The Czechs in a Nutshell

Events like the “Bulgarian atrocities”; the “Maglaj butchery” and the “Balkan crises” had the same devastating impact on public opinion in Bohemia and Moravia as news from Iraq has in the West today. Then add a bloody Balkan war, where the south Slavs started fighting each other instead of fighting the Turks, and the Sarajevo assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the imperial throne in Vienna, and the Balkans’ negative image among the Czechs was cemented for centuries. Needless to say, the horrible war in ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s hasn’t done much to change those old stereotypes.

The funny thing, however, is that Czech society itself can offer an abundance of exactly those phenomena that are so frequently associated with the much-cursed Balkan countries.

Most people in this country perceive bulging bureaucracy, souring criminality and corruption (the organisation Transparency International ranks the Czech Republic close to Romania) as serious problems. True, the Czechs have a better track record than, for instance, the Serbs when it comes to religious tolerance, but the 50,000 or so Muslims who live in the Czech Republic still don’t have a single mosque in the classical style. And when some Saudi billionaire offered to sponsor the construction of a mosque in the city of Teplice, he was politely, but firmly rejected: such buildings don’t belong to a Czech spa town!

Another Czech cliché is that people from the Balkan countries have some kind of inborn aptitude for violent behaviour. According to common wisdom, Czech women are strongly advised not to marry a man from ex-Yugoslavia, “because they are known to beat their wives”.

Besides the fact that this is a silly generalisation, several non-governmental organizations have recently pointed out that physical mistreatment of women by their husbands is actually a widespread — and so far untargeted — problem in the Czech Republic.

So, should we agree right away with the writer Vlastimil Třešňák, who claims that the Balkans start outside Prague’s Karlín district? The Czechs’ obsession with wall-to-wall carpets, sandals, male-only hospodas and “Turkish coffee” (which under no circumstances should be confused with real Turkish coffee!) might indicate that there is something to this statement. On the other hand, the Czechs’ laxity towards religion and military fighting (see: National Identity) suggest that the similarity should not be exaggerated.

Therefore, a quote from the Bible is probably the most appropriate way to summarise the Czechs’ perception of the Balkans: It’s easier to see the splinter in your brother’s eye than the beam in your own!

Battle of White Mountain

Czech history is a virtual roller coaster, with both magnificent zeniths and incredible disasters. Two Czech kings, Charles IV (1346-1378) and Rudolf II (1576-1611), for instance, not only ruled Bohemia, Moravia and all of Silesia plus large chunks of the area which now is a part of Germany and Poland, but they were also elected Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, making Prague a European centre of science and arts.

And then take a look at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620.

From a military point of view, the action that took place on the top of White Mountain (Bílá hora) — a 382-meter-high hilltop several kilometres to the west of Old Prague’s city walls — probably didn’t differ significantly from dozens of similar clashes at the time. Yet in the Czechs’ collective memory White Mountain has become a fetish of one of the biggest disasters in the country’s history, widely regarded as “an event that triggered three centuries of darkness”.

Although this term sounds a bit more dramatic than life in Bohemia and Moravia after 1620 actually was, it’s still fair to say that the battle on that foggy November day in 1620 represented a major crossroads in this country’s history. It also underpins the view that Czechs have revealed many talents throughout history (see: Beauty Contests; Beer; Cimrman, Jára; Gott, Karel; Ice Hockey), but they have never excelled in the military field.

The Czechs’ most inglorious debacle was triggered when members of the mainly-Protestant Czech gentry and nobility broke into the royal quarters on the third floor in the Prague Castle in May 1618 and promptly treated the Catholic Emperor’s governors to a full-fledged defenestration. The ruler in Vienna reacted with expected fury. The Czechs need to be taught a proper lesson once and for all! For the next two years, the imperial army fought numerous battles against the Czech forces without achieving any major victories.