Bohemia (Ger. Böhmen), formerly one of the kingdoms of Europe, now forms the most northern province of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, touching Saxony and Prussian Silesia, Moravia, Upper and Lower Austria, and Bavaria. It has an area of 19,980 sq. m., or about two-thirds that of Scotland; pop. (1869) 5,140,544; (1880) 5,560,819; (1890) 5,843,094. It contains nearly 400 cities, of which the most important are Prague, the capital of the kingdom, and third city of the empire, with 184,109 inhabitants; Pilsen has over 50,000; Reichenberg has over, and Budweis just under, 30,000. The country is surrounded on all sides by lofty mountain-ranges, the principal of which are the Riesengebirge (part of the Sudetic chain) on the north-east, dividing Bohemia from Silesia, and attaining, in the peak of the Schnee-koppe, a height of 5330 feet; on the north-west, the Erzgebirge, attaining a height of more than 4000 feet; on the south-west, the Böhmerwald, reaching 4783 feet. Offsets from these traverse the interior of the country, which has an undulating surface, sloping generally to the north. The country belongs to the upper basin of the Elbe, which rises in the Riesengebirge range; and it is well watered by the affluents of that river. The chief of these are the Moldau, the Eger, Iser, Aupa, Mettau, and Biela.
The climate of Bohemia is generally healthy, but varies greatly in different districts. In the valleys it is mild and pleasant, but raw and cold in the mountainous regions, where the higher peaks are covered with snow during a great portion of the year.
The mountain-chains which rise on all sides of Bohemia consist largely of primitive rocks, principally gneiss, mica-slate, and granite. Basalt, clinkstone, greenstone, and red sandstone are also common, and with the last, diluvial and alluvial deposits are met with, often to a considerable elevation. The extensive Silurian beds near Prague are rich in fossils. The plains belong chiefly to the Middle or Miocene period of the Tertiary formation, with sand, gravel, and marl.
A remnant of volcanic action, of which traces are common, still continues in the emissions of carbonic acid gas which have established so many mineral springs of deserved repute, at Carlsbad, Eger, Marienbad, Teplitz, and throughout the country.
The mineral wealth is varied and extensive, consisting of silver, tin, copper, lead, iron, cobalt, bismuth, antimony, alum, sulphur, graphite, and porcelain clay, with several precious and ornamental stones. More coal is produced than in all the rest of the Austrian empire. The swampy plains yield an enormous amount of peat, and a large quantity of asphaltum is also obtained. On the other hand, no salt at all is found.
The soil is generally fertile. More than one-half of the area consists of arable land; nearly one-eighth is laid out in meadows and gardens; pastures form about a twelfth; and forests cover nearly a third. The wheat, rye, barley, and oats raised in Bohemia amount to more than a sixth of the produce of the whole Austrian empire. Flax and hops are plentiful, and a great variety of fruit is exported in large quantities. The culture of the vine is confined to the vicinity of the Moldau and the Elbe. Horned cattle, sheep, goats, and swine are reared extensively in some districts; bees and geese form important items in the resources of the country.
In manufactures, Bohemia holds a very high place among continental countries. It is a great centre of dyeing and calico-printing. The linen manufacture is more extensive than that of all the other Austrian provinces together, and the flax-spinning employs more than 235,000 spindles. The chief seat of the woollen manufacture is Reichenberg and its neighbourhood. Other important branches of industry are the manufacture of paper, ribbons, lace, chemicals, porcelain-ware, and the Turkish fez. The glass-works of Bohemia are celebrated, and very numerous and extensive, affording employment to some 27,000 persons. Beet-root sugar is manufactured extensively, and there are hundreds of breweries and brandy distilleries throughout the country, mostly on a small scale, although Bohemian beer is sold throughout Europe. The manufacture of iron is considerable. Its position secures Bohemia a large transit-trade. Steamboats ply on the Elbe and Moldau, and a canal crossing into Upper Austria conveys the timber of the Böhmerwald from the latter into the Danube. There are good roads and an excellent system of railways centring in the capital, Prague. There are nearly 3000 miles of railway, besides the branch lines for mining purposes.
