parks (perhaps to go along with their "ancient" legend texts). The Czech writers and artists Jan Neruda, Alois Jirasek, Mikulas Ales, Bedrich Smetana, Antonin Dvorak Alfons Mucha and Frantisek Bilek all lived and worked at this time. The National Theater, National Museum and Rudolfinum were built at the turn of the century, and the first films in the Czech Republic were made in 1898.

The battle for "universal" suffrage within the Austro-Hungarian state was won in 1907. (All men in the Czech lands, regardless of economic status, could vote -- women in the Czech lands did not get the vote until 1919). But most of the rest of the political advances made by the Czechs came into being in a sort of fuzzy grey area. The constitutional status of the Czech lands within the framework of the Monarchy remained an open and - in Prague, at least - a much-debated question.

Well, while Czech nationalists were busy sitting in pubs drinking beer and debating how best to effect the changes they wanted to see implemented in the Austro-Hungarian government, members of other nations within the Empire were also pressing for reforms and for independence. It was these pressures that led Serbian nationalist Gavrillo Princip to assassinate the Archduke Francis Ferdinand (the heir to the Austrian throne) on June 28, 1914, precipitating World War I. Princip was locked up for this deed, and spent the rest of his days at the prison in Terezin Fortress in the Czech lands.

During the course of World War I, the Czechs became unified in their opposition to Austrian rule.

Most especially, Austria-Hungary's alignment with Germany and the restriction of democratic rights in the Czech lands led to growing opposition to the monarchy here. An organized resistance began to develop, both at home and abroad.

The Czech university professor, philosopher and politician, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk (the same one who doubted the authenticity of the faked manuscripts and the one who was later to become Czechoslovakia's first president) had been an advocate of more independence for the Czech lands long before the war had even started. In December of 1914, he went abroad, where he continued to fight for Czechoslovak independence throughout the war. He worked closely with Czech lawyer Edvard Benes and Slovak astronomer Milan Rastislav Stefanik, who were also in exile in the United States throughout the conflict. It was in the United States at this time that Masaryk met his wife, American Charlotte Garrigue.

It was there, too, that Masaryk, Benes, and Stefanik founded the Czech National Council in 1916. Over time, this organization was renamed the Czechoslovak National Council and was recognized as the valid voice of Czechoslovakia by Allied leaders. Their position as the leaders of "free Czechoslovakia" was further strengthened with the formation of Czechoslovak military units known as the Czechoslovak Legions, which fought alongside the Allies. The Czechoslovak Legions earned particular distinction on the Italian, French, and Russian fronts - and on the last of these, they actually became involved in the Russian Revolution, fighting against the Bolsheviks and, for a time during that revolution, controlled about half of the territory of Czarist Russia.

Resistance at home grew only gradually. At first, it was limited to small spy groups who had contact with Masaryk (who was considered an enemy of Austria on account of his subversive activities). Active resistance to the monarchy was severely punished, and as a result many prominent Czech cultural and political personalities spent most of the war behind bars, convicted of treason. While the sentence for treason at that time was actually death, the Austrians were too busy to carry out the sentences. Thus, the executions were never carried out, and these Czech leaders simply languished in jail for the duration.

By 1917, when things were quite apparantly not in Austria-Hungary's favor, Czech opposition to the war became much more active. People began organizing strikes, demonstrations, and even violent protests - which had to be put down by the army. Anybody who is particularly interested in this period of Czech history should definitely read "The Good Soldier Schwiek" by Jaroslav Hasek. It not only offers a great deal of insight into the kind of passive resistance the Czechs favor, but also offers many more insights into the Czech psyche.

In May 1918, the representatives of the resistance movement abroad had signed the Pittsburgh Convention, which approved the formation of a joint state composed of Slovakia and the Czech lands. Later - much later (very recently in fact) - Slovak politicians seeking autonomy for Slovakia would refer to a provision in this agreement mentioning Slovakia's own "administration, parliament and courts of law."

While the resistance leaders abroad were planning a new state, the various and sundry political forces in the Czech lands still could not agree on whether they wanted to radically reconstruct or completely abolish the political structure of Austria-Hungary. In July 1918, the Czech National Committee, a grouping of the leaders of the chief political parties (which wasn't much cooperating with Masaryk's efforts in exile), was reorganized and began preparing to assume power once the Central Powers were defeated.

In October 1918, Masaryk, Benes and Stefanik obtained recognition of the Czechoslovak National Council as the interim government of the Czechoslovak Republic from the Allied Powers. But while they were in Switzerland with delegates from the Prague National Committee discussing details of setting up this new state, a hastily-organized third grouping, the National Committee (headed by Antonin Svehla, Alois Rasin, Jiri Stribrny, Frantisek Soukup and Vavro Srobar) proclaimed Czechoslovakia an independent Republic on October 28, 1918 and began to assume the transfer of power from Austrian officials.

Adding to this disparity and completely independent of events in Prague, Slovak political representatives issued the Martin Declaration in favor of a joint Czechoslovak state on October 30, 1918.

On November 14, 1918, the interim Parliament declared that the new Czechoslovak state would be a republic, and named Tomas Garrigue Masaryk as the first President.

The Czechoslovak Republic (CSR) was composed of the historical Czech lands of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia as well as Slovakia and Ruthenia (Sub-Carpathian Russia).

Czechoslovakia's relations with its neighboring states - Germany, Hungary, and Poland - were complicated from the very start.

In security matters, Czechoslovakia alligned itself with France and her partners in the Little Entente. As Germany grew more threatening in the course of the 1930's, Czechoslovakia also signed a pact with the Soviet Union, which promised to help Czechoslovakia in the case of need - but provided that France fulfilled her obligations to help the nation first.

