Manufacturing Middle Ages : Entangled History of Medievalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe [1 ed.] 9789004244870, 9789004244863

Citation preview

Manufacturing Middle Ages

National Cultivation of Culture Edited by

Joep Leerssen Editorial Board

John Breuilly, Ina Ferris, Patrick Geary, John Neubauer, Tom Shippey, Anne-Marie Thiesse

VOLUME 6

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ncc

Manufacturing Middle Ages Entangled History of Medievalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe Edited by

Patrick J. Geary and Gábor Klaniczay

Leiden • boston 2013

Cover illustration: Our Lady’s (today called Matthias Church) in Buda (Hungary), choir interior, reconstructed by Frigyes Schulek, 1874–1896 (Photo: Ernő Marosi). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Manufacturing Middle Ages : entangled history of medievalism in nineteenth-century Europe / edited by Patrick J. Geary and Gábor Klaniczay.   pages cm. — (National cultivation of culture ; volume 6)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-24486-3 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-24487-0 (e-book) 1. Europe—Intellectual life—19th century. 2. Medievalism—Europe—History—19th century. 3. Civilization, Medieval—Influence. I. Geary, Patrick J., 1948– editor of compilation. II. Klaniczay, Gábor, editor of compilation.  CB204.M36 2013  940.2’8—dc23 

2013024278

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the ­humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1876-5645 ISBN 978-90-04-24486-3 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-24487-0 (e-book) Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

CONTENTS List of Figures .................................................................................................... Acknowledgements .........................................................................................

ix xiii

Introduction ......................................................................................................

1

PART one

MEDIEVALISM IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY HISTORIOGRAPHY National Origin Narratives in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy ...... . Walter Pohl

13

The Uses and Abuses of the Barbarian Invasions in the Nineteenth . and Twentieth Centuries .......................................................................... . Ian N. Wood

51

Oehlenschlaeger and Ibsen: National Revival in Drama and . History in Denmark and Norway c. 1800–1860 .................................. . Sverre Bagge

71

Romantic Historiography as a Sociology of Liberty: Joachim Lelewel and His Contemporaries .......................................... . Maciej Janowski

89

PART two

MEDIEVALISM IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE The Roots of Medievalism in North-West Europe: . National Romanticism, Architecture, Literature ............................... 111 . David M. Wilson Medieval and Neo-Medieval Buildings in Scandinavia ........................ 139 . Anders Andrén

vi

contents

Restoration as an Expression of Art History in Nineteenth-Century . Hungary ......................................................................................................... 159 . Ernő Marosi Digging Out the Past to Build Up the Future: . Romanian Architecture in the Balkan Context 1859–1906 ............ 189 . Carmen Popescu Ottoman Gothic: Evocations of the Medieval Past in Late . Ottoman Architecture ............................................................................... 217 . Ahmet Ersoy Medievalism and Modernity: Architectural Appropriations of the . Middle Ages in Germany (1890–1920) .................................................. 239 . Michael Werner PART three

MEDIEVALISM IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY PHILOLOGY A Cross-Country Foxhunt: Claiming Reynard for the National . Literatures of Nineteenth-Century Europe ......................................... 259 . Joep Leerssen Restoration from Notre-Dame de Paris to Gaston Paris ...................... 279 . R. Howard Bloch The Czech Linguistic Turn: Origins of Modern Czech Philology . 1780–1880 ....................................................................................................... 299 . Pavlína Rychterová PART four

MEDIEVALISM AND ITS ALTERNATIVES IN NATIONAL DISCOURSES ‘Medieval’ Identities in Italy: National, Regional, Local ...................... 319 . Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri



contents

vii

Between Slavs and Old Bulgars: ‘Ancestors’, ‘Race’ and Identity in . Late Nineteenth-Century Bulgaria ......................................................... 347 . Stefan Detchev With Brotherly Love: The Czech Beginnings of Medieval . Archaeology in Bulgaria and Ukraine .................................................. 377 . Florin Curta The Study of the Archaeological Finds of the Tenth-Century . Carpathian Basin as National Archaeology: . Early Nineteenth-Century Views ............................................................ 397 . Péter Langó Notes on Contributors .................................................................................... 419 Index of Proper Names .................................................................................. 425

LIST OF FIGURES Wilson 1. . The Long Gallery of Horace Walpole’s villa at Strawberry Hill, . Twickenham ................................................................................................ 2. .Fonthill Abbey, William Beckford’s ambitious Gothic pile .......... 3. . Eaton Hall, as designed for the immensely wealthy Earl . Grosvenor by William Porden, 1803–12 ............................................... 4. .Dowspuda Palace, Poland, built for Count Ludwik Michał Pac . 1820–3 ............................................................................................................ 5. .The cast-iron conservatory of the Prince Regent’s grandiose . London residence, Carlton House ........................................................ 6. .The Götische Haus, Woerlitz, Germany ............................................. 7. .Schinkel’s cast-iron National Memorial to the Fallen, Berlin . 1818–21 ........................................................................................................... 8. .Pugin’s St Chad’s Roman-Catholic Cathedral, Birmingham ......... 9. .The University Library, Copenhagen ...................................................

116 118 119 119 120 121 124 128 132

Andrén 1. . Stave church from Gol ............................................................................. 2. .St John’s church in Bergen ...................................................................... 3. . Restored early Romanesque wall paintings in the church at . Jelling in central Jutland .......................................................................... 4. .St. Andreas’ church in Copenhagen ..................................................... 5. .The cathedral in Uppsala ........................................................................ 6. .The neo-Gothic church of St John in Stockholm ............................. 7. .The medieval church at Nousiainen .................................................... 8. .The Uspenski Russian Orthodox cathedral in Helsinki .................

142 144 146 148 150 152 154 156

Marosi 1. . János Mihály Hesz, Baptism of St. Stephen, 1825 ............................. 165 2. .Ideal reconstruction of the west facade of St. Elizabeth in . Kassa .............................................................................................................. 168

x

list of figures

3. .Imre Henszlmann, Reconstruction study for the west facade . of St. Elizabeth in Kassa .......................................................................... 4. .Zsámbék monastery ruins from the northwest ............................... 5. .Zsámbék church ruin, choir from the east ....................................... 6. .Gelnhausen, Our Lady’s, choir from the east ................................... 7. .Buda, Our Lady’s, choir interior ........................................................... 8. .Marburg, St. Elizabeth from the southeast ....................................... 9. .Ják, Abbey Church, west facade ........................................................... 10. .Ják, Abbey Church, west facade ........................................................... 11. . Zsámbék, Provostry church ruin, west facade ................................. 12. .Pécs reliefs in the south staircase ........................................................ 13. .Pécs, south staircase ................................................................................. 14. .Pécs, Cathedral, interior looking east ................................................. 15. .Pécs, Cathedral, retable of the high altar .......................................... 16. .Pécs, Cathedral, north staircase, after reconstruction ................... 17. .Pécs, Cathedral Museum, the “Genesis cycle” from the north . staircase ........................................................................................................ 18. Pécs, the “Genesis cycle” from the north staircase ........................

169 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 183 183 184 185 186 187 187

Popescu 1. .Ambroise Baudry, Romanian pavilion on Champ-de-Mars ......... 2.. Jean-Camille Formigé, Romanian pavilion ....................................... 3. .George Sterian, project for the Bucharest city-hall—main . façade ............................................................................................................ 4. .Giulio Magni, project for the Bucharest city-hall— . perspective view and main hall ............................................................ 5. .Ion Mincu, pointed triple arch at the School for Girls, . Bucharest (1890)—patio ......................................................................... 6. .Lecomte du Noüy, sketch of the Three-Hierarchs church, . Iaşi ................................................................................................................. 7.. Alexandru Orăscu, Domniţa Bălaşa church, Bucharest ................ 8. .Lecomte du Noüy, the Metropolitan church, Tîrgovişte .............. 9. .Costin Petrescu, fresco for the Romanian Athenaeum, . Bucharest .....................................................................................................

193 195 199 201 206 207 211 213 215



list of figures

xi

Ersoy 1. .Osman Hamdi Bey, Studying Young Emir ......................................... 2. .The Çırağan Palace ................................................................................... 3. .The early Ottoman “manner” ................................................................ 4. .Hüdavendigâr Mosque, Bursa ............................................................... 5. .Aksaray Valide Mosque ........................................................................... 6. .Aksaray Valide Mosque, façade detail ................................................ 7. .Ortaköy Mosque ........................................................................................ 8. .Hamidiye Mosque ..................................................................................... 9. .Hamidiye Mosque, plan .......................................................................... 10. .Plan of Yıldırım Bayezid Imaret, Edirne ............................................ 11. .İnegöl Yıldırım Mosque ...........................................................................

224 224 227 229 232 233 233 235 235 236 237

Werner 1. .Bruno Taut, Glass Pavilion ...................................................................... 2. .Bruno Taut, Glass Pavilion, ground floor ........................................... 3. .Lionel Feininger, Cover of the Bauhaus-Manifesto ........................ 4. .Bruno Taut, Der Weltbaumeister (1919), cover ................................. 5. .Bruno Taut, Der Weltbaumeister (1919), scenes 7 and 9 ................ 6. .Bruno Taut, Der Weltbaumeister (1919), scenes 20 and 21 ............ 7. .Bruno Taut, Glass Pavilion, top of the cupola ..................................

246 246 248 251 252 253 254

Langó 1. .Lithography of Miklós Szerelmey from the book ‘Magyar . hajdan és jelen’ [Hungarian past and present.] ................................ 2. .The pagan burial’ at Vereb ..................................................................... 3. .Árpád on the mountain of Pannonia ................................................. 4. .János Érdy .................................................................................................... 5. .The ancient Hungarian artefacts from a historical poster of . the Millenium of the Hungarian conquest ....................................... 6. .The Millennial Monument ..................................................................... 7. .S-terminated rings .....................................................................................

400 402 405 407 407 411 415

Acknowledgements The present volume is one of the products of a research group (“focus group”) organized in the Collegium Budapest—Institute for Advanced Study in 2008/9 on the theme “Medievalism, archaic origins and regimes of historicity,” convened by the editors of this volume and generously sponsored by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Stockholm. It is also indebted to the international academic network of Collegium Budapest and the support of its last director, Andrew Sors, and the acquisitions of the multi-annual research focus of this institute, titled “Multiple Antiquities— Multiple Modernities,” centered around the topic of how European humanities have been using and frequently constructing, inventing classical and medieval traditions for fostering a set of alternative modernities. These previous focus groups (mentioned in detail in the Introduction) have benefited from the renewed support of the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung and the Getty Foundation. And the most substantial support, the framework of the fellowships and the excellent work conditions in the former city-hall building of Buda were provided by the internationally-sponsored Collegium Budapest, the first institute for advanced study that had been founded in post-communist East-Central Europe in 1992, and existed until 2011. This book is one of the last memorials of that institute. Finally, the authors and editors wish to thank Terrie Bramley and María Mercedes Tuya for their extraordinary editorial assistance in preparing this volume for publication.

Introduction In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, a complex of political, cultural, and institutional movements combined in a reaction against the unifying cult of classical traditions espoused by the French empire and stimulated a pan-European search for alternative sources of identity in the past and legitimacy in the present. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, Classical Antiquity had provided models of architecture, literature, and the arts, a cultural tradition that emphasized a common if largely invented heritage from Greece and especially Rome. But opposition to French imperialism, with its explicit appropriation of Roman imperial tradition, led to a rejection not only of France (in the words of Herder, “spew out the ugly slime of the Seine”) but also a more general rejection of the Roman imperial tradition that France represented. In its place, romantic nationalists sought alternative, distinct archaic origins for their particular peoples and nations. This search for archaic origins and alternative antiquities already had a long history in German speaking lands: since the Renaissance German humanists had opposed their Italian counterparts in their cultivation of a distinct archaic history and claimed culture based largely on the rediscovered Germania of Cornelius Tacitus.1 German historians and philologists had cultivated an understanding of the nation and nations initially as part of Habsburg propaganda and later, during the Enlightenment, as an alternative to classicizing French and Italian thought.2 From the first quarter of the nineteenth century, however, similar initiatives to root identity in particularist histories, folklore, artistic traditions, and ancient cultural practices became increasingly common throughout Europe, especially in those regions of Northern and East-Central Europe where classical roots were weaker or fully nonexistent. In this age of the construction of national(ist) visions of the past, the appropriation of these traditions (or their outright invention) showed, in fact, many similarities both to the efforts of earlier German humanists and of French imperialists.

1 Michael Werner, “La Germanie de Tacite et l’originalité allemande,” Le Débat. 78 (1994), 39–57. 2 Caspar Hirschi, Wettkampf der Nationen: Konstruktionen einer deutschen Ehrgemeinschaft an der Wende vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005).

2

introduction

But France and the kingdom of Naples had developed the cult of Roman antiquity as part of an imperial ideology to match French political ambitions in Europe and beyond, a cult stimulated by growing interest in classical philology, the extraordinary treasures unearthed at Pompeii, Herculaneum and elsewhere. In contrast, regions lacking a rich classical past turned a cult of archaic treasures of the barbarian past and the medieval (Romanesque and Gothic) heritage. These traditions were partly considered to be an equivalent substitute to the vestiges of classical antiquity, and partly they were opposed to the newly established classical canon (“The Tyranny of Greece over Germany”)3 as a tradition embodying a set of alternative aesthetic and cultural values, and a heritage more impregnated by “national character”. This nineteenth century cultural movement included not only the rejection of French imperialism but of imperialism generally: The first half of the century saw the growth of national, particularist movements within the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian Empires modeled to a considerable extent on German romanticism that placed great importance on language as the fundamental marker of peoples and nations. The importance of language in the discovery of alternative antiquities was enhanced by simultaneous developments that brought ancient texts and ancient languages into focus as never before: The secularization of ancient monasteries meant that previously unknown texts were discovered and made available in newly-created public libraries. Extraordinary advances in comparative and Indo-European linguistics brought a new awareness of the history of language to a wide public and engendered a search for the most primitive forms of modern languages, forms assumed to be the purest expressions of national identities. For much of Europe, this search for alternative pasts led to the Middle Ages, a poorly defined period from roughly the fifth to the fifteenth century that saw the dissolution of the Roman Empire, the emergence of “new” peoples and polities, vernacular literatures, architectural and artistic traditions, and new forms of urban life and associations. The liberals at the forefront of national cultural and political movements in particular saw this as a period in which free peoples, their own ancestors, had ended a moribund Roman Empire and created new nations within its boundaries or along its periphery. The most successful of these,

3 E.M. Butler, The Tyranny of Greece over Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935).



introduction

3

France and England, seemed to provide the model: The Anglo-Saxons and the Franks had eliminated the remnants of Roman rule in Britain and Gaul, establishing their national kingdoms that embodied the distinct national cultures of their peoples to the present. Elsewhere, the continuity between medieval nations and present polities was more problematic. In the great polyethnic European empires many intellectuals felt that their unique national identities, languages, and cultures had been repressed or denied. In Scandinavia, regional elites sought to recover their distinct identities and heritage from Danish hegemony; in Germany, despite a long tradition of cultural identity, no national state embodied or protected German character. The great peoples of the Germanic migration period such as the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Franks, and Vandals had established their kingdoms outside of modern German-speaking areas. In Italy, the disunity that had existed since the end of the Roman Empire seemed to leave the peninsula prey to its neighbors from the north. The great task for nineteenth century intellectuals in each of these regions then was to find in archaic, and specifically medieval origins, solutions to these dilemmas. The evolving national cultures in Northern, East-Central and SouthEastern Europe were divided by ongoing debates of opposed currents. Romantics competed with Classicists for aesthetic and moral superiority; attempts to define the corpus of “national antiquities”, “national medievalism” and “national archaism” faced overlapping claims to primacy among competing “nations.” And yet these emerging particularist visions of the past, rooted in medieval texts newly discovered (or in some cases invented) as well as in archaeological finds, and philological studies of the earliest stages of Germanic, Slavic, and Finno-Ugric languages, were nevertheless united in trans-European methods and approaches. The scholars, artists, and architects promoting and inventing their national traditions largely shared similar educational backgrounds, philologicalhistorical methods (often learned in German universities), and were bound to each other through networks of scholarly communication, publication, and personal relations, even while they applied their common approaches to generate separate and, ultimately often hostile ideologies. They were largely supported by new or newly reformed university systems, national public libraries, and academies of sciences. They carried on extensive correspondence among themselves, crisscrossed Europe in the search of manuscripts and artifacts, and in the process developed a complicated intellectual community unlike those of preceding generations. The result was the elaboration of a complex and at times contradictory web of national and international visions of possible pasts, a process that

4

introduction

Michel Werner has termed histoire croisée,4 an especially apt term to characterize the tangle of historical and cultural visions of the past developed across the nineteenth century. The role of medieval and other archaic origin myths in the elaboration of national identities has increasingly formed the center of scholarly attention in the past decade. A leading role was taken by the Collegium Budapest. In 1999–2000 a series of research seminars organized by Sally Humphries and Gábor Klaniczay at the Collegium explored the historical development of the humanities and resulted in a series of publications examining the development of humanities within the context of national heritages.5 Other working groups have produced volumes of important essays examining various aspects of nineteenth century attempts to elaborate the relationship between ancient origins and new modernities.6 These research projects have been paralleled by similar initiatives in other areas of Europe including initiatives in Vienna,7 Bergen, Norway,8 and the 4 Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, “Vergleich, Transfer, Verflechtung: Der Ansatz der Histoire croisée und die Herausforderung des Transnationalen,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 28 (2002), 607–636; idem, “Penser l‘histoire croisée: entre empirie et réflexivité,” Annales HSS, 58 (2003), 7–36. 5 The research results of this group were published in three volumes: Mihály SzegedyMaszák (ed.), National Heritage—National Canon, Collegium Budapest Workshop Series 11 (Budapest: Collegium Budapest, 2001); Anna Wessely (ed.), Intellectuals and the Politics of the Humanities, Collegium Budapest Workshop Series 12 (Budapest: Collegium Budapest: Collegium Budapest, 2002); Marcell Sebők (ed.), Republic of Letters, Humanism, Humanities, Collegium Budapest Workshop Series 15 (Budapest: Collegium Budapest, 2005). 6 Multiple Antiquities—Multiple Modernities. Ancient Histories in Nineteenth Century European Cultures, ed. by Gábor Klaniczay, Michael Werner and Ottó Gecser (Frankfurt— New York: Campus Verlag, 2011). Ernő Marosi, Gábor Klaniczay, and Ottó Gecser (eds.), The Nineteenth-Century Process of “Musealization” in Hungary and Europe, Collegium Budapest Workshop Series 17 (Budapest: Collegium Budapest, 2006); Edit Szentesi and János György Szilágyi, (eds.), Antiquitas Hungarica: Tanulmányok a Fejérváry-Pulszky-gyűjtemény és a Liber Antiquitatis történetéről (Studies on the history of the Fejérváry-Pulszky collection and the Liber Antiquitatis), Collegium Budapest Workshop Series 16 (Budapest: Collegium Budapest, 2006). János M. Bak, Jörg Jarnut, Pierre Monnet, and Bernd Schneidmüller (eds.), Gebrauch und Missbrauch des Mittelalters, 19.-21. Jahrhundert/ Uses and Abuses of the Middle Ages: 19th–21st Century/ Usages et Mésusages du Moyen Age du XIXe au XXIe siècle (München: Fink, 2009). Diana Mishkova (ed.), We, the People. Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe, (Budapest and New York: CEU Press, 2009). Balázs Trencsényi and Michal Kopeček (eds.), Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe (1770–1945), Vols. I and II (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2005–2006); Balázs Trencsényi, The Politics of National Character. A Study in Interwar East European Thought (London: Routledge, 2011). 7 Helmut Reimitz and Bernhard Zeller (eds.), Vergangenheit und Vergegenwärtigung. Frühes Mittelalter und europäische Erinnerungskultur (Vienna: ÖAW, 2009). 8 Ildar H. Garipzanov, Patrick J. Geary, and Przemyslaw Urbanczyk (eds.), Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008).



introduction

5

Netherlands9 as well as a series publications produced as part of the European Science Foundation research project “Representations of the past: The writing of national histories in Europe.”10 The essays in the present volume however take an approach somewhat different and complementary to these previous projects. They explore how these visions were formulated in the emerging branches of humanities (historiography, classical and medieval philology, archaeology, linguistics, art history, ethnography). The scholars examine the elaboration of national literary, artistic and historical canons, linguistic reforms, and the identification of “national” folk arts across Europe, paying close attention to particular national or sub-national traditions but placing these within the wider context of pan-European culture. Thus the essays in the present volume are contributions to a much wider field of research concerns and activities that revolve around the concept of a varied and complex relationship forged in European cultures to multiple possible antiquities and to multiple possible middle ages, relationships that provide a starting point for engendering modernity. As recent analysts such as that of Otto Gerhard Oexle11 have pointed out, the emerging medievalism of this period was far from being regressive; the real function of the rediscovered or invented Middle Ages was rather a definition of modernity by historical imagery and historicist reasoning. This characterization seems to fit more or less the whole of Europe, although in different inflections. The French case, epitomized by Chateaubriand, Victor Hugo, Thierry, Guizot, Viollet le Duc, and Michelet, could be considered as the most articulate model for this phenomenon. It should come as no surprise, however, that the comparative weight of historicist national imagery, medievalism and rediscovered archaic vestiges was even greater in the regions at the periphery of the Roman Empire in Antiquity and engaged in creation of new national identities in the nineteenth century in Northern, East-Central and South-Eastern Europe. The present volume therefore, while not neglecting the “center,” that is France and Germany, takes particular interest in the cultural interrelationships, the rivalry and clash of the emerging national cultures in the North and the East, and

9 Joep Leerssen, National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006). 10 Robert J.V. Evans and Guy P. Marchal (eds.), The Uses of the Middle Ages in Modern European States. History, Nationhood and the Search for Origins (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 11 Otto-Gerhard Oexle (ed.), Bilder gedeuteter Geschichte. Das Mittelalter in der Kunst und Architektur der Moderne (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004).

6

introduction

attempts to balance the classicist and medievalist-romantic tendencies both within those individual cultures and in a broadly comparatist and interconnected perspective. It investigates these themes across a “long nineteenth century” starting with the impact of the Enlightenment (late eighteenth century) and ending with World War I in three regions on the margin of Europe: the Nordic spaces, the East-Central European zone, and the South-Eastern-Balkans, without excluding developments in core regions such as France and Germany that influenced and were appropriated and transformed in these other areas. In Scandinavia this was the period when the formerly expansive conglomerate states (Denmark and Sweden) were transformed into relatively small and peaceful nation states; Norway, still united to Sweden, and Finland under Russian rule, were emerging to become new constituents of the Nordic pattern. In the Baltic and East-Central Europe the nineteenth century was the time of ‘national revival’ within multinational empires, during which the (re)construction of a real or imaginary past of the people was a central project of academics and artists alike. The liberation of Bulgaria and Romania from the Ottoman Empire demanded the establishment of national identities based on historical constructs after centuries of ‘colonial’ mentality. The essays focus on three significant aspects of this search for alternative identities: The first is the construction of new national master narratives, the elaboration of national origin myths; the development of historically structured linguistic reforms to create national languages and project them into the past; the creation of historiographical images of state formation, golden age and, frequently stories of decline and catastrophe; and finally the interplay between scholarly research and literature, music, and historicizing visual arts. The second might be termed the search for the true relics of the medieval past through archaeology, monument preservation, art history and ethnography; as well as in the collection of “national antiquities” and the identification, preservation, restoration, reconstruction, and documentation of “national monuments.” Finally, the authors consider the history of institutions that framed, enabled, and directed these forms of cultural expression, both secular academies, learned societies, museums, theaters, journals, reviews, clubs and cultural associations and also religious institutions and churches active in sponsoring and shaping traditions related to medieval heritage. The volume itself is organized around four major themes. The first set of papers concentrates specifically on historiography. In his survey of history writing in nineteenth century Habsburg monarchy, Walter Pohl provides a vast overview of the rival constructions of their own medieval



introduction

7

history by the different emerging nations. Subsequently, he examines the failure to create a compelling master narrative within a multi-ethnic and multi-national imperial polity, with historians settling instead for a vision of Austria as a “community of purpose,” a somber legal and administrative system unable to stir the sentiments of its inhabitants as did the particularist visions of the past that would ultimately tear it apart. Ian Wood continues with a panoramic survey of the place of medieval history and medievalist historians of the migration period in the politics of France, Italy, Germany, and Belgium across the nineteenth century. Completing this image with the North, Sverre Bagge examines the national revivals in Denmark and Norway. Presenting the process through the optic of theater, he shows the role of medievalism, here specifically Saga literature, played in these revivals, and examines in particular Henrik Ibsen’s blending a vision of a medieval, popular and democratic Norway with the ideological heritage of the French Revolution. The final historiographical paper by Maciej Janowski examines the historical vision of the great Polish historian, Joachim Lelewel, on the edge of Enlightenment and Romanticism, with a democratism somewhat similar to that of Michelet, very critical of the most important tenets of the Polish Enlightenment reformers, with their striving for a strong central power and the introduction of a modern bureaucratic type of government, believing in the self-regeneratory power of the internal democratic tradition, rooted in medieval evolution. The second part of the present volume explores the place of archaic and medieval imaginary in nineteenth century art. In northwestern Europe, as David M. Wilson demonstrates, nationalism, religious ideologies, and romanticism in art and architecture nostalgia combined in the early decades of the nineteenth century to appropriate medieval forms for the built environment and visual representation. Anders Andrén examines how different Scandinavian countries, drawing both on specific regional architectural heritages and ideological programs, evoked differing versions of a medieval past, including romanesque, gothic, or Viking dragon style, in response to differing historical visions and to contemporary perceptions of threats to national sovereignty. Ernő Marosi explores how in nineteenth century Hungary identifying, preserving, and restoring medieval monuments were incorporated into the construction of the national past although the architects’ deep connections to similar projects in France, Germany, and Austria inevitably resulted in conformity to a European medieval revival style. Representing an emergent Romanian national identity both at universal exhibitions abroad and in restoration projects at home is the topic examined by Carmen Popescu, who

8

introduction

finds that through the nineteenth century French architects and later Romanians educated in France were commissioned to build “Romanian national style” that drew strongly on ideas of neo-Byzantine architecture to such an extent that in extreme cases actual buildings were demolished so that French architects could construct “proper” neo-Byzantine edifices. Ahmet Ersoy’s essay develops the theme of western appropriation even further in his study of Ottoman gothic at the end of the nineteenth century. At the same time that Ottoman architects attempted a return to the medieval roots of Islamic/Ottoman architecture, they sought to incorporate elements of neo-Gothic into new constructions, an appropriation that betrayed these architect’s complex and unresolved dialogue with history. The final essay in this section, by the French historian Michael Werner, shows how architectural appropriations of the Middle Ages were not only feeding the nostalgia of “Historismus” and the strange mixture of eclecticism, but they also lead to a radicalization in the appropriation of the past by the present. In this sense, eclecticism became a special version of totalizing proceedings, which could explain the shift from historicism to modernity and to avant-garde, an unexpected link between gothics and modernists. The third set of essays concentrates on philological and literary scholarship and the appropriation of medieval literary texts into national canons. Through the single example of nineteenth century debates about the “original” version of the wide-spread fables of Reynard the Fox in French, High and Low German, and Flemish, Joep Leerssen exposes the antagonisms separating German and French philologists and the attempted appropriations by Dutch/Flemish philologists as each tradition attempted, both to impute its own national self-image to the fox and thereby to appropriate not only his textual provenance but his character. R. Howard Bloch explores the concentric circles in which Viollet-le-Duc invented medieval gothic through his architectural creations and in which French philologists invented an equally imaginary Francien, the supposedly pure version of Old French not evidenced by any manuscript tradition. Turning to the national revival movement in Bohemia, Pavlína Rychterová examines three generations of Czech philologists, those of Václav Fortunát Durych and Josef Dobrovský to Josef Jungmann, during which time study of the Czech language in the service of the national awakening, was progressively being freed from German philology and becoming both object and means of national identity. The final set of essays deal directly with competing ideologies of the past in national discourses. As a model of regional rather than national



introduction

9

historical imagination, Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri examines the role of medievalism in Italy, where at a national level revival of ancient Roman ideology dominated the republican search for a usable past while the Middle Ages represented papacy and foreign intervention, although medieval origins and medieval revivalism found fertile soil in local and regional self-representations. Stefan Detchev explores the changing image of the “Proto-Bulgars” in Bulgarian national discourse. They could represent the Asian, primitive, and uncivilized, but also strength and military might needed for state formation, a potentially despotic tradition that needed to be tempered by and ultimately subsumed into a Bulgarian Slavic Identity. Florin Curta also deals with medievalism in Bulgaria, but in this instance with the origins of Bulgarian archaeology. This pioneering work was undertaken by Karel Škorpil, a Czech émigré and Slavophile whose archaeological work, sponsored in part by Russia, sought in the first instance to diminish Austrian influence in the Balkans and sought to downplay the non-Slavic origins of the Bulgars. In the final paper in the volume, Péter Langó explores a similar topic to that of Curta, the early history of archaeology in Hungary. Here early interests in the classical past give way increasingly to disputes among Austrian and German scholars, pan-Slavicists, and a growing groups of Hungarian nationalists on how the physical evidence of the deep past of the Carpathian Basin could be mobilized in the increasingly heated politics of the late nineteenth century. Taken as a whole, these essays bear witness to the inextricable links between cultural and scientific engagement, the search for national identity, and political agendas in the long nineteenth century that made the search for archaic origins a histoire croisée. Patrick Geary and Gábor Klaniczay Princeton and Budapest, March 2012

PART one

MEDIEVALISM IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY HISTORIOGRAPHY

National Origin Narratives in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy Walter Pohl1 Early medieval history was a controversial topic in many European countries.2 But perhaps it was, and in many respects still is most controversial in Eastern Central Europe. In the nineteenth century, large parts of Central and Eastern Europe were ruled by multi-national empires: Russia, the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg monarchy. Here, nineteenth-century nationalism developed in regions without national states and with a leopard skin of mixed populations, and therefore soon started to aim for a reversal of the political order. This marks a contrast with Western Europe, where most nationalisms were attached to existing states.3 As Stefan Berger has observed, “if there was no continuity of state traditions, ethnicity came to the fore to claim a long tradition of proud opposition

1 This article owes much to the stimulating discussions in the ‘focus group’ at the Collegium Budapest, and I would like to thank Gábor Klaniczay and Patrick Geary for the opportunity to participate. I am also grateful to Peter Urbanitsch of the Kommission für die Geschichte der Habsburgermonarchie of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for advice. Research for this article was done in the context of the project funded by the Wittgenstein Prize of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Its publication adds to the work enabled by the ERC Advanced Grant ‘SCIRE’ awarded to me in 2010. Both projects are carried out at the University of Vienna and at the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences; I owe thanks to all these institutions. 2 See, for instance, Gebrauch und Missbrauch des Mittelalters, 19.–21. Jahrhundert/Uses and Abuses of the Middle Ages, 19th–21st Century, ed. by János M. Bak, Jörg Jarnut, Pierre Monnet and Bernd Schneidmüller, Mittelalter Studien 17 (München: Wilhelm Fink, 2009), with the contribution by Walter Pohl, “Modern Uses of Early Medieval Ethnic Origins,” 55–70; Vergangenheit und Vergegenwärtigung, ed. by Helmut Reimitz and Bernhard Zeller, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 14 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenshaften, 2009). 3 See, for instance, Theodor Schieder, “Typologie und Erscheinungsformen des Nationalstaats in Europa,” in id., Nationalismus und Nationalstaat, Studien zum nationalen Problem im modernen Europa, ed. by Otto Dann and Hans-Ulrich Wehler (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992): 65–86; Nationalismen in Europa: West- und Osteuropa im Vergleich, ed. by Ulrike v. Hirschhausen (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2001), with the introduction by Ulrike v. Hirschhausen and Jörn Leonhard, “Europäische Nationalismen im West-Ost-Vergleich: Von der Typologie zur Differenzbestimmung,” 11–45; Miroslav Hroch, Das Europa der Nationen. Die moderne Nationsbildung im europäischen Vergleich (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005).

14

walter pohl

of ‘the people’ to foreign state oppression.”4 But national states gradually moved eastward. The Habsburg Empire, which had been the main obstacle both to the creation of an Italian and a German national state, was forced to withdraw from both in the 1860s. But it retained control of its other crown lands until the First World War, while the Ottomans gradually had to acknowledge the independence and expansion of Greece, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria. Like the Ottoman and Russian Empires, the Habsburg Empire had only acquired its supra-regional power in the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Many of the subject peoples of these Empires identified themselves, with more or less plausibility, with one or another state that had existed for some time in the Middle Ages before being added to the imperial domain by force or dynastic coincidence.5 The interest of turning to a past before these (from the nationalist point of view) regrettable intrusions on the ancient national territory had taken place led to an interest in the ‘pristine’ early Middle Ages, when most of the peoples in this part of Europe were first mentioned in one form or another. Typically, this entailed scholarly and ideological debates about which territory belonged to whom. It is not surprising that the development of nationalism in these Empires was a rather complex and ambiguous process. National issues gradually became more pressing on the political and intellectual agenda; one may identify different stages here, but it was by no means a continuous process.6 4 Stefan Berger, “Introduction: Towards a Global History of National Historiographies,” in Writing the Nation. A Global Perspective, ed. by Stefan Berger (Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007): 1–29, at 5. See also Miroslav Hroch, Ethnonationalismus—eine ostmitteleuropäische Erfindung? (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2004). 5 Ernst Bruckmüller, “Nationsbildung und nationale Mythologie in Mitteleuropa. Staatlich-herrschaftliche Traditionen und nationale Mythen bei Österreichern, Ungarn und Tschechen,” in Soziokultureller Wandel im Verfassungsstaat, Festschrift Wolfgang Mantel zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Hedwig Kopetz, Joseph Marko and Klaus Poier (Wien, Graz & Köln: Böhlau, 2004), vol. 2, 779–802. See also Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe (1789–1945). Texts and Commentaries, 4 vols., ed. by Marius Turda, Ahmet Ersoy, Michal Kopeček, Balázs Trencsényi, Boyan Manchev, Vangelis Kech­ riotis and Maciej Gorny (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2006/07). 6 Hroch, Das Europa der Nationen, with a three-stage model. See also Robert A. Kann, Das Nationalitätenproblem der Habsburgermonarchie. Geschichte und Ideengehalt der nationalen Bestrebungen vom Vormärz bis zur Auflösung des Reiches im Jahre 1918, 2 vols. (Graz: Böhlau, 21964); Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, vol. 3: Die Völker des Reiches, ed. by Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch (Wien: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1980); Nations and Nationalism in East-Central Europe 1806–1948. A Festschrift for Peter F. Sugar, ed. by Sabrina P. Ramet, James R. Felak and Herbert J. Ellison (Blooming­ton: Slavika Press, 2002).

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 15 The interest here is in the role that scholarship played in the changing mechanisms of national identification.7 Political conflicts alimented by nationalism became more intense in about the same period when the scientific standards of scholarship increased considerably. Historical, philological, and archaeological methodology made a leap forward in the second half of the nineteenth century; the influences of positivism and empiricism made themselves felt; and the writing of history underwent a process of professionalization.8 In what ways was the parallel development of scholarship and of nationalism related? No doubt, as Patrick Geary states, the historical disciplines “ ‘scientifically’ established the essential components of nationhood: language, territory and distinct culture in an ancient past.”9 On the other hand, scholarly rigour could also contribute to dismantling older, romantic national myths.10 The unmasking of the Grünberg and Königinhof forgeries by Czech scholars, achieved after a long debate, established the authority of Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, the first president of the independent Czechoslovak state.11 But more often than not, advanced scholarly methods were used to destroy the myths of other nations, and this led to characteristically protracted scholarly debates, some of which will be sketched in this contribution. The Austro-Hungarian monarchy offers a fascinating case study because the emergent nationalisms were inextricably confronted with each other within an essentially common intellectual and scholarly arena.12 Nations only exist in the plural and offer a principle of distinction at least as

7 See Joep Leerssen, National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006). 8 Gabriele Lingelbach, Klio macht Karriere. Die Institutionalisierung der Geschichtswissenschaft in Frankreich und den USA in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003). 9 Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations. The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), at 34; see 15–40 for some fundamental considerations. 10 Chris Lorenz, “Drawing the line. Scientific history between myth-making and mythbreaking,” in Narrating the Nation. Representations in History, Media and the Arts, ed. by Stefan Berger, Linas Eriksonas and Andrew Mycock (Oxford & New York: Berghahn Books, 2008): 35–55. 11 Pavlína Rychterová, “The Manuscripts of Grünberg and Königinhof. Romantic Lies about the Glorious Past of the Czech Nation,” in Authenticity and Forgery, ed. by János Bak, Patrick J. Geary and Gábor Klaniczay (Leiden, forthcoming); see also her contribution in this volume. Cf. Miroslav Hroch, “From ethnic group toward the modern nation—the Czech case,” in Nations and Nationalism 10: 93–105. 12 Nation und Nationalismus in wissenschaftlichen Standardwerken Österreich-Ungarns, ca. 1867–1918, ed. by Csaba Kiss, Endre Kiss and Justin Stagl (Wien, Köln & Weimar: Boulau Verlag, 1997).

16

walter pohl

much as of identification.13 But national distinctions do not come naturally; they have to be extracted from rather time-resistant aggregates of identifications.14 Local, regional, political, dynastic identities had to be streamlined towards a new hegemonial mode of national identification. In the Habsburg monarchy, this was not easy to achieve. ‘Nations’ in the full sense were distinguished from ‘nationalities’ without sufficient political autonomy15 and these forms of community had to compete with other allegiances. A slavophone citizen of Ljubljana could identify with the Habsburg dynasty, the Austrian state, the Kronland of Krain, the ancient Veneti or Illyrians, the Slovene or the Yugoslav people or with Panslavism. ‘Czech’ in the Czech language could distinguish the Bohemians from the Moravians, both taken together from the inhabitants of other countries, or the Czech speakers from the German speakers in Bohemia. Notably, the German-speaking intelligentsia of Austria had problems of identification. ‘Austria’, in the nineteenth century, meant basically three different things: First, the medieval duchy of Austria comprising the modern Austrian lands of Upper and Lower Austria including Vienna; second, the Habsburg monarchy as a whole; and third, especially after the Ausgleich of 1867, the ‘Austrian’ part as opposed to Hungary, although official terminology was hesitant here and defined this part as “die im Reichsrathe vertretenen Königreiche und Länder”, unofficially also known as Cisleithanien, the countries on ‘this side of the Leitha river’, the ancient boundary between Austria and Hungary. After 1918, the Republic established a fourth and again entirely different meaning, comprising the former duchy and the other Länder such as Styria, Carinthia and Tyrol.16

13 Cf. What is a Nation? Europe 1789–1914, ed. by Timothy Baycroft and Mark Hewitson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 14 Cf. Walter Pohl, “Strategies of Identification: Introduction,” in Strategies of Identification, ed. by Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 1–64. 15 Endre Kiss and Justin Stagl, “Einleitung,” in Nation und Nationalismus in wissenschaftlichen Standardwerken, 7–14, at 9; Brigitte Rupp-Eisenreich, “Nation, Nationalität und verwandte Begriffe bei Friedrich Hertz und seinen Vorgängern,” ibid., 92–111. 16 Erich Zöllner, Der Österreichbegriff. Formen und Wandlungen in der Geschichte (Wien: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1988); Ernst Bruckmüller, Nation Österreich. Kulturelles Bewußtsein und gesellschaftlich-politische Prozesse, Studien zu Politik und Verwaltung, vol. 4 (Wien, Köln & Graz: Böhlau, 1996); Engl. translation: The Austrian nation. Cultural consciousness and socio-political processes (Riverside: Ariadne Press, 2003); id., “Österreichbegriff und Österreichbewußtsein in der franzisko-josephinischen Epoche,” in Was heißt Österreich? Inhalt und Umfang des Österreichbegriffs vom 10. Jahrhundert bis heute, ed. by Richard G. Plaschka, Gerald Stourzh and Jan Niederkorn, Archiv für österreichische Geschichte, vol. 136 (Wien: Leinen Archiv für Österreischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1995): 255–288, and several other contributions of this volume; Probleme der Geschichte

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 17 It is not surprising that a strong Austrian ‘national’ identity could hardly develop under these circumstances. As Friedrich Heer observed, nineteenth-century Austria had a National Bank (founded in 1816) but was not certain that it was a nation.17 The German-speaking elites were thus split in their attitudes. The aristocracy, the higher ranks in the army, and the bureaucracy were mostly conservative, strongly attached to the monarchy and characterized by the Habsburg colours as ‘schwarz-gelb’, ‘black-and-yellow’. This was an orientation shared with many of their peers from the other nationalities. The high bourgeoisie and the educated Jews were more liberal and reform-oriented, but were favourable to the Empire which had created a wide and profitable market and guaranteed their social position. The majority of the German-speaking lower bourgeoisie and many intellectuals gradually turned to German nationalism, thus identifying with another empire, not just their own. This rift was already visible in the revolution of 1848, and it may be debated whether it represented a reaction to the other nationalisms in the monarchy or directly followed the lure of German nationalism that had become culturally dominant everywhere in the German Bund by 1848. Long before 1914, the Habsburg monarchy thus lost, to a considerable degree, the consensus of its most privileged national group.18 Thus Austria is one of the very few European nations that never developed its own nationalism. Many Austrians adopted German nationalism instead. Even the fascist Austrian regime between 1933 and 1938 tried to oppose the Nazis with the unlikely ideology that the Austrians were in fact the better Germans.19 German nationalism in its various manifestations was one of the most aggressive nationalisms in Europe. It had developed from Romantic patriotism that found the essence of German culture in the soul of the

Österreichs und ihrer Darstellung, ed. by Herwig Wolfram and Walter Pohl, Veröffentli­ chungen der Kommission für österreichische Geschichte der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 18 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1991) and especially the contributions by Gerald Stourzh, “Der Umfang der österreichi­ schen Geschichte,” 3–28 and Moritz Csáky, “Historische Reflexionen über das Problem einer österreichischen Identität,” 30–49. 17 Friedrich Heer, Der Kampf um die österreichische Identität (Wien, Köln and Weimar: Böhlau, 21996); see also Markus Erwin Haider, Im Streit um die österreichische Nation. Nationale Leitwörter in Österreich 1866–1938 (Wien, Köln & Weimar: Böhlau, 1998). 18 Das Nationalitätenproblem in der Habsburgermonarchie, ed. by Robert Kann and Marianne Schön, 2 vols. (Wien, Köln & Graz: Böhlau, 1964). 19 Gernot Heiß, “Pan-Germans, Better Germans, Austrians. Austrian Historians on National Identity from the First to the Second Republic,” in German Studies Review 16 (1993): 411–433.

18

walter pohl

people (Volksseele) into a racist belief in a biologically-determined Aryan, Nordic and German superiority.20 The basis of all these ideologies was the identification of the modern Germans (Deutsche) with their ancient counterparts (Germanen). This equation then enabled the establishment of the modern Germans as the inheritors of a Germanic tradition that stretched far back into the past, and beyond the geographic range of the modern nation.21 It was thought to include Scandinavian heroic religion; the exploits of Goths, Vandals, Anglo-Saxons, Burgundians, Longobards and other Germanic peoples who conquered much of Europe in the course of the Great Migrations between the fourth and the sixth century ad; and the medieval colonisation of parts of Eastern Europe by traders, artisans and Teutonic Knights. The heroic Germanic past was represented by figures such as Arminius (Hermann der Cherusker) and Frederick Barbarossa, both of whom were honoured with massive monuments in the nineteenth century. The early medieval German past was more problematic. Its heroes were on the one hand the founders or defenders of rather short-lived kingdoms, such as Theoderic, King of the Ostrogoths, Alaric, King of the Visigoths, or Geiseric, King of the Vandals. On the other hand, Clovis and Charlemagne ruled the successful Frankish kingdom, where a much more direct line led to the modern French than to the German state.22 Therefore, medieval historians in Germany were (and still are) much more interested in the glorious period of the Ottonians, when the Holy Roman Empire was appropriated by the kingdom of the Eastern Franks (from whom in due course the Germans would develop). Still, images of the migration period were prominent in the German imagination. The popular and lavishly illustrated Bildersaal deutscher Geschichte, published in 1890, juxtaposes an attack of the wild and black-faced Huns (one of them holding a very white and fair-haired woman on his saddle) with the orderly and almost bucolic Germanenzug, with a blonde and bare-breasted lady

20 Stefan Berger, The Search for Normality: National Identity and Historical Consciousness in Germany since 1800 (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1997). 21 Klaus von See, Deutsche Germanenideologie vom Humanismus bis zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt & Main: Athenäum Verlag, 1970); idem, Barbar, Germane, Arier. Die Suche nach der Identität der Deutschen (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1994). 22 Walter Pohl, “Vom Nutzen des Germanenbegriffes zwischen Antike und Mittelalter: eine forschungsgeschichtliche Perspektive,” in Akkulturation. Probleme einer germanischromanischen Kultursynthese in Spätantike und frühem Mittelalter, ed. by Dieter Hägermann, Wolfgang Haubrichs and Jörg Jarnut (Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 2004), 1–17.

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 19 waving from her wagon.23 The book goes on to picture Alaric’s sack of Rome in 410, the battle of the Catalaunian Fields in 451, Theoderic’s mausoleum at Ravenna, scenes from the Gothic war (which had become very popular with Felix Dahn’s novel Ein Kampf um Rom) and the grisly scene in which the Longobard king Alboin offers the cup made from her father’s skull to his wife Rosamunda. Then the narrative moves on to the Franks. None of this in fact happened on modern German territory. In spite of the strong statements of Germanic-German ethnic, political and cultural continuity, historians had to come to terms with a long and broken process of identity formation, from the ancient Germani who were more of a heterogeneous population defined by the Romans than a selfaware people, through the medieval Holy Roman Empire formed by the peoples of the Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, Alamans and others, and then the early modern fragmentation which led to the separation of independent peoples such as the Swiss, the Dutch and the Austrians.24 Still, the obvious continuity of the German-speaking population in important parts of Germany lent credibility to the more arduous constructions of national continuity. In Austria, German nationalists faced even greater difficulties in coming to terms with an ethnically complex history. In most parts of the Habsburg Empire that were presently inhabited by a German-speaking population, continuity from the ancient Germans to the medieval and modern Austrians was difficult to establish. In the Roman period, German settlement (mainly the Marcomanni and the Quadi) had only stretched to the countries north of the Danube, while the Celtic population south of the river had gradually been Romanized.25 In the migration age, several ‘Germanic’ peoples moved through ancient Noricum and Pannonia, which were at intervals controlled by Goths, Franks and Longobards; but these were episodes.26 After 600, the territorial configuration of the Avar

23 Bildersaal deutscher Geschichte. Zwei Jahrtausende deutschen Lebens in Wort und Bild, ed. by Adolf Bär and Paul Quensel (Stuttgart, Berlin & Leipzig: Union Deutsche Verlagsgellschaft, 1890, repr. Wiesbaden: Marixverl., 2004); see also Bernhard Jussen, “Mémoire collective imagée et imagination historique à l‘époque contemporaine. Une approche des vignettes historiques grand public,” in Retour aux sources: textes, études et documents d’histoire médiévale offerts à Michel Parisse, ed. by Sylvain Gouguenheim (Paris: Picard, 2004), 901–912. 24 Walter Pohl, Die Germanen. Oldenbourgs Enzyklopädie der deutschen Geschichte 57 (München, 2002). 25 Verena Gassner, Sonja Jilek and Sabine Ladstätter, Am Rande des Reiches. Die Römer in Österreich (Wien: Ueberreuter, 2002). 26 Herwig Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume. Geschichte Österreichs vor seiner Entstehung, 378–907 (Wien: Ueberreuter, 1995).

20

walter pohl

khaganate, which was largely inhabited by Slavs, was remarkably similar to that of the Habsburg monarchy in the later nineteenth century.27 Only the western part of modern Austria had become part of the Bavarian duchy. When Bavarians and Franks conquered the rest of the eastern Alps in the eighth century, it still took centuries until the Slavic population became Germanized and complemented by German-speaking settlers.28 German settlement in Bohemia and Moravia began even later.29 This apparent lack of Germanic-German continuity in many parts of Austria was the more embarrassing as most peoples of the monarchy, more or less plausibly, claimed early medieval (or even earlier) origins. The Italians could argue that they were descended from the Romans who had once represented civilisation in the face of the barbarians from whom all the other nationalities of the monarchy were descended. Likewise, the Romanians claimed ancient origins from the Romans or the Dacians. The Czechs celebrated the seventh-century kingdom of Samo as the first Czech (and indeed, as the first Slavic) state, the Slovenes identified with the eighth-century Carantanian duchy, and the Croats believed that they had come from north of the Carpathians in the seventh century. The Magyars celebrated the Millennium of their conquest, honfoglalás, in grand style in 1896, but also identified with Attila and the Avars.30 All these national origin narratives predated the creation of the Eastern March in 976 which later was called Austria, and also the beginnings of the Germanization of the core areas of the Habsburg monarchy. There were cases in which scholarly polemic took issue with one or the other of these national origin stories, and Austrian-German historians tried to prove the priority of German settlement. At least as frequently, different national narratives contradicted each other. Several cases lead to scholarly debates between different paradigms and hypotheses. Thus, different regimes of historicity coexisted within the zone of intense academic communication constituted by the Habsburg monarchy. It is interesting to ask which general patterns of argument can be distinguished in these national master narratives. Is there such a thing as an underlying national 27 Walter Pohl, Die Awaren. Ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa, 567–822 n. Chr. (München: CH Beck, 22002). 28 Karl Brunner, Herzogtümer und Marken. Vom Ungarnsturm bis ins 12. Jahrhundert, 907–1156 (Wien: Ueberreuter, 1994). 29 Jan Klápště, Proměna českých zemí ve středověku (Praha: Lidové noviny, 2005). 30 Ilona Sármány-Parsons, “Ungarns Millenniumsjahr 1896,” in Der Kampf um das Gedächtnis. Öffentliche Gedenktage in Mitteleuropa, ed. by Emil Brix and Hannes Stekl (Wien, Köln & Weimar: Böhlau, 1997): 273–92.

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 21 discourse, in the sense of Foucault, which was a shared patrimony of nineteenth-century intellectuals, and which can explain the strange dialectic between the common cultural heritage and the strategies of exclusive appropriation that we can observe in the long nineteenth century?31 National origin myths tend to be elliptic and project into the past social phenomena that one would wish for in the present. It is thus also indicative of whether the early history is filled with images of peaceful peasants and democratic assemblies, or of aggressive conquerors and ruthless leaders. A full treatment of these problems would require an extensive overview of in part very regional debates that were dealt with in widely different media. One would also have to recreate some of the polyphony within national historiographies, which certainly were no monolithic blocks. Therefore, all I can do in this contribution is sketch briefly some of the crucial problems of early medieval history raised before 1914 in the Habsburg monarchy. Towards a ‘mythologie croisée’ of Central European Nations Most of the contentious historical issues between nationalities dealt with basically similar historical issues and constellations. The key question was to argue for the historical ‘right’ of a people to a certain territory that was also claimed by other peoples. This constellation was in fact much more frequent in Eastern Central Europe than in most other parts of the continent. Bohemia was contested between Germans and Czechs, Carinthia between Slovenes and Germans, Tyrol south of the Brenner between Italians and Germans, Gorizia/Görz, Istria and Dalmatia between Slovenes and/or Croatians and Italians, parts of Galicia between Poles and Ruthenians, Transylvania between Romanians, Hungarians and Germans, many other peripheral areas of the Hungarian kingdoms between Hungarians and Slavs, and so on. Historical arguments to bolster national claims could basically take two forms: Either one had been there before the others, or one had legitimately taken possession of the country at some distant point in history. The type of historical discourse employed in the two cases was rather different. The first argument—precedence—required evidence of chronological priority that stretched into a distant past illuminated by very 31 Michel Foucault, L’ordre du discours. (Paris: Gallimard, 1971); Leerssen, National Thought in Europe, and his contribution in this volume.

22

walter pohl

rudimentary sources. It almost invariably ended up with tricky problems of identification of contemporary peoples with older ones, and/or in debates over settlement continuity between those peoples. One of the basic issues here was Germanic continuity. In this context, discussions in the monarchy were linked with contemporary German research. All territories of the monarchy had been settled or conquered by Germanic peoples in Antiquity at some point, either since the first century ad (Marcomanni and Quadi in Bohemia and Moravia; Vandals, Goths and others north of the Carpathians), since the third century ad (Goths and Gepids in Transylvania), or since the migration period (Goths and Longobards in Noricum, Pannonia and the North-Western Balkans). Slavic settlement came later. However, Germanic peoples more or less abandoned most of these territories in the course of the Great Migration; the Slavs could thus argue that they had peacefully settled in these regions. This became the focus of controversial debates which still flare up occasionally in the present. In the almost total absence of written evidence for Germanic continuity, place-name studies and archaeology acquired increasing significance towards the end of the nineteenth century. Debates on the origin of the Bavarians also became relevant to the question. Most German scholars claimed that the Bavarians were directly descended from the Marcomanni. This theory was developed in 1837 by Kaspar Zeuss; “Baiovarii,” he argued, “were the men from Baia/Boiohaemum,” where the Marcomanni had lived. One could thus conclude that when the Bavarians expanded eastward from the eighth century onwards they recuperated some of their ancient homelands.32 Another group that argued to have been there first were the Italians who claimed to be the direct descendants of the Romans in all areas where they now faced Germans or Slavs, especially in the Trentino, in Istria and Dalmatia. Adolf Bachmann, professor at the German University in Prague, acknowledged in his Lehrbuch der österreichischen Reichsgeschichte which appeared in 1895 that the Italians and Ladinians regarded themselves as the oldest population of Austria who settled here continuously, although he added: “with the exception of the Italians in the South Tyrol, who are 32 Kaspar Zeuss, Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstämme (München: Ignaz Joseph Lentner, 1837), Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung, repr. 1925); for an extensive overview of the debate, see Manfred Menke, “150 Jahre Forschungsgeschichte zu den Anfängen des Baiern-Stammes,” in Typen der Ethnogenese unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Bayern, vol. 2, ed. by Herwig Friesinger and Falko Daim, Denkschriften der phil.hist. Klasse der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 204 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1990 ): 123–220.

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 23 mostly descendants of romanized Longobards.”33 Bachmann is remarkable for establishing an exact running order of oldest permanent settlements on the territory of the monarchy. The Alamanni in Vorarlberg come second, Bavarians in the west of Austria third, with the Slavs in Carinthia, in Bohemia and Moravia and the north of Hungary (modern Slovakia) as immediate runners-up.34 The question was more complex in the case of the other important romance-speaking people in the monarchy, the Romanians (incidentally, a rather late name to accommodate Valachians, Moldavians, Aromunians and other groups).35 The ‘Roman’ identification had spread among Romanian-speaking intellectuals in the early modern period, although it had also been contested.36 During the Enlightenment, the intellectuals of the ‘Transylvanian school’ (Scoala ardeleana) underlined the Latin origin of the Romanian language.37 The influential work by Petru Maior on The History of the Origin of the Romanians in Dacia (1812) maintained the purity of Roman blood in the Romanians, while the Dacians had been exterminated.38 In the second half of the nineteenth century, the ancient Dacians came back into the picture. This could be linked with a conservative, anti-western attitude,39 but it also allowed a double identification with the Romans and with the glorious Dacians: The Romanians could conveniently be the heirs both of Trajan and Burebista. Until the 1870s,

33 “Immerhin darf sich heute unser italienisches und ladinisches Volksthum, mit Ausnahme der Italiener Südtirols, die meist Nachkommen romanisierter Langobarden sind, als die älteste bleibend sesshafte Bevölkerung Österreichs betrachten”; Adolf Bachmann, Lehrbuch der österreichischen Reichsgeschichte, 1. Hälfte (Prag: Rohliček und Sievers, 1895), 14. 34 Bachmann, Lehrbuch, 14–16. 35 Transylvania and the Theory of Daco-Roman-Romanian Continuity, ed. by Louis L. Lôte (Rochester, NY: Committee of Transylvania, 1980), with the contribution by Andre du Nay, “The Daco-Romanian theory of continuity: Origins of the Romanian nation and language,” 5–15 (from a critical and sometimes rather pro-Hungarian perspective); Lucian Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness (Budapest & New York: Central European University Press, 2001). 36 Stergios Laitsos, “Die Konstruktion der Vlachen von 1640 bis 1740,” in Vergangenheit und Vergegenwärtigung, ed. Reimitz and Zeller, 205–28; Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness. 37 Du Nay, “The Daco-Romanian theory of continuity.” 38 Petru Maior, Istroza pentru inceputul rominilor an Dachia (Buda: Crăiašca Typografie a Universitătii Ungurestĭ din Pesta, 1812). 39 Andrei Pippidi, “Anniversaries, continuity and politics in Romania,” in Gebrauch und Missbrauch des Mittelalters, ed. Bak, Jarnut, Monnet and Schneidmüller, 325–36 at 330.

