Suchergebnisse

Prague: panoramas of history -- Preserving the national past for the future -- Art meets politics -- Generational approaches to national monuments -- World War I and the Jan Hus Jubilee -- Toppling columns, building a capital in revolutionary Prague -- Catholic Czech nationalism in the early 1920s -- Religious heroes for a secular state -- Modern churches, living cathedrals -- National heroes and Nazi rule -- God's warriors on Vítkov Hill -- Rebuilding Bethlehem Chapel -- Old symbols to oppose the new regime -- Religious and national symbols in post-communist Prague -- Epilogue: New times, new monuments

Abstract
Students of István Deák have been at the forefront of problematizing the Czech national narrative, particularly following the fall of Communism. The Czech nationalist interpretation of history casts the Czechs as an imprisoned nation within Austria (and later inside the Soviet bloc). In this schema, the 1620 Battle of White Mountain ushered in an era of temno (darkness) during which the Germanic Habsburgs suppressed the Czech national language and culture. This article examines how scholars who studied with Deák complicated this narrative by investigating national indifference and fissures within the nineteenth- and twentieth-century national movements.

It will be a memorable day for every Czech.In 1903, former mayor Dr Jan Podlipný used these words to petition the Prague City Council to finance a nationalist festival dedicated to the memory of Jan Hus. Arguing for a celebration devoted to the fifteenth-century priest and church reformer who had become a nationalist icon in the nineteenth century, Podlipný emphasized the "memorable" quality of the planned event.2Indeed, the purpose of the celebration was to create memory on several levels. The festival itself would gather Czechs in great numbers, creating a memory of a shared community, which would bolster the Czech nationalist spirit for future campaigns. The festival's purpose was to lay a cornerstone to a Jan Hus Memorial, a monument that would etch a permanent memory of Jan Hus into Prague's landscape. Last, by publicly and collectively commemorating Hus, Czech nationalists would create a shared memory of the nation's past.

Paces reviews 'Feminist Nationalism' by Lois A. West.