11: The Language Question
<< 10: Party Government in Austria || 12: The Coalition Ministry of 1893 >>
MEANWHILE it was necessary for the government to do
something for the Czechs and the other Slavs, on whose support they depended for their
majority. The influence of the government became more favourable to them in the matter of
language, and this caused the struggle of nationalities to assume the first place in
Austrian public life - a place which it has ever since maintained. The question of
language becomes a political one, so far as it concerns the use of different languages in
the public offices and law courts, and in the schools. There never was any general law
laying down clear and universal rules, but since the time of Joseph II. German had been
the ordinary language of the government. All laws were published in German; German was the
sole language used in the central public offices in Vienna, and the language of the court
and of the army; moreover, in almost every part of the monarchy it had become the language
of what is called the internal service in the public offices and law courts; all
books and correspondence were kept in German, not only in the German districts, but also
in countries such as Bohemia and Galicia. The bureaucracy and the law courts had therefore
become a network of German-speaking officialism extending over the whole country; no one
had any share in the government unless he could speak and write German. The only exception
was in the Italian districts; not only in Italy itself (in Lombardy, and afterwards in
Venetia), but in South Tirol, Trieste, Istria and Dalmatia, Italian has always been used,
even for the internal service of the government offices, and though the actual words of
command are now given in German and the officers are obliged to know Serbo-Croatian it
remains to this day the language of the Austrian navy. Any interference with the use of
German would be a serious blow to the cause of those who hoped to Germanize the whole
empire. Since 1867 the old rules have been maintained absolutely as regards the army, and
German has also, as required by the military authorities, become the language of the
railway administration. It remains the language of the central offices in Vienna, and is
the usual, though not the only, language used in the Reichsrath. In 1869 a great
innovation was made, when Polish was introduced throughout the whole of Galicia as the
normal language of government; and since that time the use of German has almost entirely
disappeared in that territory. Similar innovations have also begun, as we shall see, in
other parts.
Different from this is what is called the external service.
Even in the old days it was customary to use the language of the district in communication
between the government offices and private individuals, and evidence could be given in the
law courts in the language generally spoken. This was not the result of any law, but
depended on administrative regulations of the government service; it was practically
necessary in remote districts, such as Galicia and Bukovina, where few of the population
understood German. In some places a Slav-speaking individual would himself have to provide
the interpreter, and approach the government in German. Local authorities, e.g.,
town councils and the diets, were free to use what language they wished, and in this
matter the Austrian government has shown great liberality. The constitution of 1867 laid
down a principle of much importance, by which previous custom became established as a
right. Article 19 runs: "All races of the empire have equal rights, and every race
has an inviolable right to the preservation and use of its own nationality and language.
The equality of all customary (landesüblich) languages in school, office and
public life, is recognized by the state. In those territories in which several races
dwell, the public and educational institutions are to be so arranged that, without
applying compulsion to learn a second Landessprache, each of the races receives the
necessary means of education in its own language." The application of this law gives
great power to the government, for everything depends on what is meant by landesüblich,
and it rests with them to determine when a language is customary. The Germans demand
the recognition of German as a customary language in every part of the empire, so that a
German may claim to have his business attended to in his own language, even in Dalmatia
and Galicia. In Bohemia the Czechs claim that their language shall be recognized as
customary, even in those districts such as Reichenberg, which are almost completely
German; the Germans, on the other hand, claim that the Czech language shall only be
recognized in those towns and districts where there is a considerable Czech population.
What Taaffe's Administration did was to interpret this law in a sense more favourable to
the Slavs than had hitherto been the case.
Peculiar importance is attached to the question of education. The
law of 1867 required that the education in the elementary schools in the Slav districts
should be given in Czech or Slovenian, as the case might be. The Slavs, however, required
that, even when a small minority of Slav race settled in any town, they should not be
compelled to go to the German schools, but should have their own school provided for them;
and this demand was granted by Prazak, minister of education under Count Taaffe. The
Germans had always hoped that the people as they became educated would cease to use their
own particular language. Owing to economic causes the Slavs, who increase more rapidly
than the Germans, tend to move westwards, and large numbers settle in the towns and
manufacturing districts. It might have been expected that they would then cease to use
their own language and become Germanized; but, on the contrary, the movement of population
is spreading their language and they claim that special schools should be provided for
them, and that men of their own nationality should be appointed to government offices to
deal with their business. This has happened not only in many places in Bohemia, but in
Styria, and even in Vienna, where there has been a great increase in the Czech population
and a Czech school has been founded. The introduction of Slavonic into the middle and
higher schools has affected the Germans in their most sensitive point. They have always
insisted that German is the Kultur-sprache. On one occasion Count A. Auersperg
(Anastasius Grün) entered the diet of Carniola carrying the whole of the Slovenian
literature under his arm as evidence that the Slovenian language could not well be
substituted for German as a medium of higher education .
