Language loyalty and language shift in Bohemia in the long 19^th century based on the language biography of Friedrich (Bedřich) Smetana

ABSTRACT

Language loyalty can be viewed from the perspective of both language stability and language shift. The paper focuses primarily on the latter as it shows how the Bohemian composer Friedrich Smetana (1824–1884) shifted from a predominate use of German to Czech in private and official correspondence and his diaries to become known as the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana. This change serves as a model of the collective language and social shift in Bohemia in the long 19^th century. The paper shows, however, that Smetana encountered difficulties in making the language shift from German to Czech due to the stability of his previous language loyalty to German, tracing both Smetana’s subsequent evaluation of the limited language shift’s success and his explanation of its failure. In this regard, the study also considers the narrative of a Germanisation Smetana invokes to explain his loyalty to the German language during his education and beyond due to the Germanisation of educational institutions. The paper thus shows how Smetana’s narrative of his own language biography is a model narrative for his generation as whole.

KEYWORDS:

• Diglossia
• language biography
• language loyalty
• language ideology
• language shift
• Bohemia
• Czech
• German

Introduction

There are many historic and several sociolinguistic publications on Czech-German diglossia and its later normalisation.¹ Most studies refer to legislative and other top-down regulations on the macro level, especially in public domains, such as administration, education etc.² These investigations touch on the dominance of German in the Czech-German diglossia and the subsequent gradual language shift from Czech to German.³ However, this process was stopped by language shift from German to Czech and the normalisation of Czech-German diglossia. It was ideologically motivated and proceeded from the bottom-up to liberate Czech and make it equal to German.⁴

The process of normalisation of the Czech-German diglossia can be seen as a result of a specific social development in the highly industrialised and nationally mobilised Czech lands. It is in stark contrast to the situation in Upper Hungary where Slovak was replaced by Hungarian in the Slovak-Hungarian diglossia. This process of substitution is known as Magyarisation. Unlike Slovaks in Upper Hungary, the Czech national movement was able to win over members of the bilingual middle class with Czech as their first language to the Czech national agenda Czech political parties had been pressing since the 1860s. They successfully presented the linguistic asymmetry of Czech-German diglossia as a socially relevant language conflict and thus gained support for the linguistic emancipation of Czech in public domains such as administration, education etc. on the macro level. The consequence was a relatively abrupt language shift from German to Czech in the generation of Czech bilingual speakers who had been educated before the 1860s.⁵ At the micro level, the impact of the regressive language shift from a predominately German language regime in Bohemia ‘back’ to a Czech language regime in Prague and Czech parts of Bohemia has rarely been the object of linguistic study.

This study focusses on the Bohemian composer Friedrich Smetana (1824–1884), known after 1860 as Bedřich Smetana. After adopting his new ‘Czech’ role in the 1860s, Smetana and his musical oeuvre played a crucial role in Czech national mobilisation during the second half of the 19^th century. Smetana’s unique role, posthumously reiterated by Zdeněk Nejedlý (1878–1962), the Czech musicologist and communist minister of culture in post-war Czechoslovakia, has led to the painstaking documentation and preservation of his works, letters, diaries and other biographical documents in the Museum of Bedřich Smetana in Prague (founded in 1936). These source materials are the basis for my study of Smetana’s language biography, language use and language shift from German to Czech, which becomes visible in the change from his German first name Friedrich to the Czech Bedřich. While in previous research I described Smetana’s language biography and his proficiency in German and Czech (Nekula & Rychnovská 2016; Nekula 2016), I am now concentrating on the language shift beginning in his written communication in the 1860s. I maintain that his abrupt language shift signifies the reorientation of his horizontal (language) loyalty from one language to another language community and points to the erosion of his vertical loyalty to established authorities. I therefore begin my study with the concept of loyalty, more specifically with the concept of language loyalty, as a theoretical framework for explaining Smetana’s specific language shift in more detail in the second part of my paper.

There are many compelling reasons to study Smetana more closely: (1) Smetana is a composer and a musician, not an author or a philologist. He can therefore be viewed as a prototypical middle-class user of Czech and German in Bohemia between 1824, when he was born, and 1884, when he died. (2) At the same time, he was and is one of the most prominent and well-documented figures of the Czech national movement as it was becoming a mass movement re/presented and established by national associations and parties and ultimately played a role in institutions in the cultural, economic, administrative and educational sphere.⁶ (3) From this point of view, Smetana’s language use and his language shift from German to Czech in his written communication, which he justified ideologically, seems to be prototypical for his generation, especially for members of the bilingual middle class that reoriented their horizontal (language) loyalty from German to Czech and their vertical loyalty from the universal Empire to the ethnically conceptualised Czech Kingdom. Despite their idealistic enthusiasm, the abrupt reverse language shift from German ‘back’ to Czech could hardly be successful. Texts, documented not only in Smetana’s letters, but also in letters written by Czech artists such as Josef Mánes (1820–1871), Josef Adalbert (Vojtěch) Hellich (1807–1880) and others, reveal that these linguistically prototypical members of the Czech bilingual middle class, born before 1848 and educated before the 1860s, did not have a command of standard Czech because it was not taught in schools. As a result of higher education being offered only in German, parents also opted for German primary schools and those who would become later prominent Czech artists were not interested in Czech in their youth. The discrepancy between their involvement in the Czech national movement based on a language agenda and their limited proficiency of standard Czech was a problem for some after 1861. The collective narrative of Germanisation was evoked to explain this disparity. In this sense, the ‘thick description’ of Smetana’s language biography shows the macro of the changing language situation within contemporary Bohemia in the micro of an individual language management and use.⁷

Loyalty, language loyalty, and other terms

The more general concept of loyalty as defined by the German historian Martin Schulze Wessel may be connected to the linguistic concept of loyalty. Schulze Wessel explained the concept of loyalty in a paper in 2004 and has revised his understanding of loyalty several times since, most recently in the introduction to Exploring Loyalty (2017), edited by Schulze Wessel and Jana Osterkamp. In his paper from 2004, Schulze Wessel places loyalty alongside devotion (fidelity, faith, faithfulness). He thus characterises loyalty as the emotional relationship of an individual or individuals to a state and its institutions and as a relationship between an individual and a community. In this sense, loyalty is a process, in which the individual submits and commits to fulfiling his obligations towards the authority of a state (Habsburg Empire) and/or to an ethnic (Czech) community (Schulze Wessel 2004, 3). The stability of this relationship is characteristic for both vertical loyalty (fidelity) to an institution or state as well as horizontal loyalty (devotion) to a community. This relationship therefore also remains stable during the time in which loyalty does not yield any benefits to the individual or in which loyalty is in conflict with own interests.

