Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:39:17.449Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Democracy's Violent Birth: The Czech Legionnaires and Statue Wars in the First Czechoslovak Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2022

Nancy M. Wingfield
Nancy M. Wingfield*
Affiliation:
Department of History (Emerita), Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, USA
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

“Oh, home of tears, but let her bear this blazoned to the end of time: No nation rose so white and fair, none fell so pure of crime.” So reads the stanza from a poem popular in the South during the Civil War engraved on a Confederate soldier statue unveiled in 1911 on the lawn of the Cooke County courthouse in Gainesville, Texas (Figure 1). It is one of two Confederate statues long on display in the city of some 16,000 some ninety miles north of Dallas. This larger-than-life soldier, standing high upon a column, towers over an important public space. It is among many Confederate monuments that long occupied public spaces across the United States, often with little local debate, despite their often white-supremacist inscriptions.

Type
Thirty-Seventh Annual Robert A. Kann Memorial Lecture
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 53 , May 2022 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 A second Confederate monument, erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, has stood since 1908 at the entrance to Leonard Park, less than a mile from the courthouse. The city council recently voted to have it removed, either to the library or the train station, where members hope it will serve an educational purpose. Interestingly, Cooke County had been one of only few in Texas to vote against secession.

2 Driskell, Sara and Trawalter, Sophie, “Race, Architecture, and Belonging: Divergent Perceptions of Antebellum Architecture,” Collabra: Psychology 7, no. 1 (2021)Google Scholar, https://online.ucpress.edu/collabra/article/7/1/21192/116425/Race-Architecture-and-Belonging-Divergent, accessed 1 Oct. 2021.

3 On the statues in Richmond, Virginia, see for example, Brian Palmer, “Confederate Monuments Topple in Richmond, Virginia,” Reveal, 17 Aug. 2020, https://revealnews.org/article/confederate-monuments-topple-in-richmond-virginia/, accessed 19 Aug. 2021. On the United Daughters of the Confederacy, founded in 1854, see for example, Cox, Karen L., Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (Gainesville, 2003)Google Scholar; and Heyse, Amy Lynn, “The Rhetoric of Memory-Making: Lessons from the UDC's Catechisms for Children,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 38, no. 4 (Fall 2008): 408–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Colleen Shalby, “Christopher Columbus Statue Removed from San Francisco's Coit Tower,” Los Angeles Times, 18 June 2020, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-18/christopher-columbus-statue-removed-san-franciscos-coit-tower, accessed 21 Aug. 2021. Bill Lukitsch, “Downtown KC's Andrew Jackson Statue Gets History Plaque,” The Kansas City Star, 6 July 2021, https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/community/article252610523.html, accessed 11 Oct. 2021.

5 See discussion of recent work on the trope of Czech soldiers’ disloyalty to the Habsburg monarchy during wartime in Jiří Hutečka, Men under Fire: Motivation, Morale, and Masculinity among Czech Soldiers in the Great War, 1914–1918 (New York, 2019), 2–4; also Richard Lein, “The Military Conduct of the Austro-Hungarian Czechs in the First World War,” The Historian (2014): 518–49. On post–World War I paramilitaries, see for example, Gerwarth, Robert and Horne, John, “Vectors of Violence: Paramilitarism in Europe after the Great War, 1917–1923,” The Journal of Military History 83 (Sept. 2011): 489–512Google Scholar.

6 For a contemporaneous description of the bifurcated origin of the Czechoslovak army, consisting “on the one hand of the revolutionary army that developed outside the borders (the Czechoslovak Legions) …, and on the other, that which was formed in the country itself after the collapse of Austria-Hungary,” see Butter, O. and Ruml, B., eds., Tschechoslowakische Republik: Kurze Übersicht der intellektualen, politischen, ökonomischen und sozialen Verhältnisse (Prague, 1921), 16Google Scholar. On the importance of Legionnaires in Czechoslovak society, see for example, Orzoff, Andrea, Battle for the Castle: The Myth of Czechoslovakia in Europe, 1914–1948 (New York, 2009), 84–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Stegmann, Natali, Kriegsdeutungen – Staatsgründungen – Sozialpolitik: Der Helden- und Opferdiskurs in der Tschechoslowakei 1918–1948 (Munich, 2009), 63–116Google Scholar.

7 Lovejoy, Alice, Army Film and the Avant Garde: Cinema and Experiment in the Czechoslovak Military (Bloomington, 2015), 21–22Google Scholar; also Václav Šmidrkal, “The First World War in the Czech and Slovak Cinema,“ in Habsburgs' Last War: The Filmic Memory (1918 to the Present), ed. Hannes Leidinger (New Orleans, 2018), 69–92.