24

walter pohl

the theory of Romanian continuity enjoyed wide acceptance throughout the monarchy, and was even taught in Hungarian schools.40 The historical problem, however, lay in proving Daco-Roman settlement continuity in Transylvania. Irrefutably, the romance language had survived, although with substantial Slavic elements. But it was hard to prove where exactly that happened since other sources were scarce. Slavic settlers, Avar and Hungarian rulers, and German colonists all figured more prominently in the medieval evidence from Transylvania. The question was also debated in the Vienna Academy, where Robert Roesler argued in 1871 that the Transylvanian Romanians had only immigrated in the Late Middle Ages. He argued that the Romanian language must have had its origins south of the Danube, while there was a conspicuous absence of Latin place names north of the river.41 Roesler’s fundamental critique found support among many German-Austrian, and, predictably, Hungarian scholars, for instance, Pál Hunfalvy who published his ‘Ethnography of Hungary’ in 1876.42 Hunfalvy was a leading liberal intellectual of his time who was fascinated by the new methods of philology and the history of languages.43 He was convinced that language and not race was the decisive criterion of nationality: “Not the form of the skull, nor the growth of hair or the colour of the skin make the human being or a people, but exclusively his language and social being.”44 What counted, therefore, was the self-representation of human beings in the course of history. But debates were heated: in the Vienna Academy, Julius Jung argued in favour of Daco-Romanian continuity in 1877.45 Romanian scholars such as 40 Joachim von Puttkamer, Schulalltag und nationale Integration in Ungarn (München: Oldenborg, 2003), 355. 41  Robert Roesler, “Dacier und Romänen. Eine geschichtliche Studie,” in Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften 53, 1 (1866): 9–92; idem, Romänische Studien. Untersuchungen Zur Älteren Geschichte Romäniens. (Leipzig, 1871, reprint: Biblio­ Bazaar, 2010), 63–145. 42 Pál Hunfalvy, Magyarország ethnographiája (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1876); German translation: Ethnographie von Ungarn (Budapest: Franklin-Verein, 1877). For a brief overview of the debate: Puttkamer, Schulalltag und nationale Integration, 349–62. 43 Zoltán Tóth, “Liberale Auffassung der Ethnizität in der Ethnographie von Ungarn von Pál Hunfalvy,” in Nation und Nationalismus in wissenschaftlichen Standardwerken Österreich-Ungarns, ca. 1867–1918, ed. by Endre Kiss, Csaba Kiss, Justin Stagl (Köln & Wien: Böhlau, 1997), 57–64. 44 Hunfalvy, Ethnographie von Ungarn, XII: “Nicht die Form des Schädels, noch das Wachstum der Haare oder die Farbe der Haut machen den Menschen oder ein Volk; sondern allein dessen Sprache und soziales Wesen.” Therefore, “Die Erscheinung des Menschen in der Geschichte, d.i. seine Darstellung durch sich selbst” had to be investigated. 45 Julius Jung, Römer und Romanen in den Donauländern (Innsbruck: Wagner, 1877).

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 25 Alexandru Xenopol46 also sought to refute Roesler’s argument. Hunfalvy retorted, and the debate was also continued in popular historiography.47 In the multi-volume series Die Völker Österreich-Ungarns, published in 1881, the volume on the Romanians in the monarchy stated bluntly: “Only gradually and only very late have the Romanians become a people, whose origin and further history could be of more or less interest to the western peoples.”48 Nicolăe Iorga, the influential historian, publisher and nationalist politician, defended Daco-Romanian continuity in his writings.49 The problem has remained controversial to the present day. In the last years of Ceauşescu (a firm supporter of Daco-Romanian continuity) debates between Romanian and Hungarian scholars were particularly heated.50 After 1989, the scholarly discussion gradually became less controversial. What is striking in this example is how a generally accepted romantic national myth was dismantled by a critical scholar using the latest historical-philological method. Perhaps not by coincidence, this new view was promoted by Vienna. But it did not lead to a new consensus, but created a lasting rift between the new national historiographies in the Habsburg monarchy and beyond. The Slavs also discovered their ancient history in the course of the nineteenth century. Of course, the first mention of early Slavs in the sources does not predate the sixth century ad.51 Palacký assumed that they had already lived in their later settlement areas before that, even before 46 Alexandru D. Xenopol, Teoria lui Roesler. Studia asupra stăruinţei Românilor in Dacia traiană (Iaşi: Tipogr. nationala, 1884), French translation: Une énigme historique. Les Roumains au moyen-âge (Paris: E. Leroux, 1885). 47 Pál Hunfalvy, Neuere Erscheinungen der rumänischen Geschichtsschreibung (Wien & Teschen: K. Prochaska, 1883). 48 Joan Slavici, Die Rumänen in Ungarn, Siebenbürgen und der Bukowina. Die Völker Österreich-Ungarns. Ethnographische und kulturhistorische Schilderungen vol. 6 (Wien and Teschen: K. Prochaska, 1881), 21: “Nur allmählich also und sehr spät wurden die Rumänen ein Volk, dessen Abstammung und fernere Geschichte auch die westlichen Völker mehr oder minder interessieren konnte.” 49 Nicolăe Iorga, Geschichte des rumänischen Volkes im Rahmen seiner Staatsbildungen, 2 vols. (Gotha: F.A. Perthes, 1905). See Ambrus Miskolczy, “Paradoxa von und über Iorga. Die ‘Geschichte der Rumänen in Siebenbürgen und Ungarn’, 1915,” in Nation und Nationalismus, ed. Kiss, Kiss and Stagl, 127–58; Pippidi, “Anniversaries,” 326 f. 50 The Romanian position: Dumitru Protase, La continuité Daco-Romaine (Cluj-Napoca: Risoprint, 2001); the Hungarian position: Erdély története három kötetben (History of Transylvania in three volumes), vol. 1, ed. by Béla Köpeczi (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1986), English edition: History of Transylvania, vol. 1 (Boulder CO, Social Science Monographs, Highland Lakes, NJ: Atlantic Research and Publications & New York: Columbia University Press [distr.], 2001). 51  František Graus, Die Nationenbildung der Westslawen im Mittelalter. Nationes 3 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1980); Florin Curta, The Making of the Slavs. History and Archaeology

26

walter pohl

the Germans, but it had not been mentioned because of their peaceful character.52 A similar view had already been promoted by Anton Tomaž Linhart, author of the first history of the Slovenes at the end of the eighteenth century, who argued that the Slovenes had arrived in the fourth century, together with the Germans.53 But one could go beyond that. Pavel Šafařík, in his Slovanské starožitnosti, popularized the model of continuity between the Venethi and the Slavs that had already been sketched by Vaclav Durych.54 The Venethi are mentioned by authors of the early imperial age, not least, by Tacitus, as the eastern neighbours of the Germans.55 Their name came to be appropriated in the Germanic languages as a generic term for their eastern neighbours and thus applied to the Slavs. It was thus analogous to the term walhe, Walachians, Wallonians, Welsh, which was derived from the pre-Roman Volcae and later applied to Romans and Celts.56 Whereas no one would seriously conclude that the Romans, or even the Gauls, were in reality descended from the Volcae, the Venethian origin of the Slavs became common place, a view still held by the majority of Slovenian historians now.57 This allowed the Slavs to be endowed with a prehistoric past. The hypothesis has acquired a specific flavour among the Slovenes. Although the pre-Roman Veneti in Northern Italy had no obvious connection to the Venethi in North-Eastern Europe apart from the name, they were often identified as pristine Slavs. The volume of the 1880s series Die Völker Österreichs on the Slovenes, written by Josef Šuman, a school inspector from the Krain, thus deals extensively with the Venetian heritage of the Slavs, hinting, if cautiously, at a

of the Lower Danube Region c. 500–700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Pohl, Die Awaren, 94–8. 52 František Palacký, Dějiny národu českého v Čechách a v Moravě I–V (Praha: Kalve, 1848–1867), 42. See Pavlína Rychterová, “Die Anfänge des tschechischen Mittelalters und ihre Rolle beim Aufbau der nationaltschechischen Identität im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Vergangenheit und Vergegenwärtigung, ed. Reimitz and Zeller, 241–252. 53 Stih, “Die Nationswerdung der Slowenen” at 370. 54 Pavel Šafařík, Slovanské starožitnosti (Prague: Tiskem I. Spurného, 1837). For Durych, see the contribution by Pavlína Rychterová in this volume. 55 Tacitus, Germania c. 46. 56 Reinhard Wenskus, Stammesbildung und Verfassung: das Werden der frühmittelalterlichen gentes (Köln & Wien: Böhlau, 21977), 210–34; Pohl, Germanen, 50; Roland Steinacher, “Wenden, Slawen, Vandalen. Eine frühmittelalterliche pseudologische Gleichsetzung und ihr Nachleben bis ins 18. Jahrhundert,” in Die Suche nach den Ursprüngen. Von der Bedeutung des frühen Mittelalters, ed. by Walter Pohl, Forschungen zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 8 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004), 329–353. 57 E.g. Pavel Dolukhanov, The Early Slavs. Eastern Europe from the Initial Settlement to the Kievan Rus (London & New York: Longman, 1996).

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 27 possible Slavic precedence in the region north of the Adriatic.58 Bizarre as this theory may seem, it has caused quite a stir in Slovenia in recent years because a very outspoken group of amateur historians has started promoting it again—Venice as ‘the city of the Slavs’—to the great displeasure of professional medievalists. One characteristic of early Slavic history was that states and supraregional powers were slow to form. In a Herderian sense, this could be regarded as an expression of ancient Slavic liberty and therefore as a strength. But from a nationalist perspective, it created a problem. Therefore, the Czechs celebrated the seventh-century kingdom of Samo as the beginning of their state (and indeed, as the first Slavic state altogether). The Frankish Chronicle of Fredegar, our only source, states that Samo was a Frank; but all relevant Czech scholars (most notably, Palacký and Šafařík) discarded this information.59 The Moravian duchy of the ninth century was also seen as an important precedent for Slavic statehood. The tenth-century Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus had called the Moravian state ‘megalē Moravia’, Great Moravia, to stress that it was north of the Danube and thus outside the old imperial territory.60 But the grandiose-sounding term was gladly appropriated by national historiographies.61 The interval to the beginnings of the Přemyslid state had been bridged by the Grünberg and Königinhof forgeries.62 The theory of the strong Přemyslid state of the tenth century was also developed by nineteenth-century historians on the basis of very scant sources, once the forgeries had been discarded. Nevertheless, many Czech and Slovak historians of the early twenty-first century still more or less endorse a rather maximalist interpretation of the early Slavic states in the region.63 58 Josef Šuman, Die Slovenen. Die Völker Österreich-Ungarns. Ethnographische und kulturhistorische Schilderungen, vol. 10 (Wien & Teschen: Prochaska, 1881). 59 Palacký, Dějiny národu českého, 104; Šafařík, Slovanské starožitnosti. In general, see Rychterová, “Die Anfänge des tschechischen Mittelalters”. 60 This terminology is consistent with other cases such as Asia or Scythia Maior/Minor, Magna Hungaria etc. 61  Frank Hadler, “Der Magna-Moravia-Mythos zwischen Geschichtsschreibung und Politik im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,” in Geschichtliche Mythen in den Literaturen und Kulturen Ostmittel- und Südosteuropas, ed. by Eva Behring, Ludwig Richter and Wolfgang F. Schwarz (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1999), 275–292. 62 Rychterová, “The manuscripts” (forthcoming). 63 E.g. the influential books by Dušan Třeštík, Počátky Přemyslovců. Vstup Čechů do dějin (530–935), (Praha: Lidové noviny, 1997); idem, Vznik Velké Moravy. Moravané, Čechové a střední Evropa v letech 791–871 (Praha: Lidové noviny, 2001), or very recently the volume Böhmen und seine Nachbarn in der Přemyslidenzeit im mitteleuropäischen Vergleich, ed. by Ivan Hlaváček and Alexander Patschovsky, Vorträge und Forschungen, (Sigmaringen:

28

walter pohl

The Slovenes looked to the Carantanian duchy as their original state, and sometimes also claimed (according to the Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, a ninth-century piece of Salzburg propaganda against Methodius) that Samo had been a Carantanian ruler.64 In Carinthia, where a mixed German and Slavic population lived, historical precedence came to be increasingly debated towards the end of the nineteenth century. Still, it is remarkable that in the ‘Carinthia’, a regional journal founded in the early nineteenth century, the tones of debate in the later nineteenth century remain much more sustained than even a hundred years later. For a long time, most scholars (for instance, the Freiherr von Ankershofen, author of the standard history of Carinthia written in the middle of the nineteenth century) accepted as a fact that all of Carinthia was settled by Slavs before the Bavarian expansion in the eighth century.65 Only in 1893 did Karl Baron Hauser, a specialist of the prehistoric and Roman period, argue in a book that in those areas where Germans were in the majority in the nineteenth century the same had already been the case in the Early Middle Ages. Bavarian settlers, he argued, had reinforced earlier Germans there before the Slavs arrived, and the Slavs only settled interspersed between them.66 In the same year, F.G. Hann, one of the most prolific contributors of the Carinthia, endorsed the new view in a review in the journal: “Ich glaube auch, dass dieser bajuwarischen Hypothese die Zukunft gehört ”.67 The hypothesis was based on Old High German toponyms, on Paul the Deacon’s misinterpreted information (HL III, 30) that the Bavarians inhabited the ancient province of Noricum,68 but also Thorbecke, 2010); for a critique, see Herwig Wolfram, “Die ostmitteleuropäischen Reichsbildungen um die erste Jahrtausendwende und ihre gescheiterten Vorläufer,” in the same volume, and Pavlína Rychterová, “Aufstieg und Fall des Přemyslidenreiches. Erforschung des böhmischen Früh- und Hochmittelalters in der gegenwärtigen tschechischen Mediävistik,” Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 34 (2007): 629–647. 64 Peter Stih, “Suche nach der Geschichte oder wie der Fürstenstein das Nationalsymbol der Slowenen geworden ist,” in Vergangenheit und Vergegenwärtigung, ed. Reimitz and Zeller, 29–40. In general see Hans-Dietrich Kahl, Der Staat der Karantanen. Slowenien und seine Nachbarländer zwischen Antike und karolingischer Epoche, vol. 3 (Ljubljana: Narodni muzej Slovenije, 2002). 65 Gottlieb Freiherr von Ankershofen, Handbuch der Geschichte Kärntens, 2 vols. (Klagenfurt: Leon, 1841/59). 66 Karl Baron Hauser, Die alte Geschichte Kärntens von der Urzeit bis Kaiser Karl den Großen (Klagenfurt: F. v. Kleinmayr, 1893). 67 F.G. Hann, “Review of Hauser, Die alte Geschichte Kärntens von der Urzeit bis Kaiser Karl den Großen,” in Carinthia I, 83 (1893): 162–4. 68 On the eighth/ninth century identification of Noricum with Bavaria, see Herwig Wolfram, Salzburg, Bayern, Österreich, Die Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum und die Quellen ihrer Zeit, MIÖG Erg. Bd. 31 (Wien: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1995), 72 f.

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 29 on the opinions of Slovene historians about Germanic influence on Slovene pagan religion. Slavs and Germans had always lived in Carinthia in a mosaic—that was the view leading German-Carinthian historians held around 1900. Hann was not an outright nationalist. In an article about the remains of the Lombard sculpture published in the Carinthia in 1899, he stressed that there were no traces of the Lombard settlement in Carinthia, only cultural influences.69 Yet, the search for ‘German’ continuity in Carinthia became a topic in the 1890s. The German philologist Richard Müller discovered a “precious” trace of the early Germanization of Carinthia in the name ‘Krappfeld’, for which he refuted the etymology ‘Croatian’ field, while acknowledging that in general Carinthia had been Slavicized at the beginning of the Middle Ages.70 The Croats relied on the information in Constantine Porphyrogenitus that they had come from north of the Carpathians in the seventh century together with the Serbs, which provided a good basis for South Slavic, ‘Yugoslav’ ideology. The early medieval Croat state, which is only attested in contemporary sources in the late ninth to tenth century, could thus be predated by a quarter of a millennium.71 But in any case, it constituted a point of reference for Croat statehood.72 Some early nineteenth-century authors looked for even more ancient origins, for instance, the circle of the journal Danica Ilirska founded in 1835 that stressed the ­Illyrian origins of the Croats.73 Non-Slavic origins of the Croats only became ­popular in 69 F.G. Hann, “Longobardische Plastik in Kärnten,” in Carinthia I, 89 (1899): 1–4: “. . . mit der Siedlungsgeschichte in keinem Zusammenhange steht, vielmehr auf culturgeschichtlicher Übertragung . . . beruht.” (4). 70 Richard Müller, Kleine Beiträge zur altkärtnischen Namenskunde. 4. Krapfeld, in Carinthia I, 83 (1893), 148–54: “So bewahrt das altkärntnische Krapfeld (. . .) ein umso werthvolleres Zeugnis für die frühe Germanisierung des im Alterthume keltoromanischen, am Eingange des Mittelalters slavisierten Caranthaniens.” (at p. 154). 71 Francesco Borri, “La Dalmazia altomedievale tra discontinuità e racconto storico (secc. VII–VIII),” Studi Veneziani 52 (2009), 435–71; id., “White Croatia and the arrival of the Croats: An interpretation of Constantine Porphyrogenitus on the oldest Dalmatian History,” in Early Medieval Europe, 19 (2011), 204–31. 72 Neven Budak, “Using the Middle Ages in modern-day Croatia,” in Gebrauch und Missbrauch des Mittelalters, ed. Bak, Jarnut, Monnet and Schneidmüller, 241–62. 73 Anna Maria Maissen, Wie ein Blitz schlägt es aus meinem Mund. Der Illyrismus, die Hauptschriften der kroatischen Nationalbewegung 1830–44 (Bern: P. Lang, 1998); Daniel Baric, “Der Illyrismus: Geschichte und Funktion eines übernationalen Begriffes im Kroatien der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts und sein Nachklang,” in Transnationale Gedächtnisorte in Zentraleuropa, ed. Jacques Le Rider, Moritz Csáky and Monika Sommer (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2002), 125–40; Arnold Suppan, “Der Illyrismus zwischen Wien und Ofen-Pest. Die illyrischen Zeitungen im Spannungsfeld der Zensurpolitik (1835 bis 1843),” in Der Austroslavismus. Ein verfrühtes Konzept zur politischen Neugestaltung Mitteleuropas, ed. by Andreas Moritsch (Wien, Köln & Weimar: Böhlau, 1996), 102–24.

30

walter pohl

the twentieth century; their ‘Iranian’ character was proposed by Howorth in the 1880s and later endorsed by Francis Dvornik;74 whereas the identification of the Croats with the Goths that became official doctrine under the Ustaša regime seems to have appeared first in a 1902 article by Ludwig Gumplowicz, a Jewish sociologist born in Cracow who taught in Graz.75 He emphatically argued for the progress that the results of modern sociology could bring to historiography, and then presented his example: “Modern sociology brought to light such an insight, by stating the fact that anywhere and at any time, in all states, the ruling class is formed by a foreign, war-like tribe that in one or the other manner has subdued the autochthonous population and thus established its right of nobility in the conquered country.”76 Just as Polish historians assumed a Nordic origin of the Polish ruling class, the Croats who had migrated from north of the Carpathians must have been of Gothic origin.77 This is a clear case in which the enthusiasm for new scholarly methods and disciplines blends with the ideological concerns of a day, even though the author was neither Nordic nor Croat. His conclusion, however, was out of tune with contemporary racism: all nations are composed of heterogeneous anthropological elements, and their feeling of belonging to the same race are just an illusion.78

74 H.H. Howorth, The Spread of the Slavs. Part. IV. The Bulgarians in The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 11 (1882), 219–267; Francis Dvornik, The Making of Central and Eastern Europe (London: Polish Research Centre, 1949). 75 Ludwig Gumplowicz, “Die politische Geschichte der Serben und Kroaten,” in Politisch-anthropologische Revue 1 (1902–3): 779–789. For Gumplovics’ ideas about the nation, see Rupp-Eisenreich, “Nation, Nationalität und verwandte Begriffe.” The most significant ideological formulation of the Gothic origin myth was K. Segvić, “Die gotische Abstammung der Kroaten,” in Nordische Welt 3 (1935): 447–465, 508–523, 570–588, 620– 628. Segvić was a cleric from the circle of Cardinal Stepinać. I owe this information to Francesco Borri, Vienna. 76 Gumplowicz, “Die politische Geschichte der Serben und Kroaten,” 780: “Eine solche Erkenntnis förderte die moderne Soziologie zu Tage, indem sie die Thatsache feststellte, daß immer und überall, in allen Staaten, die herrschende Klasse sich aus einem landfremden kriegerischen Stamme bildete, der sich auf die eine oder andere Weise die landsässige Bevölkerung unterwarf und sohin in dem eingenommenen Lande sein Adelsrecht ausbildete.” 77 Gumplovicz mentions Karol Szajnocha (+1868), probably referring to his work Lechicki początek Polski (Der lechische Ursprung Polens), (Lwow: K. Wild, 1858). For Polish historiography of the period, see Maciej Janowski, “Mirrors for the nation: Imagining the national past among the Poles and Czechs in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,” in The Contested Nation. Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories, ed. by Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008): 442–62. 78 Gumplowicz, “Die politische Geschichte der Serben und Kroaten,” 789.

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 31 That the Hungarians only came to the Carpathian basin around 900 ad, and thus after Roman, Germanic and Slavic settlers in the region, may seem obvious. But Hungarian historiography had seen matters differently since its medieval beginnings.79 It variously appropriated other steppe peoples that had previously lived in the area as precursors or direct relatives of the Hungarians. Most notably, Attila the Hun was identified as a Hungarian, an equation already highlighted by the humanists at the court of Matthias Corvinus in the late fifteenth century.80 Direct links between the Hungarians and the Avars, who had ruled in the Carpathian Basin from 568 to c. 800, were also established in a number of ways. Such theories could in fact build on contemporary perceptions. Ancient and early medieval authors habitually identified new steppe peoples with the old, thus calling the Huns Scythians, the Avars Scythians and Huns, and the Hungarians by all three names.81 Tenth-century authors, such as Regino of Prüm or Liutprand of Cremona, had thus regarded the Hungarians as the Huns and Avars that had returned after Charlemagne had put them to flight.82 The new name was just a ruse, or came from coincidence. An anonymous tenth-century author (often identified with Remigius of Auxerre) explained in a letter that the Hungarians had returned because they had suffered from hunger in the swamps of the Maeotis where they had taken refuge; for that reason, they had also assumed the name Hungri, the hungry ones.83 The Hungarian Anonymus and other medieval Hungarian chroniclers gladly took over the identification with the Huns which gave them the means to adorn early Hungarian history with the deeds of Attila.84 Such evidence provided valuable resources for modern national historians. Still, the prevailing interest in nineteenth-century Hungarian scholarship was in the origins of the Magyars before their appearance in

79 See, for instance, National Heritage—National Canon, ed. by Mihály Szegedy-Maszák (Budapest: Collegium Budapest, 2001). 80 Attila—the Man and his Image, ed. by Franz J. Bäuml (Budapest: Corvina, 1993). 81 Pohl, Die Awaren, 4. 82 Walter Pohl, “Die Rolle der Steppenvölker im frühmittelalterlichen Europa,” in Im Schnittpunkt frühmittelalterlicher Kulturen: Niederösterreich an der Wende vom 9. zum 10. Jahrhundert, ed. by Roman Zehetmayer, NÖLA. Mitteilungen aus dem Niederösterreichischen Landesarchiv 13 (St. Pölten: Niederösterreichisches Institut für Landeskunde, 2008): 92–102. 83 Maximilian Diesenberger, “Die Steppenreiter aus dem Osten—eine exegetische Herausforderung,” in Im Schnittpunkt frühmittelalterlicher Kulturen, ed. Zehetmayer, 150–168. 84 Jenő Szűcs, “Theoretical elements in Master Simon of Kéza’s Gesta Hungarorum (1282–85),” in Simonis de Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum, ed. by László Veszprémy and Frank Schaer (Budapest: CEU Press, 1999): LVII–LVIII.

32

walter pohl

the Carpathian basin and in the conquest itself.85 The theory of ‘doppelte Landnahme’, ‘double land-taking’, according to which newly-arrived Hungarians had already dominated the late Avar khaganate, only appeared among Hungarian archaeologists and historians in the 1970s.86 Scholars from other nations tried rather to strengthen the notion of continuous settlement of non-steppe peoples in the Carpathian basin. Thus, Adolf Bachmann, in his 1895 ‘Österreichische Reichsgeschichte’, remarked maliciously that the invading Hungarians had been “nur Männer”, only men, “acht Reitergeschwader” led by Árpád:87 not a proper invasion, but just a military takeover. So far, we have dealt with theories of ‘primary acquisition’ of territory. But there was a second, if more difficult way to argue a people’s legitimate right to a country. If precedence could not be maintained or would not suffice, one could also claim prevalence. What right did those peoples have who had arrived in a country more recently than another? If the newcomers could claim that the land had been empty, there was no problem. But in most other cases, a majority or minority from the previous population still lived in the same country—or had the invaders only returned? To settle this type of question implied, first of all, a value judgement: if the later arrivals did not live in the country by right of priority, they had to be ‘better’ in some respect.88 There were two possible ways to prove superior right to a homeland. One was the blunt claim of the conqueror having taken the country by force. Such claims could only be made by a ruling elite or by an overwhelming majority that had no fears of a violent reversal of the political situation. It was therefore rarely used in its pure form (and, consequently, cases where it was are all the more interesting). Austrian Germans hardly ever referred to their right of conquest, which, of course, in many cases would not have been correct. The Hungarian conquest acquired a more 85 For instance, Károly Szabó, A magyar vezérek kora. Árpádtól Szent Istvánig (Pest: Ráth Mór, 1869); Gyula Pauler, A magyar nemzet története. Szent Istvánig (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1900), the two most influential histories of the ‘conquest’ in the second half of the nineteenth century in Hungary. Ármin Vámbéry, A magyarok keletkezése és gyarapodása (The appearance and the propagation of Hungarians), (Budapest: Franklin-társulat, 1895), argued on philological grounds for a Turco-Tatar origin of the Hungarians and against the theory of Ugrian origin. See also Tóth, “Liberale Auffassung der Ethnizität,” 59. 86 Gyula László, A honfoglalókról (Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó, 1974). 87 Bachmann, Reichsgeschichte, 18. 88 Cf. Marius Turda, The Idea of National Superiority in Central Europe, 1880–1918 (Lewiston, NY & London: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005).

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 33 military flavour, although that depended. The Hungarian honfoglalás, rendered in English as “conquest”, corresponds to the German Landnahme, land-taking. Its narratives usually pictured the country that the Hungarians entered as relatively empty and undefended; both the Franks and the Moravians had dominated the Carpathian Basin from its margins, and lost their grip as a result of conflicts among or between them. This narrative has in fact something to recommend it on the political level—no great battles are recorded over the possession of the core areas of the Carpathian basin. Obviously, the Magyars were also called upon as mercenaries by their neighbours.89 Major problems only ensued when the Magyars started attacking Franks/Bavarians and Moravians in the core areas of their dominion. The battle of Bratislava in 907 was the disastrous result of a Bavarian attempt to launch a roll-back campaign.90 In any case, in the late nineteenth century, debates in Hungary about the conquest and about the origin and character of the Hungarians were quite controversial. On the one hand, the early Hungarians were believed to be steppe warriors who took the land by right of arms, a position that of course appealed to the aristocracy, but also to the propagators of a more aggressive form of nationalism.91 The fact that the Hungarians had acquired their homeland by way of conquest coincided well with the position that the Magyar elite claimed in the kingdom, especially when the Ausgleich of 1867 had given them additional room to control the Slavic peoples at the margins, Croats, Slovaks and others. On the other hand, there were ideas that Hungarians were mostly of Finno-Ugrian origin, and had originally been hunters and fishers. This position was popularized by Ottó Herman, not least in an open-air display at the 1896 Millennium exhibition, and appealed not least to Hungarians of rural extraction.92 Hungary could of 89 Pohl, “Die Rolle der Steppenvölker”; Herwig Wolfram, “Die Ungarn und das fränkisch-bayerische Ostland,” in Die ungarische Staatsbildung und Ostmitteleuropa, ed. by Ferenc Glatz (Budapest: Europa Institut, 2002), 89–98. 90 Im Schnittpunkt frühmittelalterlicher Kulturen, ed. Zehetmayer. 91 Géza Nagy, Magyarország története a népvándorlás korában. in Magyarország története, ed. by Sándor Szilágyi, vol. 1 (Budapest: Athanaeum, 1895). Cf. Marius Turda, “The Magyars: A Ruling Race: The Idea of National Superiority in Fin-de-siècle Hungary,” in European Review of History/Revue Européenne d`Histoire 10,1 (2003): 5–33. 92 Ottó Herman, “Ethnographische Elemente der Millenniums-Ausstellung in Budapest, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Urbeschäftigung,” in Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 26 (1896), 3–13; Martin Wörner, Vergnügen und Belehrung: Volkskultur auf den Weltausstellungen 1851–1900 (Münster: Waxmann, 1999), 101. This point was raised by Levente Szabó in his unpublished paper “Medievalism, discourses of origin and nineteenth-century Hungarian ethnography” during the focus group at the Collegium Budapest.

34

walter pohl

course be pictured as a synthesis of both forms of life, as represented in the monumental painting ‘Honfoglalás’ by Mihály Munkácsy destined for the new Houses of Parliament in 1890, which pictured a peaceful Árpád being enthusiastically welcomed by the inhabitants of the land. Thus, the rhetoric of conquest was often complemented or replaced by arguments of the second type: the arrival of the newcomers had been beneficial for the country and for its previous settlers. Typically, the new settlers brought culture and civilisation to a very backward area. Often, they also brought religion. Sometimes they helped to defend the previous inhabitants against dangerous enemies. All three arguments were employed by the Germans to explain their presence in Carinthia. Around 740, they were asked by the Carantanian Slavs to defend them against the Avars, and had consequently liberated them from the Avar yoke. Then they sent missionaries who, with some effort, converted the Slavs to Christianity, which also meant bringing them the benefits of culture and civilisation.93 Another example of this type was the legitimization used by the medieval German settlers in Bohemia and Moravia as well as in Galicia and Transylvania. As city dwellers, artisans and traders, they brought urban culture to the largely rural areas of East Central Europe. Freedom was another contested issue. Slavic scholars, influenced by Herder’s views, typically underscored primeval Slavic freedom and democracy. This was exemplified, for instance, in the ceremony of the installation of the duke of Carinthia at the Fürstenstein, where the new duke was ritually questioned by a Slavic peasant.94 Germans, such as Ludwig Schlesinger in his 1860s History of Bohemia, explicitly written from the point of view of the Germans in Bohemia, claimed on the other hand that only the freedom-loving medieval German townspeople had introduced the idea of liberty in the country.95 A further argument often used by the Austrian Germans, also taken up by later authors of Austrian Reichsgeschichte, was that the Slavs had never been able to form a proper state before the Germans arrived to teach them. Samo, the first king of the Slavs, had been a Frank (as Fredegar writes); the Bohemians had been scattered in small communities before the armies

93 Herwig Wolfram (ed.), Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum (Wien: Böhlau, 1979), c. 4, 276–80 new, extended edition: Ljubljana, 2011. 94 Stih, “Suche nach der Geschichte.” 95 Ludwig Schlesinger, Geschichte Böhmens (Prag: Calve [u.a.], 1869), 88–97.

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 35 of Charlemagne subdued them.96 This corresponded to the general view among nineteenth-century German scholars that the Germans had a specific genius for state-building. But ancient statehood was also a debated issue among Slavic peoples. Thus, both Czechs and Slovenes claimed that Samo was one of theirs, an issue only settled in scholarship by Goll’s 1890 article in the Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsfor­ schung.97 The Poles were proud of their glorious medieval and early modern kingdom, and despised the uncivilized Ruthenians. In the first half of the nineteenth century, many Slavic scholars (such as Palacký) were still prepared to accept the rule of the Habsburg bureaucracy to establish peace and order among the many subject peoples. But increasingly, many came to believe that the monarchy should rather be replaced by national states. Debates on early medieval statehood—Carantania, the Croat principality, Great Moravia, Přemyslid Bohemia, the Polish kingdom—could thus acquire extraordinary significance. But they also had a social dimension. A nation had to be socially differentiated to be able to sustain a state. Many authors strove to project an often idealized model of social differentiation into the distant past. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, ‘Ständestaat’ models of idealized social hierarchy began to gain acceptance. They were projected into the Middle Ages, a society in which, as it was believed, everybody had their proper place. This in turn underlined the contribution of all relevant social groups in modern society to the nation, and tied them as far as possible to the national project. In the Austrian imperial ideology, many of these ‘soft’ arguments played a central part and all the Austrian imperial histories more or less strongly promote them. Austria, the argument ran, is a multinational state in which all nations have their culture and their way of life and their specific historical relationship to the dynasty and the state. But it is the task of the German Austrians to draw the monarchy together. They spread culture across its territory and continue to do so; they are the best administrators and have, over many centuries, built up the state as it is, which should in no case be replaced by institutions artificially imported from elsewhere; they guarantee the rights and liberties that all nations have gradually acquired in the course of history.98 And, of course, German Austrians live 96 Fredegar, Chronicae, IV, 48; Pohl, Die Awaren, 256 f. 97 Jaroslav Goll, “Samo und die karantanischen Slawen,” in Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 11 (1890): 443–46. 98 Cf. Robin Okey, “Taming Balkan Nationalism. The Habsburg ‘Civilizing Mission’ in Bosnia, 1878–1914,” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

36

walter pohl

in most of the many regions of the Empire, and therefore are the only ones who can lend coherence to it. The Slavs often employed a slightly different argument. They also lived in most of the countries of the monarchy. It had been the hard work of Slavic peasants to cultivate this huge and neglected area in the first place, and thus they laid the basis for all further progress of civilisation. This corresponded to Palacký’s romantic vision: the Slavs, he claimed, had already lived in Bohemia in antiquity as peaceful peasants. Germanic warriors, who grabbed the limelight by their military deeds, came and went, but the Slavs always remained where they were, quietly working the land. Interestingly enough, these passages were only included in the Czech translation of his book, not in the German original, so as not to give offence to the German-speaking Bohemians.99 Both arguments, the civilising role of German colonisers and missionaries, and that of Slavic peasants, were sometimes turned around. German scholars also sometimes claimed that German peasants had taken the land by the plough and introduced efficient ways of farming in countries that had so far been poor and thinly populated. On the contrary, the Slavs’ military prowess could be underlined.100 And Slavic scholars, not least in the romantic tradition of Palacký, claimed precedence in Christian mission and culture. This was not least due to the Methodian tradition: the ‘apostles of the Slavs’ had established Christian culture and Slavic literacy. For instance, the preface of Béla Dudík’s multi-volume history of Moravia in the 1870s was programmatically dated to the feast day of St. Cyril and Methodius.101 This type of argument was especially current among the Czechs, who also proudly looked back to their founding saints Wenceslas and Adalbert. But the Methodian tradition was also contested between different Slavic peoples. Jernej Kopitar (d. 1844), the founder of modern Slovene philology, claimed that Old Church Slavonic had originated among 99 E.g. Jiří Štaif, “Konceptualizace českých děějin Františka Palackého,” in Český časopis historický 89 (1991): 161–184; idem, Historici, dějiny a společnost: Historiografie v českých zemích od Palackého a jeho předchůdců po Gollovu školu, 1790–1900 (Praha: Univerzita Karlova, Filozofická faculta, 1997). 100 František Šmahel, “ ‘Old Czechs were Hefty Heroes’: The Construction and Reconstruction of Czech National History in its Relationship to the ‘Great’ Medieval Past,” in The Uses of the Middle Ages in Modern European States. History, Nationhood and the Search for Origins, ed. by R.J.W. Evans and Guy Marchal (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2010). 101  Béla Dudík, Mährens allgemeine Geschichte, vol. 1 (Brünn: Druck von G. Gastl, 1860); the first volume covered the time until 907, and the history was continued up to vol. 12 (Brünn: Druck von G. Gastl, 1888), which carried it up to the early fourteenth century. Dudík was a widely-travelled Benedictine monk and a prolific writer of history.

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 37 Slovenes in Pannonia and Carinthia.102 The debates over the origin of the Slavonic lives of Constantine and Methodius continued for a long time with ever more sophisticated philological arguments.103 The discovery of the so-called Freising fragments, a Slavic liturgical manuscript, reinforced the view of the ancient and noble character of the Slovene language. These debates were not only about the position of a nation in its immediate surroundings or in confrontation with its national rivals. They also tried to argue a nation’s specific and noble place among the nations of Europe. One was not only at the receiving end of culture, religion, state organisation, and, lately, modernisation, but one also had a contribution to make. This was already a strong concern around 1800, and Herder’s writing specifically encouraged the Slavs.104 His writings were almost immediately received by Czech intellectuals such as Dobrovský.105 Grimm’s ideas about the purity of the ancient German language and society were also accommodated in other discourses of national culture. The shared assumption in European Romantic culture that the archaic was the authentic, and was vital to supply moral and aesthetic values that threatened to get lost in the process of modernisation, allowed many eastern central European peoples to negotiate their specific contributions, for instance on poetry, oral epic, spiritual values, folk art, an attachment to nature, or a primeval love of liberty with forms of democratic participation.106 The type of historical argument required in these debates was more illustrative and symbolic than analytic (as it was required to decide who had been there first). Often, such debates were personalized. Either one could pick strong images of typical characters that exemplified the beneficial influence of the new settlers. This could be, for instance, the preacher and missionary; the hard-working Slavic peasant; or the German colonist. It was even better if one could find concrete historical figures of identification: the heroic Dacian king Burebista; Methodius, founder of the Slavic alphabet and liturgy; the martyr Adalbert; or the holy king 102 Stih, “Die Nationswerdung der Slowenen,” 371. 103 See Andreas Moritsch, “Der Austroslavismus—ein verfrühtes Konzept zur politischen Neugestaltung Mitteleuropas,” in Der Austroslavismus. Ein verfrühtes Konzept zur politischen Neugestaltung Mitteleuropas, ed. by Andreas Moritsch (Wien, Köln & Weimar: Böhlau 1996), 11–23, at 15. 104 Holm Sundhaussen, Der Einfluß der Herderschen Ideen auf die Nationsbildung bei denVölkern der Habsburger Monarchie (München: Oldenbourg, 1973); Peter Drews, Herder und die Slaven. Materialien zur Wirkungsgeschichte bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (München: O. Sagner, 1990). 105 See the contribution by Pavlína Rychterová in this volume. 106 Leerssen, National Thought in Europe.

38

walter pohl

Stephen. National saints could insure that the message would be diffused through the grass-root network of the Church.107 Austria had a considerable problem here. Its medieval patron saint Coloman was an Irish pilgrim butchered by ignorant and chauvinistic Austrians around 1000 ad; hardly a suitable national model saint.108 The saintly twelfth-century Margrave Leopold III was better, but had a very regional appeal that hardly stretched beyond lower Austria.109 In late nineteenth-century scholarly literature, one might expect to find German Austrians engaging in ferocious polemic against some of the basic assumptions of all the other national histories. Interestingly enough, nineteenth-century discussions were often less controversial than those in the first half of the twentieth century. It is striking that they were hardly reflected in the flagship of the Austrian historical profession, the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung in Vienna, founded in the 1850s, and its journal, the ‘Mitteilungen’, published since 1880.110 Of course, the Institute, like the MGH in Berlin, saw its main task in providing editions of medieval sources, for which it soon reached great renown. The journal also published articles on many general topics and it had numerous reviews, also (although more rarely) dealing with the Early Middle Ages. But the thematic horizon was firmly oriented towards German medieval studies. There was no interest in the early medieval period in Austria with its scarce sources, and relatively little communication with medieval historians in the non-German parts of the monarchy. One of the exceptions was a certain interest in the works by Czech scholars on Bohemian history. But the reviews were often rather critical. For instance, in 1881, Johann Loserth polemicized against exaggerated views of the early Přemyslid state.111 The prolegomena to a historical atlas of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy published by Hermenegild von Jireček in 1893, were welcomed for his intention, but received scathing criticism for his ignorance of relevant German

107 Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses. Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 108 Meta Niederkorn–Bruck, Der heilige Koloman. Der erste Patron Niederösterreichs. Studien und Forschungen aus dem Niederösterreichischen Institut für Landeskunde 16 (Wien: Selbstverlag des NÖ Instituts für Landeskunde, 1992). 109 Karl Brunner, Leopold, der Heilige. Ein Porträt aus dem Frühling des Mittelalters (Wien: Böhlau Verlag, Köln & Weimar, 2009). 110 Alphons Lhotsky, Geschichte des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung. MIÖG Ergänzungsband 17 (Wien: H. Böhlaus Nachf., 1954). 111  Joseph Loserth, “Der Umfang des böhmischen Reiches unter Boleslav II,” in Mitteilungen des Instiotuts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 2 (1881): 15–28.

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 39 publications.112 Jireček’s title was remarkable: Unser Reich vor 2000 Jahren. He had no problems projecting the Empire back 2000 years, but obviously hesitated to call it ‘Austria’ or ‘Austria-Hungary’. As a rare contribution to a lively debate, the MIÖG also printed a three-page ‘Kleine Mitteilung’ about Samo by the prestigious Czech historian Jaroslav Goll in which he correctly showed that the passage in the Conversio about Samo as prince of the Carantanians was ultimately derived from Fredegar and therefore contained no independent information.113 Generally, interest in the early medieval history of their country among German-speaking Austrians was relatively feeble. The German nationalists much rather turned to the glorious ‘common’ Germanic past, to its histories and myths that had been so masterfully glorified in the works of Richard Wagner. The legend most closely related to Austria was the myth of the Nibelungen, which in its high-medieval verse form locates a number of important events along the Austrian Danube. Of course, a tale that focuses on the annihilation of the Burgundians is hardly suitable to establish national continuity, and in fact the Nibelungenlied had only gradually acquired its popularity in the Romantic period.114 Still, the slogan of the “Nibelungentreue”, fidelity of the Nibelungs, invented by German chancellor Bernhard von Bülow in the Bosnian annexation crisis 1908/09, came to denote emphatically the alliance between the German and the Habsburg empires in the First World War. Little wonder that the adventure of the new Nibelungs ended as fatally as its medieval model. Imperial Histories Those who supported the Habsburg monarchy had little to gain from the early medieval history of Austria. The medieval foundation myths that they looked to were the foundation of the March in 976, its transformation into a Duchy of Austria in 1156, the victory of Rudolf of Habsburg over Ottokar of Bohemia in 1278 by which Habsburg rule was established, and the gradual acquisition of other countries by the Dukes of Austria, 112 Hermenegild R. v. Jireček, Unser Reich vor zweitausend Jahren. Eine Studie zum historischen Atlas der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie (Wien: Hölzel, 1893); Julius Jung, “Review,” in MIÖG 15 (1894): 374–77. 113 Goll, “Samo und die karantanischen Slawen.” 114 Otfrid Ehrismann, Das Nibelungenlied in Deutschland. Studien zur Rezeption des Nibelungenlieds von der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg (München: Fink, 1975); Peter Johanek, “Nibelungenstädte—mythische und historische Tradition in Worms und Soest,” in Städtische Mythen, ed. by Bernhard Kirchgässner and Hans-Peter Becht (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2003): 29–54 (on Austria: 36ff.).

40

walter pohl

culminating in the spectacular expansion under Maximilian I and his successors. Only in 1946, a further historical date was picked as a basis for Austrian national identity: the first mention of the name Ostarrichi, Austria, in a rather insignificant charter in 996, which gave the opportunity for a much-needed national celebration of its 950th anniversary.115 Apart from this symbolic marker on the way to nationhood, the Middle Ages never became fundamental for the modern Austrian nation, but has mainly played a role for the identity of the Austrian Länder, as Herwig Wolfram has recently shown.116 How to write Austrian history required difficult decisions in the second half of the nineteenth century. One way around it was to write only a history of the Habsburg dynasty, as in the influential 8–volume work by Eduard Fürst Lichnowsky published between 1836 and 1844 which spanned the medieval part of Habsburg rule in Austria from Rudolf I to Frederick III.117 A history of the Empire was more difficult to achieve. In 1853, in a post-revolutionary and neo-absolutist climate, Joseph von Helfert defined Austrian national history as the history of the entire state and people, different by origin and customs but still organically intertwined: “Östereichische Nationalgeschichte ist uns die Geschichte des österreichischen Gesamtstaates und Gesamtvolkes, als dessen organisch ineinander verschlungene Glieder all die nach Abstammung, Bildung und Gesittung verschiedenen Stämme erscheinen, die auf dem weiten Gebiete des Reiches, hier unvermischt in größeren Massen, dort vielfach untereinander vermengt, sich bewegen.”118 Almost at the same time, the Czech historian Václav Tomek argued for a similar multiplicity of Austrian history; it did not have a single beginning, but was characterized by ‘natural growth’.119 115 Stefan Spevak, Das Jubiläum “950 Jahre Österreich”: Eine Aktion zur Stärkung eines österreichischen Staats- und Kulturbewusstseins im Jahr 1946. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung 37 (Wien and München: R. Oldenbourg, 2003); Walter Pohl, “Ostarrichi revisited: The 1946 anniversary, the millennium, and the medieval roots of Austrian Identity,” in Austrian History Yearbook 27 (1996): 21–39. 116 See Herwig Wolfram, “The Public Instrumentalization of the Middle Ages in Austria since 1945,” in The Uses of the Middle Ages, ed. Evans and Marchal. 117 Eduard Fürst von Lichnowsky, Geschichte des Hauses Habsburg, 8 vols. (Wien: Schaumburg und Cie, 1836–44). 118 Joseph A. Freiherr v. Helfert, Über Nationalgeschichte und den gegenwärtigen Stand ihrer Pflege in Östereich (Prag: Calve, 1853); Bruckmüller, Österreichbegriff und Österreichbewußtsein, 277 f. 119 Václav Vladivoj Tomek, “O synchronické method při dějepisu rakaouském (Über die synchronische Methode in der österreichischen Geschichte),” in Časopis Českeho musea 28 (1854), 375–406 at 376. See also Jiří Kořalka, “Probleme einer böhmischen, tschechischen oder tschechoslowakischen Geschichte,” in Probleme der Geschichte Österreichs, 229–48.

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 41 M.A. Becker, the author of a multi-volume Österreichische Geschichte für das Volk, thus set out in 1865 to master “viel, sehr viel—das gesammte Staats- und Völkerleben Österreichs von der ältesten bis zur neuesten Zeit.”120 But how could that be achieved? Should one incorporate the parallel histories of Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and other territories before they fell to the Habsburgs? And if so, should they be inserted as digressions at the point of unification or arranged within the general chronology? Most historians who published Austrian histories started their prefaces by complaining about their topic. Franz Krones, Professor of History at the University of Vienna and author of a respected multi-volume Handbuch der Geschichte Österreichs (1876–82), deplored the lack of a coherent development and the inner contradictions in his material that prevented giving a harmonic and uplifting impression: “Die Geschichte Österreichs gehört nicht zu den Schoßkindern der geschichtsfreundlichen Leserwelt. Sie scheint in ihrem Aufbaue an einem Übermaß unorganischen Bildungsstoffes und dem Mangel eines Entwicklungsganges zu leiden, an inneren Gegensätzen und Widersprüchen, die einem harmonischen, erhebenden Eindrucke widersprechen.”121 However, he went on to say that in a deeper understanding, it was not a quirk of fate or diplomatic wizardry that had created the Empire as it was, but a particular dynamic that history could help to explain. František Mareš, in his review of Krones’s work in the MIÖG, while approving the general outline, was not satisfied with the author’s way of integrating the medieval history and historiography of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia. Where there is no shared history it has to be written separately for each group.122 Mareš also criticized Krones’s views of Slavic migration in some detail. It is remarkable that the journal entrusted the task of reviewing a major history of Austria to a young Moravian medical doctor and national-minded intellectual. Other historians faced the same difficulties. Alphons Huber introduced the first volume of his Austrian history in 1885 by stating that Austrian 120 M.A. Becker, Österreichische Geschichte für das Volk Bd. 1. Älteste Geschichte der Länder des österreichischen Kaiserstaates bis zum Sturze des weströmischen Kaiserreiches (Wien: Prandel u Ewald, 1865) VII. 121 Franz Krones, Handbuch der Geschichte Österreichs von der ältesten bis neuesten Zeit, Bd. 1 (Berlin: Grieben, 1876), 1. For Krones, see Erich Zöllner, “Bemerkungen zu den Gesamtdarstellungen der Geschichte Österreichs,” in Siedlung, Macht und Wirtschaft, Festschrift Fritz Posch zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. by Gerhard Pferschy (Graz: Steiermärkisches Landes­ archiv, 1981): 295–304. 122 “Wo kein einheitliches Geschichstleben vorhanden ist, da wird auch die Geschichte für jede historische Gruppe für sich dargestellt werden müssen,” František Mareš, “Rezension von Krones, Handbuch”, in MIÖG 4 (1883): 639–42 at 640.

42

walter pohl

history was no doubt a much more difficult task than that of other states: “Eine Geschichte Österreichs ist unzweifelhaft ein schwierigeres Werk als die Geschichte der anderen Staaten.”123 Most states, he continued, are natural formations: “Die meisten Reiche, welche in der Geschichte eine hervorragende Rolle gespielt haben, tragen den Charakter von natürlichen Gebilden an sich, sind dadurch entstanden, daß eine kräftige Nation im Kampfe um das Dasein ihre Existenz behauptet.” But Austria was an artificial edifice, “ein künstlicher Bau”. However, to understand its history it was not enough to write it from 1526, when Hungary and Bohemia were joined with the Habsburg Empire, but one had to go back to the origins of the component states in the tenth century: “Daher beginnt die Geschichte Österreichs im 10. Jahrhundert”, when unified states were formed both in Hungary and Bohemia, and the Eastern March was founded. A pre-history of these three countries had to be added to explain their legal and cultural development. Still, Huber claims, the history of Austria was not equivalent to the sum of the history of the lands of its crown. Many other territories that were also ruled by the Habsburgs for longer or shorter periods could not be treated in the same thorough manner. This concerned not only the Low Countries, Milan or Silesia, but also Styria or Carinthia. For Huber, Prague and Budapest were more essential for Austrian history than Graz or Innsbruck. It was obvious that ethnic plurality was an essential feature of the monarchy. Huber traced the parallel early medieval histories of the Carolingian and Ottonian marches, of Moravia/Bohemia, of the Avars and Hungary. In fact, this broad horizon was arguably a more adequate perspective than the national histories after 1918 could offer. For instance, Herwig Wolfram’s 1987 book Die Geburt Mitteleuropas was criticized for being too broad for a history of Austria that it purported to be, and too narrow for its title.124 A reworked version came out in 1995 as volume 1 of a multi-volume history of Austria under the title Grenzen und Räume, with an introduction that defended the choice of focus: in the Early Middle Ages, the region from the Eastern Alps to the Carpathians had become a contact zone between almost all the relevant cultural milieus in Europe:

123 Alphons Huber, Geschichte Östereichs, Bd. 1. Geschichte der europäischen Staaten, ed. by A.H.L. Heeren, F.A. Ukert and W. v. Giesebrecht (Gotha: Perthes 1885), V. See Zöllner, “Bemerkungen.” 124 Herwig Wolfram, Die Geburt Mitteleuropas. Geschichte Österreichs vor seiner Entstehung 378–907 (Wien: Siedler, 1987).

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 43 Romance- and Germanic speakers, Slavs and steppe peoples.125 It was, of course, with some difficulty that the Republic could pride itself of all these peoples as Die vielen Väter Österreichs (the title of a book by Herwig Friesinger).126 The Austro-Hungarian monarchy, on the contrary, had been able to claim that it comprised all these groups, and thus was the heir to their shared history. This was, of course, a rather abstract claim. The spatial lay-out of early and high medieval history did not correspond to the map of the Habsburg Empire. Not only topographically, but also culturally, Bregenz was closer to St. Gall, Salzburg closer to Regensburg, Cracow closer to Gniezno and Grado closer to Venice than any of these places were to each other. But a monarchy-wide view opened a space for understanding the complicated interaction of all these peoples which national histories tended to ignore. In this respect, nineteenth-century Austrian historiography had something to offer. For instance, Franz Krones placed a long “ethnographic overview” in the introductory section of his History.127 Ethnographic descriptions of a picturesque plurality of nations instead of narratives of historical conflict were one way to create the necessary impression of multiplicity in unity, and became increasingly popular in the 1870s and 1880s.128 Krones offered a basically sober synthesis which abstained from polemic; for instance, he left the contested question open whether any of the migration-age Germans remained among the Slavs (“eine offene Frage, die weder entschieden verneint noch zuversichtlich bejaht werden kann”), but acknowledged that in any case, the bulk of the Germans in Bohemia arrived as colonists much later. He also navigated around another delicate question, the extent of Daco-Romanian continuity in Transylvania: according to him, the Romanized population of Dacia had to a large extent been resettled south of the Danube, and the majority of the Romanians had only arrived after the Magyars; but it would be going too far to deny any possibility of Daco-Roman survivals in the region. He discarded the idea that the Magyars were descended from the Huns or the Avars (“eine alte aber falsche Überlieferung”); their very existence in the heart of Europe is met with slight perplexity: “Der Magyare (. . .) ist überhaupt eine der

125 Wolfram, Grenzen und Räume, 11–16. 126 Herwig Friesinger and Brigitte Vacha, Die vielen Väter Österreichs. Römer, Germanen, Slawen-eine Spurensuche (Wien: Compress-Verlag, 1987). 127 Krones, Handbuch 1, 98–126. 128 Zoltán Szász, “Das ‘Kronprinzenwerk’ und die hinter ihm stehende Konzeption,” in Nation und Nationalismus, ed. Kiss, Kiss and Stagl, 65–70.

44

walter pohl

merkwürdigsten ethnographischen Erscheinungen Europa’s.”129 But the fact that the Hungarians had survived proved both their “Accomodationsfähigkeit” and their “Kraft und Selbstgefühl”. One of the most delicate problems of this and similar ethnographies of the Empire was how to deal with the privileged position of the Germanspeakers in the Empire. A first observation is that they are never called ‘Austrians’, but always and in a very natural manner ‘Germans’. ‘Austrian’ is not an ethnographic category in Krones’s ethnography, not even in a regional sense. Upper Austria is treated, together with Salzburg, as an “old Bavarian settlement area” (p. 100), whereas the population of Lower Austria represents a colourful mixture of different German tribes into which Slavs have merged without a trace. There is no attempt to argue for stronger German continuity and against Slavic settlement anywhere. The predominance of the Germans in the Habsburg monarchy rests on different foundations: “So bildet denn das deutsche Volk den geschichtlichen Kern unseres Staatslebens und eine Ansiedlungskette vom äußersten Norden Oesterreichs bis an den südöstlichen Karpatenwall, der eines der festen Bollwerke unseres Staates abgibt.”130 The Germans were the historical core of the Austrian state and the only nationality settled across its territory. The ethnography of the Habsburg monarchy was the topic of another and very ambitious multi-volume work, Die Völker Österreich-Ungarns, which appeared in 13 volumes in 1881–84. It was the result of a private initiative by the publisher Prochazka (Vienna-Teschen/Český Těšín). Thus, it was an immediate precursor of the more ambitious and broader Kron­ prinzenwerk, Die Österreichische Monarchie in Wort und Bild, a 24-volume encyclopedia of all Austrian countries that was inspired by crown-prince Rudolf and appeared between 1885 and 1902.131 The smaller series, Die Völker Österreich-Ungarns, was also characterized by a broad ethnological interest and dealt with geography, history, culture, economy, ‘Sitten’, and the relationship to other peoples. It was inspired by state patriotism but allowed for national perspectives. In Jiří Kořalka’s terminology it would conform to the multinational tendency, as opposed to the supra-ethnic view that was averse to national activities within the monarchy.132 The

129 Krones, Handbuch 1, 104; 123; 120. 130 Krones, Handbuch 1, 98. 131  Szász, “Das ‘Kronprinzenwerk.’” 132 Jiří Kořalka, Tschechen im Habsburgerreich und in Europa 1815–1914 (Wien: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik & München: R. Oldenbourg, 1991): 23–75; Bruckmüller, Österreichbegriff und Österreichbewußtsein, 277.

