Back in the days of the Habsburg Empire, there was a town in Bohemia called Budweis.
The people in that town were called Budweisers and the town had a brewery which produced beer
with the same name—but different from the American Budweiser. Like many communities in Bohemia during
that era, Budweis had people of both Czech and German ancestries, speaking different languages,
though many were also bilingual. They got along pretty well and most people there thought of
themselves as Budweisers, rather than as Czechs or Germans. But that would later change—for the
worse—not only in Budweis, but throughout Bohemia. The mayor of Budweis spoke both Czech and German
but refused to be classified as a member of either group. His point was that we are all Budweisers.
As with virtually all groups in virtually all countries and in virtually all eras,
there were differences between the Germans and the Czechs in Budweis.
Germans were more educated, more prosperous, and more prominent in business and the professions.
The German language at that point had a much wider and richer literature, the Slavic languages
having acquired written versions centuries later than the languages of Western Europe.
Educated Bohemians of whatever ethnicity were usually educated in German. Those Czechs who
wished to rise into the upper echelons, whether in business, the military, or the professions, had to
master the German language and culture, in order to fit in with those already at the higher levels.
People on both sides learned to live with this situation and Czechs were welcomed into the German
cultural enclaves in Bohemia when they mastered that culture. In Budweis, they could all be
Budweisers. As in so many other countries and in so many other times, the rise of a newly educated
intellectual class in the 19th century polarized the society with ethnic identity politics.
All over Bohemia, the new Czech intelligentsia urged Czechs to think of themselves as Czechs,
not Bohemians or Budweisers or anything else that would transcend their ethnic identity.
Demands were made that street signs in Prague, which had been in both Czech and German before,
now be exclusively in Czech. Quotas were demanded for a certain percentage of Czech music to be
played by the Budweiser orchestra. If such demands seem petty, their consequences were not small.
People of German ancestry resisted ethnic classifications but the Czech intelligentsia
insisted and Czech politicians went along with the trend on many issues,
large and small. Eventually, Germans as well began in self-defense to think of themselves as Germans,
rather than as Bohemians or Budweisers, and to defend their interests as Germans.
This ethnic polarization in the 19th century was a fateful step whose full consequences have not
yet ended completely, even in the 21st century. A crucial turning point was the creation of the
new nation of Czechoslovakia when the Habsburg Empire was broken up after the First World War.
Czech leaders declared the new nation’s mission to include a correction of “social injustice”
so as to “put right the historic wrongs of the seventeenth century.” What were those wrongs?
Czech nobles who revolted against the Habsburg Empire back in the 17th century were defeated
and had their lands confiscated and turned over to Germans. Presumably no one from the 17th century
was still alive when Czechoslovakia was created in the 20th century, but Czech nationalists kept the
grievance alive—as ethnic identity ideologues have done in countries around the world.
Government policies designed to undo history with preferential treatment for Czechs
polarized the existing generation of Germans and Czechs. Bitter German reactions led eventually
to demands that the part of the country where they lived be united with neighboring Germany.
From this came the Munich crisis of 1938 that dismembered Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War
II. When the Nazis conquered the whole country, the Germans now lorded it over the Czechs. After
the war, the Czech reaction led to mass expulsions of Germans under brutal conditions that cost
many lives. Today refugees in Germany are still demanding restitution. If only the grievances of
past centuries had been left in the past! If only they had all remained Budweisers or Bohemians.