The Czechs and the Slovaks - who had used nationalistic arguments to justify their drive for independence from Austria-Hungary - now found themselves at the other end of the bargaining table. While these two nations were officially considered the two partners in the Czechoslovak union, together they comprised less than 65 percent of the total population. More than 3 million Germans - some 23 percent of the population - lived mostly in the Czech border regions (the territories which were to become known as the "Sudetenland") Meanwhile, the Tesin region in the north was inhabited by a Polish minority of 75,000; South Slovakia and Ruthenia had a large Hungarian minority of about 745,000; and most of the population of Ruthenia (something less than half a million people) were, quite naturally, Ruthenians.

After World War I, ethnic Germans in the border regions made a half-hearted attempt to secede from Czechoslovakia, which was put down by the Czechoslovak army in 1918. Over the course of the next 20 years, the two largest German political parties - the Agrarians and the Christian Socialists - were won over by the Czechoslovak government and agreed to cooperate with the Czechoslovak state.

Czechoslovakia was one of the few states in Europe between the two World Wars with a genuine parliamentary democracy (guaranteed by the Constitution of February 1920). Even the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (which had been established in 1921) was allowed to legally exist - which was very unusual for the time. The Communists even had a few members in parliament - and they were allowed to remain there even when they started to openly denounce democracy as such - and especially the democratic system in Czechoslovakia.

After dealing with post-war chaos, and putting down a few radical Bolshevist uprisings, the domestic political and economic situation in Czechoslovakia was basically stabilized by the beginning of the 1920s.

In the 20 years between the two World Wars, Czechoslovakia was one of the world's most advanced industrial-agrarian countries. In fact, it was among the 10 richest nations in the world at that time, as it had inherited virtually all of Austria's industrial base. This early stability paved the way for a flowering of Czech literature and culture. Proud of their new independence, Czechoslovaks were anxious to put their new country on the map - sometimes in the craziest ways. This led Czech Radio, for instance, to start broadcasting in 1923 - despite that they didn't have a transmitter or even a microphone. They simply borrowed the former (as well as a tent to protect them from the elements) from the Czechoslovak Boy Scouts, and manufactured the latter from a telephone receiver. Why the rush? They were anxious to be the first country in Central Europe to begin regular radio broadcaste. Of course, a Czech - by name of Frantisek Behounek - took part in the 1928 multinational attempt to reach the North Pole in a zeppelin - and was one of the survivors to be rescued after the good airship "Italia" crashed discouragingly far from its destination.

Experiments with architecture in interwar Czechoslovakia resulted in Prague today having the only Cubist buildings in the world, like The House at the Black Madonna (which houses a museum of Czech cubist art today) and a number of houses along the embankment under Vysehrad on Rasinovo nabrezi and on Neklanova Street. Franz Kafka, Josef Capek and his brother Karel (the two coined the word "robot" together), Jaroslav Hasek, Emil Filla, Max Svabinsky, Otto Gutfreund, Vaclav Spala all lived and worked at this time.

At the end of the twenties and the beginning of the thirties, the Czechoslovak economy was hit hard by the world economic crisis with disastrous social and political consequences: 1.3 million people were unemployed. Hardest hit were the soon-to-be-known-as-Sudeten border regions, where German inhabitants predominated.

The economic crisis and the growing influence of the Nazi movement in Germany served to politicize the ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia. On Hitler's orders, they called first for autonomy, then for secession from the Czechoslovak state. In the 1935 elections, both of the traditional German parties (the Agrarians and the Christian Socialists) experienced a monumental decline in voter support in favor of the Sudeten German Party. The Sudeten German Party, with 15.2 percent of the vote, became the largest German-interest political party in the Republic.

Tomas Garrigue Masaryk resigned from office in 1935 due to illness, and was succeeded by Edvard Benes. Benes, a National Socialist, had the misfortune to be a weak and ineffectual ruler during a particular turbulent time in the nation's history - much as the king Wenceslas IV had been in the Hussite period centuries before.

A P.E. teacher named Konrad Henlein was the leader of the Sudeten German Party, and he gradually became the mouthpiece of Nazi Germany in Czechoslovakia. His was a separatist platform aimed at joining the Czech border lands to Germany.

Nothing less than Czechoslovakia's sovereignty was at stake. But this did not interest many people outside of the small Czechoslovak state.

France and Britain favored a policy of appeasement in response to Hitler's aggressive policy towards Czechoslovakia, and so Konrad Heinlein's wish came true in September, 1938 - when the four great powers of the time (Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy) decided, at a meeting in Munich, that extensive areas of the Czech border regions were to be ceded to Germany.

Shortly after the Munich Pact was signed, the Czech border regions were indeed joined with Germany. Seizing this window of opportunity, Poland snapped up the Tesin region in the north, and Hungary annexed the southern part of Slovakia while Hungary captured Ruthenia. Overnight, Czechoslovakia lost about a third of its territory.

After six months of the "Second Republic" - as the old Czechoslovakia, minus its border regions, was known - Bohemia and Moravia were occupied by the Nazis. Slovakia had ceded from Czechoslovakia the day before - on March 14, 1939 - to form an "independent" Nazi state, and thus very short work indeed was made of the former Czechoslovakia.

Overnight, everyone had to start driving on the right side of the road (they had previously driven on the left, as the British still do).

The Czechoslovak President, Edvard Benes, and other government politicians had already fled abroad - mostly to France and to Britain. (Those that were in France went to Britain when France was occupied). These leaders' political campaign to represent Czechoslovakia's interests was an uphill battle at first, as western European powers still favored the policy of appeasement at that time.

By July 1940, however, Britain recognized President Benes as the leader of the provisional "free Czechoslovak government in exile." In addition to the London center of the provisional government, the Moscow Communist center - where politicians who favored the Soviet political system had fled - also played an important role in the Czechoslovak resistance movement during the war. Unfortunately, many of the Czechs and Slovaks who had chosen to go to Moscow spent at least part of the war years in Russian Gulags as suspected spies. Czechoslovak pilots in England's RAF were particularly distinguished fighters (even if they were initially segregated from regular troops for the same reason) and they would play a fundamental role in the Battle of Britain - but we are getting ahead of ourselves yet again. Czechoslovak army units were also formed in France and in North Africa.

