Prague is beloved for its beauty and, providentially, is situated in the center of Europe. It is highly regarded by poets, musicians, and intellectuals, and, after the fall of communism, became one of the most visited cities in Europe. It was also home to the murder of its Jewish population during World War II and was subjected to a brutal communist dictatorship for four decades. "This book presents the political, cultural, and social history of Prague from the ninth to the early twenty-first centuries."
The city overlooks a bend in the Vltava River. It was first fortified in the 10th century and became a crossroads of trade and culture. Prague and the surrounding region of Bohemia became part of the Holy Roman Empire in the 11th century. In 1346, Charles IV, King of Bohemia, was elected Holy Roman Emperor and chose Prague as his capital. "Charles's city grew larger and more beautiful during his reign. The Caroline era marked the pinnacle of medieval Prague." His son Wenceslas's reign was troubled by conflicts between Avignon and Rome and, locally, by German and Czech burghers seeking supremacy in Bohemia. A Czech priest, Jan Hus, began a reform movement focused on morality and the promotion of the Czech language. It attracted the animosity of the regime and became so popular that decades of civil war followed Hus's execution. A dynastic crisis followed, leading to the Habsburg succession in 1526. They would rule Prague, Bohemia, and the Empire for four centuries but would eventually return the imperial capital to Vienna.
Prague experienced a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics in 1618 that led to the devastating Thirty Years' War. The war spread from Bohemia to the rest of Central Europe and even drew in the French and the Swedes before it was settled by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The treaty did not extend its terms of religious toleration to Bohemia or the Austrian hereditary lands. The ensuing Protestant exile reduced Prague's population below that of Europe's great cities. Catholics and Jews slowly repopulated the city. The Enlightenment was ushered into Bohemia by Empress Maria Theresa and her son, Joseph II. Their reforms "would transform Prague into a modern imperial city with free public education, a centralized state bureaucracy, and streamlined economic, religious, and legal institutions." Joseph believed religion to be a personal matter, allowed complete religious toleration, and granted peasants civil liberties. The 19th century saw the city begin to industrialize and draw people from the surrounding regions. Czech speakers began to outnumber Germans and pushed for greater Slavic rights within the empire. As Vienna weakened from repeated military defeats, Czech language and culture flourished. Yet everyone "understood that only a large empire could protect their small nation from outside threats."
Prague entered the 20th century as a booming metropolis with 442,000 residents, more than 90 percent of whom spoke Czech. It was predominantly Catholic, with few Protestants and about 25,000 Jews. "Innovation in the arts, urban renewal, and increased political activism marked the fin de siècle." The city's limited enthusiasm for the Great War faded as battlefield defeats mounted, food shortages and rationing took hold, and refugees poured into the city. Czech independence movements arose as the empire went into free fall and declared independence in October 1918. As the capital of the First Republic, Prague vigorously "de-Austrianized," removing all things Habsburg and German, while relations among Czechs, Slovaks, and Germans throughout the country remained uneasy. The Great Depression devastated one of the world's most industrialized countries. A year before Neville Chamberlain declared "peace for our time," the founder and first president of the republic, Tomáš Masaryk, died. Three-quarters of a million Czechs queued at his bier in Prague Castle.
The 1938 Munich Agreement allowed Hitler to occupy the German-speaking Sudetenland, bringing the First Republic to an end. Prague's Jews were able to send 669 children* to London under the Kindertransport program. In early 1939, the Germans established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Jewish property was forfeited, and the Nuremberg Laws were imposed. Although its Jewish population was decimated, the city itself remained in excellent physical condition in 1945. President Beneš returned from London and expelled nearly all of the country's Germans. Beneš died in 1948, and the communists took over the government, establishing a Stalinist dictatorship throughout the country. Led by Dubček in the 1960s, the Communist Party relinquished some of its iron-handed controls and introduced far-reaching reforms. In August 1968, Soviet tanks arrived and ended the Prague Spring. The last decades of communism were less severe, as the planned economy provided consumer goods. The city was improved, new buildings were constructed, and a metro system was built in the 1970s. As the 1980s saw the entire Warsaw Pact gradually abandon communism's dominance, it all came apart in November 1989. Havel was inaugurated President the week after Christmas.
He denounced not only the years of communism but also the country's complicity in the Holocaust, its persecution of the Roma, and the expulsion of the Germans. The city's recovery was aided by UN funding after its designation as a World Heritage Site. In 1992, Slovakia and the Czech Republic peacefully separated. Czechia joined the European Union in 2004. The city and the nation have diligently pursued their mission of "returning to Europe" while continuing to wrestle with how to remember their controversial history. "Throughout Prague, sites of memory may blend into their surroundings, but they hold stories about the past. Plaques on buildings mark where famous artists lived. Stumbling blocks bear witness to the lives of Prague's murdered Jews. Statues of saints, German writers, and Czech musicians instruct us on who our heroes should be. They can expose fractures in collective memory, promote healing, or save historical figures from relative obscurity. The meanings of these places expand beyond their original intentions and come to represent multiple, even conflicting, moments in history."
*The children never saw their parents again, and half a century later they, their children, and grandchildren numbered 6,000.
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