The Origins of the German Mistrust of the Czechs at the Turn of the 1830s

It may seem strange that the Turko-Egyptian War contributed to the rise of the German activists’ mistrust of a small Slavic nation in Central Europe. This situation occurred due to the potentially negative consequences of the Eastern Question on European peace. Given the great powers’ competition in the Ottoman Empire, the possibility existed that the war would lead to controversy among them, which happened in 1839, or even to another war that almost broke out during the Rhine Crisis in the following year. Germany, situated in the center of the Continent, was the most likely to be impacted by it. Therefore, the Turko-Egyptian War immediately caught the attention of the German population, and it was not only members of the ruling and diplomatic elite who were alarmed by it (Diziol Reference Diziol2017, 218; Šedivý Reference Šedivý2016, 25–26).Footnote ¹

Of all the European powers, Russia was most responsible for this fearful estimation of the Eastern Question. Many Germans had welcomed the tsar’s diplomatic and military intervention in the Greek uprising against the sultan in the late 1820s, and therefore the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829 did not shock them, but after 1830 their attitude radically changed. If liberals and democrats had long opposed the tsarist autocratic regime, from a geopolitical standpoint even some conservatives began to consider Russia as a predatory power whose desire to conquer knew no bounds. They accused the tsar of wanting to dominate Central Europe, destroy or at least control the Ottoman Empire and, due to its wars in the Caucasus, penetrate Central Asia. These fears were mostly baseless, but they were still influential and able to take root in the minds of the public. In 1839 German journalists often wondered how Russia would exploit the conflict in the Near East, how far it would go in its territorial ambitions, and how all this would affect the interests of European nations in general and those of the Germans in particular (Schwarz Reference Schwarz2016, 287).

In their mistrust of Russia Germans were influenced not only by their own observance of international events but also from the early 1830s by the transfer of Russophobia from the British Isles (Gleason Reference Gleason1950, 153–178; Lamb Reference Lamb1993, 239–268; Vaerst-Pfarr Reference Vaerst-Pfarr and Keller1992, 581). What particularly resonated among them was the British allegation that the tsar intended to exploit Russia’s possession of the Danube delta to block navigation on this river. This gained such influence because at the same time German activists were beginning to consider the Danube to be the second most important “national” waterway bringing their trade to the Balkans and further to the Black Sea and the Levant. When statesman Hans Christoph Ernst von Gagern claimed in 1835 that “the Eastern Question and involvement in it is essentially a question of the Danube for us Germans” (Schwarz Reference Schwarz2016, 284), he expressed an opinion that was quickly spreading among his compatriots (Ardeleanu Reference Ardeleanu2010, 338–345; Groh Reference Groh1961, 180, 189; Schwarz Reference Schwarz2016, 286).

The outbreak of the Turko-Egyptian War intensified concerns for the tsar’s ambitions, which also covered those in the Balkans and on the Danube. At the same time the sultan’s defeats and his death in the late spring of 1839 made some Germans believe that the fall of the Ottoman Empire was possible if not inevitable. Altogether the tense geopolitical situation gave rise to the idea of an extension of German power down the Danube to its estuary. Exactly when this originated is unknown, but texts published in 1839–1840 reveal how geopolitical considerations and fears paved the way to this project. The continuous conflict in the Ottoman Empire and its spread to Europe in the form of the Rhine Crisis further reinforced it (Menzel Reference Menzel1839, 123–125; Schott Reference Schott1839, 154–155).Footnote ² When the Turko-Egyptian War ended, the political texts continued to recall it as an important argument on behalf of German south-eastern expansion and repeated Gagern’s claim that for Germans the Eastern Question was the “Danube Question” (Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung, September 11, 1844, 2034). Accomplishment of this plan would establish a barrier cutting Russia off from the Balkans and ensuring free navigation on the Danube and access to the Black Sea. However, it would simultaneously lead to the subjugation of the non-German, mostly Slavic, nations living in the regions along the river (Thörner Reference Thörner2008, 19–47).

For security reasons German activists easily accepted the idea of their own hegemony. They usually justified it in the same way as Prussian conservative reformist Ernst Gottfried von Bülow-Cummerow had in 1845: with the argument that the German protectorate would bring the local people peace and progress (Bülow-Cummerow Reference Bülow-Cummerow1845, 356–361). But in the same year the Allgemeine Zeitung had made a much franker statement when it expressed its support for German expansion into the Balkans with the need for the nation’s self-preservation.Footnote ³ This approach reveals how much the German attitude toward south-eastern Europe had changed since the 1820s: after the outbreak of the Greek Revolution in 1821 German intellectuals and journalists were seized with idealism and a desire for the liberation of the Greeks through Russian arms; at the end of the 1830s they judged this region more pragmatically according to their own economic and geopolitical interests, which moved them to advocate a blatantly anti-Russian policy violating the interests of other nations (Schwarz Reference Schwarz2016, 301).

In this way their own insecurity fueled ambitious or even aggressive designs and a fundamental change in their perception of other nations. With the fear of Russia this change concerned above all the Slavic peoples, and with the rise of Russophobia German activists had also assumed a suspicious attitude toward them (Jahn Reference Jahn1980, 109). They suspected the tsar of cooperating with the Slavs to become more powerful and therefore better capable of carrying out his geopolitical aims. According to these activists, the Slavs had become his fifth column in Europe, and the ideology of pan-Slavism served as a banner under which the Russian monarch brought together all the Slavic tribes (Meyer Reference Meyer1996, 36).

