Introduction to Bohemia
Bohemia, a historic region of central Europe that in the Middle Ages was a powerful kingdom. Today it forms the western part of the Czech Republic, covering an area of about 20,000 square miles (52,000 km2). On the east, it adjoins the region of Moravia; on the northeast, Poland; on the west, Germany; and on the south, Austria. Prague (Praha), capital of the former Bohemian kingdom and of the Czech Republic, is just north of the center of Bohemia, on the Vltava (Moldau) River.
Early History
The first people known to migrate to Bohemia were the Boii, a Celtic group that gave the region its name. In the first century A.D. a Germanic people, the Marcomanni, settled in the area. They were displaced in about the sixth century by a western Slavic people, the Czechs, who are known in history as the Bohemians. Related groups settled Moravia and the region to its east, Slovakia.
The West Slavs were converted to Christianity by the Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius, who later became saints. During the ninth century, German missionaries succeeded in displacing the Byzantine rite with the Roman rite. A West Slavic kingdom that included Bohemia was created in the last third of the ninth century by Moravia. However, it was destroyed by Magyar (Hungarian) attacks in 906, and Bohemia became an independent duchy ruled by the native Premysl family.
The best-known ruler of the Premysl line was Duke Wenceslaus ("Good King Wenceslaus" of the Christmas carol), who ruled in the early 10th century. He was zealous in spreading Christianity and became the patron saint of Bohemia. When Otto I founded the Holy Roman Empire in 962, Bohemia became a part of it.
Under the House of Premysl, Bohemia was expanded to include Moravia, Silesia, and, at times, Poland. The duchy was elevated to a kingdom in the 12th century. In 1257 its ruler became a German elector, one of the nobles who chose the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Bohemia became a powerful force in German affairs, and many Germans migrated to it.
In 1251 the Austrians chose a Bohemian prince to rule them. In 1253 he succeeded to the Bohemian throne as Ottokar II, later known as “the Great.” During his reign. which temporarily united Bohemia and Austria, silver mines were opened in Bohemia, which was soon the most prosperous European nation of its time. Territorial expansion southward all the way to the Adriatic Sea brought fierce opposition from Emperor Rudolph I and various German princes. however. Ottokar, forced to give up the southern lands, was killed in battle in 1278 while trying to regain them. When the Premysl line died out in 1306, Bohemia was stripped of its remaining conquests. I.)
The Bohemian Reformation
In 1310 the Bohemian throne passed to a member of the Luxemburg family, then holding the position of Holy Roman Emperor. Under Emperor Charles IV (1347–78) Bohemia achieved its Golden Age. The University of Prague, founded in 1348, was the first university in central Europe. Intellectual activity led to religious dissension, which became widespread under the leadership of the reformer John Huss (1369?–1415). Betrayed by Emperor Sigismund, who had promised him safe conduct to a church council to defend his views and then allowed the council to arrest him for heresy, Huss was burned at the stake. This provoked rebellion by Huss's followers, who demanded both religious and political reforms and, when Sigismund inherited the Bohemian throne in 1419, refused to recognize the new king. The resulting Hussite Wars ended in 1434 only when a church council agreed to accept moderate Hussites as members of the Catholic church.
A Hussite nobleman, George of Podebrad, was elected king of Bohemia in 1458. In 1462 Pope Paul II deposed him, and again there was fighting. George regained the throne with aid from Poland, and on his death left the throne to a Polish prince, Ladislas II, who shortly became monarch of Hungary also. When Ladislas's son and successor was killed in 1526 fighting the Turks, both thrones passed by marriage to Ferdinand of Hapsburg, archduke of Austria and, from 1556, Holy Roman Emperor. From that time on the Hapsburg ruler of Austria was also monarch of Bohemia.
A religious conflict between the largely Protestant population of Bohemia and the Catholic Hapsburgs led in 1618 to the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. The Bohemians were totally defeated by the Catholic forces and lost almost all voice in the government of their country. All Protestant churches were outlawed. The Bohemian (or Moravian) Brethren, the church founded by the Hussites, was almost destroyed.
The Hapsburg Era
The persecution of Protestants in Bohemia by its Hapsburg rulers resulted in a mass emigration of Bohemian aristocrats and merchants. Their places were taken by immigrants from Catholic regions of Germany and from other Hapsburg domains. German became the language of the upper classes. The population, about 3,000,000 in 1618, fell to about 800,000 by 1654, just six years after the war's end; more than 550 towns were abandoned.
Hapsburg rule in Bohemia was increasingly autocratic after the Thirty Years' War. The Catholic faith was imposed through forced conversion and the expulsion of non-Catholic clergy, and German became the official language for administrative matters.
Silesia, long a part of Bohemia, was seized by Prussia in 1740 and was not regained by the Hapsburgs in either the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) or the Seven Years' War (1756–63). Bohemia became little more than a province of Austria, although Austria's rulers retained the separate title of Bohemian monarch. Before Maria Theresa's reign ended in 1780, Bohemian schools were being conducted in German rather than Czech.
Austria, however, did not destroy Czech identity. The Royal Bohemian Society of Science was founded in 1784. In 1791 the University of Prague established a department of Czech language and literature. A feeling of nationalism began to grow in Bohemia. In 1848, when popular revolts were occurring all over Europe, a Bohemian revolutionary movement began in Prague, but it was quickly crushed by Austria.
In 1867 the Hapsburg domains, excluded from the newly formed North German Confederation, became the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the dissolution of the empire after World War I, Bohemia was joined with Moravia and Slovakia to form Czechoslovakia. In 1993, after the breakup of Czechoslovakia, Bohemia became a part of the newly independent Czech Republic.
For biographies of noted Bohemians,