8 On theorizing postwar violence, see for example, Robert Gerwarth and John Horne, “The Great War and Paramilitarism in Europe, 1917–23,” Contemporary European History 19, no. 3, special issue: “Aftershocks: Violence in Dissolving Empires after the First World War” (Aug. 2010): 267–73; and Balkelis, Tomas, “The Logic of Violence in the Polish-Lithuanian Conflict, 1920–1923,” Nationalities Papers 49, no. 5 (2021): 911–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See Šmidrkal, Václav, “‘What a Republic It Was!’ Public Violence and State Building in the Bohemian Lands after 1918,” Contemporary European History 28 (2019): 314–17Google Scholar.

10 From Francis Carsten's classic Revolution in Central Europe, 1918–1919 (Berkeley, CA, 1971) to Eliza Ablovatski's recent monograph, Revolution and Political Violence in Central Europe: The Deluge of 1919 (New York, 2021). An exception is Rudolf Kučera and Ota Konrád's recent study, Cesty z apokalypsy: Fyzické násilí v pádu a obnově střední Evropy 1914–1922 (Prague, 2018), which analyzes postwar violence in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and the South Tyrol.

11 Zdeněk Kárník, České země v éře První republiky (1918–1938), vol. 1, Vznik, budování a zlatá léta republiky 1918–1929 (Prague, 2000), 63–76.

12 King, Jeremy, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848–1948 (Princeton, 2002), 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wingfield, Nancy M., Flag Wars and Stone Saints: How the Bohemian Lands Became Czech (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 42–47Google Scholar.

13 It is likely that local museum employees pulled down the Joseph II statue in Maribor. First stored in the museum courtyard, it was sold for scrap in 1929 according to Polona Vidmar, “Sestop Habsburžanov in avstro-ogrskih junakov s piedestala: prispevek, k slovenizaciji javnega prostora Maribora in sosednijh mest leta 1919,” Annales. Series historia et sociologia 30, no. 4 (2020): 679–700.

14 The day after they arrived in Ústí nad Labem/Aussig an der Elbe, Legionnaires covered the local Joseph II statue with burlap; Leitmeritzer Zeitung, 13 May 1919, p. 10.

15 Andrea Orzoff, Battle for the Castle, 4.

16 Judson, Pieter M., The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, MA, 2016), 451CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 The best-known case is Těšín/Teschen/Cieszyn, on the border with Poland; Hlučín/Hultschin/Hulczyn, formerly part of Prussia, was also well publicized. On claims for smaller villages along the Lower Austrian-Moravian, see Densford, Kathryn E., “Feldsberg/Valtice and the Lower Austrian Towns That Became Czech, 1918–1920,” in Postwar Continuity and New Challenges in Central Europe, 1918–1923: The War That Never Ended, ed. Pudłocki, Tomasz and Ruszała, Kamil (New York, 2021)Google Scholar; also O'Donnell, Stephen, “The ‘Goral Question’ in a Transatlantic Setting: Slovak American Nationalists in the Spiš and Orava Border Dispute (1918–20),” The Slavonic and East European Review 98, no. 3 (July 2020): 504–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Law 56 Sb. 8. 4. 1927 deprived members of the military of their right to vote. This owed to concerns about politicization of the army. While politicians were concerned about both far left and radical-right influence on the young soldiers, there had been opposition to the law, which deprived Legionnaires serving in the military of their right to vote. See Jan Mercl, “Volební právo v první ČSR” (PhD thesis, Masaryk University, 2008).

19 Rudolf Kučera, “Exploiting Victory, Sinking into Defeat: Uniformed Violence in the Creation of the New Order in Czechoslovakia and Austria, 1918–1922,” The Journal of Modern History 88 (Dec. 2016): 827–55. In Češi, české země a Velká válka 1914–1918 (Prague, 2001), 260, Ivan Šedivý asserts that antisemitism increased significantly in Czech society during World War I. Two Legionnaires were among those killed in Czech-German/Czech Legionnaire-Slovak military violence connected to the June 1920 solstice celebration in Jihlava/Iglau, a southern Moravian German linguistic enclave. On the Sonnwendfeier violence, see for example, Nancy M. Wingfield, “The Germans’ Sonnwendfeier: From Folk Festival to Radical Right-Wing Mobilizing Ritual,” Střed (Feb. 2015): 18–21.

20 In the early years of the Republic, the Legionnaires were involved in battles over the use of German-language shop signs in the capital and German-language street signs in the borderlands, for example; Prager Tagblatt, 28 Oct. 1920, p. 5.

21 Both presidents of the First Czechoslovak Republic, Tomáš G. Masaryk and Eduard Beneš, belonged to the largest Czech Legionary organization, the Československá obec legionářská. The historiography on the Legionnaires is large, including the Czech-language classic, Pichlík, Karel, Klípa, Bohumir, and Zabloudilová, Jitka, Českoslovenští legionáři (1914–1920) (Prague, 1996)Google Scholar. Many focus on Russia, including John Bradley, The Czechoslovak Legion in Russia 1914–1920 (Boulder, CO, 1992); and Sak, Robert, Anabáze: drama československých legionářů v Rusku (1914–1920) (Jinočany, 1996)Google Scholar. More recently, see Kocurek, Katya, “‘In the Spirit of Brotherhood, United We Remain!’: Czech Legionaries and the Militarist State,” in Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War, ed. Cornwall, Mark and Paul, John Newman (New York, 2016), 151–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Reichenberger Zeitung, 29 Oct. 1920, p. 1.