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 45 different volumes were mostly written by authors of the respective nationality; ironically, the volume on the Czechs was written by Jaroslav Vlach, whereas the author of the ‘Romanians’ was Joan Slavici. The volumes were counted systematically, not by date of appearance: The first four volumes were dedicated to the Germans who settled in different parts of the empire, then came the Hungarians, the Romanians, the Jews, volumes 8–12 dealt with the Slavs and 13 with the Italians. The list shows an interesting overlap between national and regional criteria which is indicative of the complex process of identification and re-orientation that was in course in the Habsburg Empire. The focus and contents of the different volumes were rather different; some dealt exhaustively with early medieval history and the origins of the respective peoples, some much less. For instance, the volume on the Germans in Hungary had 30 pages about ‘Germans’ in the region before Charlemagne and 12 more about the period of Frankish rule in the ninth century.133 The volume on the Romanians, on the other hand, dealt mostly with modern history, claiming that the Romanians had only become a people very late.134 The volume on the Slovenes, written by Josef Šuman, head school inspector from Krain, deals extensively with different theories of Slavic origin, expounding Šafařík’s model of a continuity of the Venethi and the Slavs to hint at a possible pre-Germanic Slavic past in the region, but also referring the theory of Miklosich that the Slavs had come from the Lower Danube.135 Occasionally, national conflicts feature prominently. For instance, the volume on the Czechs (Die Čecho-Slaven) bluntly states: “The whole history of the Bohemian people is a fight against the expansion of the German element”,136 whereas the volume on the Germans in Bohemia ends with a patriotic exclamation: “Deutsche, haltet den Nacken steif !”137 But these rhetorical statements did not have much of an impact on the narrative of early medieval history. The ‘German’ volume acknowledges that 133 J.H. Schwicker, Die Deutschen in Ungarn und Siebenbürgen. Die Völker ÖsterreichUngarns, vol. 3 (Wien and Teschen: K. Prochaska, 1881). 134 Slavici, Die Rumänen in Ungarn, Siebenbürgen und der Bukowina. 135 Šuman, Die Slowenen. Cf. Franz Miklosich, “Die Wurzeln des Altslovenischen,” in Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse 8,5 (1857): 154–179. 136 Jaroslav Vlach, Die Čecho-Slaven. Die Völker Österreich-Ungarns, vol. 8 (Wien & Teschen: K. Prochaska, 1883). The volume contains contributions by Joseph Alexander Freiherr von Helfert, one of the most distinguished Austrian historians. 137 Josef Bendel, Die Deutschen in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien. Die Völker ÖsterreichUngarns, vol. 2 (Wien & Teschen: Prochaska, 1881): 355.

46

walter pohl

the Marcomanni disappeared completely, and from the seventh to the tenth century the region was only settled by Slavs. The Germans had come late and did not belong to the same German tribe. The ‘Czech’ volume, on the other hand, admits that the Slavs came last to Bohemia, long after the Celts and Germans had arrived. In that respect, the first volume on the Germans in the Austrian countries (which are individually enumerated in the title) is also interesting.138 It treats the migration age and the different Germanic tribes that inhabited the region only in passing, summing up that these were savage peoples that created no lasting states. There is no interest in the debate about Germanic continuity. The text continues with a long and rather accurate description of Slavic settlement areas. Only when the Slavs were weakened by wars against the Avars in the eighth century, so the story goes, did they seek the friendship of the Bavarians. This was the beginning of a slow and peaceful colonization and Germanization of Slavic lands. It was, the author stresses, a victory without any violence.139 The process was interrupted by the Magyars, so that the final victory of Germanness (Deutschthum) was only possible after the Lechfeld battle in 955.140 Apart from the very harmonious view of Germanization, another aspect in the volume is interesting. The region is settled by Bavarians; but over time, “ein specifisch österreichischer Nationalcharakter”, and a “specifischer österreichischer Stamm” develop, which of course remains “ein deutscher Stamm”, and whose mission is to hand on German culture to the other Austrian peoples.141 Obviously, in this short passage the author oscillates between an ‘Austrian’ identity as a German tribe, an ‘Austrian’ national identity which is a specific accomplishment of the German Austrians, and the identity of the Austrian state which comprises the whole population of the monarchy. This is a flexible concept which could accommodate many different identities, but barely even gloss over their contradictions. The German Austrians shared their Austrianness, if to a different degree, with all the other peoples of the monarchy, and their Germanness with

138 Karl Schober, Die Deutschen in Nieder- und Oberösterreich, Salzburg, Steiermark, Kärnten und Krain. Die Völker Österreich-Ungarns, vol. 1 (Wien & Teschen: K. Prochaska, 1881). There was a separate volume by Josef Egger, Die Tiroler und Vorarlberger. Die Völker Österreich-Ungarns, vol. 4 (Wien & Teschen: K. Prochaska, 1882). 139 Schober, Die Deutschen, 17. 140 “Der vollständige Sieg des Deutschtums in unseren Ländern,” Schober, Die Deut­ schen, 34. 141 Schober, Die Deutschen, 396.

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 47 many other German ‘tribes’. It is comprehensible that the end of their Empire resulted in a serious crisis of identity. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the ethnographic approach in Austrian ‘Reichsgeschichte’ gave way to a more institutional view. Describing the entangled plurality of Austrian nations, one could hardly avoid contradictions and ambiguities. For instance, the Hungarian version of the Kronprinzenwerk about Hungary differed in some sensible aspects from the German version.142 Later imperial histories concentrated on the institutional and legal framework that held the Habsburg monarchy together, and on its development over time. The two most relevant works are Bachmann’s Lehrbuch der österreichischen Reichsgeschichte and Luschin von Ebengreuth’s Österreichische Reichsgeschichte.143 The two books responded to the establishment of a new obligatory exam on Österreichische Reichsgeschichte (Geschichte der Staatsbildung und des öffentlichen Rechts) at the juridical faculties in 1893. Austria was, as Bachmann also acknowledged, an artificial polity (“ein künstliches Staatsgebäude”), drawn together by common material interests but divided by national and historical particularities that produced a diffused wish for autonomy. Reichsgeschichte thus could not deal with the specific histories of Austria’s many provinces, but only with the expressions of the idea of the Austrian unitarian state.144 Relevant for the prehistory of Austria therefore are the legal systems of the early medieval peoples on its territory, from the Romans/Italians along the Alps and the Adriatic to the Bavarians, Slavs and Hungarians. Austria’s ‘territorial epoch’ begins in c. 970, the history of Austria as a European power in 1500. Luschin von Ebengreuth states in almost the same words that the Austrian empire had not developed on a coherent national basis but was rather an artificial edifice resulting from the activity from its dynasty. The lasting unification with other, non-German realms was due to their failure to fulfill their tasks of governance separately. The history of Austria,

142 Vilmos Heiszler, “Ungarischer (magyarischer) Nationalismus im ‘Kronprinzenwerk’,” in Nation und Nationalismus, ed. Kiss, Kiss and Stagl, 71–77; cf. Szász, “Das ‘Kronprinzenwerk’.” 143 Adolf Bachmann, Lehrbuch der österreichischen Reichsgeschichte. Geschichte der Staatsbildung und des öffentlichen Rechts, 2 vols. (Prag: Rohlicek & Sievers, 1895); Arnold Luschin von Ebengreuth, Österreichische Reichsgeschichte. Geschichte der Staatsbildung, der Rechtsquellen und des öffentlichen Rechts (Bamberg: C.C. Buchner, 1896). 144 “Die Reichsgeschichte Österreichs kann in erster Linie nur auf die Äußerungen der östereichischen Gesammtstaatsidee Bedacht nehmen: sie ist die Geschichte des großen Werde- und Lebensprocesses des Einheitsstaates Österreich.” Bachmann, Lehrbuch der österreichischen Reichsgeschichte, 3.

48

walter pohl

therefore, “is not so much the history of a people or a country but of a state.”145 Luschin needs a few pages to define his terminology of Austria, differentiating between ‘Österreich ob und unter der Enns’, ‘die nieder­ österreichischen Lande’ (including Styria and Carinthia), ‘Oberösterreich’ (Tyrol, Görz etc.), ‘die altösterreichischen Lande’ (all lands governed by the Habsburgs before 1500), ‘die deutschösterreichischen Lande’ (the Germanspeaking ones among those).146 None of these terms corresponds with the Austrian Republic as it would emerge some twenty years later. Dealing briefly with the national composition of the Habsburg monarchy, Luschin was prepared to accept most of their national myths, for instance, the origin of the Slovaks in the Great Moravian Empire or Daco-Romanian continuity, where he sided with Jung against Roesler.147 The only major Reichsgeschichte that appeared after the end of the monarchy, written by Karl and Mathilde Uhlirz, put more stress on German continuities, and also stressed the role of the Germans who would have established their influence in Eastern Central Europe even without the Habsburg marriages.148 Bachmann and Luschin von Ebengreuth unfolded a sober vision of an Austrian ‘Zweckgemeinschaft’, a unity of purpose, that did not touch on the national sentiments of the many nationalities of Austria but that enforced a legal and administrative framework that alone was capable of establishing some sense of unity in the ‘artificial edifice’ of Austria. The relatively brief passages on the early medieval ‘prehistory’ of Austria from the end of Roman rule to the foundation of the March in 976 present an adequate but complicated picture of an emerging ethnic and legal mosaic. 145 Luschin von Ebengreuth, Österreichische Reichsgeschichte, 1 f.: “Denn unser Kaiser­ reich ist nicht etwa auf einheitlich nationaler Grundlage erwachsen, sondern ein künstlicher Bau, das Ergebnis einer durch Jahrhunderte fortgesetzten, zielbewussten Tätigkeit seines Herrscherhauses, dem die dauernde Verbindung seiner deutschen Territorien mit benachbarten, nicht deutschen Reichen zu einer Zeit gelang, als diese in ihrer Vereinzelung ihre staatlichen Aufgaben für sich allein nicht mehr zu erfüllen vermochten. (. . .) So ist also eine Geschichte Österreichs nicht sosehr eine Volks- oder Landesgeschichte, als eine Staatsgeschichte.” 146 Luschin von Ebengreuth, Österreichische Reichsgeschichte, 4–6. 147 Luschin von Ebengreuth, Österreichische Reichsgeschichte, 13 f. See above on the Daco-Romanian controversy. 148 Karl and Mathilde Uhlirz, Handbuch der Geschichte Österreichs und seiner Nachbarländer Böhmen und Ungarn, 4 vols. (Graz, Wien & Leipzig: Leuschner & Lubensky, 1927–44), vol. 1, 173: “Durch den Zusammenschluss der drei Ländergruppen ist der Einfluss des deutschen Volkes, seines Geistes und seiner Kultur über Donau und Karpaten hinaus weit nach dem Osten getragen worden. Diese Entwicklung wäre aber auch ohne das Haus Habs­burg mit innerer Notwendigkeit zur Vollendung gelangt.” The first volume was reedited in 1966, interestingly with a dramatically expanded section on the Early Middle Ages, from 16 to over 120 pages (101–222).

national origin narratives in the austro-hungarian monarchy 49 These passages hardly offer an inspiring read, and certainly little perspective for identification, as compared to many highly dramatized and often personalized national origin narratives. The visions of community that these imperial histories could offer had moved from the ‘natural growth’ of the monarchy around 1850 to the ‘artificial edifice’ which was presented around 1900. Around the same time, many national histories were written throughout the monarchy that established convincing linear narratives of a shared past, and became standard for a long time, such as the Croatian History by Vjekoslav Klaić or the history of Slovak national consciousness by Július Botto.149 The attempts to write ‘Austrian’ history in the second half of the nineteenth century, which could only be represented here in a rather sketchy and exemplary form, thus offer an interesting counter-point to the national histories that developed elsewhere, both within and beyond the Habsburg monarchy. To us they seem to offer an image of a more inclusive, multi-national history that is, in spite of all its limitations, more open and balanced than the national ideologies that they, more implicitly than explicitly, tried to counter. They are also interesting from a formal perspective for their attempt to integrate multi-centered developments and thus go beyond a linear narrative, a task that most authors regarded as particularly demanding, and less popular with their audience. But as may also have become clear, they were by no means free from ideological assumptions. After all, these were imperial histories. That their view of the past was bound to fail was mainly due to the political failure of the ruling elite of the monarchy. But it may also be that the difficulty of establishing a convincing common vision of history contributed to the increasing problem of maintaining political unity, and to the fatal decision, in 1914, to recover the fading legitimacy of the Empire in war. What role contemporary perceptions and uses of medieval history played in the political changes at the end of the ‘long nineteenth century’ in Central Europe is hard to assess. Was nineteenth-century medievalism just an ornament on the surface of political movements and power politics that inescapably led towards the establishment and the confrontation of 149 Vjekoslav Klaić, Povjest Hrvata, 4 vols. (Zagreb, 1888–1911); see Budak, “Using the Middle Ages”; Július Botto, Slovaci. Vývin ich národného povedomia, 2 vols. (Turčiansky Svätý Martin: Vyd. Knîhkupecko-nakladatelského spolku, 1906/10); however, Botto believed that Slovak history had ended after the fall of Great Moravia in the ninth century and only resumed in the nineteenth century, see Juraj Šedivý, “Die slowakische Geschichtsfor­ schung des 20. Jahrhunderts auf der Suche nach ‘ihrem’ Frühmittelalter,” in Vergangenheit und Vergegenwärtigung, 253–62, at 254.

50

walter pohl

nations states in Eastern Central Europe? Or did conflicting perceptions of the past contribute to the history of the future? One thing seems obvious, and the present volume contains rich material to support this observation: nineteenth-century societies in Central Europe and elsewhere invested heavily into different forms of medievalism, in literature, art, architecture, entertainment, historiography or political ideology. Medievalist scholarship did not necessarily conform to the grand hopes for the future that political discourses of the past sought to inspire. But where they offered convincing models for identification, these often had a deep impact. The historical research on which new codes of national identification came to be based was not necessarily bad history. But eventually, the popular appropriation of simplified historical narratives often caught scholarly discourse in a long stalemate. That was especially the case where controversial debates between national schools remained on the agenda for generations. Many of them are still at issue today, even though often enough little has been added to the arguments already exchanged in the nineteenth century. An ‘histoire croisée’ of these national histories may help to open the way for what nineteenth-century imperial histories of Austria failed to achieve: a sense of a common past in an exceptionally diverse part of Europe.

The Uses and Abuses of the Barbarian Invasions in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Ian N. Wood In 1920, a year and a half after his release from detention in Germany, Henri Pirenne published Souvenirs de captivité, an account of his time initially in the concentration camps of Krefeld and Holzminden, and thereafter under supervision first at Jena and then at Kreuzburg.1 It is a moving personal document that also offers a sharply observed picture of Germany in the years from 1916 to 1918. At the same time it is, in certain respects, curiously blinkered, and the very limitations of Pirenne’s vision are a warning to us: points that are obvious when seen with the advantage of hindsight, were not necessarily obvious even to a man trained—as are all good medievalists—to observe the smallest detail. Writing his Souvenirs de captivité Pirenne passes plenty of comments on the German professoriat of his day. He had known many individual scholars, indeed he notes that he and his fellow detainee, Paul Fredericq, were “les seuls étrangers qui fréquentassent habituellement les Deutsche Historikertage, et nous avions eu ainsi l’occasion de faire la connaissance personelle de la plupart des historiens allemands.”2 Not only that, the two of them admired the new Germany. On the academic and personal front, Pirenne was particularly close to Karl Lamprecht.3 Their friendship even survived the opening months of the war, lasting up to the German’s death in 1915—it might not have survived much longer.4 What the opening two 1 Henri Pirenne, “Souvenirs de Captivité en Allemagne (Mars 1916–Novembre 1918),” Revue des deux mondes 60 (1st and 15th February) (1920): 539–60, 829–58. The articles were reprinted almost immediately as a booklet (Brussels: Librarie Maurice Lamertin, 1920). 2 Pirenne, “Souvenirs de captivité,” 540. 3 On Lamprecht, Roger Chickering, Karl Lamprecht. A German Academic Life (1856–1915) (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International Inc., 1993), reviewed and summarised by Georg G. Iggers, “The Historian Banished: Karl Lamprecht in Imperial Germany,” Central European History, 27 (1994): 87–92. 4 On Pirenne and Lamprecht, Cinzio Violante, La fine della ‘grande illusione’: Uno storico europeo tra guerra e dopoguerra, Henri Pirenne (1914–1923): Per una rilettuta della “Histoire de l’Europe” (Bologna: Mulino, 1997), 147–51. See also Bryce Lyon, “The letters of Henri Pirenne to Karl Lamprecht (1894–1915),” Bulletin de la Commission Royale d’Histoire 132, 2 (1966): 161–231; Hans van Werveke, “Karl Lamprecht et Henri Pirenne,” Bulletin de la Commission Royale d’Histoire 138 (1972): 39–60.

52

ian n. wood

years of the war revealed was an extraordinary depth of incomprehension, concerning German scholars on Pirenne’s part, and concerning Belgium on the part of the German professoriat. Pirenne noted that the Germans could not understand the hostile reaction of their Belgian colleagues to the invasion of their country.5 They thought that he and Fredericq should have approved the liberation of Flanders from the Latin yoke.6 The forces of occupation were surprised at the refusal of the Ghent professoriat to teach in Flemish.7 Yet in Germany, outside the concentration camps, Pirenne, as a professor, was remarkably well treated, and the likes of Adolf von Harnack, Aloys Schulte and, in Jena, Alexander Cartellieri, made sure that he had access to a supply of books. Pirenne, for his part, was surprised at the political views of men he thought he knew well.8 Once in Germany he concluded that the professoriat had simply been blindly following the dictates of an absolutist government: “Ils en font un être en soi, une sorte d’entité mystique, une puissance douée de tous les attributs de la force et de l’intelligence. Au moment voulu, tous seront prêts à lui obéir, non comme des citoyens, mais comme des serviteurs.”9 And again: “Accoutumés depuis des siècles à l’absolutisme, il ne leur vient pas à l’idée que l’État, c’est eux-mêmes.”10 This last sentence both denies and attributes to the German professoriat an element of responsibility. They were used to absolutism, and so they had not woken up to the fact that they themselves were the State: but the fact that they were the State meant that they should have acted. In fact, by 1919 Pirenne was fairly well aware that the German scholarly profession had been responsible for the production of many of the ideas that underpinned the aggression of 1914.11 Pirenne’s initial unawareness is perhaps rather surprising. Indeed the German professoriat had come to play a central role in preparing the nation for its expansion in the world.12 German and English academics 5 The accuracy of Pirenne on this is amply confirmed by van Werveke, “Karl Lamprecht et Henri Pirenne,” 44–7, with the relevant section of Fredericq’s diary at 57–8. 6 Pirenne, “Souvenirs de captivité,” 543. 7 Ibid. 543–4. 8 Ibid. 546. 9 Ibid. 547. 10 Ibid. 547. 11  Bryce Lyon, “Henri Pirenne’s Réflexions d’un solitaire and his re-evaluation of history,” Journal of Medieval History 32, 3 (1997): 258–99, at 293; Violante, La fine della grande illusione, 198. 12 See John A. Moses, “The Mobilisation of the Intellectuals 1914–1915 and the Continuity of German Historical Consciousness,” Australian Journal of Politics and History, 48



uses and abuses of the barbarian invasions

53

had argued furiously over the outbreak of the war. In particular a group of 93 German professors and scholars had issued their famous, or infamous, Aufruf an die Kulturwelt (“Appeal to the Civilised World”), on 4th October 1914, to justify German aggression. The appeal prompted a counterblast from a number of Oxford historians,13 as well as a sustained examination of the supposed conflict between German and Slavonic civilisation by the Cambridge ancient historian John Bagnell Bury,14 and a further German response.15 Among the signatories of the 4th October appeal was Pirenne’s friend Lamprecht, who would also spell out his own personal, historical justification of the war in a lecture entitled “Über Belgien. Nach geschichtlichen und persönlichen Erfahrungen”, delivered in Dresden on 5th March 1915, just over two months before he died. Lamprecht had not been at the centre of Wilhelmine scholarship, being regarded by some as both too radical and also too slapdash in some of his writing.16 In the run up to the outbreak of war, however, he emerged increasingly as an enthusiastic supporter of the Kaiser’s chauvinism,17 and with the signing the Aufruf of the 93 professors, and in his lecture in Dresden he publicly signalled his strong commitment to the dominant academic position. The lecture was delivered as part of a great occasion, which began with an organ voluntary followed by two songs, the first was Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s poem of 1840, An den Stamm der Vlamen: the second by the Flemish poet Emmanuel Heil, was his 1870 poem Oproep aan de Dietschers—which Lamprecht mistranslated as “Aufruf an die Deutschen,” whereas Heil used the word Dietschers in the sense of Großniederländisch, that is the Dutch and the Flemings combined, but without (2002): 336–52, for an important overview both of the evidence, and of modern debates about it. 13 Why we are at war (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1914). 14 John Bagnell Bury, Germany and Slavonic Civilisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914). 15 Moses, “The Mobilisation of the Intellectuals,” 348–51. See also his comments (at p. 347) on an earlier Aufruf deutschen Kirchenmänner und Professoren: An die evangelischen Christen im Ausland, the text of which is available in Gerhard Besier, Die protestantischen Kirchen im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1984), 40–5. On the involvement of French academics in the Alsace-Lorraine question see Michael Heffernan, “History, Geography and the French National Space: The Question of Alsace-Lorraine, 1914–18,” Space and Polity 5 (2001): 27–48. 16 Iggers, “The Historian Banished: Karl Lamprecht in Imperial Germany.” For a brief account of the Methodenstreit surrounding Lamprecht, see Robert Harrison, Aled Jones and Peter Lambert, “The primacy of political history,” in Peter Lambert and Phillip R. Schofield, Making History: An introduction to the history and practices of a discipline (London: Routledge, 2004), 38–54, at 41–2. 17 van Werveke, “Karl Lamprecht et Henri Pirenne,” 47.

54

ian n. wood

the Germans.18 After briefly discussing the poems as evidence that the Flemings were German, Lamprecht then talks about Brussels as a Flemish city, and about the cultural and geographical distinctions between the Flemish north of Belgium and the Walloon south. He notes the borders with the French cultural region, and goes out of his way to explain the irrelevance of England to all of this. The cultural border as described by Lamprecht in no way follows the modern political border, or that of 1914: he presents Lille as a Flemish city (as many Lilleois would do today). He then points out that Beethoven’s family was Flemish. Where, he asks, did this distinction between Fleming and Walloon come from? Its origins lay in the Germanic settlement of Flanders, which he then traces in terms of place-names (all these points will recur when we turn to the 1930s and 1940s). It was in Belgium that the Lex Salica, “das älteste aller unserere Volksrechte” was compiled. He sets out the early history of the Salians, their expansion against the Celts, and their role in Merovingian and Carolingian history. Having reached the ninth century, which was for him the great period of nation formation in western Europe, he points to its importance for Belgium, in four sentences which both draw on Pirenne’s Histoire de Belgique (which he had commissioned) and look forward to Mahomet et Charlemagne: Die Pforten des Orients, die im 7. und 8. Jahrhundert ziemlich verschüttet worden waren, öffneten sich wieder. Es kam damit zu einem wirklich internationalen Austausch von europäischen und tropischen Produkten. Dieser Handel ging zum größeren Teile durch die Säulen des Herkules, also durch die Meerenge von Gibraltar, dann durch den Biskayischen Meerbusen und strandete—ja, wo strandete er? Nicht, wie man heute denken würde, in London, das noch nicht kräftig genug war, sondern an der Küste Belgiens.

From there Lamprecht traces the rise of Flanders as the economic centre of trade, paralleling Venice. He notes the region’s architecture and painting, as well as its developing democracy. With the Burgundian court, of course, the region enters the Habsburg world. Turning to more modern times, Lamprecht looks at the aftermath of the Peace of Paris in 1815, which he reads as an English neutralising of Belgium and Holland, that at the same time left the way open for French influence, especially in Brussels, Liège and Ghent. And so he turns to his hopes for the future: which is

18 The full ceremony, with the lecture is available at www.zum.de/psm/1wk/lamprecht .php.



uses and abuses of the barbarian invasions

55

the success of the current German policy of 1915. The lecture was followed by the singing of O Deutschland, hoch in Ehren and Haltet uns!. It is not hard to see why Pirenne should have regarded such an argument as a betrayal by a former friend, although it is not clear exactly when he learnt of Lamprecht’s enthusiasm for the Kaiser’s policies: he supported the expulsion of German scholars from association with the Académie royale de Belgique on 13th March and 6th June 1915, but we are not told which ones.19 By the latter date, Lamprecht was dead: he died suddently and unexpectedly, having only just returned to Germany from an official visit to occupied Belgium to promote its inclusion within a new Zollverein: in Brussels he found his ideas and expectations roundly challenged by Guillaume des Marez.20 Pirenne would address the misuse of medieval history in the years immediately following the end of the war in a number of lectures, one to the Academie Royale in Brussels, and three delivered as Rektor at the University of Ghent, in which he assessed the contribution of German scholarship to the political events of the previous decade: some of the titles give an indication of his concerns: “Le pangermanisme et la Belgique”; “L’Allemagne moderne et l’Empire romain du moyen âge”; and “De l’influence allemande sur le mouvement historique contemporain”, which concludes with the idea that we should ask “ce que nous devons desapprehendre de l’Allemagne”.21 By now he was well aware of the dangers of German interpretations of the Middle Ages, and he criticised his old teacher, Godefroid Kurth, for not having paid enough attention to the implications of Pangermanism and German militarism22—a criticism that he might just as well have levelled against himself. In many ways more important were his actions as President of the 5th Congrès international des sciences historiques, held in Brussels in 1923.23 This has a good claim to being the most important meeting of historians ever held: certainly the contribution of francophone and anglophone 19 van Werveke, “Karl Lamprecht et Henri Pirenne,” 53. 20 Ibid., 44–6. 21   Henri Pirenne, “Le pangermanisme et la Belgique,” Bulletin de l’Académie royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres, 5 (1919): 4–35: id., “L’Allemagne moderne et l’Empire romain de moyen âge. Discours prononcé à l’ouverture des cours de l’Université de Gand” (Ghent, 1921); idem, “De l’influence allemande sur le mouvement historique contemporain”, Scientia XX (1923): 173–8. The lectures are discussed by Violante, La fine della grande illusione, 201–48. 22 Violante, La fine della grande illusione, 152. 23 Compte rendu du Ve Congrès international des sciences historiques Bruxelles, 1923, ed. Guillaume des Marez and François-Louis Ganshof (Brussels: Weissenbruch, 1923). See also Violante, La fine de la grande illusione, 251–70.

56

ian n. wood

medievalists almost amounts to a blueprint for what they would achieve in the following quarter century.24 Pirenne’s two major contributions were his presidential address, “De la méthode comparative en histoire” and a paper on “L’expansion de l’Islam et le commencement du moyen âge,” which was, of course, one of the early airings of the Mahomet et Charlemagne thesis. In the long term, the latter paper would be more important, but the former more obviously addressed current questions, for Pirenne argued, clearly with the German example in mind, that history had become subjected to politics: that it had gone hand in hand with racism, and that it was crucial to ensure the separation of politics from the study of history. The problem comes when he turns to give examples of what he thought was right practice: the medieval city should be studied in Flanders and in Italy, but not in Germany, where it was only an imitation. Here, however unconsciously, he was surely falling into the trap of combining history and politics that he so deplored. One might also ask to what extent Mahomet et Charlemagne, with its denial of significance to the Germanic incomers of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, was an unconscious act of retribution. In some ways equally important was his role in the exclusion of German scholars from the Brussels meeting.25 His determination to exclude all those who had signed the Aufruf an die Kulturwelt, led to the few Germans he was prepared to invite boycotting the proceedings, along with the Austrians, most notably Alfons Dopsch. Pirenne would be more forgiving by the time of the next Congrès international, which was held at Oslo in 1928, when he and Dopsch were seen to have a beer together,26 and by 1931 he remembered his friendship with Lamprecht as lasting until the latter’s death.27 While the misuse of history on the part of Lamprecht and his colleagues is clear for all to see, it is apparent that Pirenne had not achieved the sort of objectivity that he himself thought was desirable. One can see this in his exclusion of German scholars from the Brussels meeting, and from his denial that German medieval cities constituted a useful point of comparison. One can see it also in his attempt to gloss over the importance of Belgian colonialism in his explanation of the lead up to the war.28 And one wonders whether he ever stopped to consider that his Histoire de 24 Violante, La fine de la grande illusione, 392. 25 Ibid., 294–7. 26 Ibid., 404–9. 27 van Werveke, “Karl Lamprecht et Henri Pirenne,” 55. 28 Violante, La fine de la grande illusione, 215–21.



uses and abuses of the barbarian invasions

57

Belgique was itself a statement justifying a particular reading of the creation of the Belgian state. Rather than pursue Pirenne and the debates about the role of historiography in the First World War and its aftermath, at least for the time being, I should like instead to pick up on his point about what he regarded as a relatively recent subjection of history to politics. I should like to trace some of the shifting uses of the early Middle Ages from the Napoleonic period down to 1945 (not that the problem started in Napoleon’s day), and to consider the extent to which medievalists (and for reasons that will become apparent I will not limit myself to historians) merely provided material which politicians then exploited, and to what extent they themselves contributed to, or even led, political arguments.29 Historical research and writing has always had political connotations.30 For the study of the end of the Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages this had been particularly true of eighteenth-century France, where the early history of the Franks came to be a battleground for those fighting over the privileges of the aristocracy.31 Most agreed that the hereditary noblesse were descendents of the Franks. What was at issue was whether that justified their privileged status, and even a restoration of lost rights, or whether it identified them as an alien element in society, whose position depended on an illegal act of aggression. This latter view inevitably won out in the French Revolution. Napoleon, who was much taken with the fact that his throne had once been that of Clovis and Charlemagne, decided in 1804 to commission a via media, a view of the origins of France to which all, whether for or against the Revolution, could agree. For this task he chose the anti-revolutionary, ex-emigré and writer, the comte de

29 See Ian N. Wood, “Barbarians, Historians and the Construction of National Identities,” Journal of Late Antiquity 1 (2008): 61–82. 30 For an assessment of recent historiography, see Margaret Macmillan, The Uses and Abuses of History (London: Profile Books, 2009), though in concentrating on the modern period Macmillan has drawn too clear a distinction between professional and amateur historians, which has only been meaningful since the nineteenth century. And even during the period that it has been meaningful, there have been many amateurs who have abused their subject matter less than have some of their professional counterparts. 31 See Michel Foucault, “Society must be defended.” Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76, trans. David Macey (London: Penguin, 2003). See also Claude Nicolet, La fabrique d’une nation. La France entre Rome et les Germains (Paris: Perrin, 2003); Wood, “Barbarians, Historians.”

58

ian n. wood

Montlosier.32 The work was to be ready for Napoleon’s coronation at the end of the year! This was an extraordinary, and as it turned out, foolish risk. Montlosier, quite understandably, failed to meet his deadline, and when the text was ready in 1807 it was rejected. Essentially Montlosier restated the aristocratic arguments of the eighteenth century, and thus went no way towards providing a version of early French history to which Napoleon could expect the country in general to subscribe. Montlosier would get his revenge, however, for in 1814 he was able to find a publisher, who printed his De la monarchie française, with a new preface, setting out the circumstances of the work’s composition and rejection.33 The publication history of De la monarchie française illustrates the two basic points about the use of history throughout the eighteenth and at the very beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Those in power saw that an agreeable reading of the past could contribute to their authority and to the image of a nation’s unity. Those outside could, however, present their interpretations of that same past in such a way as to criticise the establishment. This did not necessarily mean that either side offered a deliberately distorted version of the past—particularly a past as distant and under-evidenced as that of the Fall of the Roman Empire and the establishment of the barbarian kingdoms, where there was inevitably leeway for interpretation. However, given the importance of the end of Rome and the coming of the Franks for the creation of France, it was inevitable that what evidence there was would be read in the light of the political views of the writer. Regardless of the views of the establishment, Montlosier reignited debates over the origins of France, which were to continue through the next decades, and not least because of the vicissitudes of French politics during the period of the Restoration, the July Monarchy and the failure of 1848. The chief exponent of an anti-aristocratic viewpoint was Augustin Thierry.34 A more moderate stance was that taken by François Guizot. He was to set out his ideas in a number of collections of lectures and essais, notably in his Histoire générale de la civilisation en Europe: depuis la chute de l’Empire romain jusqu’à la Révolution of 1828 and his Histoire de la

32 Shirley M. Gruner, “Political historiography in Restoration France,” History and Theory 8 (1969): 346–65. 33 François Dominique de Reynaud, Comte de Montlosier, De la monarchie française, 3 vols (Paris: Nicolle et Gide, 1814–15), vol. 1, iv–vi. 34 Gruner, ‘Political historiography in Restoration France’.



uses and abuses of the barbarian invasions

59

civilisation en France of two years later.35 The centrality of the word civilisation, of course, tells us a good deal about Guizot’s priorities. Although these lectures do comment on the Fall of Rome, more important for the early medievalist are his Essais sur l’Histoire de France (pour servir de complément aux Observations de l’Histoire de France de l’abbé de Mably) of 182336—Mably being one of the leading figures in the eighteenth-century debates of the origins of the Franks, committed to an anti-monarchic reading. In a number of ways Guizot’s career points to a change in the position of historical debate.37 First, unlike his French predecessors in early medieval history, and indeed unlike Gibbon, he was himself a university professor, being appointed to the chair of modern history at the Sorbonne in 1812, partly on the strength of his translation and edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. From there, and intermittently, he went on to hold political office, briefly in 1814–15, and then for a longer period, between 1832 and 1837, when he was Minister of public instruction, and as such was responsible for the creation of the Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques in 1834, and for the reorganisation as the Comité des Arts et Monuments in 1835 of the Comité des Arts, which had been founded five years earlier. He played a leading role in the government of 1840–8, and was appointed premier ministre in 1847. It was his legislation against public meetings that sparked the 1848 Revolution. Here, then, was a man who was both a scholar and a politician. His position as minister of public instruction meant that he had oversight of French education, which went well with his historical interest in the development of civilisation: at the same time some of his lectures including his Essais sur l’Histoire de France were adoptés par le conseil royal de l’instruction publique: that is, they became text books. Guizot essentially presents a moderate view of the tradition which saw the Franks as invaders who set themselves up as a separate aristocratic class, although Marx was to comment that “democratic gents . . . should study the historical works of Thierry, Guizot,

35 François Guizot, Histoire générale de la civilisation en Europe: depuis la chute de l’Empire romain jusqu’à la Révolution (Paris: Pichon et Didier, 1828); id., Histoire de la civilisation en France, 4 vols. (Paris: Pichon et Didier, 1830–2). Both works were translated into English by William Hazlitt. 36 François Guizot, Essais sur l’Histoire de France (pour servir de complement aux Observations sur l’Histoire de France de l’abbé de Mably) (Paris: Brière, 1823). 37 Pim den Boer, History as a Profession. The Study of History in France, 1818–1914 (Prince­ ton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 61–98.

60

ian n. wood

John Wade and so forth, in order to enlighten themselves as to the past ‘history of the classes’.”38 Thierry in his take on the coming of the Franks made rather more of class distinction than did Guizot: indeed he deliberately presented his views as those of a rotourier, a member of the working classes.39 His interpretation of early Frankish history, in terms of an indigenous population conquered and oppressed by the invading barbarians—an interpretation which looked back to eighteenth-century French debates, but which Thierry presented as largely influenced by English historiography of the Norman Conquest and by Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe40—was to have an impact in Italy. Manzoni took over Thierry’s presentation of early Merovingian history and applied it to the Longobards, thus presenting the barbarians as the first of many invaders of Italy, who would lord it over the Italian population. In this way Longobard historiography came to play a role in the development of Risorgimento ideology.41 Like Guizot in France, Carlo Troya, Cesare Balbo and Pasquale Villari in Italy also straddled the worlds of politics and medieval studies. Troya and Balbo would both hold primeministerial office in 1848, the former in Naples, the latter in Turin. The third, and youngest of the group, Villari, comes closest to echoing Guizot’s career. He held chairs in Pisa and Florence, and was also to be minister for education in 1891–2. Like Guizot, he too presented a picture of the migration period in which the barbarians were not overly destructive.42 For the French and for the Italians early medieval history was part of political debate. It contributed towards an understanding of the class structure in France and of the relationship between foreign rulers and the indigenous population in Italy. In Germany the early Middle Ages also impinged on political culture and politics. One can see the emphasis put on Germanic law and the development of Rechtsgeschichte, both as a reaction to the introduction of the Code Napoléon in those areas of Germany 38 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Correspondence, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), 68. See Foucault, “Society must be defended,” 85, n. 6. 39 Augustin Thierry, “Autobiographical preface. History of my historical works and theories,” in idem, The Historical Essays published under the title of “Dix ans d’études historiques,” and Narratives of the Merovingian Era; or, Scenes of the Sixth Century, with an autobiographical preface (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1845), vii–xix, at xii. 40 Thierry, “Autobiographical preface,” xi. 41  For the most recent assessment, Enrico Artifoni, “Le questioni longobarde. Osservazioni su alcuni testi del primo Ottocento storiografico italiano,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome 119 (2007), 297–304. 42 Pasquale Villari, Le invasioni barbariche in Italia (Milan: Hoepli, 1901): trans. The Barbarian Invasions of Italy, 2 vols. (London: Fisher Unwin, 1902).



uses and abuses of the barbarian invasions

61

under French rule, and as having an important role to play in the development of the modern legal tradition in Germany.43 Much more dramatic, however, was the contribution of the early Middle Ages to events on the fringes of Germany. And here it was a discipline other than history or Rechtsgeschichte that had the major role to play: that of philology.44 The association of language and nation can be traced back to the philosophical ideas of Herder and beyond,45 while a concern with the boundaries of Germany can be found in the patriotic poetry of the likes of Ernst Moritz Arndt. These ideas were brought together in a new scholarly way by the philologists, and especially by Jacob Grimm, in their arguments about the German language. Language could identify the nationality of the population of a region,46 and could therefore be used in determining to which state a region might properly belong. One can see this especially in the debates over Schleswig-Holstein, where early Germanic settlement was at the heart of the discussion as to whether the region should be part of Denmark or Germany. And one key early medieval text that was drawn into this debate was the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, whose narrative is not set in England, but among the Danes.47 Was Beowulf an Old Danish poem, a Nordic or Germanic poem, or, just conceivably, Old English, if that could be identified as something other than a dialect of one of the others? This was a debate that rumbled on from the moment of the first edition of the poem by Thorkelín in 1815, under the title De Danorum Rebus Gestis Seculis III et IV (tertio et quarto): Poema Danicum Dialecto Anglosaxonico.48 The dominant German voice in the debates, especially from the 1840s onwards, was that of Grimm, who as president of the Verhandlungen der Germanisten held in Frankfurt in 1846 and at its subsequent meeting in Lübeck in 1847, was the leading figure in pushing the philological case for the inclusion of Schleswig-Holstein within Germany rather than Denmark49—a policy which would come to fruition in 1864. Nor was Grimm’s influence 43 For Savigny’s attack on the Code Napoléon, see Karl A, Mollnau, “The contributions of Savigny to the Theory of Legislation,” The American Journal of Comparative Law 37, 1 (1989): 81–93, at 84–6. 44 The importance of philology is clearly demonstrated in Joep Leerssen, National Thought in Europe. A Cultural History (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006). 45 Ibid., 97–101. 46 Ibid., 107–9. 47 See Thomas A. Shippey and Andreas Haarder, Beowulf: the critical heritage (London: Routledge, 1998). 48 Grimur Jónsson Thorkelin, De Danorum Rebus Gestis Seculis III et IV (tertio et quarto): Poema Danicum Dialecto Anglosaxonico (Copenhagen: Th.E. Rangel, 1815). 49 Jacob Grimm, Kleinere Schriften, 8 vols (Berlin: Dümmler, 1864–90), vol. 7, 556–81.

62

ian n. wood

on politics purely that of an academic lobbying from the outside. He and his brother, together with a number of other leading academic figures, were members of the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848.50 If Schleswig-Holstein could be defined as German on linguistic grounds, so too could the Netherlands together with Flanders, and also Alsace.51 Interestingly, the Frankish expansion into this last region does not appear to have been used as a crucial justification for a German take-over in 1870.52 Bismarck, of course, had little time for historical argument. And it is certainly possible that the failures of 1848 had rather pushed the academics to the sidelines.53 But historians were involved in the arguments for and against Bismarck’s actions: notably Theodor Mommsen wrote three letters to the Italian people, arguing that they should not enter the war on the French side, while Fustel de Coulanges, replied, attacking the German aggression.54 Yet, although both would emerge as major interpreters of the late and post-Roman periods, neither included in their arguments claims based on early Germanic settlement. Arguably, however, the war of 1870–1 did have a profound effect on the study of the early Middle Ages: Fustel’s work on the post-Roman period all belongs to the ensuing decades: his previous concern had been with Antiquity. His insistence (like that of Pirenne two generations later) on the relative insignificance of the Germanic contribution to the history of France can be seen as a reaction against events of his own day—though one would have to acknowledge that if so the reaction was unconscious, since the interpretation was solidly underpinned by a level of scholarship scarcely equalled before or since. His anti-German feelings are more apparent in his critique of his colleague Gabriel Monod, who he saw as being too deeply influenced by German scholarly traditions55—though Monod himself was as patriotic as Fustel.56 In the end Fustel’s patriotism

50 Leerssen, National Thought in Europe, 145–51, 177–85. 51  On Alsace, see now François Igersheim, L’Alsace et ses historiens, 1680–1914. La Fabrique des monuments (Strasbourg: Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2006). 52 Patrick J. Geary, Historians as Public Intellectuals, The Reuter Lecture 2006 (Southampton, 2007), 8–21. 53 Violante, La fine della grande illusione, 92. 54 Geary, Historians as Public Intellectuals, 8–21: François Hartog, Le XIXe siècle et l’histoire. Le cas Fustel de Coulanges 2nd. edn. (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2001), 59–61; Heffernan, “History, Geography and the French National Space: The Question of Alsace-Lorraine, 1914–18,” 28. 55 Hartog, Le XIXe siècle et l’histoire, 104–5. 56 On his experiences during the Sedan campaign, Gabriel Monod, Allemands et français. Souvenirs de campagne (Paris: Sandoz et Fischbacher, 1872).



uses and abuses of the barbarian invasions

63

would play a part in the decline of his scholarly reputation, not for anything he wrote, but because he came to be regarded as a hero by Charles Maurras, and thus the French right of the early twentieth century.57 This was certainly an element in his neglect at the hands of others. In Germany one can trace the impact of the Franco-Prussian war on a number of scholars, not least Felix Dahn. His scholarly work remained relatively uninfluenced by current affairs: indeed his massive multi-volume Könige der Germanen stands out for its determination to stick to the information on what the English would call constitutional history, contained in the written sources.58 In so far as the events, not just of 1870–1, but also of the Second and Third Italian Wars of Independence, of 1859 and 1866, affected his work, it was to underpin his hugely popular and influential historical novel, Ein Kampf um Rom of 1876.59 This arguably played a greater role than any other work in drawing the importance of the period of the Völkerwanderung to a general audience, simply because of its enormous popularity—indeed it was one of the publishing sensations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It put a Germanic Volk, the Ostrogoths, at the heart of the German sense of the past, in the decades both before and after the First World War.60 Had the Germanic past played a greater role in the justification of the Franco-Prussian War, Pirenne might have been more keenly aware of the possible use of the early Middle Ages, and thus less surprised by the position taken by the likes of Lamprecht. In fact, had he been aware of some of the more recent developments in German scholarship, and had he put them together with the evidence for Grimm’s involvement in the Schleswig-Holstein question, he would have had every reason for being downright apprehensive. In 1911 the German linguist and archaeologist Gustav Kossinna published his remarkably unpleasant pamphlet, Die Herkunft der Germanen.

57 Hartog, Le XIXe siècle et l’histoire, 170–215. 58 Felix Dahn, Die Könige der Germanen: Das Wesen des ältesten Königtums bei der germanischen Stämme und seine Geschichte bis zur Auslösung des karolingischen Reiches, 13 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hartel, 1861–1911). 59 Ralph-Johannes Lilie, “Gens Perfidus oder Edle Einfalt, Stille Größe? Zum Byzanzbild in Deutschland während des 19. Jahrhunderts am Beispiel Felix Dahns,” Klio 69 (1987): 181–203, at 187; Hans Rudolf Wahl, Die Religion des deutschen Nationalismus. Eine mentalitätsgeschichtliche Studie zur Literatur des Kaiserreichs: Felix Dahn, Ernst von Wildenbruch, Walter Flex, Neue Bremer Beiträge (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 2002), 75–6. 60 Stefan Neuhaus, Literatur und nationale Einheit in Deutschland (Tübingen: A. Franke, 2002), 232.

64

ian n. wood

Zur Methode der Siedlungsarchaeologie.61 Kossinna was not a young man, being already 53 years old, and much of the first part of the paper consists of denunciations of those who had had the temerity to disagree with his previous work. What Die Herkunft der Germanen spells out in very forthright terms is the central question that was consuming Kossinna, together with his proposed method for solving it, and his solution. He was concerned with the Urheimat of the Indogermanen. This, as he had learnt from Karl Müllenhoff in the 1870s, was an issue that could not be solved by “historisch-philosophischen und sprachwissenschaftlichen Realien”: instead it was necessary to add the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology.62 Working on the basis of his supposedly unassailable assimilation of Volk and Kultur (which obviously takes us one degree beyond the equivalence of a nation and language, which had been argued by the English historian E.A. Freeman),63 he could use early historical records to identify the Kultur of a Volk, and then could look at the archaeology to see where that Volk originated. This, then, was a different, but parallel approach to Kulturgeschichte, as it was being developed at the same time by Lamprecht. Since Kossinna thought that there was remarkable stability in the prehistoric archaeology of present-day North Germany and Jutland, he traced the presence in the region of Indogermanen not just back to 1000 BC, when Müllenhoff had placed the origins of the Germanic Ursprache, but right back into the Stone Age. For Kossinna “die ungestörte Kontinuität der Kulturentwicklung und besonders des Siedlungsgebietes, an den Grenzen von Ost- und Nordsee” could thus be traced back to 7/8000 bc.64 Crucially this allowed him to place the origins of the Indogermanen in Germany and not in the East. The linguistic theory with which Kossinna was playing was, of course, no longer simply that of Grimm. A crucial figure here was Max Müller. A German by birth and training, he became a member of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1851, going on to become Taylorian Professor of Modern Languages in 1854, and then Professor of Comparative Theology at All Souls in 1868. His main contribution to scholarship was in the field of Sanskrit 61 Gustaf Kossinna, Die Herkunft der Germanen. Zur Methode der Siedlungsarchaeologie (Würzburg: C. Kabitzsch, 1911); Suzanne L. Marchand, Down from Olympus: Archaeology and philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 181–7. 62 Kossinna, Die Herkunft der Germanen, 1. 63 Edward Augustus Freeman, “Race and Language,” in idem, Historical Essays, 3rd Series, 2nd edn. (London: Macmillan, 1892), 176–230. 64 Kossinna, Die Herkunft der Germanen, 29.



uses and abuses of the barbarian invasions

65

and of Indian culture. It was in this context that he developed his theory of Indo-european or Aryan languages. He came to be horrified at the way in which his ideas were applied to the study of race, insisting that the Aryan language was spoken by the “blackest Hindus” long before its use by “the fairest Scandinavians.”65 Despite Müller’s increasing reservations, his arguments on linguistics were applied to the discussion of race, not least by his Oxford colleague, E.A. Freemann, fellow of Trinity College from 1845–7, and Regius Professor of Modern History from 1884–92. He combined what he learnt about the Germanic peoples with a dislike of the Turks, Semites and Celts (among whom he included the French—he was a staunch supporter of the Prussians in 1870).66 His main specialism was Anglo-Saxon England, though he was more interested in 1066 than in the coming of the Anglo-Saxons: he did, however, insist on their superiority over the indigenous Celts. At much the same time Gobineau’s racial theories were also beginning to attract attention. First published in 1853–5, the Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines was initially little noticed.67 It has been estimated that in the first years following its publication it was only read by around four hundred people in France and a hundred and fifty in Germany: and certainly in so far as it was reviewed, the reception was poor.68 Judging by its publication history (which is difficult to follow, because dates are uncertain), it attracted increasing attention from the 1880s, when it was reprinted: a third edition followed in the 1890s, a fourth at an unspecified later date, a fifth in the 1930s, and a sixth in 1940. The first part of it (without the historical discussion), however, was translated into English by Henry Hotz, and appeared in an American edition in 1856:69 the 65 Friedrich Max Müller, Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas (London: Longmans, 1888), 120. 66 Edward Augustus Freeman, Four Oxford Lectures 1887. Fifty Years of European History: Teutonic Conquest in Gaul and Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1888), 45–53. 67 Arthur comte de Gobineau, Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines, 2 vols. (Paris: Firman-Didot, 1853–5). See Michael D. Biddiss, “Gobineau and the Origins of European Racism”, Race and Class 7, 3 (1966): 255–70. 68 Annette Smith and David Smith, Arthur Joseph Gobineau. Mademoiselle Irnois and Other Stories (Berkeley: California University Press, 1988), 12, 292, n. 13, citing Michel Lémonon, Gobineau et l’Allemagne, unpublished University of Strasbourg thesis, 1972. But see Claude Blanckaert, “On the origins of French ethnology: William Edwards and the Doctrine of Race,” in George W. Stocking, Jr. (ed.), Bones, Bodies, Behavior, Essays on Biological Anthropology (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 18–55, at 49, which suggests that Gobineau’s work attracted rather more attention. 69 Arthur, comte de Gobineau, The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races, trans. (of book 1) by Henry Hotz, with additional material by J.C. Nott (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1856).

66

ian n. wood

translation included additional material by J.C. Nott—Gobineau’s ideas presumably appealed to those Americans who were impressed by Freeman. A second incomplete translation appeared in 1915.70 A German translation of Gobineau was published between 1898 and 1901.71 A growing interest in Gobineau’s views of racial purity (or, to be fair, a travesty of them, because he thought that in reality there were only a few minor pockets of population which could be called remotely pure), combined with theories of Indo-germanic languages, to which Kossinna further added his reading of archaeology and anthropology, created a toxic mixture which nevertheless Pirenne failed to notice in his dealings with the German professoriat before 1914. The allied victory in 1918, and its academic counterpart in the Brussels Congress of 1923, did not spell the end for this gathering of ideas, of which Kossinna’s Die Herkunft der Germanen is perhaps the most succinct supposedly academic statement. The intellectual counterblast to the position espoused by Pirenne is best traced in institutional terms, in the foundation of research academies, which had an eye on the history of the Rhineland and the territories to the West. This already began under the Weimar republic, for instance with the foundation in 1920 of the Institut für geschichtliche Landeskunde der Rheinlande an der Universität Bonn,72 and a year later of the Wissenschaftliche Institut des Elsaß-Lothringer im Reich an der Universität Frankfurt.73 That is, there was a German institute devoted to the study of what was French Alsace-Lorraine. Both these institutes would be drawn, along with others, into the Westdeutsche Forschungs­gemeinschaft in 1931.74 Recently a number of younger German scholars have set out the full and complex history of the foundation of these institutes. Many of the research projects of the 1920s and 30s owed not a little to the sense of grievance caused by the Versailles settlement.75 Where ought the border to be?

70 Arthur, comte de Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races, trans. Adrian Collins (London: Heinemann, 1915). 71 Arthur, comte de Gobineau, Versuch über Ungleichheit der Menschenracen, trans. Ludwig Schemann, 4 vols. (Stuttgart: F. Frommann, 1898–1901) 72 Michael Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft im Dienst der nationalsozialistischen Politik? Die “Volksdeutschen Forschungsgemeinschaften” von 1931–45 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1999), 354, 368. 73 Ibid., 352, 369. 74 Ibid., 353–4, 367–75. 75 Karl Ditt, “The idea of German cultural regions in the Third Reich: the work of Franz Petri,” Journal of Historical Geography 27, 1 (2001): 241–58.



uses and abuses of the barbarian invasions

67

The approach of Lamprecht can be seen as foreshadowing that of the Bonn institute, with its interest in the cultural and geographical boundaries that might help define Germany’s western frontier.76 In the 1930s there was a good deal more emphasis on the importance of onomastics, following the publication of the German Language Atlas of Walter Mitzka and Ferdinand Wrede, and of archaeology, following the interventions of Kossinna. Just as I have only listed two out of a considerable number of Institutes, so I will only list two scholars:77 Franz Steinbach, who was put in charge of the Rheinische Forschungsgemeinschaft, shortly to be reformed as the Westdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, at its inception in 1931, and Franz Petri, who, although not a direct pupil of Steinbach, developed his work. Steinbach was chiefly interested in cultural regions, and particularly in the “germanisch-romanische Mischkultur” of the Merovingians.78 For him the Franks had originally expanded beyond the modern linguistic frontier between Germanic and French, and the current frontier represented a line to which Germanic settlement had withdrawn. Petri modified these ideas in his 1937 Habilitation on Germanisches Volkserbe in Wallonien und Nordfrankreich.79 Using archaeology and onomastics, chiefly field names, he argued that the linguistic frontier represented a line of balance, reflecting the complex relations between the urban romanised world and that of the Germans, achieved around ad 1000.80 In fact, in his view, there had been Germanic expansion as far as Brittany in the West and the Loire in the South.81 Petri’s work was instantly criticised by archaeologists and philologists, not least by the great onomast Ernst Gamillscheg, who instantly noticed its political implications.82 It was, however, accepted by Steinbach, who revised his own ideas accordingly.83 As a result of his research

76 Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft im Dienst der nationalsozialistischen Politik?, 369. 77 Among many other scholars of the early Middle Ages one might cite, there is Siegfried Fuchs: see Thomas Fröhlich, “The study of the Lombards and the Ostrogoths at the German Archaeological Institute of Rome, 1937–1943,” Fragmenta 2 (2008): 183–213; also, for the German Archaeological Institute see Klaus Junker, “Research under dictatorship: the German Archaeological Institute 1929–1945,” Antiquity 72 (1998): 282–92. 78 Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft im Dienst der nationalsozialistischen Politik?, 355. 79 Franz Petri, Germanisches Volkserbe in Wallonien und Nordfrankreich: Die fränkische Landnahme in Frankreich und den Niederlanden und die Bildung der westliche Sprachgrenze (Bonn: Röhrscheid, 1937). 80 Ditt, “The idea of German cultural regions,” 244. 81  Ibid., 245. 82 Ibid., 247, with bibliography in note. 83 Ibid., 247.

