The Czech Republic

Capital City: Prague

Population: approx 10,500,000 (approx. 200,000 Romani)

Currency: Czech Koruna (CZK) (will possibly adopt the Euro in 2013)
1 EURO = 27 CZK

Languages: Czech (Czech has few vowels, and many consonants).

Religion: The Czech Republic has one of the least religious populations of Europe; 59% are either atheist, agnostic, or a non-organized believer; 26% Roman Catholic; There used to be 118,000 Jews, but they were virtually annihilated during WWII; in 2005, there were only a reported 4000 Jews in Czech Republic

Borders: Czech is a landlocked country: Poland to the Northeast, Germany to the West, Austria to the South and Slovakia to the East

-The Czech Republic is divided into 13 regions; composed of the ancient lands of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia

Rivers: Elbe, Vltava, Morava

Part of EU?: Yes, since 2004, along with Slovenia, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, and several other Eastern Bloc countries that had recently emerged from Communism. This was the single largest enlargement of the EU, and was met with a lot of criticism from other member countries that feared letting in so many poorer countries would result in cheap labour, massive immigration and bring down the general EU economy.

This was also the event that gave rise to stereotypes like “the Polish Plumber” (which originated from a French politician saying he wanted to hire a Polish plumber because he couldn’t find good handyman in France, stemming from the idea that Polish people provide cheap labour. The Poland tourism board turned the negative stereotype around and designed posters with gorgeous male plumbers, and subsequently female nurses, beckoning French people to come to Poland).

QUICK HISTORY

From around the 5th century, Slavs, Germanic, Eastern European people migrated into the lands of Bohemia and Moravia. The Bohemian or Czech State emerged in the late 9th century, and was a fairly powerful player as part of the Holy Roman Empire.

The first hero of Czech Nationalism was Good King Wenceslas, the Patron saint of Bohemia. Prince Wenceslas was executed on the orders of his younger brother, Boleslav, who took over the Bohemian throne. A popular cult arose proclaiming Prince Wenceslas as the perpetual spiritual ruler of all Czechs. The horse market, Prague's traditional meeting place, was the scene of a brief thrust of Czech nationalism against the Austrian Empire in 1848, when people named the place Wenceslas Square (Václavské nám.). The statue at the top of the square was erected in 1912.

The 14th century, particularly the reign of Charles IV, is considered the golden age of Czech history. He was King of Bohemia, Holy Roman Emperor, and during his reign he made Prague one of Europe’s most advanced cities. He inspired several sites around the country, including Charles University and Charles Bridge in Prague, and the spa town of Karlovy Vary, before the Black Death decimated the population of Bohemia.

After the fall of the Holy Roman Empire, the Czech lands increasingly came under the control of the Habsburgs, who expelled the Protestant Czechs and banned all religions other than Catholicism.

The Hussite movement, founded by Jan Hus (1369–1415), linked the Slavs to the Reformation one hundred years before the Reformation actually happened.

Jan Hus was a University lecturer (and now a Czech nationalist symbol). He didn’t like what he saw as misuse of power by Rome and the German clergy in Prague, and questioned the authority of the Pope (he was ahead of his time, and Renaissance scholarship really took off after his death). In 1414, he was summoned to explain his views before an Ecclesiastic Council in Germany, and promised safe conduct by the Holy Roman Emperor. but was arrested on arrival and burned at the stake as a heretic on July 6 (now a Czech national holiday). Because of what happened to Hus, Martin Luther was quite concerned about meeting the Emperor at the Diet of Worms.

The Pope and Emperor launched a crusade to crush the Hussites in Bohemia, but the Protestant Hussites, with Hus as their martyr, fought back. On July 30, 1419, they stormed the New Town Hall on Charles Square and demanded the release of other arrested pro-reform Hussites. After town councilors rejected the demand, the Hussites tossed them out of third-story windows, killing several. This became known as the First Defenestration, from the Latin for "out of the window." The incident sparked a 15-year battle known as the Hussite Wars, which ended in the defeat of the radical Protestants in 1434.

