Cynthia Paces. Prague Panoramas: National Memory and Sacred Space in the Twentieth Century. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009. xv + 309 pp. $65.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8229-4375-4. Reviewed by Thomas Ort Published on HABSBURG (December, 2012) Commissioned by Jonathan Kwan (University of Nottingham) Most studies of Czechoslovakia in the twenti‐ In Prague Panoramas, Cynthia Paces offers a eth century, and especially those that concern its refreshing approach to the history of Czechoslo‐ history in the turbulent 1920s and 1930s, natural‐ vakia in the twentieth century. Rather than focus‐ ly and appropriately focus on that state’s ethnolin‐ ing on the state’s ethnolinguistic heterogeneity, guistic heterogeneity as the source of the conflicts she looks to its religious diversity and the conflicts that contributed to its demise. Conceived as a na‐ that ensued as a signature of its instability. Even tion-state for Czechs and Slovaks (or rather though most of the country’s population was Ro‐ “Czechoslovaks”), Czechoslovakia was in fact man Catholic (76 percent), there was also a signifi‐ multinational in composition, with an enormous cant Protestant minority (11 percent) as well as German minority population as well as sizable smaller communities of Uniates (4 percent), Jews Hungarian, Ruthenian, Polish, and Jewish com‐ (2.6 percent), and Orthodox Christians (.5 per‐ munities (Jews could opt to be counted as a sepa‐ cent). (The numbers do not add up because about rate national group). Czechs and Slovaks together 5 percent of the population declared itself to be constituted just 65 percent of the population; it “without confession.”)[1] Since there was a clear was the least homogenous of all the Habsburg majority religion in the state and since Roman successor states. And even after the state’s minori‐ Catholicism crossed national lines--most Germans ty populations were radically reduced during and and Hungarians were also Catholic--religion after the Second World War due to murder, expul‐ might have served as a binding rather than divi‐ sion, or territorial readjustment, leaving Czecho‐ sive force in First Republic Czechoslovakia. But it slovakia substantially more homogeneous in the did not and could not because, from its very be‐ process, Slovaks continued to resent Czech domi‐ ginnings, the Czech national movement was ani‐ nation of the state, culminating in the breakup of mated by a deep-seated anticlericalism. Czech na‐ 1993. tionalists blamed the Catholic Church for the de‐ H-Net Reviews struction of Bohemia’s Protestant nobility follow‐ on October 28, 1918, many other Catholic monu‐ ing the Battle of White Mountain in 1620 and for ments in the Bohemian lands were attacked as the subsequent subordination of the Bohemian symbols of Catholic and Habsburg oppression. In lands to Habsburg rule. They glorified instead the subsequent chapters, Paces explores the ways rebels against the Catholic Church, such as the re‐ in which the tensions between the state’s anticler‐ ligious reformer and heretic Jan Hus, burned at icalism and overwhelmingly Catholic population the stake in 1415, and the heroes of the Hussite played out in legislative battles as well as in popu‐ wars, such as the blind general Jan Zizka lar religious festivals and commemorations. Using (1360-1424), nemesis of many a Catholic army, as a variety of methodological approaches, ranging their forerunners in the struggle for Czech nation‐ from gender to political to art historical analysis, al independence. On top of it, several of the na‐ she highlights the impossibility of imposing any tional movement’s most prominent representa‐ one interpretation of Czech history or any one tives, including Tomas Masaryk, Czechoslovakia’s definition of Czech identity on the nation as a founder and frst president, were themselves whole. She shows, in sum, that the prevailing nar‐ Protestants who desired to minimize the role of rative of Czech history and identity was too re‐ the Catholic Church in the affairs of the state. Re‐ strictive to accommodate the vast variety of dif‐ lations between Czechoslovakia and the Vatican ferences within the state, and succeeded mainly were so bad in the early years of the First Repub‐ in alienating not just the minority populations, lic that in 1925 the Vatican recalled its ambas‐ but also many Czechs. sador from Prague, severing relations with the In the next section, the author traces this his‐ new state. It should not be surprising, then, that tory into the post-World War II era. Here, she fo‐ many of Czechoslovakia’s Catholic citizens found cuses less on public debates about the past, which it impossible to embrace the First Republic fully, under Communist rule were necessarily more cir‐ critically weakening it from within. cumscribed, than on the meaning of the historical Paces builds her argument primarily through narratives that the Communist regime imposed the analysis of debates