That is not to say that this fear was expressed for the first time in 1839, but it was in that year when the interconnected threat of Russia, Slavs, and pan-Slavism started to be voiced in German political writings. They also reveal how interest in the situation of the Ottoman Empire, inflated by the Turko-Egyptian War, stimulated this process. A literary historian living in Stuttgart, Wolfgang Menzel, referred to this combined danger in his influential Europa im Jahr 1840 (Europe in 1840) written in 1839 (Menzel Reference Menzel1839, 125). The Allgemeine Zeitung contributed to the debate in August and September with articles linking the future of Slavs with Russia, which allegedly wanted to unite them in a universal monarchy. They claimed this new eastern empire would be dangerous for all of Europe but there was still time to avert it. The outcome depended on the settlement of the Eastern Question and on preventing the Russians from conquering Constantinople.Footnote ⁴ In February 1840, democratic journalist Johann Georg August Wirth saw in the article Die Nationalität (Nationhood) the national revival of the Slavs as a threat to Germans. As he wrote the article soon after speeches in the French Parliament demanding the conquest of the left bank of the Rhine, he used the French threat as a cautionary example in explaining the Slavic one:

When mentioning the rivers important for the German Confederation, it is necessary to add that it also was in 1840 at the latest when Russian control of the Danube delta was seen as a part of not only German-Russian but also German-Slavic rivalry (Nägler Reference Nägler1990, 303).

In the early 1840s fear of pan-Slavism spread quickly across Germany.Footnote ⁵ It was de facto always explicitly linked with Russia and its foreign policy in eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire (Allgemeine Zeitung, July 26, 1845, 1650; Bülow-Cummerow Reference Bülow-Cummerow1845, 178, 184–187). German journalists expected that a Slavic empire under a Russian protectorate would inevitably lead to an armed clash between them and the Slavs as both groups not only lived side by side but sometimes also inhabited the same territories (Anonymous 1848, 5–6). This anxiety caused the perception of Slavs as enemies, or even historical enemies (Hess Reference Hess1841, 177).Footnote ⁶ This approach became evident in the political-nationalist texts of leading intellectuals. In 1842, influenced by recent international events, Karl Heinrich Wilhelm Hagen, a professor of history in Heidelberg, expressed apprehension of Russia’s threat amplified by pan-Slavism in his Rußland und Slaventhum (Russia and Slavism). As a countermeasure he advocated the conquest of the lower Danube (Lenhard-Schramm Reference Lenhard-Schramm2014, 196–198). Some other compatriots also supported this idea due to their negative appraisal of Russia and pan-Slavism (Wagner Reference Wagner1935, 64–75). In the interest of Germany’s security, the creation of their own “eastern empire” (Ostreich) became all the more important as a counterbalance to any efforts to establish a Russo-Slavic one (Oelsnitz Reference Oelsnitz1845, 65–67; Pfizer Reference Pfizer1845, 296, 302; Sass Reference Sass1842, 14–15).Footnote ⁷ In the words of the radical deputy of the Baden Parliament, Friedrich Hecker, this eastern empire would become a barrier against “the pan-Slavic desire for world domination” (Fischel Reference Fischel1919, 227).

The idea of their own eastern empire strengthened the geopolitical importance of the Austrian Empire because it represented a buffer zone between the German and Slavic worlds, but for the same reason the Slavic danger was particularly ominous for Austria. Fear of the empire’s destruction through pan-Slavism became so pronounced that the dark vision of Vienna as a border town on the Russian frontier resonated not only there but also in other federal states (Doubek Reference Doubek2004, 22–25; Fahrmeir Reference Fahrmeir2017, 88–89; Fröbel Reference Fröbel1848, 12; Hachtmann Reference Hachtmann1997, 657; Pfeisinger Reference Pfeisinger1986, 77).Footnote ⁸ In 1843 from Stuttgart, Karl Weil warned against Russia and the Slavs and added that pan-Slavism was “a living, menacing spirit with long arms, in whose embrace Austria could be suffocated if it does not keep a strict watch and whose cordiality has a long reach” (Konstitutionelle Jahrbücher, vol. 3, 5). This inevitably turned people’s attention particularly to the Slavic nations living in the Austrian Empire as the tsar could exploit them to bring about its disintegration and expansion of his own (Heppner Reference Heppner1975, 130–134).

It was in this way that the Czech-speaking people inhabiting the empire’s western provinces became an integral part of German geopolitical discourse. It is hardly coincidental that it also happened at the end of the 1830s. In early August 1839, soon after the Turko-Egyptian War became known in Europe, a Prussian correspondent warned in the Allgemeine Zeitung against the pan-Slavists and their emissaries trying to win support in the Bohemian Lands for the creation of a large Slavic empire (Allgemeine Zeitung, August 5, 1839, 1734). Owing to this danger the same newspaper stated that “since the Ottomans conquered the walls of Constantinople, no time has been more significant for the East, and perhaps also for the West, than the present one” because the war in the Ottoman Empire could lead to its downfall and Russia’s conquest of its European regions, which would get the tsar “a good step closer to the realization of that dreadful universal empire” (Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung, August 6, 1839, 1698). In November Gustav Höfken, a liberal journalist from the Rhineland, published in the Allgemeine Zeitung one of the first articles on the German-Czech relations entitled Die Czechen und die übrigen Westslaven (The Czechs and other Western Slavs). He pointed out his compatriots’ fear of Russia’s effort to expand its territory further into Central Europe and did not conceal that some of them perceived the Czechs as part of a pan-Slavic threat. Although he regarded this suspicion of the tsar’s territorial designs and the auxiliary role of western Slavs in their execution as exaggerated, he supported Austrian conquest of the lower Danube as a necessary security measure against Russian expansionism.Footnote ⁹

