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John Hus

Portrait by Hans Holbein

At no time before or after have the English taken a more genuine interest in Bohemia and her affairs than during the events which followed the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War. Their concern over what was happening in Bohemia at that time was due, mainly, to two reasons. The first was that an Englishwoman, a daughter of the reigning family, had been elevated to the dignity of queen of that country. The second motive was a religious one. Bohemia lay in the direct zone of the conflict raging between Catholicism and Protestantism and Protestant England could not but be gravely concerned over the fate of Protestant Bohemia. Money was collected and troops were raised to sustain the cause of the Stuart Queen in Prague and incidentally of Protestantism and it has been said that if James had given his daughter the support which she and her husband expected from him, Bohemia’s position might have been wholly different today. But “King James,” a historian tells us, “never stood greatly affected, either to this war, or to the cause thereof and thereupon some regiments of inexperienced volunteers going over, instead of a well composed army, it was one reason, among many others, that not only Bohemia, but the Palatinate were also lost....”

Elizabeth graced the Bohemian throne only for a few months between 1619-1620, but she insisted upon bearing the title of Queen of Bohemia to the end of her days (1596-1662). Likewise her husband, Frederick, (1596-1632) “was resolved to foregoe not the title of the King of Bohemia that he hath allreadie gotten.”

All Britain rejoiced when Elizabeth the “Pearl of the Stuarts” was wedded to Frederick of the Palatinate. John Taylor, the Water-Poet, wrote a poem about the “beloved Marriage of the two peerelesse Paragons of Christendome.” Historians have dutifully chronicled the event of “the most blessed and happie marriage betweene the High and Mightie Prince Frederick the Fifth, Count Palatine of the Rhein, Duke of Bavier, etc. And the most Vertvous, Gracious and thrice excellent Princesse, Elizabeth, Sole Daughter to our dread Soueraigne, James by the grace of God, King of Great Britaine, France and Ireland, etc., celebrated at White-Hall the fourteenth of Februarie, 1612.”

In 1619, the Bohemian Protestant Estates deposed their King and offered the crown to Frederick, in the hope that the “King of England would, out of his three kingdoms, send such a continued stock of men to the Palatinate, that the crown of Bohemia should be established on the head of the Elector Palatinate and that by no course sooner than by virtue of the English arms.”

We read of the “Departure of the high and mightie Prince Frederick King Elect of Bohemia: With his royall and vertuous Ladie Elizabeth: And the thryse hopefull yong Prince Henrie, from Heydelberg towards Prague, to receive the Crowne of that Kingdome. Whereunto is annexed the Solempnitie or maner of the Coronation.”

On another page the reader will find a quaint account of the coronation ceremonies in Prague written by an eyewitness, presumably John Harrison.

On the 8th day of November, 1620, near Prague, on the slopes of the White Hill (Bílá Hora), was fought a fateful battle between the Imperialists (Austrians) and the Bohemian Army.

Referring to this catastrophal battle, which cost Bohemia her independence, Sir Charles Montagu, English Ambassador stationed at Vienna wrote to his kinsman, Sir Edward Montagu: “To begin with the worst first, there is news come now of more certain truth than heretofore from Bohemya, which is that the King’s army hath had a great overthrow, and Prage is lost, but the King and Queen are at a strong place called Presslaw in Selecya, and the King of Hungary and he have met and they both intend to raise a far greater force to set on them (the Imperialists) suddenly; God give them better success.”

The King of Bohemia, as subsequent events proved, did not meet with better success. In a day or two after that fatal 8th day of November, when Bohemia was going to her destruction, he left Prague precipitately with his queen, never to return to that capital....

Bohemian historians speak in terms of warm praise of Elizabeth, the “Winter Queen,” but their estimate of Frederick, “First Prince of the Imperiall bloud, sprung from glorious Charlemaigne,” falls lamentably short of the measure taken of him by the Bohemian Estates, as reprinted on another page.

Conceivably for the “Winter Queen’s” enlightenment, John Harrison, who accompanied the royal pair to Prague in the capacity of court chaplain, sketched the “Historie of Bohemia, the first parte describing the Countrye, Scituation, Climate, Commodities, the Name and Nature of the People and compendiously continuing the Historie from the beginning of the Nation to the First Christian Prince, about the year of Christ 990.”

