Late Nineteenth Century and Early Twentieth Century
At the end of the nineteenth century, the Czech and Slovak situations were very different because of their overlords' different stages of development within Austria–Hungary (the Austrians in Bohemia, the Hungarians in Slovakia). The only common feature was Bohemia's status as the most industrialized part of Austria and Slovakia, albeit itself to different degrees:
- In Bohemia, a vigorous industrial revolution transformed a peasant nation into a differentiated society that included industrial workers, a middle class, and intellectuals. Under the influence of the Enlightenment and romanticism, the Czech national revival led to the establishment of the National Museum in 1818 and the National Theatre in 1881. Moreover, some Czechs were making political demands that included the reconstitution of an autonomous Bohemian Kingdom. The Czech cultural and political achievements were vigorously opposed by Bohemia's Germans, who feared losing their privileged position. On the eve of World War I, the Czech leader Tomáš Masaryk began propagating the Czechoslovak idea, namely the reunion of Czechs and Slovaks into one political entity.
- The Slovaks, on the other hand, had no forum for political expression within Hungary, and their national revival was less marked. Slovakia was not industrialized until the end of the nineteenth century, meaning the Slovaks remained mostly rural people led by a small group of intellectuals. After the creation of the dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1867, a strong national revival began in Hungary, severely repressing that of the Slovak people. By the eve of World War I, the Slovaks were struggling to preserve their newly found national identity.
Around the start of the 20th century, the idea of a "Czecho-Slovak" entity began to be advocated by some Czech and Slovak leaders. In the 1890s, contacts between Czech and Slovak intellectuals intensified. The Czech leader Masaryk was a keen advocate of Czech-Slovak cooperation. Some of his students formed the Czechoslovak Union and in 1898 published the journal Hlas ("The Voice"). In Slovakia, young Slovak intellectuals began to challenge the old Slovak National Party. But although the Czech and Slovak national movements began drawing closer together, their ultimate goals remained unclear. At least until World War I, the Czech and Slovak national movements struggled for autonomy within Austria and Hungary, respectively. Only during the war did the idea of an independent Czecho-Slovakia emerge.
Read more about this topic: Origins Of Czechoslovakia
Famous quotes containing the words twentieth century, late, nineteenth, century, early and/or twentieth:
“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)
“Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”
—Anonymous. Late 19th century ballad.
The quatrain refers to the famous case of Lizzie Borden, tried for the murder of her father and stepmother on Aug. 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Though she was found innocent, there were many who contested the verdict, occasioning a prodigious output of articles and books, including, most recently, Frank Spiering’s Lizzie (1985)
“In the nineteenth century ... explanations of who and what women were focused primarily on reproductive events—marriage, children, the empty nest, menopause. You could explain what was happening in a woman’s life, it was believed, if you knew where she was in this reproductive cycle.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)
“Bring a wife home to your house when you are of the right age, not far short of 30 years, nor much above; this is the right time for marriage.”
—Hesiod (c. 8th century B.C.)
“With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It’s all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)
“War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to “feel good” about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)