Like the Prussian correspondent, Höfken also wrote his article in the context of the Turko-Egyptian War. Indirectly, this affair fueled the German activists’ distrust of the Czechs during the Rhine Crisis. Although France and Russia were on opposite sides during the crisis, there were Germans who feared the conclusion of a French-Russian alliance. In such a case their fatherland would have to fight against two strong powers on two sides. This apprehension had its origins in the winter of 1839–1840 due to the development of the Near Eastern affair, but with the Rhine Crisis it became a real geopolitical nightmare (Šedivý Reference Šedivý2024, 69–70). As the Russian and Slavic threats had already emerged as inseparable, a French-Russian-Slavic cooperation was even expected. The Czechs’ eventual hostility would therefore be even more dangerous as it would weaken the Confederation from within. Some German journalists and diplomats were not confident that they could count on the Czechs in the event of the defense of the Confederation. In March 1841, the Hamburg representative in Vienna, Carl von Graffen, doubted Austria’s ability to defend Germany against France, and one of the reasons was the multinational character of the empire with the Slavs, whose interests could well differ from those of Germans.Footnote ¹⁰ Later that year he visited Bohemia, where he witnessed anti-German feelings, which he immediately linked with the pan-Slavic threat represented by the Czech-speaking inhabitants.Footnote ¹¹

During the Rhine Crisis, overlapping with the second half of the Turko-Egyptian War, the German press continued to allege that the Czechs aspired to create an independent kingdom in Bohemia and Moravia and annex it to a new Slavic empire. In this way they were to become a pan-Slavic vanguard, which automatically meant Russia’s. In general, these two international affairs of the early 1840s had an identical impact on the increasing number of texts on the Czech question and the spread of the terms “Czech” (Czeche/czechisch) in the German press together with texts on the Czechs’ alleged inclination to pan-Slavism. Sometimes, their authors saw the principal danger in the “Czech party” in Bohemia with its center in Prague, represented by Czech-speaking intellectuals, but usually the entire Czech-speaking population was perceived as a threat (Die Grenzboten 1843, 1483–1489; Kořalka Reference Kořalka1996, 53, 57, 71; Lades Reference Lades1938, 81–83).

Although the Turko-Egyptian War and the Rhine Crisis were solved peacefully in 1841, the fears that they helped to shape lingered among the German activists. They continued in their negative attitude toward the Czechs within the context of their anti-Russian and anti-Slavic sentiment (Pfitzner Reference Pfitzner1926, 201–362) and did not publish any books or pamphlets exclusively on the danger represented by the Czechs during the period under study. This was because it was just one of the many threats perceived by these activists, and, in comparison with those represented by France and Russia, the Czech threat was of lesser importance. However, it still existed, and their fear of the Czechs gradually grew with their fears of France and Russia and, as with the other threats, the German activists presented their relations with the Czechs primarily as a geopolitical problem. This was due to the strategic value of the region where the Czechs lived (Bauernfeld Reference Bauernfeld1873, 244–245). According to these activists, this ethnic group drove a wedge into the federal territory from the east and its eventual control by the “enemy” would threaten large areas in the north, east, and south-east of Germany (Kořalka Reference Kořalka1996, 33). Therefore, the preservation of the Bohemian Lands in German hands was crucial for the defense capability of the Confederation, the security of the routes between Berlin and Vienna or Munich and Wroclaw, and last but not least the implementation of the desired expansion along the Danube to the Black Sea (Hirschhausen Reference Hirschhausen1996/97, 64; Wagner Reference Wagner1935, 69). That is why in 1845 the Württemberg liberal politician and journalist Paul Achatius Pfizer referred to the geostrategic value of the Bohemian Lands in relation to the Russo-Slavic threat and pointed out the vital importance of Bohemia and Moravia for Germany’s security (Pfizer Reference Pfizer1845, 199).

As explained in the introduction, in the early 1840s the loudest warnings against the Czechs came from Austrian activists who were the closest to the perceived Slavic threat. Schuselka published several pamphlets in which, explicitly referring to the experience with the Turko-Egyptian War and the Rhine Crisis, he expected that Russia would ally with France with the aim of attacking Germany. His expectation that the Slavs would support the tsar also made him hostile to the Czechs. He accused the Czech patriots of disliking the Germans and desiring to bring Bohemia, Moravia, and Upper Hungary into a Slavic central empire (Mittelreich) (Schuselka Reference Schuselka1843a, 39–41; Schuselka Reference Schuselka1843b, 28–29; Schuselka Reference Schuselka1843c, 38–40, 202–209). In such a case the situation of German-speaking inhabitants would be damaged because the Czech patriots “view with outrage the prevalence of German character (deutsches Wesen) in Bohemia, and they not only want to stop its further spread but also reverse the situation and czechify the Germans. They claim the whole of Bohemia with all its inhabitants for Slavism and denounce every German Bohemian either as a predatory intruder or a renegade Slav” (Schuselka Reference Schuselka1843b, 29). Another reason why Schuselka opposed this alleged aspiration was the vital role of the Bohemian Lands like all of Austria for the defense of Confederation’s eastern border and its extension along the lower Danube (Schuselka Reference Schuselka1843b, 46, 65, 67). In brief, Austria had to be German for Germany’s “security” (Schuselka Reference Schuselka1843b, 5), and Czechs were to unite with Germans because only in such a case would they be able to preserve their nationhood (Nationalität) against Russia’s yoke (Schuselka Reference Schuselka1845, 311). In 1844, Austrian liberal Ferdinand Leopold Schirnding expressed himself in the same way: he warned against Czech pan-Slavism aimed at the creation of the same Slavic empire (Schirnding Reference Leopold Schirnding1844a, 165–175), an unacceptable ambition for him due to the geographic position of the Bohemian Lands which were crucial for the defense and even the survival of the Austrian Empire (Schirnding Reference Leopold Schirnding1844b, 52–55).