Population, Religion, &c.—The Czechs, a Slavonic race, form the bulk of the people, and in 1890 constituted 62.8 per cent. of the total population, the other 37.2 per cent. being German. They dwell chiefly in the centre and east of the country. The German population reside mainly in the north-east and in the cities; their influence on industry, trade, and commerce is great in proportion to their numbers. The distinction between Czech and German is very sharply drawn. There are about 100,000 Jews. The vast majority of the population belong to the Roman Catholic Church, but other religions are tolerated; the Protestants only amount to 120,000, the majority belonging to the Calvinistic confession, and cherishing relations with the churches of Scotland. The Roman Catholics are under the supervision of the Archbishop of Prague and the three bishops of Leitmeritz, Königgrätz, and Budweis. The monasteries and convents number between 120 and 130. Education is much more widely diffused than in any of the other provinces of Austria. At the head of the educational establishments is the university of Prague, where since 1882 all subjects are taught in the German and the Czech languages. Above 150 German professors have 1600 hearers, and 130 Czech professors, in what is practically a distinct university, have 2500 hearers. There are some 2200 German and 2500 Czech public schools, and numerous seminaries and technical institutes. Bohemia sends 54—about a fourth of the 203—members to the Lower House of the Austrian Reichsrath, or parliament of the western part of the empire.
History.—The country derives its name from the Celtic Boii, who were expelled by the Germanic Marcomanni about the beginning of the Christian era. The victors themselves soon gave place to others, and as early as the 5th century A.D. we find Bohemia peopled by the Czechs, a Slavic race. In the latter part of the 9th century, Swatopluk, the king of Moravia, subjugated Bohemia, and introduced Christianity. After his death, the dukes of Prague, who in 1086 had the title of king conferred on them by the Emperor Henry IV., ruled the country as a state in the German empire until 1306, when the last of the dynasty was assassinated.
From 1310 to 1437 the country was ruled by kings of the House of Luxemburg. In the time of Wenzel IV. (Wenceslas), a reformation of religion took place under John Huss (q.v.) and Jerome of Prague (q.v.). After the death of Wenzel IV., the imprudent measures adopted by the Emperor Sigismund excited a war of sixteen years' duration, which ended in making Bohemia an elective kingdom, and, in 1458, the shrewd and able Protestant noble, George of Podiebrad, ascended the throne. His successor, the Polish prince Ladislaus (1471-1516), was elected (1490) to the throne of Hungary, and removed the royal residence to Ofen, where also his son and successor, Louis (1516-1526), resided. After his death in battle against the Turks at Mohacz, Bohemia and Hungary passed into the hands of Ferdinand I. of Austria, who had married Louis's sister. From that time the history of Bohemia merges in the history of Austria (q.v.). The Reformation was tolerated under Maximilian, and religious liberty formally granted by Rudolf II. (1609). The withdrawal of this freedom a few years later under Matthias, and especially Ferdinand II., led to the troubles that broke out in 1618 and the election of Frederick V. of the Palatinate (q.v.) to be Bohemian king (see THIRTY YEARS' WAR). The battle at the Weissenberg (1620) restored the Hapsburgs, and was followed by the merciless extirpation of Protestantism, the suppression of all national privileges, and the ruin of the country. The reforms of Josef II. stirred up in Bohemia a revival of Czech feeling; and from 1848—when a rising was swiftly suppressed—onwards, there has been a continuous struggle between Germans and Czechs for the supremacy. A Bohemian diet elected under the new constitution of 1861 made the Czech language a compulsory subject even in German secondary schools. In 1867 the Czechs refused to send their complement of members to the Austrian Reichsrath, and showed their growing sympathies with Panslavism (q.v.). In 1879 they resumed attendance at the Reichsrath, and as a section of the Right secured further concessions in favour of the Czech tongue. The aim alike of the feudal and clerical old Czechs, and of the Liberal new Czechs, is the restoration of the full crown-rights of Bohemia, and the predominance of Czech ideas and the Czech language. See works cited at AUSTRIA; also those of Palacký (1836-60), Schlesinger (1870), and Tomek (1882), and, in English, of Count Lützow (1896), and E. C. Maurice (1896).
Language.—The Czech language, spoken in Bohemia, Moravia, and, with variations, among the Slovaks in the north of Hungary, is one of the most cultivated dialects of the Slavonic.
Its complicated and difficult forms remind one of the Latin and Greek accidence. Its peculiarities are the sibilated r, which is harsher than the rz of the Poles, and the distinct possession of both quantity and accent, so that the Latin and Greek metres can be exactly reproduced in it, though such imitations are purely artificial, the native poetry being accentual. Its syntax resembles Latin. It has one guttural, ch. It has a passive participle, but no formal passive voice, and makes a very free use of reflexive verbs.