On October 28, 1939 - which would have been the 21st anniversary of the Czechoslovak Declaration of Independence had Czechoslovakia not ceased to exist - popular celebrations turned into massive demonstrations of protest against the German occupation. A young medical student, Jan Opletal, was fatally wounded in the incident. His funeral, on November 17, 1939 turned into yet another spontaneous demonstration. (Fifty years later, on November 17, 1989, a march by students to commemorate this event helped bring about the fall of Communism). In 1939, the Nazis reacted to the student demonstration by sentencing nine student leaders to death, by closing the Czech universities, and by sending some 1,200 university students to concentration and labor camps.

The Nazi regime was very cruel and strict, and active resistance was harshly punished. Not surprisingly, then, the Czech and Slovak resistance movements were small. Yet they were very dedicated, very determined, and often surprisingly successful, especially in the field of sabotage.

During the war, Czechoslovak army units fighting abroad often parachuted foreign-trained Czech and Slovak soldiers into occupied Czech territory to perform special assignments. The most significant of these special assignments was the assassination, in 1942, of Reinhard Heidrich - the German Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia and one of the architects of the "Final Solution."

His assassination by two Czechoslovak parachutists on May 27, 1942 set off a reign of terror throughout the Czech lands. Martial law was declared and the Nazis conducted house-to-house searches looking for the parachutists and the members of the Czech resistance movement who had helped them. More than 1,600 people were executed and more were sent to concentration camps in the period immediately following the assassination. The terror reached its height with the annihilation of the village of Lidice, where 339 men were executed and the women and children of the village were sent to concentration camps. A few weeks later, the village of Lezaky, where the Nazis killed 54 men, women and children, was also razed to the ground. By the time this terror - known as the "Heydrichiada" - was over, the Nazis had damaged the resistance movement so much that it was only able to resume its activities at the very end of the war.

The resistance movements in Czechoslovakia culminated in the Slovak National Uprising of 1944 - which was brutally put down - and in the Prague Uprising in the Czech lands in May of 1945 - which started just a few days before foreign armies arrived to officially liberate the city.

Prague and most of the rest of Czechoslovakia were liberated by the Soviet Red Army in May, 1945. That this would happen had been decided by Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill at the Yalta Conference. It was at this same conference that it was decided that Czechoslovakia would come under the Soviet "sphere of influence" after World War II.

But the westernmost part of the country - from the beer-brewing town of Pilsen to the spa town of Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary) were liberated by the Americans, led by General Patton.

It was in 1945, too, that the USSR officially annexed Ruthenia.

On May 7, 1945, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied Forces, but the last shots on Czech territory were fired on May 11.

During the war, most of the members of the domestic resistance movement had gradually become ever more leftist in their ideology, since they were so vehemently opposed to the extreme right ideals that were ruling it at the time. Czechoslovakia's first post-war government was constructed exclusively from the political parties of the leftist "National Front." These included the Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party, the National Democratic Party, the People's Party and the Slovak Democratic Party. Pre-war right-wing parties were not allowed to renew their activities, because of their real and/or alleged collaboration with the Nazis.

Left-wing Social Democrat, Zdenek Fierlinger, well-known for his affiliation with the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSC), was appointed Prime Minister. The remaining six government posts were filled with Czech and Slovak Communists - Klement Gottwald, Viliam Siroky, Vaclav Kopecky, Julius Duris and Jozef Soltesz. In addition, the Communists were able to place their loyal supporter, Ludvik Svoboda (later Czechoslovak President), in the key post of defense minister. Thus, the extreme left gained a strong political position in the newly-liberated country as early as 1945.

Democratic life in Czechoslovakia never fully recovered. The most apparent demonstration of this were the 1945 Presidential Decrees (today called the "Benes Decrees"), especially those of October 24, 1945 on the nationalization of coal mines, heavy industry, food production, banks and private insurance companies. More than 3,000 companies - representing about two-thirds of the overall industrial capacity of the country at that time - were nationalized.

Other presidential decrees were issued "on the punishment of Nazi criminals, traitors and their supporters, and on extraordinary people's courts" (the Large Retribution Decree of June 19, 1945); and "on the punishment of some offenses against the national pride" (the Small Retribution Decree of October 10, 1945). On the basis of these decrees, not only the real collaborators - but also those who were only accused of collaboration - were punished harshly and without regular trials.

Before World War II, some 30 percent of the population in the Czech lands had been Germans; in Slovakia, 17 percent had been Hungarians.

In 1945, 700,000 Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia under an agreement which was sanctioned by the Allies and had been reached at the Potsdam Conference. This expulsion was, in some cases, accompanied by brutality against the Germans, which brought about protests by the Allied Powers. In the second and more organized wave of deportation in 1946, 1.3 million Germans were deported to the American zone (in what would become West Germany) and 800,000 to the Soviet zone (in what would become East Germany). Another 200,000 Germans had fled voluntarily before the end of the war to the American zone, and around 200,000 escaped to Austria.

According to the Presidential Decrees, property which had belonged to many of these people was confiscated and put under "national supervision," and the people themselves were deprived of their Czechoslovak citizenship.

Only about half a million Germans remained on the territory of Czechoslovakia after the deportations, and just 165,000 of these claimed German nationality in the first post-war census. In 1950, according to the official statistics, Germans accounted for just 1.8 percent of the population in the Czech lands, compared with a pre- war count of 23 percent.

The Potsdam Conference, which had approved the expulsion of Germans from the Czech lands, had vetoed the deportation of the Hungarian minority from Slovakia, after the Allies saw what had happened in the first deportations. Nonetheless, anti- Hungarian sentiment was so strong that a significant number of Hungarians did not claim Hungarian nationality in the 1950 census. Official statistics from that census show a significant drop in the number of people claiming Hungarian nationality in Slovakia, from around 17 percent before the war to only about 10 percent after the war.

Czechoslovakia's first post-war Parliament, the provisional National Assembly, began its activities on October 28, 1945. Its composition had been determined by an agreement among the political parties and social organizations within the "National Front."

