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Welcome to the New Books Network.
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I'm Caleb Zakrin, editor of the New Books Network. Today I'm speaking with Cynthia Paces, professor of history at the College of New Jersey. We're discussing Cynthia's new book, the Heart of Europe, a sweeping history of one of the world's most culturally important cities. Through the history of Prague, we see the rise and fall of empires, nations, dictatorships and democracies. Cynthia, I'm looking forward to going through more than a thousand years of history with you. Thanks for joining me today on the New Books Network.
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Thank you for having me.
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I'm really thrilled to get the chance to speak with you about this book. Prague is one of those cities that I haven't had the chance to visit, and I really regret not being able to go. I studied abroad in Europe and had a friend that was in Prague, and she ended up visiting me in Amsterdam. And I really regret not going to Prague because it is just such a unbelievably fascinating, important city. And, you know, every person I know that's been there has. Has just had amazingly wonderful things to say about it. But before even talking about Prague, I was just wondering if you just tell us a little about yourself and how you decided to write this book.
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Yeah. Thank you. Well, it's not never too late to go to Prague, so I hope you get there soon. So my journey to writing the book is. Is both personal and academic. So my father actually was born in. In 1943, so right in the middle of World War II. And my grandparents were small business owners in Prague. They owned a really small kind of manufacturing. It was basically in their garage, but it was like. We call. We say factory, but that gives you this idea of smokestacks and everything. It was really kind of a workshop where they made liqueurs, like after dinner, drinks and things like that. And in the short period really between the end of World War II and the communist takeover in 1948, they became very successful, and they were exporting throughout Europe and kind of involved in the business community in Prague. And then the Communists did come in February 1948 and nationalized all businesses. And for a variety of reasons, my grandparents had to leave the country. So my grandfather escaped first, and then my grandmother followed with her three sons. The middle one is my dad. So I grew up in New York, and I was kind of surrounded by Czech things. My grandparents, a lot of their friends. I didn't speak Czech because my mom is American. And my dad was. Was, you know, really educated. He came here when he was 9. So he was really American as well. But I was always interested in history and I was always curious about, you know, this place my grandparents were from. But growing up in the Cold War, we always thought, you know, we'll never go back. It's, it's, you know, it's sort of a lost place in this family culture. And then I was in college when the Berlin Wall came down and so I was actually taking a class on the of Communist and socialist thought. And then we were watching it crumble in the fall of 1989 and I had already decided that I wanted to study more of that region in college. So I was, you know, taking classes on the Soviet Union and Central Europe. And then all of a sudden this major change took place and I was able to go and study abroad there in both 1990 and 1991. And I just fell in love with the city. So then I ended up going to graduate school in European history and I worked with Ist van Deyak, who is a specialist, was a specialist in the Habsburg Monarchy. And that gave me a broader understanding of the region as opposed to just Czech history and really shaped the way I thought about Prague as this really diverse, multi ethnic city. So yeah, so then I've been teaching and writing about Eastern and Central Europe for almost 30 years and Oxford Press actually approached me and asked if I was interested in writing this book. I have other publications that are about Prague that are a little bit more kind of academic focused and this one is supposed to really be for a broader audience and introduce the city and its long history to kind of non specialists, but definitely people with like, strong interest in reading history and hopefully people also who are academically oriented who want to do a little kind of comparative urban history, things like that.
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Prague is such a great city to see the transformation of Europe through. It really is incredible how many different rulers and governments and groups of people, you know, touched Prague in some, some fashion. But you know, obviously your, your own experience, you know, very contemporary, dealing with, you know, the downfall of, of communism in the Czech Republic. But let's start, you know, a thousand years ago and let's talk about the region that would become Prague. Yes, before the Slavic migration. So what was that region like and who was there?
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A
You know, it was, it was pretty sparsely populated. You can go way back to the Celts. And there are archaeological sites in the vicinity of Prague where the Celts were living in the sort of, you know, pre Christian era during, you know, sort of the Roman warfare. In that broader region. Celts left the area. But actually, the name of Bohemia comes from the Bowie tribe of the Celts, and they also gave their name to Bologna and. And Bavaria. So that was something I learned while doing the book. So it was settled by Celts a very, very, very long time ago. There's some evidence that there are probably some Germanic groups, but really it was pretty underpopulated until that Slavic migration, kind of 6th, 7th century in the CE Christian era.
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What was appealing about the location that made people want to settle there?
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You know, there are a lot of myths in Czech history about, you know, the people coming from the east and there. There are these different myths about, like, three brothers or five brothers, and, you know, they go and they. They form the different Slavic groups, like Lech forms Poland and Czech forms Bohemia. You know, I don't know a lot. I'm not, you know, my specialty is 19th and 20th century. So I'm not like, I don't know the archaeology as well as some people. But in that migration westward, I think that Prague was one of the natural kind of stopping points. You get past the Tatra Mountains, which are in Slovakia, and then you're really in the foothills of the Alps. People don't really realize that, but you are in the river bed area. So it's pretty rich soil, very forested. And then the river provided a lot of opportunities for the people in terms of nourishment, and then later on, things like trade. So, you know, different groups settled in different places. And, you know, some Slavs, like I said, went to Poland or into the Balkans. But this group does end up in that Vltava river basin, which is, of course, where Prague is.
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And how did the city become connected to the Holy Roman Empire? What did this mean for the city and its development?
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Right. So another, you know, again, another sort of caveat is that I learned a lot writing this book about medieval history. And one of the main lessons I learned was we don't know a lot of things, right? We don't have a lot of sources. We have archeology, and then we have a lot of. We have, you know, chronicles that were written, but they were written by, you know, people who were affiliated with various monarchs. So we have. The earliest things we have are some of these Saxon chronicles that mention Bohemia, and then we have some chronicles from about the 11th and 12th century that are produced in what is now Prague. And so there are theories about how the very early Bohemian dynasty, the Przemysla dynasty, gets affiliated with the Holy Roman Empire around. Probably around the year 1000, I think. They say like 1002, but likely the, the German kings were, were pretty powerful and required local people to our local rulers to pay taxes or tributes or however you want to call it. And then they became sort of allied with them. And then as the centuries go on, the Holy Roman Empire becomes more formal. So it's kind of, you know, it's founded in 800 with Charlemagne, but then there's really kind of several centuries where it's very amorphous, like, what is it? And then Bohemia becomes a kingdom within the Holy Roman empire in the 13th century, and that's bestowed on this shemislate ruler for being an ally of the current emperor. But it's a very, it's a very confusing process. Like a lot of Americans are very used to, you know, sort of thinking about the British monarchy, let's say, and you have, you know, this primogeniture and if the, the dynasty runs out, then maybe you invite Germans to come and start a new dynasty and then it's primogeniture again. But the, but the Holy Roman Empire has this very elaborate electoral system that means that the head of the Holy Roman Empire might be Saxon and then might be Bavarian and then might be Austrian because of how the allyships are going and how this elector, these electors vote. But for Prague, the most important moment is when Charles iv, who is, for lack of a better term, the Czech king, becomes the Holy Roman Emperor. And that's in the 1340s. So the 14th century is really the height of Prague before that. I mean, you have a lot of building, you have a lot of expansion. I don't know how much you want to get into that, but Charles is really the person who, not only is he the emperor, so he is the German king, but not German, but he also makes Prague the capital of the Holy Roman Emperor Empire and brings a lot of architects, scholars, forms the university, builds the cathedral and, and really kind of puts Prague truly on the map. Before, Prague was definitely an important trading center, though, because of the sort of crossroads of, of these big major east, west and north south trading routes. So there were reasons to be in Prague in the 11th, 12th century.