Speaking “in the name of all our exiled nation” the Bohemian Church appealed for help “to the lord protector, his highness council, and the parliament.”[6]

As in the case of the Waldenses, Protector Cromwell ordered a national subscription; and a handsome amount was collected during the spring of 1658 to relieve the distress of Bohemian Protestants. Komenský and his fellow exiles were invited to settle in Ireland, the Protector desiring to strengthen the Protestant element there. The “Act for the Satisfaction of Adventurers and Soldiers” authorized “all persons of what nation soever professing the Protestant religion to rent or purchase forfeited lands,” but the Dutch, German and Bohemian emigrants whom this clause contemplated never came.[7] Believing in the fulfillment of Drabík’s false prophecy, that the cause of Protestantism in Bohemia would prevail in the end and that the exiles would yet return home in triumph, Komenský hesitated to accept England’s proffer.

Protestant refugees, who had been driven from home by Ferdinand’s edicts, wandered to England in pursuit of religious freedom and livelihood. Simon Partlicius (1593-1639), preacher and author and Samuel Martinius (1588-1640), writer and mathematician, both enjoyed England’s hospitality for a time. So did Komenský who came in 1642 to London to visit friends and to further his literary projects. Wenceslaus Hollar established a permanent residence in England. Letters are extant written by Komenský’s son-in-law, Peter Figulus, and dated at Oxford. At least two exiles, Wenceslaus Libanus and Paul Hartmann, both members of the Brethren’s Unity, had been ordained as ministers of the Church of England.

That the Irish Franciscans had been invited to Bohemia during the Thirty Years’ War to assist in the re-Catholisation of the country, is known. In Hybernská ulice, a famous thoroughfare in Prague, named after them, the Irish Friars founded a monastery in 1630. Later (1659) they built there the Church of Our Lady of Immaculate Conception. Although the monastery has long passed out of existence and even the church edifice has been forced to give way to business, the name, Hybernská ulice, still reminds the tourist of the presence of the Hibernians in Prague. An Irish name—that of Count Edward Francis Josef Taafe—has figured largely in Austrian and Bohemian politics of yesterday. The Taafes secured an incholate in Moravia in the middle of the eighteenth century and have intermarried with the Šlik, Chotek and Pachta families.

No narrative of the Thirty Years’ War is complete or understandable unless the student knows what part Bohemia took in the great struggle. A recognized authority on the subject is Anton Gindely, (1829-1892) Professor at the Prague University. Gindely’s Geschichte des dreissigjährigen Krieges has been translated by A. Ten Brook.

A quarter of a century ago one could not find on the shelves of an American library a comprehensive history of the Bohemian nation written in English. The task and the distinction of writing such a work fell to the lot of a Chicago lawyer of Scotch-Irish ancestry, Robert H. Vickers. Vicker’s History of Bohemia was published in 1894 in Chicago, the munificence of the Bohemian National Committee making the publication possible. Stranger to the subtle modern forces of the nation’s life, unfamiliar with its language, unduly in love with the rust of the past, Vickers produced a volume suffering obviously from bookiness. The Chicago Bohemians erected a monument in the National Cemetery to the memory of their Scotch-Irish friend.

A year later (1895), there appeared another history of the nation: Frances Gregor’s Story of Bohemia.

In translating into idiomatic English the little classic, Němcová’s Babička—the first story book by a Bohemian author to be so honored—Frances Gregor rendered an actual service to literature. Many an American Bohemian youth has had his or her first glimpse of the charms of Bohemian country life from Babička, but her Story of Bohemia has since been supplanted by newer and abler historical studies. Frances Gregor’s talents lay not in historical research but in light fiction writing and literary criticism. An incurable malady greatly interfered with intensive literary labor, making her life all but unendurable. She died in Colorado in 1901, aged fifty-one years.

Two additional histories were put on the market by publishers in 1896: Bohemia: an Historical Sketch, by Count Lützow; and Charles Edmund Maurice’s Bohemia: from the earliest times to the fall of national independence in 1620.

It is no secret that English Bohemica cost Count Lützow (born 1849 in Hamburg, died 1916 in Switzerland) his diplomatic career, making him persona non grata at the Vienna court. Of the several volumes written by this high-minded, unselfish nobleman, the most erudite and mature is The Hussite Wars. Lützow is especially esteemed by English-speaking Bohemians, for they alone are able to appreciate the measure of his labors.