The first test of the new political environment came with the Parliamentary elections of May 1946. The results corresponded to the expectations of the Communists, who won 40.17 percent of the vote, making them the most powerful party in Parliament by quite a large margin. The next strongest parties were the National Socialists with 23.66 percent, the People's Party with 20.24 percent and the Social Democrats with 15.28 percent. In Slovakia, the Communists obtained only 30.37 percent of the vote, while the Democratic Party took 62 percent. Two newly-registered Slovak parties, the Freedom Party and the Labor Party, together received just 3.73 percent of the vote.

In terms of the country as a whole, it was a landslide election victory for the Communists. In the new Parliament, the Constituent National Assembly, they won 114 seats, while the National Socialists held 55, the People's Party 46, the Democrats 43, the Social Democrats united with the Slovak Labor Party 39, and the Freedom Party had just three seats.

Based on the results of the May elections, a new government headed by the Communist leader Klement Gottwald was appointed on July 6, 1946. Gottwald formed a cabinet consisting of seven Czech Communists; two Slovak Communists; four Ministers from the National Socialists, the Democrats, and representatives of the People's Party; and three Social Democrats. Thus, the communists had a strong grip on power well in advance of the "coup" which would take place nearly two years later. Only two government ministers were not then members of any political party. (They were Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk (the son of Czechoslovakia's first president, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk) would soon meet his death under mysterious circumstances - and War Hero Ludvik Svoboda, who would later join the Communist Party and later still would become Czechoslovak President in 1968.)

On June 5, 1947, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall delivered a speech in which he offered assistance (which came to be known as the Marshall Plan) from the United States to all the countries of Europe for the reconstruction of their economies damaged during the war.

The Soviet Union had already refused to participate in the plan as early as June 1946. And in fact, of the future Soviet bloc countries, only Czechoslovakia considered taking part in the Marshall Plan. After consultations with Stalin, however, Czechoslovakia, too, refused the aid. For the next four decades, Czechoslovakia would continue to follow Soviet orders.

At the start of 1948, the Communist Minister of the Interior sacked eight non-Communist police officers. This move was protested by the democratic ministers in the government, but to no avail. As a stronger protest, they tendered their resignations - expecting that this would lead to the resignation and subsequent reorganization of the entire government. However, and much to their chagrin, this was not to be.

Instead, President Edvard Benes accepted their resignations, and their positions were filled by Communist Party members or sympathizers. Thus, from February 1948, all political power in the country was in the hands of the Communist leaders. In Communist propaganda, these events came to be known as "Victorious February" (Vitezny unor) today they are referred to as the "Communist Coup."

Almost immediately - with the parliamentary elections of May 1948 - the Communists became more openly hostile to normal democratic mechanisms. Non-Communists who attempted to campaign in the elections were persecuted by the police, and voters were only offered a list of candidates from the National Front - no opposition politicians were on the voting list. Yet even using these extreme measures, the Communists did not feel secure that their election victory was guaranteed. So, to make absolutely sure that things went as they wanted them to go, the Communists also falsified the election results. Thus the parties of the National Front were credited with winning an amazing 89.2 percent of the vote -- which is still rather a modest majority when compared with later Communist election "victories," which would see the National Front win 99.9 percent of the "vote."

On May 9, 1948, parliament had passed a new constitution guaranteeing a "leading role" for the Communist Party in political life. President Edvard Benes refused to sign the new legislation, and so he was forced to resign on June 7, 1948. On June 14, the National Assembly elected Klement Gottwald Czechoslovakia's new (and first 'working-class') president; and on June 15, Czechoslovakia's fifth post-war government was appointed with Antonin Zapotocky at its head.

In April 1948, the Czechoslovak Parliament had passed legislation nationalizing most companies that had more than 50 employees. In actuality, though, even much smaller companies were nationalized as a result of these laws. By the end of 1948, some 95 percent of the industrial workforce in Czechoslovakia were employees of the state. The next private sector to be eliminated were small tradesmen and shopkeepers.

In 1949, the law on Standard Farming Cooperatives was approved, launching the forced collectivization of agriculture. Industry was reorganized to favor heavy machinery and military production, and foreign trade was shifted away from western markets in favor of the Soviet Union and its satellites.

To better coordinate the individual economies within the Soviet bloc, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) was established in 1949, with Czechoslovakia as one of its founding members.

The first Soviet "advisors" arrived in Czechoslovakia in September 1949, to show the locals how best to search for class enemies. Not surprisingly, their first victims were Communists - and powerful ones. The high point of the Communist Party's purges at this time was the "trial" against the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Rudolf Slansky - allegedly the ringleader of a group of treasonous, counter-revolutionary conspirators. Many historians today say that this purge was just so much thinly-veiled, Soviet-style anti-semitism - as Slansky and most of the other accused were Jewish.

The repression and show trials of 1948-53 did much to populate the forced labor camps - the most notorious of which was at the Jachymov uranium mines - and to decimate the anti-Communist opposition. Subsequent acts of resistance to the regime remained isolated and unorganized.

It was during this dark and oppressive time that the writers and artists Jaroslav Seifert, Vitezslav Nezval, Josef Sudek, Leos Janacek, Bohuslav Martinu and Jan Zrzavy lived and worked. People caught listening to rock and roll and other foreign music or listening to foreign radio stations like Radio Netherlands were considered subversives and thrown in jail.

It was at this time, too, that the authorities - for reasons which remain unexplained to this day - started to claim that the Americans did not liberate the westernmost part of Czechoslovakia after World War II. To those people who insisted they had seen them with their own eyes, the authorities explained that those people they had seen were really Russian soldiers dressed up in American uniforms.

Czechoslovakia's first "worker president," Klement Gottwald, died in 1953, just 10 days after attending Stalin's funeral. Some say he died of a broken heart; others claim he was the victim of a virus that he caught while visiting Moscow, still others are of the opinion that he drank himself to death.