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B
One of the aspects of Prague that you discuss is just the different religious groups that settled there. So I was wondering if we could first start with just talking about the Jewish people and how various Jewish groups first began settling in Prague, what that was like for them in this place that was becoming so important and central in Europe.
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Right. So the first mention that we have of Jews being in Prague and it's really one of the first kind of descriptions of Prague is from a Spanish trader and diplomat who. Who writes a chronicle and. In the 10th century, later 10th century. And he describes this beautiful city on the river. And he's very impressed with the city. And one of the things he's really impressed with as early as the time he's writing is the diversity. So he says in the marketplace you find Turks and Jews and. And you have to kind of puzzle out who he's really talking about. And people think maybe he means Hungarians when he says Turks, I guess Poles, you know, when he talks about Cracovians. But he does mention Jews as being there and being a part of the marketplace. So that's our earliest mention, but there's also archaeological evidence. So the first settlement of Prague is. Is the castle area. The castle is on kind of a steep hill that goes down to the river, and below is what becomes called the Lesser Quarter. And that's really where the market was. And we know that from archeology. And we have evidence that, like, an early synagogue was there. And, you know, they were traders. Just like in many parts of Europe, Jews were merchants, craftspeople. For much of the Middle Ages, they were not allowed to have property. And so they became, you know, involved in business, in banking, lots of different types of trade, tailoring, things like that. So we know they're there very quite early. And. And then as the. As the city really starts to expand in the 12th and 13th century, that. That's when we also see the Jews and other groups moving across the river and. And forming what is now the Old Town. And that's where today you can go and you can visit the Jew. That really was the main place where Jews in Prague lived from again, like the 12th century to. Until the 19th century, really. So, yeah. Do you want to follow up with anything about that?
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It's very interesting, and I'm wondering too, Prague. Prague is a. Is very, very interesting religious place. Like, for example, you also talk about the. The Hussites as well. And it seems, I. It seems to me that. That it's. It's unique in its, you know, religious diversity, and also it's having. Having religions that are not the Catholic norm. Is that. Is that the case? Is Prague unique in this period or are there other. Like, obviously, you know, Martin Luther comes around eventually, but it seems that Prague is quite unique actually in the sort of religious flowering and diversity of religion.
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Yeah, I think there are a couple of things that make. I would say some of these Reform Movements that were going on throughout Europe in the churches, sort of a little bit more successful maybe in Prague you definitely had in terms of just another mention of Judaism. Obviously there was anti Semitism and, and a lot of times, especially during economic times, the middle classes would sort of want to expel the Jews. But they were, the kings knew that they were important for taxes, for money lending and they kind of offered some protection for them, some legal protection. And they were actually even allowed to in 1270 they build the old new synagogue in that old town which you again can still visit to this day. It's the oldest synagogue that still has services in Europe that still exists. And the king actually allowed them not only to build their, although it couldn't be higher than any church, so that was important. But he allowed them to use the royal architects and stonemasons to build this synagogue. So you had a pretty strong king, the position of king within the Shemysl dynasty where they especially a couple of them really see Prague as this center of trade and want to make the city prominent in central Europe. So they want to bring wealth in and they see the Jews as sort of a partner in that. So I'd say that that helps the Jewish population. Even though from time to time there are these breakouts of more major antisemitism. In terms of the Hussites. Hus was very influenced by other reform movements that were going on. There were lots of reform movements happening. And the one that he was very taken with was John Wycliffe in England who was one of the first to. He translates the Bible into English. If you go to the oed. I think he actually has more entries than Shakespeare about putting words into the English language. And. But I think that what happens that makes Prague kind of a unique center is that Charles IV founds the university and it's the first university in the Holy Roman Empire and people come from the German speaking areas, from the Slavic speaking areas, really from all over Europe and are studying there. And Charles was very, very faithful religious, very, very close to his Catholic faith. But he also was kind of liberal minded, if you will, in terms of kind of wanting to see some changes in the church. Like he also saw some of the corruption and, and he allowed some preachers like this Conrad Waldheiser, I think that's pronounced right who's from. Who was in Vienna before he comes to Prague and he allows him to come after he's been kicked out of places for preaching kind of unorthodox things. And a lot of the attacks were the excesses of the clergy. And Charles actually sort of backs him and a few other of these reforming preachers, and they're like called to the church, you know, to testify at some of these councils. And Charles gives them letters and says, you know, I support this person. And so Charles brings this very intellectual community. And then Jan Hus himself is just. He's such an interesting character. I mean, he is after Charles, but he's within the dynasty of Charles's son, Wenceslas iv. And he's this. We don't know again, a lot about his background, but we think he's from pretty peasant background. But he must have shown some incredible promise as a, you know, student for him to get to come from Southern Bohemia and come to the university in the late 14th century. So he comes and he becomes very interested in this. These debates that are going on at the Prague University about religion, like, what's the place of the church? What's the place of the monastic orders? You know, what's. Should there be things like indulgences for the forgiveness of sin? And he's pretty poor. And some of his. We have a lot of writings from him and he writes about one time making his. His confession and he has to pay some kind of indulgence, and then he wasn't able to eat for a few days because he had to pay. And, and he even saw that as, as sort of unjustifiable. Like, why would you, why would you take money from this starving student who sings in the churches to like, make his room and board? And so, so, you know, he was part of a larger movement where people were questioning what the church was doing. But from what his contemporary said, he was an incredible orator. And there were some other people in the city who were wealthy, kind of these Burgers who, Who were middle class, and they were already influenced by some of these earlier preachers that I mentioned, like a generation before. And they build this thing called Bethlehem Chapel on some property that they own, and it's this big gathering place and it's a church that's not directly affiliated with a diocese, and it's kind of tied to the university. And so Hus and other. A lot of the professors were priests, right? And they're invited to give homilies or say Mass. But, but where they really are excelling is in that sermon where they start to talk about these issues like the corruption of the papacy, the selling of indulgences, wanting more access for, for the common people. And he becomes just wildly popular. And, you know, there was Charles's son was a fairly weak monarch. So some people who were quite allied with the Catholic Church didn't think he did enough to stop this rabble rousing happening in Prague. But I think the other thing that happens in Prague is that after Jan Hus is executed by the church in 1415 for heresy, he had a lot of followers in Prague. And four years after his death, there's an uprising in the city. And it basically launches these Hussite wars that are going to take place for decades after. So they're the Hussite wars, but Huss is gone by this time, and these are people who've taken up his mantle. And in many, many ways they are much more radical than he was. They are advocating something called Utraquism, which is both kinds, both forms. And so they're asking that the lay people can receive both bread and wine in mass. And it's that idea of like the priesthood of all believers, right? Like everyone is equal under God. It shouldn't just be the priest who sips the wine. Everyone should have the wine. And the chalice becomes a symbol of Hus, even though he really was not. That wasn't one of the issues he was the most interested in, but his followers were. And it's a very complicated history, so stop me if I'm getting too, too far into the weeds, but Wenceslas IV's brother is Sigismund, and he's very, very Catholic. He's Charles's youngest son, and he's the one who calls the Council of Constance, who approves the execution of Jan Hus. And when this uprising happens in 14:19, he gets the Pope basically to call a crusade. And some of this is a move against his brother. He wants more power in the empire. And some of it, I think, is his belief that, that the Catholic Church is the true Church. And so you get like four decades of war in Bohemia, a little less than that, but very, you know, very bloody wars that are considered by the Church Crusades, and they call it the First Crusade, the Second Crusade, and the Bohemians actually do very well. They have this General Ika, who like every military history person, loves him. So if I say Prague and there's somebody who's like a military person, they're like Yanjiska, because he invented a lot of like, tactics that were kind of modern warfare and guerrilla warfare and urban warfare, and they kept beating the imperial troops. So eventually the wars end and. But it's only because the Hussites kind of split against each other. The ones that are much more radical and want to kind of form their own church and the ones that want to more reform the Catholic Church and, and so they destroy each other rather than get beaten by the empire. So it's like this kind of a little man. It's like a David and Goliath type of story and it becomes really part of the national Mythology in the 19th century and Hus becomes this like big hero. My first book really looks at the sort of revival of these religious narratives in the, in the 19th and 20th century and how Huss becomes this like modern hero for the nationalists and then for the communists who saw him as like this anti Catholic guy. So he becomes a lot of things he probably wasn't, but. But yeah, he's a fascinating person though. And because he was a prolific writer, we have a lot of sources that he, he wrote.
