Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (55 page)
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Authors: Peter Demetz
BOOK: Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City
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Whether Empress Maria Theresa, the only queen of Bohemia who was willing and able to take her responsibilities seriously, was as popular in Prague as she was in the Austrian crown lands remains an open question, and it is easy to see that many of her Prague contemporaries had ample reason to feel rather ambivalent about her—nobles, Jews, and the nascent bourgeoisie, whether Czech- or German-speaking. Pride of family and person were essential to her; as true Magna Mater Austriaca, she had sixteen children (ten of whom survived), and honestly loved her husband, Francis Stephen of Lothringia, a noted ladies’ man and financial genius, working mostly for his own pocket. Later nationalists among the many societies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had few arguments to advance against her personally. The dynasty was her nation; she corresponded with her children in French; as for her German, she spoke it with the sophistication of a plebeian Vienna wet nurse, as a popular ditty of her
time suggested, and wrote the language of Klopstock and Lessing quirkily and according to French syntactical rules (only Frederick of Prussia’s German was worse, but he was, after all, a French writer of note). The trouble was that she had reasons to like Hungarians more than Bohemians; when Frederick struck against her in December 1740, she presented herself, not yet twenty-four years old, to the gathering of the Hungarian Estates at Poszóny (Bratislava), in a first-rate public relations performance, as a hapless woman and unfortunate mother, with a few Magyar ribbons added. Enthusiastically, and in official Latin, they responded to her pleas and promised an army immediately. The Poszóny melodrama strongly differs from the events in Prague when it was occupied by her enemies only a month later: a majority of the Bohemian Estates paid homage to Karl Albrecht of Bavaria as their new king (he was not actually anointed but he received Duke Václav’s sword from the hand of the archbishop). After the occupation force was gone and Maria Theresa came to Prague and was legitimately crowned queen of Bohemia at St. Vitus Cathedral on May 12, 1743 (not as
regina
but as
rex femina
), she had considerable difficulties in forgiving the treacherous Estates, but she at least banished the archbishop.
time suggested, and wrote the language of Klopstock and Lessing quirkily and according to French syntactical rules (only Frederick of Prussia’s German was worse, but he was, after all, a French writer of note). The trouble was that she had reasons to like Hungarians more than Bohemians; when Frederick struck against her in December 1740, she presented herself, not yet twenty-four years old, to the gathering of the Hungarian Estates at Poszóny (Bratislava), in a first-rate public relations performance, as a hapless woman and unfortunate mother, with a few Magyar ribbons added. Enthusiastically, and in official Latin, they responded to her pleas and promised an army immediately. The Poszóny melodrama strongly differs from the events in Prague when it was occupied by her enemies only a month later: a majority of the Bohemian Estates paid homage to Karl Albrecht of Bavaria as their new king (he was not actually anointed but he received Duke Václav’s sword from the hand of the archbishop). After the occupation force was gone and Maria Theresa came to Prague and was legitimately crowned queen of Bohemia at St. Vitus Cathedral on May 12, 1743 (not as
regina
but as
rex femina
), she had considerable difficulties in forgiving the treacherous Estates, but she at least banished the archbishop.
When Frederick of Prussia—“the monster,” she called him—had taken away her Silesia, she was ready to change her half-paralyzed Baroque monarchy into an efficient state rather than to forgive the personal insult. In politics, she was a gifted pragmatic with an eye on the future of her state, and it was fortunate that few people in Prague could have known that, in correspondence, she called the sacred crown of Wenceslas, in one of her more sprightly moods, a
Narrenhäubl
(a clown’s cap) before taking that precious piece of jewelry back with her to Vienna.
Narrenhäubl
(a clown’s cap) before taking that precious piece of jewelry back with her to Vienna.