surrounding the erection on Czechoslovak society. In a fascinating series of or destruction of religious monuments or monu‐ chapters, she demonstrates the regime’s highly se‐ ments with otherwise “sacred” meaning for the lective and instrumental approach to the past as nation. She begins her story in the 1890s when well as the outsize importance it attached to reli‐ Czech nationalists frst proposed erecting a monu‐ gious imagery and symbolism. The regime lav‐ ment to Hus in Old Town Square and fnally suc‐ ished money and attention, for example, on the ceeded in doing so in 1915. She examines in turn massive Zizka memorial in Prague, appropriating the construction of the memorial to St. Wences‐ the general as a symbol of premodern class strug‐ laus, the martyred tenth-century Bohemian king, gle and Czech proto-socialism. Similarly, the at the top of the eponymous square in Prague, and regime went to great lengths to rebuild Bethlehem the monument celebrating the life of the nine‐ Chapel, one of the sites of Hus’s preaching. By teenth-century historian and nationalist leader openly linking itself to the Hussite legacy, the Frantisek Palacky (both completed in 1912). The regime cast itself as the heir to the proudest Czech chapters on the First Republic begin with a vivid nationalist tradition. At the same time, it sought to account of the November 1918 destruction by rad‐ tap into the emotional content of this religious ical Czech nationalists of the column to the Virgin heritage and turn it toward Communism. Besides Mary standing in Old Town Square since the sev‐ noting the irony that an atheistic regime should enteenth century. In the revolutionary fervor fol‐ seek to legitimate itself through religious history, lowing the declaration of national independence Paces points out that both sites “functioned as-- 2 H-Net Reviews and looked like--churches. They were sites of lation were the chief source of the state’s difficul‐ wakes, funerals, and internments for the most ties. Rather, she persuasively demonstrates that revered leaders--places to pay homage to the they constitute another, heretofore underappreci‐ state, nation, and the party” (pp. 172-173). Com‐ ated, feature of its fragility. As important and orig‐ munism, Paces suggestively implies, mirrored or‐ inal as this argument is, one of the shortcomings ganized religion in striking ways, especially in its of Paces’s book is that its inquiry into Czech na‐ cultivation of the absolute faith and devotion of tionalism’s religious exclusivity is too constrained. its adherents. It also mimicked its use of public Paces attends almost entirely to Catholic alien‐ space, seeking to reproduce the auratic qualities ation from the state and nation; there is hardly of traditional religious edifices. Although it is not any discussion of the attitudes of Czechoslovakia’s the main part of her argument, Paces provides other religious constituencies. What did Uniates strong evidence for viewing Communism as a po‐ think of the Hus cult? Were the country’s Jews put litical religion. off by the toppling of the Marian column? What In some respects, then, Prague Panoramas about Orthodox Christians? No answers to these tells two different stories, one for the interwar era questions are forthcoming. To be fair, Paces focus‐ and one for the postwar period. But there are es on the religion of the majority of the popula‐ some key threads that link the two. The most im‐ tion, and its adherents’ posture vis-à-vis the state portant of these concerns the fate of the Marian is certainly the critical one. But the attitudes of column. Since its toppling in 1918, the destroyed the other constituencies are not incidental to her column became a symbol of the First Republic’s story, and their perspectives are not well repre‐ anticlericalism and its failure to make many sented. Catholics feel at home in the state. Under Commu‐ One of the most engaging features of Paces’s nism, Catholic and non-Catholic intellectuals alike book is its use of many of Prague’s most iconic began to regard this “formative act of vandalism” monuments as its primary source material. If as the nation’s frst step on the road to (godless) stone and bronze monuments have an air of in‐ dictatorship (p. 223). In both periods, the column’s evitability and permanence about them, as if they destruction becomes a metaphor for the ill that somehow had to exist in the shape and place they comes from a too-narrow conception of Czech na‐ do, Paces strips away this self-satisfied veneer, ex‐ tionhood and identity. For Paces, the same dynam‐ posing the ferce controversies that accompanied ic is at work in the selection of Hus as the central their creation and lent them their given form. In figure of the Czech national pantheon. “By em‐ other words, she historicizes Prague’s marvelous bracing the memory of Hus,” she writes, “Czech cityscape, and this is undoubtedly the book’s nationalists stubbornly excluded many citizens strongest suit.