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B
Yeah, the Hussite wars are just so interesting as you related in the book and just truly what an unbelievably fascinating period of time that I oftentimes feel like, obviously historians spend a lot of time working on this period, but I feel like oftentimes people that are more, maybe history hobbyists should probably spend more time actually reading, reading about, you know, the, this period because it's just so, it's so interesting to see all of the, the religious clashes. And I think that, you know, people might actually find some, some similarities between, between the world today, even if it's, you know, everything's a little different. Of course there, you know, the, the world that, that was being broken and the new world that was being created, I think is people will find a lot of similarities.
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Yeah.
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You then talk about how that the Habsburgs came to power, what was that, that process like? And obviously they, you know, they end up reigning for a few hundred years and in various interesting ways. But, but it's during, you know, they, they come to power and then, you know, they really are there for the transition to the more, you know, modern world. There's obviously there's democracies being birthed. You know, they hold on for quite a while. What is, what is that period like?
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A
So 1526 is, is the year that the Habsburgs gain control and sort of hereditary rights both in like the Bohemian lands, which includes like Moravia today and some of Silesia as well as Hungary. And there's a variety of reasons for this. As I was mentioning earlier, the, the Holy Roman Empire is an elected or the Emperor is an elected role. And actually Charles IV was the one who, who created the golden bull of 1356. That outlined what you needed to do to elect the monarch. So he makes it like a much more formal system. And even though I said there wasn't primogeniture, you can imagine that certain families rise to prominence and then they get people to vote for their son to be the next one. And the Habsburgs are becoming the most powerful family in Europe. And then of course, they have a branch that ends up in Spain and, and ends up in the New World. And then they have this branch in Central Europe. And so after the Hussite wars, there was a period with no monarch, and then there was a period with a nobleman who was, who was a Protestant or an Utraquist Yizhi, or George of Podyabradi, who becomes this elected king. And there are elections also in the Bohemia Bohemian lands among the nobles, and then he dies. And the Jagiellonians, the Polish, you know, the Polish royal family is asked to take on the crown and they make an arrangement with the Habsburgs and there's this double marriage in Vienna where their like a daughter and a son marry a daughter and a son, or there's like it's two generations represented or something that basically if the Anglonians don't have an heir, it's going to go to the Habsburgs. And that is indeed what happens. So, so it's through these marriages. But there was a lot of reason at the time for the nobility in both Hungary and in Bohemia to support the Habsburgs because they're fighting the Turks. And everyone, of course, is trying to prevent the Turks from going north. And so militarily there's some rationale for, you know, having having the Habsburgs in charge. Several of the early Habsburg rulers were also quite tolerant of some of this kind of Bohemian heresy, if you will. They're very involved, they're very Catholic, they remain so. But some of the earlier rulers are willing to tolerate this sort of religious difference. And this is also the period of time where now we really do have a German Reformation. Right. And so it's also like the Diet of Worms investigating Martin Luther. And then later ON in the 16th century, there becomes a rule that within the Holy Roman Empire, the prince or the head of that area can say what religion their area is. So if you're in, if your prince is Lutheran, then your region is considered Lutheran. And if you're, you know, if you're Catholic, if you're in the Habsburg lands, then your region is considered Catholic. But some of those, like I said, early, early emperors that, that are in Bohemia are fairly tolerant the most tolerant is Rudolf ii, who we can talk about because he also moves the capital back to Prague. But even a couple of his predecessors, his father was known to be very liberal about religion, so they kind of let things be. But then things are getting much more sensitive in the 1600s. And in 1618 there's a rebellion. Most of the Bohemian noblemen have become some form of Protestantism. A lot of them are Utrequists, which aren't a total break with the church. Some are Lutherans, now they've joined Lutheran. Some are getting interested in Calvinism. But there's a lot of Protestantism in Bohemia and there's disagreements now, especially after Rudolph's death. The emperors are a bit more conservative and there's conflict between basically crown and the nobleman. And that's how you get into the Thirty Years War, when the Protestant noblemen revolt against the Catholic officers who are in Prague. So I got a little ahead of the story in a way, but, you know, the, the Habsburgs, they. They get. They also in mythology, become like the bad guys and that, you know, they. They were intolerant and. And it really depends on, like, what else is going on in Europe, of course. And it also depends on who. Who is the monarch. You know, Maria Theresa was. Was quite conservative and anti Semitic, and her son Joseph II is the person who. Who issues the toleration patents and frees the Jews and also allows Protestants to practice in Bohemia. So again, you have to kind of look at each. Each period and each monarch and sort of understand what is happening in that kind of religious mishmash.
- [36:27]
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Yeah, I think that the religious background, like why it's so important is because of obviously what happens in the 20th century. And I think that the background's really interesting and also how you go through the ways in which things are constantly seem to be shifting, even in sometimes a couple year, period, just a few years, there will be complete reversals depending on who's in charge, which obviously is what makes doing a history of a city like Prague so difficult. You mentioned Maria Theresa, and she was definitely someone in the book that I picked up on as a very interesting monarch. Obviously, too, unless I missed it, she was one of the only female monarchs in this. Yeah. So I was wondering if that meant anything. Obviously she becomes a monarch, you know, roughly in the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, how she stacks up and measures against some of the other, I guess you could say enlightened despots.