Maria Theresa was particularly intelligent in selecting her advisers, among them Frederick Wilhelm Count von Haugwitz, who had arrived in Vienna as a refugee from Silesia, for matters of internal administration; and Wenzel Anton Count Kaunitz, efficient and inventive, for international affairs; her new mercantile policies, trying to increase commerce and for the first time industrial production from above, began to invigorate Prague’s economic life. In 1754, the city had still only 40,000 inhabitants, but by 1784, when her son came to power, there were 78,000, and Prague was the second most populous city of the Hapsburg monarchy, shorn of political power but of considerable intellectual and artistic importance.
In 1753 a commission for commerce and manufacture was established, and Prague entered, slowly and by a combination of private initiative
and government support, its earliest years of industrialization. There were a few establishments for spinning and weaving cotton (among them the town prisons, where labor was especially cheap), printing calico, and producing fustian and gloves; after guild restrictions were lifted, a number of paper mills in and around the city developed quickly. It is interesting to know that as early as 1771, young František Ringhoffer, just after his guild examination, opened a copper workshop in the Old Town; in modern times, the Ringhoffer metal works became one of the most important of the monarchy and the Czechoslovak Republic.
and government support, its earliest years of industrialization. There were a few establishments for spinning and weaving cotton (among them the town prisons, where labor was especially cheap), printing calico, and producing fustian and gloves; after guild restrictions were lifted, a number of paper mills in and around the city developed quickly. It is interesting to know that as early as 1771, young František Ringhoffer, just after his guild examination, opened a copper workshop in the Old Town; in modern times, the Ringhoffer metal works became one of the most important of the monarchy and the Czechoslovak Republic.
Yet Maria Theresa undercut the early success of her economic reforms by her visceral dislike of Jews, and she used the rumors, spread by the conservative Prague guilds, that Prague’s Jews had collaborated with the Prussian armies to justify her edict of December 18, 1744, that the entire community must be removed from its ancient town, almost
stante pede.
A commission to investigate treasonous collaboration with the Prussian enemy sentenced ten Jews to death (though not a single Bohemian baron was ever convicted for having paid homage to Bavaria’s prince), but she suspended the sentences, wanting, in her impeccable anti-Prussian rage, to punish
all
Jews, without evidence or exception. So Prague’s Jews, 10,000 in number, one-quarter of the city’s inhabitants, had to leave for the countryside, at least a two-hour distance from the town line. The first exiles holed up in the villages of Holešovice, Libe
, and Karlín, now Prague suburbs, and in other nearby towns, where they were ordered to wind up their affairs, private and economic, before leaving Bohemia altogether.
stante pede.
A commission to investigate treasonous collaboration with the Prussian enemy sentenced ten Jews to death (though not a single Bohemian baron was ever convicted for having paid homage to Bavaria’s prince), but she suspended the sentences, wanting, in her impeccable anti-Prussian rage, to punish
all
Jews, without evidence or exception. So Prague’s Jews, 10,000 in number, one-quarter of the city’s inhabitants, had to leave for the countryside, at least a two-hour distance from the town line. The first exiles holed up in the villages of Holešovice, Libe
, and Karlín, now Prague suburbs, and in other nearby towns, where they were ordered to wind up their affairs, private and economic, before leaving Bohemia altogether.Maria Theresa had no idea of the economic consequences of her edict, and she underrated the vocal opposition to her policies of ethnic “cleansing.” Opposition brought together an unlikely group of institutions and people: the Bohemian chancellery in Vienna; the Bohemian Estates (for once); the army, wanting well-organized deliveries; the pope and the sultan; the embassies of England and Denmark; and her own economic advisers, who began to grasp the interlocking problems of credit and capital, badly needed at a time of slow reconstruction. In September 1748, Maria Theresa, always the practical administrator, finally reversed herself and allowed the Jews to return to Prague at the price of nearly 300,000 gold pieces (camouflaged as a “toleration” tax). The dangers to the Jewish community had not ended yet; a terrible fire, probably caused by arson, devastated much of the Jewish quarter on a Sabbath night in May 1754, destroyed hundreds of dwellings, and left many families homeless. But the new mercantilism had its distinct virtues too: the Jewish community appealed for credit to a powerful Viennese bank, and twelve years later
its town hall, synagogues, hospital, and many private buildings had been restored. Czech historians believe, however, that interest payments to the Vienna bank were so burdensome that they slowed the economic progress of the community for decades.
its town hall, synagogues, hospital, and many private buildings had been restored. Czech historians believe, however, that interest payments to the Vienna bank were so burdensome that they slowed the economic progress of the community for decades.