23 Rudolf Kučera writes that some 150 people were killed in postwar violence between the war's end and 1920 in “Exploiting Victory, Sinking into Defeat,” 836; on postwar violence in the Bohemian Lands, see also Ota Konrád, “Jenseits der Nation? Kollektive Gewalt in den Böhmischen Ländern 1914–1918,” Bohemia 56 (2016): 328–61; and “Two post-war paths: Popular violence in the Bohemian lands and in Austria in the aftermath of World War I,” Nationalities Papers 46, no. 5 (2017): 759–75.

24 On national minority service/relations in the early days of the Czechoslovak army, see Zückert, Martin, Zwischen Nationsidee und staatlicher Realität: Die tschechoslovwakische Armee und ihre Nationalitätenpolitik 1918–1938 (Munich, 2006), 46–57Google Scholar.

25 For details of the saga, see Prager Tagblatt, 5 Nov. 1920, p. 3, and 12 Nov. 1920, p. 1; and Reichenberger Zeitung, 12 Nov. 1920, p. 1.

26 On requisitioning food in the postwar Bohemian Lands, including the Legionnaires' role, see Leitmeritzer Zeitung, 28 Mar. 1919, p. 2; and Nordmährischer Rundschau, 4 May 1919, p. 6. See also contemporaneous discussion of food shortages in Poslanecká sněmovna N.S.R.C. 1920, 16. schůzi, 4. Listopadu; and 21. schůzi, 12 listopadu 1920. On wartime food shortages in the Bohemian Lands, see Claire Morelon “Street Fronts: War, State Legitimacy and Urban Space, Prague 1914–1920” (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2014), 135–45; and Kučera, Rudolf, “Rationed Satiety: The Politics of Food,” in Rationed Life: Science, Everyday Life, and Working-Class Politics in the Bohemian Lands, 1914–1918 (New York, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Czech military forces stationed in Pilsen had occupied the Cheb/Eger airfield and the local garrison between 9 and 12 Nov. 1918.

28 Okresní archiv Cheb, okresní úřad Cheb, carton 48, Stadtrat Eger an das Ministerrätepräsidium in Prag, 14 Nov. 1920; Egerer Zeitung 16 Nov. 1920, p. 1.

29 Prager Tagblatt, 20 Nov. 1920, p. 1; Reichenberger Zeitung, 18 Nov. 1920, p. 2; and Lidové noviny, 19 Nov. 1920, p. 3; also, Morelon, “Street Fronts,” 165–66.

30 Reichenberger Zeitung, 19 Nov. 1920, pp. 2–3.

31 Gablonzer Tagblatt, 19 Nov. 1920, p. 1.

32 Prager Tagblatt, 20 Nov. 1920, p. 1.

33 Reichenberger Zeitung, 19 Nov. 1920, p. 1.

34 German Agrarian party deputy Franz Křepek also employed the term “mutiny” in Parliament while discussing Czechoslovak troop behavior; Poslanecká sněmovna N.S.R.C. 1920, 21. schůzi, 12 listopadu 1920, 342.

35 Reichenberger Zeitung, 19 Nov. 1920, p. 1.

36 Gablonzer Tagblatt, 19 Nov. 1920, p. 1; the Ostrauer Zeitung, 19 Nov. 1920, p. 1, also reported Prime Minister Černý saying that everyone had known of the Legionnaires’ plan to topple the statue. On sending the general from Prague, Lidové noviny, 19 Nov. 1920, p. 3.

37 Prager Tagblatt, 10 Nov. 1920, p. 2.

38 Prager Tagblatt, 4 Aug. 1921, p. 1.

39 For example, the Legionnaire who pulled a knife on a train conductor who refused to remove the double-headed eagle button on his jacket, Nordmährische Rundschau, 11 May 1919, p. 7.

40 On Gajda, see Kelly, David, “The Would-Be Führer: General Radola Gajda of Czechoslovakia,” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 12, no. 3 (1999): 163–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 One of the three statues dedicated to Zborov Legionnaires cast at ČKD Blansko between the wars still stands today in a Blansko city park.

42 Other Habsburg-era statues, including Emperor Francis Joseph, Empress Maria Theresa, and, most famously, Prague's Marian Column, have also appeared/reappeared in the Czech built landscape.

43 In former Josefov fortress in eastern Bohemian Jaroměř, the statue's inscription hails the emperor as the “founder of the [eponymous] Josefov Fortress.”

44 Kučera, “Exploiting Victory, Sinking into Defeat,” 846–48.