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Did the Slavs Speak German at Their First Congress?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Lawrence D. Orton
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“The language spoken at the congress was German, then regarded as the Esperanto of the Slavs.”—Albert Mousset, Le Monde slave (1946)

“The story that German was used at the congress is a hostile invention.”— Lewis Namier, 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals (1946)

In his Pan-Slav treatise of 1837, On Literary Reciprocity Between the Different Branches and Dialects of the Slav Nation, Jan Kollár recommended that all educated Slavs ought to know the four principal Slavic “dialects”: Illyrian (Serbo-Croatian), Russian, Polish, and Czecho-Slovak. He thought that the scholar, however, should be able to use all the Slavic dialects, as well as the languages of the Slavs’ neighbors. But in a less frequently cited passage, in which he explained why his work was appearing in German, Kollar bemoaned the still limited knowledge of the various Slavic idioms, even among so-called learned Slavs: “When one wishes to make himself understood on any important matter to brother Slavs, he must use a foreign, non-Slavic tongue.”

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , September 1974 , pp. 515 - 521
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1974

References

1. Kollár, Jan, Rozpravy o slovanske vzájemnosti, ed. Weingart, Miloš (Prague, 1929), pp. 45, 47.Google Scholar

2. This theme pervades the writings of Kollár and P. J. Šafařík, the poet and the scholar respectively of pre-March cultural Pan-Slavism. On the Slavic reawakening see especially Milan, Prelog, Slavenska renesansa, 1780-1848 (Zagreb, 1924)Google Scholar, and Hans, Kohn, Pan-Slavism : Its History and Ideology, rev. ed. (New York, 1960)Google Scholar, part 1. Although the Czech journalist Karel Havliček dramatically challenged the litany of a unitary Slavdom in his celebrated article of 1846, “Slovan a Čech,” an emotional commitment to Kollár’s “Slavic reciprocity” still permeated the 1848 congress.

3. Šafařík to Jan Neuberk, May 4, 1848, in Žáček, Václav, ed., Slovanský sjezd v Praze roku 1848 : Sbirka dokumentu (Prague, 1958), p. 67 Google Scholar. Šafařík specifically suggested that either Latin or German might have to be used in the general sessions.

4. “Jednací řád sjezdu slowanského w Praze,” in Zpráwa o sjezdu slowanském (Prague, 1848), pp. 20-24.

5. Wspomnienia z lat od 1803 do 1863 r., ed. B. Pawłowski (Lwów and Warsaw, n.d.), pp. 229-30. It should be borne in mind that very few Poles shared the intoxication of the Czechs, Slovaks, and South Slavs for Slavic solidarity, and that many Polish delegates were openly critical of the way the congress was handled by its Czech organizers.

6. Protocol in Wisłocki, Władysław T., Kongres słowiański w r. 1848 i sprawa polska (Lwow, 1927), p. 71 Google Scholar. Bakunin readily assented to this request, adding that even in Russian the feeling and principles of liberty could be conveyed.

7. May 26, 1848, in Žáček, Slovanský sjezd, pp. 86-87.

8. See Thun to Prince von Lobkowitz, June 19, 1848, in Chaloupecký, Václav, “Hrabě Josef Matyáš Thun a slovanský sjezd v Praze r. 1848,” Čcský časopis historický, 19 (1913) : 90–91Google Scholar. By another account, Thun’s “illness” actually stemmed from the increasingly radical tone which the “foreign” Slavs (principally Poznan Poles) were giving the congress. See Jan M. Černy, Slovanský sjezd v Praze roku 1848 (Prague, 1888), p. 15, who cites Josef Jireček as his source.

9. See Matthias, Murko, Deutsche Einflüsse auf die Anfänge der böhmischen Romantik (Graz, 1897), p. 287.Google Scholar

10. June 8, 1848, p. 1266.

11. Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, June 10, 1848, no. 162, pp. 2583-84. The reporter was soon recognized as a German and was asked to leave the hall.

12. Der Wanderer (Vienna), June 7, 1848, no. 136; Wiener Tageblatt für alle Stände, June 8, 1848, no. 3; and Gerad’aus (Vienna), June 3, 1848, no. 20. The charge that the Prague Slavs were using German was also raised in the Leipzig weekly Die Grenzboten, June 16, 1848, no. 24, pp. 441-42. See also Laibacher Zeitung, July 1, 1848, no. 79, p. 466, and Wochenblätter für Freiheit wid Gesetz (Carlsbad), 1848, p. 170.