The first important regulations which were issued under the law of
1867 applied to Dalmatia, and for that country between 1872 and 1876 a series of laws and
edicts were issued determining to what extent the Slavonic idioms were to be recognized.
Hitherto all business had been done in Italian, the language of a small minority living in
the seaport towns. The effect of these laws has been to raise Croatian to equality with
Italian. It has been introduced in all schools, so that nearly all education is given in
Croatian even though a knowledge of Italian is quite essential for the maritime
population, and it is only in one or two towns, such as Zara, the ancient capital of the
country, that Italian is able to maintain itself. Since 1882 there has been a Slav
majority in the diet, and Italian has been disused in the proceedings of that body. In
this case the concessions to the Servo-Croatians had been made by the Liberal ministry;
they required the parliamentary support of the Dalmatian representatives, who were more
numerous than the Italian, and it was also necessary to cultivate the loyalty of the Slav
races in this part so as to gain a support for Austria against the Russian party, which
was very active in the Balkan Peninsula. It was better to sacrifice the Italians of
Dalmatia than the Germans of Carinthia.
It was not until 1879 that the Slovenes received the support of the
government. In Carniola they succeeded, in 1882, in winning a majority in the diet, and
from this time while the diet of Styria is the centre of the German, that of Carniola is
the chief support of the Slovene agitation. In the same year they won the majority in the
town council of Laibach, which had hitherto been German. They were able, therefore, to
introduce Illyrian as the official language, and cause the names of the streets to be
written up in Illyrian. This question of street names is, as it were, a sign of victory.
Serious riots broke out in some of the towns of Istria when, for the first time, Illyrian
was used for this purpose as well as Italian. In Prague the victory of the Czechs has been
marked by the removal of all German street names, and the Czech town council even passed a
by-law forbidding private individuals to have tablets put up with the name of the street
in German. In consequence of a motion by the Slovene members of the Reichsrath and a
resolution of the diet of Carniola, the government also declared Slovenian to be a
recognized language for the whole of Carniola, for the district of Cilli in Styria, and
for the Slovene and mixed districts in the south of Carinthia, and determined that in
Laibach a Slovene gymnasium should be maintained as well as the German one.
The Germans complain that in many cases the government acted very
unfairly to them. They constantly refer to the case of Klagenfurt. This town in Carinthia
had a population of 16,491 German-speaking Austrians; the Slovenian-speaking population
numbered 568, of whom 180 were inhabitants of the gaol or the hospital. The government,
however, in 1880 declared Slovenian a customary language, so that provision had to be made
in public offices and law courts for dealing with business in Slovenian. It must be
remembered, however, that even though the town was German, the rural population of the
surrounding villages was chiefly Slovene.
It was in Bohemia and Moravia that the contest was fought out with
the greatest vehemence. The two races were nearly equal, and the victory of Czech would
mean that nearly two million Germans would be placed in a position of subordination; but
for the last twenty years there had been a constant encroachment by Czech on German. This
was partly due to the direct action of the government. An ordinance of 1880 determined
that henceforward all business which had been brought before any government office or law
court should be dealt with, within the office, in the language in which it was introduced:
this applied to the whole of Bohemia and Moravia, and meant that Czech would henceforward
have a position within the government service. It was another step in the same direction
when, in 1886, it was ordered that "to avoid frequent translations" business
introduced in Czech should be dealt with in the same language in the high courts of Prague
and Brünn. Then not only were a large number of Czech elementary schools founded but also
many middle schools were given to the Czechs, and Czech classes introduced in German
schools; and, what affected the Germans most, in 1882 classes in Czech were started in the
university of Prague - a desecration, as it seemed, of the oldest German university.
The growth of the Slav races was, however, not merely the result of
government assistance; it had begun long before Taaffe assumed office; it was to be seen
in the census returns and in the results of elections. Prague was no longer the German
city it had been fifty years before; the census of 1880 showed 36,000 Germans to 120,000
Czechs. It was the same in Pilsen. In 1861 the Germans had a majority in this town; in
1880 they were not a quarter of the population. This same phenomenon, which occurs
elsewhere, cannot be attributed to any laxity of the Germans. The generation which was so
vigorously demanding national rights had themselves all been brought up under the old
system in German schools, but this had not implanted in them a desire to become German. It
was partly due to economic causes - the greater increase among the Czechs, and the greater
migration from the country to the towns partly the result of the romantic and nationalist
movement which had arisen about 1830, and partly the result of establishing popular
education and parliamentary government at the same time. As soon as these races which had
so long been ruled by the Germans received political liberty and the means of education,
they naturally used both to reassert their national individuality.