In 1618, Ferdinand II, a Hapsburg who was a dedicated Catholic and vowed to stamp out Protestantism, particularly in Bohemia, became Holy Roman Emperor. Before he took power, Rudolf II had been King, and had granted Bohemian Protestants religious freedom (in the Letter of Majesty). Czech Protestants at the time were building a few new churches in Prague, but the government tried to stop them. When the Catholic leaders metaphorically threw the Letter of Majesty out the window, the Czechs rebelled, stormed Prague Castle, and literally threw a couple of Catholic Deputies out the window (Second Defenestration).

Thus began the Thirty Years' War, which engulfed the entire continent. It was the Catholic Habsburgs vs. the Protestants of other countries. The Thirty Years War was one of Europe's most violent, and the Czechs were defeated in the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620 (although war continued to rage until 1648, when it ended with the Treaty of Westphalia). Twenty-seven Czech leaders were beheaded in the Old Town Square in Prague, and hundreds of Czech nobles fled the country

The Czechs were ruled for the next 300 years as part of the Austrian empire. This period, until the late 18th century, is known as the Dark Age.

Following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in WWI, the independent nation of Czechoslovakia was created in 1918, incorporating Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Slovakia. During WWII, Hitler threatened to annex part of Slovakia, allowing the remaining parts to be partitioned by Hungary and Poland, so Slovakia seceded from Czechoslovakia in 1939 and allied itself with Nazi Germany. The remaining Czech territory was occupied by Germany, and almost 400,000 Czech citizens were killed in the holocaust, while hundreds of thousands of others were forced into camps (such as Terezin) or forced to evacuate. There was a Czech-Government-in-Exile, and the occupation finally ended in 1945 when the Soviets and Americans arrived.

In 1948, the Communist party (KSC), disillusioned with the West and looking favourably to the Soviets after they helped with the Czech liberation from German rule, staged a coup d’etat and took complete control,. For the next 41 years, Czechoslovakia was a Communist state within the Eastern Bloc.

COLD WAR

North America had formed a special alliance with Western Europe, called NATO, to guard against attack from the Soviet Union. So the Russians formed their own alliance with the Communist states of eastern Europe (including Czechoslovakia), called the Warsaw Pact. Each side started arming themselves with missiles.

By the 1960s, the economy was stagnating, there was media censorship, and calls for reform.

Alexander Dubcek, a Slovakian, was a leading figure in the reform movement. His vision was a softer, more liberal form of Communism, Socialism with a Human Face, where you could be a Communist but still speak your mind without fearing repercussions from the secret police. In the Prague Spring of 1968, Dubcek’s government drafted the Action Program, removed the Czech Prime Minister and Dubcek became leader.

The Soviets weren’t happy about the Prague Spring, and the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia on August 20, 1968, which really turned the population (and the government) against the Soviets, and got them behind Dubcek. In 1969, student Jan Palach set himself on fire in Wenceslas square to protest the Soviet invasion. The Soviets had to ease up on Dubcek a bit after all the resistance (which was not confined to the Czech Republic, but worldwide), so they allowed him to stay in power for a while. The reforms of the Prague Spring were not reversed overnight, but eventually.

Reformists were purged from government, censorship got stricter, atheism was imposed, conformity and obedience were encouraged and the top creative and intellectual minds were sent into exile or imprisoned. Dubcek was ousted. Underground writing and publishing emerged from dissidents (who, frankly, were only a small portion of the population in Czechoslovakia, as much of the population adhered to the recommended the status quo)

Finally, in 1989:

... Poland became a democracy for the first time since the 1930s (and the Solidarity Union won the first free elections, after being imprisoned by the Communists)

... the wall came down in Berlin

... Hungary dismantled its iron curtain and opened its doors to the west

... the people of Bucharest overran the secret police, capitured the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu and his wife, who were quickly tried and executed

... Yugoslavia broke apart in 1991

... and the Velvet Revolution occurred in Czechoslovakia.

It started with a student demonstration in Prague, which sparked a series of other protests, swelling from about 200,000 on the first day to a half million the next. Peacefully and quietly, the Communists announced that they would relinquish their control, and the first non-Communist party was appointed, with Dubcek the speaker of the parliament and Vaclav Havel, a playwright who had been imprisoned under the Communist regie, the first Prime Minister (he remained in power for 10 years, getting the Czech Republic into the EU and NATO).

