I've been reading about the czech national revival and an interesting thing is that some revivalists were originally germans who decided that czech culture and language were super cool, learned the language and became czech nationalists. What's the cause of this?
Same reason why some nobles supported the Hussites. More autonomy for the Czech lands means more power for the local nobility regardless of their ethnicity.
>>18480109Oh ok, but I guess that would be a reason mainly for the nobility and not the burghers right?
>>18480097To give some examplesMiroslav Tyrš (born Friedrich Tirsch) and Jindřich Fügner (born Heinrich Fügner) who founded Sokol - a czech patriotic physical training organization. Božena Němcová (born Barbara Pankl) one of the most important revivalist writers, born to a czech mother and a german father, grew up at the court of a Silesian duchess which was of course german speaking. Bedřich Smetana (born Friedrich Smetana) one of the most important czech composers and revivalists. He grew up speaking german. Josef Mánes one of the most important artists of the revival. Also grew up speaking german. Vojtěch Náprstek (born Adalbert Fingerhut) another influential revivalist. Vilém Dušan Lambl (born Wilhelm Lambl) who became an important biologist and also dedicated a lot of time to studying slavic languages he was also a revivalist and later had trouble with the secret police because of his agitation. His brothers were also important revivalists and fierce czech nationalists
>>18480097What's supposed to be weird about it? You had the exact same thing with Germans and Jews in Hungary throwing their lot behind Magyar nationalism and Magyarising themselves much more willingly than most non-Magyar Hungarians.You also have random funky families where guy A becomes turbo-Magyar (so anti-everything else), a modern national hero and the other becomes turbo-anti-Magyar and becomes a big figure in, e.g. Slovak national revival. Same parents and background.Must have made for really awkward family gatherings.A real oddity would be complete foreigners signing up and becoming big, not Bohemians who just happen to not be Czech (or Hungarians who happen to not be Magyars). Think people from Senegal, Ireland or Netherlands.
>>18481441The line between Czechs and Germans was blurred due to centuries of deliberate Germanization. The lands of the Czech Crown were not an apartheid state, anyone whose family lived there for generations was bound to have both Czech and German ancestry. The fact that your family spoke German and not Czech could at times simply be a class thing rather than ethnicity thing.
>>18481452>A real oddity would be complete foreigners signing up and becoming bigI looked into it and there were some foreigners who kinda participated in the revivalErnest Denis who was a french historian and politician. He traveled to Bohemia many times in his life, learned czech, wrote extensively about czech history, gave lectures about czech history on french universities, and relentlessly agitated for czech independence. He actually worked with Masaryk and Beneš and helped them with achieving recognition abroad. This dude was a certified czechaboo. Louis Leger, another frenchman who traveled to bohemia, learned czech and agitated for czech independence and wrote about czech and slavic history.
>>18481461Yeah, it seems that many middle and upper class czechs simply adopted german due to social mobility and didn't bother to teach their kids czech. Once the revival started, speaking czech stopped being associated with being a poor peasant and middle and upper class czechs started speaking czech again.
>>18481441Some of them were Czech at least partially by blood. The language was sort of in a state Irish was in let's say 1900 - a lot of people knew it but it was a designated villager language, so the city dwelling elites and artists usually didn't know it and were raised speaking German.
>>18480097Same as Croatian national revival. This was its central figure, who created the modern Croatian ortography:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljudevit_Gaj>His father Johann Gay was a German immigrant from the Kingdom of Hungary, and his mother was Juliana (née Schmidt), the daughter of a German immigrant arriving in the 1770s.[4][5]He was inspired by this half-German guy who's often described as the first Croatian nationalist:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavao_Ritter_Vitezovi%C4%87And similarly there's:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Maister>He came from a German-speaking family. Letters from his youth have been preserved in which he expressed his rejection of Slavs and Jews, but eventually he turned to the Slovene national cause.[1]
>>18482978Here are some other figures of the Croatian national revival:https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljudevit_Vukotinovi%C4%87>His ancestors came from Hungary, where they were landowners.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimitrija_Demeter>He was born in a wealthy merchant family of Greek origin.[3][4][5] https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanko_Vraz>Stanko Vraz was born in the Slovenian town of Cerovac in 1810 as Jakob Frass.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petar_Preradovi%C4%87>Petar Preradović was born to a family of Serb origin[4][5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatroslav_Lisinski>Lisinski was born Ignatius Fuchs to a German Jewish family.[1][2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josip_Runjanin>He was an ethnic Serb,[2][3][4]And this guy was a Euromutt Croaboo:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoljub_Eduard_Penkala>Eduard Penkala was born in Liptószentmiklós (now Liptovský Mikuláš in Slovakia), then part of Austria-Hungary, to Franciszek Pękała, who was of Polish heritage, and Maria Pękała (née Hannel), who was of Dutch descent. > He then moved with his wife to Zagreb (which was then in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia). To mark his loyalty to his new homeland, he took on the Croatian name Slavoljub (Croatian for "slavophile"), becoming a naturalized Croat.