In contrast with legality, which represents the outer dimension of the relationship between an individual and an authority, loyalty represents the inner dimension of this relationship based on emotions (Schulze Wessel 2004, 3). Referring to the Bible, Schulze Wessel claims that the outer dimension of the relationship to the authority of God was emphasised by Pharisees, the inner by Evangelists (Schulze Wessel 2004, 3). In this way he shows the differing assessment of these two vertical relations between an individual and an authority.

Schulze Wessel further compares the notion of loyalty to the notion of identity (Schulze Wessel 2004, 9 f). While loyalty arising from social interaction is stable, it can, of course, erode and disappear, and plural loyalties can be reconfigured in social communication. In contrast, identity – in Central Europe prominently based on language – is presented as essential, eternal, and singular in the language ideologies and national discourse of the long 19^th century.⁸ That is why Schulze Wessel prefers the analytical concept of loyalty to the member category of identity in analysing the complex and dynamic relationships between individuals and authorities or individuals and (ethnolinguistic) communities. By contrast, contemporary protagonists of (Czech) emancipatory discourse revaluated horizontal loyalty in terms of identity and devaluated vertical loyalty in terms of legality in the long 19^th century. We will also find this strategy in Smetana’s retrospective narration concerning his loyalty, which seems to be quite typical for his generation as a whole.

I would like to trace this concept of loyalty with respect to language loyalty. In doing so, I am drawing on the American sociolinguist Joshua Fishman, perhaps the best-known scholar dealing with language loyalty and language shift. He used the term language loyalty to describe the relationship of individuals to their minor ethnolinguistic community in the U.S. (Fishman 1966) Though a rural background and a low level of identification with an ethnonational agenda were characteristic of members of these minorities, they became aware of their ethnolinguistic exclusivity in a foreign (American) environment. The consequence was language loyalty to the minority language and social solidarity within the minority based on everyday linguistic and social practices. The emotional horizontal loyalty of immigrants to their minority language and community was certainly not in conflict with their vertical loyalty to the American authorities. Nevertheless, social changes (like reduced migration to the U.S., migration within the U.S. as a consequence of crises as well as the obligatory use of English in school) eventually reduced the social complexity, cohesion, and stability of the ethnolinguistic minority, as well as their everyday use of the minority language. Because the ethnolinguistic minority could no longer satisfy the social needs of its members, restructuring became necessary in the social as well as in the linguistic sense. The consequence was the gradual erosion of the minority language (communicative needs were not satisfied). In this sense, the gradual progressive language shift from the minority heritage language to English was based in linguistic practice. In consequence, the horizontal (language) loyalty correlated with a vertical loyalty to the American authorities.

The situation of the Czech minority living in diaspora in the U.S. in the 19^th century was, of course, quite different from that in 19^th century Bohemia where Czech was ‘marginalised’ by top-down language planning from 1770s to 1850s. During the following process of revitalisation, bilingual users of Czech and German with Czech ethnic backgrounds ‘reversed’ their gradual language shift from Czech to German and in the 1860s, they abruptly shifted from the written German mastered in German elementary and grammar schools to written Czech, even though they were not proficient enough to write it correctly. This means that this process was not based in linguistic practice but, unlike in the U.S., was motivated ideologically. Despite notable differences between (progressive) language shift and regressive (reversing) language shift, Fishman’s explanation helps us understand Smetana’s situation during his Swedish exile. When examining letters and diaries, we may observe how he became aware of his ethnolinguistic exclusivity in Göteborg (Gothenburg). Smetana’s abrupt language shift from (written) German to (written) Czech, however, was not caused by the linguistic reality of his exile, but rather motivated by his language ideology concerning the role of Czech and German in Bohemia. The same seems to explain the regressive (reversing) language shift from (written) German back to (written) Czech that took place in the Czech lands of the early 1860s after the ‘fall’ of Czech’s once powerful role during and after the Thirty Years’ War. Smetana’s regressive language shift seems to be a lens for the process of revitalisation of Czech by reversing the ongoing language shift taking place in his homeland.⁹ The comparison of progressive language shift and regressive language shift will also be discussed later.

Friedrich Smetana’s language biography

The following section outlines Smetana’s language biography before his deliberate abrupt language shift, which his name change from the German Friedrich to the Czech Bedřich in 1860 marked and in which he chose to write in his flawed Czech instead of his nearly flawless German.¹⁰

Diaries, letters and other sources suggest that Franz and Barbara Smettana (written by the Smetanas in German instead of Czech spelling), the composer’s parents, most likely preferred to converse in Czech at home and in church. (The composer was baptised, confirmed and married in a Czech church.) Despite this preference, Smetana’s father became relatively proficient in German, indicated by his subscription to the German newspaper Bohemia. As a lessee of breweries, he was certainly able to conduct business in the German or multilingual environment of Vienna, Pilsen (Plzeň), Prussian Silesia and later in Chwalkowitz (Chvalkovice), Leitomischl (Litomyšl), Neuhaus (Jindřichův Hradec), and Ruschko-Lhotitz (Růžkovy Lhotice), where officials at the chateaux were mixed with regard to the language they used.

