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Zap's Prague: the city, the nation and Czech elites before 1848

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2013

CHAD BRYANT
CHAD BRYANT*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 468 Hamilton Hall, CB# 3195, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA
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Abstract:

Karel Vladislav Zap, who came of age during the 1830 revolutions in Europe, belonged to a generation of Czech elites determined to promote national consciousness while actively carving out a space within Prague's middle-class social milieu. Zap, as his topographies of the city demonstrate, also called on his countrymen to claim the city and its structures from their German-speaking neighbours, thus contributing to a dynamic that would continue throughout the century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , May 2013 , pp. 181 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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References

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3 In the course of my research, I have been unable to locate a first edition of Zap's Guide. Thus, this article will rely on the second edition: Zap, K.V., Průwodce po Praze: Potřebna přiruční kniha pro každého, kdo se s pamětnostmi českého hlawního města seznámiti chce (Prague, 1848)Google Scholar. Publication of the 1847 edition was announced in the winter edition of Časopis českého Museum, 21, 4 (1847), 465. Just before the revolution, the same journal announced the publication of the 1848 edition. See Časopis českého Museum, 22, 3 (1848), 324. During the period in between, Zap's publisher released his chapter on the Hradčany district of Prague, probably in the last months of 1847, the listed publication date aside. Zap, K.V., Popsánj král. hradu, chrámu sv. Wita a všech ostatních památnosti na Hradčanech w Praze (Prague, 1848)Google Scholar. See Časopis českého Museum, 21, 6 (1847), 673. The precise publication date of the German translation is unclear. Given the fact that the German translation makes no mention of the revolution we might assume that it was published before or shortly after March 1848. Zap, K.V., Wegweiser durch Prag. Ein nothwendiges Handbuch für Fremde, die sich mit den Merkwürdigkeiten der böhmischen Hautpstadt bekannt zu machen wünschen, trans. Ritter von Rittersberg, L. (Prague, 1848)Google Scholar.

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31 ‘Proslov’, Pautník. Časopis obrázkový pro každého, 1 (1846), 1.

32 Schaller, J., Beschreibung der königlichen Haupt- und Residenzstadt Prag: sammt allen darinn befindlichen sehenswürdigen Merkwürdigkeiten, 4 vols. (Prague, 1794–97)Google Scholar. See also Huber, H., Beschreibung der königlicher Haupt- und Residenzstadt Prag (Prague, 1781)Google Scholar; and Opiz, J.F., Vollständige Beschreibung der königlichen Haupt- und Residenzstadt Prag (Prague and Vienna, 1787)Google Scholar.

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34 On the Bohemian nobility's embrace of history, see Agnew, H., Origins of the Czech National Renascence (Pittsburgh, 1993)Google Scholar.

35 On the popularity of Prague as destination for Germans, see Demetz, P., Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (New York, 1998), 272–4Google Scholar; and the voluminous quotations from various German travel writers in Schottky, J., Prag wie es war und wie es ist (Prague, 1831), 15–31Google Scholar. A number of German-speaking British travellers ventured off the Grand Tour to visit Prague as well. Bugge, Peter, ‘“Something in the view which makes you linger”: Bohemia and Bohemians in British travel writing, 1836–1857’, Central Europe, 7 (May 2009), 3–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 On these developments more generally, see Buzard, J., The Beaten Track: European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to Culture, 1800–1918 (Oxford, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bohls, E.A., ‘Introduction’, in Bohls, E.A. and Duncan, I. (eds.), Travel Writing 1700–1830: An Anthology (Oxford, 2005), xiii–xxviiGoogle Scholar; and Parsons, N., Worth the Detour: A History of the Guidebook (Stroud, 2007)Google Scholar. My thanks to Rosemary Sweet for her helpful thoughts on this topic and others.

37 Sweet, R., ‘The changing view of Rome in the long eighteenth century’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 33 (2012), 145–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 146–7.

38 Schaller, J., Beschreibung der königlichen Haupt- und Residenzstadt Prag (Prague, 1820)Google Scholar. See, however, Edler von Geissau, A.F., Kurze Beschreibung der Königlichen Haupt- und Residenzstadt Prag im Königreiche Böhmen (Prague and Vienna, 1805)Google Scholar.