68

ian n. wood

Petri was put in charge of the German-Dutch institute in Köln in 1938, and was elevated to the chair of Dutch history in the same city in 1942. Meanwhile his expertise was being used within the war effort—even more so than Lamprecht’s had been.84 He was appointed as the officer in charge of cultural politics in occupied Belgium.85 And his work was being consulted as relevant to where the western frontier of Germany should be drawn, not least because Adolf Hitler read his Habilitationschrift overnight on 4th May 1942.86: Should just the Flemish-speaking parts of Belgium be included in Germany, or should parts of northern France be drawn in as well?87 Here Petri himself objected: he thought that the subtlety of his work was being ignored. It was not only Petri’s scholarship that was being consulted. Equivalent work was carried out in Franche-Comté and in Burgundy. As has recently been remarked “The Nazis gratefully accepted the supply of academic theses as a legitimization of German expansion, the propagation of nationalist values, and also the role given to them as the instrument of a German mission.” And the author goes on: “Their plans to re-draw German political boundaries were however hardly oriented on the primacy of academic research. Their decisions and debates on future boundaries in the West and more especially the East were rather based on political and military considerations.”88 Ultimately, of course, this Bismarckian interpretation is likely to be accurate. That scholars were complicit in helping define where the boundary of the Reich should lie, however, is clear. Petri, not surprisingly, lost his job at Köln in 1945, but Steinbach, and Steinbach’s teacher Hermann Aubin, soon helped him back into academic life: in 1951 he became director of the Provinzialinstitut für Westfälische Landes- und Volkskunde in Münster, and ten years later took over Steinbach’s post in Bonn, succeeding him as director of the Institut für geschichtliche Landeskunde.89 He did modify his ideas slightly, though essentially in terms of accepting a less aggressive terminology. I began with Pirenne, and the problem of how much and when he actually realised the extent of scholarly involvement in German politics.

84 van Werveke, “Karl Lamprecht et Henri Pirenne,” 44–6. 85 Ditt, “The idea of German cultural regions,” 242. 86 Ibid., 249. 87 Ibid., 249–50. 88 Ibid., 251. 89 Ibid., 252.



uses and abuses of the barbarian invasions

69

I should like to close with another Belgian, Charles Verlinden, like Pirenne professor at Ghent. In 1953 he gave a lecture to the Royal Historical Society in London, entitled “Frankish colonisation: a new approach.” In it he concentrates on French and Belgian scholarship on the issue, pausing briefly to comment on Petri: “The situation was in no way altered by the publication of the very controversial book of Franz Petri . . . Different groups of specialists have shown, and continue to show, how much there was that was unsound in Petri’s theses, and Petri himself has recently abandoned a considerable number of the propositions he had taken up.”90 In retrospect this scarcely seems an adequate acknowledgement of one of the great abuses of early medieval history—not that one should single out Petri alone: he was merely one of the most significant heirs to a tradition which goes back past Kossinna and Lamprecht, at least as far as Grimm, and which had only slowly overtaken the discourses of privilege, class and conquest which had previously been dominant.

90 Charles Verlinden, “Frankish colonisation: a new approach,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 4 (1954): 1–17, at p. 2.

Oehlenschlaeger and Ibsen: National Revival in Drama and History in Denmark and Norway c. 1800–1860 Sverre Bagge Some years ago I had a strange and remarkable theatre experience, watching an early nineteenth century representation of one of the most well known Icelandic sagas at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. The play was a meeting with a distant world, even more distant than that of the sagas, which makes it an appropriate starting-point for an examination of medievalism and national revival in Denmark and Norway during the first half or so of the nineteenth century. Romancing the Sagas: Kjartan and Gudrun Kjartan and Gudrun, composed by Adam Oehlenschlaeger (1779–1850) in 1847, was a great success at the time, with one of the most acclaimed actresses, Johanne Louise Heiberg, in the title role as Gudrun. It is based on the Icelandic Laxdoela Saga, which is in turn influenced by the story of Sigfried and Brünhild in the Nibelungen Cycle, also extant in an Old Norse version in Volsunga Saga. Laxdoela Saga depicts a love story between the best man, Kjartan, and the best woman, Gudrun, who become separated because of misunderstandings and pride, after which love turns into hatred and Gudrun has Kjartan killed. The saga presents these events in the subdued manner characteristic of this literature. The strong emotions are just hinted at; the characters express themselves in short, succinct sentences, and little is said explicitly about their inner lives. In Oehlenschlaeger’s play, the hero and heroine pour out their emotions in long monologues or addressed to some confidant. Kjartan is torn between two women, the haughty, selfish, cynical Gudrun whom he sees through, but cannot fail to love—the typical femme fatale—and the innocent, Madonna-like Ingeborg, the Norwegian King Olav Tryggvason’s sister, a relationship which is also present in the saga, but is less prominent. Kjartan comments on the problem in the following way: I had my heart full of one not worthy of it and overlooked . . . the tenderness innocence showed me

72

sverre bagge but what a difference between honesty—pretention, sincerity and deceit. I love the deceitful, I leave the innocent . . .  But Gudrun’s wit and humour, imagination and fire bring spring as soon as she opens her lips. . . .  The sweet poison I drank from your rosy kiss. The drunken knows that he is drunk—but greater joy is not to be found on this earth than the inebriation of love.1

In addition to the love story, the arrival of Christianity plays an important part. Like the saga, the play takes place during the reign of Olav Tryggvason (995–1000) when both Norway and Iceland were officially converted to Christianity. Oehlenschlaeger regards Christianity as a civilising force, but criticises King Olav’s violent missionary methods. He also uses religion to characterise the difference between Kjartan and Gudrun. Kjartan is one of the first Icelanders to accept Christianity—this is also the case in the saga—and in Oehlenschlaeger, he becomes a devout Christian, so much so that his father is worried that he spends all his time reading Latin books, a worry Oehlenschlaeger probably shares. By contrast, Gudrun, who is already a Christian, has adopted the new religion in Sicily, including all the bad sides of Catholicism. The clash between the two kinds of religion is expressed in the dialogue between her and Kjartan, when Kjartan returns from Norway and discovers that Gudrun has married his friend Bolli, who had told her that Kjartan had been engaged to Ingeborg. Preferring Kjartan, Gudrun has no qualms about solving the problem either by divorce or simply by Kjartan killing Bolli, but the pious and upright Kjartan declines both. Thus, Gudrun represents Mediterranean Catholicism, according to which everything can be fixed, whereas Kjartan anticipates Northern Protestantism, which takes God’s law seriously. Heroic Love: The Warriors of Helgeland Ten years after Kjartan and Gudrun, the young Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)—today far better known than Oehlenschlaeger— turned to the sagas in the play The Warriors of Helgeland (Hærmændene 1 “Med hjertet fuldt af den, som ei er hende værd,/ jeg oversaae, forstod ei, skiønte slet kun paa/ Den Ømhed, som Uskyldigheden viste mig. . . . Men Gudruns Ild og Vid og Skiemt, Indbildningskraft/ Frembringer Vaar, saasnart hun aabner Læberne. . . . Den søde Gift inddrak jeg af dit Rosenkys./ Den Drukne veed, han er beruust—men større Lyst/ Ei findes dog paa denne Jord, end Elskovs Ruus,” Adam Oehlenschlaeger, Kiartan og Gudrun, Oehlenschlaegers Poetiske Skrifter, vol. 10 (Copenhagen: Selskabet til Udgivelse af Oehlenschlaegers Skrifter, 1859), 265–402, here at pp. 318–9.—This and the following translations are all mine.



oehlenschlaeger and ibsen

73

paa Helgeland, finished in 1857, published in 1858). The play—which is rarely performed today—may possibly lead to similar reactions as that of Oehlenschlaeger. The heroism and violence of the persons and action approach melodrama. The plot and characters are largely taken directly from the sagas, notably Volsunga saga, from which the main events and even the names of two of the main characters, Sigurd and Gunnar, are derived. The story is essentially the same as the one in Volsunga saga and its source, Nibelungenlied: The woman, Hjørdis in Ibsen’s play, demands her suitor to perform an almost impossible deed to win her, to enter the cage of a wild bear and kill it. Sigurd performs the deed, pretending to be Gunnar, and brings Hjørdis to him, himself marrying the meek and feminine Dagny. This has happened five years before the play takes place. During the play, Sigurd reveals the secret to Dagny who in turn, in a moment of crisis, bursts out with it to Hjørdis. Deceived by not having married the best man, Hjørdis plays Sigurd and Gunnar off against one another, a conflict that ends with Sigurd’s death. Various other saga episodes are interspersed in this story. Taken as a whole, the action seems to have too many saga elements at once to be really saga-like; there is little of the gradual building up of apparently harmless and peaceful episodes to dramatic conflicts that are so characteristic of the sagas—and actually also of Ibsen’s later dramas. On the other hand, the most striking novelty in Ibsen’s drama is his use of the saga style, a novelty that was not met with unreserved approval by his contemporaries. The characters usually speak in short, succinct sentences with the change of word order characteristic of the saga style, particularly of the memorable sayings in the sagas. As in the sagas, dialogue is dominant over monologues. There are no confidants or confidantes and thus no way for the characters to explain their motives or inner thoughts; their words are their actions. There is thus little introspection and analysis of motives. Honour is the overall concern, although a critic might object that it is flagged in a somewhat exaggerated way compared to the sagas. Love is also a strong emotion, expressed more directly than in the sagas, most remarkably in Hjørdis’s interpretation of Sigurd’s seemingly noble act: Remember, you performed the shameful deceit; you sat with me in the cage, pretended love while laughing in secret, threw me away to Gunnar, as I was good enough for him—and left the country with the woman you loved.2

2 “Kom i hu, det var dig, som øvede hin skjændige List, det var dig, som sad hos mig i Buret, gjøglede Elskov mens du listelig lo derved, slængte mig bort til Gunnar, thi for ham var jeg god nok endda—og foer saa fra Landet med den Kvinde, du havde kjær,” Henrik

74

sverre bagge

Actually, as Sigurd confesses in the following, Hjørdis was his great love, which he sacrificed for the sake of his friend, a sacrifice Hjørdis regards as the worst treachery, as did probably Ibsen himself. Psychology and Nation Building: The Pretenders Ibsen’s next—and penultimate—historical play, The Pretenders (KongsEmnerne), finished in 1863 and published in 1864, is also his most successful one, still performed fairly often and still able to impress a contemporary audience. As in The Warriors, the action is based on a saga, in this case the Saga of Håkon Håkonsson, king 1217–63, composed shortly after the king’s death by the Icelander Sturla Tordarson. Ibsen read it in a contemporary translation and also had access to P.A. Munch’s detailed account of the period, published in 1857. Ibsen’s play deals with the period from the royal election in 1217, which Håkon won and Skule lost, until Skule’s rebellion, defeat and death 1239– 40. It follows the saga in its main outlines, but rearranges and abbreviates the events for the sake of dramatic effect. Thus, Ibsen lets Skule’s rebellion take place immediately after Bishop Nikolas at his deathbed has confirmed Skule’s doubts about Håkon’s origins but destroyed the document that might have given him full certainty, one way or the other. Actually, Nikolas died in 1225, while Skule rebelled in 1239. Some memorable sayings or episodes are reproduced directly, but otherwise, the distance to the saga style is greater than in The Warriors. The language is generally closer to that of Ibsen’s own age, and the characters are no longer statues from the past, but human beings with whom it is possible for a nineteenth as well as twenty-first century audience to identify. As the title indicates, the play deals with pretenders to the throne, and the three protagonists are all in different ways pretenders. Håkon Håkonsson, the winner, is the visionary but one-dimensional politician, full of confidence in his own cause, full of belief in God’s vocation of him to be the king of Norway and willing to sacrifice everything—including personal relationships—for his great project. His rival Skule is ambitious, but full of doubt about himself, a great man, but a man who in the end proves unable to lead his men and win their confidence, because he does

Ibsen, Hærmændene paa Helgeland, Henrik Ibsens skrifter, vol. 3 (Oslo: Aschehoug, 2006), 351–485; here at Act III, 440.



oehlenschlaeger and ibsen

75

not believe in his own cause and, unlike Håkon, has no project other than the ambition to become king. Between them is the diabolical figure of Nikolas Arnesson, bishop of Oslo, also in a way a pretender, a man descended from a noble family, the son of a queen, and full of ambition but unable to fulfil it, because he is a coward and thus unable to lead men in battle. Consequently, he has to seek refuge in the Church, despite little inclination towards clerical office. As he cannot be the first himself, however, he wants to prevent everybody else from ascending to this rank by creating strife and rivalry and playing Håkon and Skule off against one another. All three protagonists are featured in the saga, and show some resemblance to the description there and to that of Munch, in whose version Håkon is clearly the hero, the great king who restores the kingdom and introduces the coming age of greatness, whereas Skule acts out of personal ambition and to the harm of the country. The picture of Nikolas is also negative in Ibsen’s two sources. He is depicted as a sly intriguer in Håkon’s saga, and the older saga of Håkon’s grandfather King Sverre hints at his lack of personal courage. However, these are only sketches, which Ibsen develops into “rounded” characters, fighting, intriguing and confronting one another on the stage. In presenting the characters and the action, Ibsen continues the movement away from Oehlenschlaeger and the older tradition. The play is built up through dialogues; the persons are characterised through their actions and decisions, although there are also some examples of monologues and asides. Rather than letting the characters issue proclamations to one another, as often in Kjartan and Gudrun, Ibsen constructs real dialogues in which they develop their arguments, try to influence one another or reveal their secret thoughts and plans. Håkon’s belief in himself, his great project and his sacrifice of personal relationships are shown in his various actions, rather than being described by some bystander. Skule’s self-doubt is expressed in some passages that have the character of monologues, but mainly in dialogues, notably the one between him and the poet (skald) Jatgeir. And Nikolas’s diabolical character is shown in full blossom in his marvellous death scene—a parade piece for an ambitious actor and usually a great success with the audience—full of bitter humour and selfirony, in which he kindles Skule’s ambition as well as his self-doubt. A comparison between two temptation scenes illustrates the difference between Ibsen and Oehlenschlaeger. In Kjartan and Gudrun, the temptation motif is introduced by Kjartan having read the legend of St Anthony’s temptations and commenting on the greatest of them, the appearance of

76

sverre bagge

a beautiful woman.3 Gudrun overhears his words and mentions her own knowledge of Latin and the text in question. Then she quickly turns to her real errand, declaring her love for Kjartan—in contrast to her earlier reluctance—asking him to marry her, after which Kjartan resists the temptation and, as a good, honest Christian—in contrast to Gudrun’s Sicilian Christianity—rejects both her ways of getting rid of Bolli. The corresponding scene in The Pretenders starts with Skule and Nikolas finding themselves alone after Håkon has left with all his men. Skule comments on the greatness of being king and Nikolas asks, cautiously: “Would you try it, earl?”4 Then Skule admits that he dreams of it every night. Nikolas gradually warms him up, making him confess his ambition, after which he starts going through Skule’s whole career and the many times he has had the chance but never exploited it. He then turns to the difference in character between Skule and Håkon and the ruthlessness needed to carry out one’s ambitions. Finally, having made Skule ripe for his arguments, he reveals the secret that forms his reason for starting this conversation, the information that Håkon may not really be a king’s son. Ibsen here uses a technique that he develops to perfection in his contemporary plays, starting with ordinary conversation that gradually develops into dramatic confrontation. This technique bears some resemblance to the sagas, where great confrontations or decisions are also often built up from ordinary conversations, but the psychology is more complex in Ibsen. The dialogue between Nikolas and Skule in the temptation scene may also be compared to the following one between Skule and Håkon.5 Nikolas’s revelations on his deathbed finally provoke Skule to seize the throne, but before doing so, he approaches Håkon for the last time, starting with an appeal to Håkon that they must not part as enemies. Is this Skule’s attempt to make Håkon persuade him not to challenge him? Does he seek Håkon’s friendship, some act of generosity, some willingness to involve him in the government of the realm that may satisfy his ambition? If so, he is disappointed. Håkon is too absorbed in his own vocation and vision for uniting the people to take Skule seriously. He dismisses all Skule’s appeals and arguments and—as appears from his comment after Skule has left him—he does not really believe that Skule will rebel against him. 3 Oehlenschlaeger, Kiartan og Gudrun, Act IV, 352–7. 4 Henrik Ibsen, Kongs-Emnerne, Henrik Ibsens skrifter, vol. 4 (Oslo: Aschehoug, 2006), 219–452; here at Act II, 263–79. 5 Ibsen, Kongs-Emnerne, Act III, at 334–41.



oehlenschlaeger and ibsen

77

The dialogue shows that Håkon lacks Bishop Nikolas’s psychological insight; he is a great statesman, but he does not understand other people face to face. In this way, Ibsen uses the different forms of dialogue to depict his characters and show the difference between them. The drama Ibsen created, for the first time with real success in The Pretenders, has some basic features in common with the sagas, in a similar way as the realistic novel, namely the author’s apparent neutrality. The author’s explicit voice, which is so prominent in Oechlenschlaeger’s drama as well as in the great novels from the early nineteenth century, for instance those of Dickens and Thackeray in England, disappears. There is no prologue explaining the coming play and the lessons to be learnt from it and no comment to the “dear reader”, revealing what the author thinks about his characters and how he explains their actions. Admittedly, some of these techniques are impossible to use in a drama, which mainly consists of the interchange of words between the characters. A prologue may sometimes serve this purpose, or a particular character may act as the author’s spokesman. Oehlenschlaeger uses no prologue in Kjartan and Gudrun, but nevertheless expresses his moral evaluations of the characters in a very explicit way. Thus, Kjartan’s characterisation of Gudrun, quoted above, corresponds to the thoughts and emotions expressed in her own conversation with her confidant, the servant Cornelia.6 Ingeborg is Gudrun’s angelic contrast, as she appears on the stage as well as in the way the other characters, including Kjartan, describe her. She also speaks on Oehlenschlaeger’s behalf against her brother’s violent missionary methods. Kjartan’s father Olav På is a pagan, and as such in the wrong, but defends the national culture against Kjartan’s obsession with the Latin books in accordance with Oehlenschlaeger’s own ideas. Kjartan’s rival Bolli is consistently portrayed as a selfish intriguer, far below Kjartan in heroic qualities and moral standards. By contrast, the characters in The Pretenders are let loose on the audience, with their aims, intrigues, jealousies or heroic acts; they relate to one another and neither to the audience nor to the author. As this is a general feature of the modern, realistic novel and drama from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, it has been explained by the emergence of a more complex society with greater uncertainties.7 This would also 6 Oehlenschlaeger, Kiartan og Gudrun, Act III, 327–8. 7 For general accounts of this change, see e.g. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis. Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der europäischen Literatur (Bern: Francke: 1946), 400–66 and Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968),

78

sverre bagge

seem a reasonable explanation, not in the sense that it has become more difficult to detect the author’s opinion, but in the sense that the audience expects evidence or that the author believes that it does. The author’s explicit reference to some norm or common opinion is insufficient; what matters is a concrete and vivid presentation of the realities supporting his or her argument. Here we may point to the parallel to historical writing, with increasing demands for evidence to support the historian’s conclusions (cf. below my discussion on Peter Andreas Munch). From an aesthetic point of view, the new style also presents the author with new challenges and opportunities, showing rather than reporting real life and human beings. In particular, the new technique was a stimulus to uncover the complexities of the human character rather than opposing right and wrong, as was clearly Ibsen’s aim in The Pretenders. To what extent similar explanations can be found for the emergence of saga narrative, shall not be discussed here,8 but there is clearly a parallel between the sagas and Ibsen’s style, as well as a likelihood that the sagas, at least to some extent, have served as a model for The Pretenders. Whereas the psychological contrast between self-confidence and doubt is the main theme in the drama, the political aspect is also prominent, as the contrast between the characters is expressed in this field. Håkon wants to become king in order to realise a great project, to create one people out of the many scattered regions, as he declares to Skule in their last encounter: Norway was a kingdom, it shall become a people. The Thrønds were set against the men of Viken, the men of Agder against those of Hordaland, the Hålogolendings against the Sognings. Hereafter they shall all be one and they all shall know by themselves that they are one. This is the task God has laid on my shoulders.9

Such an idea has never occurred to Skule who dismisses it as impossible, to which Håkon replies that it is impossible to Skule but not to him. 272–82 and passim. Concerning Ibsen and Norway, see Per Thomas Andersen, Norsk litteraturhistorie (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2001), 238–9. 8 Sverre Bagge, “Nordic Uniqueness in the Middle Ages? Political and Literary Aspects,” Gripla 20 (2009), 56–61, and “Fortelling, makt og politikk hos Saxo og Snorre,” Jon Gunnar Jørgensen, Karsten Friis-Jensen and Else Mundal (eds.), Saxo & Snorre (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag, 2010), 172–3, 182–4. 9 “Norge var et Rige, det skal blive et Folk. Thrønder stod mod Vikværing, Agdeværing mod Hørdalænding, Haalogalending mod Sogndøl; Alle skal være Et herefter, og Alle skal vide med sig selv og skjønne at de er Et! Det er Hvervet, som Gud har lagt paa mine Skuldre” (Ibsen, Kongs-Emnerne, Act III, 339).



oehlenschlaeger and ibsen

79

The difference between the two men is also shown in practice, when Skule, whose basis is Trøndelag, finds it impossible to win the confidence of the inhabitants of Oslo after his conquest of the town. The idea is also central in Bishop Nikolas’s intrigues, which not only include creating mistrust between the two leaders, but also appealing to regional sentiments. The Danish Context All three dramas form evidence of increasing interest in the medieval past and a national revival, in accordance with what happened in most European countries at the time, but they also show differences that call for an explanation. Are we dealing with different generations, a general change in literary taste and attitudes taking place around the middle of the nineteenth century or with a difference between Norway and Denmark, or both? How do these dramas fit in with the general attitude to the medieval past during the first half or so of the nineteenth century? Oehlenschlaeger was one of the main representatives of the national revival in Denmark from around the turn of the century, which formed part of the Romantic Movement. He was influenced by Henrik Steffens in Germany and introduced German Romanticism in Denmark with the poem “The Golden Horns” in a collection of poems 1803, celebrating a find from the Bronze Age that had recently received great attention. Medievalism in Denmark was combined with nationalism in a somewhat paradoxical way.10 Danish national and romantic ideas were largely imported from Germany, but were at the same time a reaction against the strong German influence in the country since the Later Middle Ages, because of the country’s proximity to Germany as well as the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein with a largely German population, still under the rule of the Danish crown. The German language was strong among the nobility in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whereas a national movement started in the bourgeoisie in the late eighteenth century. This movement was culturally rather than politically anti-German. Political anti-Germanism came later, during the wars over Schleswig-Holstein 1848–50 and 1863–64.

10 For the following, see Vibeke Winge “Dansk og tysk 1790–1848,” in Ole Feldbæk (ed.), Et yndigt land, 1789–1848. Dansk identitetshistorie, vol. 2 (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel, 1991), 110–49 and Flemming Lundgreen-Nielsen, “Grundtvig og danskhed,” in Ole Feldbæk (ed.), Folkets Danmark, 1848–1940, Dansk identitetshistorie, vol. 3 (Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel, 1992), 9–187.

80

sverre bagge

Internally, however, the Danish movement had a political aspect, aiming at increasing the influence of the Danish-speaking bourgeoisie at the cost of the German-speaking nobility. On the other hand, unlike Norway, there was no strong connection between this movement and the democratic ideas based on the French Revolution. Denmark was ruled by an absolute king until 1849. Formally, it was even the most absolutist regime in Europe, with a written constitution that gave the king all power. In reality, however, the regime at this time was based to a degree on consensus among the leading circles of the people. The great figure in the Danish national movement during a large part of the nineteenth century was N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872), priest, theologian, religious leader, poet and historian. Grundtvig wanted to unite Christianity with the Nordic traditions. He was fascinated with the ancient mythology, poetry and sagas and other narratives. In his two historical works, World Chronicle (1814) and Introduction to Universal History (3 vols., 1833–43), Grundtvig linked together pagan and Christian history: Christianity reached its fulfilment in the Nordic peoples. The Danes shared the Germanic spirit, but differed from the Germans as well as from the Latin-Mediterranean peoples. Next to the Greeks and the Jews, the Nordic peoples were the most important in God’s government of world history. Grundtvig’s national ideology was thus expressed in the idea of a substantial contribution of the Danish nation to humankind. By contrast, Grundtvig hated the Romans for their tyranny and legalistic mind. Grundtvig’s philosophy was based on a deep knowledge of Nordic mythology and early history; thus, Grundtvig translated the two greatest historical works of the Nordic Middle Ages, both from the early thirteenth century, Saxo’s Latin history of the Danes and Snorri Sturluson’s account of the kings of Norway, written in Old Norse. Grundtvig had a great plan for the national education of the people, founding “popular high schools”—which still exist in the Scandinavian countries, notably in Denmark—to give education in the national culture, not in Latin, as was the basis in the contemporary learned schools. Grundtvig had a central position in historical circles in Denmark in the first half of the nineteenth century, which may seem surprising from a modern point of view. However, history had no prominent position at the university before 1849.11 It was taught as a preparatory course, before the professional education, in law, theology and medicine, an arrangement 11 For the following, see Kai Hørby, Historie (Copenhagen: Gad, 1980), pp. 386–426.



oehlenschlaeger and ibsen

81

similar to that of the medieval universities, with the Artes faculty as the lower, preparing for the same three higher studies. History was also widely defined as a part of philology, which was in turn almost identical with what are today the humanities. Little was written on national history, in Denmark as in the rest of Europe. By contrast, the classical tradition was strong, expressed among other things in the new university buildings inaugurated in 1836, in classicist architecture and with Pompeian-style paintings. However, steps in a new direction were taken with the foundation of the Danish Historical Society in 1839 by Chr. Molbech, the first editor of Historisk tidsskrift (=Danish Historical Journal), which appeared for the first time in 1840. Its aim was the collection and edition of memories of Danish history, texts as well as monuments and artefacts, and the writing of history based on this material. The first example of this approach in practice was C.F. Allen, Introduction to National History (1840). Allen (1811–71) later became professor of history and a leading figure in the national-liberal approach to history. His main work dealt with the history of Denmark 1497–1536. Grundvig was present at this foundation meeting but did not approve of its programme. He did not want national history but universal history, which, as we have seen, did not mean that he paid little attention to Danish history, but rather the opposite: with his view of Denmark’s importance for universal history, it would be a too narrow project to write only Danish history. He also strongly opposed antiquarianism. He wanted living, not dead history; history should be a source of inspiration for educating and forming the living nation. Grundtvig was of course fighting a losing battle. The future in academic history lay in the introduction of the new methods of source criticism and the exact, philological and historical examination of the sources, propagated by the leading German universities at the time. At the same time, however, this approach also allowed for national interpretations, by pointing to the organic connection between the past and the present. Grundtvig’s influence is obvious in Kjartan and Gudrun. Oehlenschlaeger approves of Kjartan’s Christianity but not of his Latin books. Kjartan’s father Olav På (peacock), a maker of idols, is a genuine artist who marvels at the beautiful statue of Odin he has received from Byzantium— characteristically from the Greek rather than the Latin world—and who rightly worries at his son’s departure from the old culture, which Kjartan eventually admits. When Kjartan’s Christian companion, the monk Martin, expresses his pleasant surprise in finding such a cultured young man in a wild, barbarous country, Kjartan corrects him, pointing out that

82

sverre bagge

Nordic paganism is as cultured as the Greek and Latin one. Martin then admits that he has to recover his Danish identity, having been brought up in the Latin language and culture in a monastery abroad.12 Oehlenschlaeger shares Grundtvig’s attitude to the Christianisation of Scandinavia, rejecting Olav Tryggvason’s attempts to introduce the new religion with terror and suppression as well as Gudrun’s Mediterranean Christianity, while embracing Kjartan’s serious attempt to practice the new religion and Ingeborg’s kindness and innocence. Oehlenschlaeger’s emotional and romantic attitude to the Middle Ages can also be seen as the expression of a similar attitude to the past as that of Grundtvig, emphasising the similarity rather than the difference between the past and the present and appealing to the audience to identify with the moral, religious and romantic problems of the tenth century heroes. The Norwegian Context Whereas the University of Copenhagen dates from 1479, the first Norwegian university, that of Christiania (now Oslo), was founded in 1811, largely according to the Danish model. Its main aim was to educate civil servants, which meant that the most important subjects were law and theology. As in Denmark, history was of secondary importance, while Latin and Greek were the main subjects in the Faculty of Arts which prepared the students for the higher, professional studies. Nevertheless, history soon came to assume great importance. The achievements of its practitioners, notably Rudolf Keyser (1803–1864) and Peter Andreas Munch (1810–63), were at least equal to those of their Danish counterparts, and their general political and cultural importance was probably greater than that of their Danish colleagues among professional historians and equal to that of Grundtvig. Thus, the distance between nation building and antiquarianism was less than in Denmark. Like their Danish colleagues, Keyser and Munch were influenced by contemporary German scholarship—for example, Munch uses a quotation from Niebuhr as a motto for his work13—but the extent and character of this influence have never been the subject of any detailed study.

12 Kiartan og Gudrun, Act V, 368–9. 13 “Ich werde suchen die Kritik der Geschichte nicht nach dunkeln Gefühlen, sondern forschend auszuführen, nicht ihre Resultate, welche nur blinde Meinungen stiften, sondern die Untersuchungen selbst in ihrem ganzen Umfange vortragen.”



oehlenschlaeger and ibsen

83

An obvious parallel is the systematic attempt to trace and publish all extant sources and use them to reconstruct the national history, corresponding to Munch’s programme of presenting not only the result of his research but also how he arrived at them. This programme resulted in new and better editions of sagas and other sources and the two great series Norges gamle Love (The Old Laws of Norway) and Diplomatarium Norvegicum, the Norwegian equivalents of Monumenta Germaniae Historica. The two series began to appear in 1846 and 1849 respectively and are still unfinished. Munch spent several years in the Vatican Archives to find material for the latter series and was one of the first foreign scholars to work there.14 The result of this work with the sources was Munch’s history of Norway, of which he managed to finish eight great volumes before his death, covering the period until 1397. It is a detailed narrative history, based on extensive reading of the sources, the sagas as well as charters and documents. As in Germany, there was a strong connection between detailed research, narrative and national history. The aim of historiography was not generalization, as during the Enlightenment, but the exact description of a unique national past. Culturally as well as politically, Norway had been a part of Denmark between 1536 and 1814. The independence of 1814 could be regarded as a liberation as well as a break of the union between the “twin kingdoms”. After all, the purely political reason for the liberation was that Denmark had to cede Norway to Sweden which had joined the winning side in the Napoleonic wars. The Norwegian uprising started as a protest against the cession, lead by the heir to the Danish throne, Christian Frederik. However, the prince was persuaded by his surroundings that he could not claim any hereditary right to the throne, but had to be elected by the people and rule as a constitutional monarch, according to the idea of popular sovereignty. Although Christian Frederik eventually had to resign and the Norwegians accepted the Swedish king, the constitution was preserved and made Norway an almost equal partner in the new union, in contrast to the old one. In the following period, attitudes to Denmark were mixed. On the one hand, there was general joy at the liberty and the new constitution; on the other, the members of the Norwegian political elite, mainly consisting of civil servants, were often of Danish origin and had strong connections to Denmark.

14 Owen Chadwick, Catholicism and History. The Opening of the Vatican Archives (Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press, 1978), 41.

84

sverre bagge

The main trend in the first half of the nineteenth century, however, was to focus on the difference between Denmark and Norway, often combined with quite strong anti-Danish sentiments. One result of this was the “discovery” of the saga literature as genuinely Norwegian rather than, as previously thought, common Scandinavian.15 Another was the idea, first formulated by Rudolf Keyser, of a fundamental difference between Norway and the two other Scandinavian countries, going back to the earliest settlement of the countries.16 This was based on the belief—supported by some archaeological evidence—that the Germanic peoples had invaded Scandinavia from the north, arriving in an empty country in Norway, whereas they had suppressed the previous inhabitants in Denmark and Sweden. This resulted in Norway being inhabited by free men, owning their own land—an “odel constitution”—in contrast to the feudal constitutions of the neighbouring peoples. This focus on Norwegian uniqueness was in turn related to a great emphasis on the Middle Ages, particularly the period until the early fourteenth century. Whereas Denmark and Sweden had continuous histories as independent kingdoms from the tenth or eleventh century onward. Norway only had the Middle Ages. With the death of King Håkon V in 1319, Norway entered the first of a series of unions with the neighbouring countries. Although these unions were in principle based on equality between the two—or occasionally three—partners until 1536, most historians regarded Norway as the weaker party and the whole period of unions as one of decline. The period before 1319 was therefore the period of the real Norway, on which the future history of the country had to be based. Consequently, this period assumed an existential importance, far more so than in the neighbouring countries. This also forms the background for its popularity as the subject of historical dramas, including those of Ibsen, a genre that was very popular in the 1850s and 1860s. In their more specific explanation of the rise and fall of the country in the Middle Ages, Keyser and Munch were above all concerned with constitutional issues. The initial unification of the country was carried out by a monarchy from the “outside”, based on military power and wealth accumulated on Viking expeditions. Gradually, however, this monarchy 15 The problem in this discovery appeared later, when the Icelanders claimed the Icelandic literature—which includes most of the saga literature—as their special inheritance, in opposition to the Norwegians. 16 Sverre Bagge, “The Middle Ages,” in William H. Hubbard et al. (eds.), Making a Historical Culture. Historiography in Norway (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995), 113.



oehlenschlaeger and ibsen

85

entered into cooperation with the peasants and the aristocracy and eventually the Church. The following history of the country was the history of the relationship between these powers. During the century of internal peace 1030–1130, Norway had a balanced constitution in which no single power dominated. In the following period, the Church in alliance with the aristocracy tried to take control of the country, which led to a monarchic reaction under Sverre (1177–1202), who allied himself with the peasants. The end result was the victory of the king under Sverre’s successors and the establishment of an almost absolute monarchy in the thirteenth century. This absolute monarchy created internal peace and stability and strengthened the position of Norway among the powers of the north but proved disastrous during the unions after 1319, when the Danish king could use his strong position to abolish Norwegian independence. The strong emphasis on constitutional issues and the ideal of a balance between the internal powers may be part of the heritage from the Enlightenment, which was prominent in the Norwegian constitution of 1814. Keyser’s and Munch’s ideals on this point can also largely be explained by contemporary conditions, in the attempts of intellectuals, civil servants and politicians to defend the Norwegian constitution against encroachments from the Swedish king. Thus, the use and importance of the Middle Ages were in many ways different in Norway and in Denmark. Whereas the events of 1814 were a defeat in Denmark, they were a victory in Norway. The Norwegian constitution of 1814, largely based on the ideas from the French Revolution, was one of the few of its kind to survive the age of reaction during the following years and played a crucial part in the political and cultural life of the new nation. Somewhat paradoxically, this led to a combination of the Middle Ages and the ideas of the French Revolution: democracy and a certain amount of egalitarianism, including a free peasantry and relatively little distance between the aristocracy and the people. Culturally as well as politically, this meant an emphasis on the difference rather than the similarity between Norway and the neighbouring countries, notably Denmark. The emphasis on the ancient literature, notably the sagas, as Norwegian rather than common Scandinavian, formed part of this picture. The political ideas expressed by Ibsen in The Pretenders fit in well with this interpretation. The picture of Håkon as the great nation-builder corresponds to Munch’s comment on the unification of the kingdom—then as well as later one of the most important themes in the history of the country. Concerning the first unification, under Harald Finehair in the second half of the ninth century, Munch states that that this was only

86

sverre bagge

the first stage in the process. Harald’s conquest was solely military; Norway was still an assembly of separate regions and principalities that was only gradually united as national community, notably through the influence of Christianity. Munch points to St. Olav (king 1015–30) as the one who achieved this, already 200 years before Håkon’s reign, and does not refer explicitly to Håkon in this context.17 However, Håkon brought an end to the internal struggles that had raged intermittently for more than a century, struggles that have been understood as regional by many historians. There would therefore seem to be ample need for nation-building even in the thirteenth century. From a modern point of view, it may be objected that Ibsen’s Håkon resembles a nineteenth-century statesman rather than a medieval king. The focus on unity created by one, charismatic, brilliant statesman is characteristic of nineteenth-century political ideas before the emergence of the party system. It is the duty of the statesman to unite, not to divide; he should focus on the common interests of the whole nation, not those of classes or groups, and he should be a visionary leader, showing his people the way to greatness. Ibsen’s form, including his opposition to Oehlenschlaeger, can be regarded in the same perspective. The idea that the sagas were specifically Norwegian would naturally lead to the observation that this literature was radically different from the one that could be identified as specifically Danish. The main historical text from medieval Denmark, Saxo Grammaticus’ Gesta Danorum, differs from the saga literature not only in being written in Latin, but in totally different stylistic and narrative ideals: Saxo’s hypotaxis versus the sagas’ parataxis, Saxo’s elaborate descriptions versus the sagas’ understatement, Saxo’s moralisation versus the sagas’ neutral descriptions, Saxo’s use of language as an end in itself versus the sagas’ use of language as a means to describe the external world.18 It may also be added that Grundtvig’s translation of Snorri, although in may ways a brilliant work, departs considerably from the saga style, aiming at a narrative familiar to a nineteenth century Danish audience.19 Ibsen’s use of the saga style may therefore have a similar national purpose as his portrait

17 P.A. Munch, Det norske Folks Historie, vol. 1 (Christiania: Chr. Tønsberg, 1852), 459–60; cf. 4.1 (1857), 427–32 on Håkon’s character and importance. 18 Bagge, “Fortelling,” 172–3, 182–4; cf. “Nordic Uniqueness,” 56–61. 19 On Grundtvig’s translations, see most recently Flemming Lundgreen-Nielsen, “N.F.S. Grundtvig og Saxo og Snorre,” Jon Gunnar Jørgensen, Karsten Friis-Jensen og Else Mundal (eds.), Saxo & Snorre (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag, 2010), 37–75.



oehlenschlaeger and ibsen

87

of Håkon Håkonsson, inspired not only by the saga literature, but also by popular narrative, given literary form in the collection of fairytales by the folklorists Asbjørnsen and Moe (1840). This was an important source of inspiration for Ibsen as well as other writers, including his contemporary Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832–1910). The other main body of Danish medieval literature, the ballads, which are romantic and emotional, are also very different. This genre also existed in Norway, but, relatively speaking, formed a less important part of the Norwegian-Icelandic heritage. Conclusion The question posed above about the difference between Oehlenschlaeger and Ibsen must be answered by a combination of the two explanations. We are dealing with a difference between generations and the introduction of a new trend as well as a difference between Denmark and Norway. Ibsen’s drama has replaced that of Oehlenschlaeger all over the world. Although contemporary, avant-garde drama largely takes the form of a rejection of Ibsen, there is no return to Oehlenschlaeger. On the other hand, the previous comparison has underlined the difference between Danish and Norwegian medievalism. Both countries experienced a national revival, based on medieval foundations, embracing the national culture and language—Danish versus German in Denmark, Norwegian versus Danish in Norway—and both countries sought a connection with a genuinely popular and national culture, as opposed to the international, aristocratic culture of the eighteenth century. However, these ideas had a more political character in Norway, combining the picture of a popular and democratic constitution in the Middle Ages with the heritage of the French Revolution, as expressed in Ibsen’s picture of Håkon Håkonsson as the great popular leader and nation builder and in Munch’s historical epos of the growth of the Norwegian nation, its egalitarian origins and its balanced constitution. These ideas also bolstered the Norwegian interpretation of the cultural heritage of the Middle Ages. The sagas were the expression of a popular culture, a culture upheld by tough, quiet, matter-of-fact people who did not pour out their emotions and kept an ironic distance from refinement and sentimentality. The new literary prose, inspired by the sagas and popular narrative that developed from the 1850s onwards, formed one aspect of this ideology, but was at the same time part of an international trend that eventually made my meeting with Oehlenschlaeger’s drama such a strange experience.

Romantic Historiography as a Sociology of Liberty: Joachim Lelewel and His Contemporaries Maciej Janowski Lelewel and Comparative History The aim of this essay is to look at certain ideas of the great classic figure of Polish historiography, Joachim Lelewel (1786–1861). At first glance, Lelewel’s work could be easily dismissed as merely another instance of nation-building activity of a peripheral European historian, important as political manifesto but intellectually marginal. Indeed some of his works (such as his synthetic “History of Poland, told by an uncle to his nephews”) would easily justify this impression. Others of his works, however, deserve closer study by a historian of ideas. For the moment, we will set aside Lelewel’s political texts which would demand a separate essay. (Besides, as a political thinker he is far less interesting than as a historian). We will also set aside his fascinating methodological studies,1 and confine ourselves to some of his detailed historical works in the narrow sense of the term, in order to look into how he treats the historical material, how he explains events, and how he connects causes and effects. For he had, as Nina Assorodobraj and Jerzy Szacki have shown,2 a sort of historico-sociological theory of his own, a theory that unifies elements of Enlightenment philosophical history with distinct elements of Romantic epistemology and social thought. Let us try to reconstruct some patterns of his thought. One should note a specific difficulty here: Lelewel’s language is very personalized, idiosyncratic, he invents new words, uses grammatical structures peculiar to him and notoriously omits verbs from his sentences.

1 Edited, partially from the manuscripts, by Nina Assorodobraj as a 2nd volume of the unfinished edition of Lelewel’s works: Joachim Lelewel, Pisma metodologiczne, ed. Nina Assorodobraj (Warsaw: PWN, 1964), 2 vols (J. Lelewel, Dzieła, vol. II, part 1–2). 2 Jerzy Szacki, Historia myśli socjologicznej, vol. I (Warsaw: PWN, 1983), pp. 183–200 (on sociological theories in the historiography of the first half of the nineteenth century; especially on Lelewel 191–2); Nina Assorodobraj, Kształtowanie się założeń teoretycznych historiografii Joachima Lelewela, in Z dziejów polskiej myśli filozoficznej i społecznej, ed. Nina Assorodobraj, Bronisław Baczko (Warsaw: PWN, 1957), 112–94.

90

maciej janowski

Such linguistic mannerisms make his texts difficult to understand even on the most external, linguistic level. This is not because of distance in time—it was seen as idiosyncratic by readers in his lifetime. The great Romantic poet Juliusz Słowacki in one of his dramas presented him ironically as a “sphinx who speaks in riddles,” and a leading Classicist poet and conservative opponent of Lelewel’s democratic ideas, Kajetan Koźmian, is said to have remarked sarcastically that Lelewel’s works were certainly very important, and it was a pity that no one had translated them into Polish. Lelewel’s language is a field for separate study. Obviously, this style of expression was not adopted by chance, it was to serve certain aesthetic and intellectual goals. I suppose that its task was to force the reader to read slowly and carefully; so that the reader is bound to reflect on what he reads. Probably Lelewel also attempted to emulate the enviable density of Tacitus’ style. In any event, this linguistic problem creates some interpretative challenges, even for a native speaker of Polish, and should be borne in mind by the reader. To start with, Lelewel was fond of comparisons. His writings are full of small comparative digressions, as if, when writing about anything, he were intuitively asking himself: and how does it look like elsewhere? What were the differences and analogies between the growth of Christianity and Islam? why did strong monarchy prevail in France and parliament in England? His comparisons are almost always structural, i.e. he does not make Plutarch-type comparisons between various individual human characters, but attempts to find broader, social, political or cultural parallelism. Even if he starts with comparing two personalities, as two Italian queens whom he clearly dislikes—Bona of Poland and Maria Medici of France3—he quickly shifts into broader comparisons of the cultural and political situation. Not indulging in individual personal comparisons he is from time to time prone to compare national characters. In this, he is usually conventional—unless, at times, he turns from abstract characterology to the interplay between collective behaviour and the economic, cultural or political situation of a country. In addition to numerous comparative parts within larger works, Lelewel also wrote some independent comparative studies. Thus, he compared the two Polish uprisings (1794 and 1830/31), the three Polish constitutions (1791, 1807, 1815), the works of the Polish historian Adam Naruszewicz and

3 Joachim Lelewel, Historia polska do końca panowania Stefana Batorego, ed. by Zygmunt Kolankowski (Warsaw: PWN, 1962), 364ff (J. Lelewel, Dzieła, vol. VI).



romantic historiography as a sociology of liberty

91

the Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin, as well as comparing Naruszewicz and another Polish historian Tadeusz Czacki. The most important of these is the Historical parallel of Spain and Poland,4 written in 1820 and published only during the Polish uprising in 1831, in temporarily liberated Warsaw. Historical parallel is a difficult text. A reader who expects to find an interesting comparative analysis may at first glance be disappointed. The major part of the text is organized in parallel columns (Spain in the left column, Poland in the right one) and stresses, so is the first impression, casual or non-existent analogies by devices like repeating the same phrases in both columns without any deeper thought. Or is it really so? The reader who would take the trouble to read the text carefully, could, perhaps, find something interesting. Let us try. Modern historiography, according to Lelewel, has by and large overcome the achievements of the ancient historians. Now we understand trends that reveal themselves only over the course of centuries. Therefore, whereas ancient historiography could compare only individuals (like Plutarch), modern historians shoulder a more challenging task, the comparison of the developments of various nations. Longue durée is the proper field of comparisons. The first and most fundamental difference between Spain and Poland is that, to use anachronistic terminology, Spain lies at the core, Poland on the periphery of Europe. The duality of European development, divided between the Southwestern and the Northeastern part of the continent, is for Lelewel an obvious fact. Marian Henryk Serejski supposes that the choice of Spain as a kind of counterpart to Poland was motivated by the will to compare two developmental types of both parts of Europe.5 The choice of Spain instead of a closer country (such as Hungary) may also have been motivated by a desire to produce a purely “structural” comparison (i.e. a comparison that does not take into account mutual borrowings and influences). Lelewel’s spatial imagery lies somewhere in the middle between the traditional north/south and the modern east/west division of Europe. In various writings he stresses either east/west or north/south divide; perhaps the difference depends on the epoch he is dealing with. The general 4 Joachim Lelewel, Historyczna paralela Hiszpanii z Polską w XVI, XVII XVIII stuleciu, in idem, Dzieła, vol. VIII, Historia Polski Nowożytnej, ed. Józef Dutkiewicz, Marian H. Serejski, Helena Więckowska (Warsaw: PWN, 1961), 215–63. 5 Marian Henryk Serejski, Koncepcja historii powszechnej Joachima Lelewela (Warsaw: PWN, 1958), 380.

92

maciej janowski

features of these two parts of Europe are clear for Lelewel: in the old Roman provinces, “in the Western and Southern part of Europe, rich and well provided by nature, newly emerging kingdoms were Christian from the start, and at the spot they adopted the order and culture of the defunct state.” Contrary to them, “outside of the Roman Provinces, between the barbaric kingdoms, into the eastern and northern part of Europe, by nature less opulent and less provided, Christianity was disseminated only slowly. Together with it, came contaminated institutions and culture of the old Rome with unsteady and belated steps. That is why in the Western and southern part of Europe [there is] always higher culture, there of everything the origins, priority and example; in the north-eastern one [the culture is] lower, in everything that is proper to the West [there is] belated­ness, moderation and receptivity”6 (as far as possible I tried to render Lelewel’s style into English). The most interesting point of the comparison is based on this premise: the analogies are drawn in spite of the original difference of starting points. Or, to put it differently: in every epoch, general European institutions and tendencies influence countries and regions with different backgrounds and according to the nature of these backgrounds they assume different forms. So in the Middle Ages similar institutions, estate privileges, which are to be seen in both countries, rest on different foundations. Generally speaking, there is no feudalism in Poland, nor (with some exceptions) in the Northeast of Europe. Gentry, Democracy, Feudalism Of course, this argument is hardly original. Many Romantic historians from the European periphery took pride in asserting that “their” country or region did not know feudalism, usually considered paramount to oppression and slavery. (In this, by the way, they differed from many of their Enlightenment predecessors and their positivist-rationalist heirs who tended to see the national development as part of a universal process and attempted actually to demonstrate the existence of feudalism in their native lands). So Lelewel’s main argument is not original, but the way he conducts it is ingenious. In order to understand the interrelation of feudalism and liberty in Lelewel’s thinking we should first of all remember that Lelewel is a

6 Lelewel, Historyczna paralela, 220.



romantic historiography as a sociology of liberty

93

democrat, not a liberal; and in the context of the ­nineteenth-century European thought it means that he sees liberty as access to political power and as a certain level of real, and not only formal political equality; he does not betray much interest in the liberal notion of liberty as protection of the individual against the infringements of the state.7 This, again, is the attitude common among the European radicals of the 1830s and 1840s, among whom Lelewel was one of the central personalities; this democratic attitude resonates well with his criticism of feudalism. However, one additional element complicates the picture: Lelewel, as we shall see in detail further in this text, stresses the role of the Polish nobility as the main social carrier of political liberty. Here an important distinction is necessary, in order to avoid misunderstanding. The idea that strong nobility warrants political liberty is not rare in Lelewel’s time, but it is popular among liberal-conservative rather than among radicaldemocratic authors. Its proponents, such as Montesquieu in the “Spirit of the laws,” tend to see in the nobility an “intermediary body” between the population at large and the monarch. The liberties of the noble estate create so to say the umbrella that protects the country from the danger of monarchical tyranny. From this perspective, the liberty that nobility protects is a liberal, “negative” liberty—protection of individual rights against the infringements of arbitrary state power. With Lelewel the case is completely different, much rarer, and therefore also more interesting. His hatred of privilege, of oligarchy, of any “state within state,” of any organized corporation that would oppose the monarch above and at the same time oppress the people below, is as strong as among all democratic radicals in his time. How does he combine this attitude with extolling the Polish nobility as bearer of liberty? Very simply: he makes a sharp distinction between nobility and aristocracy, thus making the poor nobility a part of the “people,” together with peasantry. The concept is not at all absurd, it can be found among many Polish democrats of the period; to a certain degree a similar attitude is discernible among the Hungarian anti-Habsburg opposition of the 1840s, where the small nobility is considered as the basis of Hungarian liberty. The concept was partly justified by the social structure of Polish (and also Hungarian) nobility: the preponderance of very poor gentry, not much socially above the peasantry, gave plausibility to the argument. The

7 Cf. Henryk Marek Słoczyński, Światło w dziejarskiej ciemnicy. Koncepcja dziejów i interpretacja przeszłości Polski Joachima Lelewela (Kraków: Historia Iagellonica, 2010), 197–9.

94

maciej janowski

political tradition of the participation of nobility (again, both in Poland and in Hungary) was another important motive for adopting this idea. Accustomed to political participation, frustrated by being deprived of political rights after the partitions of Poland, the Polish nobility were prone to engage in various illegal activities and to form the core of a revolutionary movement. This poor nobility, according to Lelewel, has nothing to do with feudalism. Feudalism, in Lelewel’s understanding, is characterised not by the existence of nobility but by a legal hierarchy and by the dependency of some individuals on others (a democrat and not a liberal, Lelewel did not consider dependency on the state as necessarily evil, so long as the state was more or less democratically governed). Feudalism, by creating a complicated hierarchy of mutual dependencies, abolishes liberty and introduces slavery everywhere. The existence of the broad and unitary noble estate, one that is not divided in itself into higher and lower substrata, although deplorable on account of numerous instances of estate egoism, is on the whole a far lesser evil from the point of view of the rule of liberty, than the intricate network of feudal dependencies. It is even more so, because the poor nobility is, in Lelewel’s view, closer to the peasantry than to rich nobles. Quite often they are descendants of peasants, as in numerous instances when the monarchs conferred noble status en bloc on whole villages on account of their merits in defence of the realm. From this perspective, a broad stratum of the poor gentry is a perfectly democratic institution. Lelewel stresses that the voices of the democrats should not be directed against the nobility en masse, but only against the rich nobility which formed in Poland the central part of the ruling oligarchy. It is oligarchy, not nobility, that should be combated. He gives an interesting analogy: in France, he says, there is a strong bourgeoisie, but nobody attacks the bourgeoisie as a whole, one discerns between laudable poor labourers and artisans and condemnable rich bankers and factory-owners (we see that Lelewel does not understand bourgeoisie in the Marxist sense, as owners of means of production, but in a more etymological sense, as the citydwellers). The rich are the “aristocracy of bourgeoisie” and only this aristocracy is to be condemned. By the same token, one should not condemn the nobility as a whole but discern between poor nobility (good) and the “aristocracy of the nobility” (bad).8 8 Joachim Lelewel, Uprzednia myśl, czyli słowa do poszukiwań wstępne, in idem, Polska, dzieje i rzeczy jej . . ., vol. III (Poznań: Żupański, 1855) 1–48, esp. 13.



romantic historiography as a sociology of liberty

95

Interestingly enough, Lelewel does not sympathise with strong central power: here is an important distinction between him and numerous democratic thinkers of his generation (for whom a strong enlightened monarch would mean an ally in fight against feudal privileges and prejudices). Lelewel notices the attempts of monarchs in various countries and in various moments of the early-modern period to ally themselves with the third estate in order to curb the power of the nobility. He sees, however, monarchic rule and aristocratic rule as allies, not as competitors; therefore he does not generally see much good in the anti-oligarchic activities of monarchs, although he does not neglect them. Both monarchs and aristocrats are equally bad, “dynasticism” and aristocratic oligarchy stand very close to each other. Spain and Poland: Monarchism and Republicanism Let us return to history and to the Polish-Spanish comparison. Presenting general tendencies towards the strengthening of central power in Spain and its weakening in Poland, Lelewel writes that stopping the evolution towards despotism in Spain was more or less impossible, as the growth of despotism in the West was a universal process, not confined to Spain only. Analogously, there was a general tendency to the development of democracy in the Northeast of Europe. This general tendency, however, was interrupted by growth of despotism everywhere in the Northeast except in Poland. Now, this statement gives immediately rise to three important questions. First: how and why did it happen that the ­southwestern part of Europe evolved towards strong central monarchic power, whereas the north-eastern part of the continent naturally tended towards decentralisation and republicanism? Second: how and why was this natural process of the growth of liberty in the Northeast eventually stopped by growing despotism everywhere but in Poland? And third: why was Poland an exception? Starting with the first question: Lelewel seems to think (although it is not easy to pinpoint an exact quotation to prove it) that one of the central differences between the two great regions of Europe was that Spain, like the whole Southwest, was “full.” Full in every possible sense: full of institutions, rights, peoples, ideas, towns and peasants. Poland, like the whole Northeast, was “empty.” This topos of East as “rasa charta,” so clearly seen as early as the eighteenth century in the attitudes of Voltaire and others towards Russia is palpable here too, but in a very special form. It applies

96

maciej janowski

to the early centuries ad, not the eighteenth century, and it seems to underlie the whole of Lelewel’s narrative. Civilization and social institutions in Poland are less “dense.” Now, Lelewel’s attitude towards the benefits of civilization was ambivalent. On the one hand, he believed that they contribute to effeminacy and consequent weakening of public spirit, followed by the political decline of the state. On the other hand, he highly prized the cultural achievements that accompanied material civilization: both works of art and especially the critical spirit.9 These achievements are usually connected with the growth of trade, both on account of riches that give material independence and of international contacts that connect with other civilizations and thus broaden intellectual horizons. Elements of both the “republican” idea of virtue as coming from Spartan purity and austerity and the idea of “polished” virtue that comes through trade and accomplishment of manners are present in Lelewel.10 Deeper research would be needed to decide how, if at all, he tried to connect these two attitudes. I suppose that he would have answered, as he did remark many times, that things are good or bad according to their historical circumstances, not absolutely, and they should be analysed according to these circumstances. In this attitude to blessings and curses of civilization, Lelewel adhered to an explanatory scheme that was extremely popular in European historiography for millennia. This scheme discerns in history a recurrent rhythm: a poor and virtuous country, by its martial virtues, wins power, glory and opulence. The inhabitants indulge in newly-won riches, slowly lose their virtues and thus inevitably steer towards disaster. Then they are defeated by another people, yet unspoiled—and the cycle starts anew. John Burrow, in his beautiful and thought-provoking synthetic “History of Histories” identified the Roman historian Sallust as the first to use this scheme as explanation for the victories and the defeats of the Romans. Burrow traced the fortunes of this scheme through the ages and discovered its various variations in numerous authors (such as Machiavelli or

9 Cf. e.g. his ambivalent, but on the whole sympathetic, evaluation of Renaissance refinement in Italy: Joachim Lelewel, Wykłady kursowe z historii powszechnej w Uniwersytecie Wileńskim 1822–1824, ed. by Marian Henryk Serejski (Warsaw: PWN, 1959), 399 and 419 (J. Lelewel, Dzieła vol. III). 10 Here my interpretation differs somewhat from that of Monika Baár, Historians and Nationalism. East Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 105, who stresses the “republican” element in Lelewel’s thought.



romantic historiography as a sociology of liberty

97

Montesquieu) into the nineteenth century.11 Lelewel, therefore, remains in good company. Like most of the other authors who adopted this vision, he modified and transformed the Sallustian scheme to comply with his ideas and research interest. First of all, he connected it with his concept of spatial division of Europe: the process of growth and decline took different form in various parts of the continent. We can trace certain elements of this Sallustian scheme in Lelewel’s account of the growth of despotism in Spain and, by extension, in the whole (South-)West. It is precisely this difference in level and “density” of civilization that caused the growth of a strong monarchy in Spain and lack of a similar ruling institution in Poland. Strong cities make the monarch strong and help him to curb the nobility. This underlying intuition is similar to the later theory of Norbert Elias, although of course not nearly as coherently elaborated and much less convincing—just an intuition, not a full-fledged sociological theory, as in Elias. This intuition is that the “density” of interpersonal communication creates the necessity of regulation—be it in the form of self-control, or in the form of external power. The “north-eastern” lands, sparsely populated, did not generate conditions for the development of legal niceties that result in a feudal pyramid and the collapse of liberty; neither did they generate preconditions for strong central power. Primitive, aboriginal liberty had a chance to develop into modern democratic liberty. One more aspect of the growth of strong central power is interesting in Lelewel’s analysis: strong monarchy is not the only possible means of attaining unity. However different the position of monarchy was in both countries, the integrative processes proceeded in parallel in Poland and in Spain. The difference was that Spanish unification was attained by the person of the monarch, whereas Polish unification was the result of the “inclinations and good will,”12 i.e. ongoing integration of the nobility in all the historical units of the country (Poland proper (divided in turn into Greater and Smaller Poland), Royal Prussia, Lithuania and Ruthenia) into one single noble estate. Spanish unification was more complete but, so Lelewel seems to think, more precarious as it depended on the individual. The Polish type of state integration was more demanding and, ultimately, as it turned out, it failed to preserve the very existence of the 11 John Burrow, A History of Histories. Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century (London: Penguin Books 2009), 83ff and passim. 12 Lelewel, Historyczna paralela, 226.