In the private sphere, both parents preferred Czech in personal texts. The composer’s mother Barbora, originally Lynek/Lynková (1792–1864), made the following note about her wedding in Czech:

Dne 20. Novembru roku 1820 […] sem mnela kopŭlaci v Hořiciich Pan dekan Handl nas kopŭlirowal s Fra[n]ti∫∫kem Smetannou sladkem na Nowim Mnėste.¹¹

On 20 November 1820 […] I had my wedding in Hořice. The priest Handl married me to František Smetana, head brewer in Nové Město.

Smetana’s father, Franz Smetana (1777–1857), also noted the birth of his son in Czech:

Dne 2. Martʒi [1]824 auterij 10. hodin Rano Narodilse Sinaǯek. Meno danobillo Frid[r]ig jeho pani kmotřij pan doktor dostal a babiǯka.¹²

Our little son was born at 10 o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, 2 March 1824. He was given the name Friedrich, and his godparents were Dr. Dostál and the midwife.

Their written Czech is, of course, not simply due to old orthography but also due to limited schooling.

The Smetanas gave their sons German first names (Anton, Karl Franz, Friedrich) and sent them to German schools in order to maintain their middle-class status their parents had secured (social gratification) or to climb higher on the social ladder. Friedrich thus began his education in the Piarist German elementary school in Leitomischl in 1829, even though his parents could have opted for a Czech school at this level instead. Following elementary school, they had no option save a German school; the first Czech grammar school opened in Tabor (Tábor) in 1862. Friedrich Smetana thus only attended German elementary and grammar schools in Neuhaus (1831–35), Iglau/Jihlava (1835–36), Deutsch-Brod/Havlíčkův Brod (1836–39), Prague (1839–40), and Pilsen (1840–43). After completing grammar school in 1843, he attended a conservatory in Prague from 1844 to 1847 where the language of instruction was German. Smetana’s jobs and public activities depended on his proficiency in and use of German until the early 1860s: he was in the service of Count Thun in the 1840s and played piano for the former emperor Ferdinand V at Prague Castle in 1850. Beginning in 1848, he not only taught, Czech, pupils at the conservatory such as the daughters and sons of the families of František Palacký, Josef Adalbert (Vojtěch) Hellich, Josef Jiří Kolár etc., but also members of the noble families Nostitz, Thun, Lobkowitz, Sporck, Wolkenstein and Bellegarde predominantly using German. Smetana also relied on German as a Lingua franca in Göteborg (Gothenburg), where he served as choirmaster for a singing society from 1856 to 1861 (respectively 1862) and established his own conservatory which members of wealthy (Jewish) families attended.

Smetana spoke Czech in private conversations and even wrote in German in his personal texts. In 1840, while transferring from the grammar school in Prague to the grammar school in Pilsen (when he was only 16), he began keeping a diary in German and continued this practice until 1862 (which means about 22 years), when he began using Czech in his diary. He similarly began writing to his future wife Katharina, born ‛Kolarz’ or Kolář (1827–1859) in Pilsen in German and only switched to Czech (see bold letters below) only in emotionally charged places:

Doch jetzt bitte ich, na Kolenach prosjm, schreiben Sie mir wieder zum 3ten Male nach Růschkolhotitz über Wlaschim, Čechtitz, do třetice wšeho dobrého, schreiben Sie […].¹³

Yet I ask you, begging you on my knees, write to me again a third time to Růschkolhotitz via Wlaschim, Čechtiz––third time’s a charm––write […].

After their wedding Smetana continued this practice in his correspondence with both Katharina and his mother-in-law until his wife’s death in 1859.

His wife regularly spoke Czech with him and their children:

Sie [= Fritzchen] sprang fortwährend ganz lustig herum u. rief: tady se mne to libi, tady wostanem!¹⁴

She [i.e. Fritzchen = Bedřiška] constantly jumped about merrily and cried: I like it here, we’ll stay here!

She nevertheless preferred German at the conservatory founded by her husband and in her diaries and private letters to him––including a letter dated 31 August 1855 about how their much-beloved daughter Fritzi was dying.

After his first wife’s death, Smetana also used German in his correspondence with his second wife Bettina, born Ferdinandi (1840–1908), whom he had married on 10 July 1860. Occasionally, albeit rarely, Smetana switched to Czech when the children were concerned and he was emotionally involved. The couple later began corresponding in Czech in order to practice the language. This specific language management was likely intended to improve Smetana’s proficiency in written Czech (language management) by increasing the frequency of its use (communicative management) without fear of sanctions for having an insufficient command of standard Czech (socioeconomic management) in Czech national institutions as well as in public discourse.¹⁵ The inconstancy of this practice may be seen in Smetana’s (Czech) comments on Bettina’s letter written in German on 15 August 1865:

Dívná věc, že si mně zase z německým psaníčkem oblažila, snad pro ten tamnejší vzduch, ktery okolo Lamberku vladne?¹⁶

It’s strange that you’ve blessed me again with a letter in German––perhaps because of the air that prevails there around Lamberk?

However, during an acute crisis in their partnership the couple exchanged letters in German on 13 April 1871. Both obviously desired to communicate precisely and unfettered in this situation, emotionally involved on the other end of the scale. Bettina Smetana’s diaries from 1856 to 1908 are also found in the Bedřich Smetana Museum––and in German.

To sum up the data from Bedřich Smetana’s language biography, we can see that his everyday linguistic practice was shaped considerably by the use of German in situations outside the family and church, while observing a gradual language shift from Czech to German in the family started by his parents. Czech, his first language, became the secondary language, whereas German, his second language, became the primary language. This gradual language shift was motivated by the specific language situation in the linguistically mixed Bohemian lands within the Habsburg Empire characterised as Czech-German diglossia (German was used in the school system and public sphere) as well as by the goals Smetana’s parents had for their son. In consequence, save for one exception, Smetana exclusively used German in his written communication before 1860.

Using the concept of loyalty, we can see language loyalty to German and lacking language loyalty to Czech and the Czech community in Smetana’s family, as well as in his own language management before 1860. We can see that his German diaries do not contain any proclamation of loyalty to Czech or the Czech community. They also lack any identity discourse. Smetana used the German version of his name and of the names of his close relatives (Franz for his father and Barbara for his mother) in his German diaries. His compositions have German titles or dedications throughout this time (see ‘Luisen-Polka’).