39 Schaller, Beschriebung (1820), 1–11.

40 Ibid., 43–5.

41 See, for example, Klutschak, F., Der Führer durch Prag (Prague, 1845), 31–42Google Scholar (original edn 1838).

42 Zap, Průwodce, i.

43 Zap gracefully acknowledged this debt in his 1847 publication. Zap, Průwodce, ii.

44 Zap, Popsánj kr. hlavního města Prahy pro cizince i domácí, ii.

45 Schmidl, A., Reisehandbuch durch das Königreich Böhmen, Mähren, Schlesien, Galizien, die Bukowina und nach Jassy (Vienna, 1836), 22–3Google Scholar.

46 Klutschak, Führer.

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48 Zap, Průwodce, 332.

49 Macura, ‘Prague’, in Macura, Mystifications, 35–46.

50 Nemes, The Once and Future Budapest, 9.

51 Zap, Popsánj kr. hlavního města Prahy pro cizince i domácí, ii.

52 Zap, Průwodce, ii.

53 Ibid., iv.

54 Ibid., 7

55 Ibid., 9.

56 Ibid., 11.

57 Ibid., 15.

58 Ibid., 21.

59 Ibid., 25.

60 Ibid., 48.

61 Ibid., 44.

62 Ibid., 47.

63 Ibid., 210.

64 Ibid., 210.

65 Ibid., 230.

66 Ibid., 246.

67 Schottky, Prag, vol. I, 15.

68 Schaller, Beschreibung (1820), 225.

69 Klutschak, Führer, 15; Časopis českého Museum, 20, 3 (1846), 399.

70 Zap, Průwodce, 124–8.

71 Ibid., 142.

72 Zap, Wegweiser.

73 Zap, Průwodce, ii.

74 Schaller, Beschriebung (1820), 11, 51.

75 On the emerging, middle-class practice of strolling and the cult of nature in Prague, see Lněničková, České země, 271; and Marek, M., Kunst und Identitätspolitik. Architektur und Bildkünste im Prozess der tschechischen Nationalsbildung (Cologne, 2004), 24–32Google Scholar. On the phenomenon more generally, see König, G.M., Eine Kulturgeschichte des Spazierganges. Spuren einer bürgerlichen Praktik 1780 bis 1850 (Vienna, 1996)Google Scholar; Amato, J.A., On Foot: A History of Walking (New York, 2004), 71–124Google Scholar; Jarvis, R., Romantic Writing and Pedestrian Travel (Houndmills and New York, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robinson, J.C., The Walk: Notes on a Romantic Image (Norman, 2006), esp. 70–7Google Scholar.

76 Schmidl, Reisehandbuch, 40.

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78 Schmidl, Reisehandbuch, 40–1.

79 Zap, Popsánj kr. hlavního města Prahy pro cizince i domácí, 204–6. Schmidl also recommended Coloured Island but notes that all of Prague's islands offer up gardens and walking paths. Schmidl, Reisehandbuch, 41–2.

80 Murray, Handbook, 334. See also Schmidl, Reisenhandbuch, 41

81 Zap, Průwodce, 297–8, 299–300, 302–4.

82 Zap, Popsánj kr. hlavního města Prahy pro cizince i domácí, 198.

83 Zap, Průwodce, 55.

84 Ibid., 56.

85 Ibid., 324.

86 Ibid., 324–5.

87 Ibid., 55.

88 A point developed well in Amato, On Foot.

89 See, for example, Nord, D.E., Walking the Victorian Streets: Women, Representation, and the City (Ithaca, 1995), 19–48Google Scholar; Amato, On Foot, 153–78; and O'Byrne, A., ‘The art of walking in London: representing urban pedestrianism in the early nineteenth century’, Romanticism, 14 (2008), 94–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 Baudelaire, C., ‘The painter in modern life’, in Mayne, J. (trans. and ed.), The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (London, 1964), 9, 40Google Scholar.

91 Lorimer, H., ‘Walking: new forms and spaces for studies of pedestrianism’, in Cresswell, T. and Merriman, P. (eds.), Geographies of Mobilities: Practices, Spaces, Subjects (Burlington, 2011), 20Google Scholar.