The Watershed of 1846

The year 1846 brought new impetus for the German activists’ mistrust of the Czechs. Even then it was an indirect consequence of international events. In February the Poles revolted in Cracow and Galicia and were quickly defeated, and in November Austria annexed Cracow. Most German diplomats and publicists accepted the annexation because they regarded it as necessary for security reasons. The negative attitude toward Russia played a crucial role again. It was widely believed that the tsar wanted to destroy the Free City of Cracow at any cost and that he had threatened to annex it himself if Austria had not done so. The tsar was said to have told Austria: “Either you or I have to take over Cracow!” (Frankfurter Oberpostamts-Zeitung, November 21, 1846, 3152) Germans certainly preferred Austria to annex the city because they saw Russian possession of it as a serious threat to the defense and even political survival of the German Confederation (Šedivý Reference Šedivý2022, 340–360.).Footnote ¹²

The debates about the annexation further stimulated the already strong mistrust of Russian ambitions in Europe. The view was strengthened by the rumor of the tsar’s hegemonic aspirations both in the Baltic and on the Danube (Kourier an der Donau, November 23, 1846, n. pag). Anti-Russian feeling escalated rapidly, particularly in Vienna due to fear of the loss of economic positions in Moldavia and Wallachia, but even the inhabitants of more distant Darmstadt and Hamburg were afraid that Russia would annex them.Footnote ¹³

Like in the early 1840s, the Russian threat was viewed in a greater geopolitical context. In late 1846, however, the Germans saw their position even more precarious. Their relationship with the Danes deteriorated owing to their conflict over the Schleswig-Holstein Question, and the growing Scandinavian movement was then seen as another threat coming from the North to sustain the Danes’ claims. In the south, the Italians’ anti-Austrian, which for many meant anti-German, diatribes raised doubts about the security of the Confederation’s border in the Adriatic and the Alps. France was suspected of wanting to ally with Russia in the near future. All this amplified the Germans’ perception of external threats. It was geopolitics that fostered their fears and expectations of the worst from others (Šedivý Reference Šedivý2024, 113–44, 175–220).

Some Germans were also convinced of the hostile designs of the Slavs. Here the year 1846 built on the legacy of the 1839–1841 period. Since the Cracow uprising and its later annexation intensified the activities of Slav intellectuals including the supporters of pan-Slavism, it was not difficult again to connect the pan-Slavic movement with the threat from Russia (Vlček Reference Vlček2002, 51). As the police report on the public opinion in Vienna in October 1846 reveals, this further stimulated the fear of an alleged Slavic conspiracy directed from St. Petersburg and the Slavs’ hatred of not only Austria but all of Germany.Footnote ¹⁴ The number of German written texts discussing all the various Slavic issues increased rapidly, often calling for the preservation of Cracow in Austrian hands and turning it into a fortified town to strengthen the Confederation’s eastern border.Footnote ¹⁵ Austrian military officer Karl Moering was only one among many who viewed Cracow as a “large Germanic parade ground against the Slavic people” (Wandruszka Reference Wandruszka1939, 114).

From among the Slavs, not only the Russians but also the Poles were gradually seen as the Germans’ rivals if not enemies. There were various reasons for this anti-Polish sentiment, including the Polish emigrants’ anti-Austrian and anti-Prussian verbal attacks, and the apprehension that an independent Poland would become an ally of France as it had been in previous centuries. Camile de Briey, the Belgian envoy to the German Confederation, fittingly explained this attitude in this way: “To understand the secret of a people’s affections and hatred, it is almost always enough to open up their history and look at the map.”Footnote ¹⁶ Consequently, anti-Slavic texts usually reflected a strong mistrust of the Poles. In 1846 Saxon historian Heinrich Wuttke published a pamphlet Polen und Deutsche (Poles and Germans) in which he warned against pan-Slavism and claimed that the Poles intended to murder Germans in that year. His concern for Germany’s security in the east moved him to form the Verein zur Wahrung der deutschen Sache an den östlichen Gränzen (Association for the Preservation of the German Cause on the Eastern Borders) (Dipper Reference Dipper1985, 104; Lenhard-Schramm Reference Lenhard-Schramm2014, 201–208). In his pamphlet published in 1847 (but based on articles published earlier in the 1840s) Der Weltkampf der Deutschen und Slaven seit dem Ende des fünften Jahrhunderts nach christlicher Zeitrechnung (The World Struggle of the Germans and Slavs since the End of the Fifth Century According to the Christian Calendar), Moritz Wilhelm Heffter, a gymnasium Professor from Brandenburg, introduced the history of the Germans and the Slavs as a continuous conflict in which he regarded the latter as enemies and the problems of geography and power as crucial aspects of the ongoing animosity. He presented the annexation of Cracow as a new chapter in this struggle, giving the Germans a certain advantage against both Russia and the Slavs, including the Poles (Heffter Reference Heffter1847, iii, 7–9, 455).

Given the well-known animosity between the Poles and Russians, it may be surprising that the fear of a Russian-Slavic alliance included the former. This situation arose because the German activists who considered pan-Slavism a threat usually ignored or at least trivialized the divergent or even conflicting ambitions within the “Slavic world”. Their own fear made them insensitive to details and prone to spreading unsubstantiated rumors, the outcome of which was not only the frequent hostility to both the Russians and Poles but also linking the two groups into one danger. In 1843 Die Grenzboten, published in Leipzig by Ignaz Kuranda, a German activist born in Prague, voiced an opinion in an article Die slavischen Tendenzen in Böhmen (The Slavic Tendencies in Bohemia) about the existence of a “Polish-Russian pan-Slavism” striving for the freedom of Poland and the Slavs under Russia’s protectorate. From its Parisian hotbed it was said to direct its propaganda to important “Slavic cities” including Prague. Here the journal linked this Polish-Russian pan-Slavism with Czech nationalist aspirations geopolitically dangerous for both the Austrian Empire and German Confederation (Die Grenzboten 1843, 1486–1489).

