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Rotating Spheres: Gendered Commemorative Practice at the 1903 Jan Hus Memorial Festival in Prague

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Cynthia Paces
Cynthia Paces*
Affiliation:
The College of New Jersey, U.S.A.
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Extract

It will be a memorable day for every Czech.

In 1903, former mayor Dr Jan Podlipný used these words to petition the Prague City Council to finance a nationalist festival dedicated to the memory of Jan Hus. Arguing for a celebration devoted to the fifteenth-century priest and church reformer who had become a nationalist icon in the nineteenth century, Podlipný emphasized the “memorable” quality of the planned event.2 Indeed, the purpose of the celebration was to create memory on several levels. The festival itself would gather Czechs in great numbers, creating a memory of a shared community, which would bolster the Czech nationalist spirit for future campaigns. The festival's purpose was to lay a cornerstone to a Jan Hus Memorial, a monument that would etch a permanent memory of Jan Hus into Prague's landscape. Last, by publicly and collectively commemorating Hus, Czech nationalists would create a shared memory of the nation's past.

Type
Forum: Gender, Nation, and Memory
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , September 2000 , pp. 523 - 539
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

1. Letter from Dr Jan Podlipný to Prague City Council, 10 January 1902. Fond: Praesidium Magistrátu a Městské Rady [Hereafter PMMR]. Inv. c. 2098. Sign B 28/59. 1902–1903, Archiv Hlavního Města Prahy [Hereafter AHMP].Google Scholar

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13. Quoted in David Middleton and Derek Edwards, eds, Collective Remembering (London: Sage, 1990), p. 3.Google Scholar

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21. Ibid. Google Scholar

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24. “Kladení základního kamene,” p. 101.Google Scholar

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26. Speech reprinted in Věstník sokolský, Sokol gazette, No. 17, 1903, pp. 504–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. Němcová, Babička, p. 195.Google Scholar

28. Věstník sokolský. No. 17, 1903, p. 504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. Julia Kristeva, “Stabat Mater,” in Susan Rubin Suleiman, ed., The Female Body in Western Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

30. A. J. Šnajdaufová-Čadová, “O Mistru Janu Husovi a jeho vyznámu (On Master Jan Hus and his meaning).” Reprinted in Ženský svět (Women's World), Vol. 7, No. 13, 6 July 1903, pp. 154–160. The Festival program lists the speech's title as On Master Jan Hus and his meaning for Czech women. Google Scholar

31. Šnajdaufová-Čadová, “O Mistru Janu Husovi,” p. 154.Google Scholar

32. Ibid. Google Scholar

33. Ibid, p. 158.Google Scholar

34. Ibid, p. 160.Google Scholar

35. Baron, “Mothers, Morality, and Nationalism,” p. 282.Google Scholar

36. Šnajdaufová-Čadová, “O Mistru Janu Husovi,” p. 155.Google Scholar

37. Ibid. Google Scholar

38. Ibid. Google Scholar

39. Ibid. Google Scholar

40. Ibid., p. 160.Google Scholar

41. Katherine David, “Czech Feminists and Nationalism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy: ‘The First in Austria’,” Journal of Women's History, Fall 1991, pp. 32–33.Google Scholar

42. The term tábor was used by both the Young Czechs and the National Socialists for their party rallies. Tábor literally means gathering or camp, but the word also evoked the memory of the Hussite era, since Hus's radical followers lived communally in the Southern Bohemian town they named Tábor. The word tábor is of Turkish origin, meaning wagons chained together in a circular fashion. It is found in nearly every East European language, but only in Czech did the word acquire historical and political significance. Bruce Garver discusses Young Czech tábory or political meetings in Young Czech Party, p. 71.Google Scholar

43. Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theater in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

44. Garver, Young Czech Party, p. 71. Garver mentions that Young Czechs and Sokols frequently evoked Žižka memory at the open-air demonstrations for states rights of the 1860s and 1870s.Google Scholar

45. I would like to thank Hugh Agnew, Nancy Wingfield, and Claire Nolte for their helpful ideas about these contrasting images.Google Scholar

46. Svatopluk Čech, “Hus,” reprinted in Pamětní list k slavnost polození zakladního kamene k husovu pomníku (Commemorative pamphlet for the celebration of the laying of the foundation stone for the Hus Memorial) (Prague: Nákladem Slavnostního výboru, 1903), pp. 1–3.Google Scholar

47. Sec Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). I have found her essay “Women in The Making of the Working Class” particularly helpful in analyzing ways in which definitions of masculine and feminine are encoded into public events.Google Scholar

48. “Husovy slavnost” (Hus Festival) Ženský obzor, (Women's horizan) Vols 3–4, Nos 2–3, 6 July 1903, p. 41.Google Scholar

49. “Oslava Husova proti Husovi,” (Hus festival against Hus) Právo lidu, (Right of the people) 6 July 1903).Google Scholar

50. “Husova oslava,” Katolické listy, (Catholic news) 6 July 1903.Google Scholar

51. František Kysela-Sauer, Naše luza, jesuité a diplomaté (Our Mob, the Jesuits, and the Diplomats) (Prague, 1923).Google Scholar