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A
Yeah, well, I think that she really was quite enlightened, but I think her sort of Achilles heel was anti Semitism. But in other ways she, she was quite enlightened. She was really the person that started elementary education. The Habsburg region was one of the most literate in Europe over the course of her rule. And she was on the throne for 40 years, 1740 to 1780. She was co regent with her son Joseph II for part of that. You asked about sort of did being a woman make a difference? In some ways it was something that, that was weak, weakened her abilities in that this is also when you have the rise of Prussia and Prussia starts to expand. Before the 18th century, Prussia was like this small, not that important Germanic northeastern backwater. But Frederick the Great of Prussia sees Maria Theresa as a weakness by being a woman and he feels that her rule is illegitimate and so he challenges her. And her first, certainly her first decade of her reign was fighting off the Prussians. Like there were these Austro Prussian wars and. And her father knew he didn't have a male heir and he issued something called the pragmatic sanction. He was Charles. And that allowed her to inherit the crown. And her title was actually like the female king of Bohemia and Hungary. So but she could not be Holy Roman Emperor. And that was part of the weakness. Even though in many ways that was a symbolic title, it was a blessing of the church, it was a sanctioning by the Pope that this was the sort of the leader of the Central European states. So her husband Charles of Lorraine, and from then on it's actually technically Habsburg Lorraine is there dynasty is the Holy Roman Emperor. And when he dies, that's when his son Joseph II becomes the Holy Roman Emperor. So she, because it's a Catholic post, she cannot have that. She manages to kind of fight off, you know, Frederick the Great quite well, but she loses territory. And so some of Silesia is ceded to Prussia. So we see her reign as in many ways very successful in terms of like social reforms, education being the big one. She also, for Prague itself, remakes the castle as a very modern center of bureaucracy. The Habsburgs are great centralizers and, and she puts a lot of money into Prague. Like I was saying, only Charles IV and Rudolf ii, who was a Habsburg, had Prague to be the capital. But until Maria Theresa's son, I would say Prague was seen as really the second city. And the emperors or kings, they had all these titles, right? They were King of Bohemia and Emperor. They put a lot of money into renovating the castle area, into building monasteries, churches, city walls, reinforcing things, stamping the area with Renaissance architecture or rococo or Baroque architecture. So she puts a lot of money into Prague. And the castle we see today is really her castle. That area, like beneath the cathedral is a lot of these kind of administrative buildings. And. Yeah, so she's a really interesting monarch. She had many, many children in the midst of all of this, from all accounts, she wanted to be very involved in decision making. She founded an institute for gentlewomen, which was up at the castle, which was. Was again, a recognition of unmarried women not having a lot of prospects. And it was a place for them to live and to study, but they could leave. They weren't taking any kind of vow. So, yeah, she's very, very interesting and her son is very important for Prague in terms of his reforms, but he also really doesn't spend much time and is very. Not interested in kind of Bohemia and the Bohemian lands as like this historic entity where she has a big coronation and he never gets crowned in Prague. He's like, no, I don't want to do that.
- [43:16]
B
Yeah, she really is such a fascinating person as you describe, you know, moving a little bit into the, into the 19th century. The 19th century is obviously an era where you see just the nationalist uprisings, you know, and the birth of nationalism in many ways. And I was wondering how that arose in Prague and why it manifested as Czech nationalism. You know, like why Bohemia is kind of a cooler name. I don't know Czech school name too. But I was. How does it, how does that happen?
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A
I. I won't get into it, but like we, in graduate school, we would like, have hours of debate about when to say Bohemian, when to say Bohemian lands. Bohemian lands includes Moravia and part of Silesia. But does it give them credit? And, and then the people who say Czech lands versus Bohemian lands, and yeah, it's. That's a whole other story. But in terms of the nationalism, I think this is another thing that's really important to point out is that until the 19th century, certainly during the Habsburg era, German really becomes the lingua franca, the main language that's spoken in Prague. Anybody who is anyone must know German to succeed in, in business, to succeed in, in government. The, the Habsburgs love to set up bureaucracies, so they, you know, they require German and. But. But there were always, you know, Czech speakers as well. What, what shifts the demographics is the industrial revolution, which starts really during Joseph's reign. And he was also kind of an iconoclast and he hated the monasteries, so he closes down all the monasteries in kind of like a Henry VIII move. And a lot of them become actually the earliest factories in Prague and also military storage places. But by the late 19th century, you start to get textile works, brick works right on the river. The area, the area kind of just outside the old town starts to get industrialized and workers start to come from the countryside. And they are Czech speakers. So the actual demographic of the city changes. And Slavic speakers are coming in as they are a lot of people who are prominent business owners, factory owners. They learn some Czech too, because they have to talk to these workers. And then there are kind of these sort of awakeners they get called these Enlightenment figures. The main person that's known today is Frantisek Polacky, and he was a historian and he worked at the Bohemian Museum. And he was. He was a. He was a Lutheran from Moravia. And he. And. And some of the other intellectuals in Prague were very interested in, like, this Slavic background in the Hussite period. Some of Hus's own writings were about the importance of maintaining the Czech language as opposed to German. So German and Czech were always there together and there. There was fight, you know, what was the more important language, even in the Middle Ages. But you get this combination of kind of these Enlightenment intellectuals who are interested in Czech, who are interested in the Reformation, interested just in history generally, interested in botany and geography, and they're doing all these studies. They form the National Museum. And that combined with the fact that now there are Czechs that are coming into the city, you just get this kind of explosion of a more Slavic culture. And sometimes, you know, writers in the mid 19th century are going to the countryside and they're gathering folk tales and music. So you have Dvorak and Smetana, the musicians, the composers, you know, referencing Slavic folk music in their music. You have playwrights who are starting to write in Czech. They're existing side by side at the time. But by the end of the 19th century, the Czechs win control of the. Of the city government in Prague. And more and more people who maybe even had German background are migrating to using Czech. And so today you might go to Prague and people have very Germanic last names, but their families have been Czech. I mean, that's a very fraught thing to say, but let's at least say spoken Czech for generations. Yeah. So the Germans, they sort of lose the demographic war in many ways. And then at the turn of the 20th century, though, you have still this very, very important German literary movement. And the university gets divided into Charles Ferdinand University and the kind of Charles part, you know, references, of course, the founder, Charles IV and Ferdinand is the Habsburg Emperor. And it divides into a German university and a Czech university. And you can, you know, you apply. And so Franz Kafka as an example goes to the German university. Albert Einstein has one of his first teaching posts in Prague at the German University. It's all like part of the same university, but it's almost like having two colleges and they share some facilities. But there's this, that's a period of time and I've written about that in some other work that I've done, like even about things like medical associations, organizations to fight tuberculosis, organizations to increase women's access to education. They all have like the Czech association to expand women's professional roles. And the German association, you know, for the Czechos, for Protection of Children, the German association. Everything gets nationalized. And that's a product of that kind of nationalizing moment that happens after the French Revolution, I guess all over Europe really. But it's kind of crazy in Prague because. And in Bohemia more broadly, but especially Prague I think, because Prague is so mixed. Whereas like in Bohemia you could find like a German village, a Czech village. And it's not as intertwined, but Prague is really intertwined. And so, you know, do you go to the German gymnastics club, the Turnverein, or do you go to the Sokol, the Czech.
- [51:23]
B
And so yeah, yeah, that's a very interesting division. I'm glad you mentioned Kafka because obviously we've spent so much time talking about religion and talking about the governmental structures. But you know, I haven't asked much about culture. And of course Kafka, I think it is not that controversial to say is probably the most famous artist, author to come from Prague. And I was wondering if you could share a little about Kafka and the world that he was coming from. What it was like to be a young writer in the late 19th, early 20th century.