98

maciej janowski

state; but, so Lelewel hints, it was theoretically able to produce a cohesion more stable and more resilient, and also more favourable to liberty than the Spanish version. This, I believe, is one of the most interesting points in Lelewel’s argumentation. It is here, if anywhere, that his essential belief in the superiority of the Polish system over the Spanish can be detected: not in the real course of affairs which went more or less equally badly for both countries, but in the unfulfilled potentiality that could have brought about a brighter future for Poland. The Problem of Despotism in Northeastern Europe This is how Lelewel’s answer for the first of our questions may have appeared. Now we come to the second: how was it that, given this original inclination towards liberty in Northeastern Europe, despotism prevailed everywhere but in Poland? How was this original direction of development derailed in all of Northeastern Europe with the exception of Poland? Most probably Lelewel’s answer would have been twofold. On the one hand, there were causes of a systemic nature, explaining how Northeastern Europe had lost its primordial liberty: these are the introduction of ­Christianity and the influence of western feudalism. Lelewel himself, although baptized as a Roman Catholic, did not profess attachment to any specific Christian denomination in his adult life. He was clearly of the opinion that the introduction of Christianity (whether Eastern or Western) destroyed primitive equality and introduced social divergences. This opinion does not result in any advocacy of renouncing Christianity: Lelewel seems to treat Christianity as a “given” factor, something that can and should be analysed like all other historical facts, but could not have been avoided. These two factors, Christianity and feudalism, were narrowing the gap between the western and eastern parts of the continent and directing the north-eastern part along the western lines, i.e. towards monarchic despotism. One can also consider the growth of the cities (especially strong in Bohemia13) resulting from western influence. Cities, which started to suppress the rural population and influence the social differentiation of the peasantry, thus contributed to the destruction of the primordial liberty.

13 Lelewel, Wykłady kursowe, 347.



romantic historiography as a sociology of liberty

99

Parallel with these systemic factors, there are other causes of a more contingent nature: the Tartars in Russia and the Habsburgs in Central Europe. Without them these “general” causes would probably not have succeeded in “derailing” the north-eastern part of the Continent from its course of liberty. It is worth noticing here that Lelewel considers Russia, together with Poland, Hungary, Bohemia and Scandinavia, as belonging to the region free of feudalism, and therefore especially capable of political liberty. He clearly did not subscribe to the theory, so common in the works of Romantic writers such as Mickiewicz (at times) or Marquis de Custine, that despotism is something proper to Russian civilization. Russian liberty collapsed because of the despotic influence from Constantinople that was in a sense a functional equivalent of the western influences of Catholicism and feudalism in Poland, Bohemia or Hungary.14 Another culprit was the Tartar invasion, and yet another the power of local princely dynasties. As Russia was originally free, the decline of its freedom is reversible, and Russia had the potential to be free in the future: hence, as Andrzej Walicki stresses, Lelewel’s sympathy for the conspiracy of the Decembrists (1825) as restorers of “ancient Russian liberty.”15 The same fateful role that the Tartars played in Russian history was performed by the Habsburgs in the history of Hungary and Bohemia. Perhaps nowhere has Lelewel’s revolutionary radicalism influenced his historical writings more than in the antipathy he felt for the Habsburg dynasty. At a certain moment, Lelewel had the idea of reworking the Parallel, so that it would include, together with Poland and Spain, Hungary and Bohemia. (The aim would be overtly political—to demonstrate the futility of the hopes placed in the Habsburg House by some of the Polish emigrants in the 1830s. This, however, needs not concern us here.) It is obviously a great pity that this broadened version remained unrealized, but looking at other works by Lelewel we may gain a relatively clear impression of how the new Parallel would have looked. Both Hungary and Bohemia, according to Lelewel, shared the central “northeastern” feature—the lack of feudalism. In the whole of east-central Europe elements of feudalism came with Canon law, which introduced exemptions and privileges in the hitherto unified (according to Lelewel) legal system. Because the growth of the cities in Bohemia was more profound than in the case of Poland, so

14 Lelewel, Wykłady kursowe, 380; 382. 15 Andrzej Walicki, Lata 1815–1863, in Zarys dziejów filozofii polskiej 1815–1918, ed. by A. Walicki (Warsaw: PWN, 1986), 39.

100

maciej janowski

was the feudal influence (remember that in Lelewel’s view of society, the cities on “German law” in the late Middle Ages, in east-central Europe are the carriers of feudalism). In Hungary as in Poland there were originally no legally divided estates, in spite of Stephan the Great’s amazing legislative activity (no other country in Europe at that time, writes Lelewel, had as many written laws as Hungary). “There were various nations in Hungary: Slovaks, Cuman and German settlers, and the ruling Magyars, all retained their languages and national feelings. Only the Latin language has bridged the difference, it equally mixed the peoples but did not facilitate melting them into one with the Magyars. The noble estate became one (nobiles), other estates could not grow much in the subsequent centuries, the preponderance of the aristocratic estate was only slowly diminishing.”16 This is as good an example as any of Lelewel’s Tacitean laconism, which can make the interpreter a bit desperate. Is it just a fragment of notes prepared for a lecture, an excerpt on which he intended to expound in more detail in the classroom? Is any attempt to interpret this not a hopeless undertaking that risks reading “into” the texts ideas clearly not present there? Conscious of this risk, I would venture the following interpretation. Latin “mixed” the peoples but did not “melt” them: this distinction seems crucial to me. Perhaps it could be read as an implicit comparison with the Polish situation, where the peoples—or at least the political elites, i.e., the nobility—did actually melt and create one political nation. It seems that the idea underlying this statement is the same as the idea that underlies Lelewel’s reflection on the factors of Spanish and Polish unity. Hungary was united by state language, a rather superficial factor, whereas Poland had a chance to achieve a deeper unity, a unity that would melt her inhabitants into a single powerful people—presumably by the force of the idea of liberty. Writing about the rule of Louis the Great in Hungary and in Poland in the fourteenth century (he is “the Great” only in Hungary, in Poland he is just “Louis of Anjou”) Lelewel mentions that “the knightly estate in Poland was breathing more with the spirit of liberty” (than the Hungarian nobility).17 Again risking over-interpretation, one can perhaps match this reflection with former remarks of Lelewel about Hungary: because Hungary was so “overregulated” by St. Stephen, it was also much more

16 Lelewel, Wykłady kursowe, 373. 17 Lelewel, Wykłady kursowe, 387.



romantic historiography as a sociology of liberty

101

occidental than Poland. Therefore the Hungarian constitution betrayed more elements of Western-type feudalism and less space for liberty. In Hungary, however, it was clearly the Habsburgs who were the most responsible for destroying liberty. Lelewel is not without a certain moderate sympathy for the reforming goals of Joseph II, although he treats with obvious irony the emperor who “inspired by the ideas of his age, wanted to achieve everything at once”; who “disputed long about liberty but reduced everything to passivity.”18 Writing about the Hungarian reaction to Joseph II’s reforms, he unreservedly takes the side of the Hungarian nobility: “Among the Hungarians, the voice was broadening: What? Without us about us! And they could not stand still when Germanism was being arbitrarily imposed upon them, they did not allow the destruction of laws and liberties.”19 Implicitly, the reader is expected to come to the conclusion that Hungary, like Poland, may return to its old tradition of liberty which survived in spite of absolutism. The Preservation of Liberty in Poland Let us skip Lelewel’s analysis of the collapse of liberty in ancient Athens and in the Roman Republic: these are instances of the Sallustian interpretation that was discussed above. Now we come to our third question: how was it possible that the original liberty was preserved in Poland? One could guess that this was by sheer chance. In Northeastern Europe the “systemic” factors such as feudalism and Christianity were weaker than in the South-West: in Bohemia and Hungary, as well as in Russia, they were strengthened by additional, “contingent,” factors as the Tartars’ and the Habsburg rule. In Poland no local “contingent” factor appeared and so the primordial liberty managed to survive. It was precisely the preponderance of small nobility that made this possible. Technically, it happened because the legal system of the noble estate, the Law of the Land (jus terrestrae) was the only institution that retained some elements of the old Slavonic law. All other strata embraced imported legal systems that had nothing to do with the local tradition: The colonization on the German law introduced the new legal system both to cities and villages, Canon Law introduced the new legal status for the clergy. The Slavonic tradition, 18 Lelewel, Wykłady kursowe, 657–658. 19 Lelewel, Wykłady kursowe, 660.

102

maciej janowski

preserved in the “Law of the land,” envisaged, according to Lelewel, “equal rights for people of every estate.”20 At another place he used the characteristic term “niejednostajność ” which can be translated as “non-unitary character” of the feudal legal system. As opposed to this, the old Slavonic law, preserved in the gentry law, was jednostajne, unitary.21 Lelewel does not seem to mean that there were no legal differences in the treatment of people of different conditions, but rather that the whole legal structure was unitary, with none of the exemptions or privileges later imported by Canon law and German law in the High Middle Ages. In any case, the very term jednostajność is telling for the historian of ideas. It is the term often used by Enlightenment thinkers in Poland who criticised the estate system (which they equalled with feudalism) and hoped for reforms that would make the Polish legal system closer to the idea of equality before the law. Now, Lelewel takes this Enlightenment political term and uses it for his polemic with the Enlightenment historiography. He attempts to prove that the unitary character of the legal system was an essential element of the old Slavonic law destroyed by Western influences, and not something that only now has to be introduced by ideas imported from France. Once the Polish Kingdom was renovated in the fourteenth century after a period of dismemberment into particular principalities (feudal dismemberment, one would be prone to write, but Lelewel would clearly not like it), the statutes of King Casimir the Great made this noble/Slavonic legal tradition into the core of the legal system of the Kingdom and thus laid the foundation for the gentry democracy that flourished in Poland in the sixteenth century. Some additional elements strengthening the position of liberty in Poland as opposed to Spain could probably be added. Natural setting plays a certain role: natural defence in form of mountains and the existence of numerous fortified cities meant that infantry was the most important weapon in early modern Spain whereas given the flat terrain and the relatively small number of fortifications in Poland, cavalry was more significant.22 This observation is not followed by any clear conclusion but it seems very probable that Lelewel’s argument was essentially that the cavalry represented a noble force whereas infantry was a tool in the hands 20 Joachim Lelewel, Krytyczny rozbiór statutów wiślickich, in “Polska wieków średnich, czyli Joachima Lelewela w dziejach narodowych polskich postrzeżenia”, vol. III (Poznań: Żupański, 1859), 359. 21  Lelewel, Wykłady kursowe, 389. 22 Lelewel, Historyczna paralela, 224.



romantic historiography as a sociology of liberty

103

of a monarch; thus different military developments were also a factor in (or one might well say “an indicator” or even “a cause of ”) the divergences in the development of political systems. Lelewel would most probably add one more factor to his explanation of the growth of Polish liberty: that of national character. He never elaborated a consistent national characterology, but he often used national character as an additional (not a central) explanatory device,23 probably in cases when he could not find better arguments. By pointing at various places to the freedom-loving national character of the Poles, Lelewel could escape the above-mentioned impression that the survival of liberty in Poland was a matter of chance. By presenting the Poles as naturally prone to freedom he implicitly endowed Polish liberty with an almost sacral aura of inevitability. Here, however we leave Lelewel’s sociology and enter his metaphysics, which is not a subject of this paper. Poland and Spain: Parallel Declines This is how the question “why was Polish liberty preserved” could have been answered by Lelewel. Another problem, however, appears immediately: In spite of all the promising auspices, the liberty in Poland, like in Spain, also collapsed, although somewhat later, as did the international position of both states. The comparison of the declines of the two former great powers adds a new dimension to Lelewel’s understanding of the dynamics of free constitutions. Here, too, we see the same approach that we noticed earlier when introducing Lelewel’s comparative method: Lelewel tries to analyse the interplay of the historical background and new influences. He, so to say, differentiates between different historical “layers” in different epochs. He adopts the same procedure when addressing Counter-Reformation. It was a supranational phenomenon, it took place first in Spain and later in Poland because Spain lies “in the Western side, where changes, due to general causes, make their first appearance.”24 The victory of Catholicism, he writes, in the classic tradition of Enlightenment historiography, always led to a decline in the external position of a country, in its economic conditions and its liberty. This decline, due to the victory of the Counter-Reformation, happened both in Spain and in Poland, 23 Cf. Andrzej Wierzbicki, Spory o polską duszę. Z zagadnień charakterologii narodowej w historiografii polskiej XIX i XX wieku (Warsaw: Trio, 2010), 69–134. 24 Lelewel, Historyczna paralela, 232.

104

maciej janowski

but in different ways. This difference has to do with the nature of Polish and Spanish state-building: as noted earlier, state unity was built by strong monarchy in the case of Spain and by a homogenous middle nobility in the case of Poland. Consequently, the decline in Spain took the shape of increasingly indolent absolutism, unable to tackle the basic problems of the country, whereas the decline of Poland was shaped by the increasing indolence of the gentry, bereft of their former civic spirit, and losing their power to aristocratic oligarchs.25 Thus, the same cultural and political atmosphere, the pernicious role of the Jesuits, religious intolerance, etc., resulted in similar declines in both countries, although in Spain this decline was produced by the hypertrophy of royal power and in Poland by its atrophy. Lelewel also stressed the sinister influence of the Habsburgs, so important in the Bohemian and Hungarian cases, as well as in Spain as well. It may be less obvious that he sees this factor in the case of Poland too, noting the pro-Habsburg politics of the Polish kings from the Vasa dynasty (notably Sigismund III) and the influence of the Habsburg princesses as wives of Polish monarchs. At the same time, Lelewel, as usual, dismisses the comparison of personal characters as explanatory factor: Philip II as a person was more cruel and severe than Sigismund III; nevertheless, their “functional” role as restorers of Catholic domination was the same.26 Lelewel believed that internal causes alone cannot be responsible for the political collapse: they weaken the polity but do not destroy it totally.27 Here external powers must be active: France in the case of Spain, Muscovy (Russia) in the case of Poland. The connection between internal liberty and external political strength is one of the central problems in the “Historical parallel.” Although he never clearly states it, the main conclusion of Lelewel was broadly understood to be that strong central power did not save Spain from collapse. This was for Lelewel an important argument in internal Polish historiographical polemic: Lelewel thus opposed the Polish Enlightenment historians and political thinkers who argued (as Adam Naruszewicz) that precisely the weakening of royal power was the main cause of Poland’s decline and fall. This argument, and the very idea of comparing Poland with Spain, gave birth to many interesting texts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but an even shorter attempt to trace the influence of Lelewel on Polish culture would need a separate text. 25 Ibid., 233–234. 26 Ibid., 235. 27 Ibid., 232.



romantic historiography as a sociology of liberty

105

Conclusions To put Lelewel into a broad picture of Enlightenment or Romantic historiography is indispensable for two reasons. Firstly, with Lelewel as with anyone else, comparison is the only way to assess the originality of thought and the contribution of the author to broader intellectual developments. The second reason is more specific to Lelewel’s position. Chronologically, he is a historian on the borderline of Enlightenment and Romanticism; elements of both systems of thought can be traced in his works. What, then, makes me consistently refer to Lelewel as a Romantic historian (in other words as belonging to an important stream of thought, not of course romantic in the sense of individual psychological qualities)? Only a broader reflection on the applicability of concepts as Romanticism or Enlightenment to historical writing could answer this question. I am afraid, however, that the study of Lelewel’s thought in a proper comparative way exceeds my modest knowledge. The general picture I offer here is something of a rough outline. As regards the first problem: in his democratism Lelewel is quite similar to Michelet. His stress on “culture” and “civilization” connects him with the whole Enlightenment tradition, notably that of Scottish Enlightenment (Ferguson, Hume). Among his contemporaries, Guizot, with his interest in history of civilization, may have influenced him. In his “Whig” view of history as the growth of liberty, Lelewel may be close to Henry Hallam, whom he liked and often quoted, and to Macaulay, whom he does not appear to have read. His skeptical view of the role of Christianity in history makes him close to Gibbon. Like Montesquieu in the “Considerations on the causes of the rise and decline of the Romans” he stresses the dangers to liberty that come from the growth of military victories and strong armies; contrary to Montesquieu in “Spirit of the laws” he sees feudal privileges as inimical to freedom. Contrary to Voltaire, he does not believe in any positive aspects of enlightened absolutism. This is just a list of problems that deserve to be treated in full at some time (this task has been partially accomplished by Serejski in his book cited in Footnote 5). Coming to the second problem: to what extent can Lelewel be considered a Romantic or Enlightenment thinker? As regards the question of form—clearly, he was not (in spite of his ambitions) a Polish Gibbon especially because of his style, often abounding with Gibbonian irony, but never approaching Gibbonian elegance. If we may venture a parallel with the plastic arts, Lelewel’s style has the air of Michelangelo’s last works, consciously unfinished when the struggle of the artist with the material of

106

maciej janowski

marble is in itself a part of artistic expression; so with Lelewel. His struggle with form, with language unaccustomed to express such a degree of historical subtleties, with finding a proper way between emotions, rational explanation and irony, and his attempts at laconism of expression—all make his style far from elegant classicism and somehow bring him closer to the emotional style of the Romantics. Concerning his ideas, we could begin with a very broad generalization that, while almost certainly untrue in the details, may nevertheless have some value: Enlightenment “likes” sociological interpretations whereas Romanticism “likes” historical ones. We know, of course that there is no single “Enlightenment” but numerous “Enlightenments,” and the same goes for “Romanticism” and “Romanticisms.” We know from numerous excellent works by Hans Peter Reill and Ulrich Muhlack (in Poland also the book by Serejski) that the transformation from Enlightenment to Romantic historiography was a gradual one; that German Enlightenment was very strongly “historicist” and the decisive step towards the close “historicist” reading of the source text was taken long before classical German historicism: it first developed in theological thought and only slowly migrated into the realm of secular historiography as well (Chladenius). This German Enlightenment/early Romantic thought gave Lelewel a sensibility for things changing in time. At the same time, he retained the Enlightenment propensity for a “sociological” perspective. He is as far from a-historical explanations based on human nature as he is from the rigidity of German classical historicism which treats any comparison with mistrust, believing only in the unique specificity of any given historical time and place. We should also mention Lelewel’s epistemology, exposed in his studies on “historics” (Historyka); these ideas also put Lelewel somewhere between Enlightenment empiricism and Romantic stress on intuition and speculation. Another reason for treating Lelewel as a Romantic historian, this from the perspective of the history of politics rather than ideas, is his criticism of the most important tenets of the Polish Enlightenment reformers, with their striving for a strong central power and the introduction of a modern bureaucratic type of government. Unlike them, he believes in the selfregenerating power of the internal democratic tradition, originating from the Middle Ages. In the 1830s and 1840s he was part of the so-called Great Emigration, the centre of which was in France (although Lelewel lived mostly in Belgium, expelled from France due to his democratic radicalism). In his political opinions he was a part of the Polish émigré democracy, a stream that was clearly romantic in its appeal to the people as the



romantic historiography as a sociology of liberty

107

repository of national and democratic values. This was a revolutionary democratic romanticism, closer to Mazzini or Garibaldi than to German romanticism which was marked more by the dominance of conservative politics and the glorification of the medieval past. The general evaluation of Lelewel’s achievement does not depend on whether he was right. Most probably he was not, although some of the questions he raised are still open and continue to constitute the subject of lively debates (after all, the Parallel deals essentially with the problem of dualism between European East and West, which still belongs to central questions of European history). It was often noted that Lelewel connects a rather schematic general view of history with a fascinating critical and interpretative eye for details. Therefore his minor studies (and his methodological texts, one might add) are better guides for an appreciation of his historical talents and ideas than his synthetic works and his political journalism. He is a historian whose ways of thinking, reasoning and building sequences of causes and effects are fascinating, and as far as I can tell, often original within the context of European historical thought. To give but one example: as we have seen, in Lelewel’s view feudalism arose in the southwest of Europe and was transplanted from there during the Middle Ages, with mixed success, to other parts of the continent. Under certain specific circumstances, though, it could happen that feudalism was born locally, independently from one that already existed elsewhere. This, according to Lelewel, was the case of Lithuania. The reason was its overstretched territory (as a result of expansion on Ruthenian lands in the fourteenth century) and the force of dynastic traditions of the local Ruthenian princes.28 Again, whether the argument is correct, or even plausible for us now, is irrelevant: it is the intellectual refinement and the way of reasoning that counts. One is reminded of numerous later debates about the role of space and communications in the development of feudalism, as well as about the possibility of non-Western feudalism (in Japan?). Mónika Baár interpreted Lelewel’s perspective as an attempt to establish Poland’s superiority over Lithuania (at the same time, Lithuanian historian Simonas Daukantas was proving the very opposite fact, namely the lack of feudalism in Lithuania and its strength in Poland).29 She may well

28 Lelewel, Wykłady kursowe, 385–6; 388. 29 Baár, Historians and Nationalism, 205.

108

maciej janowski

be right, but the political implications of Lelewel’s thesis do not in the least diminish its intellectual importance. Let us once again return to the problem of the form of Lelewel’s works. Lelewel, as mentioned earlier, is not an easy writer. However, after writing this text, it occurred to me that there is a certain advantage in the disorder and incomprehensibility of Lelewel’s texts. Precisely because of these formal qualities, his works are so to say “open,” “inconclusive.” Most historians in the nineteenth century—at least in their synthetic works— offer us a ready picture of the past. Lelewel opens before us the way of his reasoning: we see how he argues, quarrels with himself and his contemporaries, and is inconsistent in details but consistent in attitudes. Observing his process of thinking is not easy, but it can be extremely interesting—no less now than 200 years ago.

PART two

MEDIEVALISM IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE

The Roots of Medievalism in North-West Europe: National Romanticism, Architecture, Literature David M. Wilson This paper tackles three strands in the origin of nineteenth-century medievalism in north-west Europe: first, the quests for the roots of nationhood; second, the expression of medievalism in architecture; and third, the early stages of medievalism in historical fiction. These are but three of the many elements discussed in this book and I am conscious of—and must ­emphasise—the very general nature of the discussion. The origins of this neo-medievalism lie in the comparatively peaceful period of the years before the Terror in France. It was a period—a golden age—of academic and intellectual enquiry: “Ganz Europa ist ein gelehrtes Reich,” wrote Herder in 1787 as that golden era was about to come to its brutal end.1 This was the period when such varied figures as Goethe, Hegel and Friedrich took up the torch of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists and passed it on to firebrand romantics of the French Revolution such as the English poet Wordsworth, to philosophers of nationalism like the rather younger Dane, Grundtvig, as well as to the multitude of stratigraphical geologists and antiquarians who challenged basic thought about the natural world and artefacts of the past. Romanticism expressed itself in various ideas—among which were the Sublime and the Gothic, which expressed themselves particularly in literature and architecture. The Sublime—purer simpler virtues of a society which had emerged from the primitive and bestial and not yet been curbed by rigorous political and social order—“would combine primitive simplicity with modern decorum.” The Sublime, as famously discussed in England in 1756 by Edmund Burke in A philosophical Enquiry into the Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, was popularised in France among the salonistas of Madame de Staël, and most typically taken up in Germany in Schlegel’s recognition or definition of romantic poetry of the Sturm und Drang in 1798. Hand-in-hand with Romanticism went the growth of nationalism, particularly during and after the Napoleonic wars. Even the arch-classicist 1 Johann Gottfried Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menscheit (Riga and Leipzig, 1784–91).

112

david m. wilson

Napoleon was so fascinated by the fictitious medieval bard, Ossian—that most enigmatic romantic evocation of the Sublime and melancholy—that he carried his poems with him on his campaigns. And Napoleon’s taste is reflected even by that apparent opponent of the Romantic Movement, the painter Jacques-Louis David, who wrote, “it is in Homer and Ossian, and in the primitive people among whom their works were written, that we shall find the means to regenerate our soul and spirit.” In Scandinavia, from the end of the eighteenth century, major artists such as Abildgaard and Eckersberg started to paint scenes—at first in Classical dress—from the heroic, semi-legendary pagan past revealed in the Eddaic and Saga literature, which expressed a similar sentiment.2 In times of trouble—political, religious or social—national identity, sometimes distinct from existing government, becomes an important force with people under threat. It became increasingly important to have a national identity based on law, language, custom and history, particularly in the period after 1789 when Europe was in a political and social melting pot. If a national identity was blurred it had to be looked for in the roots of the society in which the present was formed—in its history. It was a society disturbed and restless, searching all the time for innovation; a society that at the same time sought peace and reconciliation, which led philosophers like Adam Müller (leading on from Herder’s Philosophie der Geschichte), to believe in a harmony that could only be found in the medieval. Thus, for example, the motto of that vast compendium of German medieval texts, the Monumenta Germaniae Historia, founded in 1819, was and remains, Sanctus amor patriae dat animum. Somewhat later, in 1836, Ranke in his Political Conversation put this in stark terms which now seem to carry a lot of baggage, but which in the mid-nineteenth century seemed apposite to a rapidly forming political structure in Germany: Our fatherland is with us, in us . . . we are rooted in it from the beginning, and we can never free ourselves from it. The mysterious something that animates the lowliest as well as the greatest, this spiritual atmosphere in which we breathe precedes every constitution.3

2 I have dealt with this at length elsewhere: David M. Wilson, Vikings and Gods in European Art (Højbjerg: Moesgaard, 1997). 3 Quoted by James J. Sheehan, German History, 1770–1886 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 553.



the roots of medievalism in north-west europe

113

The search for this spiritual atmosphere had been going on for years before Ranke wrote these words. So where did you start? What better place, said such philosophers as Herder, than with language. A people—to use the German term popular in the nineteenth century, ein Volk—is held together, formed and defined by a common language, which overrides even religion and physical boundaries to provide a common identity. Knowledge, said Herder in 1772, in his Abhandlung über der Ursprung der Sprache, was only possible through the medium of language—the original vernacular. In poetry he saw the creation of nations— a mode of coming to terms with reality, “a poet is the creator of the nation around him” he wrote; so one must examine the sources which define that identity—the most overriding of which is literature. But in Germany, at this period in no sense a state, this did not really take one back far enough, for the early sources were written in Latin. So what you did was to go first to the oldest Germanic vernacular, which happened to be English (many of the early texts of which had been published between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and 1730), and venture forwards from that. In this spirit in 1815 the Danish scholar, Grímur Thorkelin, printed the full text of the earliest epic in a Germanic language, the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, with its Danish background, previously only known from an entry in a library catalogue.4 And of course there were also the Icelandic sources, which were now being thoroughly investigated in historical terms with the availability of better published texts, particularly P.E. Müller’s three-volume Sagabibliothek, published between 1817 and 1820. But you didn’t have to stick to the vernacular; you could study the contemporary Latin sources, as Grundtvig did in considering the story of the Anglo-Saxon missions to Germany. Herder, not really interested in history as such, only wanted to use the sources to colour thought and action towards a unity called Germany, politically an abstract concept, which he equated to the Gothic in which he combined nationalism and patriotism. The Danish polymath, Grundtvig, was similarly biased, “vi er ikke til for Historien, men Historien for vor Skyld” [We are not here for history, but history is for our use], he wrote.5 To the Danes—in reaction to eighteenth-century high history—attention was now also paid to the peasant, reflecting Herder’s concentration 4 Grímur J. Thorkelin, De Danorum rebus gestis secul. III & IV poëma danicum dialecto anglosaxonica (Havniæ, 1815). 5 Quoted by Ellen Jørgensen, Historiens studium i Danmark i det 19. aarhundrede (København: Bianco Luno, 1943), 41.

114

david m. wilson

on one class, the Volk. To Danish scholars, however, living as they did in a multi-lingual society, the roots of their national identity were not confined to language and historical sources, they were also bound up with a study of folk-music, folk-tales, mythology and Danish antiquities and monuments. Indeed, for much of the nineteenth century this latter emphasis was formally recognised in the University of Copenhagen by a Chair of Danish history and antiquities founded in 1835. It is no accident that much of the systematisation of prehistory throughout Europe in the nineteenth century was founded on the work of Danish archaeologists, of whom the best known remains C.J. Thomsen, who between 1818 and 1821 produced a plan for the systematic display of Danish antiquities. In the context of the subject of the essays in this book—medievalism—the most important outcome of his work was the beginning of the classification of medieval archaeological material, which was now intelligently displayed for the first time in Europe. It is interesting in this context that one of the early supporters of the idea of a collection of Danish national antiquities, Rasmus Nyerup, in 1806 was clearly inspired—as were so many throughout Europe—by Alexandre Lenoir’s short-lived Musée des monuments français, which contained many medieval objects—tombs, altarpieces, stained glass and tiles— pillaged in the revolutionary period, but collected together between 1790 and 1794 and opened to the public in the Monastère des Petits Augustins in Paris. With the fall of Napoleon the contents of the museum were largely returned to the churches from which they had been removed, although a few items were retained in the centre. The influence of this collection was extraordinarily wide outside France, although within France itself there was a return to the classical norm and a withdrawal from the medieval and its associated nationalism. It was not until A. du Sommerad’s luxurious multi-volume publication, Les arts au moyen âge, appeared in 1846, based on the medieval collections of the Musée de Cluny, that French interest in the realia of the Middle Ages revived. Du Sommerad had bought this fine medieval building in 1833 and moved his large collection into it. He died in 1842 and the collection was purchased by the state and opened in 1843, with his son as the museum’s first curator, just as Viollet le Duc’s career as the premier architect of the French Gothic revival started. I must now go back in time and return to one aspect of medievalism which was ultimately to permeate northern Europe in the nineteenth century—neo-Gothic architecture—the most visible of all aspects of medievalism.



the roots of medievalism in north-west europe

115

It is generally agreed that European neo-Gothic architecture had its origins in England. It emerged from the ‘Picturesque’ which, in the mid­eighteenth century, produced cottages ornés, ‘gothic’ ruins, Chinese pagodas, rustic cottages—which expressed both the Romantic and the Sublime. In England this was adopted and encouraged by professional or semi-professional architects, Sanderson Miller, William Chambers, the German painter J.H. Muntz and, most influentially and eclectically, Humphry Repton. It was, however, a group of amateurs led by Horace Walpole (fourth Earl of Oxford)6 who were perhaps most influential in the development of what might be termed ‘Romantic Gothic’ in a single building, Strawberry Hill, Walpole’s villa at Twickenham on the outskirts of London, which he began to Gothicise in 1749 and completed in 1792.7 Gothic architecture in the medieval tradition had really only achieved its slow lingering death a few years before this and even then it reached out from the grave.8 In the words of Kenneth Clark, in his pioneering work on the English Gothic revival, published in 1928: From 1600 to 1800 perhaps no year passed which did not see the building of some pointed arch and gabled roof . . . There are churches, colleges, private houses, built under the stiffest Augustan tyranny, which can only be classified as ‘Gothic’.9

But the Gothic of Strawberry Hill (fig. 1) was distinctly different from the tired medieval tradition.10 It was imbued with the magic romantic

6 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.n. 7 Anna Chalcraft and Judith Viscardi, Strawberry Hill. Horace Walpole’s Gothic Castle (London: Frances Lincoln, 2007); Michael Snodin, Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009).   8 Some remarkable survivals of medieval Gothic are to be found in south Central Europe, particularly in the architecture of Jan Blažej Santini (a.k.a. Johann Santin-Aichel). His Abbey Church of Kladruby (1712–26), in the Czech Republic, for example, is a splendid monument of Gothic-Baroque. Martin Horyna, Gotika a baroko v sakrální architektuře Jana Blažeje Santiniho (Praha, 1992); Xavier Galmiche, Santini. Architecte gotico-baroque en Bohême, 1677–1723 (Paris: Jacques Damase, 1989). Santini, who also travelled in England and Holland, based his architecture on Italian models.   9 Kenneth Clark, The Gothic Revival. An essay in the history of taste (London: Constable, 1928), 1. This book was a startlingly original work when it appeared. The only previous study of the subject was published more than half a century earlier, Charles Lock Eastlake, A History of the Gothic Revival (London: Longmans, Green, 1872; reprinted Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1970), the latter edition has an introduction by J.M. Crook, who wrote of it, “as a standard textbook on the Gothic, Eastlake has never been surpassed.” 10 For a good summary account of English neo-Gothic architecture see John Summerson, Architecture in Britain 1530–1830, 9 ed., (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), 366–83.    

116

david m. wilson .

Fig. 1. The long gallery of Horace Walpole’s villa at Strawberry Hill, Twickenham. Design by one of Walpole’s ‘Committee of Taste’, John Chute. Georgian comfort combined with accurate medieval decoration.

lightness of the Sublime, and, although Walpole and his band of amateur advisers were eccentric and dilettante, they produced something which reflected the spirit of the late eighteenth century and influenced much of the Gothic movement of the nineteenth century. Their romantic creation was gradually to be reflected throughout northern Europe, at first through the whim of the rich and princely class, then through the work of academic architects inspired by religion and a knowledge of the past, to end, I suppose, in the Wagnerian excesses of Ludwig of Bavaria’s Neuschwanstein and of Disneyland. In Britain the rich led the taste for Gothic architecture from the end of the eighteenth century, building a fair number of Gothic country houses (and in Scotland, castles).11 Although some of these buildings were 11  The earliest large neo-Gothic castle in Europe was Roger Morris’s Inverary Castle (1845–61) for the Duke of Argyll; Frank Arneil Walker, Argyll and Bute (London: Penguin,



the roots of medievalism in north-west europe

117

small and on a domestic scale, others were vast and imposing, like William Beckford’s Fonthill Abbey (fig. 2), built between 1796 and 1807 to the designs of James Wyatt,12 but built so badly that its tower, some 90m high, collapsed not once but twice.13 Perhaps nothing was more splendid than Eaton Hall, Cheshire (fig. 3), built between 1804 and 1812, for the vastly wealthy Earl Grosvenor (later Marquis of Westminster) by William Porden, to which wings were added in 1823–5 by Benjamin Gummow, who had been Porden’s assistant. This imposing building with its delicate Gothic battlements and cast iron tracery is now long gone, as has most of its grand, but much heavier, replacement built between 1870 and 1883 to the design of Alfred Waterhouse. In Poland, of all places, a taste of the original Eaton Hall can be seen in the porte cochère—all that survives—of the Dowspuda Palace (fig. 4) of the Pac family, built between 1820 and 1823, clearly on an English model, which was the grandest neo-Gothic secular building in Poland. The general appearance of the palace was certainly close to a scaled-down version of Eaton Hall; but the latest scholar to comment on it—while acknowledging this similarity—feels that the architects may have merely have used English pattern books.14 In Scotland pseudo-medieval castles were all the rage; Culzean Castle, for example, was built to the design of Robert Adam 1777–90,15 while in London the Prince Regent, who had eccentric tastes in architecture, in 1807 added a cast-iron neo-Gothic conservatory to Carlton House (a complex long-since demolished). The conservatory (fig. 5) was designed by an amateur friend of the Prince, Thomas Hopper. It was described by a contemporary as ‘florid Gothic’.16 Encouraged by its success, a rather less flamboyant Gothic dining room was added to the house by Wyatt and Nash in 1812–14.17 Where the English patrons had gone, the ­Americans 2000) 313– 20 and fig. 75, The Buildings of Scotland. The castle-building disease also spread to England; see, for example, Caerhays Castle, Cornwall, Michael J. Lewis, The Gothic Revival (London: Thames and Hudson, 2002), fig. 36. 12 See also ibid., fig. 49. It was at one time known as ‘Fonthill Splendens’. 13 Barry Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), fig. 144. 14 Barbara Arciszewska, “Neo-Gothic residences in the Poland and the English pattern books,” in Studies in the Gothic Revival, ed. by Michael McCarthy and Karina O’Neill (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008), 30. 15 Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890, fig. 38. 16 Survey of London, vol. 20, pl. 64; William H. Pyne, The History of the Royal Residences . . .  (London, 1819), 84. 17 J. Mordaunt Crook and Michael H. Port, The History of the Kings Works 1782–1851, 6 (London: H.M.S.O., 1973), 313–5.

118

david m. wilson

Fig. 2. Fonthill Abbey, William Beckford’s ambitious Gothic pile, far removed from the Georgian politeness of Strawberry Hill. Designed by James Wyatt to please his client’s megalomania. His builders skimped on the foundations and the tower collapsed.



the roots of medievalism in north-west europe

119

Fig. 3. Eaton Hall, as designed for the immensely wealthy Earl Grosvenor by William Porden, 1803–12. Displaying delicate tracery and battlements, pinnacles and plaster fan-vaults, it was extended, mutilated, encased and made even more grandiose in the mid-nineteenth century. It was largely demolished in 1961.

Fig. 4. Dowspuda Palace, Poland, built for Count Ludwik Michał Pac 1820–3. Confiscated by the Russians after the uprising of 1830, it fell into disrepair, as pictured here. Gradually quarried away, the porch survives, with a few fragments of the building. Possibly directly inspired by Eaton Hall (fig. 3).

120

david m. wilson

Fig. 5. The cast-iron conservatory of the Prince Regent’s grandiose London residence, Carlton House, built in 1807 by the amateur Thomas Hopper. Pulled down with the rest of the house in 1826/7.



the roots of medievalism in north-west europe

121

Fig. 6. The Götische Haus, Woerlitz, Germany, designed originally as a cottage orné by Friedrich Wilhelm Erdmannsdorf for Duke Leopold II, Friedrich Franz of Anhalt-Dessau, who had been inspired by a visit to Strawberry Hill in 1764. An extraordinary mish-mash of Gothic styles.

followed, building neo-Gothic houses and churches, large and small, throughout the eastern United States.18 Returning, however, to Strawberry Hill, Walpole, together with the garden designers, Kent and Repton, were particularly influential in Germany. In 1764 Duke Leopold II Friedrich Franz of Anhalt-Dessau visited Strawberry Hill and was much impressed by it and by the then fashionable English romantic gardens. As a setting for his palace at Wörlitz he started in 1765 the construction of an English-style park with a great house inspired by the English classical tradition, now part of a World Heritage site. Within the park he added, from 1773 onwards, the remarkable Götische Haus (fig. 6) designed originally as a cottage orné by his architect Friedrich Wilhelm Erdmannsdorf, who had accompanied him on his English tour.

18 Calder Loth and Julius T. Sadler, The Only Proper Style. Gothic architecture in America (Boston: Little Brown, 1975); Lewis, Gothic Revival, 54–7.

122

david m. wilson

As it grew over the years from a gardener’s cottage into a full residence (it was completed in 1813) it produced the most remarkable hotch-potch of Gothic themes; the north face is English Tudor Gothic, while the south face is a Venetian church. Enormous windows provided a setting for a magnificent collection of Swiss stained glass. The Prince de Ligne visited Wörlitz in 1799 and wrote, “Never has there been anything as accomplished, never anything that has been executed so well; everything here is so thorough that one believes oneself to be three-hundred years younger.” The Duke was very much ahead of his time in his taste for the medieval (although he filled his palace with the refined classical taste of English pottery made by Wedgwood),19 but he was completely in tune with contemporary German thought. It was about this time (in 1772) that the youthful Goethe wrote a panegyric on Strasbourg Cathedral as a true evocation of German national spirit—a theme which he soon abandoned. Friedrich Schlegel took a more considered view of German Gothic architecture. In Briefe auf einer Reise in 1806 he moved away from Romanticism to a more measured analysis and definition of Gothic architecture, placing it firmly in a religious context, the first real factual description of the style in Germany. Surprising perhaps is the Prussian royal family’s brief—and somewhat uncertain—flirtation with medieval architecture in the early years of the nineteenth century, when the genius of Karl Friedrich Schinkel put a strict classical face on deeply Protestant Berlin. But it was Schinkel himself who might well have led Prussia in an entirely different direction, for he was deeply influenced by the Romantics. His paintings and his theatre designs are redolent of Gothicism. In the hard days of the Napoleonic wars he painted and drew great Gothic buildings to demonstrate the superiority of medieval art. The German National Romantic movement, turning towards a medieval past, reached its climax in Berlin with the return of the king, Frederick Wilhelm III, from exile in 1810. His young queen, Luise of MecklenburgStrelitz, died in the same year, at a time when Schinkel had been appointed to the civil service as an architect, with the title of Oberbauassessor. The king employed Schinkel to design a mausoleum for Luise, and indeed a fine Doric building was built; but another much more interesting design, displayed at the Berlin Academy in 1810, had come to nought. This was a

19 Thomas Weiss (ed.), 1795–1995 Englische Keramik in Wörlitz (Luisium: E.A. Seeman, 1995).



the roots of medievalism in north-west europe

123

Gothic chapel of three transepts. In an accompanying pamphlet Schinkel emphasised the superiority of Gothic above the architecture of classical antiquity.20 Schinkel soon turned back to the classical, but one Gothic monument—the National Memorial to the Fallen on the Kreuzberg, Berlin—of 1818–21 was executed in Gothic style at the behest of the king, who in effect rejected Schinkel’s original classical design. Constructed of cast iron (fig. 7), it reflects Schinkel’s interest in ecclesiastical architecture, particularly a never-realised cathedral and much of his early painting. The monument was presumably based on the English Eleanor crosses with details from Cologne Cathedral. Schinkel was to return to the Gothic later—in 1833, when Prince Wilhelm of Prussia’s anglophile wife Augusta of Sachsen-Weimar, for whom Goethe had designed Gothic houses when she was a child and who had since been influenced by Humphry Repton’s writings, commissioned a house at Babelsberg. Schinkel was restricted by the site and designed a Gothic house of extremely strict form, which was later developed by other architects. Set in an English park, it was eclectically furnished, but Schinkel did design a few Gothic pieces which survive.21 One further building demanding attention is the castle of Stolzenfels on the Rhine, which was completely restored and embellished by Schinkel and his successors after 1836. But as Prussia’s ambitions grew, so the architects—led by Schinkel—turned almost exclusively to the imperial echoes of classical architecture.22 “Perhaps,” wrote William Vaughan, “Schinkel sensed that the moment of Gothic idealism had passed in Germany with the dispersal of the liberation movement.”23 It is, however, easiest to trace the actuality of strict neo-Gothic design in England, in the work of church architects, for the theological turmoil of the time led to the demand for a large number of churches in the quickly-expanding industrial cities and, for Roman Catholics and highchurch Protestants, a demand for more decoration and embellishment than had been seen since the Reformation. Based very much on this religious engagement and on a thorough study and systematisation of the

20 Michael Snodin (ed.), Karl Friedrich Schinkel: A Universal Man (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), 99. 21  Ibid., 162–3. 22 Ibid., 165. 23 William Vaughan, Romanticism and Art, 2nd ed., (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994), 125.

124

david m. wilson

Fig. 7. Schinkel’s cast-iron National Memorial to the Fallen, Berlin 1818–21. One of Schinkel’s few completed Gothic structures. Based on the late thirteenthcentury English Eleanor Crosses, with German decorative motifs from Cologne Cathedral.



the roots of medievalism in north-west europe

125

products of pre-Reformation church buildings, neo-medievalism grew and matured. The names of two architects stand out—Rickman and Pugin. Both are important in their different ways. Thomas Rickman was earliest in the field with his publication in 1817 of a well-researched and fundamental book entitled An attempt to discriminate the styles of English architecture from the Conquest to the Reformation, which ran into a number of often enlarged and revised editions, the last of which appeared in 1881. Basing his work a number of antiquaries and architects who had studied and published English buildings, Rickman systematised English architecture, dealing first with the classical orders, but more importantly establishing a terminology for the different English medieval styles which has survived to this day. Here he defined Norman, Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular as labels for the architecture of the medieval period. He illustrated his book with a series of fine-line drawings of the different structures and the elements which were used by the builders. Although he favoured the medieval, he was broad-minded, but hoped that builders could carefully distinguish styles, “so that a day may come when we shall have Grecian, Roman and English edifices erected on the principles of each.” He could be very critical concerning the architecture of some contemporaries, as for example the eccentric Gothic of Greenbank in Liverpool, built between 1812 and 1816, which he stigmatized as, “a curious mess of confusion as to style and the attempt at Gothic as barbarous as most we have about.”24 Rickman was a practising architect who built, or had a hand in building, many great structures including the New Court of St John’s College, Cambridge, and a number of new churches, in Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, to serve the new conurbations of industrial England. The new churches were funded by money from Parliament, intent on upholding the Protestant centre of the state. To this end in 1818 they voted a sum of a million pounds to build 600 new churches in areas which lacked them, a sum which was to be administered by a commission especially erected for the purpose. By the time this building spree came to an end in 1835 only 214 ‘Commissioner’s’ churches had been built, but many survive today dominating now, as then, the urban and suburban landscape

24 Quoted by Richard Pollard and Nikolaus Pevsner, Lancashire: Liverpool and the South-West (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 442. The Buildings of England.

126

david m. wilson

of the country. Many were, however, built on lines which were not strictly medieval and robust enough for the purists.25 Of those involved in this ecclesiastical development was A.W.N. Pugin, one of the greatest English architects of the period, whose achievement has been summarised in a short paragraph by his latest biographer: Pugin gave Britain’s capital cities two of their greatest landmarks, the clock tower of the Palace of Westminster, generally, if inaccurately, known as Big Ben, and in Edinburgh, the spire of Tolbooth St John’s. He built the first English cathedral since Wren’s St Paul’s and he reinvented the family house. But his influence depended not only, not even primarily, on his buildings, it was both wider and more elusive. He gave the nineteenth century a new idea of what architecture could be and mean. He saw it as a moral force in society and as a romantic art.26

Pugin was much influenced by his French father—a refugee from the Revolution—who kindled his interest in architecture at an early age and who, in 1821–3, published a two-volume work entitled Specimens of Gothic Architecture, with a text by Edward Willson. This was to be the predecessor to a much larger work published in three volumes between 1831 and 1836, in which father (who died in 1832) and son collaborated, and for which Willson also wrote the text. Willson, who disapproved of the perceived nationalistic tendencies of Rickman, wrote: The revival of Gothic architecture seems almost peculiar to this country [England]; scarcely anything has been done on the continent in the construction of modern buildings after this manner and but little investigation of ancient monuments. The backwardness of our neighbours is mortifying to the English student; as undoubtedly a great fund of curious information, relative to the practice of architecture during the middle ages, will be brought forth whenever the study of the Gothic style shall become general on the continent. One important fact has been abundantly evinced, viz. that there are no certain grounds for the protestations advanced by certain writers to the pointed arch as our national institution . . .27

The last sentence is a palpable hit, not empty rhetoric, for both the Pugins had travelled widely in France and examined its architectural remains (indeed the elder Pugin had published in English a book on the Gothic 25 Michael H. Port, Six Hundred New Churches. The Church Building Commission 1818–56 (London: SPCK, 1961). 26 Rosemary Hill, God’s Architect. Pugin and the building of Romantic Britain (London: Allen Lane, 2007), 1 27 In Auguste Charles Pugin et al., Examples of Gothic Architecture, 1, (London: Bohn, 1831), xi.



the roots of medievalism in north-west europe

127

architecture of Normandy). Rickman’s terminology, however, survived, and the younger Pugin, when he came to design his own buildings, was to adhere strictly to the chief orders of Gothic architecture in an English taste. His drawings of medieval architectural detail, which like his father’s, are exceptionally fine, provided much accurate detail of medieval Gothic architectural features. The younger Pugin, a Roman-Catholic convert, had been brought up with the Middle Ages and was not afraid of elaborate decorative elements of the architecture of that period, which he most publicly expressed in the interiors of the Houses of Parliament, a structure largely conceived by Barry, but embellished and partly designed by Pugin (who certainly designed the clock-tower).28 He was alive to the importance of the medieval craftsmen who embellished their buildings long before John Ruskin and William Morris worked it out; he himself designed almost every detail of carving in wood and stone, every door-handle and tile in the Parliament building. In 1836 Pugin published a book with the snappy title, Contrasts, or a parallel between the noble edifices of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and similar buildings of the present day, shewing the decay of taste. Accompanied by appropriate text. On the first page he wrote, ‘On comparing the Architectural Works of the last centuries with those of the Middle Ages, the wonderful superiority of the latter must strike every attentive observer’. He goes on to lampoon the weak stuccoed architecture of the Georgian period (including the rather woolly Gothic of the period), setting it against the rich softened perspective of the Middle Ages. The book was a runaway success and, in the words of his biographer, ‘marked the beginning of Pugin’s career and the effective end of Georgian architecture’. To Pugin—the committed Roman Catholic—architectural statements reflected religion; classical architecture was pagan, as exampled by the Temples of Reason which sprang up after the French Revolution. Gothic architecture, however, was deeply Christian, as exemplified by the medieval churches which were the most public architectural statement familiar throughout the English—and French—countryside. One of the buildings which marked Pugin’s perception of this new beginning, reflecting his thoughts in Contrasts, was St Chad’s RomanCatholic Cathedral (fig. 8), which he designed and built for Birmingham between 1839 and 41. The style of the building is basically north German 28 Hill, God’s Architect, figs. 30 and 52.

128

david m. wilson

Fig. 8. Pugin’s St Chad’s Roman-Catholic Cathedral, Birmingham. Once dominating an area of small houses, it is now in its turn dominated by huge office-blocks and surrounded by a major road interchange. Photo by the author.

(a smaller version of St Elizabeth’s in Marburg), as is the building material, brick (although laid in English bond). The tracery is influenced by England but has German parallels, a mixture which is also seen in another of his major churches, St Mary’s, Derby,29 built in the year before he started on St Chad’s. More strictly adhering to his principles of English

29 Ibid., figs. 22 and 23.



the roots of medievalism in north-west europe

129

purity is St Giles, Cheadle, in Staffordshire, a dazzling display of Gothic ­romanticism.30 Pugin was also influential in the design of churches built with the Commissioners’ money and also new rural churches associated with the Anglican revival of the nineteenth century—all based on proved and ideal English medieval models. Pugin also designed secular buildings, smallish houses or grand castles; a particularly influential patron in this latter area (as with his grander churches) was one of the richest Roman Catholic peers, the Earl of Shrewsbury, for whom he redesigned and rebuilt Alton Castle in much the same way as did Schinkel at Stolzenburg.31 With Rickman he was an inspiration to the Romantic architects and designers of the mid- to late nineteenth century in England—Street, Ruskin, Scott, the eclectic Burges and others—who Gothicised and medievalised England. But how about France, the cradle of medieval Gothic, so well known to Pugin? It was only in the 1840s, after a long and arduous struggle to build the neo-Gothic church of St-Nicholas in Nantes and the building of a splendid Gothic burial chapel for the Orléans dynasty at Dreux between 1816 and 1830, that medievalism began to triumph in a struggle which was to continue well into the 1850s. As in many countries the cause of medievalism came to the fore in the aftermath of a bloody struggle, this time the revolution of 1830. One of the first such expressions of this focus on romanticism was Victor Hugo’s novel, Notre-Dame de Paris, published in 1830. But architecturally the movement began to get official support from a former professor of history at the Sorbonne, Louis Guizot, who was Minister of Public Instruction from 1832 to 36 under Louis-Phillipe and remained in government, sometimes as prime minister, until 1848. Guizot appointed a senior civil servant, an author and archaeologist, Prosper Mérimée, to restore buildings at risk. Mérimée gave the contract for the first such restoration, at SainteMarie-Madeleine at Vézelay, to a young man, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, whose name is almost synonymous with the Gothic Revival—at least so far as the French are concerned! At Vézelay Viollet-le-Duc demonstrated his own attitude towards medieval architecture, replacing the pointed Gothic vaults with twelfth-century groin vaults. It saved the church, but was the precursor to a cavalier attitude to the distinct grammar of medieval architecture, which was repeated all over France. Concerning

30 Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890, 162. 31  Hill, God’s Architect, fig. 50 top.

130

david m. wilson

r­ estoration Viollet-le-Duc wrote in 1866, “Le mot et la chose sont modernes. Restaurer un édifice, ce n’est pas l’entretenir, le réparer ou le refaire, c’est le rétablir dans un état complet qui peut n’avoir jamais existé à un moment donné” [The word and the idea are modern. To restore a building is not to maintain, repair and refresh, but to re-establish a finished state, which may never have actually existed at any given time].32 Even so, particularly in early years, he was an outspoken—even vituperative—proselytiser for the use of Gothic as the national architectural style of France.33  He was most famous for his restoration, with Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus, of Notre-Dame de Paris between 1845 and 1870, which cleared up the building and gave it a new tower. His treatment of the castle of Pierrefonds was highly controversial as it did not recreate an accurate historical situation, rather a ‘perfect building’ of a medieval style.34 In his use of different techniques and his eclectic and practical approach to architecture—particularly in his use of cast iron (which had admittedly been used frequently in the English church-building spree of 1818–36)—he is seen by many as a key figure in the development of modern architecture—and in military architecture he certainly was, as witness his influence on the frontier fortification after the siege of Paris up to the Second World War. Viollet-le Duc’s Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, published between 1854 and 1868, was as influential in France as were the earlier works of Rickman, and the Pugins in England. The English liked his technical approach and used it in many places. But many followed John Ruskin who in 1880 stated that his approach created, ‘a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered: a destruction accompanied with a false description of the thing destroyed’.35 Despite these strictures and Viollet-le-Duc’s rather arbitrary—if rational—­attitude, his influence was enormous in France and beyond. He surely influenced the Parliament building in Budapest almost as much as did Barry’s English Houses of Parliament. 32 Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, 8 (Paris, 1866), 114 [Translation by Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890, 167]. 33 Idem. “L’art national et l’art étranger” and “Du style gothique au XIXe siècle,” Annales archéologiques, 2, 1845, 503–8, and 4, 1846, 333–53. 34 Idem., Description du château de Pierrefonds (Paris, 1857); Lewis, op. cit., 140–2 and fig. 130. For photographs of the state of the château before and after the restoration: Nikolaus Pevsner, Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc; Englishness and Frenchness in the appreciation of Gothic architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 1969), figs. 28 and 29. 35 John Ruskin. The Seven Lamps of Architecture ([1880] New York, Dover Publications, 1989), 194.



the roots of medievalism in north-west europe

131

In concluding this short excursus into the neo-medieval architecture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in north-western Europe, I should say a few words about Scandinavia. And they will be very few words, for almost all the polite architecture of this period in Scandinavia is of classical inspiration. In Sweden there are one or two extra­ordinary exceptions. In the Royal Palace in Stockholm, Crown-Prince Oskar constructed and furnished a single neo-Gothic room, light and romantic in the English style.36 Dating from about 1820, it is probably the earliest piece of this style in the North. Despite the popularity of the Gothic released in Tegnér’s Gothic League (see below), and the success of a large exhibition of art in 1818, medieval taste is rarely seen in Sweden until the late 1830s and 40s. One of the earliest examples was at Jordberga Gård in Skåne, where Carl Georg Brunius designed and furnished a Gothic library very much in the English taste,37 or, as he put it, in ‘the noble medieval style’. Classical taste persisted in architecture, and it is perhaps for this reason that there was a tendency to build in a sub-medieval Romanesque style in an attempt to return to the Romantic Middle Ages, as in Lund about 1840, where Brunius built his own house.38 Although a great number of neo-Gothic buildings—particularly public buildings and minor manor houses—were constructed in Scandinavia in the second half of the century, most, apart from some churches, were dull and provincial. Built of brick, with stepped gables they follow the style of the Danish late Middle Ages. In Oslo the German architect, Alexis de Châteauneuf, together with Wilhelm von Hanno, built the Gothic Trinity Church between 1850 and 1858.39 Centrally planned in the Lutheran tradition, it is very much in the brick church-building tradition of Hamburg at this period—rather unexciting, but a major building in a commanding and prestigious position. Perhaps the most important early neo-medieval building in Scandinavia was the highly successful University Library in Copenhagen, a great brick building with neo-Gothic hall with cast-iron pillars and sub-Romanesque exterior, built by Johan Daniel Herholdt 1857–61 as the result of the first public architectural competition in Denmark (fig. 9). It was about the

36 G. Alm, et al., Karl Johanstidens konst (Lund: Signum, 1999), fig. 57. Signums svenska konsthistoria, 9. 37 Ibid., 112 and fig. 110. 38 Ibid., fig. 91. 39 Stephan Tschudi-Madsen, The Works of Alexis de Châteauneuf in London and Oslo (Oslo, 1965). Lewis, Gothic Revival, figs. 120–1.

