shawn wang y.x.

Prague In Black And Gold: The History of a City

By Swyx on July 29th, 2009

INCOMPLETE summary of the book by Peter Demetz, Prof. Emeritus of German and Com. Lit. at Yale who fled Czechoslovakia in 1949 to the US, and awarded the Czech Medal of Merit in 2000 by President Vaclav Havel.

See Book Review, and Extract

1. Libussa, or Versions of Origin
   1. What the Schoolchildren Learn
   2. What Archaeologists and Historians Believe: Hypotheses and Reconstructions
   3. The Fortunes of Libussa
2. Otakar’s Prague, 880-1278
   1. From Trading Post to Royal Residence
   2. The Rise of a King
   3. The Early Jewish Community and the Prague Tosafists
   4. Czech Saints, Italian Rhetoricians, and German Poets
   5. “My Kingdom stands on brittle glass”
3. The Carolinian Moment: Charles IV and His Age
   1. Burghers, Markets, and Cobbled Streets
   2. Prince Vaclav, or rather, Charles
   3. King Charles, Father of his Motherland
   4. The Founding of the New Town
   5. Charles Establishes his University
   6. The King’s Kitchen Cabinet and the Italian connection: Cola di Rienzo and Francesco Petrarch
   7. Charles builds his Myth
   8. New Writing in Carolinian Prague
   9. Cracks in the Facade
   10. The Carolianian Jewish Town and the Massacre of 1389
4. The Hussite Revolution: 1415-22
   1. The King and the Vicar-General
   2. The Advance of the Religious Reformers
   3. Jan Hus at Bethlehem
   4. The Decree of Kutna Hora
   5. Jan Hus at Constance
   6. Beginnings of Hussite Resistance
   7. Prague Attracts the European Dissidents
   8. The Revolt of the Prague Radicals
   9. The Crusaders Arrive: The Battle on Zizka’s Hill
   10. The Battle for the Vysehrad and the Death of Jan Zelivsky
   11. Hussites and Jews, and a Coda
5. Rudolf II and the Revolt of 1618
   1. Praga Mystica?
   2. After the Polish Kings, the Hapsburgs Again
   3. Rudolf in Ascendance
   4. Scientists in Prague: Tadeas Hajek, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Jessenius
   5. The Alchemists Come to Prague
   6. The Golden Age of Prague’s Jewish Community: Rabbi Judah Loew and His Golem; Jewish Tradition and the New Sciences
   7. Picaresque Prague and the Case of Baron Russwurm
   8. The Last Years of Rudolf
   9. The Revolt of 1618 and the Battle of the White Mountain
   10. The Prague Baroque
6. Mozart in Prague
   1. Gli Italiani a Praga
   2. A Third-Rate Place: War and Peace in the Provinces
   3. The Age of Reforms: Mother and Son
   4. Mozart at the Bertramka
7. 1848 and the Counterrevolution
   1. The Travelers, and What they Did Not See
   2. Stormy Interlude: The Strikes of 1844
   3. Revolution and Counterrevolution: 1848-49
   4. Three Lives in the Shadow of the Revolution
8. T.G. Masaryk’s Prague
   1. A Modernized City and a Literature of Ghosts
   2. The Republic in its Monday Best
   3. Masaryk Returns to Prague
   4. From the Coachman’s Cottage to Prague Castle: A Modern Fairy Tale
   5. Turbulent, Republican Prague
   6. The Cultures of Republican Prague
   7. Prague, September 21, 1937
9. Postscript: A Difficult Return to Prague

Prague

Expanded Details

1. The King and the Vicar-General
2. The Advance of the Religious Reformers
3. Jan Hus at Bethlehem
4. The Decree of Kutna Hora
5. Jan Hus at Constance
6. Beginnings of Hussite Resistance
7. Prague Attracts the European Dissidents
8. The Revolt of the Prague Radicals
9. The Crusaders Arrive: The Battle on Zizka’s Hill
10. The Battle for the Vysehrad and the Death of Jan Zelivsky
11. Hussites and Jews, and a Coda

1. Praga Mystica?
2. After the Polish Kings, the Hapsburgs Again
3. Rudolf in Ascendance
4. Scientists in Prague: Tadeas Hajek, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Jessenius
5. The Alchemists Come to Prague
6. The Golden Age of Prague’s Jewish Community: Rabbi Judah Loew and His Golem; Jewish Tradition and the New Sciences
7. Picaresque Prague and the Case of Baron Russwurm
8. The Last Years of Rudolf
9. The Revolt of 1618 and the Battle of the White Mountain
10. The Prague Baroque

1. Gli Italiani a Praga
2. A Third-Rate Place: War and Peace in the Provinces
3. The Age of Reforms: Mother and Son
4. Mozart at the Bertramka

1. The Travelers, and What they Did Not See
2. Stormy Interlude: The Strikes of 1844
3. Revolution and Counterrevolution: 1848-49
4. Three Lives in the Shadow of the Revolution

1. A Modernized City and a Literature of Ghosts
   1. mid 1880s: when an entirely Czech city government suggested a radical plan to “sanitize” the most decrepit parts of Old Town and a few other corners. After the Vienna authorities approved it the old Jewish quarter including cemetery, synagogues, and town hall, was razed in 1895. Yet by then only 10% of Josefov were still jewish.
   2. Continuing into the first year of WW1 Prague advanced to being a modern city, massively industrialized, with Czech University, new banks, insurance companies, and expanding suburbs.
   3. Socially, the decreasing importance of the German language in favor of Czech from 1880 to 1900
   4. Literature also emerged with modernization: George Eliot visited in late 1850′s, writing “the Lifted Veil”, about “previsions” of Prague; German Wilhelm Raabe in 1863 wrote “Holunderblute” about a medical student meeting a Jewish girl in the cemetery, hooking him with the Czech line “strc prst skrz krk”; Herrmann Goedsche wrote Biarritz about Bismarck and Napoleon III, etc. Crawford’s The Witch of Prague was popular in 1890′s about a travelling gentleman searching for Beatrice but stumbling into the Czech Unorna.
2. The Republic in its Monday Best
   1. “When World War I entered its third year, Prague was a haggard, cold, and hungry city, and people moved in a gray zone of daily compromises, anger, and hidden hopes, trying to think of the future.”
   2. Early April 1918, the Congress of Oppressed Austrian Nationalities met in Rome to declare their right to self-determination. The power of the Dual Monarchy crumbled as the empire was forced to make increasingly ineffectual concessions. The empire died on Oct 28 1918, with a bloodless takeover by Czech National Committee, but there was confusion on the ground as to whether this was part of the imperial federalization concession or an outright secession, though by 6pm that day the CNC passed its first Law declaring the Independent Czechoslovak State, severing ties with Vienna.
3. Masaryk Returns to Prague
4. From the Coachman’s Cottage to Prague Castle: A Modern Fairy Tale
5. Turbulent, Republican Prague
6. The Cultures of Republican Prague
7. Prague, September 21, 1937

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