In a little-known chapter in Czech history, 1953 also saw active protests against the Communist regime, especially in Plzen and Ostrava, because of worsening economic conditions. These rebellions had to be put down by force, and the fact that they had taken place at all was supressed by the Communist regime. The ringleaders were sent to hard labor camps like the one at Jachymov.

In addition to Comecon, the Soviet Union and its satellites were united by the military Warsaw Pact, which was founded on May 14, 1955. This "Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance" was signed by the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Albania. The Pact was concluded for 20 years and then prolonged every 10 years after that; in 1985, just a handful of years before it was to become defunct, it was renewed for 30 years.
It was formally dissolved by a protocol which was signed in 1991.

After the death of President Antonin Zapotocky, Antonin Novotny - the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia - was elected President.
For the first time, the top posts of both the state and the Party were in the hands of just one man. Later, it was learned that Novotny had been a spy for the Gestapo during the war. During his presidency, Novotny had a fish pond stocked with carp installed in the very formal Royal Gardens of Prague Castle so that he wouldn't have far to go when he felt like going fishing.

Well, time passed and in 1960, the Communists adopted a new constitution which officially changed the name of the country to "The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSSR)" because, as they said, a socialist society - the first step on the road to true communism - had already been achieved in the country.

But even this spiffy new name did not help to slow the country's rapid and alarming economic decline.

Fear diminished and political and artistic freedoms increased in Czechoslovakia in the 1960's. Changes took place in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia as well.

The post of First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was taken away from Antonin Novotny and given to Alexander Dubcek, a Slovak Communist who was not very well known at that time (much like Mikhail Gorbacev, who was also relatively unknown when named to the top Soviet post decades later).

Key officials connected with the Novotny government were gradually replaced and Novotny himself resigned on March 28, 1968. Ludvik Svoboda (the post-war Defense Minister) became the Czechoslovak president, and on April 8 a new government, headed by Oldrich Cernik, was appointed.

A bit like Gorbacev would do decades later in the Soviet Union, Dubcek set out to reform all aspects of life in the country. In effect, he was doing little more than giving a legal stamp of approval to the grassroots changes that were already taking place. The government platform, approved by the Communist Party Central Committee in April, criticized the policies of the past - especially those that had done such damage to the economy. For the first time since 1948, the government proclaimed the legitimacy of basic human rights and liberties in Czechoslovakia, and objected to the persecution of people for their political convictions.

Around this time, the public was greatly influenced by a text called "2,000 Words," which was written by Ludvik Vaculik and published in the literary weekly Literarni noviny, and in the dailies Prace and Zemedelske noviny. The piece called on the people to struggle against everything they considered to be bad, and appealed to them to take control of their own lives.

The people listened, and it wasn't long before jazz music, rock clubs, pop culture, miniskirts and other symbols of Western imperialism were to be spotted all over the place, but most especially in Prague. Bohumil Hrabal, Josef Koudelka, Ivan Klima, Josef Skoverecky, Milan Kundera, Arnost Lustig, Milos Forman, Jiri Menzl and many other writers and artists were all living and working at this time. Culture thrived, and the Czechs are especially well known for the films they produced at this time. They also invented a percursor to the modern-day music video, which they called "television songs," and experimented with multimedia, and Laterna Magika and other forms of Black Light Theater date from this time.

The reforms that enabled this growing freedom were - in the words of Alexandr Dubcek - an attempt to create "Socialism with a human face," and came to be known as the "Prague Spring." They were also considered to be terribly threatening by those in power in the Soviet Union, as they compromised the uniformity of the Soviet bloc.

The Soviet Union and its satellites began to more vocally criticize the renegade Czechoslovak Republic. This political pressure from around the bloc peaked in the summer of 1968. The Czechoslovaks didn't listen.

Over the night of August 20-21 1968, Warsaw Pact forces (with the exception of Romania, which refused to participate) invaded Czechoslovakia, beginning a 20-year period of occupation and "normalization." The Soviets insisted they had been invited to invade the country, as loyal Czechoslovak Communists had told them that they urgently required "fraternal assistance against the counter-revolution." (After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, a letter of invitation was, indeed, discovered to exist). Alexandr Dubcek and the other Prague Spring leaders were whisked off to Moscow.

Ludvik Svoboda, the President of the Republic, left for Moscow on August 23. The results of his talks there, which were not concluded until August 28, were summed up in a defeatist Moscow memorandum in which Czech and Slovak signatories agreed with the temporary presence of Soviet troops on the territory of the CSSR. Only one member of the delegation, Frantisek Kriegel, refused to sign the memorandum.

After the failure of the Prague Spring, Czechoslovak reformists tried to preserve at least some of the achievements of their reform efforts. One of these was the constitutional issue, which gave more autonomy to Slovakia. On October 28, 1968, the Czechoslovak National Assembly approved a new constitutional law on the creation of a Czechoslovak Federation. It was signed into law by President Svoboda at Bratislava Castle on October 30, and it decreed that Czechoslovakia be divided internally into two separate Czech and Slovak Republics. The federal setup took effect on January 1, 1969.

But just two months later, the Federal Assembly adopted three more new constitutional laws curtailing and in fact undermining the previous amendment, meaning that the new federation existed in name only. State administration was again strictly centralized.

About 150,000 Czechs and Slovaks fled to the west as a result of all this hubbub. Many of those who stayed continued to protest the invasion. In the most famous of the individual acts of protest, a young philosophy student, Jan Palach, self-immolated himself on Wenceslas Square in January, 1969. In the political purges of late 1969 and early 1970, thousands of people were removed from their jobs (and, since it was illegal to be unemployed, most of the country's intellectual elite spent the next 20 years washing windows or floors, stoking coal furnaces or selling vegetables or newspapers) and half a million people were expelled from the Communist Party.