92 For an excellent overview, see Pech, S.Z., The Czech Revolution of 1848 (Chapel Hill, 1969), 47–78Google Scholar; and Štaif, Obezřetná elita, 203–13.

93 Erickson, J., ‘The preparatory committee of the Slav Congress, April–May 1848’, in Brock, P. and Skilling, H. G. (eds.), The Czech Renascence of the Nineteenth Century (Toronto, 1970), 176–201Google Scholar. The quotation is from Žáček, V., Slovanský sjezd v Praze roku 1848. Sbírka dokumentů (Prague, 1958), 89Google Scholar.

94 Demetz, Prague, 296–300; Pech, The Czech Revolution, 139–62; Štaif, Obezřetná elita, 255–68.

95 ‘A’, review of Průwodce po Praze, Časopis ceského Museum, 23 (1949), 131–5. Quotation from 132. Several years later the same journal listed Zap's Guide in a bibliography of new and noteworthy publications. See ‘Bibliographie’, Časopis ceského Museum, 27, 2 (1853), 403.

96 Zap, K.V., Der Kleine Wegweiser durch Prag: Ein Auszug aus dem grosseren Werke (Wegweiser durch Prag) (Prague, 1850)Google Scholar.

97 Zap, K.V., Zeměpis Císařství Rakouského (Prague, 1851)Google Scholar.

98 ‘Zap, Karel Vladislav’, Ottův Slovnik, 431–2. One of Zap's most popular books, first published in 1862, was the Czech-Moravian Chronicle, which claimed as its goal the ‘bringing to life and explaining the past, in which the whole of our national being consists’. Zap, K.V., Česko-Moravská kronika (Prague, 1862)Google Scholar. Quotation from Sayer, The Coasts, 130.

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100 See, for example, Ruth, F., Kronika královské Prahy a obcí sousedních, 3 vols. (Prague, 1995–96Google Scholar; original edn 1903–04); and Poche, E., Prahou krok za krokem. Uměleckohistorický průvodce městem (Prague, 1958)Google Scholar.

101 Sayer, The Coasts, 180–2, 357–8 n. 111.

102 Paces, C., Prague Panoramas: National Memory and Sacred Place in the Twentieth Century (Pittsburgh, 2009), 59–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; M. Nekula, ‘Institutions of memory: Prague pantheons since 1848’, paper presented at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Nov. 2009; Cohen, The Politics, 145–8; Sayer, The Coasts, 100–3; and Wingfield, N.M., Flag Wars and Stone Saints: How the Bohemian Lands Became Czech (Cambridge, MA, 2007)Google Scholar, esp. 48–78.

103 Many guidebooks intended for Czechs from the countryside appeared in anticipation of the 1891 Jubilee Exhibition in Prague. See, for example, Hynek, A., Hynkův průvodce po Praze a po zemské jubilejní výstavě v roce 1891 (Prague, 1891)Google Scholar; and Kafka, J., Illustrovaný průvodce všeobecnou zemskou jubilejní výstavou s průvodcem Prahou (Prague, 1891)Google Scholar. See also J. Randák, ‘Die Formierung des Prager Raums. Narrative des Nationalen in Prag- Reiseführern (Mitte des 19. Jh bis Mitte des 20. Jh.)’, paper presented at ‘Soziale/Kulturelle (Stadt-)Räume und Transkulturalität in Prag’ conference, Constance, 2011.

104 On tourism and nationalism more generally, see Koshar, R., German Travel Cultures (Oxford and New York, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On nationalism and tourism in Bohemia, see Judson, P., Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 141–76Google Scholar; and Murdock, C., ‘Tourist landscapes and regional identities in Saxony, 1878–1938’, Central European History, 40 (Dec. 2007), 589–621CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

105 Guistino, C., Tearing Down Prague's Jewish Town: Ghetto Clearance and the Legacy of Middle-Class Ethnic Politics around 1900 (Boulder, 2003), 267–306.Google Scholar

106 On the contested meanings of Prague's various Czech nationalist monuments, see Paces, Prague Panoramas.