The Czechs in a Nutshell

The Falcon was born in Prague in 1862, when Miroslav Tyrš and Jindřich Fügner founded the Prague Gymnastics Union. Tyrš was a renowned aesthete and university professor who, inspired by contemporary trends in neighbouring Germany, worked out a program of gymnastic exercises, while Fügner was a wealthy banker willing to finance the startup of the organization. In addition to promoting the ancient ideal of a sound soul in a sound body, Sokol, as the Union was soon renamed, also had a nationalistic mission: to foster “energetic, self-conscious and hardy Czech men”.

Tyrš and Fügner definitely struck a chord among the Czechs. Sokol clones popped up all over Bohemia and Moravia, among Czech emigrants in America and even in other Slavonic cities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The growth was so impressive that in the 1880s Sokol’s leaders decided to restructure the organization according to a military-like system. Individual clubs were renamed battalions and grouped in regional entities, which were headed by a náčelník (chief commander) on the national level. To make Sokol’s paramilitary (and overtly anti-imperial) character completely visible, the members were also equipped with uniforms resembling those carried by the Italian revolutionary Garibaldi’s soldiers in the war against the Austrians.

As the Czech national revival (see: Czech Language) grew ever stronger in the second half of the nineteenth century, so did Sokol. By the turn of the century, the organization consisted of 630 battalions with more than 50,000 members, and its regular displays of mass gymnastics, called sleti, at Prague’s Letná Plain turned into giant demonstrations of Czech national self-consciousness. Of course, Sokol’s importance didn’t diminish after Czechoslovakia’s foundation in 1918. During the First Republic, the movement was given official blessing as a nation-building instrument and expanded to Slovakia.

Being a Sokol member equalled being a Czechoslovak patriot and a supporter of president Tomáš G. Masaryk. Since this axiom also applied to the Hussite Church (see: Religion; Jan Hus), one may deduct that a typical Czech patriot in the interwar years equalled a Protestant Sokol member, although numerous Jews were also fervent supporters. The country’s Catholics, on their part, reacted with establishing a competing organization, Orel (Eagle), which enjoyed some support in Moravia.

Given Sokol’s patriotic-Czech image, it was no surprise that the Nazi occupants in 1941 banned the organization. Since totalitarian regimes of different ideologies have much in common, it was also not surprising that the Bolsheviks followed suit by dissolving Sokol and incorporating its members into an all-national sports organization. However, to give some impression of continuity, they “kidnapped” the Sokol’s national sleti and gave them a communist wrapping. Thus, every five years from 1955 until 1985, a Spartakiada was arranged at Prague’s giant Strahov stadium, where thousands of half-naked men and women from all corners of Czechoslovakia met to perform gymnastics according to the original Sokol recipe.

Yet, in the forty years of dictatorship, Sokol never ceased to exist as a fixed concept. Parents sent their children to do gymnastics in the Sports club, but called it Sokol when speaking about it at home. The exercises still took place in the original Sokolovna — the Sokol buildings, which also housed events ranging from Christmas bazaars to pet exhibitions and discos. In rural areas, the local Sokolovna often doubled as town hall (as they still do), so, when Sokol officially re-emerged in 1989, the changes had mostly formal character.

The once-so-proud Falcon does, however, show unmistakable signs of wear and tear. Many children still attend gymnastics after school, but it’s no longer a mass organization. Its paramilitary base looks pretty outdated (some wits joke that Adolf Hitler once applied for Sokol membership, but was rejected because he wasn’t Czech!). That also goes for its overt collectiveness and cadaver-discipline, which is none too palatable in a nation struggling to forget its communist past.

Nevertheless, Sokol must be credited for one everlasting success: this relatively small nation of 10 million beer drinkers (see: Alcoholics; Hospoda) would probably never have reached such impressing results in the international sports arenas if Tyrš and Fügner not had contributed to the national emancipation by turning physical education into a mass movement. And neither would the Czechs still be greeting each other with Sokol’s traditional cheer: Nazdaaaar!

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