Considering this example from 1843, it is easier to understand why three years later the increasing lack of sympathy for the Poles was followed at a regional level by a similar attitude toward the Czechs. Although there was no criticism of the annexation of Cracow in the Bohemian Lands nor any reports of pro-Polish sympathy from them, according to the Austrian police some German-speaking inhabitants of Bohemia, Moravia, and Vienna felt threatened by the Czechs and their growing national consciousness (Glossy Reference Glossy1919, 159, 209, 212–213).Footnote ¹⁷ It was the earlier distrust of this small nation in the heart of the Continent that was also responsible for the doubt about its loyalty to the Austrian Empire and the Confederation during 1846. It was believed that the Czechs’ alleged connection with other Slavs including the Russians and Poles would encourage their separatism and inclination to obey the tsar’s orders. This opinion became particularly strong among Austrian Germans whose empire was the most directly threatened of all the federal states (Glossy Reference Glossy1919, 109).Footnote ¹⁸ In January 1847, the police reported that the Viennese were “again a little more concerned about Bohemia. There have been several indications that Czechism (Tschechentum) also appears here as a coherent political element, which in a way has aroused a surprising fear of the Slavic colossus in the small hereditary German states” (Glossy Reference Glossy1919, 209). Schuselka now saw in the Czechs an even greater security threat, especially with his negative evaluation of the unsettled state of European politics and Russian-pan-Slavic alliance (Schuselka Reference Schuselka1847, 271–293).

Even in other parts of Germany, however, people shared this apprehension and often used terms such as “Czechism,” “Bohemian Czechoslavism” or “Russian Party in Bohemia”Footnote ¹⁹ when they viewed the Czechs’ designs as detrimental to the entire Confederation. On December 2, 1846, in Stuttgart the Schwäbischer Merkur published an article from Bohemia that warned against Czech nationalism (Czechenthum) and linked it with Polish anti-German sentiment (Schwäbischer Merkur, December 2, 1846, 1337). Heffter even accused Slavs in general and Czechs in particular of hating Germans (Heffter Reference Heffter1847, 7). In the Baden Parliament Hecker warned against the spread of pro-Russian pan-Slavism in the Bohemian Lands because without them how could Germans be able to defend themselves “against the attacking force of the Slavs? Who can assure us that their devastation will not surpass that of the Mongols?” (Robert Reference Robert1846, 475) In February 1847 Graffen reacted to the affairs of the previous year with the same warning against the dangers represented by the Poles and other Slavs, particularly the Czechs as he explicitly described Bohemia and Moravia as Germany’s strategically vulnerable point in its defense.Footnote ²⁰

The practical response was the German activists’ greater readiness to not only defend but also extend Germany’s eastern frontier (Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung, August 26, 1847, 1902). They were even willing, in Heffter’s words, to fight the Slavs even though a conflict between them could not be decided “without the most violent shocks to current conditions, without a complete overthrow of the at least partially existing European political balance of power and states system, [and] without the most violent infringement and mockery of historical law” (Heffter Reference Heffter1847, 456). That is how even before 1848 their own geopolitical fears paved the way to confrontation, and it was also long before that year that the perception of Czechs as a threat impacted on the rise of German national consciousness: in March 1846 the Viennese wanted to strengthen national solidarity against the pan-Slavism that they linked with the alleged Slavic separatism in Bohemia.Footnote ²¹

The Czech Reaction

In the case of the Czech activists, their anti-German attitude also originated around 1840, and geopolitics was primarily responsible for it. German demand for political hegemony over Central Europe necessarily threatened their own cultural as well as political aspirations as the Germans’ desire for a leading role would turn the Czechs into a national minority, who at best could expect to be tolerated. This explains why they were sensitive to the German activists’ aggressive rhetoric. In early 1841, František Palacký, a Czech historian and later an important politician, discussed with the Austrian president of police, Count Josef von Sedlnitzky, the danger of a “national” oppression of the Czechs. In the summer of 1843, František Ladislav Rieger, later Palacký’s son-in-law, commented on the unprecedented number of pamphlets on the co-existence of Germans, Slavs and Magyars (Heidler Reference Heidler1924, 7, 13). At the same time, František Girgl, a friend of the most eminent Czech journalist in the following years, Karel Havlíček Borovský, complained about the anti-Czech bias of these pamphlets that, as he emphasized, had emerged just recently.Footnote ²²

The impact of geopolitics on the attitude of Czech activists can be proved in three ways. First, in the personal communication and public debates among themselves. In November 1845 Vilém Gabler recommended to Borovský that he read the Allgemeine Zeitung and Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung to learn more about European affairs. Then he expressed himself in a similar way as Briey did in February 1847: “Good geography and good maps will not be wasted.”Footnote ²³ In December 1845 Gabler advised Borovský to buy Bülow-Cummerow’s Der gegenwärtige Zustand des europäischen Staatensystems (The Current Condition of the European State System), in fact Die europäischen Staaten nach ihren innern und äußern politischen Verhältnissen (The European Countries according to Their Internal and External Political Conditions),Footnote ²⁴ promoting the German conquest of the Danube down to the Black Sea for security reasons (Bülow-Cummerow Reference Bülow-Cummerow1845, 33–35, 111–124, 372). In April 1846 Jakub Josef Dominik Malý led a controversy with Borovský on Czech-German relations in which he referred to the aggressive pan-Germanism and remarked that “Mr. Borovský would do better to read the Augsburg General Newspaper [Allgemeine Zeitung] and other German journals because he would certainly find excellent details on this subject. Not to mention their [the Germans’] intentions to seize the mouth of the Danube, to settle Asia Minor, to Germanize America, [and] to drive us out of Europe” (Tobolka Reference Tobolka1900, 75). The significance placed on geography manifested itself further in the approach the Czech activists took to the geopolitical importance of certain locations: If the German activists talked about “their Danube” as a barrier against Russia’s expansion, then Borovský saw in the Danube “our Slavic river” free of Russian and German control (Tobolka Reference Tobolka1901, 22) and many of his compatriots revered their “Czech mountains” protecting them all around (Klíma Reference Klíma1983, 406).