The aforementioned language loyalty to German and the missing language loyalty to Czech are expressed by Smetana himself in his diary entry on 2 March 1841:

Ach Gott! Was ich nicht lachen muss. Eine hat sich in mich verliebt, Eine, die sehr wenig Bildung besitzt, ja nicht einmal recht gut deutsch kann!! – Davon abgesehen, ist sie älter als ich.¹⁷

Oh God! Isn’t it laughable? A girl has fallen in love with me, a girl who is hardly educated and can’t even speak proper German!! And besides that, she’s older than I am.

It is important to note his attitude to language and the accompanying emotions. She is not lovable because she is Czech, that would be usual in Czech poetry of the time, but is laughable because she does not know German.

His diary entry about the wife of Mr. Brosch on January 14, 1841 shows that he nevertheless at least took note of the patriotic movement of the time:

Der Herr Brosch ist die Gefälligkeit selbst, und seine Frau!! Die ist noch besser. Eine enorme Patriotinn, eine wahre Cžechinn. Aber nicht daß sie vielleicht kein deutsch könnte! Nein, vielmehr nur zu gut versteht sie’s.¹⁸

Mr. Brosch is kindness itself. And his wife!! She is even better. A tremendous patriot, a true Czech. But this is not to say she doesn’t know German! On the contrary, she understands it only too well.

Considering Smetana’s clarification that Mrs. Brož’s Czech patriotism is not based on her inaptitude in German one may infer he views it as the result of a ‛true’ choice, yet he remains far from an essential ethnolinguistic identity discourse and from horizontal loyalty to an exclusively Czech speaking community. The expression of loyalty to German quoted above followed six weeks later.

The language loyalty to German corresponds to both his horizontal loyalty to the wide (universal) German speaking music community and his vertical loyalty to the imperial authorities and the (German or bilingual) language management of official institutions in Bohemia. His horizontal loyalty can be ascertained in his German correspondence, his oeuvre, which uses German, and his reference to universal and German motifs (Richard III, Macbeth, Cid, Wiking-Fahrt, Marie Stuart, Hakon Jarl, Wallensteins Lager) as well as on his visits; in Weimar he was a guest of Franz Liszt (1857) and in Leipzig he participated in a congress of German musicians (1859). He was present at the unveiling of a monument to Goethe and Schiller in Weimar. The stay in Leipzig included excursions to the Wartburg and to Eisenach. On these occasions, he used the first name ‘Friedrich,’ or as an exception, the French equivalent ‘Fréderic.’¹⁹ The vertical loyalty can be observed in his use of both languages in his conservatory in Prague (from 1848 onward) with his noble bilingual and predominantly German speaking clientele, in his contact to the former emperor Ferdinand V (1850), in the use of the Austrian imperial anthem in his Triumph-Sinfonie (1853–54), as well as in his attempt to dedicate this work to the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I and his bride to celebrate their wedding in 1854.

Smetana’s language shift from German to Czech

This section is dedicated to Smetana’s language shift from German to Czech in written texts in the early 1860s which also indicates a reorientation of his horizontal and vertical loyalties. This may be taken as a model for shifts occurring on the micro level and reflects a general shift in public domains on the macro level. This shift seems to be the result of language politics that are based on collectively shared language ideologies that explain social inequality in terms of language and use the increasingly covert prestige of Czech within the Czech language community to promote an ethnonational agenda.

On the one hand, Czech bilinguals in Bohemia seem to be widely participating in the language shift and reconfiguration of loyalties. The difference from Czech immigrants in the U.S. was mentioned above: the Bohemian shift from a well-mastered standard form of the second language (German) to the fragmentally acquired written form of the first language (Czech) that reversed the language shift from Czech to German, was not based in linguistic practice but rather was motivated by ideology. In a German entry in his diary on 1 January 1862 Smetana views his shift from written German to written Czech in the ideological context of the national movement:

Bei dem wiedererwachten Bewußtsein unserer Nationalität ist es auch mein Streben, das Studium unserer schönen Sprache zu vollenden, um mich, seit meiner Kindheit nur an deutschen Unterricht gewöhnt, ebenso čechisch wie deutsch mit Leichtigkeit mündlich u. schriftlich ausdrücken zu können. […] Es wäre nun in Ordnung, mein Tagebuch in der Muttersprache zu führen. Da ich aber dieses Buch in altgewohnter Weise deutsch begann, will ich es nun auch zu Ende führen. Indessen eigne ich mir die leider sehr vernachlässigte (wohl meist durch Schuld unserer Regierung u. der Schulen) Muttersprache so an, daß ich sie ebenso geläufig als richtig werde schreiben können.²⁰

With the awakened awareness of our nation, I, too, strive to improve to complete the study of our beautiful language in order that I, accustomed since childhood only to instruction in German, might be able to easily express myself both orally and in writing in Czech as well as in German. […] It would therefore be fitting for me to keep my diary in my native language. However, since I began this book in the customary way in German, I will thus finish it. In the meantime, I shall master our very neglected mother tongue (the fault of our government and schools), to the extent that I shall be able write it not only fluently but correctly.

On the other hand, Smetana’s language shift was unique both with respect to his motivation and the place where the language shift was realised.

Smetana’s vertical loyalty to the authorities starts to erode in the 1850s during the era of Bach’s neoabsolutism: the emperor rejected Smetana’s dedication of the Triumph Symphony in 1854 and the composer’s conservatory for bilinguals including the German-speaking elite in Prague was proving to be less profitable than expected. However, Smetana’s decision to leave Prague for Göteborg in 1856 was also motivated by his personal life: in the late 1850s he lost three of his four daughters, Gabriela [=Jellčel] (1852–1854), Kathi [=Kateřina] (1855–1856) as well as his talented and much-beloved daughter Fritzi [=Bedřiška] (1851–1855). Only Sophie [=Sofel], married Schwarz (1853–1902), reached adulthood.

