The Czechs in a Nutshell

In school, Czech children learn that their country has been in the very locus of European history since the Middle Ages. This might be considered slightly ethno-centric, but by and large, it’s not that far out.

Take, for instance, the Reformation. Most people believe it started with the German Martin Luther. But actually, it was triggered by the Czech priest Jan Hus, who thundered so intensely against the Catholic Church’s trade with indulgences that the Vatican found it most convenient to burn him on a stake, in 1415 — and thus provided the Czechs with the first of their many “heroic debacles”.

Photo © Terje B. Englund

The Thirty Years’ War, in which more or less every state on the European continent became involved, started in 1618, when protestant Czechs threw the Catholic king’s counsellors out of a window at the Prague Castle (see: Battle of White Mountain). Luckily for the counsellors, they both survived this defenestration, thanks to the latrine in which the gentlemen landed.

Two Czech kings, Charles IV (1316-1378) and Rudolf II (1552-1612) were even elected Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. True, the title sounds quite impressive compared to the rather limited power that the Emperor exercised, and neither of them spoke Czech as their mother tongue (the former was from the Western German Luxembourg dynasty, the latter was an Austrian Habsburg). Still, for today’s Czechs, they both represent indisputable evidence that this country, from a historical point of view, is an integrated part of Central Europe, and has no more in common with “Eastern Europe” than Austria, Germany or, say, Luxembourg.

Of course, this problem goes beyond religion and history. Take a look at the older buildings that surround you in any Bohemian and Moravian town. Read Kafka, Švejk, Kundera and Seifert (see: First Republic), listen to the music of Smetana, Dvořák and Martinů, or visit a gallery with the paintings of Josef Čapek, Emil Filla and Kamil Lhoták.

In short, there are thousands of examples within architecture, literature, music and the arts that prove beyond any doubt that Czech culture can be placed — literally speaking — in the middle of Europe. The renowned linguist R.G.A. de Bray puts it like this:

“Czech culture forms an ideal synthesis of East and West. Antonin Dvořák’s opera Rusalka is a perfect example: an essentially Slavonic legend, with a Slav atmosphere of mystery and longing, set out against Dvořák’s rich melodious music, Slav in spirit, if you will, but Western in technique and harmony.”

And if this still shouldn’t convince a sceptical foreigner, there is the ultimate argument at hand: geography. Prague is situated more to the West than Vienna, Stockholm and Helsinki. Does anybody speak about these cities as East European?

To outsiders, this may seem completely irrelevant; who cares about the difference between Central and Eastern Europe? Well, most Czechs do. Like it or not, it’s a question about national identity. While the countries in Central Europe are regarded as countries that were “kidnapped from Europe by the Soviet Union”, as Milan Kundera writes, Eastern Europe is the mafia-infested, vodka-drinking part of Europe that still is mired in its communist past.

No matter how arbitrary and snobbish this border-line might occur to you, the essence of it is clear as crystal: in a Czech context, the nomenclature “Eastern Europe” should be used with the utmost care and only in a strictly geographical context.

Ultimately, this leads us to another, even more academic question. Where on earth is the border between Central and Eastern Europe? Certainly, the Czechs don’t have the slightest doubt that they belong to Central Europe. As do the Hungarians, Slovaks, Austrians, Slovenes, Croatians (see: Balkans) and all the other nations in the former Austro-Hungarian empire.

But what about Poland, whose eastern part constituted the Russian empire’s western-most province for more than a hundred years? And Galicia and Ruthenia, which for centuries belonged to the same monarchy as the Czechs, but now are a part of Ukraine. Where do the Baltic states belong?

The farther east you go, the more diffuse is the perception of the borderline between Central and Eastern Europe. The Polish writer Jacek Wozniakowski once got so frustrated by this vagueness that he decided to settle the question once and for all. The criterion he used was the frequency and the standard of public toilets in different European countries.

Not surprisingly, Wozniakowski found that his Polish motherland is clearly a part of Central Europe, while Belarus is not. Of course, if Wozniakowski’s criterion is applied consequently, several states, which have always regarded themselves to be hard-core Western Europe, could risk ending up in its very Eastern part.

Charter 77