Second, that geopolitics represented an important backdrop to the Czech-German war of words is easily revealed in the context in which the Czech activists entered this battlefield. Their texts were often written in the same geopolitical spirit with references to recent international affairs, the insecure peace, and the real and imagined ambitions of European countries and other nationalist leaders (Anonymous 1843, 149–173; Anonymous 1844b, 54–55). The Prague newspaper Pražské Nowiny referred to the Germans’ international fears and aspirations and reacted with obvious disagreement. At that time Borovský was responsible for reporting on foreign affairs in this newspaper. He wrote in detail about the Germans’ mistrust and even apprehension of Russia, Britain, the Poles, and the Danes, which he regarded as exaggerated, and he also introduced their intended counter-measures like territorial expansion and naval armament to protect their fatherland (Tobolka Reference Tobolka1900, 308–318).Footnote ²⁵ From 1846 to 1848 Borovský also debated with the journal Ost und West on the topic of Czech-German relations (Hofman Reference Hofman1957, 71–74). Although Rudolf Glaser founded Ost und West in 1837 to report on Czech literature, later debates resulted not from the sphere of culture but geopolitical allegations (Malý Reference Malý1876, 461). More conservative than Borovský, Malý also saw the Czech-German relationship within this broader international context, which led to his mistrust of the Germans. Already in 1840, Malý offered long surveys of important European, Near, and Middle Eastern affairs (Malý Reference Malý1840, 171–176, 210–230). This enabled him to recognize that the Germans’ antipathy toward the Czechs resulted from “their being startled out of their sense of long-established peace and security” (Malý Reference Malý1872, 4). Therefore, in the mid-1840s he responded to the German texts on the external threats represented by France, Denmark, and Russia allegedly supported by the Czechs and other Slavs with the argument that the Czechs demanded only the same national rights as did the Germans in Alsace, Schleswig, and Russia’s Baltic provinces (Kořalka Reference Kořalka1985, 251; Malý Reference Malý1872, 4).

Third, the extent to which the Czech activists’ anti-German attitude was formed by geopolitics can be seen from their political writings addressed to their German counterparts. It was no coincidence that from 1839 their pamphlets published in German in Augsburg and Leipzig, their German articles printed particularly in the Allgemeine Zeitung, or Czech texts disseminated in the Austrian Empire contained political rather than cultural demands (Kořalka Reference Kořalka1985, 260). In October 1839 Jan Erazim Vocel rejected the accusation of the Czechs’ desire to create a “great eastern Slavic empire” (Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung, October 5, 1839, 2173). In March 1841 he repeated this assurance when he rejected the vision of the Slavs’ cultural activities leading to their political unification and “willingness to destroy the existing world order” (Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung, March 14, 1841, 577). He was correct because all the Czech activists named in this article, and many others like Vojtěch Náprstek and August Smetana, did not desire the creation of a pan-Slavic empire under Russia’s protectorate (Stellner and Soběhart Reference Stellner, Soběhart and Řepa2008, 561–563).

What was common to the Czech political writings was, first, the repeated assurances of their authors’ loyalty to the Austrian Empire and the rejection of the tsar’s leadership. In 1844 Vocel felt forced to reassure the Germans again owing to what he labelled as growing “Czechophobia” (Czechophobie) (Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung, August 23, 1844, 1881–1883). In the same year an anonymous Czech writer rejected the German fear of the Czechs’ desire for independence from Austria and the apprehension that “if the Germans lose control in Bohemia, in twenty years the Russian border guards will be positioned near Dresden and Vienna” (Anonymous 1844a, 184).

Second, the aspiration for German supremacy was regarded by the Czechs as a threat to their own political, economic, and cultural existence as was also the possibility of the accession of the Bohemian Lands to the German Customs Union. When the Allgemeine Zeitung informed its readers in September 1844 that Bohemia would soon enter the Union (Allgemeine Zeitung, September 16, 1844, 2077), Jan Hulakovský sharply opposed such a possibility because it would inevitably lead to not only the economic but also the cultural and political subjugation of the Czech-speaking people (Hulakovský Reference Hulakovský1845, 37–40). His fear of Germans was further motivated by medieval history in which, as he claimed, the Germans “had exterminated” the Slavs in many regions (Hulakovský Reference Hulakovský1845, 6–12). Recalling the latest international affairs and aware of the German ambition to conquer the lower Danube and anti-Slavic texts, he believed in the possibility of a repetition of this disaster:

To save not only the cultural but also the physical existence of his nation, Hulakovský even called for the Bohemian Lands to leave the German Confederation (Hulakovský Reference Hulakovský1845, 48). For similar reasons other Czech activists had adopted this aspiration by 1848, and Borovský publicly voiced it in March 1848 (Kohn Reference Kohn1953, 28).

Third, to become stronger vis-à-vis the German activists, the Czech activists tried to increase the number of “Czechs” by embracing not only the Czech-speaking inhabitants of Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia but also the Slovaks living in Upper Hungary. Vocel had already done so in October 1839, and others continued to do so later. In the support of this union some of them invoked Šafařík’s statistical and geographic work (Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung, May 7, 1843, 974; Anonymous 1843, 8). Hulakovský even found a denomination for them: “Czech-Slavs” (Čechoslované) (Hulakovský Reference Hulakovský1845, 21, 52–53). This fully corresponds to the logic of the threshold principle and prefigured what happened between the Czechs and Slovaks in 1918.

For identical security reasons Czech intellectuals openly declared their loyalty to the Austrian Empire. They did not desire its destruction for they saw in it the only guarantee of their survival between two dangers: one represented by the tsarist autocracy, the second by the ambitious Germans. Their attitude completely corresponded with what Metternich claimed in June 1848, namely that the nations ruled by the Habsburgs kept together due to their need “for mutual protection and joint strength against threatening neighboring empires” (Metternich-Winneburg Reference Metternich-Winneburg1884, 429–430). They well understood that “under the given geographic and power conditions, the Austrian Empire represented the relatively most favorable state-political framework for the constitution and preservation of the Czechs as a distinct nation” (Kořalka Reference Kořalka1985, 248). Malý even claimed in 1845 that the Czech nation’s existence entirely depended on the preservation of the empire and that it was because of external threats including the one from Germany that he was “a sincere Austrian patriot” (Malý Reference Malý1845, 16–18).