Similar to Czech immigrants in the U.S., Smetana also seems to become aware of his first language in a foreign environment. But whereas Czech immigrants in the U.S. continued to use Czech, Smetana wrote his first verifiable letter in Czech upon his arrival in Göteborg in a letter to his parents on 23 December 1856, one day before Christmas Eve. It seems to be a very emotional time to write a letter: Smetana is in exile, shortly after the deaths of three daughters, while his wife Katharina had fallen ill and remained in Prague. Katharina and their daughter Sofel accompanied Smetana to Göteborg in 1857, where his wife became so ill that she could not return to Prague in the summer of 1858. Longing to die in her homeland, she passed away in Dresden in the spring of 1859 en route to Prague. During the following concert season, Smetana longed for both his homeland and Bettina,²¹ whom he had met in the summer of 1859 after the death of his first wife and who was to become his second wife one year later.

In his longing, Smetana received a letter from his former student Jan Ludevít Procházka (1837–1888). On 11 March 1860 Smetana noted in his diary in German that Procházka had requested songs in Czech in a letter written in Czech.²² The specific request for Czech songs helped him recognise the profound social changes in Bohemia which had followed the emperor’s vow to give the people a new constitution. Czech now seemed to be present in the public space and the public use of Czech that demonstrated horizontal (language) loyalty seemed to not only be a new communicative norm, but also a form of social capital in an awakened Czech community in Prague and Bohemia.²³

Smetana therefore replied to Procházka in Czech, although he knew quite well that his proficiency in written Czech was not good enough––he combined old and new orthography and used German word order by placing Czech verbs at the end of dependent clauses:

Prosjm, bi jste [abyste] mně předevšým [především] odpustíl [odpustil] wšecky chybi [chyby] jak ortograficky tak grammatykálnj [jak ortografické tak gramatické], ktere [které] v hojně se v mým psanj nalesnau [které se v mém psaní hojně/často nalézají/vyskytují]; neb až do dnešnjho časů [dnešní doby] mně nebylo dopřáno, se v naší mateřské řečí dotwrdjtj [dotwrditi./dotvrditi.] Od mládj skoro v němčíně [němčině] jak w školách [ve/na školách] tak w společnostjch [společností/ve společnosti] wíchowán [vychováván], nedbal jsem, dokud jsem býl [byl] študentem [studentem], jiného se učitj [učiti], k čemů [čemu] jsem nebyl nucený [nucen], a pozděic [později] božska [božská] hudba w šecků [všecku/všechnu] moji sílů [mou sílu] a cely [celý] čas pro sebe zabrala, tak že teď k hanbě to musjm přiznatj, neůmjm [neumjm/neumím] se patřičně vijádritj [vyjádřiti], anj [ani] napsatj [napsati] v česke [české] řečí [řeči]. Ale ta předhůzka ne jen mně treffy nýbrž také naše školy, á - - t. d.!! Že ale jsem z tělem [tělem] a dušj Čechem a chonosým [honosím] se bjtj [býti] sýnem [synem] naší sláví [Slávy], to nemusjm opakowatj [opakowati/opakovati]. Proto taky se nestjdjm [nestydím] Vám odpowědětj v matřském jazikem [mateřským jazykem] ačkoliv chybně, á [a] těšjm se, že jest mně to dopřano [dopřáno], Vám vijevytí [vyjeviti] ják [jak/že] wlasť [wlast/vlast] naše mně nadevšecko [nade všecko] jde [je]. […] Vás mnohokrate [mnohokráte] vítaje [zdravě] zůstávám/s úctau/Bedřich Smetana²⁴

I ask you above all to forgive all the mistakes in both orthography and grammar, of which there are plenty in my writing; to this day I have never had an opportunity to improve my proficiency in our mother tongue. Having been educated in German almost from early childhood, both in schools and in society, I did not bother to learn anything that I was not forced to learn as a student, and later divine music took all my power and all my time; so that I must confess to my disgrace that I cannot properly express myself or write in the Czech language. However, this rebuke applies not only to me but also to our schools, and to – other factors!! But I need not repeat that I am a Czech in body and soul and proud to be a son of our glory. And therefore, I am not embarrassed to answer you in my mother-tongue, though with errors, and I am pleased that it is granted to me to express to you that our homeland means more than anything to me. […] sincerely yours Bedřich Smetana

The language choice outside of his homeland, also marked by the language shift in his first name, can be understood as an expression of loyalty to the homeland and Czech community Procházka represents; Smetana stresses his devotion to his ‘homeland’ and declares his first language his ‘mother tongue.’²⁵ Smetana certainly knew that his limited proficiency in written Czech, the result of his predominant use of German before 1860, reveals a lack of language loyalty to Czech and to the Czech community since he had allowed his first and become his secondary language. However, when he ‘confess[es]’ that he is not able to write in Czech and asks Procházka to ‘forgive’ his [Smetana’s] ‘mistakes,’ he does not mean he has personally ‘betrayed’ Czech. He explains the partial loss of his ‘mother tongue’ in his ‘early childhood’ (as a he was child not responsible for the school choice and loss of his language) by blaming the school system and society. Since he did not himself cause the partial loss of his ‘mother tongue,’ it is not his fault: the use of German is further explained in categories of ‘power.’ He ‘was forced to learn’ German, or, as he phrased it in his letter to Eliška Krásnohorská on 25 November 1876, ‘he was Germanised.’²⁶ His language loyalty to German, including his vertical loyalty to its institutions, is now retrospectively translated into an outer relationship, or more accurately, reframed in the category of ‘legality.’

By contrast, the characterising Czech as his ‘mother tongue’ translates the inner relationship to Czech into the category of an ‘identity’ that is now emerging despite his ‘mistakes’ in grammar and orthography. He indicates the awakening of this formerly hidden identity in his language and name shift, the essentiality, eternity, and singularity of the ‘mother tongue’ and ‘Czechness’ become explicit in formulations like ‟I am a Czech in body and soul and proud to be a son of our glory” using organic and family imagery. The conceptualisation of the contemporary language situation in terms of ‘(true) identity’ furthermore resolves the paradox of the (partially) missing ‘mother tongue’ as manifested in a limited proficiency in the written form of his first language.