The easygoing leaders of the 1960's were banned (Dubcek spent the next 20 years in the Slovak forestry service), and replaced by hardnosed hardliners. The new communist government was one of the most repressive in all of the East Bloc - surpassed only by East Germany and Albania. The ensuing period of "normalization" during the 1970's and about half of the 1980's - like the Counter-Reformation - was a bleak and unhappy time for the nation. The architecture of the time reflects this: most of the construction during this period was focused on building largescale "pre-fabricated housing" districts on the outskirts of cities. These neighborhoods today are still grey and depressing, with block after block of identical cement housing (the Czechs call them "rabbit hutches") and little or no greenery.

Ludvik Svoboda was still the President of Czechoslovakia, but by this time he was already rather old and becoming forgetful. He used to walk around Prague Castle asking where Dubcek was. This grew to be rather embarrasing, and Svoboda was forced to resign due to "illness." Gustav Husak, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, was elected as President in his place - thus holding down both top functions in the country. (The last change in Party power before the fall of Communism took place with the 1987 election of Milos Jakes as Secretary General of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.)

Active opposition to the policies of normalization had begun to form during the initial Warsaw Pact occupation of August, 1968. They grew into underground movements during the bleak 1970's.

In 1976, the members of the underground rock band called "The Plastic People of the Universe" were arrested and charged with crimes against the state for holding a rock concert. This was one of the catalysts for the creation of the well-known "Charter 77" movement, which was formed to monitor and to internationally report human rights abuses within the country. Its first spokesmen were Vaclav Havel, Jan Patocka and Jiri Hajek. They and many other groups actively resisted the Communist regime, and many of them endured long jail terms for their efforts.

During the second half of the 1980s, the general situation in Czechoslovakia became more easygoing, especially after the introduction of Perestroika reforms in the then-Soviet Union. But the Czechoslovak leadership - still headed by Gustav Husak, who had assumed power after the Soviet Invasion of 1968 - was leery of movements intended to "reform communism from within" and continued to toe a hard line in Czechoslovakia, much to the chagrin of Mikhail Gorbacev. But by 1988 there were organized demonstrations demanding change - and just about one month after the fall of the Berlin Wall, communism in Czechoslovakia became a casualty as well.

The six-week period between November 17 and December 29, 1989, also known as the "Velvet Revolution" brought about the bloodless overthrow of the Czechoslovak communist regime. Almost immediately, rumors (which have never been proved) began to circulate that the impetus for the Velvet Revolution had come from a KGB provocateur sent by Gorbacev, who wanted reform rather than hardline communists in power. The theory goes that the popular demonstrations went farther than Gorbacev and the KGB had intended. In part because of this, the Czechs do not like the term "Velvet Revolution," preferring to call what happened "the November Events" (Listopadove udalosti) or - sometimes - just "November" (Listopad). But we digress.

It all started on November 17, 1989 - fifty years to the day that Czech students had held a demonstration to protest the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. On this anniversary, students in the capital city of Prague were again protesting an oppressive regime.

The protest began as a legal rally to commemorate the death of Jan Opletal, but turned instead into a demonstration demanding democratic reforms. Riot police stopped the students (who were making their way from the Czech National Cemetery at Vysehrad to Wenceslas Square) halfway in their march, in Narodni trida. After a stand-off in which the students offered flowers to the riot police and showed no resistance, the police bagan beating the young demonstrators with night sticks. In all, at least 167 people were injured. One student was reportedly beaten to death, and - although this was later proved false - this rumor served to crystallize support for the students and their demands among the general public. In a severe blow to the communists' morale, a number of workers' unions immediately joined the students' cause.

From Saturday, November 18, until the general strike of November 27, mass demonstrations took place in Prague, Bratislava, and elsewhere - and public discussions instead of performances were held in Czechoslovakia' theaters. During one of these discussions, at the Cinoherni Klub theater on Sunday, November 19, the Civic Forum (OF) was established as the official "spokesgroup" for "the segment of the Czechoslovak public which is ever more critical of the policy of the present Czechoslovak leadership."

The Civic Forum, led by the then-dissident Vaclav Havel, demanded the resignation of the Communist government, the release of prisoners of conscience, and investigations into the November 17 police action. A similar initiative - the Public Against Violence (VPN) - was born in Slovakia on November 20, 1989. Both of them were joined en masse by Czechoslovak citizens - from university students and staff to workers in factories and employees of other institutions. It took about 2 weeks for the nation's media to begin broadcasting reports of what was really going on in Prague, and in the interim students travelled to cities and villages in the countryside to rally support outside the capital.


The leaders of the Communist regime were totally unprepared to deal with the popular unrest, even though communist regimes throughout the region had been wobbling and toppling around them for some time.

As the mass demonstrations continued - and more and more Czechoslovaks supported the general strikes that were called - an extraordinary session of the Czechoslovak Communist Party Central Committee was called. The Presidium of the Communist Party resigned, and a relatively unknown Party member, Karel Urbanek, was elected as the new Communist Party leader. The public rejected these cosmetic changes, which were intended to give the impression that the Communist Party was being reformed from within as it had been in 1968. The people's dissatisfaction increased.

Massive demonstrations of almost 750,000 people at Letna Park in Prague on November 25 and 26, and the general strike on the 27th were devastati    ng for the communist regime. Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec was forced to hold talks with the Civic Forum, which was led by still- dissident (soon to be President) Vaclav Havel. The Civic Forum presented a list of political demands at their second meeting with Adamec, who agreed to form a new coalition government, and to delete three articles - guaranteeing a leading role in political life for the Czechoslovak Communist Party and for the National Front, and mandating Marxist-Leninist education - from the Constitution. These amendments were unanimously approved by the communist parliament the next day, on November 29, 1989. 

    Well, the old saying that 'if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile' held true, and the communist capitulation led to increased demands on the part of the demonstrators. A new government was formed by Marian Calfa; it included just nine members of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (several of whom actively cooperated with the Civic Forum); two members of the Czechoslovak Socialist Party; two members of the Czechoslovak People's Party; and seven ministers with no party affiliation - all of latter were Civic Forum or Public Against Violence activists. 

    This new government was named by Czechoslovak President Gustav Husak on December 10. The same evening, he went on television to announce his resignation, and the Civic Forum cancelled a general strike which had been scheduled for the next day. 

