Revolution and Counter-Revolution; Or, Germany in 1848Marx, Karl
History
Revolution and Counter-Revolution; Or, Germany in 1848
Marx, Karl
Germany -- History -- Revolution, 1848-1849
Camphausen and Hansemann had taken such pains
to bring about. "Whereby they sinned, thereby are they punished." Such
has been the fate of all the upstarts of 1848 and 1849, from Ledru
Rolin to Changarnier, and from Camphausen down to Haynau.
The question of nationality gave rise to another struggle in Bohemia.
This country, inhabited by two millions of Germans, and three millions
of Slavonians of the Tschechian tongue, had great historical
recollections, almost all connected with the former supremacy of the
Tschechs. But then the force of this branch of the Slavonic family had
been broken ever since the wars of the Hussites in the fifteenth
century. The province speaking the Tschechian tongue was divided, one
part forming the kingdom of Bohemia, another the principality of
Moravia, a third the Carpathian hill-country of the Slovaks, being
part of Hungary. The Moravians and Slovaks had long since lost every
vestige of national feeling and vitality, although mostly preserving
their language. Bohemia was surrounded by thoroughly German countries
on three sides out of four. The German element had made great progress
on her own territory; even in the capital, in Prague, the two
nationalities were pretty equally matched; and everywhere capital,
trade, industry, and mental culture were in the hands of the Germans.
The chief champion of the Tschechian nationality, Professor Palacky,
is himself nothing but a learned German run mad, who even now cannot
speak the Tschechian language correctly and without foreign accent.
But as it often happens, dying Tschechian nationality, dying according
to every fact known in history for the last four hundred years, made
in 1848 a last effort to regain its former vitality--an effort whose
failure, independently of all revolutionary considerations, was to
prove that Bohemia could only exist, henceforth, as a portion of
Germany, although part of her inhabitants might yet, for some
centuries, continue to speak a non-German language.
LONDON, February, 1852.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Lusiana, an ancient territory of Germany, north of Bohemia, to
which the whole of it originally belonged. Later it belonged to
Saxony, and still later, in 1815, was divided between Saxony (the
northern part) and Prussia (the southern).
IX.
PANSLAVISM--THE SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN WAR.
MARCH 15th, 1852.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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