In using the narratives of ‘Germanisation’ associated with power and authorities and ‘awakening,’ Smetana places the communicative memory of his individual fate within the cadres sociaux²⁷ of collective memory using these cultural narratives which shape the imagination of the historical relations between the Czech Kingdom and the Habsburg Empire. Both narratives are usually combined into one to make clearly mark the erosion of vertical loyalty to imperial authority, institutions, and language planning from above. Smetana’s regressive language shift from German ‘back’ to Czech (reversing the language shift from German to Czech) can be seen as the consequence of a reorientation of his horizontal loyalty from German to Czech–a process opposite to that of the aforementioned American minorities. While members of the Czech minority, who were vertically loyal to American authorities, gradually changed their horizontal loyalty from the Czech community to the American community (as shown by their linguistic practice and their gradual language shift), Smetana and other members of the bilingual Czech-German community were motivated by ideology to first declare their changed horizontal loyalty before later also changing their vertical loyalty and their linguistic practice at least partially.

Back in the Czech lands, Smetana chose the popular Czech names Zdeňka (1861–1936) and Božena (1863–1961) for his daughters. Especially the name Zdeňka, which evokes the orphan of Karel Havlíček Borovský (1821–1856), seen as a national martyr, may be viewed as an expression of horizontal loyalty addressed to the Czech community. In keeping with this, the children later attended Czech schools. Smetana also came into contact with leaders of the Czech nationalist movement at Tuesday gatherings at the home of Rudolf Thurn-Taxis.²⁸ He also participated in the founding of the Umělecká beseda (Artists’ Society) and appeared at public nationalist events.²⁹ Thurn-Taxis promised Smetana he would support his efforts to become chief conductor of the provisional Czech theatre.³⁰ Despite this support and his own visible loyalty to the Czech language and community, Smetana was not immediately successful in this endeavour. However, he became chair of the music section of the Artists’ Society and choirmaster of the Hlahol singing association in January 1863. In a certain sense he also returned to the ‘womb of the nation’ in his compositions: he wrote the choruses Tři jezdci (The Three Riders) in 1862 and Odrodilec (The Renegade) in 1864 for Hlahol, which mirror his efforts to achieve national mobilisation and to rehabilitate himself as a navrátilec (one who has returned) who also explicitly declared his Czech origin in his letter of application for the position of director of the conservatory in Prague:

Schlußlich bemerke ich, daß ich von čechischen Eltern abstammend und in Folge der Erziehung beider Landessprachen vollkomen machtig bin, was auch meine schriftstellerische Thätigkeit beweisen kann.³¹

Finally, I point out that I am the son of Czech parents and have full command of both the country’s languages as a result, which my work as a writer demonstrates.

Despite Smetana’s statement, his reviews and articles for the Czech newspaper Národní listy (National News) were written in German and translated by the newspaper’s editor into Czech.³² When Jan Neruda later requested and received Smetana’s account of his experiences in the 1880s, the poet told Smetana he would have to edit his notes:

Ty kousky jsou zajímavy, schází jim jen stylistické spojení které tedy s Tvým dovolením přidám.³³

Thee fragments are interesting; they only lack stylistic connection, which I’ll add if you will so allow.

It is clear from Smetana’s letters and his calendar entries after the 1860s that he regularly took note of political happenings³⁴ and, especially in his calendar entries, that he perceived the political events in Bohemia and the Habsburg Empire in the national categories of Czechs and Germans, or the ‘Czech side’ and the ‘German side,’ reflecting the discourse of the time.³⁵ In this sense, he was reacting to the explosive political situation of the late 1860s. Although the polarity in the following quotation is more geographical than ethnic, it nevertheless shows the reorientation of his vertical loyalty as well:

Ve Vídni začina obrat pro Čechy, co následek českých voleb. Chtejí se výrovnat. My máme jen jednu odpověd. Právo státní koruny české.³⁶

In Vienna a turnabout for the Czechs is beginning as a result of the elections in Bohemia. They want to reach a settlement. We have only one answer. The rights of the Bohemian crown as a state.

Smetana becomes one of the prominent figures of the national music and art movements at the time in part thanks to his ‘royal’ opera Libuše, composed between 1869–1872 and premiering in 1881, and Má vlast (My country), the set of six symphonic poems composed between 1874 and 1879. The opera Libuše, ideologically distant from his ‘imperial’ Triumph Symphony, forms the ethnonational narrative of the eternal and awakened nation that connects past and present. The widespread imagination of an essential and eternal ‘mother tongue’ and of ‘Czechness,’ conceived as categories of ‘identity,’ had the political potential to change the language in public institutions such as administration, education, culture, industry and commerce––at least for future generations.

Language loyalty and language reality

In the preceding parts of this paper, I considered two types of language shift–a progressive gradual language shift from the vernacular to the dominant standard, based on linguistic practice (present e. g. in minorities in the US as well as in the context of Czech-German diglossia), and a regressive, ideologically motivated abrupt language shift from proficient use of the written form of a second language (German) to deficient use of the written form of a first language (Czech), reversing the language shift (here from German to Czech). It was, however, much easier to espouse the Czech ‘mother tongue’ than to actually write well in the first language. Smetana himself was unable to master this shift linguistically. Although he tried to learn standard Czech, he had gaps in Czech vocabulary and did not become proficient in regard to orthography or grammar (e.g. using the nominative ‘česká’ instead of the accusative [českou]) as some examples show:

‘chce s mojí operou dělat dobré “Geschäfte„’,³⁷ ‘aby konec arii byl “applausfähig”’,³⁸ and ‘jenž často je buď líné buď taky “begriffsstützig”,’³⁹ ‘než-li někam dělat Aufwartung, radějí platím’.⁴⁰

V politickém životě ta stará bída. Stav výmíneční [výjimečný] trvá pořád, proč, to žádný neví, než snad pání [páni] ministři. Vídeň je zkázou Prahy. Zdejší šlechta hodlá dávát [dávat] na Žofině [Žofíně] kprospěchu [ku prospěchu/ve prospěch] chramu [chrámu] sv. Víta velke [velké] představéní [představení], jehožto část česká [českou] mají vyplniti zlomky ze moji [z mé] zpěvohri [zpěvohry] Prodaná nevěsta.⁴¹

It’s the same old misery of political life. The state of emergency still continues––why nobody knows, except maybe the ministers. Vienna is the scourge of Prague. The nobility here plans to give a big show on Žofín Island to benefit the cathedral of St Vitus. The Czech part is to consist of fragments from my opera The Bartered Bride.

