The Ancient Prague University
A university that limits itself merely to the education of its students is a school and nothing more. The Czech University of Prague, one of the oldest universities, is far more than a school. The Czech nation has always placed ideals above material interests, in contrast to their Teutonic neighbors. And the Prague University has been from its foundation an exponent of the Czechoslovak idealism.
It was founded by Emperor Charles in 1348 and was thus the first university of Central Europe. It was founded not merely for the Czechs, but for the whole empire, that is to say, for the present Germany and for all the lands that are today in the hands of the Germans. Charles himself was a pupil of the University of Paris. He loved the Czech nation and realized that it was the best educated nation in Central Europe; this primacy he wanted to secure for Bohemia permanently by establishing in its capital a great school of learning.
Today the Prague University, its teacher Masaryk and his pupils carry on the cultural fight against materialsm taught in the state universities of Germany; they also carry on a political fight as well as a fight in a revolutionary armies—among them the famous Czechoslovak Army of Siberia.
The University of Prague, which is officially referred to as the “ancient” university, is worthy of its name. Emperor Charles established in it four faculties—of divinity, law, medicine and philosophy; a fourfold division which has been maintained to this day. He also divided it into “nations”, according to the nationality of professors and students. There was the Czech nation, which included students from the Czechoslovak lands, as they are known today, as well as from the Jugo-Slav lands; then there was the Polish nation constituted of Poles, Silesians, Russians and Lithuanians, then the Saxon nation, comprising the men from Saxony, Thuringia, Denmark and Sweden, and finally the Bavarian nation, among which were counted Austrians, Swabians, Franconians and men from the Rhineland. So the university was a cosmopolitan school, originally half Slav and half German. Later the Polish “nation”, after a university had been established in Cracow, ceased to be Polish and was composed of Germans from Silesia, Brandenburg and Pomerania, and thus Slavs became a minority.
Germans occupied the chairs of professors and by virtue of university priviliges they filled with their men the churches and schools of Bohemia. But the controversies that soon arose between the Czechs and Germans transcended the field of material advantages. Under the leadership of John Hus, twice rector of the university, and master Jerome of Prague the Czechs introduced a religious reform which was opposed by the German professors. The Czech idealism and the German reactionary materialism thus came into conflict. The Czechs, with Hus, defended freedom of conscience, the Germans maintained papal theocracy.
The fight was transferred from the university to the people and resulted in the war of Czech democracy, embodied in the Hussite army, against theocracy suported by the autocracy of German princes.
German students and professors left the University of Prague in 1409 and founded a university in Leipzig, hoping to make the old school in significant; but no German university, in spite of any achievements, became as the Prague University did become, the real leader of its nation.
After the Hussite wars up to the battle of the White Mountain in 1620, the Prague University continued to be the highest cultural institution of the Czech nation; it was a Hussite, that is to say, Protestant, university.
Ferdinand II. who defeated the Czech rebels, killed the leaders of the people and drove the Protestants out of Bohemia. With them went the old professors of Prague University and Ferdinand turned the university over to the Jesuits, who made of it a Roman Catholic college. Since that day the university bears, in addition to the name of its founder, the name of him also who took it from the nation and gave it to the German and Spanish Jesuits. Its official name has been the Carolo-Ferdinandea University. The education of Jesuits was very effective. As early as 1648, when Prague was besieged by the Swedes, students of the university led by the Jesuit Plachý fought against Swedish supporters of the Czech nation, fought for the Hapsburgs and against their own people.
Up to the days of Maria Theresa the university belonged to the Jesuits and had for its principal aim to make the Czechs Roman Catholics. In that it succeeded, but its second task, to Germanize Bohemia, was not successfully carried out, and the first sign of new days was the institution of the chair of Czech language in 1791. It was like the study of a dead language, for few people believed that the nation with its tongue and its ideals could arise from the grave dug for it by the Jesuits.
But the resurrection of the Czech nation came about, and the Prague University, although Germanized, had its share in it. Up to 1882 the language of instruction remained German, and yet
- ↑ Written originally for the Christian Science Monitor.