There was not anybody in Prague, baron or beggar, Christian or Jew, untouched by the policies of Maria Theresa’s son Joseph II, the most enlightened despot on the Hapsburg throne, who wanted to change the state radically within ten years (1780-90) to achieve “the general good of the greatest number”; and yet, when he died and the ceilings of the monarchy were caving in, he felt bitterly offended that he had worked so hard day and night only to make so few people happy and so many ungrateful. For fifteen years, he had been his mother’s co-regent, and when he came to power alone he was middle-aged, plagued by eye trouble and loss of hair, woefully impatient, obsessed with the first principles of good government, inspired by Lodovico Antonio Muratori’s
Della pubblica felicità oggetto de’ buoni principi
(1748) and his own admiration of Frederick of Prussia, and incapable of true compassion. In the course of his rule, he issued more than 2,600 edicts, some of which anticipated the most essential civic achievements of the liberal revolution of 1848, but he was also an amateur administrator who hated to delegate responsibilities. He constantly interfered with the work of his bureaucrats, whom he distrusted, and endlessly wrote little notes to the appropriate officials exhorting them to arrive punctually at committee meetings, to do away with the female fashion of tight bodices, unhealthy and therefore harmful to the state, or to prevent too much masturbation, which weakened the flesh, in the military schools.
Della pubblica felicità oggetto de’ buoni principi
(1748) and his own admiration of Frederick of Prussia, and incapable of true compassion. In the course of his rule, he issued more than 2,600 edicts, some of which anticipated the most essential civic achievements of the liberal revolution of 1848, but he was also an amateur administrator who hated to delegate responsibilities. He constantly interfered with the work of his bureaucrats, whom he distrusted, and endlessly wrote little notes to the appropriate officials exhorting them to arrive punctually at committee meetings, to do away with the female fashion of tight bodices, unhealthy and therefore harmful to the state, or to prevent too much masturbation, which weakened the flesh, in the military schools.
Joseph was a terribly honest man and a deeply unhappy human being. His first wife, the young and highly talented Infanta Maria Isabella of Parma, whom he passionately adored, barely tolerated him; she was carried away by a strong affair with his sister Mimi (their ardent love letters have been preserved). He brutally ignored his second wife, the Bavarian princess Josepha Maria, whom he had married only because his mother had wished him to; he did not even attend her funeral. His brother, the future Emperor Leopold, chided him for chasing the servant girls at Schönbrunn Castle, and though he later demurely flirted with the Princess Eleonore of Liechtenstein, he mostly relied on his manservant to bring to his bed prostitutes from the Vienna streets (their services, as those of the court artists, had to be inexpensive). He wanted a rational and abstract efficiency, and he inevitably ran afoul of the growing opposition
defending regional particularity and the older principle of the many national and territorial interests within the monarchy.
defending regional particularity and the older principle of the many national and territorial interests within the monarchy.