Slovakian national aspirations continued, and the two countries quietly parted ways in 1993 (the Velvet Divorce). The Czech Republic has become the first former member of the Comecon (a response to the European Coal and Steel Community set up by communist/Eastern Bloc countries) to achieve the status of a developed country (2006), and it also ranks best, compared to the former Comecon countries, in the Human Development Index.


PUPPETS/MARIONETTES

Puppetry has been practised in the Czech Republic since the 18th century as part of a family-oriented traditional activity. It had a revival in the 20th century, when puppet theaters were established. Puppet theatre was shown indifference by the country's censors, so it was used for political dissent; in this way, some puppeteers became national, revolutionary heroes. 
 

BOHEMIA(N)

Formerly the Kingdom of Bohemia, before the region was incorporated into the Czech Republic along with the Kingdoms of Moravia and Silesia.
Romani gypsies entered France and Western Europe via Bohemia, so the French called their gypsies Bohemian. Eventually, wandering artists, those who lived untraditional lifestyles, artists and creators who congregated in low-class gypsy neighbourhoods (particularly in Paris), also took on the name Bohemian.
 
 
BOHEMIAN CRYSTAL

The Czechs started working with Bohemian crystal in the 1500s (under Rudolf II, who became patron to the glassmakers during the Renaissance).
 
 
CZECH FOOD

-Czech national dish: roast pork with dumplings and sauerkraut; strong emphasis on goulash, meat dishes (particularly pork); fish is rare

-Absinthe has a connection with Prague, but it did not originate in the Czech Republic. Artists in Prague simply brewed it, and enjoyed it.


CZECH BEER

Czech beer has a long history, with the first breweries dating back to 1118 and 100 still operating today.

The Czech Republic makes a good argument for being the home of beer as we know it. Pilsner, which today describes any light beer, originated in the Bohemian town of Plzen in the 19th century. Budweiser, North America’s number 1 beer, was brewing in the Czech town of Ceske Budejovice for 100 years before the Americans put it into a six-pack. And in case anyone doubted their claim as the Masters of Beer, the Czechs have topped the list of most beer drinkers per capita. So when in the Czech Republic, pick a side in the Budweiser debate and enjoy a few pints, because chances are everyone around you will be having one too.

BUDWEISER

The history of brewing in Cesky Budejovice dates back to 1265. In the late 19th century, the beer was brought by Germans to the US, and started being brewed by Anheuser-Busch. The Czech company, and the US company, fought for years over the usage of the name Budweiser. In 2009, courts ruled in favour of the Czech company, but the US firm still markets as Budweiser or Bud in some countries, the Czech company markets as Czechvar in North America, and they both use Budweiser in the UK. Either way, a pint’s a pint!


Famous Czech People:

-Sigmund Freud

-Czechs invented contact lenses, first separated blood types

-Franz Kafka, a German-Jewish Praguer who, for much of his adult life, worked in relative obscurity as a sad Prague insurance clerk (“kafkaesque” now means absurdity)

-Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being), was born in Brno but has lived in exile in France since 1975 after he criticized the Czech government and his books were banned until the Velvet Revolution in 1989

-Milos Forman directed One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus

-Martina Navratilova, Jaromir Jagr, Dominik Hasek

-The Czech Republic is the homeland of many supermodels: Eva Herzigova, Paulina Porizkova, Petra Nemcova

-Ivana Trump, Madeleine Albright (former US Secretary of State)

 
QUIRKY FACTS

-Following the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, the country found itself without a common single-world name. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs suggested Czechia, but it never really caught on

-According to The Economist, the Czech Republic has earned "a reputation for promoting human rights at every turn". EU officials have been irritated by the Czech Republic's activism in human rights. Kosovo was one of the main EU issues in 2009 (with Czech as the Presidency of the Council)

-The Czech Republic has the most Wi-Fi subscribers in the European Union


Language Tips

Hello: dobry’den

Goodbye: na shledanou

Please: byt prijemny

Thank You: dikuji

Excuse Me/Sorry: prominte

Yes: Ano

No: Ne

Do you speak English?: Činit tebe mluvit Anglicky

Where is?: kde is?

How much?: Kolik?

One: jeden

Two: dva

Three: troyka

Four: ctyri

Five: pet

Water: voda

Beer: pivo

Wine: vino

Cheers!: Na Zdravi!