Despite repeating Czech standard vocabulary and grammar and practicing them by writing letters in Czech in private contexts, Smetana’s competence in written Czech remained limited, as attested by his personal letters written yet to his secretary Josef Srb in the 1880s, in which he gave up correcting erroneous forms and appealed to the addressee:

Smutná okolnost pro mně je tá, že stran české koncepce se musím vždy na výpomoc někoho jiného obrátit.⁴²

A sad circumstance for me is that when formulating something in Czech I always have to turn to someone else for help.

(gramatikálské sklonění si udělejte zde a jinde sám). Mám nazpěch.⁴³

(Provide the grammatical declensions here and elsewhere yourself.) I’m in a hurry.

Contemporaneous textbooks, for example the Ausführliches, theoretisch-praktisches Lehrbuch der böhmischen Sprache für Deutsche (Detailed Theoretical-Practical Instruction Book of the Czech Language for Germans), published by Tomáš Akvin Burian in 1839, suggest that having a deficient command of Czech was a common experience for all of Smetana’s generation:

Alle Slawen, eben so auch die Böhmen, lieben ihre Sprache; aber seit den Kinderjahren der Fortbildung derselben entrückt, finden es oft geborene Böhmen in den Jahren der männlichen Studien entweder zu mühsam, das Versäumte nachzuholen, oder es mangelt an Gelegenheit, sich in der Muttersprache auszubilden, um gut geschriebene Bücher lesen zu können. Die Nachtheile, die aus der Vernachlässigung der Muttersprache erwachsen, sind groß und zahlreich. (Quoted according to Newerkla 1998, 189)

All Slavs, including the Czechs, love their language. However, deprived of education therein since childhood, native Czechs often find it during their adult studies either too tiresome to repeat what they have missed, or they lack an opportunity to educate themselves in their mother tongue in order to read well-written books. The disadvantages that result from neglecting the mother tongue are great and numerous.

The Society of Czech Writers Svatobor (founded 1862) even bestowed awards on books for being written in a ‘good’ and ‘correct’ Czech rather than for their aesthetic qualities (Nekula 2017, 322 ff and 336 ff).

The collective experience of linguistic submersion in (or rather, submission to) German accompanied by a lack of support for speakers with Czech as their first language to acquire it, a missing appreciation for the Czech vernacular and the lack of opportunities for non-native speakers of German in the centre of the Empire⁴⁴ thus seem to drive the regressive language shift from German to Czech that was promoted from below and reversed the language shift from Czech to German promoted from above. This was triggered by the reorientation of horizontal loyalty in combination with the erosion of vertical loyalty. Bedřich Smetana’s generation carried out this regressive language shift more symbolically than linguistically.

Summary

What do we learn about the language situation in the Czech lands during the long 19^th century with respect to Czech when we view it through the lens of Smetana’s language biography and usage? And what is the added value of the analysis from the perspective of micro to macro in terms of methodology?

Having analysed the case of Friedrich (Bedřich) Smetana (on the micro level), we observed that the regressive language shift from German to Czech, which counteracted the language shift from Czech to German, was not the result of linguistic reality but due to language ideology. Smetana used the narrative of Germanisation to explain the tension between language ideologies and the reality of his language use and shape, arguing he was as an individual not responsible for the language shift from Czech to German, but rather, the shift was the result of his family upbringing that reflected the broad context of Bohemian society in the Habsburg Empire. With respect to language regulations on the macro level, Smetana’s case, i.e. his language use and shape, indeed seems to be quite typical for his time and generation. The collective experience of linguistic inadequacy with respect to Standard Czech, a language to be learned in textbooks tailored to this learner group, but not fully acquired, seems to feed the narrative of Germanisation, widely used to construct collective identity.

In this sense, Smetana’s well-documented life serves as a model for research on the precarious group of bilinguals whose lives are not similarly reported in contemporary sources. Neither imperial language planning and policy from above nor national language planning and policy from below were really interested in this group ‘in between’ because it was to be assimilated or respectively repressed out of shame for the alien. The study’s correlation of phenomena on the micro level to phenomena on the macro level suggests findings on the micro level apply also to the macro level. We may therefore view Smetana’s reduction of twofold loyalty to German to only vertical loyalty to German as a model to characterise an entire generation. This also seems to hold true for his later narrative that transforms loyalty into legality and for the later replacement of vertical loyalty to German represented by the Habsburg Monarchy by a vertical loyalty to Czech as represented in the Bohemian crown and state. It is also possible to draw conclusions from the micro level that apply to the macro level: reframing a missing loyalty to Czech language and community as a hidden subversive Czech identity and the transformation of a horizontal loyalty of language practice into vertical loyalty applies not only to Smetana, but also to other relevant parts of the awakened Czech community.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marek Nekula

Marek Nekula is professor of Western Slavic languages and literatures and chair of Bohemicum – Center for Czech Studies at the University of Regensburg, Germany. He is the author of Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts: Studies on Language and Literature (2016) and, in German and Czech, of Death and Resurrection of a Nation: Pantheon in Czech Literature and Culture (2017).