- [52:01]
A
Yeah, I mean he is just another absolutely fascinating person. His father was a businessman who owned a kind of haberdashery store on Old Town Square, like right in the center of Prague. And his mother came from a German speaking, quite well off family and in, I think in Podebrati, which is near Prague. Both of the parents end up coming into Prague and Kafka grows up really speaking Czech and German. The family speaks German, but the, the housekeeper, nanny who takes him to school speaks Czech and he, he goes to university, he ends up studying law. He, he tried a few different things. He, he earns his JD degree and works for an insurance Company for. For most of his career, he uses Czech and German in. In his. His work life. Although, you know, he's prominently a German speaker and certainly a German writer. So he is definitely living in a time in which there is that division of cultures. And he has a circle of friends, some of whom he met at the university and some who are just kind of part of this German, Jewish intellectual circles that go to these certain cafes and, you know, talk about stuff. And so he. Max Broad is like one of the famous people who. He was a writer. He was much more well known at the time than Kafka and a little bit older, but also Franz Werfel. And then we know that Einstein from time to time joined them and they would meet and they would talk about politics, they would talk about ideas, about Zionism, what they thought about it. And Kafka would often. And they all were writers. So, you know, just like people today, they would share some of their writing and Kafka would read some of his writing out loud and apparently was very, very funny. And he would even laugh while he was reading, you know, the metamorphosis about being a bug. Like, one of the things I think that gets lost about Kafka is that he had a really good sense of humor from what everyone says. And so you read Kafka or you see like, you know, the Orson Welles movie, and it's very, very, very seriously. But he was apparently, you know, quite funny. And we think of him as sort of like, sad and has tuberculosis and. But, you know, he also had, like, a lot of friends. He clearly had some. You know, he never was able to, like, make a commitment to marry. But, you know, I think one of his big struggles was. Was so, like, so many of us right, where we have our day job and. But we have a passion, whether it's, you know, playing guitar or writing stories. And he know, he really wanted to be a writer, but he knew he had to, like, make a living. And so he did this insurance work and he. He was so interesting, though. He even invented a few, like, safety apparatuses that would, like, help his workers. And he would write funny things like in Letters to Max Broad about, like, I don't know what to do anymore. Like, the. These. These girls in these factories are throwing themselves down staircases holding, you know, filled dinner sets of porcelain, and I have to go deal with their mess kind of thing. And. But he's sort of being tongue in cheek about it. So he. Yeah, so he. Another thing that, you know, is interesting is that when, you know, when he dies, when. When he's, you know, more toward middle age, he's a Czechoslovak citizen, right. So people go from being subjects of the Habsburg crown or being, you know, Austro Hungarians to being Czechoslovaks. And so he dies in. In 1924, and, you know, six years into the Republic.
- [56:28]
B
And that transition from the Empire to the Republic is obviously, you know, one of the many, many, many consequences of World War II. 1. Just before even talking about World War I and the creation of the Czechoslovak Republic. Kafka is such an interesting person. I know that he was convinced that his friends and the people around him hated him and thought that he was weird and ugly and all of these things. You can read his diaries. But in fact, people thought he was extremely charming and funny, which, you know, it's a, you know, a lesson for all of us. And. And of course, that he had to have a day job, too. So, you know, there's no. There's no shame in having a day job if you're a screenwriter.
- [57:10]
A
Like, people who keep diaries, like, you get your worst fears out right in your diaries. So, like, maybe he also knew because, like, you know, he kept coming, going out with his friends, and maybe he knew they really liked him.
- [57:24]
B
I'm sure. I'm sure on some level he must have. Yeah. So, I mean, he. He lives through a very interesting time period. You know, he sees a huge transformation of Prague in terms of just, you know, not just of Prague, but just of Europe, period.
- [57:39]
A
And one of the things that really marked his childhood that he wrote about was the destruction of the Jewish quarter when he was a child. So he really sees a change in Prague, and it's part of this whole, like, sanitation campaign that lots of European cities are doing around 1900. But it ends up sort of destroying some of the history of that area. And that's something that I think affected him also as a kid.
- [58:14]
B
What was the experience of the city like in World War I? And the consequences, of course, the end of Empire, the new Republic, you know, this. The. The 20th century. It's actually unbelievable in many ways. It seems like the 20th century was the most just unstable, transformative century that, you know, that we have. That we have in the entire history of Prague. I don't know if you would. You would agree with that.
- [58:41]
A
Yeah. When I teach, like, a 20th century class, sometimes I put, like, my grandfather's, like, birth date in 1911, and then, like, some other mark of. Of his life. And, you know, he was born in Austria, Hungary, but then he becomes a Czechoslovak citizen at age like 7. And then as a. As a, you know, kind of young man in his 30s, he is the part of the Nazi protectorate that when Bohemia and Moravia are taken over by Germany, then there's like, before that even was the Second Czechoslovak Republic, which was like this sort of puppet state, then the protectorate, then another Czechoslovak Republic, then the Communist. And I always say he never moved more than about a half an hour from where he was born, but he was a citizen of, you know, something like seven entities. And then he comes back at the end of his life and gets his citizenship back. But then Czechoslovakia is Czech Republic. So, you know, and he was an American citizen. So I was like, so just, you know, only moving really well. I mean, a big move to New York. But like, he. He was a citizen of so many different countries. And my dad's passport is, I mean, not passport, sorry, birth certificate. You know, it's. It's from. Is from the Nazi protectorate. It's 1943. So, yeah, I would say the 20th century, you know, and then the level of violence. Right. You know, in terms of how much destruction Prague is able to avoid, some of the actual damage that many of the cities experience, especially in World War II. But, yeah, the level of upheaval, I don't know if is matched. I'm sure there are medievalists who can tell us otherwise. But. But you asked about World War I. I think another thing that is really important to know about this period, around the time of this Czech national revival, until the. The state, the formation of the state, is that it wasn't necessarily seen as a contradiction to be, like, in favor of Austria and to be a Czech nationalist. I think that what the Czech nationalist probably wanted more than anything was to have the deal that Hungary got, which was to have autonomy in their area, to have the. To have the Czech language have rights, you know, in terms of people using it within the bureaucracy. That was a big fight. But I think Polotsky said something about, you know, if the Habsburg Monarchy or if Austria didn't. If Austria didn't exist, we would have to invent it. And, and the idea of these, like, tiny little countries that we end up getting in World War I was not an idea that. That really people embraced people for his, you know, historically, for centuries had been parts of larger entities. So the, you know, the Czechs resent that Hungary was kind of successful in. In creating that dual monarchy in 1867, and. And that radicalizes them to sort of demand for some autonomy for Bohemia. But at the beginning of World War I, there was some fear because of Czech nationalism that there would be uprisings and wouldn't report for duty. But it didn't really happen. Czechs and German speakers tended to be in their own units, but they reported and people flew the Czech red and white flag and the Habsburg eagle. So there was more patriotism for Austria than one might expect. There's a recent book about kind of the streets of Prague during World War I that's, that's very good and gives. Goes into like great detail about the different. The way the city looked at the time. The. The churches donated their bells to the military to, you know, for the medal. There were organizations that were feeding. There was a lot of. There were refugees from Galicia, a lot of Jewish, Polish refugees. So that was another experience of the war. But it's really toward the end of the war, as Austria and Germany are clearly losing the war, that more and more people are convinced with this idea of an independent country. And Thomas Masary, who becomes the first president, is abroad during the entire war, and he is in the background talking to, you know, Woodrow Wilson and supporters in France and Britain about the idea of statehood. But it wasn't a foregone conclusion that some people, you know, might. Might read the 19th century as like, this was the Czechs the beginning of the quest for an independent nation state. And I would say it was really more cultural rights and more autonomy within the empire.