Literature.—Bohemian literature divides itself naturally into three periods—(1) From the earliest time to the burning of Huss in 1415; (2) from 1415 to Josef II.'s Edict of Toleration in 1781; and (3) thence to the present time.
Period I.—The Greek Church is represented by a Glagolitic (q.v.) fragment (circa 900), the Latin by a fragment of St John's Gospel, with an interlinear Bohemian translation of somewhat later date. The greater part of the Bible was translated by the end of the 13th century, and in the 14th the whole was complete. A manuscript containing an unrhymed poem, the 'Judgment of Libussa,' was found in 1817, and another was found by V. Hanka, containing epic and lyric poems, all ascribed to the end of the 13th century. These manuscripts have both been attacked as forgeries, but it is difficult to conceive a forger in 1817 possessed of sufficient knowledge for the purpose, and microscopic examination has shown that Hanka both misread and misunderstood his manuscript in various places. The Latin Alexandréis was freely translated into Bohemian rhyme between 1240 and 1250, and legends of Christ and of several saints were current towards the close of the century.
The first half of the 14th century, the great event of which was the foundation of the university of Prague by Charles IV. in 1348, presents a rhymed chronicle, called that of Dalimil, the earliest complete manuscript of which (circa 1350) lay for one hundred and forty years unrecognised in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, and was unearthed only in 1876. In this century didactic and satirical poetry were well represented. The rhymed legend of St Catherine (discovered at Stockholm in 1850) is of considerable beauty, and that of St Prokop is amusing. The travels of Marco Polo were translated early, and those of Sir John Mandeville late in the same century. A cycle of chivalry was also current. A complete Life of Christ was written. Romances of Alexander the Great and of Troy were translated. Tkadleck's dialogues between 'The Complainer' and 'Misfortune' are a model of terse and elegant Bohemian. Thomas of Stitný (1373-1400) wrote, in order that higher matters might become generally accessible in the Bohemian as well as in the Latin tongue, first for the instruction of his children, and then for a wider circle, considering that 'the soul of a Bohemian was as precious to God as that of a Latinist.' Theologian, homilist, and philosopher, his equal cannot be found in English literature before the time of Elizabeth. As a writer it is impossible to separate John Huss (Jan Hus) from Stitný. Huss's activity lay between 1402 and 1415, first as a preacher, and then as a writer. His Latin works, except those written without books in prison, are little more than centos and adaptations of Wyclif; but his Bohemian writings are very different, though he apparently still used Wyclif as an encyclopædia. He wrote a long work on the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, sermons on the Gospels for every Sunday in the year, and many smaller treatises, the most beautiful of which is the Daughter, a manual of advice to the human soul. His Bohemian style is inferior to that of Stitný.
Period II., from 1415 to 1781.—The Hussite wars were not favourable to any but controversial literature. After the suppression of the military Taborites (1452), the teaching of Peter Chelezický, a great religious writer and thinker (1430–56), was adopted by the peaceful Bohemian brotherhood. But for many years the brethren disregarded human learning, until, under the influence of Jan Blahoslav, the translator of the New Testament, who first noticed the capacity of Bohemian for representing the classical metres, they proceeded in earnest to their new translation of the Bible, which was printed in 6 vols. at Kralitz, in Moravia (1579–93). In poetry the Hussite times produced a few songs, satirical and didactic poems and ballads, among which are a spirited ballad on the battle of Aussig, and the war song of Ziska's soldiers on the march. Jan Ziska's military arrangements, which still exist in writing, are very remarkable. The Diary of an Embassy from King George to King Louis XI. of France (1464) is of historical rather than literary interest. During the Polish dynasty (1476–1524) John Hasensteinský wrote Travels in Palestine (1492) and Advice to his Son in excellent Bohemian, and Nicholas Konacz a grand book on the Plaint of Justice, the Queen and Lady of all the Virtues. Under Ferdinand I. and Maximilian II. (1526–75) the study of the classics was much advanced by the Jesuit academy established at Prague in 1555. Many of the Jesuits wrote in Bohemian with great success. Sixtus of Ottersdorf's Memoirs of the Years 1546–47, so fatal to Bohemian freedom, are very valuable. But the literary glory of this era is the Kronyka Česká of V. Hajek of Liboczan (1541), which in style rivals Herodotus, though its historical statements are so untrustworthy, that Palacký terms him 'the corrupter of Bohemian history.'