This affinity for the Austrian Empire motivated by security considerations had been expressed since 1839 when Vocel argued that the protection it granted to the Czechs made them loyal subjects of the emperor (Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung, October 5, 1839, 2173). Its preservation thus became crucial for him and other activists during the 1840s. In September 1842 an anonymous author wrote in his pamphlet Slawen, Russen, Germanen: Ihre gegenseitigen Verhältnisse in der Gegenwart und Zukunft (Slavs, Russians, Germans: Their Mutual Relations in the Present and Future) that he saw the Czechs’ future only within the Austrian Empire because

On the contrary, without the Austrian Empire the Czechs risked their “downfall” (Untergang) (Anonymous 1843, 228).

When deliberating their own security within the context of geopolitics and material power, the Czech activists saw in the economic strength and geographical position of Bohemia and Moravia “the breastplate of Austria” (Anonymous 1843, 175) and in them and other Slavic nations the core of its power. In 1841 Vocel stated that if the widespread suspicion of Russia’s hostile designs was justified and the warmongering attitude of France from late 1840 turned into aggression, and “if the existing political system were to be shaken by the interaction of French and Russian cannons, then […] the inclination of the Catholic Slavs for the German imperial house, acquired during the peace, could have important consequences in a conflict with the Tsarist Empire” (Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung 14 March 1841, 578). Additionally, the Czechs and other Austrian Slavs could help the emperor to conquer the lower Danube (Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung, May 7, 1843, 977; Anonymous 1843, 189–193). This meant that if the German desire to control the river was motivated by the need of a barrier against Russia, the Slavic-Austrian dominance, reinforced by the expected loyalty of local Slavs, would fulfill the same role. In such a case the Austrian Slavs could become the Germans’ bastion against the tsar’s empire, together they could guarantee the European peace that had been shaken in 1840 (Anonymous 1843, 233–237).

For this support the Czech activists expected a quid pro quo. Arguing with the high number of Austrian Slavs, they claimed that the Austrian Empire could never be Germanized. On the contrary, all its Slavic nations deserved not only cultural but also political equality with Germans and Magyars (Hulakovský Reference Hulakovský1845, 12). Already in the mid-1840s this equality became a synonym for national autonomy (Hulakovský Reference Hulakovský1845, 41; Chownitz Reference Chownitz1846, 185–187). If granted to the Czechs and other Austrian nations, then Hulakovský promised that the Slavs would defend Austria with the same fervor as they had already done against Frederick II of Prussia and Napoleon I (Hulakovský Reference Hulakovský1845, 47).

This is how the concept of Austro-Slavism was already formulated before 1848 (Kočí Reference Kočí1971, 191–201; Kořalka Reference Kořalka, Lutz and Rumpler1982, 134). That it was a geopolitical-security concept is obvious not only from the Czechs’ fear of Germans and Russians that gave rise to it but also from how Palacký introduced it in his formal refusal to attend the German National Assembly as a member in April 1848. He shared the Germans’ fear of Russia, and like some other leading Czech patriots he considered its expansionism to be the main threat to the small nations of Central and South-Eastern Europe. Therefore, he also proposed Austria’s control of the lower Danube. However, this solution was to serve not only the security of Germans but all the nations living in that region and in the whole Austrian Empire, and these nations were to be put on an equal footing. The second anti-Russian barrier was to be erected in an independent Poland. In this way Palacký offered his alternative to the idea of a German Central Europe (Alexander Reference Alexander2005, 35–36).

The 1848 Revolution

The year 1848 represented another important milestone but no actual turning point in the antipathy between the German and the Czech activists. Although this animosity is often said to have started in the summer, a closer look reveals an obvious continuity from the preceding years. During the early March phase of the revolution any understanding and cooperation aimed at constitutional changes was already quite limited and contemporary witnesses saw little cordiality between the two groups.Footnote ²⁶ The reason lay in the divergent opinions on the positions they were to assume not only in the Austrian Empire and the German Confederation but also within the broader European framework (Tobolka Reference Tobolka1901, 7). Malý later remembered that the conflicting geopolitical issues never entirely disappeared but were merely muted at this time (Malý Reference Malý1872, 80; Malý Reference Malý1876, 516).

If constitutional demands took precedent over geopolitical interests in March, then the latter soon returned with full force and became a major factor defining the quality of German-Czech relations in the following months. They played a crucial role especially for the Germans, who felt threatened from all sides, waged wars against the Danes and Italians from late March and expected the outbreak of a greater conflict with Russia and France at any time (Groh Reference Groh1961, 196–197; Hachtmann Reference Hachtmann1997, 657–658; Kittel Reference Kittel2002, 375). As a topic of debate, geopolitics also became more important than ever because Germans, with two-fifths of the population, were a national minority in the Bohemian Lands (Hein Reference Hein1998, 75; Hewitson Reference Hewitson2010, 54). The affiliation of these lands to Germany was therefore primarily legitimized by the necessity of having them for the security of the entire German nation (Klíma Reference Klíma1994, 8–28). The expediency of this justification, however, does not change the fact that in 1848 the German activists certainly considered the Bohemian Lands, in the words of liberal journalist Jacob Venedey, as a “German fortress” (Zwingburg) without which all of their fatherland would be “irrevocably exposed to every enemy from the east” (Fenske Reference Fenske1976, 394).