- [64:33]
B
That's very interesting and I think an important distinction, especially how people think about nationalism, because nationalism is still one of those things that we have today, and it has evolved over time, I think, in the way that people talk about it, the way that people think about it, since it's kind of widespread explosion in the 19th century. Obviously there's French nationalism and things that start before or sort of start to, before the origins of which. But it's very interesting how you relate that. And this Czechoslovak Republic doesn't last for very long. What is the. The interwar period like? And, you know, obviously, you know, the story here is like so many other places in Europe where they eventually they get taken over by the Nazis. So what, you know, this period and then also the Nazi takeover. What, what happens there?
- [65:34]
A
Yeah, Masaryk, who I mentioned, I mean, he's another really important historical figure and he has to be given a lot of credit for holding on to this democracy for 20 years where places like, you know, their neighbors like Poland and Hungary move toward authoritarianism. Having said that, a third of the population of Czechoslovakia is German speaking German, identifying by this time. And Masaryk really does believe and he refers to them as guests in our land. Now these guests had been living there, you know, from the 12th, 13th century. Sometimes, you know, generations, people came into Prague as merchants. They were invited to come to share their knowledge of mining and metallurgy. So to hear that, you know, now suddenly the place that your ancestors have lived for several centuries, you're now a guest in this country, that really stung the Germans. The Slovaks were part of Hungary. And so the, the Czech lands or the Bohemian lands inherited the Austrian legal system. But the Slovaks were less developed economically. And so then there was resentment on the kind of uneven power sharing or lack of power sharing. The capital was Prague all the way in the West. So there were chinks in the armor of Czechoslovakia. It was also really a remarkable time though. There was a lot of experimentation in art, in film, in surrealism, in theater, modern architecture. So really interesting functionalist glass buildings, a lot of industrial development. Czechoslovakia did sort of get a lot of, of the Austrian industrial sector. And so they were, they were quite wealthy for a very tiny nation. I think they were like, they had the ninth GDP in, in the, in the world. And you know, so it was a, it was a pretty, in many ways a very progressive state. Masaryk was a big proponent from the time he was a young man of women's rights. And yet there was always this kind of, this problem of this multinational place being seen as a nation state. In fact, you couldn't say you were Czech or Slovak like on the census, you had to say Czechoslovak because if you said you were Czech or Slovak separately, then no, no group would really have a majority. So to be, in order to get that like they convinced, they convinced Wilson that Czechoslovak was one nation. The languages are very similar, but the histories are quite separate. So it's a mixed bag. I mean, people look back at it very nostalgically, but a lot. But historians, I think have in the last 30 years or so tried to make it more, a more nuanced understanding that yes, it was a democracy in a time when a lot of countries were rejecting democracy. And the, these minority groups or, you know, other nationalities did have representation, but they weren't necessarily seen as equal citizens by the government, by the fellow citizens. And it, and it does encourage both the Slovaks and the Germans to sort of look to, to Hitler as is this, would this be a better circumstance for us?
- [70:19]
B
Right. And what is it like for Prague when, you know, Hitler, you know, starts his campaign of conquering, conquering Europe, you know, who, who Collaborates, who resists? Who are the victims?
- [70:33]
A
Yeah, another, you know, complicated question. Masaryk's protege, Edvard Benesch, leaves the country and forms a government in exile, first in France and then for most of the war it's in Britain. Masaryk's son, Jan Masaryk was the foreign minister. He accompanies Bene along with a lot of the top government, kind of. And that liberal, those liberal parties, but also the head of the Catholic Party is in England at the time. And some of the Social Democrats and communists go to the Soviet Union. Once they enter the war, there are collaborators. So first there's this period of time, it's short from the second. It's called the Second Czechoslovak Republic. And it's between the Munich agreement in October 38 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 39. And this person, his name was Emil Haha and he was a judge. He was an older man and conservative in politics, didn't like he was appointed by Masaryk, but he didn't love Masaryk's liberalism. He didn't like he was Catholic, he didn't like Masaryk's Protestantism. And he agrees to sort of be the president of this second republic and in, you know, hindsight is 20 20. But it was a fatal mistake. You know, he becomes then a puppet leader of the Nazi state. He stays on in a position even after the Nazis incorporate Bohemian Moravia into the protectorate and he ends the war. Seen as a war criminal, he does allow the anti Semitic legislation from Germany to transfer over to Czechoslovakia and really capitulates to a lot of the demands that Hitler makes. There are stories of him being really sort of tormented by the Nazis that he's brought to Berlin when they tell him he's they're going to invade. His wife had recently died. He was kept up to like 1:30 in the morning and, and he was a. I think he was a weak person. And they found the right person who had some gravitas during the interwar period, thinks maybe I can save the country by playing the game. But you don't play the game with Hitler. Right. And you know that that's what happened. Yeah. So Prague is during the war. I mean, there are some moments where there, there are reprisals against people in the resistance. There's never a resistance like you see in Amsterdam, place you mentioned, or certainly Poland, where you almost have an underground society that, that is functioning the Czechs. And it's another area where there's a lot of soul searching to this day. About Czechs can be a little bit, you know, like their films about World War II are often about like, we're pretty passive and we'll get a beer and get along there. There were, there were people who were in the resistance, but there wasn't as widespread resistance. But they also were not under attack in the same way. But you know, of course the Jewish population was deported. People knew it was happening and not enough people did anything about that.
- [74:37]
B
Yeah, obviously it's that, that history, this in specificity, it's unique to Prague, but it's the history of many places in Europe about the kind of, the complicity, the rolling over because of very legitimate fears about getting decimated, getting wiped out and the costs of resistance.
- [75:01]
A
I think about it a lot in my own life of how easy it is to just to not listen to the radio these days and be like, I need a break from this, like, I need to have my normal life. I need to teach my classes, I need to drive my kids around. And you know, and it, it make, it makes me pause though, because I'm like, wait a minute, what would I be doing in 1943? Would I be, you know, just like walking my kids to school or. It's, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a really tough, it's a really tough question because I think especially in the areas that were occupied but not under military attack, I think you could have a day to day life. I think there was tension and you know, fears for sure, but I think you could kind of just look, you know, sort of just turn the other way. And I think we all do that to some extent.
- [76:12]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a very important question, you know, to constantly ask and you know, thinking about this period of time that, you know, during, during Nazi rule, I think it's important to, yeah, it is important to highlight that it wasn't like, like it was, you know, everywhere. It wasn't like there were, you know, that there were, you know, Nazi soldiers everywhere, policing everyone all the time. Life went on in a lot of different places. And I think that's very important to.
