Historic Monuments as Sites of Nationalist Tension

“Oh, home of tears, but let her bear this blazoned to the end of time: No nation rose so white and fair, none fell so pure of crime.” So reads an inscription on a Confederate soldier statue unveiled in 1911 on the lawn of the Cooke County courthouse in Gainesville, Texas. It is among many Confederate monuments that remain in public spaces across the United States, sometimes with little local debate, despite their white-supremacist inscriptions.

Protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, and elsewhere, in summer 2017 reflected tension over the meaning of statues in public places and who determines their continued presence.

Front Royal, Virginia (May 2009); Luray, Virginia (May 2009)

In response to the protests, some Confederate statues, which are to be found mainly in the South, were boarded up, vandalized, or taken down in the dead of night. In some cases, locals called for statues of other less divisive figures to replace these monuments; in others, the pedestals remain empty. The public drama over Confederate statues is not a new problem, as those familiar with the post-1918 battles over the fate of statues of the reforming, enlightened-absolutist Habsburg Emperor Joseph II (r. 1780-1790) in nascent Czechoslovakia know.

Empty Pedestal, formerly the site of Equestrian Statue of Confederate General P.G. Beauregard, New Orleans, Louisiana (April 2018); Empty pedestal that formerly held a statue of Jefferson Davis, Memphis, Tennessee (March 2018)  The pedestal itself was removed to a “secure location” in late July 2018. A boarded up, later removed, Confederate memorial at 59^th and Ward Parkway, Kansas City, Missouri (August 2017).

Like the Confederate memorials, most of which were unveiled in the early 1900s, in the era of Jim Crow and rising popularity of the Ku Klux Klan, or in the 1950s and 1960s, a time of increasing demands for equal rights, many of the Joseph II monuments were put up long after the events they commemorated in an era of tension. Yet again like the Confederate monuments, they were often the gift of private organizations to towns and cities. The Joseph II statues, like monuments to Confederate soldiers, possessed potential political power that was unleashed in an era of Czech-German national conflict.

The exclusive claims German speakers made on the memory of Joseph II are apparent in the solely German-language inscriptions on the statues, even in areas of mixed Czech-German population. The Germans of the Bohemian Lands overcame other, earlier interpretations of Joseph II, transforming him from the “Esteemer of Humanity” to the “Esteemer of Germandom.” Claiming his memory exclusively for the German people served to nationalize not only the Emperor, but also the Habsburg dynasty, thus weakening this important centripetal force of the Monarchy.

Joseph II statues became flashpoints across the border regions of the Bohemian Lands soon after the foundation of Czechoslovakia following Austria-Hungary’s dissolution in late 1918. Czech-German conflict over the Joseph statues beginning in summer 1920, and continuing into the autumn, culminated in the so-called “Statue War” during late October, when most remaining statues of the Emperor in the borderlands were toppled. Assaults on the statues occurred in a time of economic, political, and social strife in Czechoslovakia and reflected the myriad problems its leaders faced in consolidating power, especially in the nationally mixed border regions. In addition to their anti-German/anti-Habsburg component, these popular attacks demonstrated local Czechs impatience with the regional and national authorities who had heretofore primarily limited themselves to suggesting that statues be boarded up or moved to museums.

The initial volleys in the “Statue War” were fired in predominantly German northern Bohemia. Owing to the alleged mistreatment of local German army recruits, national passions were already high in Teplice/Teplitz on October 28, 1920, the second anniversary of Czechoslovak independence. Following patriotic celebrations that day, local Czechs demanded the removal of the city’s bronze statue within three days. Rather than meet Czech demands to clear away the statue, district political officials simply boarded it up. The city’s German residents became increasingly angry the longer the statue remained encased. In early November, an unknown person or persons removed the covering. Fearing conflict, the Prague government sent in troops to maintain the peace. On November 11, local Czechs pulled down the statue, which city officials then moved to the city museum, where it remained throughout the interwar era. The statue’s removal reverberated throughout the Bohemian Lands. On the Czech side, there were anti-German protests and attacks on other statues of Joseph II. From the Germans came loud complaints about the government’s failure to stop “lawless” (Czech) behavior.

Czech residents, sometimes accompanied by Legionnaires (those Czechs who fought on the side of the Allies during wartime), attacked Joseph II statues across the Bohemian borderlands. While most statues were removed, covered up, or simply destroyed with only minor casualties, there were exceptions. Indeed, violence in connection with the statues resulted in several deaths. Some local German officials put their Joseph II statues under guard, while others convinced residents to set aside plans to re-erect local statues of the Emperor in the interest of peace and order. Elsewhere, German residents spontaneously, and, usually, peacefully, restored their towns’ statues.

Czech reactions to the attacks on the statues were varied and complicated. Czech intellectuals had long debated the effects of the Josephinian reforms. While recognizing the Emperor’s positive contributions in some areas, Czechs stressed the emotional and psychological significance German nationalists had invested in them. Many Czech politicians advocated the removal of the statues under government auspices. In late November 1920, they supported a parliamentary motion to remove all Habsburg monuments. The issue of the Joseph II statues’ future, which had in some cases been taken to court, was settled in the mid-1920s. The legal basis for the decisions was Paragraph 23 of the Law for the Defense of the Republic, which called for the removal from public view of statues, inscriptions, and memorials of anti-state character or of members of the Habsburg or the Hohenzollern dynasty. Virtually all of Joseph II statues would be taken down, although at least one obelisk remained, its inscription removed.

Joseph II obelisk near Teplice/Teplitz in Northern Bohemia (Mid-1990s); Cheb’s/Eger’s Joseph II in the Back Courtyard of the Státní okresní archiv Cheb (Mid-1990s)

A few monuments, their inscriptions removed, survived otherwise intact through the interwar period, even World War II, when the occupying Nazis melted down many for the war effort; and beyond, even as Czechoslovakia’s Germans were expelled after 1945. Some seventy years after the “Statue War,” and the fall of the Communism in 1989, statues of Joseph II began reappearing in the Czechoslovak/Czech landscape. Their Czech-language inscriptions are primarily variations on “Enlightened ruler and reformer,” although in eastern Bohemian Josefov, the statue’s inscription hails the Emperor as the “founder of the Josefov Fortress.” In the twenty-first century, he has occasionally been the subject of popular festivities.

Joseph II Statue at the Josefov Fortress (June 2016); Restored Pedestal, which formerly held a Joseph II Bust in Brno/Brünn (Late-1990s); Restored Joseph II Statue in Trutnov/Trautenau (June 2016); Garishly painted Joseph II Statue standing before a Restaurant in Northern Bohemia (Mid-1990s)

Another statue has been repurposed as a kind of brightly painted garden gnome in front of someone’s country house, while yet another stood—and, perhaps, still stands—near a roadside restaurant in northern Bohemia. These new—more benign—interpretations of the Joseph II statues, however, reveal the limitations of parallels between them and Confederate statues. Although some Confederate monuments may in the future occupy space in museums as part of the historic past, it seems unlikely that their presence will soon lose the ability to offend passersby.