Will S. Monroe’s Bohemia and the Čechs was published in 1910. It is profusely illustrated and contains an informative review of the literature, art, politics and the economic and social conditions of the people. Monroe knows his Bohemia from close personal association and not from books alone, and his Bohemia and the Čechs has achieved wider popularity than any of the accounts preceding it.

In the Cambridge Modern History the student will find abundant and reliable material on Bohemia, from such noted writers as Robert Nisbet Bain, A. W. Ward, Louis Eisenmann, and others.

John Hus. Jerome of Prague. Unity. Moravians. The Hussite Reformation in the fifteenth century was a movement which concerned not Bohemia alone, but the entire Christian world. “Thus begun,” remarks Bishop de Schweinitz, “one of the most remarkable and at the same time terrific wars the world has seen; for sixteen years Bohemia single handed defied papal Europe.” Two Englishmen, John Wickliffe and Peter Payne, the first impersonally, through his writings, the other personally, played not an inconspicuous rôle in the great religious awakening which followed the burning of Hus at the stake in 1415.

The Hussite literature, as the reader will perceive, is quite bulky. Of the non-Bohemian Hus scholars, whose works have been written in English or translated into that tongue, these deserve to be mentioned: De Bonnechose, Les Réformateurs avant la Réforme, known as Reformers before the Reformation; Johann Loserth’s Hus und Wiclif; De Schweinitz’s History of the Church known as the Unitas Fratrum, or the Unity of the Brethren; Count Lützow’s The Hussite Wars; David S. Schaff’s John Huss; His Life, Teachings and Death; W. N. Schwarze’s John Hus, the Martyr of Bohemia. Knowing the Bohemian language and being in a position to make use of native sources, some of them still unpublished, Count Lützow has had an undoubted advantage over Hus commentators who were not so fitted. Rev. E. H. Gillett’s Life and Times of John Huss, was, after it had been published, adversely commented upon, the author being openly charged with taking bodily sentences, paragraphs and pages from De Bonnechose, without giving the Frenchman due credit. (See North American Review, July, 1865.) Rev. A. H. Wratislaw’s John Huss, the commencement of resistance to papal authority, has for its basis the trustworthy researches of the historians Palacký and Tomek.

The Moravian Church, claiming direct descent from the Unity of Bohemian Brethren, has produced noteworthy sectarian literature. In fact, the Moravians, to mention only one scholar, the late Bishop de Schweinitz, have done more than any other evangelical church in the way of interpreting to the English speaking people the most stirring chapters of Bohemian history.

There is this criticism to be made, however, in reference to the Hus literature, that while non-Bohemian writers regard Hus as a religious reformer only and treat the reformation inaugurated by him wholly in the light of a religious upheaval, the Bohemians insist on taking a broader view of Hus and of Hussites. To them Hus reveals himself not only as a religious reformer, but likewise as a champion and purifier of the native tongue. In the Hussite Wars they recognize a political-spiritual revolution, having for its purpose the liberation of the Bohemian nation alike from papal trammels and from German domination.

The Bohemian Church, Unity, Unitas Fratrum, Unity of Bohemian Brethren, Brethren’s Unity, are the names given to a church which originated in the second half of the fifteenth century. In the severely strict notions as to what is proper in the practice of religious duties, the Unity bore a striking resemblance to the Puritans.

Its doctrine and discipline are admirably set forth in the articles passed in 1616 at the Synod of Žeravice. These articles, provided with annotations by Komenský have been translated into English, under the title Ratio disciplinae, or the Constitution of the Congregational Churches. Thus one is able to trace the influence of the Unity upon the Church of England. When the Bohemian Revolution broke out (1618) the nobility belonging to the Unity were powerful enough to influence the selection of a new King in the place of Ferdinand II., who was dethroned by the Estates. The choice, as we know, fell upon Frederick of the Palatinate. The Patent of Tolerance, (1781) allowing Protestant worship in Austria, purposely excluded the Unity. To the Government the church was objectionable, first because of its Bohemian national traditions, and secondly because of the leading part its members had taken in the revolution against Ferdinand.