- [76:42]
A
Highlight in there was the execution of or the assassination of Heydrich in Prague in 1942. And that was the time after that that you saw tremendous reprisals in Prague and some of the surrounding areas is. But like you said, for in everyday life, even if you saw the police officers were Nazi soldiers, they weren't necessarily interfering. And there was this carrot and stick approach that the Nazis took because they Needed the Czechs to, like, work in the factories. And. And so they were like, all right, we'll let them continue with their culture. There were, like, horse races and soccer games and movies. And so it was only when some kind of major resistance event happened that there was. But that's not true if you were Jewish, of course.
- [77:39]
B
Right. Yeah. And obviously there's just, I mean, so many horribly bleak aspects of this period of time. And so much has also been been written about and discussed. And what I find so interesting, too, is, like, you know, you have this. This place that is essentially. You know, there's this brief period of time where they. They sort of get to rule themselves. Then it passes over to. To Nazi control. And then just. Just right after that, they. They then go under communist control. And. And, you know, this. This period of time, it's. There's so much. It's almost in this interview alone. Like, it's so hard to cover every single detail of it. Like, I, you know, we. We've really, you know, drilled down into so many specifics of it. But. But, you know, now that we're in the. In the 20th century, we start to, you know, see. See the world, you know, that. That we start to recognize a little bit more. And what. What is. What is Prague under. Like, what is Prague like under Communist rule? What's that experience like compared to maybe other places and regions that the Soviet Union starts to encompass?
- [78:50]
A
Right. So I had this realization yesterday when I was teaching one of my classes that the period that Czechoslovakia was communist was just a little bit longer than the period it hasn't been since then. Like, time goes really fast. So. So 1948 to 1989 now is like. It's 35 years since the change, which is crazy to me, makes me feel very old. But I think you have to look at. Even in that 40 years, you have to look at which period are you talking about? The first years when Stalin was still alive and Clement Godwald was the premier head of the Communist Party and was sort of molding himself on Stalin were very severe. That's, you know, that's when many people emigrated there. You know, all the small businesses were nationalized. There were Catholic priests arrested. Many people put in work camps. The show trials, especially the Slasky trial, that basically falsely accuses about 14 people in the hierarchy of the Communist Party of being traitors, 11 of those being Jewish. So you have, like, anti Semitism coming from the party after the war. So I was the first. The first five years are brutal. And when strangely Gottwald dies only days after returning from Stalin's funeral in March 1953. He gets pneumonia or something going to Moscow, and he comes back and he dies. So you get this kind of real shift. And in 1956, when Khrushchev kind of, you know, tells the world that, you know, the. That Stalin had committed all these crimes, you do start to see a thaw in the region. And the late 50s, but especially the 60s, there's an incredible experimentation allowed in film. That's when you get some of the major, like the Czechs winning Academy Awards for some of their amazing movies, like Shop on Main Street, Closely Watch Trains. There's these experimental movies. One of my favorite movies is Daisies by a female. Vera Kitilova female director. Really amazing stuff. The Czechoslovaks win the, like, top prize at the World's Fair in Brussels. And I think it's 58 for their architecture and their exhibit on, like, everyday life. And they're starting to make more consumer goods. That's always an issue. Like, they're making lots of chemicals and no, you know, nice clothing or. Or dishware or something like that. They start building the panel lock apartments, which get kind of a bad rap, but they allow a lot of people to have their own, you know, place to live. A lot of people, you know, would get married, have a first baby in their early 20s. They live still living with mom and dad. So now people are able to get apartments. And then this. This kind of liberalization culminates in the Prague Spring, which is a real, real liberalization. Under Alexander Dupchak becomes head of the Communist Party. He's a Slovak. He comes to Prague and he's very charismatic. And he creates this program, socialism with a human face. Some of that has been happening already, but he really demands that they lift censorship, they allow for more freedom of religion. And he's like, we. He never wants to, you know, change from communism per se, but he says we can't, like, live in this censored world. And that's when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw patch basically say that he's gone too far. So From January to August 1968, people are traveling outside the country. There's just this idea that reform is possible under communism. And then in August, the Warsaw Pact invades the country and occupies Prague. And you have another sort of dark period that. That starts in 68. The government creates this program called normalization. In the 1970s, when I say a dark period, it's never like the 50s like under Stalinism. It's more if you were a dissident. If you were, you know, Fatslav Havel, or you know, Milos Forman, who goes on to direct Amadeus and, and One Flew over to Cuckoo's Nest, or Milan Kundera, a very well known novelist, they leave the country like they're not going to be able to do what they do in the 1970s in Czechoslovakia. Havel stays, goes to jail, back and forth. You know, there's a dissonant movement. If you're the tip top of the intellectual, creative or academic echelon, it's not going to be good for you. If you're sort of an everyday person that isn't necessarily a believer in communism, but isn't all. Also isn't like so ideologically opposed, you probably could have a good life, like standard of living was good. Normalization also, like put that emphasis more on consumer goods. They made things like vacations affordable. They made theater tickets affordable for people. But you couldn't leave. You couldn't. If you were, you know, a person who wanted to go to study abroad, you couldn't do that. If you wanted to work abroad, you couldn't do that. You had to really apply to like leave and see family members. If you were a certain age, if you were an older person, you could go because you weren't contributing to the socialist needs anymore. But again, I think one of the things I tried to do in the book, and certainly it's something that many of my colleagues in the field have done in their own studies, is to just try to give these periods of time a little more nuance than we had from like the Cold War. Like everyone was oppressed all the time. There were show trials every day now there are show trials. In the early 50s, there was the invasion. In the late 60s, there was oppression of the creative class. But there was also everyday life and a fairly decent standard of living. And some of those, like the, the bread lines and things that you saw in Poland were not very common. In Czechoslovakia they had a better standard of living. So Romania and Poland were suffering economically more than Czechoslovakia and Hungary or East Germany, let's say.
- [86:44]
B
That's very interesting, highlighting the. I think you're right. It's very important to highlight the nuances and demonstrate the way in which people's experience differed depending on how outspoken they were. And that if someone wasn't as outspoken, then maybe it could be fine for them. But yeah, obviously if you're someone like Vaclav Havel, then maybe not so much. Yeah, there's a revolution, the Velvet Revolution. One of the most unique revolutions in many ways. I'm wondering if you could just share a little about the Velvet Revolution, why it's different than others, whether or not you think its reputation as, you know, non violent is accurate, what you think of it.