It may be suggested that the resistance to the German language is
to some extent a result of the increased national feeling among the Germans themselves.
They have made it a matter of principle. In the old days it was common for the children of
German parents in Bohemia to learn Czech since 1867 this has ceased to be the case. It may
almost be said that they make it a point of honour not to do so. A result of this is that,
as educated Czechs are generally bilingual, it is easier for them to obtain appointments
in districts where a knowledge of Czech is required, and the Germans, therefore, regard
every order requiring the use of Czech as an order which excludes Germans from a certain
number of posts. This attitude of hostility and contempt is strongest among the educated
middle class, it is not shown to the same extent by the clergy and the nobles.
The influence of the Church is also favourable to the Slav races,
not so much from principle as owing to the fact that they supply more candidates for
ordination than the Germans. There is no doubt, however, that the tendency among Germans
has been to exalt the principle of nationality above religion, and to give it an absolute
authority in which the Roman Catholic Church cannot acquiesce. In this, as in other ways,
the Germans in Austria have been much influenced by the course of events in the German
empire. This hostility of the Church to the German nationalist movement led in 1898 to an
agitation against the Roman Catholic Church, and among the Germans of Styria and other
territories large numbers left the Church, going over either to Protestantism or to Old
Catholicism. This "Los von Rom" movement, which was caused by the continued
alliance of the Clerical party with the Slav parties, is more of the nature of a political
demonstration than of a religious movement.
The Germans, so long accustomed to rule, now saw their old
ascendancy threatened, and they defended it with an energy that increased with each
defeat. In 1880 they founded a great society, the Deutscher Schulverein, to
establish and assist German schools. It spread over the whole of the empire; in a few
years it numbered 100,000 members, and had an income of nearly 300,000 gulden no private
society in Austria had ever attained so great a success. In the Reichsrath a motion was
introduced, supported by all the German Liberal parties, demanding that German should be
declared the language of state and regulating the conditions under which the other idioms
could be recognized; it was referred to a committee from which it never emerged, and a
bill to the same effect, introduced in 1886, met a similar fate. In Bohemia they demanded,
as a means of protecting themselves against the effect of the language ordinances, that
the country should be divided into two parts; in one German was to be the sole language,
in the other Czech was to be recognized. A proposal to this effect was introduced by them
in the diet at the end of 1886 but since 1882 the Germans had been in a minority. The
Czechs, of course, refused even to consider it, it would have cut away the ground on which
their whole policy was built up namely, the indissoluble unity of the Bohemian kingdom, in
which German and Czech should throughout be recognized as equal and parallel languages. It
was rejected on a motion of Prince Karl Schwarzenberg without discussion, and on this all
the Germans rose and left the diet, thereby imitating the action of the Czechs in old days
when they had the majority.
These events produced a great change in the character of the German
opposition. It became more and more avowedly racial; the defence of German nationality was
put in the front of their programme. The growing national animosity added bitterness to
political life, and destroyed the possibility of a strong homogeneous party on which a
government might depend. The beginning of this movement can be traced back to the year
1870. About that time a party of young Germans had arisen who professed to care little for
constitutionalism and other "legal mummies," but made the preservation and
extension of their own nationality their sole object. As is so often the case in Austria,
the movement began in the university of Vienna, where a Leserverein (reading club)
of German students was formed as a point of cohesion for Germans, which had eventually to
be suppressed. The first representative of the movement in parliament was Herr von
Schönerer, who did not scruple to declare that the Germans looked forward to union with
the German empire. They were strongly influenced by men outside Austria. Bismarck was
their national hero the anniversary of Sedan their political festival, and approximation
to Germany was dearer to them than the maintenance of Austria. After 1878 a heightening of
racial feeling began among the Radicals, and in 1881 all the German parties in opposition
joined together in a club called the United Left, and in their programme put in a
prominent place the defence of the position of the Germans as the condition for the
existence of the state, and demanded that German should be expressly recognized as the
official language. The younger and more ardent spirits, however, found it difficult to
work in harmony with the older constitutional leaders. They complained that the party
leaders were not sufficiently decisive in the measures for self-defence. In 1885 great
festivities in honour of Bismarck's eightieth birthday, which had been arranged in Graz,
were forbidden by the government, and the Germans of Styria were very indignant that the
party did not take up the matter with sufficient energy. After the elections of 1885 the
Left, therefore, broke up again into two clubs, the "German Austrian," which
included the more moderate, and the "German," which wished to use sharper
language. The German Club, e.g., congratulated Bismarck on his measures against the
Poles; the German Austrians refused to take cognizance of events outside Austria with
which they had nothing to do. Even the German Club was not sufficiently decided for Herr
von Schönerer and his friends, who broke off from it and founded a "National German
Union." They spoke much of Germanentum and Unverfälschtes Deutschtum,
and they advocated a political union with the German empire, and were strongly
anti-Hungarian, and wished to resign all control over Galicia, if by a closer union with
Germany they could secure German supremacy in Bohemia and the south Slav countries. They
play the same part in Austria as does the "pan-Germanic Union" in Germany. When
in 1888 the two clubs, the German Austrians and the Germans, joined once more under the
name of the "United German Left" into a new club with eighty-seven members, so
as the better to guard against the common danger and to defeat the educational demands of
the Clericals, the National Germans remained apart with seventeen members. They were also
infected by the growing spirit of anti-Semitism. The Germans parties had originally been
the party of the capitalists, and comprised a large number of Jews; this new German party
committed itself to violent attacks upon the Jews, and for this reason alone any real
harmony between the different branches would have been impossible.