Protest

Dated Sept. 2, 1415, by 100 Bohemian Lords against the burning of John Hus. Since 1657 property of the University of Edinburgh

Some of the greatest writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were members of the Unity: John Augusta (1500-1572, Bishop and writer), John Blahoslav (1523-1571), collaborator on the Kralice Bible, author of Grammatika Česká, Charles, Lord of Žerotín (1564-1636), John Amos Komenský. The Unity reformed schools and promoted literature by setting up printing shops in Bohemia and Moravia. Toward the close of the fifteenth century a printing shop was opened in Mladá Boleslav; in the first part of the sixteenth century another was established at Bělá, near Bezděz, and still another at Litomyšl. The last named town was, up to 1547, looked upon as the chief seat of the administration of the church. Because of persecution, the Unity transferred its centre to Přerov in Moravia. Here too, it set up printing establishments, the one at Ivančice becoming in time far-famed. In 1578 the Ivančice concern was moved to Kralice (Moravia).

By common consent, the Kralice Bible, so called from Kralice, where it was printed, is regarded as the most enduring literary work of the Unity. For fourteen years eight eminent scholars worked on this Bible, rendering the translation into a language idiomatic, and pure beyond that of any other book. It was published between the years 1579-93, and Lord Žerotín bore the expense of it. The British Bible Society in publishing a Bohemian Bible followed exactly the edition of 1613.

The New York Lenox Library, which is now a part of the New York Public Library, owns: 1. A complete set of the Kralice Bible; the sixth volume, however, is of a later edition. 2. Two copies of the Prague Bible. 3. One copy of the Paul Severín of Kapí Hora Bible of the edition of 1537. The Kralice Bible was bought by Lenox, the founder of the Lenox Library, from the collection of the Duke of Sussex.[8]

John Amos Komenský. John Amos Komenský (or Comenius, which is the Latinized form of the name), one of the great figures in Bohemian history, was born in 1592 in Moravia, (hence the suffix “Moravus” seen on some of his works) and died as an exile in 1670 in Holland.

Though he was a churchman of prominence, being the last Bishop of the Unity, his reputation is founded not on his ecclesiastical and philosophical writings, but on his pedagogical studies. As a school reformer he was the first to carry out the principle, long since recognized as sound by all teachers, of appealing to the senses; so he called the artist to his aid. The result was the Orbis Sensualium Pictus or the Visible World. “The circumstances of his life were as unfavorable as possible to his career as a writer,” remarks Lützow. “Traveling from Moravia to Bohemia, thence to Poland, Germany, England, Sweden, Hungary, Holland, ever unable to obtain tranquillity, often in financial difficulties, twice deprived of his library by fire, forced to write school-books, when he was planning metaphysical works that he believed to be of the greatest value, he always undauntedly continued his vast literary undertakings.”

From Cotton Mather[9] we learn (a fact which is confirmed by other sources) that Governor Winthrop offered to Komenský the Presidency of Harvard College. “That brave old man Johannes Amos Comenius, the fame of whose worth hath been Trumpetted as far as more than Three Languages (Whereof everyone is endebted unto his Janua) could carry it, was agreed withal by our Mr. Winthrop, in his travels through the Low Countries, to come over into New England and Illuminate this Colledge and Country in the Quality of President: But the Solicitations of the Swedish ambassador, diverting him another way, that Incomparable Moravian became not an American.”

Biographers are not agreed as to the number of Komenský’s works. F. J. Zoubek has enumerated 137 of them; Keatinge lists 127. Some were written in Latin, others in Bohemian, though Komenský, having received his theological training in Germany, was conversant with the language of that country also.

As a master of Bohemian diction he had few, if any, peers. To the revivalists Komenský’s writings were a safe and never-failing storehouse of philologic material and even today, despite the circumstance that Bohemian syntax and orthography like the English, have undergone an essential change, his style is a source of delight to literary purists.

His chief writings that have been translated into English, and the main facts of their publication, are as follows:

The Gate of Tongues Unlocked first appeared in Latin in Leszno (Lissa), Poland, in 1631; the same year in German. The Bohemian edition is dated 1633, the English 1633.

The School of Infancy. This manual was written primarily for the use of Bohemian schools, but when the author realized that he could not return to his fatherland, being a Protestant, the work was translated into German. The English edition is dated 1641. The Bohemian manuscript was discovered only in 1856 and put into print two years later.

A Reformation of Schooles was printed for Michael Sparke, London, 1642.