Maria Theresa had been a Baroque Catholic at heart, and she would have continued her intermittent policy of religious “cleansings” had her filial co-regent not interfered. Evangelicals in Austria and Bohemia were arrested in the 1770s, and she renewed an old edict against heretics, but when confronted by the rage of her son, she once again artfully reversed herself, and the Protestants were given the possibility of nonpublic worship. Joseph’s own “patents of tolerance,” a series of legal documents differing from land to land but all based on his handwritten billet of October 13, 1781, were announced in Prague a week later: they granted Lutherans, Calvinists, and Greek Orthodox equality before the law, admission to educational institutions and town functions, and the right to own houses and other property; Roman Catholicism was still to be “the dominant religion,” but wherever one hundred Evangelical families lived in proximity they could build their own house of worship (it could not have either a tower or a direct entrance from the street), choose their own pastor, and establish a school. After long persecution and illegality, people were not easily willing to leave their Protestant closets. In the entire monarchy, only 2 percent of the population declared to be of Protestant faiths, and in Prague, once a Hussite bastion, and in the nearby country a meager one hundred and six families had the courage openly to claim worship in the Protestant way. Dissident groups were not covered by the new rules; when the authorities discovered a group of Bohemian Deists who did not believe in Christ or the sacraments, they mercilessly punished them; children, to receive a Catholic education, were separated from their parents, who were shipped in chain gangs to do forced labor at the Turkish frontier, where they perished. Only later did Joseph stop the deportations, though he ordered at least twenty-eight lashes applied to any Deist because they did not know what to believe. He was not beyond enlightening poor people by the whip.
When Emperor Joseph II declared that Catholicism would be predominant in the monarchy, he had a religion of his own on his Jansenist mind—not linked to Rome, useful to the state, and possibly closer to the tradition of the early Hussites than he ever knew. He did not start his church reforms from scratch, but radicalized those of his mother: Maria Theresa, prompted by her scientific and legal advisers (including the Dutch physician van Swieten and the lawyer Joseph von Sonnenfels, whose grandfather had been a Moravian rabbi) and supported by a reform movement within the church, had made a few reluctant if essential
steps to secularize education and, with an eye to economic development, to limit the excessive number of church holidays and the founding of new cloisters. Joseph II continued her reforms with doctrinal zeal—closing churches, dissolving orders and monasteries, abolishing church fairs and pilgrimages, dear to many peasants, and interfering with the rites of the church (the dead had to be buried in linen sacks, in order to save timber). In the entire monarchy four hundred monasteries and cloisters received liquidation orders; in Prague, the “Rome of the North,” of one hundred thirty-one churches and chapels in 1770 only fifty-seven remained open after his edicts, and of forty monasteries and seminaries only fourteen were left after his commissions had delivered the notifications; in many cases, the numbers of monks and nuns were radically reduced (no novices could be accepted). Theoretically, his intentions were simple: only monastic orders serving the sick and the poor or contributing to the education of the people were to be tolerated, but in practice it was difficult to make the necessary distinctions. The emperor was particularly insensitive to institutions long important in Bohemian history, and though their assets were carefully transferred to a religious trust fund to be used for educational purposes or to pay lump sums for modest pensions to departing monks or nuns, he worked with a heavy hand and challenged many, not only friends of Czech ecclesiastical antiquities.
steps to secularize education and, with an eye to economic development, to limit the excessive number of church holidays and the founding of new cloisters. Joseph II continued her reforms with doctrinal zeal—closing churches, dissolving orders and monasteries, abolishing church fairs and pilgrimages, dear to many peasants, and interfering with the rites of the church (the dead had to be buried in linen sacks, in order to save timber). In the entire monarchy four hundred monasteries and cloisters received liquidation orders; in Prague, the “Rome of the North,” of one hundred thirty-one churches and chapels in 1770 only fifty-seven remained open after his edicts, and of forty monasteries and seminaries only fourteen were left after his commissions had delivered the notifications; in many cases, the numbers of monks and nuns were radically reduced (no novices could be accepted). Theoretically, his intentions were simple: only monastic orders serving the sick and the poor or contributing to the education of the people were to be tolerated, but in practice it was difficult to make the necessary distinctions. The emperor was particularly insensitive to institutions long important in Bohemian history, and though their assets were carefully transferred to a religious trust fund to be used for educational purposes or to pay lump sums for modest pensions to departing monks or nuns, he worked with a heavy hand and challenged many, not only friends of Czech ecclesiastical antiquities.
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