132

david m. wilson

Fig. 9. The University Library, Copenhagen. The first major neo-medieval building in the Danish capital. Sub-Romanesque on the exterior, the main reading room is Gothic. Photo by the author.

time that this library was built that the Scandinavians began to develop and decorate objects in the National Romantic style, deeply rooted in the medieval period, but this is the subject of another study in this volume. If architecture was the most visible, public and prominent expression of medievalism in northern Europe, fiction was perhaps its most popular expression for the literate, who now had the advantage of circulating libraries to make books more cheaply available to them. The towering figure in this world was Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) (see below), whose novels were translated into many languages and turned into operas and plays, all within a short period of their publication. Of course there were other figures in northern Europe, even in England, who wrote on similar medieval themes; some writing long before Scott, but many directly influenced by him. For example, the Danish poet and hymn-writer, Bernhard Severin Ingemann, wrote four historical novels between 1826 and 1834 based on medieval kings or pretenders. Importantly, and totally independently of Scott, the greatest Danish romantic poet and playwright, A. G. Oehlenschläger, who burst on the Danish literary scene about 1803,



the roots of medievalism in north-west europe

133

wrote between that date and 1810 a series of successful dramas—Hakon Jarl, Baldur hin Gude, Palnatoke and Axel og Valborg—which helped Denmark, suffering under attack from all sides, to turn for inspiration to one of its most heroic periods, the Viking Age. In more romantic mode, a group of Swedes, led by Esaias Tegnér and Erik Gustaf Geijer, in 1811 founded the Götiska Förbundet [Gothic League], which with its journal Iduna took them back to the Viking Age and to a mythology of the past, to prehistory. It was here in 1820 that Tegnér published the first stanzas of his most successful poem, ‘Frithiof ’s saga’, based on a thirteenth-century Icelandic romance, Friðþjófs saga hins frækna, which dealt with the eighth century and clearly owed a lot to Oehlenschläger. (It is not uninteresting that Tegnér acted as sponsor when Oehlenschläger was given an honorary doctorate in Lund in 1829.) ‘Frithiof ’s saga’ was finally finished in 1825 and was praised by Goethe as, “alte, kraftige, gigantischbarbarische Dichtart;” it was translated many times into many languages, but particularly into German and English, and, set to music, it became one of the most popular song cycles of the late nineteenth century. It was indeed in the early Icelandic saga material that the neo-Gothic romantics of the turn of the century found their inspiration. Gravemounds and sacred trees, harps and drinking-horns figured largely in their painting, but also in their poetry. Tegnér, Oehlenschläger, Ling, Hertz and Grundtvig worked this rich mine and produced many popular—if sometimes rather banal—works, in which standing stones, runic-inscribed stones and grave-mounds allowed a romantic interpretation of the heroic age of the early Middle Ages. They used either folk verse or classicallyinspired metres to celebrate their new-found national romanticism, which sometimes bound all of the Scandinavian countries as one. Running as a Leitmotif through the late eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth century, was a constant discussion of the validity of using classical or northern media to express the early medieval and mythical past. As in Germany at the same period there was a perceived need to visit the past—through history and philology—to help provide nationalist— or patriotic—understanding and social cohesion in the face of external threats seated in the French Revolution and the wars which followed, up to the German conquest of Schleswig-Holstein in 1864. In Britain romantic fiction concerning the Middle Ages first properly flourished in a much less pejorative fashion and was translated into the northern European languages. Michael Alexander’s splendid book on medievalism has mined this rich source most eloquently and can hardly

134

david m. wilson

be bettered.40 The author who, above all others, stands out was Walter Scott, to whom was erected the most grandiose memorial monument to a literary man the world has ever seen. Completed in 1846, only 14 years after his death, with the placing of a Carrara marble figure of a seated Sir Walter, it is an eclectic neo-Gothic monument designed by George Mikle Kemp, based on continental architectural details, and stands 61m high, dominating one end of Princes Street in Edinburgh’s New Town.41 Scott was a lawyer, although only a moderately successful one, in the centre of the lively intellectual society of Edinburgh. He was well read and, already in the early 1790s, was working his way into medievalism, not only the medievalism of Scotland, but of the whole of Europe; but particularly he got involved in the Romanticism of Germany. So immersed was Scott in this German genre that his first published work in 1799 was a well-received translation of Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen, a melodrama which was deeply influential in Scott’s later work, elements resurfacing as late as 1819 in Ivanhoe. But Goethe was not the only German who influenced him. He was deeply influenced by more medievally-inclined poets like Bürger, whose gloomy Gothic ‘Leonore’ had been translated into an English version which so impressed Scott that he acquired a copy of the German edition. At the same time he wrote a pastiche of ‘Leonore’ and translated Bürger’s ‘Wilde Jäger’ and Goethe’s ‘Erlkönig’ into English.42 Scott considered himself primarily as a poet and published most of his novels anonymously, not revealing their authorship of the novels until 1827. He was deeply influenced by medieval poetry, particularly by Chaucer, and by ballads and romances culled from early sources (including some modern pastiches), particularly in Scotland, many of which he edited himself in the five-volume Minstrelsy of the Scottish borders. His first major published English poem, published in 1804, was a translation of the thirteenth-century romance, Sir Tristrem, which was to be followed in 1805 by his first major essay into a sort of medievalism, a long poem in five cantos entitled The Lay of the last Minstrel, which was an enormous success. It has its admirers, although I must say I cannot really stomach it! In the words of Michael Alexander, ‘Scott was a good minstrel, not a great poet’.

40 Michael Alexander, Medievalism. The Middle Ages in Modern England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007). 41  John Gifford et al., Edinburgh (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), 314–6. The buildings of Scotland. 42 See John Sutherland, The Life of Walter Scott (Oxford and Cambridge USA: Blackwell 1995), 65, 69–70.



the roots of medievalism in north-west europe

135

He was, however, a great novelist, the progenitor of the English historical novel, the most famous of his medieval novels being Ivanhoe (1819). This is still highly readable and full of suspense, despite some racist undertones which today would seem politically incorrect. The plot is well known, and has very many important triggers for British understanding of the Middle Ages. It was well researched by its antiquarian author. Not only was its history fairly accurate within the limits of the available sources and the demands of a writer of historical novels, but his descriptions of medieval realia were the result of careful research and observation. His comments on arms, armour and dress benefited not only from such books as that by Strutt on English medieval dress (1796), but also on his own collections housed in the neo-medieval house he designed for himself at Abbotsford just above the English border.43 But he pleaded for a novelist’s licence to stray from accurate detail. In his introduction to Ivanhoe he stresses his take on the medievalist vision. Presumably in apposition to the sentiments of Rickman, whose book had appeared just two years before Scott’s novel, he pleads release from . . . “the ill-deserved applause of those architects who, in their modern Gothic, do not hesitate to introduce, without rule or method, ornaments proper to different styles and to different periods of art.” It is not my place to pursue the medieval literary spin-off of Scott’s historical novels—some of which are banal in the extreme—but I cannot forbear to mention some of the more extraordinary evocations of medievalism they produced. One of the most remarkable occurred during the Coronation dinner of George IV (1824), when the hereditary King’s Champion, accompanied by the fully robed Duke of Wellington (also mounted), rode fully caparisoned into the hall and threw down his gauntlet to challenge any who might question the king’s right to the throne.44 Scott’s influence spread abroad; in 1823, for example, at a ball in Brussels, guests were asked to appear in the costume of Scott’s Ivanhoe or in twelfth-century dress. But the most amazing phenomenon was certainly the much lampooned tournament of 1839, which was mounted by the 43 Although Scott is popularly seen as the arch-proponent of the ‘Scotification’ of Scotland, he was well aware of the problems and of the sources. Attempts to align him with romantic views concerning the antiquity of the tartan, for example, are exaggerated. He was well aware of the lack of sources to support the case, and considered them fraudulent; see Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Invention of Scotland. Myth and history (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 221–2. This did not, however, lead him to discourage the King from wearing it! 44 Alexander, Medievalism, fig. 42.

136

david m. wilson

Earl of Eglinton, at vast expense on his Scottish estate in Ayreshire. Stands were erected to hold two thousand spectators, among them the future Napoleon III. Many more crowded the scene. The Queen of Beauty, an essential in any sub-Ivanhoe plot, was the Duchess of Somerset, while the Marquis of Londonderry, when caught in the rain which ruined the first day of the festivities, to the great delight of the Press, unfurled an umbrella to protect himself and his armour—which I suppose might otherwise have rusted. The latter-day knights, clad in full armour, tilted gently at each other and everybody retired happily to dream of further medieval glory.45 As a footnote it might be added that Queen Victoria’s Consort is portrayed in marble on a tomb-chest in the Albert Memorial Chapel at Windsor Castle in fully uncomfortable—almost correct—medieval armour, carved by Baron Henri de Trinqueti between 1863 and 1873.46 In the Royal Mausoleum at nearby Frogmore, where he was ultimately buried, he appears, not only recumbent as on a tomb-chest, but also as a standing figure (by William Theed the younger) together with his wife, both dressed in Anglo-Saxon costume. Summary In this short essay I have attempted to weave together three strands of the origins of medievalism: First, burgeoning nationhood in Europe. Initially this was partly based on the study of language—language being seen by many philosophers as the defining element of nationality. A spin-off of this was the quickly growing interest in early sources, which produced, for example, such great projects as the MGH and the Saga library, not to mention the English Rolls Series. Second, the propaganda of contemporary religion, deeply involved in a re-examination of its liturgical roots, which was partially, but importantly, expressed in the antiquarian study and re-adaptation of medieval architecture—particularly (but not exclusively) the Gothic. While particularly relevant to those of the Roman-Catholic persuasion, it was also taken

45 James Aikman, An account of the tournament at Eglinton, revised and corrected by several of the knights: with a biographical notice of the Eglinton family to which is prefixed a sketch of chivalry and of the most remarkable Scottish tournaments (Edinburgh: Hugh Paton, 1839). 46 Alexander, Medievalism, fig. 50.



the roots of medievalism in north-west europe

137

up—most typically in England—by Protestants. Of course neo-Gothic architecture was also used in secular contexts, be it the romanticism of Strawberry Hill, in heroic expressions of National-Romanticism, like the great Kreuzberg monument in Berlin or in the castles of the newly­confident Scottish aristocracy. The third strand is romantic nostalgia, seen not only in the secular architecture I have just referred to, but in the romantic painting of Friedrich or (later) of the Nazarenes (a subject which I have not discussed), in the philosophy of Hamann and Sturm und Drang, or in the poetry of Words­ worth and Schiller. I have concentrated on Walter Scott and to a lesser extent on Esaias Tegnér, who brought medieval heroism and chivalry to the forefront of manly virtues. I have here summarised only the origins of neo-medievalism in northwestern Europe, not its flowering in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, which I have hardly touched upon. This lies in other, more competent, hands.

Medieval and neo-medieval buildings in Scandinavia Anders Andrén Architecture in neo-historical styles as well as in restorations of historical buildings is a good guideline to the understanding of how the past in the nineteenth century was constructed. All public buildings were created and restored through complex processes of negotiations between the architects, the commissioners of the building projects, and public opinion. In this sense, neo-historical architecture and restorations mirrored historical discourses in different parts of Europe.1 This was also the case in Scandinavia during the nineteenth century. In Scandinavia the term “Middle Ages” was introduced by the Norwegian-Danish historian, author and playwright, Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754) in 1744, in his Moralske Tanker [Moral Thoughts]. Later the concept was introduced in Sweden by the historian Sven Lagerbring (1707–1787). It quickly became a conventional term for the historical period between the conversion and the reformation, i.e., from the eleventh century to the early sixteenth century.2 Compared to central Europe, it was a short Middle Ages, preceded by a pagan past common for Scandinavia as a whole. In the first half of the nineteenth century the Viking Age was first introduced as the name of this supposedly heroic and glorious common Scandinavian past, before the Middle Ages.3 The architectural remains from this short Scandinavian Middle Ages are mostly churches. In addition to churches, some castles, manor houses as well as town houses, are preserved. However, few other non-­ecclesiastical buildings have remained intact, because the dominant medieval building tradition was wooden or timber-framed constructions. Most of these buildings have been destroyed by fire, warfare and time. Only a few

1  August Reichensperger and Michael J. Lewis, The politics of the German Gothic revival (New York: Architectural History Foundation, 1993); Michael J. Lewis, The Gothic revival (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002); Kathleen Curran, The Romanesque revival. Religion, politics and transnational exchange (University Park, Penn: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003). 2 Jes Wienberg, “Metaforisk arkeologi of tingenes sprog,” Meta, medeltidsarkeologisk tidskrift, 1988 (1–2): 30–57. 3 (cf. Wilson in this publication)

140

anders andrén

­ edieval wooden buildings are preserved in the remote regions of Norm way and Sweden. Due to fact that mostly churches have been preserved from the Middle Ages the construction of the medieval past in the nineteenth century is mostly confined to churches, new and old. As in other parts of Europe, the Middle Ages were only one of several historical periods used and studied in Scandinavian architecture during the nineteenth century. Neoclassicism dominated Scandinavian architecture until the 1830s and 1840s, when new styles were introduced. Only in the 1850s and 1860s did neo-Romanesque, neo-Gothic and neo-­Renaissance styles become important architectural expressions side be side with neoclassicism. All these neo-historical styles disappeared in the early years of the twentieth century, with the introduction of Art Nouveau/Jugend.4 The diversity of historical styles meant that architects often mastered several different styles simultaneously, and mixed them into an eclecticism specific to the nineteenth century.5 Many architects were active in a variety of fields simultaneously and could preserve, restore and reconstruct old building as well as design new buildings. This ­combination of styles and activities can be illustrated in the following two Swedish cases. Carl-Georg Brunius (1792–1869) was professor of classical Greek at the University of Lund, but is sometimes called the first medieval archaeologist of Sweden. He wrote extensively about medieval architecture, and based his writings on numerous field trips and on his work restoring and reconstructing medieval churches. Additionally, he was also an architect who designed new buildings, mostly in an eclectic neo-Romanesque style.6 Helgo Zettervall (1831–1907) was a leading Swedish architect in the second half of the nineteenth century. He was commissioned with the most prestigious restorations, primarily four of the seven medieval cathedrals in present-day Sweden. Zettervall followed the principles of Viollet-le-Duc, which meant that he reconstructed what he imagined to be the intention of the original architect, rather than restoring what had eventually been realized. He thereby created an idealized Middle Ages 4 Niels-Ole Lund, Nordisk arkitektur (Copenhagen: Arkitektens forlag, 1991); Marian C. Donnally, Architecture in the Scandinavian Countries (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1992). 5 Tobias Faber, Dansk arkitektur (Copenhagen: Arkitektens forlag, 1977); Jakob Lindblad, 470 nya kyrkor. Bidrag till Sveriges arkitekturhistoria 1850–1890. Studier till Sveriges kyrkor 2 (Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet, 2009). 6 Bo Grandien, Drömmen om medeltiden. Carl Georg Brunius som byggmästare och idéförmedlare. Nordiska Museets Handlingar 82 (Stockholm: Nordiska Museet, 1974).



medieval and neo-medieval buildings in scandinavia

141

in ­large-scale ­reconstructions of the main ecclesiastical buildings of the country.7 Zettervall was also an architect who designed new buildings in a variety of eclectic historical styles. In Lund he not only reconstructed the Romanesque cathedral, but also designed the university building in a neo-Classical style, the hospital in a neo-Romanesque style, the church of All Saints in a neo-Gothic style and his own private villa in a Palladian neo-Renaissance style.8 These Swedish architects are only two examples of a common European pattern. This kind of play with history and links between restorations, reconstructions and new design can be found in Berlin as well as Vienna, Paris and London.9 Although the evocation of the past was typical in restorations, reconstructions and designs of new buildings and followed a common European pattern, there were also some interesting regional differences. This variation becomes quite clear when comparing the Scandinavian countries. Norway Since the end of the fourteenth century Norway had been a part of the Scandinavian union, and after the dissolution of this union in the early sixteenth century the country became an integrated part of the Danish kingdom. In the wake of the Napoleonic wars Norway declared its independence in 1814, but was forced into a union with Sweden, after a short war based on the peace treaty of Kiel. The union with Sweden officially included a common king and a common foreign policy, but internally, Norway created a new administration and state organization of its own. After a serious political crisis with Sweden, the country eventually became independent in 1905.10 One of the main goals in nineteenth-century Norway was to define a Norwegian national identity in the emerging state. Many intellectuals were reluctant towards Danish and Swedish influences, as well as to ­common   7 Göran Lindahl and Anders Åman, Helgo Zettervall 1831–1907 (Stockholm: Sveriges arkitekturmuseum, 1966).   8 Ragnar Blomqvist, Lunds stadsbild (Lund: Inventeringskommittén, 1968).   9 Göran Kåring, När medeltidens sol gått ned. Debatten om byggnadsvård i England, Frankrike och Tyskland 1815–1914 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1992). 10 Øystein Sørensen, “Det nye Norge i det nye Norden 1814–1850,” in Max Engman and Åke Sundström (eds.), Det nya Norden efter Napoleon, Stockholm Studies in History 73 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2004), 55–78; Bo Stråth, Union och demokrati. De förenade rikena Sverige och Norge 1814–1905 (Stockholm: Nya Doxa, 2005).

142

anders andrén

Fig. 1. Stave church from Gol, dated to the 12th century. The church was moved to Kristiania (Oslo) and reconstructed in 1884 at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History. Photo by the author (2009).



medieval and neo-medieval buildings in scandinavia

143

Scandinavian sentiments.11 Since the written language in Norway had been Danish, discussions started already in 1815 to create a Norwegian written language. Finally two standard forms of written Norwegian were created, one based on the administration in Kristiania (Oslo) and the other based on old dialects in the remote valleys of western Norway. The rural “new Norwegian” was more similar to the language of early medieval Norway, and became the second official language of Norway in 1885.12 This new archaic language was one aspect of a retrospective trend towards trying to link the emerging new country with the Viking age and the early and high Middle Ages. This period was the “golden age” of the medieval Norwegian kingdom, in many respects more firmly organized than Denmark and Sweden at that time. This period is also historically well-known, due to the Icelandic chieftain and poet Snorri Stur­luson, who wrote the history of the Norwegian kings in his Heimskringla, from the early thirteenth century. A suitable national heritage from this period was the Norwegian stave churches from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (fig. 1). They were preserved in the same distant valleys where the old dialects were spoken. And they represented a unique public architecture, without parallels in Denmark and Sweden. Although some of the stave churches were pulled down in the nineteenth century, there were also measures to preserve and restore them. At the same time, the first scholarly studies of this unique national heritage were carried out.13 Apart from the stave churches, Romanesque and early Gothic masonry architecture were also of scholarly interest. These buildings represented the independent Norwegian kingdom as well, and the style of the main churches underlined links with the British Isles, and not with Denmark, Sweden or Germany. Many

11  H. Arnold Barton, Sweden and Visions of Norway. Politics and Culture 1814–1905 (Carbondale & Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003); Sørensen, “Det nye Norge,” 55–78; Ruth Hemstad, “Nordisk samklang med politiske dissonanser. Skandinavisme og skandianvisk samarbeid på 1800–tallet,” in Max Engman & Åke Sundström (eds.), Det nya Norden efter Napoleon, Stockholm Studies in History 73 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2004), pp. 187–227; Rasmus Glenthøj, En moderne nations fødsel. Norsk national identifikation hos embedsmænd og borgere 1807–1820 (Odense: Syddansk universitetsforlag, 2008). 12 Einar Haugen, Riksmål of folkemål. Norsk språkpolitikk i det 20. Århundre (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1966); Sørensen, “Det nye Norge,” 55–78. 13 Lorentz Dietrichsen, De norske stavkirker. Studier over deres system, oprindelse of historiske udvikling. Et bidrag till Norges middelalderske bygningskunsts historie (Kristiania & Copenhagen: Albert Cammermeyers forlag, 1892); cf. Peter Anker, De norske stavkirker (Bergen: Universitetet i Bergen, 1979).

144

anders andrén

Fig. 2. St John’s church in Bergen, built in 1888–94. Drawing by Herman Major Backer. Photo by Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide (2013).



medieval and neo-medieval buildings in scandinavia

145

of the stone churches were successively restored during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.14 A good example is the archbishop’s cathedral in Trondheim, which had partly collapsed. The rebuilding started in 1869 but was not concluded until the reconstruction of the nave and the west towers were completed in the second part of the twentieth century.15 The neo-historical styles in Norway varied according to their historical background. The medieval stave churches served as inspiration for a specific dragon style, used for railway stations, villas, hotels and some churches.16 Otherwise, eclectic neo-Romanesque and neo-Gothic styles were used for many of the new churches built in the expanding cities, such as the neo-Romanesque churches at Frogner and Grønland in Kristiania (Oslo) and the neo-Gothic churches of St. John in Bergen (fig. 2) and St. Paul in Kristiania (Oslo).17 Both of these historical styles could evoke a link to the independent medieval Norway. Denmark Denmark was for a long time the main political power in Scandinavia, but it gradually became less powerful and the small country eventually had to redefine its national identity. The loss of Norway in 1814, and above all the loss of Schleswig to Prussia in 1864, forced a redefinition of the country and its history. After the defeat in 1864, the archaeologist J. J. A. Worsaae (1821–1885) wrote that the national glory had to be traced in the history and prehistory of the country. The main issue was to define a national Danish identity away from everything that was German.18 In the 1830s and 1840s many Danes and Swedes developed a common Scandinavianism as a political defense against Prussia and Russia, but after

14 Harry Fett, Norges kirker i Middelalderen (Kristiania: Albert Cammermeyers forlag, 1909); cf. Øystein Ekroll, Med kleber og kalk. Norsk steinbygging i mellomalderen (Oslo: Norske Samlaget, 1997). 15 Gerhard Fischer, Nidaros domkirke. Gjenreisning i 100 år, 1869–1969 (Oslo: Areschoug, 1969). 16 (cf. Wilson in this publication) 17 Odd Brochmann, Bygget i Norge. En arkitekturhistorisk beretning. Bind 2. Fra 1814 til etterkrigstiden (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1981). 18 Vagn Skovgaard-Petersen, Danmarks historie. Bind 5, tiden 1814–1864 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1985); Lorenz Rerup, Danmarks historie. Bind 6, tiden 1864–1914 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1989); Steen Bo Frandsen, “Det nya Norden efter Napoleon,” in Max Engman and Åke Sundström (eds.), Det nya Norden efter Napoleon. Stockholm Studies in History 73 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2004), 19–54.

146

anders andrén

Fig. 3. Restored early Romanesque wall paintings in the church at Jelling in central Jutland. Jelling was an important early medieval royal site, and the wall paintings were discovered, recorded and restored in 1874–5. Photo by the author (2008).



medieval and neo-medieval buildings in scandinavia

147

1864, the movement developed a more cultural profile.19 The creation of a common heritage in the Viking Age was part of this ­Scandinavianism.20 However, over time, a more narrowly defined Danish national identity was also constructed on the basis of the golden imperial age of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. During this time Denmark was a Baltic empire, having conquered northern Germany, including Lübeck, the Western Slavonic region and Estonia. Many of the events during this period are known through Gesta Danorum, written by Saxo Grammaticus around 1200. This history was retold for the general public in 1898 by the influential Danish historian Kristian Erslev, in Valdermarernes storhedstid [The great epoch of the Valdemarian kings]. The twelfth and early thirteenth centuries were well represented by large and small Romanesque churches all over Denmark. They could serve as suitable national heritage for several reasons. In fact, Romanesque architecture, stone sculptures, wall paintings and inventories are nowhere else in Scandinavia so well preserved as in Denmark (fig. 3). Some direct links can be found between the churches and the people mentioned by Saxo Grammaticus, for instance the archbishop Absalon, who founded a Cistercian monastery in Sorø in 1161, and took an active part in the conquest of Rügen in 1168. Some of the monuments, especially early brick buildings, as well as wall paintings and sculptures also reflected influences from the Rhineland, Lombardy, France and England. From that perspective the national heritage seemed independent of Prussia, which was the contemporary political threat.21 However, there are also many Gothic churches or churches rebuilt during the Gothic period in Denmark, especially in the medieval towns. These buildings were not noted to the same extent as the Romanesque churches, because the Gothic churches represented the late Middle Ages, a time dominated by the Hanseatic League and German merchants. Because the Gothic churches were regarded as expressions of German domination, above all a preferred Romanesque heritage was studied, preserved and restored during the nineteenth century. The monuments from the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries seemed to mirror the glorious past of the great Valdemarian kings.22 19  Hemstad, “Nordisk samklang,” 187–227. 20 (cf. Wilson in this publication) 21  Francis Beckett, Danmarks Kunst I–II (Copenhagen: Koppel, 1924–26). 22 Beckett, Danmarks Kunst; Mouritz Mackeprang, Vore landsbykirker. En oversigt (Copenhagen: A.F. Høst and søn, 1944); cf. Jes Wienberg, Den gotiske labyrint. Middelalderen

148

anders andrén

Fig. 4. St. Andreas’ church in Copenhagen. The church, which was built in 1898–1901 after design by Martin Borck, is one of the best examples of a Danish neo-Romanesque style, developed via thorough studies of Romanesque brick churches in Denmark. Photo by the author (2010).



medieval and neo-medieval buildings in scandinavia

149

The Romanesque cathedral of Viborg was totally rebuilt in 1864–76. Only the crypt survives from the original building, whereas all the other parts of the church were pulled down and rebuilt in a pure Romanesque style.23 Many other churches were also restored and partly rebuilt in the nineteenth century. Romanesque paintings were recovered and sometimes repainted, while granite sculptures from the churches in Jutland started to be documented.24 The same stylistic preferences are also visible in the neo-historical styles. Although eclecticism prevailed, the neo-Romanesque style was clearly dominant, above all in many of the new churches built when Copenhagen expanded beyond its old urban limits, for example, St. Paul, St. Stefan and St. Andreas (fig. 4). The supposed Lombardic background of medieval brick architecture was expressed in neo-Lombard churches, good examples being Christ church and Jesus church in Copenhagen. In a few cases a neo-Byzantine style was used, as in the design of the city hospital in Copenhagen.25 In contrast to Norway and particularly Sweden, the neo-Gothic style never acquired a story position among the neo-medieval styles in Denmark, due to its German associations.26 One of the few exceptions is St. Alban’s church in Copenhagen, which was deliberately designed in an English neo-Gothic style.27 Sweden Sweden witnessed a late and slow state formation, compared to Denmark and Norway. There are no early chronicles comparable to Snorri’s Heimskringla or Saxo’s Gesta Danorum, which means that very little is known about the early history of the country. Sweden was part of the Scandinavian union from the end of the fourteenth century, but following successive wars with Denmark it became an independent state again in the early sixteenth century. During the seventeenth century Sweden og kirkerne i Danmark, Lund Studies in Medieval Archaeology 11 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1993). 23 Jens Vellev, Viborg domkirke. Nedrevet og genrejst. Fotografier 1863–1876 (Højbjerg: Hikuin, 1976). 24 Faber, Dansk arkitektur, 144. 25 Ida Haugsted, Nye tider. Historicisme i København (Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk forlag Arnold Busck, 2003). 26 Harald Langberg, Danmarks bygningskultur II (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1955), p. 144. 27 Sixten Ringbom, Stone, style and truth. The vogue for natural stone in Nordic architecture 1880–1910 (Helsinki: Finska fornminnesföreningen 91, 1987), 52.

150

anders andrén

Fig. 5. The cathedral in Uppsala. The church, which is the largest medieval building in Scandinavia, was built in 1273–1435 after a master plan by the French stonemason Etienne de Bonneuil. In 1886–93 the church was restored and externally reconstructed in a neo-Gothic style, after a design by Helgo Zettervall. Photo by the author (2010).

became a ­Baltic empire, after conquering Estonia, Latvia, parts of northern Germany and several old Danish and Norwegian provinces. However, Sweden gradually lost its importance after several military defeats in the eighteenth century and after a final defeat against Russia in 1809, when Finland being one half of the realm was lost. Although the loss of Finland was partly compensated for by the union of Norway in 1814, Sweden had to fundamentally redefine its national identity during the nineteenth century. The bishop and poet Esaias Tegnér wrote that Sweden had to reconquer Finland within the new limits of the country after the defeat of 1809.28

28 Göran Behre, Lars Olof Larsson and Eva Österberg, Sveriges historia 1521–1809. Stormaktsdröm och småstatsrealiteter (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1991); Lars-Arne Norborg, Sveriges historia under 1800-och 1900-talen. Svensk samhällsutveckling 1809–1996 (Stockholm: Almqvst & Wiksell, 1995); Åke Sundström, “Sverige 1809–1864,” in Max Eng-



medieval and neo-medieval buildings in scandinavia

151

In the redefinition of Swedish national identity, Finland was more or less excluded from Swedish history. Instead, a Scandinavian identity was developed by Swedish and Danish intellectuals in the 1830s, as a response to the Russian and Prussian threats. The political aspects of this Scandinavianism did not survive the Danish defeat in 1864, but a more culturally defined Scandinavian identity continued to be nourished. One aspect of this Scandinavian identity was the common Viking heritage.29 However, as in Denmark, a more narrowly defined national identity was also developed in Sweden, but paradoxically this identity was directed towards the old archenemy Denmark. The national Swedish identity was primarily focused on the resurrection of the independent Swedish state in 1523, and on the supposedly heroic struggle for independence against the Danish kings in the fifteenth and early sixteenth century.30 This period was well illuminated by chronicles, which meant that historical persons and monuments could be linked, thereby underlining a national heritage. The late Middle Ages are well represented in central Sweden, in and around Stockholm.31 Churches, wall paintings and alter pieces from the late Gothic period survive in central Sweden to a much greater extent than in other parts of Scandinavia (fig. 5). This historical heritage began to be studied at the same time as the main cathedrals and town churches were rebuilt and partly reconstructed in a pure Gothic style by architects such as Helgo Zettervall. Exceptions from this chronological pattern come mainly from the Old Danish province of Skåne. The cathedral of Lund as well as some of the parish churches were restored and partly reconstructed during the nineteenth century, in a Romanesque style following the pattern of Denmark.32 The main preference for the late Middle Ages in Sweden is, however, clear from the neo-historical styles. Although many small churches were designed in eclectic styles,33 and some buildings have a clear man and Åke Sundström (eds.), Det nya Norden efter Napoleon, Stockholm Studies in History 73 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2004), 119–149. 29 Sundström, “Sverige”; Hemstad, “Nordisk samklang”; cf. Wilson in this publication. 30 Sune Rudnert, I historiemålarens verkstad. Carl Gustav Hellqvist—liv och verk (Lund: Lund University Press, 1991); Mia Geijer, Makten over monumenten. Restaurering av Vasaslott 1850–2000. Nordiska Museets handlingar 132 (Stockholm: Nordiska Museets förlag, 2007). 31  Margareta Kempff Östlind, (ed.), Södermanland—landskapets kyrkor (Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet, 2003); Ingrid Sjöström and Ulf Sporrong (eds), Uppland—landskapets kyrkor. (Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet, 2004). 32 Siegrun Fernlund, “Ett Herranom värdigt temple”. Kyrkorivningar och kyrkobyggen i Skåne 1812–1912 (Lund: University of Lund, 1982). 33 Lindblad, 470 nya kyrkor, 231.

152

anders andrén

Fig. 6. The neo-Gothic church of St John in Stockholm. It was built in 1883–1890 after a design by Carl Möller. Photo by the author (2013).



medieval and neo-medieval buildings in scandinavia

153

­ eo-Romanesque touch, most large churches in Sweden were neo-Gothic. n This style evoked the heroic history of the country, but could also reflect the independent medieval cities when constructed in urban contexts. Many new urban churches were built in a neo-Gothic style, such as the cathedral in Luleå, the town churches in Sundsvall, Jönköping, Lysekil and Eslöv as well as the Haga church in Gothenburg and St. John’s church in Stockholm (fig. 6).34 This neo-Gothic style evolved into a specific Swedish neo-medieval style, especially when used in rural contexts. In the former Danish and Norwegian provinces, Skåne, Halland and Bohuslän, most medieval parish churches had a Romanesque core. However, many of these churches were torn down in the nineteenth century, and replaced by large neoGothic buildings, for example at Asmundtorp, Billinge, Håslöv, Maglarp and Västra Vram in Skåne.35 This rebuilding was clearly connected with attempts by the Swedish church to address the beginning secularization of society, by choosing an architecture that evoked a Christian golden age.36 However, in contrast to the neo-historical style in Denmark, the neo-Gothic style also seems to have reinforced a Swedish grand narrative, about the late medieval struggle for independence from Denmark. From that perspective, the rural neo-Gothic churches can be looked upon as a way of incorporating the former Danish and Norwegian provinces into a Swedish national discourse. Finland Finland had been a part of Sweden since the crusades, conquest and colonization in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. After the peace treaty in 1809, Finland became a fairly independent part of the Russian empire, as a grand duchy under the Russian tsar. This new Russian province included a small Swedish-speaking minority along the coasts and a large 34 Henning Repetzky. Västsvenska kyrkor från nygotikens storhetstid. Göteborgsarkitekten Adrian C. Petersons kyrkoarkitektur (Varberg: Länsstyrelsen Halland, 2008); Lindblad, 470 nya kyrkor. 35 Fernlund, “Et Herranom”; Ringbom, Stone, Style and Truth; Repetzky, Västsvenska kyrkor; Lindblad, 470 nya kyrkor. 36 Benkt Olén, Rymlighetens evangelium. Helgo Zettervall som kyrkoarkitekt i Lunds stift i ljuset av samtida kyrkoliv (Lund: Lunds universitet, 1987); Jes Wienberg, “Kirkerne og befolkningen i Ystadområdet,” in Hans Andersson and Mats Anglert (eds.), By, huvudgård och kyrka. Studier i Ystadsområdets medeltid, Lund Studies in Medieval Archaeology 5 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1989), 243–264.

154

anders andrén

Fig. 7. The medieval church at Nousiainen, dated to the 15th century. Nousiainen, according to the missionary legend, was the first Christian site in Finland, and inside the church is a late medieval sarcophagus of the apostle of Finland, St. Henrik. Photo by the author (1987).

Finnish-speaking majority in the interior, including some Russian officials and regiments. Based on Swedish models, an internal administrative organization was established in the nineteenth century. Finland became an independent state in 1917, in the wake of the Russian revolution.37 The central issue in Finland during the nineteenth century was to survive politically as a relatively independent part of the Russian empire, and to define this new region culturally. Swedish had been the official administrative written language, although the New Testament, Luther’s catechism and prayer books were translated into Finnish by the middle of the sixteenth century. After 1809 a new Finnish national identity was defined by the Finnish language and oral culture, partly in opposition to the old Swedish ruling elite. Finnish became an official administrative written language in 1863, successively replacing Swedish as the main written communication.38 37 Max Engman and David Kirby (eds.), Finland. People, nation, state (London: Hurst, 1989); Max Engman, “Storfurstendömet Finland—national stat och imperiedel,” in Max Engman & Åke Sundström (eds.), Det nya Norden efter Napoleon, Stockholm Studies in History 73 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2004), 150–186. 38 Engman, “Storfurstendömet Finland.”



medieval and neo-medieval buildings in scandinavia

155

The discovery of the Finno-Ugric language group meant that Finnish could be historically connected to a distant past in the east with other Finno-Ugric speaking populations in the Russian empire. Kalevala, as a Finnish national epos, was created in the 1840s by Elias Lönnrot, after recording old songs in Karelia. Later, anthropological expeditions were sent to the Urals and further east, in search of more “original” Finno-Ugric speaking tribes.39 Since no architectural models were found in these Finno-Ugric contexts, the Finnish identity was mostly based on an immaterial cultural heritage, such as language and oral culture. This immaterial heritage could in itself inspire artistic expressions, for instance, Lemminkäinen’s mother (1897) painted by Akseli Gallen-Kallela after a story in Kalevala.40 In contrast to the Finno-Ugric oral culture, the medieval monumental heritage in Finland was basically late Gothic churches from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries (fig. 7). They represented a distinct heritage of the Swedish rule, and evoked the old western connections. However, most of them were left without major restorations during the nineteenth century.41 The neo-historical styles in Finland were diverse, mirroring the political challenges and mixed national identities of the Russian province. Neoclassicism was prevalent in Finland, above all in Helsinki, which was rebuilt as the capital of the grand duchy after a general plan by the German-born architect Carl Ludwig Engel (1778–1840). His main neo-classical monuments in Helsinki were the university, the guildhall, the senate house and the cathedral.42 Although neoclassicism was popular in the whole of Europe, the systematic rebuilding of Helsinki created a small version of St. Petersburg, thereby linking Finland to the new political centre in the east.

39 Derek Fewster, Visions of Past Glory. Nationalism and the Construction of Early Finnish History (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2006); cf. Ildikó Lehtinen and Jukka Kukkonen (eds.) The Great Bear. Old photographs of the Volga-Finnic, Permian Finnic and Ob-Ugrian peoples (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 1980). 40 Juha Ilvas and Leena Ahtola-Morrhouse (eds.), Akseli Gallen-Kallela (Helsinki: Ateneum, 1996). 41  Markus Hiekkanen, The stone churches of the medieval diocese of Turku. A systematic classification and chronology (Helsinki: Finska fornminnesföreningen 101, 1994). 42 James Maude Richards, 800 Years of Finnish Architecture (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1978).

156

anders andrén

Fig. 8. The Uspenski Russian Orthodox cathedral in Helsinki, built in 1862–68, after a design by Alexey Gornostaev. Photo by Markus Hiekkanen (2012).

Among the neo-medieval styles, the neo-Romanesque style was not used, because historically no Romanesque churches existed in Finland. Instead neo-Gothic churches or eclectic churches with neo-Gothic touches were built, for example, the church of Holy Trinity in Vaasa, St. Michael’s church in Turku and the town church in Loviisa. They could evoke a Swedish past, but above all they were expressions of the Lutheran Finnish church within the Orthodox Russian empire. In contrast to these neo-Gothic churches, the small Russian population in Finland had Orthodox churches built in a neoclassic or a neo-Orthodox style, such as the churches in Turku and Vaasa, and the Uspenski cathedral in Helsinki (fig. 8). Only with the National Romanticism movement in the early twentieth century did a specific—and rather austere—Finnish architecture in granite evolve for monumental buildings.43

43 Richards, 800 Years; Ringbom, Stone, style and truth.



medieval and neo-medieval buildings in scandinavia

157

Later Developments The play of neo-historical styles in architecture ended in Scandinavia at the beginning of the twentieth century. Instead of a virtuous play with the past, new styles such as Art Nouveau or Jugend linked architecture with nature. In all of the Scandinavian countries modernistic architecture was well established in the 1930s, leading to a more radical break with old neo-historical styles.44 Simultaneously, with the introduction of modern architecture, the concept behind restorations changed. After fierce criticism of the idealized reconstructions of the nineteenth century,45 new principles of restoration work were introduced at the beginning of the twentieth century. Instead of trying to reconstruct the original idea, restorations accounted for the real and often complex history of a building. One of the first examples of these new principles is the restoration of the cathedral in Strängnäs in central Sweden in 1907–1910. Chronologically different parts of the building were preserved, while some older phases were hinted at through visible traces in the fabric.46 These new restoration principles defined historical monuments more as a historical resource and less as a playful gesture to the past. This changed perspective was also expressed through the first plans of the systematic publication of medieval monuments. Inspired by the German Kunstdenk­ mäler, a corpus of all churches in Sweden, (Sveriges Kyrkor) began to be published in 1912. Similar series started in Denmark in 1933 and subsequently in Norway and Finland.47 The new perspectives on historical monuments also led to a first real interest in profane medieval buildings. Medieval wooden houses in Sweden and Norway were preserved and restored.48 Masonry houses in medieval towns were also protected and restored. The most radical change occurred in Stockholm, when a plan from the 1860s to rebuild the whole medieval city centre of Stockholm (Gamla Stan) was finally abandoned around 1900. 44 Lund, Nordisk arkitektur; Donnally, Architecture. 45 Verner von Heidenstam, Modern barbarism (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1894). 46 Erik Bohrn, Strängnäs domkyrka. Södermanland 1: 2. Sveriges kyrkor 124 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1968), 436. 47 Marian Ullén (ed.), Från romanik till nygotik. Studier i kyrklig konst och arkitektur tillägnade Evald Gustafsson (Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet, 1992), 195. 48 Arne Berg, Norske tømmerhus frå mellomalderen. Bind 1, allment oversyn (Oslo: Lantbruksforlaget, 1989).

158

anders andrén Conclusion

This short survey of architecture and historical identity in Scandinavia during the nineteenth century touches upon three different issues. Firstly, the Middle Ages was only one of several periods used in the public historical discourse. Neo-Romanesque and neo-Gothic were used simultaneously with the Viking dragon style, Neoclassicism and neo-Renaissance. Secondly, different periods of the Middle Ages were used in the building of national identities in each Scandinavian country. The choice of style in restorations and reconstructions as well as in new designed buildings specifically emphasized the most glorious part of the past in each respective country, often in contrast to the specific political threats in the world of the nineteenth century. Thirdly, in every country, different periods of the past were emphasized, making it possible to evoke a golden age specific to each country. However, these constructions were not based on free fantasies. Instead they were realistically based on prominent material remains from distinct historical periods. The stave churches in Norway, the Romanesque churches in Denmark, and the late Gothic churches in Sweden, were each unique from a Scandinavian perspective. Nevertheless, using a cultural heritage from certain periods of the past, and not other periods, meant that a conscious choice of the past was used in the construction of national identities.

Restoration as an Expression of Art History in Nineteenth-Century Hungary Ernő Marosi Reconstruction and restoration are two key concepts affecting monuments as both aesthetic subjects and as historical sources of art history. They are closely correlated, but while reconstruction does not mean physical activity exclusively, restoration is always a technical intervention, in contrast primarily to the simple conservation of artifacts. There is no art history without reconstruction in an intellectual sense, at least in the sense of placing the monument into its supposed “original” context of person, age, and function. Art history has also contributed to the possibilities of putting artworks into an artificial context of historical evolution (styles) beginning in the late eighteenth century and on through the nineteenth. Only later, at the beginning of the twentieth century, did this unreflected approach to the relics of the past end. The methodological distinction between conservation and restoration in the preservation of historical monuments made intellectual reconstruction the legitimate operation and restoration a dangerous one. This paper deals with the period before this distinction was made. This was the first period of Hungarian art history, when its institutions were formed. In the course of another research project at Collegium Budapest it was called the “musealization” process, i.e., the process of considering artworks, in private and public collections and immovable buildings, monuments of universal or national history.1 Defining Historical Monuments The definition of historical monuments in nineteenth-century Hungary was a subject closely related to the foundation of the institutions of national culture (and the renewal of the Hungarian language), such as the National Theatre, the Hungarian Learned Society/Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the Széchényi Library/Hungarian National Museum). This 1 Ernő Marosi, “Introduction,” The Nineteenth-Century Process of “Musealization” in ­ ungary and Europe, eds. Ernő Marosi, Gábor Klaniczay and Ottó Gecser Collegium BudaH pest Workshop Series No. 17, (Budapest: Collegium Budapest, 2006) 11–7.

160

ernő marosi

process can be more precisely defined by political and social concepts than by stylistic terms, e.g., Classicism or Romanticism. Recent publications about the early history of private and public collecting and the associated institutions, including the evolution from antiquarianism to modern disciplines of scholarship, have contributed a great deal to the knowledge of their goals and ideal backgrounds. Various manifestoes and programmatic declarations are among the sources of primary importance for this period. The text entitled Imploring in Favour of Hungarian Antiquities was published by Miklós Jankovich as an editor’s note in the 1818 issue of the scholarly review Tudományos Gyűjtemény.2 The editor examined the description and illustration of Hungarian antiquities (including epigraphic monuments, written and early printed texts) as witnessing “the diligence of the nation, its scholarly and military merits, and therefore its honour and fame.” The goals of the article were twofold: to promote the publication of relics of the past, and to use them to glorify the nation, conceived in the sense of the estate of nobility. Jankovich’s collection, which was sold to the National Museum in 1832 as the first and defining enlargement of its art collection, was based on the same principles. Besides “national” anti­ quities, including relics associated with the history of the nation at home or abroad, Jankovich also classified universal items (“of the Greek, Roman or barbarian nations”). As the first important item on the agenda, he wished to document two important medieval churches, Kassa (Kaschau, Košíce) and Zágráb (Agram, Zagreb), in drawings. In fact, no such drawings were ever published, but these two Gothic churches were the subjects of important restorations in the late nineteenth century and the early publication by Imre Henszlmann in 1846, dedicated to the Gothic churches of Kassa, can be considered the fulfillment of Jankovich’s wish. The task of demonstrating the magnificence and glory of the nation in the past, together with the publication of its monuments, informed ideas of competing with more civilized nations as early as the Call in the matter of Hungarian monuments to all Hungarians concerned about national honor, the first official program for the preservation of historical monuments, published in 1847 by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and

2 Miklós Jankovich, “Esedezés a magyar régiségek iránt,” Tudományos Gyűjtemény 12 (1818): 121–3; re-edited: in Ernő Marosi, ed., A magyar művészettörténet-írás programjai. Válogatás két évszázad írásaiból [Programs of Hungarian art history. Selected writings from two centuries], ed. (Budapest: Corvina 1999), 15–7.



restoration as an expression of art history

161

signed by its secretary general, Ferenc Schedel (Toldy).3 In spite of similar argumentation, which can be considered rather as a publicity technique, its initiators, both Hungarian propagators of art history, Ferenc Pulszky and Imre Henszlmann, at this time had a concept opposed to that of Jankovich. They presented modern ideas about the universal evolution of art with a strong emphasis on the historical role of medieval art as well as with a belief in the cultural importance of artworks and monuments for improving the cultural conditions of the nation. Pulszky propagated his ideas in his essay About the Influence of Antiquities on Modern Art published in 1841, which followed his 1838 remarks About the Usefulness of Art Collections, published in the same year as Henszlmann’s Parallel between Artistic Views and Education in Antiquity and the New Age.4 For both authors, art was not a medium of the vanished historical glory of the nobility but an instrument of education for the nation, including the masses of the third estate. At the time, the foundation of an independent academy of fine arts was considered a necessary condition of national culture, but Henszlmann refused the academic education system and voted for training based on historically systematized collections containing both originals and copies (prints, artistic and mechanical copies, e.g., gesso casts). Pulszky also stressed the importance of artists’ training in workshops, followed by travel abroad. The preservation of historical relics in museums and in situ was part of their reform proposal. The 1847 Call of the Academy established the basic parameters for the protection of the monuments, such as their conservation and renovation and also their publication in illustrated works for the learned world of both scholars and artists. This seemingly coincides with Jankovich’s goal of publishing books for the use of connoisseurs, but the text goes a step further towards historicism, quoting the example of foreign nations whose historical relics were not only studied by connoisseurs and scholars but also resuscitated “by the miracle of poesy.” This was a program of historicism, which served as a basis for the monument policy of the Hungarian institutions for the preservation of monuments up to the late nineteenth century. There was an inherent contradiction between the tradition of the glorious past and modern ideas of artistic evolution. 3 “Felszólítás minden, a nemzeti becsületet szívén viselő magyarhoz a hazai műemlékek ügyében” [Call in the matter of Hungarian monuments to all Hungarians concerned about National Honor], Magyar Academiai Értesítő VII, Nr. II, February 1847, v–xi, re-edited: in Marosi, Programs, 30 ff. 4 See Marosi, Programs, 331–3.

162

ernő marosi

This contrast between the universalist concept of early art historiography of the mid- nineteenth century and a monument policy based on the cult of national history became explicit from the 1850s. The independent revolutionary government of 1848/49 could not follow the 1847 Call for organizational measures during the war with Austria, thus the first institutional structure for the official inventarisation and preservation of historical monuments in Hungary was established by the Austrian state authorities during the absolutist rule of the 1850s. The activity of the Austrian Central-Commission zur Erforschung und Erhaltung der Baudenkmale was based on a universalist principle of general evolution in the lands of the Austrian Empire, of the Gesamtmonarchie, and the first head, Eitelberger, proposed the same theoretical framework for Hungarian monuments, which in many cases he described and introduced into the international scholarly literature for the first time.5 However, these contradictory ideas of Austrian universalism and Hungarian art historical “separatism” which became highly influential in the future had the same roots, since Eitelberger’s evolutionary concept went back to the same doctrines of the court medailleur and great connoisseur Joseph Daniel Boehm and his Hungarian pupils, Henszlmann and Pulszky. They—and especially Henszlmann—embedded the medieval monuments in Hungary within a general process of the evolution of art more than, e.g., their contemporary, Arnold Ipolyi, who considered them mainly as relics of national cultural history in the background of the history of Hungarian society. At the end of absolutist rule (the authority of the Central-Commission ceased in 1861) Hungarian institutions returned to the concept expressed in the 1847 declaration, which was also published in 1859 in enlarged form. The additional text includes the program of the Archaeological Commission of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences founded in 1858, and a list of the competent disciplines, including archaeology (in the original sense without any distinction between archaeology and art history), epigraphy, numismatics, sphragistics, and heraldic studies. Two branches of the activities of the commission were foreseen in the program: First, proper national archaeology was defined as “the past of the nation,” i.e., not by stylistic periods, but chronologically up to the peace of Szatmár of 1711 (marking the end of Rákóczi’s war of independence). In this way, the

5 For the activities and the influence of the Viennese Central-Commission see numerous contributions by Edit Szentesi and mainly her summarizing essay “Die Anfänge der institutionellen Denkmalpflege in Ungarn (Die 1850–1860er Jahre),” in Marosi, Klaniczay and Gecser, The Nineteenth-Century Process of “Musealization”, 235–48.



restoration as an expression of art history

163

spectrum was extended to Late Renaissance and Early Baroque artworks, which were apparently contrasted to the stylistic choice focused on the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Second, general archaeology was to be mainly concerned with the history of Hungary and its territory. Collaboration with the National Museum and purchases for its collection were also foreseen. The 1847 Call was published again in the first volume of the series Archaeologiai Közlemények [Publications in Archaeology], which was the first publication of the Commission, followed since 1868 by the periodical Archaeologiai Értesítő. After 1861, when the control of the Vienna Central-Commission for Hungary ended, the Archaeological Committee played an important role in the interim period until the organization of an independent official monuments’ preservation office. The legislative preparation was begun immediately after the 1867 compromise with Austria, but a Provisory Commission of Historical Monuments, headed by Imre Henszlmann, was only founded in 1872. The National Commission replacing the provisory one was finally founded on the basis of the first law concerning historical monuments in 1881.6 The opposition between universal art historical interests and domestic traditions as well as the strong emphasis on national representation—together with ideal and stylistic preferences for historicism—became fundamental characteristics of the Hungarian preservation of monuments. Alois Riegl remarked on monument values in a short sentence in his fundamental study of 1903. He characterized the Hungarian law as “dictated by the interests of state egoism”—as were the laws of Greece, France and the Papal State.7 Defining what to Preserve The definition of the group of monuments to be preserved in terms of art history (historical styles) appeared relatively late, with the ­introduction of 6 Gyula Forster, “A műemlékek védelme a magyar kormány visszaállítása óta, 1867– 1902” [The protection of monuments since the restitution of the Hungarian government], Magyarország Műemlékei 1 (1905): 7–9; Miklós Horler, “Az intézményes műemlékvédelem kezdetei Magyarországon (1872–1922)” [The beginning of institutional protection of monuments in Hungary, 1872–1922), in István Bardoly and Andrea Haris, eds., A magyar műemlékvédelem korszakai. Tanulmányok [The periods of the preservation of historical monuments in Hungary, Studies], (Budapest: OMVH, 1996), 79–91; István Bardoly and Pál Lővei, “The First Steps for Listing Monuments in Hungary, Marosi, Klaniczay and Gecser, The Nineteenth-Century Process of “Musealization”, 249–258. 7 Kunstwerk oder Denkmal? Alois Riegls Schriften zur Denkmalpflege, ed. Ernst Bacher, (Wien-Köln-Weimar: Böhlau, 1995), 102.

164

ernő marosi

art historical studies in the middle of the 19th century. In the first period of romantic historicism, medieval style was rather undifferentiated, characterized in a summary way as “Gothic.” On the 1828 altarpiece showing the Baptism of King St. Stephen of Hungary, painted by János Mihály Hesz for the high altar of Esztergom cathedral, then under construction, this image of the highest local and national interest was placed in a Gothic church interior. Although the painting was greatly praised by contemporaries—among them the man of letters Ferenc Kazinczy—it was later destroyed, and only a small 1825 preparatory version (now in the Catholic parish in Balatonfüred, Fig. 1) witnesses that the original church interior corresponded to the interior of the St. Catherine Chapel under the south tower of St. Stephen’s in Vienna. The Vienna chapel can be identified by its star-vaulted choir and the characteristic hanging keystone—so, according to the principle of historical truth, a scene of the late tenth century was placed into Late Gothic architectural surroundings. However, this apparent archaeological error was not motivated simply by a lack of art historical knowledge, but also by a Hungarian historical tradition that St. Stephen was baptized in Vienna.8 The almost-legendary baptism scene in the presence of Emperor Otto III by Hesz was combined with that of St. Stephen’s wedding with Queen Gisela in the presence of their parents, arranged on balconies according to Baroque liturgical use. But looking for Hungarian monuments in Vienna in the heart of the Habsburg Empire as an expression of Hungarian self-consciousness was not unique. It was mainly directed to the tradition of King Matthias Corvinus’ victory over Emperor Frederick III and his rule in Vienna. Even his contribution to the building of Late Gothic St. Stephen’s, especially the completion of St. Stephen’s tower, the most famous Gothic monument of the central European region, was often presumed although based on scant documentary evidence.9 Being aware of the fact that Henszlmann had studied art history in Vienna in the late 1830s, we should not be surprised that his relatively close acquaintance with the building history and details of St. Stephen’s church influenced his views on Gothic architecture. In his 1846 ­monograph, 8 About the role of the historian Ignác Aurél Fessler, but without the identification of the Vienna chapel cfr. Katalin Sinkó and Árpád MIkó, Történelem—kép. Szemelvények múlt és művészet kapcsolatából Magyarországon / Geschichte—Geschichtsbild. Die Beziehung von Vergangenheit und Kunst in Ungarn, exhibition catalogue (Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 2000), Cat. Nr. XIII-6, 642. 9 Cfr. Jolán Balogh, A művészet Mátyás király udvarában [Fine Arts at the Court of King Matthias], (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1966), vol. I, 281.



restoration as an expression of art history

165

Fig. 1. János Mihály Hesz, Baptism of St. Stephen, 1825, Balatonfüred, Catholic Parish. Photo: László Szelényi.