The History of the Bohemian Persecution, which is one of the author’s church works, was completed in Bohemian in 1632, but was not published in that tongue until 1655. The date of the Latin version is 1647; of the English, 1650.

Jeremy Collier’s rendering into English of the Pansophiae, or, as the translator entitled it, Patterne of Universall Knowledge, is dated, London, 1651. Published in 1643, in Danzig, it was printed two years later in Amsterdam. The Bohemian translation is quite recent, dating from 1879. “No one can impartially claim for Komenský a high rank as a philosopher,” comments Count Lützow, “and it is certainly a mistake to speak of Komenský’s system of philosophy. There is no philosophical system of Komenský in the sense that there exists a philosophical system of Spinoza.”

The Physicae or Naturall Philosophie Reformed by Divine Light was printed in Leipsic in 1633, in Amsterdam 1643, 1645, 1663, etc. The Bohemian translation is recent. The English edition, in this catalogue, is of 1651.

The True and Readie Way to Learne the Latine Tongue appeared in Leszno, 1633. It was translated later into Dutch, English (our catalogue’s London edition is of 1654), Magyar, Swedish and Polish. The Latin-Bohemian-German edition is dated Trenčín, Hungary, 1649.

Komenský’s most popular book, the Orbis Sensualium Pictus, was printed originally in Nuremberg, in 1658. The English translation by Charles Hoole followed one year later. The Latin-German-Magyar-Bohemian edition was issued in 1685; the first American edition, a reprint from Hoole’s twelfth London edition, in New York, in 1810.

That the English translation of The Great Didactic, which Komenský wrote between 1627-1632 in the Bohemian language and in 1640 in Latin (published in Amsterdam, 1657), was not undertaken until our time (1896) is a matter of great surprise. The same comment is pertinent to Komenský’s most readable little volume, The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart, which strikingly reminds one of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. It was only in 1905 that it found an able translator in the person of Count Lützow. The Praxis Pietatis, an oft-quoted book which passed through several editions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has not been translated for the very good reason that it, in itself, was an adaptation, from the Practice of Piety, a volume by an English divine.

The Exhortation of the Churches of Bohemia to the Church of England, Englished by Joshua Tymarchus and printed for Thomas Parkhurst, in Cheapside, 1661, was used eighty-seven years later as an argument and a plea by a distinguished English American, Gen. Oglethorpe.

Addressing the English Parliament (1748) in favor of the passage of a bill to relieve the United Brethren, or Moravians, from military duty and oaths, General Oglethorpe explained that the “Brethren were received in England under King Edward the Sixth, and countenanced under his successors.... And to speak a few words of their further intercourse with the Church of England. Their Bishop, Comenius, presented the history of his church to King Charles the Second, in the year 1660, with a moving account of their sufferings, addressed to the Church of England.... In the year 1683, a most pathetic account of these Brethren was published by order of Archbishop Sancroft and Bishop Compton. They also addressed the Church of England, in the year 1715, being reduced to a very low ebb in Poland; and his late Majesty, George I., by the recommendation of the late Archbishop Wake, gave orders in Council for the relief of these reformed episcopal churches, and Letters Patent for their support were issued soon after.”

The prognostications made in Revelation Revealed by two Apocalyptical Treatises, is a book which relates to prophecies and alleged visions by Christopher Kotter, Christina Poniatovia and an unscrupulous impostor, Nichols Drabík by name. Genuinely believing in the truth of the prophecies of this trio, Komenský was ridiculed and criticized by contemporaries, especially by the Frenchman, Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) in his Dictionnaire Historique et Critique. Hallam’s belittling appraisal of the author of Orbis Sensualium Pictus (“this author, a man of much industry, some ingenuity, and a little judgment, made himself a temporary reputation by his Orbis Sensualium Pictus, etc.”) is no doubt traceable to Bayle’s unfavorable estimate. Bayle’s writings, be it remarked, were held in high regard by men of letters of his time.

In 1892 educators the world over observed the three hundredth anniversary of Komenský’s birth. The March (1892) number of the Educational Review was wholly devoted to him; it contained articles by the editor, Nicholas Murray Butler (now President of Columbia University), S. S. Laurie, C. W. Bardeen, Paul H. Hanus. The American Bohemians in several cities, Chicago, New York, Omaha, Milwaukee and Cleveland, by appropriate ceremonies also celebrated the anniversary of the birth of their distinguished fellow-countryman.