The time of the emperors Rudolf II. and Matthias (1576–1619), or rather of the former, has been termed the 'golden age' of Bohemian literature, although little rises much above mediocrity. But educational arrangements were excellent, and probably superior to those of any other country in Europe. The centre of literature in Rudolf's time was the printer Adam of Veleslavin. Translations were more abundant than original works. Matyas Gryll (1592) wrote the only good original poem, 'On the Providence and Government of God,' of this era. The travels of Harant of Polzic in Palestine, Egypt, and Sinai have been translated into German, and the adventures of Wratislav of Mitrovitz in Turkey, into German, English, and Russian. Of Jirzik Zaveta's Schola Aulica, Balbinus said that, 'if translated into Latin, it need fear no criticism.' The greatest literary man among the Brethren was J. Amos Komenský (Comenius), the author of the World in Pictures and the Labyrinth of the World. From Ferdinand II. (1619) to Josef II. (1781) is a period of literary decline, succeeded by slumber. The Jesuits from the school of Ferdinand I. gradually died out, and their successors did not study Bohemian, but simply carried on an indiscriminate crusade (till 1760) against the native literature, one Jesuit boasting of having himself destroyed 60,000 volumes.
Period III., from Josef II. (1781) to the present time.—We now come to the unexampled resuscitation of a dead and buried language and literature. The Abbé Josef Dobrowský, the father of Slavonic comparative philology, devoted his life to grammatical, philological, and historical research, but wrote principally in Latin and German. In 1795 Fr. V. M. Kramerius established a Bohemian printing-press which, till his death in 1808, was the centre of Czech literary activity. In 1806 Jan Nejedlý issued the first periodical, the Hlasatel
(Herald), in the Bohemian language. Dobrowský unfortunately constructed a prosody intended to reproduce the classical metres by accent irrespective of quantity, which was very embarrassing to poetry till overthrown (1818) by Palacký and Szafarzik (Schafarik). Still A. J. Puchmayer (1795–1814) is justly considered the reawakener of the Czech muse. The stores obtained by the researches of Dobrowský were edited in the Starobylá Skladanie, 'Ancient Collections' (1817–24), by V. Hanka, who also first successfully imitated the popular songs and ballads of the peasantry (1815–16). But the greatest impulse to Bohemian poetry was given by the 13th-century manuscripts above mentioned.
In 1818 Count Kaspar Sternberg and others succeeded in fully establishing and endowing the Bohemian Museum, which became the centre of research and progress. In 1819 appeared the first great poem of the revival, Polák's Sublimity of Nature. Next came J. Kollár, Fr. L. Czelakowský, and the Slovák Jan Holý. In 1821 J. S. Presl established the scientific magazine Krok, and ere long created a Bohemian terminology for chemistry and other sciences. In 1825 Jungmann published his History of Bohemian Literature. In 1827 the magazine (Czasopis) of the Bohemian Museum appeared under the editorship of Fr. Palacký in Bohemian and German. Contrary to expectation, the circulation of the German monthly dwindled to nothing, while that of the Bohemian quarterly rapidly increased. In 1831 the Matice Česká, a bye-committee of the museum, was instituted for the republication of old and the publication of new works of value in the Bohemian language. By its aid J. Jungmann's gigantic Bohemian dictionary, the work of thirty years, appeared in five large volumes (1835–39), and in 1837 Szafarzik's Slavonic Antiquities, the first Bohemian work that obtained a European reputation. In 1831 Fr. Palacký was elected historian to the Estates of Bohemia. After searching the principal archives of Germany and Italy, especially the Vatican Library, he brought out the first volume of his history in German in 1836, in Bohemian not till 1848, the year of the abolition of the Austrian censorship of the press. In 1849 J. A. Purkyne, a physiologist of European reputation, effected the establishment of the periodical Ziva for natural science. Other periodicals became numerous. Palacký's History (to 1526) was completed in German in 1867, in Bohemian not till 1876, the excisions and interpolations of the censorship being rectified. It was continued by Gindeley (1829–92). The translation of Shakespeare's dramatic works was completed (1854–72). K. J. Erben deserves especial notice as poet, archaeologist, translator, and editor of Huss's Bohemian works (3 vols. 1865–68), of Stitný, &c. V. V. Tomek, besides his history of the university of Prague (1849), is author of an exhaustive history of the city of Prague (vols. i.–vii. 1855–85). He was justly appointed the first rector of the re-established Bohemian University of Prague (1882).