Concern for their own security led the German activists to the unequivocal conclusion that the Bohemian Lands must remain Austrian (Křen Reference Křen1996, 73). Only in this situation would the German nation be strong enough to resist the pressure of Russia and the Slavs in the east, the French in the west, and the Italians in the south (Wollstein 1977, 199). The extent to which the question of the future of the Bohemian Lands was perceived from the perspective of external threats is illustrated by August Ludwig von Rochau’s statement made on May 2, 1848: “To permit the emergence of a Slavic state in Bohemia would be to thrust a poisoned sword into Germany’s breast. To release Bohemia, which reaches into the geographical center of Germany, […] from the German state, to abandon it to Russian influence and pan-Slavist propaganda, would mean nothing other than suicide for Germany” (Burian Reference Burian and Eberhard1992, 240). Karl Heinrich Brüggemann expressed himself in the same spirit nineteen days later: “It would certainly be no small sacrifice for Germany if we were to give up these lands […] Our whole eastern border would be shattered, a foreign state would stretch right into the heart of Germany, which could only too easily become a bastion for Russia […] We fully recognize the newly awakened power of the concept of nationhood and the urge of states toward national borders; but for that reason alone, we […] cannot allow a large ambivalent state to be established in the center of our fatherland” (Burian Reference Burian and Eberhard1992, 239). In the same month this opinion was shared by Graffen, whose negative attitude toward the Czechs had been formed as a result of his geopolitical-security concerns since 1841.Footnote ²⁷

These statements were made when the German politicians and journalists were becoming increasingly convinced that of all the Slavic nations it was the Czechs who were most intent on breaking up the Austrian Empire and seceding their lands from the German Confederation with the aim of incorporating them into a Slavic empire or, even worse, allying with Russia. The inevitable outcome was the increasing hostility toward the Czechs (Kühne Reference Kühne1863, 244–245; Kittel Reference Kittel2002, 372; Řepa Reference Řepa2014, 66, 75, 81–82, 84, 91; Vick Reference Vick2002, 159–160). Austrian liberal Victor Franz von Andrian-Werburg had already become a vocal supporter of German control of the entire Danube in the first half of the 1840s (Kaindl Reference Kaindl1926, 127), and in 1848 the Czechs’ alleged pan-Slavic and anti-German aspirations made him a determined enemy of “Czechism” (Czechismus), which at the end of March 1848 he considered “a kind of terrorism” (Adlgasser Reference Adlgasser2011, 61). In May he saw the situation as so serious that he expected an early outbreak of civil war between the Czechs and the Germans as part of the “war of extermination” (Vernichtungskrieg) between Germans and Slavs. For strategic reasons, he therefore insisted on German rule being maintained in the Bohemian Lands as in Posen (Adlgasser Reference Adlgasser2011, 84–85, 90, 143–144). At that time other German activists, and not only those in Austria, predicted the same “terrible war of nations” (ungeheurer Nationalkrieg) between the Germans and the Slavs (Bergsträsser Reference Bergsträsser1929, 38; Blackstock and Hoselitz Reference Blackstock and Hoselitz1952, 62, 67).

In the spring and summer of 1848, the Czech activists contributed to the fear of this catastrophic scenario with three events, albeit certainly unintentionally as most of them were not considering either the dissolution of the Austrian Empire or war with Germans: first, Palacký’s refusal to enter the National Assembly in Frankfurt explained with his Austro-Slavic vision of Central and South-Eastern Europe; second, the Slavic Congress in Prague from 2 to 12 June; third, the June uprising in Prague from 12 to 17 June (Burian Reference Burian and Eberhard1992, 238; Štaif Reference Štaif and Moritsch2000, 56).

Each of these events attracted attention throughout Germany, altogether they increased the perception of the Czechs as a serious security threat. Although the Czech political arena was dominated by men loyal to the Habsburgs and certainly not aimed at promoting Russian interests, the German journalists and deputies in Frankfurt saw in Prague the center of the pro-Russian and anti-German Slavic “hundred-headed hydra.”Footnote ²⁸ Therefore, it was in Bohemia that the future of the entire German nation was to be decided even at the cost of war (Anonymous 1848, 6; Randers-Pehrson Reference Randers-Pehrson1999, 390; Vlček Reference Vlček2002, 103; Wigard Reference Wigard1848, 661–676).

Because geopolitics prevailed over constitutional preferences in the attitude toward the June uprising, the counter-revolutionary victory of the Austrian army was celebrated even among liberals and democrats whose representatives in Frankfurt agreed to the possible deployment of federal troops in Prague (Breuilly Reference Breuilly, Dipper and Speck1998, 321; Müller Reference Müller and Bleiber1977, 250, 254; Wigard Reference Wigard1848, 655–676). Their unceasing conviction of the geostrategic importance of Bohemia and Moravia for the control of Central and South Eastern Europe did not allow them to yield (Hahn and Berding Reference Hahn and Berding2010, 598; Kořalka Reference Kořalka and Řepa2008, 571; Siemann Reference Siemann1985, 152).Footnote ²⁹ In reaction to Palacký’s idea of Austrian control of the Danube Bavarian geographer Moritz Wagner stated that Austria alone could never prevent Russian expansion and that it needed the support of the other federal states, which also predetermined the relationship of the Bohemian Lands to the whole of Germany. Wagner defended the need for their submission to German interests by arguing that “by its character and geographical location Bohemia is an essential part of Germany,” and “if we agreed to the political separation of Bohemia from Germany, which is the real intention of the Czechs, it would be an act of suicide for us” (Wagner Reference Wagner1848, 4). The only solution was the creation of a “united, free and strong Germany,” which would include the Bohemian Lands (Wagner Reference Wagner1848, 10). Friedrich Wilhelm Schulz, a democratic deputy in Frankfurt, pointed out that a nation is defined not only by language and economic interests but also “the strategic considerations of security” (Schulz Reference Schulz1848, 4) that were shaped by those of geography. These moved him to demand for inclusion in Germany the regions inhabited by other nationalities including the Bohemian Lands so that the Germans “would be able to halt the path of Russian influence and Russian rule as far as the western border of Bohemia” (Schulz Reference Schulz1848, 15).