Language and Literature. The Cheskian Anthology (1832) compiled by Sir John Bowring (1792-1872) is the earliest known effort to acquaint the English reading public with Bohemian literature which was just then beginning to revive from the débâcle of the Thirty Years’ War. Before this, Bowring had written a sympathetic review for the Foreign Quarterly Review (1828) of Joseph Jungmann’s Historie literatury české. For the Westminster Review (1830) he wrote a resumé of the Manuscript of the Queen’s Court (Rukopis Kralodvorský) since pronounced by philologists, like Macpherson’s Songs of Ossian, spurious.

Another Englishman who formed a deep attachment for the youthful Bohemian republic of letters was the Rev. Albert Henry Wratislaw (1821-1889). By his several translations and original studies Wratislaw rendered valuable service in England to the nation from which his ancestors had sprung. Wratislaw claimed descent from the ancient and honorable family of the Wratislaws of Mitrovic. Conceivably the relationship with the Wratislaws of Bohemia prompted him to translate into English The Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz. Wratislaw’s Bohemian Poems, Ancient and Modern, from the original Slavonic (Bohemian) is a skillful piece of work.

Writing under the pen name Talvj, Mrs. Robinson, wife of the Rev. Robinson, has devoted a chapter in her Historical View of the Languages and Literatures of the Slavonic Nations to the History of the Czekhish or Bohemian Languages and Literature. Mrs. Robinson’s views on Bohemian literature are by no means her own. Palacký and Šafařík have pointed out that the chapter is nothing but an extract from Paul J. Šafařík’s Geschichte der slavischen Sprache und Literatur nach allen Mundarten. The pseudonym Talvj, by the way, she conceived by putting together the initial letters of her maiden name, T. A. L. v. J., that is, Theresa Albertina Louisa von Jacobi.

Flora P. Kopta’s Bohemian Legends and Other Poems is not a satisfying work. Far more felicitous than her poetry is her prose volume, The Forestman of Vimpek.

The credit for worthily introducing Bohemian poetry belongs to an Englishman, P. Selver. The Anthology of Modern Bohemian Poetry is an admirable achievement. Not only is Selver’s interpretation faithful, but the selection of authors is representative.

Leo Wiener, a well-known Slavic scholar connected with Harvard University, has presented to the public a fine rendition of J. S. Machar’s Magdalen.

Richard William Morfill (1835-1909), late Slavic Professor at Oxford, has written voluminously on Slavic history and philology. Among his philological studies are: a simplified grammar of the Polish language, a grammar of the Russian language, a grammar of the Bulgarian language, A Grammar of the Bohemian or Čech language. The last named is the only work of its kind in English, Charles Jonáš’ Bohemian Made Easy being really an interpreter and not a scientific grammar. The Bohemian Literary Society of Chicago, it is reported, has in preparation a new English grammar for the study of the Čech language.

In Count Lützow’s History of Bohemian Literature, the student will find an excellent manual. With his usual painstaking care, the author recounts in a lucid manner the story of Bohemian literature, its glory and its vicissitudes.

Miscellany. Attention is called to a meritorious volume under this subtitle, by de Moleville, The Costumes of the Hereditary (!) States of the House of Austria. Fifteen plates portray old Bohemian, Slovak and Moravian costumes.

The Kralice Bible

Though not the oldest in point of date, the Kralice Bible (1st ed. 1579-93, 6 vs.) is the most renowned of all the Bohemian Bibles. Formerly in the Lenox collection, it is now the property, with other rare Bohemian Bibles, of the New York City Public Library

Music. Critics rate Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) as the greatest Bohemian composer, yet it is Dr. Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) who is the most widely known outside of his native country. The reason for this is that Dvořák visited England and spent a number of years in New York as director of a conservatory of music. “The forcefulness and freshness of Dvořák’s music,” writes H. E. Krehbiel, the noted New York musical critic, “come primarily from his use of dialects and idioms derived from the folk-music of the Chekhs.... Dvořák is not a nationalist in the Lisztian sense; he borrows not melodies but the characteristic elements from the folk-songs of his people.”

