Palacký und Czoernig: eine tschechisch-deutsche Zusammenarbeit im Geist des böhmischen Landespatriotismus

Résumé 0

František Palacký and Karl Czoernig were very significant personalities of 19th century Central Europe. The first one, as the historiograph of the Czech Lands became a reknown historian and since 1848 also a famous political thinker; the second one was the founder of the modern statistics in the Habsburg empire. In the 1850’s he was among the leading reformers of the Monarchy and one of the initiators of the international statistiscal congresses. Both had gained since their youth a unusual understanding for the language and nationality problems of the Czech Lands and devoted themselves to the question of Czech regional patriotism (Landespatriotismus). They began to correspond in 1829 about the historical evaluation of Albrecht von Waldstein. Later they discussed about the Czech nation, for Czoernig considered his homeland to be the Czech Kingdom and not the entire Habsburg Monarchy. He then began to write for Palacký’s review until its suspension with reports about Triest where he worked at the time and international statistics. The correspondance went on the 1840’s with each writer taking great care of the political evolution of the Czech Lands. During this period Czoernig continued his statistical work by travelling in many parts of the empire so that he was able to compare the situation of the Czech Lands to them. He informed Palacký of his results and asked for his cooperation in getting access to the work of Pavel Josef Šafařík published in 1842, for Czoernig wanted the most accurate data about the Slavic population of the empire, thus showing his enduring interest for the Slavs. These informations enabled the authorities in 1846 to complete their language regulations and they were next considered as a basic preparation for the oncoming works on the ethnography of the empire made by researchers and politicians. The ways of Palacký and Czoernig parted at the time and after the Revolution of 1848 but they still met at the beginning of the 1860’s and greeted each other as good old friends.