    At the 19th joint session of the two houses of the Federal Assembly, Alexandr Dubcek - who had led the ill-fated Prague Spring movement in the 1960's - was elected Speaker of the Federal Assembly. One day later, the parliament elected the Civic Forum's leader, Vaclav Havel, President of Czechoslovakia. 

    Despite their many shortcomings - not the least of which were political inexperience and serious time pressures - the new government and parliament were able to fill in many of the most gaping gaps in the Czechoslovak legal framework - concentrating in particular on the areas of human rights and freedoms, private ownership, and business law. They were also able to lay the framework for the first free elections to be held in Czechoslovakia in more than 40 years. 

    The results of the 1990 local and parliamentary elections in Czechoslovakia, which were likened at the time to a referendum which posed the question "Communism, yes or no?" showed a sweeping victory for the soon to be extinct Civic Forum (OF) in the Czech Republic, and for the Public Against Violence (VPN) in Slovakia. In other words, "Communism, no thanks." 

    The turnout for the local elections was more than 73 percent, and for Parliamentary elections more than 96 percent of the population went to the polls! 

    Czech Petr Pithart of the Civic Forum was elected as Czech Premier, Slovaks Vladimir Meciar and Marian Calfa, both of the Public Against Violence (VPN), were elected Slovak and Federal Premier, respectively. Vaclav Havel was re-elected as the Czechoslovak President on July 

 

History of the Wawel Hill

how the kings' seat was built on the swamps

In Cracow, on the left bank of the Vistula River, there is a hill with the height of 228 m above the sea level. It is made of Jurassic limestones (161-155 millions years) uplifted in the form of tectonic horst in Miocene (23 to 5 million years ago). The word "wąwel" used in the Middle Ages was supposed to mean, as interpreted by some people, a gorge dividing the hill into two parts, or, according to others, "a height among the swamps". Within the rocks there are numerous karst forms, and caves. A medieval legend has evolved about one of them, telling that it was reportedly inhabited by a dragon beaten by prince Krak.

First buildings

The beginnings of colonization in this area have been determined during archaeological works for 100 000 years B.C. The settlement established on the crossing of major trade routes constituted the main town of the Vislans tribe. In his 13th century chronicles Wincenty Kadlubek mentions Krak and Wanda - the legendary rulers of the tribe, living at the turn of the 7th and 8th century.

The first historical rulers of Poland from the Piasts family - Mieszko I (960-992), Boleslaw Chrobry (1025), Mieszko II (1025-1031) - chose Wawel for one of their seats. At that time it was a town built of wood, stone and soil. In 1000 the diocese of Cracow was established and this caused the need to build a cathedral. As the first one, the diocese of Cracow was taken by bishop Poppon, and construction of the cathedral started in the 1020s. Despite intensive archaeological works the appearance of that first Wawel cathedral, known as "the Chrobry Cathedral", could not have been reconstructed so far. The cathedral was devoted to St. Waclaw. There is also no conformity as to the time when it was destroyed. It is believed that it took place in the 1040s during the invasion of prince Brzetyslaw, or in the 1080s during a fire.

The remains of other buildings that existed on the Wawel Hill have also been identified during archaeological works. The oldest found remains of wooden buildings date back to the 9th century, while the stone ones to the turn of the 10th and 11th century. There are the remains of such buildings as: The Rotunda of Holy Virgin Mary (10th and 11th century), the B Church (10th century.), the Church of St. Gereon, the Church of St. George, the Church of St. Michael, a hall with 24 poles and a square building of unknown use (10th and 11th century).

The middle of the 11th - 13th century

Wawel became a significant political and administrative centre of the state during the reign of Kazimierz Odnowiciel (1034-1058). His son, Boleslaw Smialy (1058-1079), started to build the next Romanesque cathedral. The construction was continued by Wladyslaw Herman, and completed by Boleslaw Krzywousty (1102-1138). The consecration of the second Wawel cathedral, known as the Herman Cathedral, took place in 1142. Probably in 1089 the remains of bishop Stanislaw from Szczepanow were brought to it from Skalka. Since that time the cult of this saint has been connected with the cathedral. The image of the cathedral from that period has been preserved on the stamp of the seal of Cracow chapter from the 12th century. The cathedral burnt at the beginning of the 14th century, and the remains of it are the foundations of the future buildings - the bottom part of the Vicar Tower (the Silver Bells) and the three naves crypt of St. Leonard.

In 1291 Cracow went under the Czech reign and Waclaw II from the family of Przemyslid crowned himself as the king in the Wawel Cathedral.

Other buildings from that period are the rotunda at the bastion of Wladyslaw IV (12th century), the church at the Dragon's Cave, the rotunda at Sandomierz Tower (11th century).

14th - 15th century

After the coronation of Wladyslaw Lokietek as the king of Poland (1320) the wooden and soil fortifications were replaced by the bricked ones and the construction of the castle started. Its development took place by the request of Kazimierz Wielki. That was the period of the magnificence of Wawel. During the reign of Jadwiga Andegawenska and Wladyslaw Jagiello, one more rebuilding took place. Apart from the local and West European artists, Russian painters were also employed by the royal court. The so-called Chicken Foot and Danish Tower were built. The Hall of Jadwiga and Jagiello has remained (currently the place of exhibition of Szczerbiec). During the reign of Kazimierz Jagiellonczyk (1447-1492) the profile of the hill was enlarged, among others, by high brick towers: The Thieves', Sandomierz and Senators' Towers.

The coronation of Wladyslaw Lokietek as the king of Poland took place in 1320, in the ruins of the burnt cathedral. This was the first historically recorded coronation of a Polish ruler on the Wawel Hill. In the same year the construction of a new cathedral also started, and the building was consecrated in 1364. From the beginning of the construction and for the next centuries, the subsequent chapels were built on it. In the overall outline this is a three-nave building with a transept (a transverse nave) and an ambit (the ambulatory behind the altar). The first chapels were built at the presbytery - the chapel of St. Margaret and the chapel of Batory. The chapel at the western entrance was founded by the wife of Wladyslaw Jagiello - Zofia Holszanska, while the Swietokrzyska chapel by Kazimierz Jagiellonczyk. At the end of the 15th century the number of chapels was 19.