13. June 25, 1848, p. 483.

14. Tobolka, Zdeněk V. and Žáček, Václav, eds., Slovanský sjeszd v Praze 1848 : Sbírka dokumentu, part 1 (Prague, 1952), pp. 498–501.Google Scholar

15. See Rath, R. John, “The Viennese Liberals of 1848 and the Nationality Problem,” Journal of Central European Affairs, 15, no. 3 (October 1955) : 227–39 Google Scholar; and Roy, Pascal, “The Frankfurt Parliament, 1848, and the Drang nach Osten,” Journal of Modern History, 18 (1946) : 108–22.Google Scholar

16. German reaction to the Slavic revival is examined in Eduard Winter, “Die deutschsprachige Ŏffentlichkeit und die slawische Frage im 19. Jahrhundert, ,” in L'udovít Holotik, ed., L’udovit Štur und die slawische Wcchsclseitigkeit (Bratislava, 1969), pp. 177–86 Google Scholar. See also Gerard, Laduba, “The Slavs in 19th Century German Historiography,” Poland and Germany, 15, no. 3-4 (1971) : 8–22; 16, no. 1 (1972) : 14-34, and no. 2-3 (1972) : 8-31Google Scholar. A remarkable synthesis of German paternalism and culturally supremacist attitudes toward the Slavs on the eve of the 1848 upheavals is found in Heffter, M. W., Der Weltkampf der Deutschen und Slaven seit dem Ende des fünften Jahrhunderts (Hamburg and Gotha, 1847).Google Scholar

17. “Prag und der neue Panslavismus,” June 9, 1848, no. 23, p. 385. On the journal’s posture toward the Danubian Slavs in the Vormärz and 1848 see especially Francis L. Loewenheim, “German Liberalism and the Czech Renascence : Ignaz Kuranda, Die Grensboten, and Developments in Bohemia, 1845-1849,” in Brock, Peter and Skilling, H. Gordon, eds., The Czech Renascence of the Nineteenth Century (Toronto, 1970), pp. 146–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. See Reinisch, I. F., “Slavische Glaubensbekenntnisse,” Der Radikale (Vienna), July 20, 1848, no. 28, p. 111.Google Scholar

19. “Die slavische Frage,” Constitutionclle Donan-Zcitung, June 19, 1848, no. 78.

20. On July 1, 1848, in Franz, Wigard, ed., Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen der deutschen constituirenden Nationalversammlung zu Frankfurt am Main, 9 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1848-49), 1 : 665.Google Scholar

21. Germany : Revolution and Counter-Revolution, in Leonard, Krieger, ed., The German Revolutions (Chicago, 1967), pp. 177–80 Google Scholar. Engels added that Palacky “is himself a learned German run mad, who even now cannot speak the Tschechian language correctly and without foreign accent.“

22. Anton, Springer, Geschichte Oesterreichs seit dem Wiener Frieden 1809, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1863-65), 2 : 334 Google Scholar; and Alfred, Fischel, Der Panslaivismus bis zum Weltkrieg (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1919), pp. 271–72 Google Scholar. Indicative of the persistence of the charge is Hermann Münch's massive study of the Bohemian question, which appeared after World War II. M'nch often cites Springer and Fischel, but in the passage on the language question at the congress he quotes (without elucidation) only the memoirs of Ferenc Pulszky, a Magyar veteran of 1848 and associate of Kossuth, to the effect that “the language of deliberation was German!” See Böhmische Tragödie : Das Schicksal Mitteleuropas im Lichte der tschechischen Frage (Braunschweig, 1949), p. 191.

23. See Michael B., Petrovich, The Emergence of Russian Pan-Slavism, 1856-1870 (New York, 1956)Google Scholar, chap. 6. A notable exception was the Slovak L’udovit Štúr, who, despondent over the failure of 1848-49 and the subsequent betrayal by Habsburg officialdom, in his posthumously published Das Slawenthum und die Welt der Zukunft, exhorted the West and South Slavs to entrust themselves to a union with tsarist Russia and adopt Russian as their literary language.

24. Meissner’s recollections appeared in the Kölnische Zeitung, July 16, 17, 1848, nos. 198, 199, entitled “Bilder aus Frankfurt—Auf der Fahrt zum Parlamente.” He did not identify Bakunin by name, but as a “giant of a man,” a Russian whose acquaintance he had made two years before in Paris. See also Nikolajevskij, B, “Prag in den Tagen des Slavenkongresses 1848,” Germanoslavica, 1 (1931-32) : 300–312.Google Scholar