166

ernő marosi

The Churches of the Town of Kassa Built in Old-German Style, the only hypothesis based on the archival sources of Kassa concerns the identification of the master mason, Stefan Krumenauer, working in Vienna with a member of the Kassa burgher’s family Crom. Henszlmann argued for the identity of Krumenauer (also mentioned in Vienna as Krommaurer, which he interpreted as “Crom Maurer”) with Stefan Crom, documented in Kassa.10 Judging by the drawing technique and the Gothicizing style of his illustrations (e.g., in the geometric projection of the levels of the tabernacle and the buttresses of Kassa’s St. Elisabeth church) we may even conclude that Henszlmann had access to the Gothic plan collection of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and developed a drawing manner suitable for rendering Gothic structures as well as for his aim of developing a universal geometrical and arithmetic system of architectural proportions. Henszlmann’s efforts at methodology conformed to the impact of nineteenth-century research on the morphology and theory of Gothic buildings. Besides the literature quoted in his monograph, we have a list of the publications in his possession that he used when he was writing his work. In his letter addressed to the bishop of Kassa, asking his support for the edition of the monograph, he lists the names of Georg Möller, Sulpiz Boisserée, Friedrich Hoffstadt, Karl von Heideloff, Anton Tschischka and others—except for Tschischka, the author of a monograph on St. Stephen’s of Vienna—thus practically the entire corpus of literature on Gothic workshop traditions, which was mainly due to the building movement for Cologne cathedral.11 In fact, the Cologne cathedral as a national monument served as a model for the evaluation of the Kassa church; the movement for its completion was followed not only in Kassa, where an association was founded for the reconstruction, but also in general in the 1847 Call of the Hungarian Academy. The proposal for the official preservation of historical monuments in Hungary was decided in the same Seventh Assembly of the Society of Physicians and Natural Scientists held in Kassa, which also assisted in the presentation of Henszlmann’s monograph and the Gothic church itself.

10 Imre Henszlmann, Kassa városának ó német stylű templomai [Old German style churches of the city of Kassa], (Pest, 1846), 13, and also 23 (in the context of the sacrament tabernacle of Kassa St. Elisabeth church, citing the popular belief that the tabernacle was a reduced model of St. Stephen’s tower in Vienna, which was finished under the rule of King Matthias). 11 Ernő Marosi, Henszlmann Imre és Kassa városának ó német stylű templomai, annex to the reprint edition of Henszlmann’s book of 1846 (cf. N. 10), 6 ff.



restoration as an expression of art history

167

From the first moment, Henszlmann was convinced that the St. Elisabeth church was founded after the middle of the thirteenth century, at the same time that German settlers founded the town. For his monograph, he used exclusively documents from the history of the town of Kassa, beginning with charters from 1283 and 1292 proving the existence of a parish church dedicated to St. Elisabeth, and continuing by quoting privileges given by the fourteenth-century Angevin rulers and later donations by Matthias Corvinus from 1472 to 1482. Thus, his periodization coincided with the popular opinion in the town, often mentioned by him, that the times when the city flourished coincided with the main construction periods of the parish church. Strangely enough, Henszlmann avoided perhaps the most important period of the economic and cultural growth of the town (which has been proved by modern art historical research as the decisive second building period of the church), that of King Sigismund of Luxemburg. This could only have been motivated by a negative estimation of both the personality and the historical role of the Luxemburgian. Evidently, in 1846 Henszlmann was not yet influenced, as in his later period, by any prejudice against Gothic style in a normative sense as a phenomenon of decadence. At this time he did not see any distinction between the Early, High or Late Gothic periods, as can be proved based on his use of his experience in Vienna. The ideal reconstruction of the two-towered west facade of the St. Elisabeth church, published as the frontispiece of his 1846 monograph (Fig. 2), shows a rich architecture based on actual details, mainly of the south tower, dominated by a Late Gothic character and crowned by spires in open tracery, apparently inspired by those on the medieval plans of Cologne cathedral. Another fictive element of his reconstruction drawings is the octogonal tower over the crossing square of the Kassa church, which seemingly went back to Sulpiz Boisserée’s rejected reconstruction hypothesis about the existence of such an element in the Cologne cathedral. So, wishful thinking about the parallels between the parish church of his native town and the Cologne cathedral as a national symbol of German unity was expressed in his ideal reconstruction (Fig. 3), which was—despite the contrary impacts of later archaeological studies and excavations—never abandoned and also followed by Imre Steindl in the great reconstruction campaign between 1877 and 1901. During his exile in the 1850s Henszlmann received a series of new art historical publications, which he used immediately as elements of an elaborate construction for a planned building history of the Kassa parish church. The first and the most apparent impact of this period of intensive study is a new terminology (“Gothic” or csúcsíves—the Hungarian version

168

ernő marosi

Fig. 2. Ideal reconstruction of the west facade of St. Elizabeth in Kassa, frontispiece of Imre Henszlmann, Kassa városának ó-német stylű templomai, Pest 1846.



restoration as an expression of art history

169

Fig. 3. Imre Henszlmann, Reconstruction study for the west facade of St. ­Elizabeth in Kassa, before 1846. Hungarian Academy of Science, Library, Ms 4407/77.

170

ernő marosi

of the German “Spitzbogenstil”—or Viollet-le-Duc’s “style ogival” instead of “Old-German,” still used in 1846), mainly influenced by the publications by Franz Mertens.12 Mertens proved the French origin of Gothic architecture based on the writings of Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis. His publication is now nearly forgotten, but his terminology influenced the important art historical manuals at the time when the distinction between the Romanesque and Gothic periods was introduced. In a similar way, problems of the chronology of styles were as crucial to Henszlmann as they were for the Hegelian authors of German manuals. But, besides borrowing the new chronological terminology, mainly from Franz Kugler and Karl Schnaase, he found important theoretical support in the so-called Mertens’ “laws.” Among these five factors, so-called “propagation,” i.e., the spread of artistic innovations from a creative center (another “law” attributed all medieval innovations to individual achievements) seems to have been the most important for him—and also for the reception of these “laws” in Hungary. Henszlmann consequently considered the Hungarian art of the Middle Ages as a delayed transmission of Western models—a theory that facilitated his reconstruction based on these models, and at the same time a hypothesis opposed to that of national originality.13 During his stay in France, Henszlmann had also occasion to discover French architectural literature, mainly that by Viollet-le-Duc and his circle, thus extending his outlook which had thus far been based nearly exclusively on German scholarship. He also received two important factual stimuli from this circle for his Kassa monograph. First, he realized that the ground-plan of the parish church in Kassa went back to a scheme which is represented at St.-Yves in Braine and its successors, and secondly, he became aware of the fact that the Picard artist Villard de Honnecourt, had made a journey to Hungary in the thirteenth century. Thus, he had proof of his “law of propagation” and the parish church of Kassa became an example of this doctrine. The thirteenth-century origin of the building seemed to be documented as a French design, probably by Villard himself, but its implementation by later bunglers was not worthy of the excellent initial plan. At this point, Henszlmann had definitely abandoned 12 Franz Mertens, “Paris baugeschichtlich im Mittelalter,” Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 1843. 13 The problem of the reconstruction of his theoretical system: Ernő Marosi, “Henszlmann Imre (1813–1888), a magyar művészettörténet-írás kezdetén” [I.H. (1813–1888), at the beginning of Hungarian Art Historiography], in Csilla Markója and István Bardoly, eds., “Emberek, és nem frakkok”. A magyar művészettörténet-írás nagy alakjai [“Humans and not Tuxedos”. Great personalities of Hungarian Art Historiography], special issue of Enigma, Nr. 47, 13 (2006) 44–7.



restoration as an expression of art history

171

his original neutral position concerning Late Gothic, evidently under the influence of French purist ideas and the overall negative evaluation of “decadent” late phases of stylistic evolution. This normative turn of his taste and the aim of “improving” the architectural mistakes of the building later proved fatal for the church in Kassa. Purifying the Resuscitation of the National Past Purification as a method of resuscitating the national past meant not only the removal of stylistically alien elements such as later additions or Baroque decorations and furniture, but, in its most radical form, the reduction of the whole architectural organism to its earliest, “original” shape. This was the aim of the official preservation of historical monuments in late nineteenth-century Hungary, which spent a great deal to restore the key monuments of national art history to their “original splendor.” The most important restorations were even part of the 1896 celebration of the Millennium of the Hungarian Conquest. The motivation to go back to the beginning of studies in medieval archaeology and art history appears evident in the choice of architects employed after 1872 by the Provisory Commission of Historical Monuments. Three of them, Imre Steindl, Frigyes Schulek, and Ferenc Schulcz, were pupils of the Vienna master builder, Friedrich von Schmidt.14 Evidently, Schmidt was mainly recommended by his activities on St. ­Stephen’s in Vienna, the awareness of which had been an important factor for Hungarian medievalism since Henszlmann’s early studies. Moreover, Schmidt, coming from the masons’ lodge in Cologne, also represented the theoretical and practical knowledge of this leading undertaking in Neo-Gothic architecture.15 On the basis of his greatest achievement, the restoration of the high south tower of St. Stephen’s in Vienna, Schmidt, as a specialist in towers (the completion of unfinished medieval church towers being one of the most important goals of nineteenth-century restorations) was

14 József Sisa, “Steindl, Schulek und Schulcz—drei ungarische Schüler des Wiener Dombaumeisters Friedrich von Schmidt,” Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Vergleichende Kunstforschung in Wien, 3 (1985), 1–8; idem, “Neo-Gothic Architecture and Restoration of Historic Buildings in Central Europe. Friedrich Schmidt and His School,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2002), 170–87. 15 This aspect of his career was stressed by Ingrid Ciulisová, Historismus a moderna v pamiatkovej ochrane [Historicism and Modernity in the Preservation of Monuments], (Bratislava: Veda, 2000), 69 ff.

172

ernő marosi

very important for Henszlmann. In the 1840s he had already drawn an ideal reconstruction of the Kassa west facade, which was followed by Imre Steindl (and finally rejected as late as 1900). The conservative character of Hungarian purist historicism can clearly be seen against the Viennese background, where at the same time, in the early 1870s, Schmidt’s restoration methods were already sharply criticized (among others by Professor Moritz Thausing) and their completion prevented. The case of St. Elisabeth in Kassa is a striking example of how art historical hypotheses were used. Schmidt, in improving the “mistakes” of Late Gothic builders, implemented Henszlmann’s hypothesis of the original thirteenth-century plan of the church by sacrificing most of it, including the original star vaults of the Gothic building. Characteristically, his ideas were the most clearly expressed on his own original church building, the St. Elisabeth Church in Budapest, which appears as an ideal St. Elisabeth memorial, integrating elements of her Marburg church with those of the Kassa parish church, together with elements borrowed from Schmidt’s vocabulary of architectural form.16 The parallel to Kassa shows how relative the distinction was between “restoration” and “free creation” for Steindl. The methods of the other leading restorer and chief architect of the Commission for the Preservation of Monuments—also a pupil of Schmidt’s— Frigyes Schulek, were characterized by the author of the monograph on Our Lady’s Church of Buda as more authentic in an archaeological sense.17 Schulek’s reconstructive interventions with the aim of rendering the medieval view of the building both outside and inside were preceded by careful archaeological investigations. He made gesso casts of the architectural stone carvings, replaced them with copies on site and by free creations corresponding to the style and age of the originals. Collections of medieval forms (e.g., the illustrations of Viollet-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire raisonné) played the important role of model books in this procedure. Schulek’s restoration was not limited to only the elimination of those elements which altered the medieval look of the building, but he also emphasized Early 16 Ferenc Vadas, “Marburg, Kassa és Bécs között. Az Erzsébetvárosi templom építészettörténeti helye” [Between Marburg, Kassa and Vienna,” [The place of the church of the Budapest Elisabeth district in the history of architecture], in Maradandóság és változás [Permanence and mutability. Conference papers, Ráckeve 2000], (Budapest: Művészettörténeti Kutatóintézet, Képző- és Iparművészeti Lektorátus, 2004), 313–27; József Sisa, Steindl Imre (Budapest: Akadémiai, 2005), 157–174. 17 József Csemegi, A budavári főtemplom középkori építéstörténete [The medieval building history of the main church of Buda Castle], (Budapest: Képzőművészeti Alap, 1955).



restoration as an expression of art history

173

Gothic details whose fragments came to light in the Late Gothic context. In a separate opinion of 1874, Henszlmann protested against the reconstruction of the Late Gothic south tower of the church, suggesting instead the reconstruction of the two west towers of the thirteenth-century building (as at Kassa, where the existing north tower had to be eliminated).18 In contradiction, Schulek implemented another art historical hypothesis in the choir restoration; the three-apsidal system of the early fifteenthcentury was reduced according to a thirteenth-century scheme with rectangular aisle bays, and windows arranged in two rows which were introduced instead of high choir windows with Early Gothic ­tracery. This cannot be justified by archaeological evidence, but rather traced back to a—­stylistically correct—art historical judgment about the close relationship between the Buda parish church and the Premonstratensian provostry ruin in Zsámbék, near Buda (Fig. 4). The forms are not identical, however; in Buda, Schulek planned two rows of windows with pointed arches, while the choir walls of the Zsámbék church were articulated with round arched windows and a superimposed row of circular ones (Fig. 5). Henszlmann, in his early period, at the same time as he was writing his 1846 monograph on the Gothic churches in Kassa, had also studied Zsámbék, together with his friend, the architect Frigyes Feszl. Although he was mainly fascinated by its proportions, he had to be aware of its stylistic relationship with the Virgin’s church in Gelnhausen (Fig. 6), studied and reproduced in a series of prints by Feszl.19 At the same time that Schulek’s restoration was under lively discussion, Henszlmann, following German art history and also his concept of the law of “propagation,” attributed great importance to the Transitional Style in Hungary.20 Thus, the art historical concept of the transition between Romanesque and Gothic architecture was to be realized in the articulation of Our Lady’s in Buda (Fig. 7). But instead of the model of Gelnhausen, Schulek followed that of St. Elizebeth’s in Marburg (Fig. 8), by this choice stressing the High Gothic character of the Buda building. 18  Quoted by Béla Zsolt Szakács, “Modernization and Musealization: Monument Protection in Hungary in the Time of Béla Czobor (1889–1904),” in Marosi, Klaniczay and Gecser, The Nineteenth-Century Process of “Musealization”, 260. 19  Edit Szentesi, “Néhány megjegyzés az 1840–50-es évek építészeti ornamentikájához” [Some remarks on the architectural ornament of the 1840–50s], Ars Hungarica 20 (1992), 67–79. 20 Cfr. his comprehensive book: Magyarország ó-keresztyén, román és átmenet stylű mű-emlékeinek rövid ismertetése [A Short Description of the Monuments of Early Christian, Roman and Transitional Styles in Hungary], (Budapest: XXX, 1876).

174

ernő marosi

Fig. 4. Zsámbék monastery ruins from the northwest, iron etching. In: Hunfalvy, János—Rohbock, Ludwig, Magyarország és Erdély eredeti képekben, Pest 1860.

In a similar way, the Baroque spires over the pair of west towers of Ják Abbey church (Fig. 9) were replaced by copies (Fig. 10) of the pyramidal spire of the southwest tower of the Zsámbék church ruin, preserved in its original state (Fig. 11). Earlier, August Essenwein had replaced the Baroque spires of the Lébény Abbey church with a characteristic German Romanesque form.21 Lébény, Ják, and Zsámbék were treated as belonging to a Hungarian school of Romanesque architecture characterized by threenaved churches with three apses without transepts and by two-towered west parts [Westwerks].22 The decision (by Schulek and his pupil, László Gyalus) to introduce the spires of Zsámbék at Ják stressed this school of construction (corresponding to a hypothetical domestic evolution) of the art historians. 21  Alice D. Mezey, and Edit Szentesi, “Az állami műemlékvédelem kezdetei Magyarországon. A Central-Commission zur Erforschung und Erhaltung der Baudenkmale magyarországi működése (1853–1860)” [The Beginnings of State Monument Protection. Hungarian Activity of the Central-Commission zur Erforschung und Erhaltung der Baudenkmale], in Bardoly and Haris, A magyar műemlékvédelem korszakai, 58–62; Cf. Szakács, “Modernization and Musealization” 264. 22 See about this concept Ernő Marosi, “Die Baukunst der Benediktiner im Ungarn der Árpádenzeit,” Acta Historiae Artium 35 (1996), 15–29.



restoration as an expression of art history

Fig. 5. Zsámbék church ruin, choir from the east. Photo by the author.

175

176

ernő marosi

Fig. 6. Gelnhausen, Our Lady’s, choir from the east. Photo by the author.



restoration as an expression of art history

177

Fig. 7. Buda, Our Lady’s, choir interior, reconstructed by Frigyes Schulek. Photo by the author.

178

ernő marosi

Fig. 8. Marburg, St. Elizabeth from the southeast. Photo by the author.



restoration as an expression of art history

179

Fig. 9. Ják, Abbey Church, west facade, photograph about 1880. Photo archive of Forster Institute, Budapest.

180

ernő marosi

Fig. 10. Ják, Abbey Church, west facade. Photo by the author.



restoration as an expression of art history

181

Fig. 11. Zsámbék, Provostry Church ruin, west facade. Photo by the author.

182

ernő marosi

Another case of visualizing the theories of art historians—not just of decisions on the subjects of debates—can been seen in the restoration history of the Romanesque cathedral in Pécs. Here, in 1882, Friedrich von Schmidt himself was charged with radical purification, which became a Neo-Romanesque rebuilding. In the course of the total remodeling of the liturgical space and its decoration, the remnants of the original sculptural decoration (Fig. 12) from the 12th century, uncovered in 1883 (Fig. 13), were integrated into the new space. They were treated as a purely art historical fiction, based on general ideas about the stylistic and iconographic peculiarities of medieval art. An expert on Christian art, the art historian Béla Czobor, was a suitable person for conceiving this program (Fig. 14). The interpretation of the fragmentary narrative cycles, their typological reading proposed by Henszlmann and their interpretation as allegorical allusions to the fate of King Peter (Orseolo) of Hungary had been the subject of debates between Henszlmann and Arnold Ipolyi as early as the 1860s, before all the fragments were discovered. Czobor, as he conceived the retable relief for the high altar, evidently followed Henszlmann’s typological interpretation by proposing a Mosan enamel model for the Crucifixion relief (Fig. 15). He decided this on the basis of his typological interpretation as he completed the relief cycles on the staircase walls of the crypt entrances with Genesis scenes on the north side (Fig. 16) and a Passion cycle on the south. They were carved in stone partly as reconstructed copies of the originals (Fig. 17), but mostly as free compositions in medieval style by the young sculptor György Zala (Fig. 18). The main value of this reconstruction of the sculptural decoration consisted of a kind of experimental application of art historical views on medieval sculpture; an archaic look was accentuated by proportions and isocephaly and in the polychromy of the reliefs.23 In his 1818 Imploring, Jankovich expressed the desire to document Zagreb cathedral as the second most important medieval monument in Hungary beside the St. Elizabeth church of Kassa. At that time of great restorations of late nineteenth century historicism, however, Zagreb was already the capital of the national Croatian state, enjoying quite great autonomy in the framework of post-compromise Hungary. Its restoration after a catastrophic earthquake in 1880 shows close parallels with the 23 Ernő Marosi, “Die Domskulpturen von Pécs. Kunsthistorische Einordnung und Inszenierung als ein Paradigma ungarischen Selbstverständnisses,” in Robert Born, Alena Janatková and Adam S. Labuda, eds., Die Kunsthistoriographien in Ostmitteleuropa und der nationale Diskurs (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2004), 233–52; Béla Zsolt Szakács, “Másolás és újraalkotás: a pécsi altemplomi lejáratok domborművei” [Copying and Remaking: the Reliefs of the Crypte Entrances of Pécs Cathedral], Ars Hungarica 33 (2005), 241–56.



restoration as an expression of art history

183

Fig. 12. Pécs reliefs in the south staircase, after Imre Henszlmann, copper engraving by H. Bültemeyer. In: Henszlmann, Imre, Pécsnek középkori régiségei I, Pest 1869.

Fig. 13. Pécs, south staircase. Photo 1883, photo archive of Forster Institute, ­Budapest.

184

ernő marosi

Fig. 14. Pécs, Cathedral, interior looking east. Photo by the author.



restoration as an expression of art history

185

Fig. 15. Pécs, Cathedral, retable of the high altar. Photo by the author.

activities of Steindl and Schulek in the service of the Budapest Commission for the Preservation of Historical Monuments. The common denominator was Friedrich von Schmidt, whose pupil, Hermann Bollé, was charged with its Neo-Gothic rebuilding24 at the same time as another pupil, Josef Mocker, was working on Prague cathedral and Karlstein castle in Bohemia. An important aspect of national-minded historicism, is worth further research: at the time when separate histories of national medieval artistic evolutions were conceived, the restorers’ universal orientation provided for their stylistic uniformity.

24 Ana Deanović and Željka Čorak, Zagrebačka katedrala (Zagreb: Globus, Kršćanska sadašnjost, 1988), 264–300.

186

ernő marosi

Fig. 16. Pécs, Cathedral, north staircase, after reconstruction. Photo by the author.



restoration as an expression of art history

187

Fig. 17. Pécs, Cathedral Museum, the “Genesis cycle” from the north staircase. Photo: Institute for Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, ­Budapest.

Fig. 18. Pécs, the “Genesis cycle” from the north staircase, reconstruction models by György Zala. After P. Gerecze, Péter, A pécsi székesegyház, különös tekintettel falfestményeire. Műtörténeti tanulmány, Budapest 1893.

Digging out the Past to Build up the Future: Romanian Architecture in the Balkan Context 1859–1906 Carmen Popescu “The lives of our parents passed smoothly like a river flowing through gardens and orchards [. . .] To us they seem as far and estranged as the brave ones killed at Valea Albă were to them.1 [. . .] They opened their eyes in the soft cradle of a life of Oriental habits; we came [into this world] in the blast of new ideas; the eyes and thoughts of our parents looked to the East, our eyes gaze to the West.”2 This is how Alecu Russo (1819–59), writer and literary critic, described the gap separating fathers and sons in the Romanian Principalities around the middle of the nineteenth century. This gap between the generations was the awareness of history: time was ticking differently for those born after 1800, and they were swirled away by the powerful wave of historicity. The dynamics of progress, which was busily elaborated in the West, had reached the backward peripheries of the continent. Eager to keep pace with this modernity, which appeared to embody the most visible sign of the “civilized” world, the young Romanian generation discovered the inescapable force of historicity, gradually becoming aware that history was an indispensable instrument with which to spread the values of progress to which they aspired. Hence, it became essential to look back to their past in order to prepare their future as part of the concert of the modern nations. The interest in history raised in the midst of the modernization process which, in addition to promoting the assimilation (when not mere imitation) of Western models, stimulated also the rise of a national discourse. In a peripheral country like Romania, where the pressure to be perceived as an identifiable nation equaled the much desired emancipation, both politically and culturally, the development of such a discourse gained a particular meaning. If identity was seen as a necessary criterion 1  One of the most important battles in the history of the Principality of Moldavia, in 1476, which involved the armies of the Ottoman empire and the Moldavian ruling prince Ştefan cel Mare. 2 Alecu Russo, Scrieri, second and definitive edition, ed. by Petre V. Haneş (Craiova: Scrisul românesc, without date), 17. Writer, Russo was also one of the ideologues of the 1848 revolution in the Romanian Principalities.

190

carmen popescu

for integration into the “civilized” world, this was the consequence of the Western gaze, nurtured by Kant’s Anthropology and Hegel’s Philosophy of History, which made a clear distinction between nations with a “defined character” and those unable to attain it, or “historic” peoples and those who were “but half-awake.” The Balkan countries seemed to be, in both cases, condemned to remain outside the ascendant frame of time. History, understood as the sedimentation of an acquired degree of civilization, thus became a founding concept of the national discourse of modern Romania, which, after unification in 1859, grew to be a “State affair,” closely controlled by official politics. The historians of the young Romanian State developed a different strategy than their Transylvanian colleagues, who had favored—for political reasons—the ancient period (exploring particularly the alleged Roman origins of the Romanian nation): from the entire narrative, they chose to focus on the Middle Ages, seen not only as the precursor to the modern state (through the formation of Wallachia and Moldavia), but also as the embodiment of one of the most important features of Romanian identity, that is the continuous struggle against the Ottoman Empire. From the pages of books industriously written by the new generation educated in Western universities, history contaminated other means of expression, primarily affecting the use of artistic language as a powerful medium of affirming identity. The narrative forged by local historiography exerted a nurturing and lasting influence on the nascent discipline of art history and inspired artists eager to transpose it into meaningful images. In Gheorghe Tattarescu’s (1818–1894)3 “The Awakening of ­Romania” (1848)—a title clearly alluding to Hegel’s categorization of nations—the vestiges of history surround the young woman embodying the nation; the landscape where she is set is picturesque but desolate, however she seems promised to enjoy a bright future guided by arts, humanities and science, under the auspices of religion. History vs. Folk Art: Shaping an Image of Identity. Universal Exhibitions As a matter of fact, in the realm of arts, where fashion challenged spirituality on a material level, the interest in history surfaced only later, after 3 First educated as a religious painter at the Archbishopric School in Buzău, he received a fellowship to study painting in Rome (from 1845 to 1851). In addition to numerous churches, he also painted historic compositions, often with allegorical subjects.



digging out the past to build up the future

191

the absorption of the praised Western models.4 Aristocrats and members of the rich bourgeoisie competed in embracing the values and practices of “civilized” Europe: while the decorum changed, the “decoration” ­followed—Western clothes, architecture and artistic works progressively replaced the former habitual elements of every-day life. Not only were the latter seen as obsolete, but they were also judged as “barbarous,” because they evoked an aspect of alleged backward “orientalness.”5 For the young generation seeking to emulate the Western lights of progress and modernity, it was but natural to turn their backs on a past seen as humiliating. In this context, the interest in the “old stones” appeared as an oddity, the case of the erudite Gheorghe Asachi (1788–1869), who in the 1830s toured monasteries and manors in his native Moldavia, remained something of a unique figure. Inspired by the nascent “cult of monuments,”6 with which he was acquainted during the years he spent pursuing an education in Vienna and Rome,7 he toured the country, recording brief notes about the edifices he visited. But these notes were published only much later, after almost four decades, when (local) history had been transformed into an object of interest.8 After the Union of the two principalities, Wallachia and Moldavia, in 1859, the artists played a crucial part in articulating the discourse of national history. They literally explored the past, being part, aside historians, of the special commission founded in 1860 with the scope of inventorying the monuments in Wallachia and Moldavia. The same year, Tattarescu asked the government to support his tour of all the old monasteries of the country in order “to copy everything that is ancient, costumes, portraits, customs, etc. because time and lack of care destroy them all;” he gathered all the information in a Album Naţional (National Album) 4 For the Western influences on local architecture in the nineteenth century, see Mihai Ispir, Clasiscismul în arta românească (Bucureşti: Meridiane, 1984), and Monica Mărgineanu-Cârstoiu, Romantismul în arhitectură (Bucureşti: Meridiane, 1990). 5 The Ottoman influence was perceived as an “oriental barbarity”, see Titu Maiorescu’s essay published in 1868, “În contra direcţiei de astăzi în cultura română,” quoted in Lucian Boia, Istorie şi mit în conştiinţa românească (Bucureşti: Humanitas, 1997), 44. 6 We have borrowed the title of Aloïs Riegl’s seminal work, Der moderne Denkmalkultus, sein Wesen und seine Entstehung (Vienna, 1903). 7 While in Italy, he visited in 1808 Venice, Florence, Padua, Bologna, Ferrara, Naples and Pompeii. See Gheorghe Gabriel Cărăbuş, “Gheorghe Asachi—un separatist ‘avant la lettre’,” Codrul Cosminului, no. 10 (2004): 185–206. Retrieved December, 11, 2009, via http:// atlas.usv.ro/www/codru_net/files/CC10/Asachi.pdf. 8 Published in Calendarul pentru Români pe anul 1871 (1871) and Almanahul de învăţătură şi petrecere ilustrat cu stampe (1872). See Nicolae Iorga, “Monumentele în vechea noastră literatură,” Buletinul Comisiunii Monumentelor Istorice, July–September (1933): 101–15.

192

carmen popescu

intended to represent a “precious collection both for the country and the artists who would create paintings with national subjects.”9 However evocative of the glorious national past the paintings and etchings may have been, their effect remained limited due to the nature of their support and exposure. Hence in the end the most effective image of identity was created by architecture, as a public art. Though slower at the outset than the other arts, architecture offered the most successful articulation of the new trend based on the reinterpretation of the past sources. Designated as “National” or “Romanian Style,” this architectural expression had a rich and long evolution, leaving a lasting impression on the Romanian built landscape and the tastes of the future generations.10 While the historians’ approach was meant to contribute to weaving a vast tapestry of a common Balkan history, the architects aimed to individualize the uniqueness of the Romanian genius. The first emblematic architectural image was to be forged for the 1867 Universal Exhibition in Paris. The highly symbolical occasion—Romanian stands were presented for the first time separately and no longer included in the structures of the Ottoman Empire—deserved a symbolical approach. The entire discourse of the pavilion in the Galerie des Machines was arti­ culated around the Episcopal Church in Curtea de Argeş, considered to be the most accomplished and significant monument of all Romanian medieval art. Commissioned in 1512 by the erudite prince Neagoe Basarab, who was to be seen by the historians as a Renaissance ruler, this was the first edifice in the country to be restored according to the new theory of monuments developed in the West. Its choice for the Romanian pavilions at the 1867 exhibition stated that the modern State laid its foundations on the national heritage. The stand in the Galerie des Machines was dominated by the wooden model of the church, realized by Karl Storck (1826–87), the best sculptor in the country at the time, both as a work of art and as a precious instrument for restoration; in a glass case near the model, a large monograph on the edifice was exhibited, written by the historian Alexandru Odobescu, who was also the president of the Romanian commission. Published for the occasion, the study was a testimony to the nascent discipline of local art history. Moreover, the architecture and decoration of

  9 Adrian Silvan Ionescu, Artă şi document (Bucureşti: Meridiane, 1990), 164–5. 10 See our study, Le style national roumain. Construire une nation à travers l’architecture 1881–1945 (Rennes/ Bucureşti: Presses Universitaires de Rennes/Simetria, 2004).



digging out the past to build up the future

193

Fig. 1. Ambroise Baudry, Romanian pavilion on Champ-de-Mars, Universal Exhibition, Paris (1867). Library of the Romanian Academy.

the church inspired the surrounding installations, as well as the pavilion on Champ de Mars. For this latter, Odobescu originally envisioned to reproduce the farm of a “fortunate peasant,”11 thus designating religion and folklore as the two major poles of Romanian identity. Nevertheless, the pavilion was eventually designed under the appearance of a little church (Fig. 1), a choice demonstrating that at the time history played the determinant part in writing a national narrative. The message was a clear response to the demands to integrate into the march of Universal history the Romanian nation might have been young, but it had behind it a long history, rich in accomplishments.

11 Odobescu imagined that the pavilion should be inhabited by a couple of peasants, performing the common activities around the farm: “this concise tableau vivant will be of great interest to the public of the exhibition, by offering it more knowledge on the life, the customs and the products of Romania than any painting or other [written] description.” Al. Odobescu, Opere, vol. 2 (Bucureşti: Editura Academiei, 1967), 333.

194

carmen popescu

As it was customary at the time, a French architect was commissioned with the design of the Romanian installations at the 1867 Exhibition. The Romanian government designated the young Ambroise Baudry (1838– 1906), who had already been acquainted—if only briefly—with the local culture, after accompanying an archeological mission charged to study Roman antiquities on the territory of the Romanian state.12 Under Odobescu’s direction, the Frenchman combined elements of Romanian religious architecture, explicitly stating his intention to use local tradition as a source of inspiration to create a new architecture. It is worth noting that his two main sources—the Episcopal Church in Curtea de Argeş and the little Stavropoleos church in Bucharest (1724–30)—were to become in the next decades major references for Romanian art historiography. If the result was entirely fantasist, aiming to valorize the decorativeness and the picturesqueness of the composition, for Baudry it represented a firmly structured historicist approach: “Unlike monuments in some parks, the Romanian pavilion is not an exact reproduction of a known monument in the country. It is more a species of Greek-Romanian architecture [by which he meant Byzantine] destined to give an idea of the construction modes and architectural styles [of the country].” Under these circumstances, the pavilion on Champ de Mars was supposed to personify the paradigm of the entirety of Romanian medieval architecture. And it was no paradox that this emblematic image was shaped by an outsider, since foreign artists played—in Romania as in other cultures on the periphery—an important role in stimulating the invention of identity as the first to be receptive to the neglected local heritage. At the next Universal Exhibition in Paris, in 1889, which celebrated the centenary of the French Revolution, Romania—as a monarchy—participated unofficially. The Romanian committee took advantage of this particular situation, proposing a different vision of identity. The appointed architect, Ion Mincu (1852–1912), was a young Romanian and, moreover, he had won notice a few years before by designing for general Lahovary a small dwelling freely inspired by the peasant house (Bucharest 1886). The edifice prompted numerous enthusiastic comments at the time, becoming the cornerstone of a new architectural expression, designated as the “National” or “Romanian” style. For the “Romanian Restaurant” at the 1889 12 Marie-Laure Crosnier Leconte, “Un début de carrière à l’étranger. 1865–1869,” in L’Egypte d’un architecte. Ambroise Baudry (1838–1906), ed. by Marie-Laure Crosnier Leconte et Mercedes Volait (Paris: Somogy Éditions d’art, 1998), 34–55.



digging out the past to build up the future

195

Fig. 2. Jean-Camille Formigé, Romanian pavilion, Universal Exhibition, Paris (1900). Period post-card. Collection of the author.

Exhibition Mincu developed the same approach, rendering the composition more complex and more precise in its resemblances: the edifice was an almost archeological representation of a country house, close to ­Odobescu’s idea of a the farm of a “fortunate peasant.” But once again the project was abandoned—this time for financial reasons—and was replaced by a replica designed by the Frenchman Oscar André, who enhanced the picturesqueness of the edifice, while simplifying its structure. The historicist approach to identity, which satisfied both the Western paternalist vision and the requirements of the Romanian officials, was to be adopted again for the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris. The Romanian government commissioned a prestigious French architect, Jean-Camille Formigé, (Fig. 2) (1845–1926)—applauded at the precedent edition of the Parisian Universal Exhibition for his Palais des Beaux-Arts—and invited him to visit the country in order to get some idea of the local art. The result found manifestation in two edifices—an official pavilion suggesting a Byzantine church (and bearing numerous elements inspired once more by the famous Episcopal Church in Curtea de Argeş), and a restaurant, an almost identical copy of the Mogoşoaia palace near Bucharest (1702), considered to be the pearl of Romanian secular medieval architecture. The

196

carmen popescu

complementary aesthetics of the two edifices, meant to create a synthetic image of Romanian art, was meanwhile relevant—through the choice of sources—for the evolution of the local historiography: the (post) Byzantine period was equaled in importance by the epoch of Constantin Brâncoveanu (the Wallachian prince who commissioned the palace), which was perceived as an original creation of the Romanian genius. Concerning Byzantine art, the pavilions of the other orthodox Balkan countries adopted it without any exception, all displaying similar architectures. This uniform picture of the Balkan peninsula revealed a double meaning: one was political, responding to the need of the Nation-making process— the countries of the region employed prestigious (and also recognizable) motifs in order to create identifiable historic narratives; the other was aesthetic, reflecting the very doctrine of historicism as elaborated by Western architects as a result of both their newly acquired taxonomic perspective and the desire to resuscitate the lost values of the past. As a matter of fact, Formigé himself was a principal actor in this artistic debate, as he was one of the most respected representatives of Byzantinism in France.13 At the same Universal Exhibition, Romania had a third pavilion ­representing a “Tobacco kiosk.” Designed by a young Romanian architect, Petre Antonescu (1873–1965), the little edifice reminded one of a pictu­ resque Ottoman fountain. The composition was intended less to acknow­ ledge the role of Ottoman art in the creation of the Romanian heritage than to offer the visitors a piece of fashionable Orientalism. The association was furthermore natural for a product seen as a purely oriental habit. Back Home: The Place of the “National Style” in the Official Discourse Like Mincu, Antonescu had also been trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. At the time, most of the Balkan architects, if not all of them, were educated in Western academies, and were thus impregnated by the doctrines taught there, which they turned into efficient instruments once back home. Though familiar with the Western debates, when formulating ideas of their own work, they nurtured a vision that was rather different from the rhetoric of the universal exhibitions.

13 Marie-Jeanne Dumont, Paris—arabesques. Architectures et décors arabes et orientalisants à Paris, (Paris: ed. Eric Koehler, Institut du monde arabe, Caisse nationale des monuments historiques et des sites, without date), 19.



digging out the past to build up the future

197

In their turn, the governments of the young Balkan nations also had a different idea of what official architecture should look like. Instead of the picturesque vocabulary of the universal exhibitions, which stigmatized them—through its fantasist taxonomy—as peripheral cultures, they longed for a mark of real recognition: back home, Western architectural currents ruled everywhere, lending their prestige to public institutions and private residences. Hence the comparison of the local capitals with the most famous cities of the Western world: when exploring this “savage Europe,” Harry de Windt noted this resemblance with great satisfaction— Belgrade and Bucharest disputed, in his book, the enviable title of “Paris of the Balkans.”14 It took a certain time to introduce an effective alternative to these successful Western trends. In Modern Romania, a new expression progressively emerged at the end of the 19th century. Under the influence of nationalist theories, architects began to reflect on the renewal of their discipline: “‘Strangerism’ weakened [our] character through servitude, chased the confidence in our hearts through the scorn for all that is Romanian, and broke the thread of tradition,” wrote Dimitrie Berindei (1832– 84) in 1861, back from his Parisian studies.15 Only one quarter of a century later these aspirations found a concrete manifestation, Mincu’s house for ­general Lahovary, which was considered as the first example of Romanian architecture, embodying the very soul of the nation. From its beginnings, the “National Style” was seen as a reaction against the fashionable, hegemonic Western currents, intended as rooted in national history. If some influential intellectuals, all advocates of the nationalist ideo­ logy, enthusiastically welcomed it, the new architectural expression found little support among politicians at the end of the century. It took the opinion of a foreign specialist to make Romanian officials reflect upon reconsidering the use of local sources in the creation of a new architecture. The president of the international contest for the Senate and Chamber of Deputies (1891), the German Paul Wallot (1841–1912), admired the accomplishment of the Romanian first prize winner, while deploring the lack of specificity reflected by the design, which could have fit any European

14 Harry de Windt. Through Savage Europe (London and Glasgow: Collin’s Clear Type Press, [1907]). 15 The essay of Ioan D. Berindei, “Bucureştii. Studiu istoric,” was first published in Revista Română in 1861 and reissued in Analele Arhitecturei, nos. 5, 6, 7 (1891). For the quotation see I.D. Berindei, “Bucureştii. Studiu istoric,” Analele Arhitecturei, no. 5 (1891): 95, 96.

198

carmen popescu

capital.16 Author of the highly historicist Reichstag in Berlin (1881), conceived as an image to Prussian glory, Wallot was sensitive to the handling of history as an instrument of identity, advising his Romanian colleagues to search for inspiration in their “national architecture, which abounds with interesting motifs that could be profitably utilized.” Such reasoning yielded no result at the competition for the State Archives in Bucharest, which clearly stipulated the use of local architectural references, a choice that seemed but logical for an institution meant to embody national history; neither its first phase in 1882, nor the later one in 1893 led to any concretization.17 A more substantial tentative was engaged in 1894 by the mayor of Bucharest, who saw in the lack of an appropriate building for the city-hall an opportunity to “reestablish the Romanian style.”18 He thus launched a competition, inviting three architects: the Romanian George Sterian (1860–1936), the Italian Giulio Magni (1859–1930) and the Swiss Louis Blanc (1860–1903). The three men were known for their interest, not only in the interpretation of motifs from the traditions of the past, but also for the revival of its spirit. Sterian appeared as a theoretical mind, exploring the sources of tradition: he was one of the first Romanian architects to be involved in the restoration of the historical monuments,19 and he was also the cofounder (and the main financial supporter) of the first local architectural journal, Analele arhitecturii şi ale artelor cu care se leagă (The Annals of Architecture and the Related Arts). Established in Romania and married to a local aristocrat, Blanc was the author, together with Alexandre Marcel (1860–1928), of a project for the railway station in Bucharest (in response to an international contest launched in 1892): in spite of its Orientalism, the composition attempted to recuperate the Byzantine dimension of the Romanian heritage, transposing into iron, the key material of the modern architecture, a monumental series of cupolas. Magni, 16 “Primul banchet al arhitecṭilor români,” Analele Arhitecturei, no. 1 (1891): 15. The Romanian architect who won the first prize was Dimitrie Maimarolu, who was a former student of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. 17 See for the history of the project Aurelian Sacerdoţeanu, Proiecte pentru Palatul Arhivelor statului. Contributie la istoria arhitecturii noastre în secolul XIX (Bucureşti: Cartea Românească, 1940), 3, 4. 18 Monitorul Comunal al Primăriei Bucuresti, no. 12, June 18 (1895): 152–4. 19 He worked as the principal assistant of the French Lecomte du Noüy on several restoration sites; see our essay, “André-Emile Lecomte du Noüy (1844–1914) et la restauration des monuments historiques en Roumanie,” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art Français, (1998): 287–308.



digging out the past to build up the future

199

Fig. 3. George Sterian, project for the Bucharest city-hall—main façade. Le Moniteur des Architectes, 1900, fig. 4.

who was invited in 1893 by the jury of the contest for the State Archives, prolonged his stay in the country, proving through the majority of his projects his commitment to the “revival” of a Romanian style.20 The competition for the Bucharest city-hall explicitly designated history as the major source for forging this emblematic image of the capital, as two surviving proposals demonstrate. Paradoxically, the Romanian submitted a highly eclectic composition (Fig. 3): as he later explained,21 he was confused by the absence of an authoritative local model for such a significant institution. This led him to explore “prestigious” examples in Western Europe, meant to inspire the “silhouette” of the building, as he wrote. In response to the same lack of local models, but also to the need to invent a “national” architecture, he adorned this generic structure with a mixture of motifs taken from different periods of Romanian art. Interestingly, he chose as favored sources the religious edifices that he helped to restore—the Episcopal Church in Curtea de Argeş and two churches from the Moldavian capital, Iaşi, “Three Hierarchs” and Golia. Scholarship, understood as verified, accumulated knowledge, appeared thus to legitimize the new “National Style,” forging its vocabulary out of 20 See Nicolae Lascu, “Giulio Magni e l’ambiente architettonico romeno,” Quasar, nos. 24–25 (2001): 157–75; Ezio Godoli, “Architetti italiani nei Balcani tra Ottocento e Novecento,” in Architettura et architetti italiani ad Istanbul tra il XIX et il XX secolo (Istanbul: Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Istanbul, 1995), 87–96. 21  G. Sterian, “Projet d’hôtel de ville pour Bucarest,” Le Moniteur des Architectes (1900): 64.

200

carmen popescu

sources recognized as national monuments. The use of direct quotations from the mentioned churches reinforced this statement, ­proclaiming ­history—through its various manifestations through the ages—as the ultimate foundation of modern Romania. A similar approach motivated Magni’s proposal (Fig. 4): more structured architecturally, his drawing exploited fewer historical sources, but he blended them with vernacular motifs (such as the wooden balconies and the pitched roofs). The composition reminded one of the fortified monasteries, while the belfry-like vertical element was like a Byzantine church tower, covered by (what should have been) a gilded cupola. In spite of its miscellaneous motifs, the general image was well articulated, suggesting a credible “Romanian” ensemble. The approach gained more force in the interior through the symbolic use of the monumental statue of Michael the Brave, the prince who attempted to unify the three principalities in 1601 (an act interpreted by the historians of the nineteenth century as the prefiguration of national unity). The presence of this key figure of Michael the Brave, a topos of historicist paintings as well, stands as a powerful mark of the coherence of the national discourse: there was but one history, be it written, painted, or represented in architecture. In 1900, the mayor at the time commissioned another version of the city hall to the father of the “National Style” himself, Ion Mincu. The new project made use, once more, of the symbolic motif of Michael the Brave: placed in the upper part of the main façade, decorated by elements copied from Curtea de Argeş, the statue of the prince dominated the whole composition, which was comprised of numerous historic characters. Looking for a Legitimate Past: What Sources? If for Western architects the use of history was an easy task due to the already established taxonomy, for their Romanian colleagues the path to follow was arduous and ambiguous. The different stages of the competition for the Bucharest city hall perfectly illustrate these difficulties. On the one hand, there was the necessity of emulating Western examples, turned into generic canons. The creation of the “National Style,” as a matter of fact, had been stimulated by the rapid westernization of the country: all the defenders of the new expression, young Romanian architects, had been educated abroad—most of them at the École in Paris— where not only were they in direct contact with the trendiest currents,



digging out the past to build up the future

201

Fig. 4a.

Fig. 4b. Giulio Magni, project for the Bucharest city-hall—perspective view (a) and main hall (b). Library of the Romanian Academy, Lucrări şi proiecte executate în România de arhitectul Iulius Magni, fig. 24, 26. Photo: Nicolae Micloşi.

202

carmen popescu

among including historicism, but they were also exposed to the hottest doctrinal debates of the time, such as the emergence of regionalism.22 In this context, the “National Style,” though conceived as a reaction against the hegemony of Western culture, was impregnated by Western thinking, appearing more as a local idiom articulated in a universally understandable language: the approach, which was characteristic of all the other “national styles” developed in the Balkans, brought together themes extracted from the local tradition and framed according to academic schemes. Western examples were referred to in order to legitimate the “medievalism” of the Romanian “National Style.” For example, in his composition for the city hall, Sterian employed, alongside local motifs, elements inspired by the Ruskin’s theory, such as the Romanesque windows and the bi-color chromatics, alternating—like in certain Romanian churches—stripes of white stones with red bricks. Though rarely quoted, the important theoretical writings of the time were familiar to Romanian architects, who utilized them as stimulating (and legitimizing) models. The reference to such acknowledged works—as, for an example, Ruskin’s Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and Stones of Venice (1853), which directly influenced both the ideology and the aesthetics of the nascent national architecture—was meant to assert a place for local tradition within the dominant, thus recognizable, narrative of Western art history. This implied, on the other hand, the foundation of a particular discourse for Romanian art history, as well. But before weaving its thread, it was important to answer a dilemmatic question: what truly represented Romanian art? The condition of peripheral culture, opposed to the hierarchy of values of the “civilized world,” led some Romanian intellectuals to doubt of the very existence of local artistic expression. Painter Petru Verussi (1847–86), for instance, published an article in 1875 stating that Romanians did not have any art.23 This constituted a frightening, if not paradoxical conclusion, especially given that the author of the text was a professor of art history at the School of Beaux-Arts in Iaşi. Educated at the 22 In the last two decades of the 19th century, half of the Romanian students at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris enrolled in Julien Guadet’s studio. A former fellow of Berindei during their education years—which explains the attraction of young Romanians to his teaching—Guadet was considered the founder of the regionalist doctrine in French architecture. See Jean Favier, “Architecture et régionalisme,” published in La Construction Moderne, October 2–9 (1938), quoted by Jean-Claude Vigato, L’Architecture régionaliste. France 1890–1950 (Paris: Éditions Norma, 1994), 15. 23 The essay “Despre arta naţională” was first published in Convorbiri literare (1875), and was reissued in Analele Arhitecturii şi ale artelor cu care se leagă, no. 7 (1891): 144–52.



digging out the past to build up the future

203

École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Verussi was an adept of Taine’s philosophy of art, believing that “the way water reflects the sky and site around it, so does a work of art reflect the time and place where it was made”; hence, the lack of dignified history and of servitude explained the terrible art that had been produced in the Romanian territories over the centuries. There was but one church deserving to be considered as a real masterpiece— and that was the Episcopal Church in Curtea de Argeş—while all the others, affirmed Verussi, were dim and narrow, reflecting the narrow minds of those who had conceived them. Fifteen years later, to a younger generation of Romanian intellectuals it appeared that solely the lack of a historical perspective could have led to such a gloomy vision. The first historical sketch of Romanian architecture was published in 1889 with the title General Outlook of the National Monuments and the Means to Stop Their Destruction. Intended as criticism of the restorations by the Frenchman André-Emile Lecomte du Noüy (1854– 1914) in Romania, the study provided a coherent image of the evolution of Romanian architecture. Following the general scheme of European art, its author, Nicolae Gabrielescu (1854–1926)—who worked, like Sterian, as an assistant to a French architect—, identified the great periods of Romanian architecture, delimiting their span: Byzantine (from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century), Gothic—related to the Moldavian churches that bore its influence (the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries), and Venetian— the authority of which became obvious in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Defining Romanian art in terms of Western categories was not to be seen as depreciative for a culture that had nothing specific; on the contrary, as in the case of the doctrine of the “National Style,” the approach was intended to integrate Romanian art into the large European narrative of Art history. This comparative vision was developed by the first architectural journal, founded one year later, in 1890.24 Published by a handful of young architects freshly returned from their Parisian studies—including Sterian and Gabrielescu—, The Annals of Architecture and the Related Arts aimed to establish a scientific basis for all of the aspects concerning the discipline of architecture. The journal had three main goals, which were intertwined: to take part in writing the history of Romanian architecture; to

24 Analele arhitecturii şi ale artelor cu care se leagă was founded by the architect Ion Socolescu, who was also its chief editor; it was published from 1890 to 1893.

204

carmen popescu

promote a new, national expression based on the interpretation of local tradition; and to contribute to the creation of a school of architecture. The articles published in The Annals represented a real tribune for Romanian architectural history. Alongside the monographs on exemplary edifices, reflecting the journal’s interest in historical monuments and its intention to constitute a corpus of ancient art, The Annals published essays on the origins and the evolution of architecture on the Romanian territory. These essays endeavored to establish a hierarchy of local styles, in connection with great European art. This approach, similar to Gabrielescu’s, was based on a strategy of integration, intending to demonstrate the value of the Romanian heritage by tracking down its illustrious origins. Most significant in this sense was the parallel drawn between Venetian and Wallachian architecture: Sterian wrote an essay in which he compared the two, on the basis of their common Byzantine origin.25 He illustrated his article with representative pictures of Venetian architectural decoration, signed with his own initials, thus showing that his study trips abroad contributed to his reflections on Romanian art. Moreover, these illustrations were also tangible proof—for those who did not have a chance to travel to Italy— that the Romanian monumental sculpture from the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries evidently assimilated the influence of Venetian art. The conclusion of this comparative analysis allowed to discard the Ottoman impact on local culture (deliberately ignoring that Istanbul had served as an intermediary in the dissemination of Venetian aesthetics in the empire), while pointing out the prestigious origins of Romanian art. The richly decorated art of the eighteenth century Wallachia was soon to be considered the apex of Romanian culture, utilized by the artists of the late 19th century to symbolize the national genius. It is important to note that this categorization marks a separation in the discourses of history and art history: while the first deplored the eighteenth century as the period of the decay of the two principalities (due to the strengthening of Ottoman control), the second applauded its accomplishments. So powerful became its authority in the realm of art that sometimes it obscured the historical narrative—when the most prominent historicist painter of the country, Theodor Aman (1831–1891), painted a scene concerning Michael the Brave’s glorious gestures, he chose to set it in what resembled

25 G. Sterian, “Încercări de critică asupra istorii noastre arhitecturale,” Analele arhitecturii şi ale artelor cu care se leagă, no. 21 (1890): 21–8.



digging out the past to build up the future

205

the porch of an eighteenth century Wallachian church. “Brancovan” art, as local historiography designated it after the name of prince ­Constantin Brâncoveanu, was to form the most important reservoir for the creators of the “National Style.” Ion Mincu, who was the most influential in defining its architectural vocabulary, introduced the pointed triple arch (Fig. 5), typical of Brancovan architecture, as an emblematic element of the new style. He included it in various manners in all his works, allying the graceful movement of its lines with a rich, joyful decoration. Moreover, by choosing polychromic varnished ceramics for the execution of this decoration, Mincu synchronized Romanian modern architecture with the latest trends of Western Europe (both in terms of artistic doctrine and aesthetics). This emblematic element was to be interpreted by several generations of architects and foreigners—such as Magni. The architects of The Annals employed the pointed arch as well. Aside Sterian, author of the Venetian theory, and the director of the journal Ion Socolescu succeeded in building a successful career on its picturesque rendition. Surprisingly, the style that had stirred debates all over Western Europe since the beginning of the century—Gothic architecture—was less often (if ever) exploited in the first attempts to create a vocabulary for the “National Style.” Furthermore, though they acknowledged its influence on Moldavian art, Romanian architects seemed to ignore it in their fieldwork—as if Gothic was too definitively associated with Western culture to be credible as a source of Romanian art. A notable exception was represented by Lecomte du Noüy, the Frenchman who came to the country in 1876 as the architect-restorer of the Episcopal Church in Curtea de Argeş; a disciple of the famous Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879),26 who had been asked personally by king Carol to restore the jewel of Romanian art, he paid a considerable attention to the lessons taught by monuments. During his study tours, he noted thoroughly what he considered the most significant details (both for the structure and the decoration, see Fig. 6); while documenting the restoration of two churches in Iaşi, he thus realized numerous sketches of the Gothic elements of Moldavian churches that he observed in the course of his fieldwork.

26 Viollet-le-Duc had been asked personally by king Carol to restore the “jewel” of Romanian art, but he declined, recommending his disciple. See C. Popescu “AndréEmile Lecomte du Noüy (1844–1914) et la restauration des monuments historiques en Roumanie.”

206

carmen popescu

Fig. 5. Ion Mincu, pointed triple arch at the School for Girls, Bucharest (1890)— patio. Photo: Carmen Popescu.



digging out the past to build up the future

207

Fig. 6. Lecomte du Noüy, sketch of the Three-Hierarchs church, Iaşi. Lucrări Library of the Romanian Academy, notebook. Photo: Aurelian Stroe.

208

carmen popescu

Another explanation for the tendency to set aside the Gothic in defining the aesthetic expression of the “National Style” could be found in the discourse of the recently established discipline of art history. Though considered as exemplary for the periodization of Romanian art, Gothic was attributed a certain “regionalist” character, connected with works of architecture clearly confined in time and space, specifically from the mid-fifteenth century to the sixteenth century in Moldavia. Thus when gothic elements were used by the adepts of the “National Style,” they were supposed to denote the Moldavian compound of local heritage. The most compelling example is that of the Moldavian-born architect Nicolae Ghika-Budeşti (1869–1943), who made abundant use of Gothic motifs, which he often quoted archeologically. But more than an emotional tribute to his Moldavian origins, their utilization was meant to complete the “national” dimension of the new architecture, forming a synthesis of all the regional expressions of local art. This proved that what seemed a consensual ­process—writing the national history, creating a new national expression of art—concealed underground tensions related to harmonizing the different voices of the narrative. Byzantinism: A Common Language or an Image of Specificity? One might have expected that Byzantine art, which represented the major compound of the Romanian heritage—architecture as well as painting—, would be extensively exploited in the nationalist context of the time. This was indeed the case of the Romanian pavilions at the universal exhibitions, but on the national scene Byzantinism did not play a substantial part in the creation of the new architectural image. This constituted a surprising situation, since the very narrative of local historiography was articulated around religious art, largely considered a direct derivation of Byzantine culture. This approach was unquestionably induced by the Western debates, according to which religious art represented a privileged field of renewal due to its axiological virtues. But at the same time, religious art bore a supplementary meaning, in Romania as in the other countries of the Balkans, as it was assimilated to the sacred fight against the “Pagan.” Thus, in addition to the aesthetic accomplishment—which was but natural in the context of provincial cultures where secular art was rarely as magnificent and was often replaced by newer, more fashionable forms—religious art came to be perceived as a symbol of identity.



digging out the past to build up the future

209

While in Serbia, Bulgaria and particularly Greece Byzantinism occupied a central role in shaping the new image of identity, in Romania its meager traces were far from having a programmatic political character. In Greece for instance, where Byzantinism had been resuscitated through the work of foreign architects, it quickly gained paramount importance as an image of identity, as illustrated by the Athens cathedral designed in 1842 by the Frenchman François Boulanger (1807–75). Alongside neo-classicism, the vocabulary of which was extensively employed in building up modern Greece, Byzantinism recuperated the other influential period of the Greek culture. Hence, it was important that its development enjoyed the benefit of scientific foundations. Theophil von Hansen (1813–91), professor at the Academy in Vienna, was involved in the archeological explorations of Athens, using the discovered remains to document a neo-Byzantine architecture that he displayed in his design for the Military Pharmacy (1852). King Othon was a strong supporter of this new architecture, which he envisioned as the official image of Athens. In Serbia, where Hansen had disciples, neo-Byzantine architecture achieved a nationalist meaning as well, serving the political idea of “Greater Serbia” and reminding one of the role played by the Serbs in the struggle against the Ottoman Empire. Meanwhile, as in Bulgaria, Byzantinism was meant to translate into architectural form the ideology of the powerful pan-Slavic movement.27 In Romania, Byzantinism remained confined to the renewal of religious architecture. But even in this field, it had to compete with the other major styles from the local heritage. If not the first, the most ­consequential architect to use a Byzantinist vision was Alexandru Orăscu (1817–94); his German education—he completed his studies in Munich and Berlin— played a significant role in shaping his approach. In the 1850s the German and Viennese academic milieus, followed by the French, were preoccupied with the task of assigning specific stylistic expressions to particular areas of spirituality. In the historicist context of the time, the revival of Romanesque art, and consequently of the Byzantine, was thought to ­represent the culture of the South, as opposed to Gothic, which embodied the North. Such debates had echoes in Romania as well, but they were often superficially assimilated, favoring rather a fashionable choice than the art doctrine. For instance, it is difficult to interpret the use of neoRomanesque elements, like in the facades of the Saint-Spiridon-the-New

27 See for a perspective image our essay “Un patrimoine de l’identité: l’architecture à l’écoute des nationalismes,” Etudes balkaniques, XII (2005): 135–172.