The first king buried in the Wawel Cathedral was Wladyslaw Lokietek. The sarcophagus made of sandstone was founded by Kazimierz Wielki in the middle of the 14th century. In the aisle of Wawel Cathedral, Kazimierz Wielki and Wladyslaw Jagiello are also buried. The sarcophagus of Kazimierz Jagiellonczyk was made in 1492 by Wit Stwosz.

Other buildings designed for dukes, royal officers, craftsmen and numerous towers (Jordanka, Lubranka, Sandomierska, Teczynska, the Gentry, the Thieves', the Maiden) also come from this period.

16th - 17th century

In the days of the reign of the last Jagiellons, Aleksander Jagiellonczyk (1501 - 1506) and Zygmunt I Stary (1506 - 1548), the Royal Castle was rebuilt. The new palace, built at the place of the Gothic residence, was completed in ca. 1540. Under the patronage of the king the course of the works was supervised by: Francis of Florence and Bartolommeo Berrecci, and after their death - Benedict of Sandomierz. Apart from Italian artists also German architects, wood-carvers, painters and casters worked for Zygmunt. The vast courtyard with a column arcade, as well as the Envoys' Hall with its coffered ceiling deserve special attention.

The last of the Jagiellons, Zygmunt II August, enriched the castle interiors with the collection of arrases. On the other hand, Zygmunt III Waza renovated, in the style of the early Baroque, the north-eastern wing, burned during the fire in 1595. The works were managed by architect Giovanni Trevano; the Senator's stairs and the fireplace in the Hall under the Birds come from the period of that reconstruction.

Relocation of the regal court to Warsaw in 1609 resulted in slow, but permanent worsening of the condition of the castle. From that date the rulers would stay in Cracow only occasionally. In the 17th century the modern bailey was built.

The condition of the buildings deteriorated during the deployment of Swedes in the castle (1655 - 1657, 1702). One tried to remedy the negligence making an effort of repairs in the days of Jan III Sobieski, the Wettins and Stanislaw August.

At the beginning of the 16th century Francis of Florence created in Wawel Cathedral a sculptured niche in which the tombstone of Jan Olbracht was placed. In the days of Zygmunt Stary, the ancestral chapel of the Jagiellons was built, known as "the Zygmunt Chapel". In 1520 the Zygmunt bell was casted. The tombstones of Cardinal Fryderyk Jagiellonczyk and many bishops also come from that period.

Despite the relocation of the capital of Poland to Warsaw, the Wawel Cathedral remained the place of coronation and burial of the kings. However, it was slightly reconstructed. The ambit was heightened, the tomb of St. Stanislaw was made with marble altar and silver coffin, the main altar was created. The Baroque tombstones of the bishops (Marcin Szyszkowski, Piotr Gembicki, Jan Malachowski, Kazimierz Lubienski) and of the kings (Michal Korybut Wisniowiecki, Jan III Sobieski) and chapels (the chapel of Wazas) were erected.

The loss of independence

After the loss of independence by Poland in 1795, the troops of the invading states: Russia, Prussia and Austria subsequently stayed on Wawel. The transformation of Wawel into the barracks resulted in many changes and damages. Some of the buildings were pulled down (the church of St. George and the church of St. Michael), the galleries were surrounded with a wall, and the interiors of the castle changed. After the collapse of the Cracow insurrection and liquidation of the Republic of Cracow, three buildings of the military hospital were erected on Wawel. By resolution of the Sejm of Galicja of 1880 the castle was given for a residence to Emperor Franz Joseph I. The Austrian army was deployed on the Wawel Hill until 1911.

The funerals of Jozef Poniatowski and Tadeusz Kosciuszko, in the form of national manifestos, took place in the Wawel cathedral at that time. The renovation of royal tombs was also started. In 1869 the coffin of Kazimierz Wielki was opened. The sarcophagi of other kings were cleaned, also the new ones were founded, and the underground crypts were connected by corridors. The thorough renovation of the cathedral took place at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. In 1902 in the Wawel cathedral the tombstone of Queen Jadwiga, and in 1906 a symbolic tombstone of Wladyslaw Warnenczyk were created. In 1900-1904 Jozef Mehoffer made the murals in the cathedral treasury and stained glass in the windows of the cathedral transept showing Christ of Sorrow and Mary. He is also the author of the murals and stained glass in the chapel of the Szafraniec family and stained glass windows in the Swietokrzyska chapel. In 1902-1904 Wlodzimierz Tetmajer decorated the chapel of queen Zofia with the figures of Polish saints and national heroes.

Started at the beginning of the 20th century, the renovation of the castle lasted a few decades. The conservation works, financed from social donations, were supervised by Zygmunt Hendel, and after him Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz. To commemorate all the contributors, little bricks with their surnames were made and placed in the wall at the northern entry to the castle. At that entry the Arms Gate was built and the statue of Tadeusz Kosciuszko was placed. During the works managed by Szyszko-Bohusz the Rotunda of Holy Virgin Mary and the remains of previous buildings were found.

Independent Poland

After 1918 the castle served as a representative residence of the head of the state and a museum of historical interiors. In 1921 the statue of Tadeusz Kosciuszko was created by Leonard Marconi and Antoni Popiel. The ashes of Juliusz Slowacki (1927) were brought to Wawel, Jozef Pilsudski and Wladyslaw Sikorski were also buried in the crypts.

During World War II, Nazi governor Hans Frank had his headquarter on Wawel.

In 1959-1961 some valuable exhibits returned to the collections of the museum, among others, the arrases and Szczerbiec - the coronation sword.

Currently the hosts of the hill are: the Royal Castle on Wawel - the State Art Collections and the Management of the Metropolitan Basilica on Wawel.