Notwithstanding the concessions about language the Czechs had,
however, made no advance towards their real object - the recognition of the Bohemian
kingdom. Perhaps the leaders of the party, who were now growing old, would have been
content with the influence they had already attained, but they were hard pressed at home
by the Young Czechs, who were more impatient. When Count Thun was appointed governor of
Bohemia their hopes ran high, for he was supposed to favour the coronation of the emperor
at Prague. In 1890, however, instead of proceeding to the coronation as was expected,
Taaffe attempted to bring about a reconciliation between the opposing parties. The
influence by which his policy was directed is not quite clear, but the Czechs had been of
recent years less easy to deal with, and Taaffe had never really shown any wish to alter
the constitution; his policy always was to destroy the influence of parliament by playing
off one party against the other and so to win a clear field for the government. During the
month of January conferences were held at Vienna, with Taaffe in the chair, to which were
invited representatives of the three groups into which the Bohemian representatives were
divided, the German party the Czechs, and the Feudal party. After a fortnight's discussion
an agreement was made on the basis of a separation between the German and the Czech
districts, and a revision of the electoral law. A protocol enumerating the points agreed
on was signed by all who had taken part in the conference, and in May bills were laid
before the diet incorporating the chief points in the agreement. But they were not
carried; the chief reason being that the Young Czechs had not been asked to take part in
the conference, and did not consider themselves bound by its decisions; they opposed the
measures and had recourse to obstruction, and a certain number of the Old Czechs gradually
came over to them. Their chief ground of criticizing the proposed measures was that they
would threaten the unity of the Bohemian country. At the elections in 1891 a great
struggle took place between the Old and the Young Czechs. The latter were completely
victorious; Rieger, who had led the party for thirty years, disappeared from the
Reichsrath. The first result was that the proposed agreement with Bohemia came to an end.
But the disappearance of the Old Czechs made the parliamentary situation very insecure.
The Young Czechs could not take their place; their Radical and anti-clerical tendencies
alarmed the Feudalists and Clericalists who formed so large a part of the Right they;
attacked the alliance with Germany they made public demonstration of their French
sympathies they entered into communication with other Slav races, especially the Serbs of
Hungary and Bosnia; they demanded universal suffrage, and occasionally supported the
German Radicals in their opposition to the Clerical parties especially in educational
matters; under their influence disorder increased in Bohemia, a secret society called the Umladina
(an imitation of the Servian society of that name) was discovered, and stringent
measures had to be taken to preserve order. The government therefore veered round towards
the German Liberals; some of the ministers most obnoxious to the Germans resigned, and
their places were taken by Germans. For two years the government seemed to waver, looking
now to the Left, now to Hohenwart and his friends; for a time Taaffe really had the
support of all parties except the Young Czechs.
After two years he gave up his cautious policy and took a bold
move. In October 1893 he introduced a reform bill. Universal suffrage had long been
demanded by the working men and the Socialists; the Young Czechs also had put it on their
programme, and many of the Christian Socialists and anti-Semites desired an alteration of
the franchise. Taaffe's bill, while keeping the curiae of the feudal proprietors
and the chambers of commerce as they were, and making no change in the number of members,
proposed to give the franchise in both towns and rural districts to every one who could
read and write, and had resided six months in one place. This was opposed by the Liberals,
for, with the growth of socialism and anti-Semitism, they knew that the extension of the
franchise would destroy their influence. On this Taaffe had probably calculated but he had
omitted to inquire what the other parties would do. He had not even consulted Hohenwart,
to whose assistance he owed his long tenure of power. Not even the pleasure of ruining the
Liberals was sufficient to persuade the Conservatives to vote for a measure which would
transfer the power from the well-to-do to the indigent, and Hohenwart justly complained
that they ought to have been secure against surprises of this kind. The Poles also were
against a measure which would give more influence to the Ruthenes. The position of the
government was hopeless, and without waiting for a division Taaffe resigned.
<< 10: Party Government in Austria || 12: The Coalition Ministry of 1893 >>
