The Czechs in a Nutshell

In addition, after the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the Czechs were finally masters of their own house. So why should they now greet foreigners with open arms? Well, for economic reasons, foreign investors had to be tolerated, but as late as in 2003, more than 50 percent of the Czech population, according to a survey, said that they regarded the inflow of foreigners as a negative phenomenon, especially so when it comes to people from Asia and the former Soviet Union. The survey suggested that two thirds of the Czech population would prefer to live in a closed society where they “could solve their problems themselves”.

Does this attitude explain why the “right-wing” government in the first half of the 1990s was so hesitant to sell state industry to foreign investors, as the Hungarians had done, but instead launched an unsuccessful voucher privatisation program for the country’s citizens? Or was it rather an expression of the golden hands formula — the notion that the Czechs have a God-given talent for creative improvisation (see: Cimrman, Jára)?

In any case, the xenophobic revival in the 1990s has by now, to all appearances, passed its peak. Besides that, the Czechs have, during their turbulent history, demonstrated an amazing capability to adapt to new regimes, so there’s no reason to paint the devil on the wall. The historian Dušan Třeštík probably hit the nail on the head when he stated that the Czechs have already become completely normal Europeans. “The only problem is that they’re not yet aware of it.”

Franz Josef

To the citizens of the Habsburg empire, Franz Josef I — who ruled his multi-national subjects with a firm hand for an incredible period stretching from 1848 to 1916 — was something like Queen Victoria to the British: a seemingly immortal symbol of the empire’s stability, the predictability of its conservative politics and the moral values preached by the Catholic Church (see: Religion).

However, when the First World War ended in late 1918 and the Danube Empire fell apart, Franz Josef was soon forgotten by his former Slavonic subjects, not least by the Czechs, who had lost more than two hundred thousand young men in a meaningless war they never supported. Neither had they forgotten that the Emperor, or Mister Procházka, as they spitefully called him (a newspaper once printed a photo of the Emperor in Prague with the caption Procházka na mostě, or “A Walk on the Bridge”), for letting himself, in 1867, be crowned as king of the Hungarians, while he didn’t take the trouble to go to Prague to be crowned as the king of the Czechs.

And when his nephew, Franz Ferdinand — the unlucky fellow in Sarajevo — married a lady from the Czech gentry, Žofie Chotková, both the Emperor and his court reacted with unconcealed horror. Franz Ferdinand was even pressed to accept the condition that the children of such an “unequal” marriage would have no rights to ascend to the imperial throne.

Small wonder, then, that the citizens of newly-established Czechoslovakia exceeded one another in smashing statues of the former Emperor. Jaroslav Hašek, the author of the tales about the good soldier Švejk, uses one episode to pinpoint the Czechs’ aversion towards Franz Josef: when flies “decorate” the Emperor’s portrait in a hospoda with their waste products, the Czech innkeeper (and millions of readers with him) hardly manages to hide his pleasure, while the Austrian undercover agent goes bananas and arrests the poor guy.

Yet Franz Josef has left one tradition that still characterizes the Czechs’ daily life. One of Franz Josef’s allegedly numerous virtues was his great diligence. Thus, in all the 68 years he ruled, the Emperor went to bed early (okay, often with his mistress), and — even more importantly — woke up and started working at an almost ungodly early hour.

Some pundits claim that the real reason was not diligence, but rather the Emperor’s long-lasting problems with insomnia. Be this as it may, the consequence was inevitable: when Franz Josef was busily working at six o’clock in the morning, his staff and administration were also busily working at six o’clock. And when state bureaucrats all over the empire jumped out of bed before the sun rose, private industry, trade and transport couldn’t be far behind. In short: the Austro-Hungarian empire must have been hell for all of us late sleepers.