Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule: A Study of the Ideals and Aspirations of the Bohemian and Slovak Peoples, as They Relate to and Are Affected by the Great European War
History
Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule: A Study of the Ideals and Aspirations of the Bohemian and Slovak Peoples, as They Relate to and Are Affected by the Great European War
Undaunted, Havlíček made other attempts to procure a newspaper license,
and at last he obtained a promise that he might be allowed to publish
a paper in Kutná Hora, a provincial town not far from Prague. In time
even this paper was suppressed by the police and its editor arrested
and interned in the province of Tyrol by Bach’s order. It should,
perhaps, be said that Havlíček was the one journalist whom neither
threats nor offers of bribery could influence. There, separated from
his wife and child, Havlíček gave way to brooding which brought on a
fatal brain disease. From Tyrol he was permitted to return home, broken
in health and spirit. To the last Havlíček remained steadfast to the
cause he had championed--the liberation from bondage of his nation.
Havlíček’s colors were red and white (Bohemian national colors), and
neither threats nor favors could swerve him from his chosen path:[11]
“They banished you from the fatherland,” wrote Pinkas to Havlíček, “but
they transformed the fatherland itself into a fortress and a jail. We
live here the most unhappy lives conceivable. Not a ray of light enters
our intellectual prison to brighten it.”
The mere acquaintanceship with Palacký was enough to expose one to the
chicanery of the police. Strobach, at one time Mayor of Prague and a
former speaker of the short-lived parliament, was deposed as judge
because, when presiding at a trial, he failed to hold a drunkard on a
charge of lèse majesté. Count Thun would not allow Rieger to lecture at
the university for the reason, as he stated, “that students would see
in him a political agitator, not a professor.”
A demand was made on Palacký by the censor to strike out of his
“History of the Bohemian Nation” the chapters relating to Hus and the
Hussite Wars. Even Prince Metternich, whose bureaucratic leanings
were above suspicion, considered the demand, which was equivalent to
an order, unreasonable. After a great deal of haggling as to what was
permissible and what should be deleted, a compromise was effected
between the historian and the censor. However, Palacký’s biographers
all agreed that the terms of the compromise were not satisfactory
to him. He is said to have expressed a hope that future historians,
living in freer times than he, should tell the whole truth about the
importance and meaning of the Hussite movement, which he was not
allowed to do. The chapters relating to the Hussite times he wrote both
in Bohemian and German. But because German critics had impugned his
impartiality, he determined, as a protest, to continue with Bohemian
as the original and German as a translation. When he announced his
decision to the Land Committee, a protest was raised and he was warned
not to publish the Bohemian text before the German; nor to do anything
from which it might appear that the German text was not the original.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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