Notes

¹ The concept of diglossia was originally used to examine language varieties by Charles A. Ferguson (1959) and expanded to languages by Joshua A. Fishman (1967). I use the concept in this expanded sense and draw on the normalisation or substitution of diglossia as formulated by Georg Kremnitz (2005).

² For more see Hroch (2015), Křen (2000), Berger (2000), Stöhr (2010), Velčovský (2014).

³ See Berger (2005), Newerkla (1998).

⁴ For more on the theory of top-down and bottom-up language planning in the long 19^th century see Nekvapil (2011).

⁵ See King (2005) and Judson (2006).

⁶ For more on the Czech national movement and its phases as a model of national movement in small nations in Central Europe see Hroch (2015). More on the role of institutions in constructing nation/s in Brubaker (1996).

⁷ For more on ‘thick description’ see Geertz (1973 [2000]).

⁸ See Nekula (2014). More generally see Hroch (2015).

⁹ For more on revitalisation and reversing language shift see Fishman (2006).

¹⁰ For sources and more details see Nekula and Rychnovská (2016).

¹¹ Facsimile in Nejedlý (1924), illustration between pp. 188 and 189.

¹² Facsimile ibid.

¹³ Friedrich Smetana to Katharina Kolář, letter of August 6–7, 1843 (Smetana 2016, 12).

¹⁴ Katharina Smetana, Diary, part II, p. [45]. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum.

¹⁵ For more about levels in simple and organised language management realised by individuals, organisations and institutions see Nekvapil (2016).

¹⁶ Bedřich Smetana to Bettina Smetana, letter of 15 August 1865, cursive M.N. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum.

¹⁷ Bedřich Smetana, Diary, 2 March 1841. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum.

¹⁸ Bedřich Smetana, Diary, 14 January 1841. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum.

¹⁹ For instance, he signed his manuscript of the composition Ball-Vision from 1858, dedicated to Fröjda Benecke in Göteborg, as ‘Fréd.’ (abbreviation for Fréderic’). At the time he published several of his pieces under the name Fréderic Smetana.

²⁰ Bedřich Smetana, Diary, 31 December 1861 and 1 January 1862. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum.

²¹ “Sehnsucht nach meinem Vaterlande, nach Bettina!” Bedřich Smetana, Diary, 29 October 1859. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum. Similarly also in Bedřich Smetana, Diary, 5 September 1860.

²² ‘in čechischer Sprache, worin er mich um Mitwirkung zur Vorbereitung von Chören und Quartetten für Männergesang bittet, i.e. in čechischer Sprache.’ Bedřich Smetana, Diary, 5 March 1860, cursive by M.N. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum.

²³ On language as social capital see Bourdieu (1992 [1996]).

²⁴ Facsimile in Nejedlý (1924), note 11, published between pp. 328 and 329, transcription of letter by the author. Cursive emphasis of author.

²⁵ ‘Mother tongue’ is not used here as a term to describe proficiency as practiced within language acquisition research, but rather as a membership categorisation used in Smetana’s texts to analyse his discursive construction of ethnolinguistic identity as practiced within sociolinguistics and discourse analysis. In contrast to Smetana’s phrasing in texts written after 1860, I use the term ‘first language’ for Czech to denote Smetana’s history of language acquisition and the term ‘secondary language’ mean the language shift from Czech to German in his language biography before 1860.

²⁶ “Máte pravdu, že nerad korespondují, ale přičinou jest to, že zajedno píšu špatně český, nenaučil jsem se tomu v mládi, byl jsem germanisovan, a v stáři jsem neměl dosti časů k tomu, a za druhé vězí jakásí lenost a antipathie proti všemu dopisování v mém nítru.” Bedřich Smetana to Eliška Krásnohorská, letter of 25 November 1876. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum. See also Vočadlík (1940).

²⁷ On the concept of social frame of memory see Halbwachs (1992).

²⁸ Bedřich Smetana, Diary, February 1862. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum. See also Rychnovsky (1924, 135).

²⁹ For an example, see the unveiling of the plaque commemorating Karel Havlíček in Borová. See Bedřich Smetana to Bettina Smetana, letter of 23 August 1862 (Smetana 2016, 403).

³⁰ Bedřich Smetana, Diary, February 1862. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum.

³¹ Bedřich Smetana to the office of the Society for Support of Musical Art in Bohemia, letter of 23 April 1865. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum.

³² Later published as a book in Smetana (1920).

³³ The resulting text was published in Národní listy 21 (20 April 1881), no. 94, p. 1 under the title ‘Z “Druhého večera” divadelních táčků. Mistr Bedřich Smetana vypravuje.’ (From the ‘Second Evening’ of Tales from the Theatre: Master Bedřich Smetana Speaks.) Quoted according to Nejedlý (1924, 42).

³⁴ See for example Bedřich Smetana to Isaac Philip Valentin, letter of 24 January 1864, Bedřich Smetana to Fröjda Benecke, letter and of 3 April 1866, both devoted to the conflicts of Prussia with Denmark and Austria. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum.

³⁵ Bedřich Smetana, Diary, 5 March 1867. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum.

³⁶ Bedřich Smetana, Diary, early October 1869. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum.

³⁷ Bedřich Smetana to Josef Srb, letter from 22 February 1882. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum.

³⁸ Bedřich Smetana to Adolf Čech, 1 April 1881. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum.

³⁹ Bedřich Smetana to Adolf Čech, 1 April 1881. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum.

⁴⁰ Bedřich Smetana to Bettina Smetana, 12 July 1870. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum.

⁴¹ Bedřich Smetana, Diary, February 1869. Quoted from a transcript available in the Bedřich Smetana Museum.

⁴² Bedřich Smetana to Josef Srb, letter of 4 August 1881. Quoted from a transcript available in Museum Bedřicha Smetany.

⁴³ Bedřich Smetana to Josef Srb, letter of 18 September 1883. Quoted from a transcript available in the Museum Bedřicha Smetany.

⁴⁴ For more on the relevance of this aspect in mobilisation of national movements with respect to social inequality between centre and periphery within an Empire see Anderson (1991).