Last two decades of the 19th century were also a peak period of the Czech immigration to Vienna. The study analyzes reasons why most of tens of thousands immigrants from Czech speaking parts of Bohemian lands were not recorded during population censuses 1880–1910 with the Czech language of common communication. For this reason it first brings forth a situation of the Czech minority and a social climate it had to face in Vienna and then it defines a category of the “language of common communication” used in pre-Cisleithan censuses. Later on it describes a course of the census of the language of the common communication in Vienna. It also takes into account interest positions of the Cisleithan state (a support of a natural migrant assimilation out of the reason of social cohesion sustenance), German nationalistic activists (an assimilation of Slavic immigrants in the German territory “at any rate”, that is also a violent one) and also of Czech nationalistic activists (the fight against assimilation and a denial of a natural assimilation existence).
This study focuses on nationalist agitators and municipal politicians in the North Bohemian city of Reichenberg (now Liberec) during the period of nationalist political struggles before WWI. It explores — on the example of the record of the language of daily use in 1891 census and other conflicts between German and Czech activists — the ways in which the discourse of the political elites became nationalized — though this hardly reflects the intensity with which people were committed to national issues in their everyday lives. The intensification of the conflicts in Reichenberg is not regarded as a sign of the weakness of civil society, but rather of its growing strength. In the days when the Czech-speaking community in Reichenberg occupied an entirely inferior status, there was no friction between it and the majority German community. The friction came about when the Czech-speaking middle classes gained in strength and influence, and began to engage in nationalist agitation — which was confrontational in nature. The hostile response from the city authorities was essentially a symptom of a struggle for the symbolic occupation of public space. The response adopted by the Reichenberg City Hall (which was similar to other “German” authorities in ethnically mixed towns and cities in the Bohemian lands) was very hard, which to some degree explains (though it does not excuse) the highly confrontational approach taken by the independent Czechoslovak state towards its German citizens in the immediate post-war years.
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The submitted study introduces a theme from the field of the commemorative culture, particularly the memorials formerly dividing and uniting the population of the multiethnic regions. We demonstrate this issue on the example of the memorials of Josef II and Hans Kudlich erected in the German-speaking regions of the Czech lands at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. These memorials, representing the symbols of of unity of the German-speaking population, widened the cultural gap between the Czech and German inhabitants. Subsequently, we outline the fate of the memorials during the times of changes of political systems in the Czech lands (1918, 1945). The final section of the study is centred around the two selected memorials that were restored after 1989 and have thus become a sort of symbol of reconciliation with the past.
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