Smetana’s renown was won on precisely the same ground which made Dvořák famous, the only difference being that Smetana applied the principle of the folk-song before Dvořák. Previous to Smetana’s time one could speak of music in Bohemia, but not of Bohemian music. George Benda (1721-1795), Joseph Mysliveček (1737-1781), John Ladislav Dusík (1761-1812—the name of this “neglected composer” is also spelled Dussek), Václav John Tomášek or Tomaschek (1774-1850), author of the usual method of fingering double scales, were writers of music who belonged to the period when there was music in Bohemia, when composers were content to imitate Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and Wagner; when they strove to out-German the Germans in music. Smetana was the first to strike the true chord of inspiration—the chord touching the nation’s soul—the folk-song. It was the influence of the folk-song which lent to his masterpiece, the Bartered Bride, (Prodaná Nevěsta) its exquisite charm and enduring freshness. Apropos, the Bartered Bride was introduced to the American public at the New York Metropolitan Opera House on April 29, 1909, and the baton on this unforgettable occasion was wielded by Gustav Mahler, also a native of Bohemia, though not a Čech.

Of the several musical artists who have visited the United States, none have won larger recognition from the critics and the public than Jan Kubelík (born 1880), violinist, Emmy Destinn (born 1878), soprano.

Periodicals. The long cherished wish that there might be an English language newspaper which should interpret to the Americans the ideals of the Bohemian race was realized in September, 1892, when The Bohemian Voice, a monthly printed in Omaha and published by the National Committee, was issued. Through lack of funds The Bohemian Voice was forced to suspend publication in November, 1894. The first editor of this “organ of the Bohemian-Americans in the United States” was Thomas Čapek; upon his resignation, in April, 1894, J. J. Král took charge as editor.

The speculative American Bi-Monthly, launched in Chicago in 1914, failed after publishing two numbers.

In February, 1917, the Bohemian National Alliance in America started a monthly in Chicago, The Bohemian Review. In the initial number the editor, Dr. J. F. Smetanka, argues as follows: “If some two hundred thousand people[10] can support more than eighty publications in the Bohemian language, why should not three hundred thousand of their children, more used to the English language, establish and support just one organ devoted to their interests as Americans of Czech descent?”

In conclusion it may be added, that The New Europe, of London, though by no means a Bohemian or a Slavic magazine, has paid generous attention to Bohemian questions as affected by the war. Among the collaborators of The New Europe are such able students of Austrian politics as Thomas G. Masaryk, late Professor at the Bohemian University of Prague, Dr. R. W. Seton-Watson of King’s College and H. Wickham Steed of the London Times.

Plans, Maps. etc. Of especial interest to the students of American Colonial history is the Map of Virginia and Maryland this present Year 1670 Surveyed and Exactly Drawne by the Only Labour and Endeavour of Augustin Herrman, Bohemiensis. A copy of this rare map is on file in the Library of Congress in Washington.[11] In addition to the Map of Maryland, Herrman made a sketch of New Amsterdam (New York) as that city looked in 1650. Herrman is reputed to be the first Bohemian immigrant to America, coming here in 1633. On the site of the former Bohemia Manor in Cecil County, Maryland, there is still preserved a tombstone bearing this inscription: “Avgvstine Herrmen Bohemian The First Fovnder Seater of Bohemea Manner Anno 1661.” Like Wenceslaus Hollar, John Amos Komenský, Paul Skála ze Zhoře, (the historian) and thousands of other Protestants, Herrman, the son of a minister of the gospel, was forced to flee from Bohemia after the overthrow of the Protestants there.

Politics and War Publications. Publication has received an unwonted impetus from the war. Never since the Thirty Years’ War have the grievances and political aspirations of the Bohemians been given more widespread publicity. Woodrow Wilson stated the situation precisely in one of his books when he declared that “no lapse of time, no defeat of hopes, seems sufficient to reconcile the Czechs of Bohemia to incorporation with Austria.” Since 1848, the year which saw the dawn of constitutionalism in the Hapsburg monarchy, the Bohemians have been asking for home rule; the lessons of war at once suggested a bolder program, a new orientation. Presently their leaders demand a separation from Austria and the inclusion in an independent Bohemian State of the Slovaks of Hungary. Under this subtitle the reader will find indexed articles by opponents (Heilprin) as well as by well-wishers. Of the new orientation, that is, of a Bohemian-Slovak State, free and independent, the leading intellect outside of Bohemia is Professor Masaryk, temporarily an exile in England.