- [87:29]
A
Yeah. So Timothy Garton Asch, who is a journalist and historian and had spent time in the region, had written a book about solidarity in the 1980s. He was traveling around Eastern Europe while all of this was happening, and in 1989, and he was in Poland during the elections, and then he went to Hungary when the borders were being opened to Austria, and he knew people in the area, and he was at this music theater called the Magic Lantern Theater, which is the name of his book later about the revolutions, when Havel and the students were all meeting and planning this, you know, velvet revolution. And there's like a little. Somebody has a video camera and they're like making a little report or something. And they ask him, and he's kind of sitting with a beer. He's from. He's British, he's got a very sort of Oxbridge accent. And he says, well, in Poland it took 10 years. In Hungary it took 10 months. In East Germany it took 10 weeks. Maybe here in Czechoslovakia it will take 10 days. And so that became like the quip of the year. And it wasn't inaccurate. And therefore, I also think that the reason for it is that once things started to go, they went faster than anybody expected. I was talking about the Berlin Wall in my yesterday, and you know, we were talking about even then that it, it was unexpected, how fast it was going to go. One thing I remember, I was a sophomore in college and my professor, when things were changing in Poland, we were, you know, the elections were happening, and then there were all these protests going on in Germany. And then even when the wall fell down, he said, don't hold your breath for Czechoslovakia and Romania. And the reason he said that was that those were the most conservative governments at the time. And so even after people were watching the wall fall, and I try to like, explain that to students, and I show them like, you know, clips of the, of the news. And you have like Peter Jennings, these other, like, news guys saying, like, astonishing day in Eastern Europe. So people were constantly astonished that it was happening. So I think that, yes, it was fast, yes, it was nonviolent, but it also was a domino that the region just started going, we can't do anything about this. And the Czechoslovak leadership eventually, within about 10 days or so, capitulates in Romania. Ceausescu Never does in that way. My professor was right. He won't give up power, whereas the Czechoslovak did. But he's then executed on television in, on Christmas Day, Ceausescu. So, you know, the revolution happens there in a very different way because he doesn't step down. Everyone else eventually steps down that year. And Gorbachev is an important factor. You can't dismiss him at all because he tells these leaders in these other countries, like, we have enough problems that I'm dealing with in Moscow. You need to make your own path. We're not going to invade, we're not going to, you know, in, In Poland in 1980, I think Yarozalski was afraid that there was going to be an invasion in, in 80, you know, 87, 88. Gorbachev is saying to these guys, I'm not invading you, we're pulling out of Afghanistan. Like, we're not doing this anymore. And he tells Haneker in East Germany, like, I don't, I'm. I think you're like too stodgy, like you're too conservative. You gotta give them a little bit here. And he's visiting Prague and he's visiting Berlin and everyone's shouting gorby, Gorby. And you know, so, so he's important to it. The realization the Soviet Union's not gonna invade gives the people sort of some of that boldness. So it's, you know, it's. I don't think it's because the Czechs are somehow naturally non violent or something like that. I think they, you know, one of the things that really pushes the revolution in Prague is that a lot of Germans are flooding over before the wall comes down. They're able to get to Prague because it's part of that Eastern bloc and they're just trying to leave East Germany and they're going to Hungary and they're going to Czechoslovakia. And so there are like all these Germans camped out in Prague at the embassy and they're telling them about the revolutions happening in Germany. So there's a lot of stuff happening in the region.
- [92:42]
B
Yeah. What a just unbelievable period of time. I would love to be able to go back in time and just see what it was like. And it is interesting to hear how much the expectations that people had were. People's expectations are not accurate. And oftentimes I feel like the expectations go the other way or people think that, you know, things are going to. Crazy things are going to happen and nothing does.
- [93:09]
A
Right.
- [93:09]
B
But this is a, that's the more.
- [93:11]
A
Common thing, I think. Yeah.
- [93:12]
B
Absolutely. And this is the rare case where it's the, it's the reverse.
- [93:15]
A
Yeah.
- [93:16]
B
So then, you know, obviously, you know, not, not much later, eventually, you know, that there is that, you know, the Czech Republic form. And that sort of brings us to the, you know, the kind of the present day configuration of the government. And I was wondering, you know, if you could just. Obviously, you know, difficult to summarize, you know, 30, the past 30 years, but you know, where Prague sort of finds itself today, what you see as the kind of the current status, stature of the city more broadly in Europe.
- [93:52]
A
Europe. Well, interesting that you ended, you know, by saying in Europe. A lot of people I talk to, they really see themselves as Europeans. Like that sort of idea of like the return to Europe, I think is pretty significant that, you know, they see themselves as member states of the EU and that they're sort of, you know, a normal European nation now. Like, I think there's a feeling about that and I think the problems they have are what we're seeing everywhere, right. Like some, some populism or nationalism in sort of the, you know, fringe or not necessarily fringe but more extreme parties. But there's definitely at the same time, like the current president I think is a, is really a moderate, a more stable figure than Zeman, the last president. So this Petro Pavel is his name and he was a NATO general. So like that shows you how in 35 years, like somebody who, who actually rose to the ranks of NATO is now the president of Czechoslovak or Czech Republic. Certainly it is a tourist destination and it's a beautiful city still. And I think that for the Czechs there's a little bit of resentment that there's lots of people flooding in. And yet it's like one of the major parts of their GDP is tourism. So that's definitely a big part of life in Prague for sure is this sort of tourist infrastructure that has developed with lots of tour groups and I bring students there every couple of years. So I contribute to that as well. Yeah. And I think it's a city that I've always said this. It's something I've written about in other works as well as the way I kind of conclude the book that is very concerned about this question of its identity and memory. So you really do see groups of people very passionately getting involved in building a monument, building a memorial. So two examples, and it's what I end the book book with one is that this Baroque Marion column had been torn down in 1918. It was from 1648. And this one group just kept petitioning and petitioning to put a new replica on Old Town Square. And eventually the city government said, okay. And I find it a very strange thing. It's like this replica of this 17th century monument that's back on Old Town Square. And the people who are see it don't even realize that it's not contemporary to the 17th century. But then there's also this really small but lovely memorial that is called Return of the Stones. And some workers had uncovered in Wenceslas Square these cobblestones that had Hebrew writing on it. And they realized that they were parts of tombstones that the communists had broken up in these kind of Sudeten areas and destroyed some old Jewish cemeteries and turned them into cobblestones. And so the city gave the cobblestones back or, you know, gave them to the Jewish community of Prague, who then commissioned a memorial that's in the smaller Jewish cemetery in Prague. And the artist created. Created a monument made of those. And you see that a lot in Prague is that sort of groups of people saying, I need to mark this city. There's Kafka memorials, there are some memorial to the victims of communism. And just like every time you sort of read the press, there's like another group of people that are like, we want a monument to this, this to that. And, and I think that's a. Some. A little bit of a unique Prague thing. I'm sure there are people who are experts of other cities who can come up with other cities that do that. But that's something that even so, even though I say yes, it's like, evolved a lot and it's very much like a small European country now. There's that kind of like, knowledge that this has been a capital of empires. It's been a capital of, of, you know, of. Of. Of nations. It's been a place that's attracted writers and, you know, musicians, Mozart. And there's still some pride in that, I think. Yeah.
- [99:07]
B
It's such a historically and culturally rich city. You know, I'm really excited to visit it someday and, you know, hopefully be able to. To, you know, go in with. With a bit of knowledge, you know, based on your book and based on our discussion and really, you know, appreciate fully enjoy the city. So, you know, I look forward to that someday.
- [99:28]
A
Absolutely.
- [99:29]
B
Yeah. Well, Cynthia, it was really wonderful to get the chance to speak with. Speak with you about this book. I think it's just such a, you know, a wonderful history of Prague and I think it's a great model as well, for anyone who's interested in doing history of cities, municipal histories, and. Yeah, it was just. Just really great to speak with you.
- [99:48]
A
Thank you. I really appreciate that. It was a labor of love, and it means a lot.
- [99:54]
B
Well, thanks so much for being a guest on the New Books Network.
- [99:56]
A
All right. Thank you, Caleb.