Thomas Garrigue Masaryk (the middle name is assumed from that of his American wife, Miss Charlotte Garrigue of New York) is writing his name large in what posterity will joyfully call Bohemian Emancipation. Masaryk was born of humble Moravian-Slovak parentage in 1850. From the time he entered public life, he was always a rebel, though in the finest sense of the term; rebel in politics, rebel in literature, rebel in the manner he interpreted Bohemian nationalism. That he was not summarily removed from the chair he occupied in the Prague University was due to fear of the man, to fear of his large following, and not to the want of powerful accusers or because of scruples on the part of the government. In native literature and politics alike, Masaryk’s activities are bound to leave a deep mark. Fortunately for the cause, he was able to effect his escape from Austria in the early stages of the war.

An able writer and a forceful advocate of Bohemia’s cause in the United States is Charles Pergler, vice-president of the Bohemian National Alliance in America.

Prague. Von Humboldt was not the only traveler who thought that the capital of the Bohemian Kingdom was the most beautiful inland town of all Europe. American and English tourists who have visited the city all concur in the opinion of von Humboldt. “Prague to a Bohemian,” to quote Arthur Symons (Harper’s Magazine, Sept., 1901), “is the epitome of the history of his country; he sees it as the man sees the woman he loves, with her first beauty.” Lützow’s Story of Prague will fully repay the reader who would like to know more of this beautiful mediæval city.

Sociology and Economics. The theme of Slavic immigration to America within the last twenty-five years has been considered by politicians, settlement workers, immigration “specialists,” professional labor agitators and others. The caption of Alois B. Koukol’s article in The Charities and Commons, A Slav’s a Man for A’ That, sums up the situation precisely. Yes, the American Slav is a man, for all that has been said about him—chiefly against him—by professional labor agitators; but it took the Great War to demonstrate his utility to America. No economist has written of him with greater sympathy, understanding and tact than Emily Greene Balch, teacher at Wellesley College. To get a more accurate perspective on the subject, Miss Balch went to the source, to their homelands to observe Our Slavic Fellow Citizens.

Sokols. The “Sokol Union” (Sokol in Bohemian means falcon, a bird typical of strength and fearlessness) is, or rather was, until the Great War, the most powerful non-political organization in Bohemia. Suspecting its members of disloyalty, the authorities in the first stages of the war, dissolved it. Miroslav Tyrš and Henry Fügner founded the “Sokol Union” in 1862. Body culture is the primary though not the sole aim of the society; considered from its ethical aspect the “Sokol Union” contemplates nothing less than the moral and physical regeneration of the Bohemian race. From Bohemia the Sokol idea has gradually found its way into other Slav countries, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria and there are Sokols, men and women, even in America.

Travel and Description. The old time travelers like Christian Frederick Damberger, Georg Robert Gleig, Johann Georg Keysler, Johann Georg Kohl, described not the kingdom of the Čechs, but Bohemia, the Province of Austria. After 1621 Bohemia ceased to exist as an independent state and the veneer of Teutonism thickened from year to year. So complete seemed the denationalization of Bohemia in the eighteenth century and even in the first part of the nineteenth, that foreigners visiting the baths at Carlsbad and Marienbad were surprised to hear peasants talk in an unknown tongue. As for the real Bohemia, after she had again found herself, no English or American traveler has more trenchantly described her castles, her mediæval churches, her splendid ruins, her roads, her industries, her schools, than James Baker.

Two books by travelers of Bohemian nationality might be mentioned, though, strictly speaking, they have no place in our Bohemica. They are Dr. Emil Holub’s Seven Years in South Africa; travels, researches, and hunting adventures between the diamond fields and the Zambesi, 1872-79, translated by Ellen Frewer and published in London by Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington in 1881. The other is B. Kroupa’s An Artist’s Tour; gleanings and impressions of travels in North and Central America and the Sandwich Islands. With illustrations by the author. Published by Ward & Downey, London, in 1890.

The opinion has been expressed that John Lederer, the Virginia traveler, was not an Austrian, as some surmise, but a Bohemian.[12] Lederer is by no means an uncommon surname among Bohemians; moreover, there is evidence that Bohemian exiles began settling in Virginia during the Thirty Years’ War.