210

carmen popescu

church in Bucharest (1852–8, Carol Benisch): were they to be understood as related to Orthodox spirituality, perceived as more Oriental (symptomatically, their “orientalness” caused, at the same time, the rethinking of the architectural vocabulary of synagogues)? Or were they just the sign of a fashionable trend? It is obvious that Orăscu absorbed the Western debates on stylistic appropriation in a more dogmatic manner, as demonstrated by his work for the Domniţa Bălaşa church in Bucharest (Fig. 7). Originally built in 1743, the edifice had been damaged by several flaws; for its reconstruction, which started in 1881, Byzantine architecture appeared a legitimate choice. In addition to the theories circulating in the most important European art academies, Orăscu may have been motivated by the fact that, in that time, Byzantine art had already begun to be seen in local historiography as the major heritage of the Romanian culture. However, this did not prevent him from adding a nuance of neo-Romanesque interpretation to the Byzantine elements—was he thus closer to the paradigms promoted by his masters, German and Viennese architects, or simply more fashionable? Not only was the use of Byzantine elements mostly decorative (and only rarely structural), but their reading was often ambiguous, as reflected by later examples, such as the Romanian merchants’ church, built around 1896 in the Transylvanian city of Braşov or the Amzei church in ­Bucharest (1901), by the Romanian Alexandru Săvulescu and the Polish Zigfrid ­Kofczinski. Like Domniţa Bălaşa, both edifices quoted in a free manner the decoration of the emblematic church in Curtea de Argeş, thus showing the aspiration to create a symbolic image for the new Romanian religious architecture. Moreover, it is interesting to note that the church in Braşov is part of a series (including, among others, the Serbian orthodox churches in Trieste and Pancevo) inspired by Hansen’s efforts to revive Byzantinism with the Greek Uniate church in Vienna (1856–8). Hence, enthused by the latest architectural developments abroad or inspired by the local tradition forging a recognizable (and appropriable) imagery seemed to constitute the central goal of Romanian architects at the end of the nineteenth century: the resort to identifiable architectural motifs, as well as already legitimized readings (such as, for instance Ruskin’s interpretation of Byzantinism as articulated in Stones of Venice) represented a manner of making the narrative of the new architecture both readable and meaningful for as many people as possible. Ruskin himself wrote, in his “Lamp of memory,” that the architecture of the day should be rendered “more historical,” which implied a monumental structure adorned with expressive, symbolical sculptures: “would not one such work be better



digging out the past to build up the future

211

Fig. 7. Alexandru Orăscu, Domniţa Bălaşa church, Bucharest (1881). Period postcard. Collection of the author.

than a thousand histories?”28 In spite of its (sometimes) fantasist compositions, new Romanian religious architecture sought the same symbolical expressivity: the decorative motifs and the white-and-red horizontal layers of their facades were there to remind one that Romanian culture was rooted in Byzantine art. This brick and stones aesthetics of Byzantine architecture spread to a few secular buildings, too—the most coherent approach being Socolescu’s—as a sign of their assumed historicity. If the freedom and, particularly, syncretism of interpreting Byzantinism could have been induced by the closeness to the French model,29 there was another reason underlying the approach of the Romanian architects. The explanation could be found in their obsession with specificity: the 28 John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (London: George Allen, 1901; first printed 1849), 325–36. 29 For the debates concerning Occident/Orient religious representation and on French Byzantinism, see Barry Bergdoll, “L’architecture religieuse au XIXe siècle,” in Marseille au XIXe siècle. Rêves et triomphes, edited by Marie-Paule Vial (Marseille/Paris: Musées de ­Marseille/ Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1991), 184–211; François Loyer, Histoire de l’architecture française. De la Révolution à nos jours (Paris: Mengès/Editions du Patrimoine, 1999), 160.

212

carmen popescu

very identity of the Romanian spirit could not be otherwise than entirely particular. Therefore, even if Byzantine art was acknowledged as essential for its formation, the most important question was the manner in which this heritage, along with all the other prestigious sources, had been appropriated and interpreted on Romanian soil. Hence, at the competition for the symbolic “Cathedral of the Nation” (launched in 1891 and left without any concrete results, like many of the architectural contests at the time), Mincu sought inspiration in the “Romanian byzantine,”30 quoting several major churches of the country—including Curtea de Argeş and Stavropoleos—all built, with one exception, after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. Ironically enough, it was a foreign architect who succeeded in shaping the purest neo-Byzantine vocabulary in Romania. This was the Frenchman Lecomte du Noüy, the architect-restorer of Curtea de Argeş. Under the guidance of Romanian historians—Odobescu included—, he documented the restoration of the interior of the church with famous examples of what was seen as “Western” and “Eastern” Byzantine art, such as churches in Ravenna and Venice, on the one hand, and in Constantinople and a few towns in Greece, on the other. As a result, he recreated, according to a modernized vision, the splendor of Byzantine art, glimmering with the shine of gold and semi-precious stones. Furthermore, Lecomte du Noüy used the expertise he gained at Curtea de Argeş in what was meant to be the restoration of two other Wallachian churches, Saint Dumitru in Craiova and the Metropolitan Church in Tîrgovişte (Fig. 8), both from the early sixteenth century. Taking as a pretext the damaged masonry, the Frenchman demolished the two edifices and replaced them with entirely new compositions, the architecture of which was a close interpretation of the ideal Byzantine models—an attitude that echoed his master’s Viollet-le-Duc theory on restoration, as retrieving the original idea of the edifice (even if never materialized as such). Though severely criticized at the time, his approach laid the foundation of neo-Byzantinism in Romanian religious architecture: decades

30 The information was indirect—his biographer, Nicolae Petraşcu, referred to it in the novel Marin Gelea, published first in several episodes in the journal Literatură şi artă română (1904 and 1905) and released afterwards as a separate volume, Marin Gelea (Bucureşti: Imprimeria Albert Baer, without date). The main character was inspired by Mincu’s life and career.



digging out the past to build up the future

213

Fig. 8. Lecomte du Noüy, the Metropolitan church, Tîrgovişte (sixteenth century; restoration started 1885). Photo by the author.

214

carmen popescu

later, in the interwar years, many churches were still directly inspired by Lecomte du Noüy’s design. Conclusions: History Absorbed These references to the history of the nation were instrumental in shaping a lasting image of identity, an image that was hesitant at its beginnings, wavering between different possible exemplary sources of medieval art, as if in order to better explore the various possible paths of history. Nevertheless, the references of identity were to be established soon. In 1906 the General National Exhibition opened, conceived on the model of the famous universal manifestations that toured the modern world. History was the key-concept of the exhibition, which commemorated both the past glory of the nation and its rebirth through the modern State: the country celebrated twenty-five years of independence from the Ottoman empire, forty years of rule of its first king, the German Carol from the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen branch, and . . . one thousand eight hundred years since the installment of the first Roman colons on its territory. This chronological arch, which spanned the history of the nation, was embodied by the numerous pavilions of the exhibition, which together formed a monumental display of the various possibilities of using the past in order to build up the future: quotations from all the historical monuments of the country were combined in inventive compositions that were to mark the future image of Romania. In the same year, 1906, at the other end of the continent, others reflected upon the exemplary virtue of architecture and its historicity: “Architecture then may be said to be the result of and inseparable from history, because the work of man in each period is before us in the mighty structures of past civilizations. By the study of architecture we learn of the conditions, hopes, fears and the very thoughts of the peoples of bygone days as certainly as, if not more surely than, by the contemporary written chronicles, though not with the same degree of continuity.”31 The affirmed historicism of the Romanian “National Style” in its first stage was inextricably connected to the writing of the national discourse. The creation of this architectural expression developed at the same time 31  Sir Bannister Fletcher, Architecture and its place in general education (London: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1930), 1.



digging out the past to build up the future

215

Fig. 9. Costin Petrescu, fresco for the Romanian Athenaeum, Bucharest (inaugurated 1938)—fragment: Matei Basarab, prince of Wallachia (1632–54) and Vasile Lupu, prince of Moldavia (1634–1653) in front of the Three-Hierarch church in Iaşi (commissioned by the latter, 1639); Constantin Brâncoveanu, prince of Wallachia (1688–1714), in front of the Hurezi monastery, which he commissioned in 1690–93. Ateneul Român din Bucureşti. Marea frescă, Bucureşti, 1938.

and influenced the historiography of local art history, often sharing the same actors. The emergence of art history often informed the work of the architects, while their reflections and fieldwork nurtured the foundations of the discipline. While a new architecture was built, the consciousness of its own past grew up symmetrically and, as a matter of fact, the new architectural landscape was meant as a continuation of the old monuments: an image of identity. Progressively, particularly after the Great War, the artistic reference to history started to be seen as obsolete, being replaced by an ethnological reading: at that stage of maturity, Romanian artists did not have to prove that their country had a history; they had merely to enrich artistic expression with the nuances found in folk and vernacular art. However, in terms of image of identity, the effects of the historicist construction remained operative, confirming the indefectible association between images and ideas in forging memory. In 1938, the symbolical building of the Romanian Athenaeum was completed, with a large circular fresco completely covering the walls of its main concert hall: not only the the scenes painted by Costin Petrescu (1872–1954) followed the original

216

carmen popescu

idea of the indefatigable ideologue Alexandru Odobescu—who imagined the illustration of the entire history of the nation, from the noble Dacians up to the king Carol—,32 each historical epoch was characterized by a emblematic edifice (Fig. 9). Architecture was thus inextricably bound not only to evoke the past, but to embody the illustrious figures of history.

32 Al. Odobescu, “Ateneul Român si clădirile antice cu dom circular,” in Conferinţe ţinute la tribuna Ateneului Român, anthology, notes and introductory essay by Gheorghe Buluţă (Bucureşti: Editura Eminescu, 1989), 160–171.

Ottoman Gothic: Evocations of the Medieval Past in Late Ottoman Architecture Ahmet Ersoy According to conventional Orientalist wisdom, the afflictions and the ultimate “failure” of the modern non-western world are readily traceable to a set of grave “absences.” These include such diverse phenomena as the Renaissance, civil society, revolutions, or the middle class, all defined through a normative prioritization of the west as the ultimate and unassailable measure of achievement. Of course, the brutal logic of Eurocentric dualism has long been discredited through the exposure and the exhaustive critique of Orientalist vision.1 Still, when it comes to investigating the complex dramaturgy of westernization in the modern non-western world, entailing diverse histories of appropriation, cultural immersion and resistance in an environment marked by western hegemony, some form of comparative reckoning often becomes a necessity. Informed by the insights of recent scholarship on cross-cultural and postcolonial studies, this newer mode of cultural comparison, however, is not burdened by historicist causality, and neither is it predicated on transcendent universals. It focuses, rather, on the very contingencies of a world of intense global interconnectedness and reciprocity, where, as Homi Bhabha reminds us, concepts, norms and practices originating from the west are continuously pluralized, subjected to “unexpected transformations,” and translated into myriad local dialects beyond the boundaries of the metropolitan center.2 In this sense, what we might recognize as “absences” or acute divergences within a non-western cultural context gain new meaning; not as symptoms of sheer deficiency or incongruity, but as the outcome of local exigencies, political imperatives and cultural predilections within particular sites of encounter or contestation. Such comparative insight, in turn, ­contributes

1  For an early critique of the Orientalist comparative framework and its visions of Oriental deficiency, see Bryan S. Turner, Marx and the End of Orientalism (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978). A comprehensive survey of the earlier stages of the debate on Orientalism can be found in A.L. Macfie (ed.), Orientalism: A Reader (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000). 2 See Homi Bhabha, “Unsatisfied: Notes on Vernacular Cosmopolitanism,” in Gregory Castle (ed.), Postcolonial Discourses: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001): 38–52.

218

ahmet ersoy

to our broader task of fracturing, dispersing and cross-mapping the universal experience of modernity. Ottomans and the Culture of Medievalism The term (and the concept of) Middle Ages first appears in Ottoman historiography in the latter half of the nineteenth century, through translations made from French sources.3 The word medievalism, itself a nineteenthcentury European concoction, does not have an equivalent in Ottoman Turkish (or in modern Turkish, for that matter).4 The Ottomans, in other words, were not big in academic medievalism. We do not encounter in the Ottoman context the rich corpus of scholarly works on the languages, customs, legends, art or history of the Middle Ages that constitute the modern field of Medieval Studies in Europe.5 One should note, if the comparison is to be pursued further, that there is no Ottoman counterpart to the nineteenth-century medievalists’ gigantic editorial undertakings such as the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, and nothing comparable to the bookish turmoil caused by the infamous forgeries and academic scandals of the period, all engendered by a rising passion in Europe to penetrate the authentic sources of the Medieval era (that is to say, one never comes across an Ottoman Ossian). Although one could elaborate further on the “absence” of a professional or institutional basis for the study of the Middle Ages in the Ottoman scholarly context, one could, however,

3 The Ottoman term is “kurun-ı vusta” (“qurun al-wusta” in modern Arabic sources). The earliest work of history that uses the new term in its title is Ahmed Tevfik, Tarih-i Mücmel-i Kurun-ı Vusta (Istanbul: Yahya Efendi Matbaası, 1289 [1871]), which is a translation of Victor Duruy, Histoire du moyen âge (Paris: Hachette, 1861). 4 Alain Boureau notes that the first occurrences of the words “medieval” and “medievalist” in French date from the 1860s and 1870s. See Alain Boureau, “Kantorowicz, or the Middle Ages as Refuge,” in R. Howard Bloch and Stephen G. Nichols (eds.), Medievalism and the Modernist Temper (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 355. 5 In Ottoman higher education, a separate course on medieval history was first established in 1919, in the wake of an administrative and curricular restructuring in Istanbul University (then the Darülfünun). The course entitled “History of Oriental Peoples in the Middle Ages” was offered under the chair of history at the Faculty of Literature. With the onset of the new Republican educational system in 1924, the scope of the course was broadened to become a general history of the Middle Ages. With the final and radical reforms of 1933, an additional course on Turkish history in the Middle Ages became part of the curriculum, supplementing the general survey on medieval history. On the changing curricula of Istanbul University, see Osman Nuri Ergin, Türkiye Maarif Tarihi, vol. 3–4 (Istanbul: Eser Matbaası, 1977), 1209–58.



ottoman gothic

219

trace the emergence of a marked desire to evoke the medieval past in nineteenth-century Ottoman culture. As in the case of Europe, this new yearning for times of medieval “innocence” and virtue was prompted in the late Ottoman domain by the rise of a modern sense of history, which involved a fundamental awareness of change and a pervasive sense of irremediable loss, instilled in the minds of many Ottomans by the wideranging modernizing reforms of the nineteenth century. Overwhelmed by the dilemmas and uncertainties of a process of intense westernization, and haunted by the effects of increasing western encroachment in their everyday lives, nineteenth-century Ottomans were driven by a new and romantic zeal to recover marked moments of power and glory in the distant Ottoman and Islamic past. Re-envisioning an idyllic past worked as a means of psychological empowerment for the Ottomans, as it provided a comforting escape from the grim realities of living in an old-fashioned empire striving to come to terms with the age of rampant nationalism. Such historiophile diversions were also instrumental in legitimizing late Ottoman culture’s newly contrived models of self-identity and projection. Images of medieval rootedness helped consolidate and naturalize changing visions of collective identity in the Ottoman center, as the modernizing state strove to devise new strategies for creating a supra-national whole out of a wildly diverse, multi-ethnic and multi-religious imperial conglomerate. In these times of great volatility, as the foundational tenets of the Ottoman imperial establishment were being interrogated and seriously redefined, there was a growing predilection among many Ottoman intellectuals to revisit the time of late medieval origins and to recapture the putative constituents of a common Ottoman identity in their purest and most embryonic form.6

6 A pertinent example in terms of the effort to authenticate and eternalize late Ottoman constructs of identity is the Üss-i İnkılab [The Basis of Reform] (Istanbul: Takvimhane-i Amire, 1877), a historical work by Ahmed Midhat, one of the most prolific writers of the period. Although the book is meant to serve as a chronicle of the period of late Ottoman reforms, it begins with a chapter on the founding years of the empire, destined to provide a historical basis of legitimacy to the nineteenth century’s ideals of imperial harmony. Here, the professed Ottoman national “genera,” as they are formulated in the late nineteenth century, are extrapolated back to the period of imperial origins. Ahmed Midhat attributes the success and longevity of the empire to a common vision of “Ottomanness” and a rooted sense of compatriotism which, he claims, was shared and nurtured by all ethno-religious communities of the Ottoman realm from the very outset of the imperial endeavor in the fourteenth century. For a brief account on Ahmed Midhat’s work and a translated excerpt from the text, see my article: “Ahmed Midhat: The Basis of Reform,” in Balázs Trencsényi and Mihal Kopeček (eds.), Discourses of Collective Identity in Central

220

ahmet ersoy

Again congruent with the European experience, the Ottoman longing for the distant medieval past was a highly complex and multi-faceted phenomenon that resonated with deep-seated historical susceptibilities. These multiple invocations of the medieval past were not entirely new to Ottoman culture, but were informed by collective yearnings that were deeply embedded in the Ottoman historical imaginary. An essential component of this culture of historical longing was the traditional and long-standing image of the faultless ancient order of Early Islam as the ultimate “age of happiness.” Throughout the broader Islamic world, time-honored visions of the “golden age” of Islam were fervently revived and rearticulated in the nineteenth century, concomitant to rising anxieties about modern change and increasing western imperialist incursion. With new introspective zeal, revivalists with various shades of opinion within the modernizing Islamic domain strove to reassess the time of origins in an effort to rediscover the innovative potential of early Islamic culture and to diagnose the reasons of its subsequent “decline.”7 From mid-nineteenth century onwards, with the spread of printing technology in the Islamic world, there emerged a growing effort, initially in Egypt, and then in the Ottoman Empire and beyond, to publish (and translate, in the Ottoman case) the “classical” works of Islamic culture alongside the classics of western civilization, disseminating them to a broader reading public.8 Of course, the proliferation of printed texts also facilitated an increasing exposure to recent European renditions of the medieval past. In the Ottoman context, a series of translations from French sources, including widely popular studies such as Duruy’s History of the Middle Ages, Michaud’s History of the Crusades, or Viardot’s History of the Arabs and Moors of Spain, familiarized the Ottoman audiences

and Southeastern Europe (1775–1945): Texts and Commentaries, vol. II, (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007), 291–96. 7 On the concerns of the earlier generation of Islamic modernists with the glories of early Islam, see the classic work of Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1789– 1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). On the engagement of late Ottoman intellectuals with traditional visions of Islam, see the other classical study by Şerif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962). For a broader survey of Islamic revivalist movements in the Ottoman Empire, see Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 8 For the initial publications of the Bulaq press in Egypt, see Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 72. For the late Ottoman interest in the classics, see Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, 203.



ottoman gothic

221

with European scholarship on medieval history.9 It should be noted that European historical works, and in particular Orientalist scholarship, had a profound impact on conceptions of the Ottoman historical self and on the reshaping of the historical image of Islam. The universal and historicist perspectives afforded by modern historiography enabled many authors in the Ottoman and Islamic world to link the rise of Islam in more comparative terms to the broader cultural and political matrix of the early medieval world. At this time, influential figures such as the peripatetic Islamic revisionist Al-Afghani began, largely under the spell of Guizot and Ibn Khaldun, to envision Islam as a unique and cohesive civilization that played a major role in the development of human history.10 Conjuring up these alternative visions of distant Islamic history involved an unsteady course of engagement with European knowledge on the medieval past, entailing various degrees of appropriation and emulation, as well as outbursts of antagonism and critical reactionism—which were hardly exceptional, since the myriads of cultural and scholarly practices endorsed by the western academic establishment were largely fraught with Eurocentric biases and Orientalist preconceptions. Ernest Renan’s derogatory remarks about Islam and its incompatibility with modern civilization, for instance, had a lasting impact on many Muslim intellectuals, and his essay on the subject was fiercely retaliated by prominent authors like Afghani and Namık Kemal, the spiritus rector of the Young Ottoman opposition.11   9 Victor Duruy, Histoire du moyen âge depuit la chute de l’empire d’occident jusqe’au milieu XVe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1861) was translated into Turkish by Ahmed Tevfik with the title Tarih-i Mücmel-i Kurun-ı Vusta (Istanbul: Yahya Efendi Matbaası, 1289 [1871–72]). Joseph F. Michaud, Histoire des croisades (Paris: Frères Michaud, 1812–17) was translated by Ali Fuad, Edhem Pertev and Ahmed Arifi: Emrü’l Acib fi Tarih-i Ehli’s-Salib (Istanbul, 1283 [1866–67]). Ziya Paşa’s translation of Louis Viardot, Histoire des Arabes et des Maures d’Espagne (Paris: Pagnerre, 1851) was entitled Endülüs Tarihi, vols. 1–2 (Istanbul: Takvimhane-i Amire, 1276–80 [1859–1863]). On these and other publications see M. Halil Yinanç, “Tanzimattan Meşrutiyete Kadar Bizde Tarihçilik,” in Tanzimat (Istanbul, 1940), 573–95. 10 On the life and impact of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, see Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 103–29; Nikki Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); and Elie Kedourie, Afghani and ῾Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam (London: Frank Cass, 1966). 11  Ernest Renan’s lecture at the Sorbonne, published with the title L’Islamisme et la science: Conférence faite à la Sorbonne, le 29 mars 1883 (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1883), was rebutted the same year by Al-Afghani’s article “L’Islamisme et la science” in the Journal des Débats, 18/19 May, 1883. Namık Kemal’s much celebrated response, Renan Müdafaanamesi, was published later in Külliyat-ı Kemal (Istanbul: Selanik Matbaası, 1326 [1910–11]). For other Muslim responses to Renan’s essay, see Dücane Cündioğlu, “Ernest Renan ve

222

ahmet ersoy

The latter’s highly popular essay on Saladin, on the other hand, one of the earliest modern accounts on the Crusades from the perspective of the Muslims, was written with an explicitly corrective agenda in mind, in direct response to Michaud’s authoritative rendition of medieval religious struggle.12 In the case of the Muslim, Turkish-speaking elite of the Ottoman center, defensive strategies against scholarly “alteritism” had to be devised in more convoluted form, since the Ottoman apologists had to respond not only to the reductive tropes and inaccuracies embedded in Orientalist representation, but also to claims shared by many Arab intellectuals at the time that the advent of Turkish rule prepared the demise of Islamic civilization in the late Medieval Era; an argument that was highly redolent of current Orientalist taxonomies.13 Such confrontations within the Islamic world developed largely as a function of dynastic/national rivalries, rooted cultural predilections, and undercurrents of ethnic particularism. The forbidding image of the Ottomans as the inept custodians of Islamic civilization even seeped into the official discourse of the Egyptian government, a major rival state that was only nominally a province of the empire in the nineteenth century.14 The Ottomans, in turn, had made the dualistic logic of Orientalism part and parcel of their project of modernization and imperial domination. Enlisting age-old notions of geographic and ethnic hierarchy, they legitimized their modern and patriarchal interventions in the “east” by envisioning the Arab provinces as being lodged in a perpetual state of exotic medievalness.15 ‘Reddiyeler’ Bağlamında İslam-Bilim Tartışmalarına Bibliyografik Bir Katkı,” in Divan 2 (1996): 1–94. 12 Namık Kemal’s Salahaddin was conceived as a prelude to his series of biographic accounts on Ottoman history, first published as part of the collection entitled Evrak-ı Perişan (Istanbul, 1872). On Namık Kemal’s historical biographies, see İskender Pala, Namık Kemal’in Tarihi Biyografileri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1989). 13 On earlier and formative examples of the discourse on the “corrupting influence” of the Turks, see the accounts of two Egyptian intellectuals, Tahtawi and Muhammad ῾Abduh in Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 80 and 150. 14 The official Egyptian catalogue to the 1867 World Exposition in Paris, for instance, portrays the Ottomans as incapable aggressors who were responsible for the obliteration of the “Arab genius” in art: “Quant à la Turquie; hélas! Elle n’a guère fait que servir de tombeau au génie arabe. Incapable d’inventer un art qui leur fût propre, les turcs n’ont pas même pu s’assimiler avec intelligence et avec goût l’art d’altrui . . . Depuis le dernier siècle même, ils ne construisent plus leurs palais et leurs monuments que dans le style occidental. Après avoir volé la génie arabe, ils l’ont laissé s’éteindre.” Charles Edmond, L’Egypte à l’exposition universelle de 1867 (Paris, 1867), 183. 15 On Ottoman Orientalism and its connections to agendas of modernization and imperial control, see Ussama Makdisi, “Rethinking Ottoman Imperialism: Modernity, Violence and the Cultural Logic of Ottoman Reform,” in J. Hanssen, T. Philipp and S. Weber (eds.),



ottoman gothic

223

Within such a nexus of cultural reciprocity and political rivalry, late Ottoman intellectuals endeavored to recast the time of Ottoman beginnings as a period of recovery and splendor in the history of Islam, and to promote the image of the Ottoman dynasty as the benefactor and rightful inheritor of Islamic civilization. The growing passion for the medieval past, idealized as the locus classicus of Islamic civilization and the seedbed of Ottoman identity, was articulated through unprecedented forms and technologies of historical representation in the Ottoman realm. In many cases, the Ottomans tapped into the rich imaginary potential of Orientalism and appropriated its aesthetic or academic protocols in order to capture the desired “medieval mood.” The Ottoman / Islamic past was rendered available for the emotional consumption of the Ottoman public through the “authenticating” testimony of museum and exposition displays, restored and reconstructed early Ottoman monuments, historical novels, vastly popular plays on the glories of Islamic Spain, as well as Orientalist paintings that evoked an elusive image of the medieval past as a time of exemplary virtue and immaculate “eastern” morality.16 (Fig. 1) But publicly the most visible manifestation of this novel desire for history was a the rise of a highly eclectic architectural style that drew heavily from the European Orientalist reservoir of forms in its appeal to the architectural past. Starting with the 1860s, the heavily westernized language of early nineteenth-century official architecture, boasting a decorative program saturated with a rich blend of Classical elements, was replaced by an entirely novel and conspicuously eclectic repertoire of forms that was culled from the purportedly “authentic” sources of Ottoman tradition. These sources ranged from early Ottoman and Medieval Islamic architecture (particularly that of Spain) to, curiously, European Gothic. (Fig. 2) Wildly diverse and erratic as it might appear at first hand, this particular mélange of forms seems to be consistently maintained by the Ottoman architects, whose stylistic choices were informed by imperial politics of The Empire in the City: Arab Provincial Capitals in the Late Ottoman Empire (Beirut, 2002), 29–48; idem, “Ottoman Orientalism,” in American Historical Review, 107 (2002): 768–796; and Selim Deringil, “‘They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery:’ The Late Ottoman Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate,” in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 45 (2003): 311–342. 16 On the Ottoman painter Osman Hamdi Bey and his Orientalist fantasies on the medieval past, see my article “Osman Hamdi Bey and the Historiophile Mood: Orientalist Vision and the Romantic Sense of the Past in Late Ottoman Culture,” in Reina Lewis, Mary Roberts and Zeynep İnankur (eds), The Poetics and Politics of Place: Ottoman Istanbul and British Orientalism (Seattle and Istanbul: Pera Museum and University of Washington Press, 2011): 144–155.

224

ahmet ersoy

Fig. 1. Osman Hamdi Bey, Studying Young Emir (1908). After Mustafa Cezar, Sanatta Batıya Açılış ve Osman Hamdi. 2 vol’s. Istanbul: Erol Kerim Aksoy Vakfı, 1995.

Fig. 2. The Çırağan Palace (1864–71), Sarkis and Agob Balyan. Photo: Çelik Gülersoy Archive, reproduced by permission of the Çelik Gülersoy Foundation.



ottoman gothic

225

identity, stipulations of international rivalry, diplomatic tact, as well as the dictates of current global fashion. Medieval Mamluk elements seem to have been cautiously avoided in this ensemble, for instance. A standard attribute of the European orientalist inventory at the time, Mamluk forms must have been anathema to the Ottoman architects because of their close association with Egypt. The hybrid “orientalizing” idiom was propagated as the official style till the end of the reign of Abdülhamid II (1876–1909). Architects in the close orbit of the official center advertised the new style as the manifest sign of a dawning “Ottoman Renaissance,” through which, they claimed, Ottoman architecture, ridding itself of its superfluous westernizing pretensions, was reconnected to its primordial foundations. From Neo-Gothic to Neo-Ottoman: Visions of Medieval Compatibility in Architecture While the early Ottoman and Moorish components of the self-styled “Ottoman Renaissance” may unambiguously be linked to the romantic proclivities of late Ottoman culture and its collective visions of imperial rootedness, it is incomparably more challenging to make sense of the peculiar Gothic elements that start adorning many Ottoman revivalist buildings consistently throughout the late nineteenth century. The earliest significant neo-Gothic structure to be erected in the Ottoman lands was the Crimean Memorial Church, built in 1868 to serve the small Anglican community in Istanbul.17 Possibly due to its unassuming scale and limited function, the building’s presence seems to have made no major public impact in the Ottoman capital. Still, it is inconceivable that the Ottoman architects, who were fully conversant with trends and debates in the European architectural scene, were incognizant of the dense religious associations of the Gothic style at the time they incorporated it into their designs for imperial mosques, palaces or other public buildings.

17 The Crimean Memorial Church was initially designed by William Burges. His remarkable Mauro-Gothic proposal was later abandoned and the church was built by G.E. Street. See Mark Crinson, Empire Building: Orientalism and Victorian Architecture (London and New York: Routledge, 1996). We should also note the building of a “strictly” neo-Gothic funerary monument for the Ottoman banker Avram Kamondo at this period. On the Kamondo memorial, see Naim Güleryüz, İstanbul Sinagogları (Istanbul: N. Güleryüz, 1992), 120–22.

226

ahmet ersoy

The earliest account in Ottoman sources on the Gothic as an architectural style comes from a scholarly text published by the Ottoman government on the occasion of the 1873 World Exposition in Vienna. The Usul-i Mi῾mari-i ῾Osmani/L’architecture ottomane (hereafter the Usul) was the earliest comprehensive study on the history and theory of Ottoman architecture.18 For their account on the origins of Ottoman architecture, the authors of this pioneering study largely drew upon the work of Léon Parvillée, a protégée of Viollet-le-Duc who had been commissioned by the Ottoman government to restore the fifteenth-century monuments of Bursa, the first capital of the empire.19 Conversant with Parvillée’s efforts to promote early Ottoman architecture as a rational and articulate system of building governed by universally valid geometric principles, the authors of the Usul distinguish the early Ottoman style as a final and synthetic expression of medieval rationality. The analytical and comparative discourse of the Usul reveals a growing conviction among the Ottoman architects of the period in the elementary conformity of the Gothic and Ottoman building traditions. Throughout the text, the initial experiments of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in Ottoman architecture are recurrently weighed against medieval “Arab” and Gothic traditions. In the “theoretical” section, for instance, authored by the Ottoman Levantine artist Montani Efendi (Pietro Montani), the earliest distinguishing features of Ottoman architecture, such as composite moldings and pointed arches, are characterized as exact counterparts to the Gothic style. (Fig. 3) Although this earlier “manner” of building is identified by Montani as “the most primitive form of Ottoman architecture,”20 implying that in its superior logic and order the Ottoman style was to surpass the Gothic soon after this preliminary stage, one can still see that it was essential for 18  Marie de Launay, Montani Effendi et al., Usul-i Mi῾mari-i ῾Osmani / L’architecture ottomane (Istanbul: L’imprimerie et lithographie centrales, 1873). For a critical investigation of this publication in the context of Ottoman revivalism, see my unpublished dissertation: “On the Sources of the ‘Ottoman Renaissance:’ Architectural Revival and its Discourse During the Abdülaziz Era (1861–76),” (Harvard University, 2000). For the Ottoman authors’ vision of early Ottoman architecture, see Ahmet Ersoy, “Architecture and the Search for Ottoman Origins in the Tanzimat Period,” Muqarnas 24 (2007): 79–102. 19  Parvillée published his study on the early Ottoman monuments of Bursa a year after the Usul-i Mi῾mari. Léon Parvillée, L’Architecture et décoration turque au XVe siècle (Paris: A. Morel, 1874). The most comprehensive study on Parvillée’s artistic career is Miyuki Aoki’s unpublished PhD dissertation: “Léon Parvillée: Osmanlı Modernleşmesinin Eşiğinde Bir Fransız Sanatçı,” (Istanbul Technical University, 2002). On Parvillée’s restoration and building activities in Bursa, also see Beatrice St. Laurent, “Ottomanization and Modernization: The Architectural and Urban Development of Bursa and the Genesis of Tradition, 1839–1914,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1989. 20 Usul, p. 16.



ottoman gothic

Fig. 3. The early Ottoman “manner.” After the Usul.

227

228

ahmet ersoy

the authors of the Usul to confirm Ottoman architecture’s links with the Gothic tradition. In a lecture he delivered in Istanbul in December 1875, Montani is known to have defended Ottoman architectural rationality as the product of a common medieval kernel that bore fruit to the other great architectural traditions of the pre-Renaissance world. He examined Ottoman architecture with reference to the three major medieval architectural traditions of the Euro-Mediterranean world; the Gothic, the Byzantine and the “Moorish.” Montani is reported to have employed elaborate graphic tools in order to demonstrate to his audience the fundamental unity of these traditions.21 Focusing on such stylistic perviousness within the greater medieval world was crucial for the Ottoman authors as it constituted, in their view, the very substance of the successful Ottoman synthesis in late medieval architecture. In view of the evidence one finds in the Usul, it can be argued that the earlier monuments of the dynasty carried an immense romantic appeal for the late Ottoman architects, partly because the latter could identify in these buildings references to the common medieval patrimony of the Mediterranean world. The architects’ fascination with the initial experiments of the Bursa period, such as the fourteenth-century Hüdavendigâr Mosque (with its flat, massive façades and pointed double arches) must be largely attributed to these monuments’ supposed affinities (or irresolute dialogue) with the gothic and medieval Islamic traditions. (Fig. 4) Even an offhand annotation of Montani’s central proposition in his “medieval lecture” provides substantial clues to the Ottoman architects’ comprehensive approach to the medieval sources of dynastic tradition. It is uncertain whether the late Ottoman architects were at all informed about eighteenth-century European theories on the Islamic origins of the Gothic style.22 Nevertheless, they seem to have been conversant, at least, with the 21  It is reported in the Levant Herald that Montani delivered his lecture on the compatibility of medieval styles in the residence of Edhem Paşa, a distinguished statesman who had sponsored the publication of the Usul as the Minister of Public Works. See The Levant Herald (December 22, 1875). Apart from this brief account, no other textual trace of the lecture has survived. 22 In the eighteenth century John Evelyn, Christopher Wren and their followers argued that the Gothic style, “erratic” as it was, must have either been invented by the Spanish Arabs or introduced to Europe from the Middle East during the time of the Crusades. Thus, throughout the eighteenth-century (and well into the first decades of the nineteenthcentury) the Gothic was acknowledged by many commentators as an “Arabian” or “Saracenic” style. On theories related to the Islamic / Oriental origins of the Gothic style see: Georg Germann, Gothic Revival in Europe and Britain: Sources, Influences and Ideas (London: Lund Humphries, 1972), 39–48; Paul Frankl, The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations through Eight Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 364–76;

ottoman gothic

229

fig. 4. hüdavendigâr mosque, Bursa (ca. 1366–85). drawing by sedat Çetintaş, after his türk mimari anıtları: Osmanlı devri [istanbul, 1946], pl. 16.

growing European awareness in the nineteenth century about the consanguinity of medieval western and islamic architectural traditions. theories Kenneth clark, The Gothic Revival: An Essay on the History of Taste (london: John murray, 1962), 74; charles Eastlake, A History of the Gothic Revival (london: longmans, Green, and co., 1872), 132; sigrid Bertuleit, Gotisch-Orientalische Stilgenese: Englische Theorien zum Ursprung der Gotik und ihr Einfluss in Deutschland um 1800 (frankfurt am main and new York: P. lang, 1989). meager efforts to unearth the putative middle Eastern sources of the Gothic survived into the latter half of the nineteenth century. On Pascal coste’s retake of the saracenic origins scenario, see B. thaon, “Pascal-Xavier coste: notes d’un voyage au pays gothique,” in daniel armogathe and sylviane leprun, Pascal Coste ou l’architecture cosmopolite (Paris: l’harmattan, 1990), 124–31. for another late hypothesis on the ancient Persian origins of the Gothic by a disciple of viollet-le-duc, see marcel dieulafoy’s introduction to his L’Art antique de la Perse, v. 5 (Paris: librairie centrale d’architecture, 1889).

230

ahmet ersoy

concerning the definitive role of a shared Roman-Hellenistic heritage on the great pre-Renaissance traditions of the Euro-Mediterranean world led many European architects of the period, especially those who were keen on investigating the medieval past, to experiment with Islamic motifs within their eclectic design framework. Even the mastermind of Gothic revival in France, the eminent Viollet-le-Duc, is known to have employed decorative elements derived from the Islamic repertoire in some of his own architectural and restoration projects, the decoration of the Château d’Abbadia (1870) being the most renowned example.23 The French master’s occasional recourse to Middle Eastern decorative traditions stemmed from his belief in the essential rationality of Islamic geometric patterns. Acknowledging the common Classical/Byzantine origins of the Islamic and Gothic building traditions, Viollet-le-Duc argued that the mathematical basis of its underlying geometric structure made Islamic ornament a legitimate source of inspiration for the architects of the modern world.24 Conversely, then, the idea of a shared building tradition between Europe and the Islamic world in the Middle Ages may have reinforced the relevance of the Gothic style for the Ottoman architects, who sought to return to the medieval roots of the Ottoman/Islamic tradition. Perhaps, the incorporation of a foreign component like the Gothic into the very fabric of the local “Renaissance” was justified by Ottoman architects in similar terms of “rational validity” and historic congruity. Surely, the rising prestige of the Gothic in Europe as the rational style par excellence, and the broad universal claims of the proponents of the Gothic Revival must have played a significant role in shaping the Ottoman architects’ decision to accommodate this style. They must have perceived the Gothic, similar to Moorish decoration, as a distinguished and ubiquitously recognizable marker of the broad Euro-Mediterranean medieval

23 Earlier, Viollet-le-Duc attempted to employ some Islamic details in the restoration of the Notre-Dame chapels (in the late 1850’s) and in the mausoleum he designed for the Duchess of Alba near Madrid (1867). In the Abbadia project he collaborated with his student Edmond Duthoit, who, as already noted, continued experimenting with Islamic forms in the later stages of his career. 24 In his preface to Parvillée’s L’Architecture et décoration turque, Viollet-le-Duc contends that his observations on the geometrical principles of Gothic buildings yielded similar results with those of his apprentices, Léon Parvillée and Jules Bourgoin, who concentrated on Islamic architectural / decorative traditions. He maintains, therefore, that the western and oriental architects in the Medieval era employed similar geometric formulas in building their edifices. Parvillée, p. ii. Viollet-le-Duc’s Entretiens sur l’architecture (Paris: A. Morel, 1863–72) also includes several passages on the common roots of Gothic and Islamic design traditions.



ottoman gothic

231

heritage. Perhaps, then, the prospect of the universal (read western) recognition and approval of the modern Ottoman style worked as a major incentive for the late Ottoman architects, who forayed into the European subdivision of a broader “medieval legacy,” deliberately and with nonpartisan casualness. The Return of Medieval Typology While the “Ottoman Renaissance” mainly pertained to decorative surfaces in established building types in the Ottoman domain, certain buildings displayed signs of a more comprehensive transformation in architectural morphology. A pertinent case in this regard is the Aksaray Valide Mosque (1871) in Istanbul, an entirely conventional building in terms of its plan and structure. (Fig. 5) With a central, vertically oriented prayer space crowned by a dome, the building conforms to a typology that can be traced back to the Classical models of the sixteenth century. The sharp exterior outline and prismatic body of the building, however, suffice to create an impression of firmness and severity that stands as a remarkable novelty in the context of nineteenth-century religious architecture, which had been characterized by large relieving arches, curvilinear forms and heavily sculpted ornament for at least the last hundred years. (Figs. 6, 7) With its flat façades pierced by pointed (Gothicized) arches, as well as the incised, two-dimensional decoration of its surfaces, the Aksaray Mosque unmistakably harks back to the more stout and stern morphology of the Anatolian Middle Ages. Adding to the unique effect of angularity, of course, is the unprecedented high drummed dome, which was a truly archaic feature that had been abandoned by Ottoman architects since the fifteenth century. Thus, with its stern rectangular body crowned by an elevated dome, the Aksaray Mosque conveyed a particular image of massiveness and solidity that was, in turn, easily associated with early Ottoman and medieval Islamic structures. Representing the next step in the progress towards an “archaized” rectangular effect in late Ottoman religious architecture is the Hamidiye Mosque (1885–86),25 with its uncommonly horizontal, box-like body, immaculate Gothic windows, and high drummed dome that covers only 25 According to an official construction document, the building was designed by Nikolaki Kalfa (Nikolaos Tzelepis). See: Dolmabahçe Palace Archives, DBSA, E I (1392). On the building and its architect, see my article: “Aykırı Binanı Saklı Kalfası: Hamidiye Camii ve

232

ahmet ersoy

Fig. 5. Aksaray Valide Mosque (1869–71), Sarkis and Agob Balyan. After Pars Tuğlacı, The Role of the Balyan Family in Ottoman Architecture, Istanbul, 1990.



ottoman gothic

233

Fig. 6. Aksaray Valide Mosque, façade detail. Photo by the author.

Fig. 7. Ortaköy Mosque (1854–55), Nigoğos Balyan. Nineteenth-century postcard.

234

ahmet ersoy

one section of the prayer space.26 (Figs 8, 9) An exceptional product of pure historicist reflection, this royal mosque represents the first conscious departure from a vertically oriented—centralized mosque typology that had been the hallmark of Ottoman religious architecture for centuries.27 In fact, with its massive horizontal outline and the unusual configuration of its plan, the building appears to constitute a late tribute to a long-abandoned archetype of Ottoman architecture, the “T-type convent-masjid” typology of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. (Fig. 10) It should be noted that the rise of such historicist sensibility in architectural practice was only possible on the basis of accumulated scholarly and technical knowledge on historical structures, mainly achieved through a comprehensive program for the restoration and rebuilding of early Ottoman buildings in the nineteenth century. The imaginative dialogue with a remote architectural past, revealed in buildings such as the Hamidiye, becomes more graphic in light of numerous late medieval Ottoman buildings which were entirely rebuilt (or heavily restored) throughout the late nineteenth century. The fourteenthcentury Yıldırım Mosque in İnegöl, for instance, entirely reconstructed in 1892, testifies superbly to what medieval tradition comprised in the eyes of the late Ottoman architects. The guiding principle of this regenerative endeavor was, it seems, to restore the building, à la Viollet-le-Duc, to its “ideal” medieval identity.28 Appropriately, the combination of the elevated dome and the massive prismatic volume, pierced with the inevitable Gothic windows, make the building appear as an early Ottoman prequel to the Hamidiye Mosque.29 (Fig. 11) Thus, one could argue that the romantic and historicist discourse of late Ottoman architecture not only delineated the innovative program of the modern Ottoman style, but, in Nikolaos Tzelepis,” in Hasan Kuruyazıcı and Eva Şarlak (eds) Batılılaşan İstanbul’un Rum Mimarları (Istanbul: Zografyon Lisesi Mezunları Derneği, 2012): 104–117. 26 A similar example of the Hamidian rectangular style is the Yeni Cami (New Mosque) of Thessalonica, built in 1902 by Vitaliano Posilli. See Vassilis Colonas, “L’Eclectisme, style officiel ottoman à Salonique à la fin du 19e siècle,” in Ninth International Congress of Turkish Art—23–27 September 1991, Istanbul, vol. 1 (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı, 1995), 489–500. 27 It was Aptullah Kuran who first commented on the nonconformist layout of Hamidiye Mosque as a conscious departure, with particular reference to the positioning of its royal pavilions. See Aptullah Kuran, “The Evolution of the Sultan’s Pavilion in Ottoman Imperial Mosques,” Islamic Art 4 (1990–1991): 281–300. 28 See Ekrem Hakkı Ayverdi, Osmanlı Mimarisinin İlk Devri, I (Istanbul: İstanbul Fetih Cemiyeti, 1989), 500. 29 A similar case of “neo-Medieval” reconstruction is the fourteenth-century Şehadet Mosque in Bursa, re-fashioned in the Hamidian era (1892) along the voguish OttomanMauro-Gothic line. See Albert Gabriel, Une capitale turque, Brousse, I (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1958), 45–46; and Ayverdi, Osmanlı Mimarisinin İlk Devri, 267–74.



ottoman gothic

Fig. 8. Hamidiye Mosque (1885–86), Nikolaki Kalfa (Nikolaos Tzelepis).

Fig. 9. Hamidiye Mosque, plan.

235

236

ahmet ersoy

Fig. 10. Plan of Yıldırım Bayezid Imaret, Edirne. After Ayverdi.



ottoman gothic

237

Fig. 11. İnegöl Yıldırım Mosque (fourteenth century, rebuilt in 1892). After Ayverdi.

symmetrical terms, also enabled the reconstitution of Ottoman “heritage” from bare fragments, rendering it legible and concrete for the Ottoman audiences. In the final analysis, the propagation of a sense of visual affinity (and even reciprocity) between modern and late medieval Ottoman architecture was a profoundly political endeavor as much as an aesthetic one. It helped instill an appropriate sense of continuity and ideological certainty in the Ottoman public. Popular identification with a resplendent medieval past was, after all, an important step in the process of national/ dynastic self-definition in the Ottoman context. For many twentieth-century scholars, the conspicuous Gothic forms adorning late Ottoman mosques, palaces, and civic buildings were nothing more than paltry evidence to the eclectic eccentricities of nineteenthcentury Ottoman architects who were, professedly, so naïve and impulsive as to emulate anything that was in vogue in the European architectural scene, be it neo-Classical, Gothic or Saracenic. Yet, although first-hand accounts of the specific Gothic sources of the Ottoman revival are quite scarce, it would hardly be far-fetched to associate such particularized aesthetic preferences with late Ottoman culture’s romantic and historicist agenda centered upon the medieval past. Rather than being entirely dismissed as aberrant cases of Europeanizing bizzaria, these migrant forms must be reconsidered with reference to the late Ottoman architect’s

238

ahmet ersoy

c­ omplex and unresolved dialogue with history. Late Ottoman art and architecture was entangled in a complex matrix of historical references, and bespoke of an unresolved quest for self-discovery in Ottoman culture. I believe that a closer understanding of late Ottoman society’s growing passion for the past, and, in turn, the ensuing cultural tendency that might be termed Ottoman “romantic medievalism,” constitutes the appropriate backdrop for discussing the appearance of Orientalist, early Ottoman and the unlikely Gothic forms in the novel official architectural vocabulary of the empire. Focusing on such historicist translations and translocations in the architectural field may also help us reconsider and expand the definition of medievalism as a broad and multi-faceted modern phenomenon.

Medievalism and Modernity: Architectural Appropriations of the Middle Ages in Germany (1890–1920)* Michael Werner The present article questions practices of medievalism and representations of the Middle Ages. In order to understand these practices and representations, we have to take into account, on the one hand, a general narrative of the construction of Middle Ages during the long nineteenth century and, on the other, the final breakdown of classical medievalism and its impact on the cultural evolution of the first decades of the twentieth century. Because our primary interest is the relationship between medievalism and modernity, it makes sense to concentrate on this latter period. Of course, during the whole nineteenth century, medievalism was linked to political, social and cultural changes that took place within the process of modernization. The completions of the Cologne cathedral, the long-term enterprise of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, and the restoration of the château de Pierrefonds were powerful symbols of the ideology of progress which dominated the century in Europe. In a certain sense, medievalism and the idea of modernity were often closely linked. Many advocates of medievalism attempted to bring medieval order and forms into the present. They took inspiration from the Middle Ages to shape their here and now. But since the 1890s, the relation between representations of the medieval past and modernity began to change profoundly. History, framing the views of the century, shaped the knowledge and modified the self-understanding of European societies, and was increasingly forced to confront the crisis of historicism. The acceleration of uncontrolled urban development resulting from the industrial boom created strong social tensions and undermined the ideology of progress. In the field of literature, arts and architecture, these evolutions prepared the field for avant-garde movements. The passage from affirmative historicism to modernity implied a development requiring a period of time and took different forms. It was ­neither * I am very grateful for the discussions and precious comments of the focus group members who shared the common work at the Collegium Budapest during the first months of 2009.

240

michael werner

a sudden transformation nor a linear process, but rather a complex evolution, including backward steps and numerous intertwining entanglements. As I will argue, this mutation can be observed in several spheres of social and cultural life. In the following remarks I will concentrate on architecture and on the ideas of “building,” but similar phenomena might be observed in applied arts (furniture, interior design) or in popular literature. However, as we will see, architecture offers special evidence to illustrate the argument I am trying to defend. I Let us begin with a preliminary remark on our understanding of historicism. What we call historicism (Historismus) is a movement which started in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. It was related, as stated by Koselleck, to the historical experience of the French Revolution, which radically questioned the foreseeability of history.1 From then on, past, present and future were separated. Without commenting here further on the methodological implications for the historiography (in particular source criticism, necessity for not assessing the past in light of the present), I would like to define historicism, for the purposes of my presentation, in the term of Otto-Gerhard Oexle, as a movement of Historisierung (historization) encompassing all areas of humanities, arts and sciences.2 This overlapping definition includes all disciplines. However, in art history and the history of architecture the term historicism describes, more specifically, the use of historical styles (classical, Gothic, Romanesque, renaissance, baroque) by artists and architects of the nineteenth century. It assumes that these styles can be recognized by their basic features and can be transferred by imitation into the present. Normally one distinguishes between a romantic stage and a positivistic or “serious” or “scholarly” stage of historicism. The first reputedly appeals to the imagination, through the mind of the past, and might be conjured into the present as a kind of enchantment. It proceeds by a sort of Totalisierung of the traits and features it searches to discover in the past. Among the possible pasts it prefers the Middle Ages because it postulates their continuous development into the present time. The Middle Ages are considered as the origin and the cradle of its own 1  Reinhard Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik historischer Zeiten (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1979). 2 Otto-Gerhard Oexle, Krise des Historismus—Krise der Wirklichkeit. Wissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur 1880–1932 (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2007).



medievalism and modernity

241

identity. In addition romantic historicism sees in the Middle Ages the harmonious unity of a religiously formed community and its advocates were interested in the popular traditions inherited from the Middle Ages and sought to use these traditions to shape their own ways of life. The positivistic or scholarly Historismus, by contrast, attempted to infer “pure elements” of the past form vocabulary in an art-historically correct way. It criticized the “Subjektivismus” of romantic historicism, and tried to find a teachable and objectively correct style derived from form details. But as we will see, even if it concentrated on details, the positivistic historicism did not proceed (and work out) without representing the totality, which encompasses and summarizes all individual details. At this step, a basic tension important for our subject becomes visible: that between Totalisierung and eclecticism. As normally understood, eclecticism means combining and mixing heterogeneous elements in opposition to the idea of a totalized and unified representation of the past. What I will attempt to show is, on the contrary, that eclecticism is not an ahistorical and arbitrary handling of the past, but a radicalization in the appropriation of the past by the present. In this sense, eclecticism is a special version of totalizing proceedings, which could explain the shift from historicism to modernity and to avant-garde. II For our purpose, which is to question the relationship between historicism and modernity, we have to highlight four main features: First, historicism involves the feeling of the complete availability of the past. In this respect, historicism is close to eclecticism. The progress of history provides full accessibility to the past and allows situating one’s own position in the present. This means, among other things, that the knowledge of the past provides a control of the present. It makes available adequate solutions to the problems faced by the participants of the present time. Second, there is, however, a basic tension between historical know­ ledge and contemporaneity: on the one hand, history, especially antiquarian history, turns away from the present moment. The historical school argued that the historian has to cut himself off from the present and to plunge into the past in order to find out “wie es eigentlich gewesen ist” (Ranke). On the other hand, historicism assumes that the more one knows about the past, the more one will be able to be an authentic citizen of the present, a member of contemporary society. In so far as the Middle Ages

242

michael werner

were considered as the cradle of the European nation-states, medievalist historicism raised the question of historical continuity and discontinuity. Third, the national framing of medievalism during the nineteenth century entailed a supplementary tension: that between the particularity of the nation and the (presumed) universality of the Middle Ages. Each nation attempted to establish its own medieval past, which was, at the same time, considered as a common European legacy. So we see competing national visions of universality, national appropriations of a past considered as a fundamentally universalistic period of human history. This paradoxical link will be important for the bridge into avant-garde modernity. Fourth, and this concerns especially Gothic medievalism, is the idea that the medieval world, in contrast to classical Antiquity, represents a unified system merging religion, political order, arts, sciences and daily life. This view of the Middle Ages, whose roots go back to romantic writers and artists,3 dominated the whole century. Even more, it increased toward the century’s end, enhanced by the emergence of Geistesgeschichte. For art history, and particularly for the history of architecture, the Gothic world was better able to embody the powerful spirit of a historical age. According to Karl Scheff­ ler, one of the authors who popularized the vision of Geistesgeschichte,4 the spirit of the Gothic world was a strong integrating principle, likely to heal the illnesses of the fragmented and disordered present time. The stress of spirituality denationalized, up to a certain degree, late German medievalism, even if Scheffler continued to claim the Nordic character of the Gothic. In the beginning of the twentieth century a new structural scheme of values emerged opposing spirituality to materialism, abstraction to realism, and mysticism to rational empiricism and positivism. For the establishment of these different pairings of values, which imply a critical view of what was seen as the prevailing tendencies of the nineteenth century, the reference to the Gothic universe played a crucial role. III The spiritualistic turn of late medievalism was not only a problem of shifting ideas: it also involved changes related to the formal architectural language. David Wilson’s contribution to this volume highlights several main 3 Novalis was one of the most ardent defenders of this vision. 4 Karl Scheffler published his Geist der Gotik in 1917 (Leipzig: Insel).



medievalism and modernity

243

characteristics of neo-Gothic architecture in Europe.5 Referring to his perceptive analysis, I would just like to add that the late neo-Gothic buildings, especially in Germany, were characterized by a certain tendency to abstraction and simplification, abandoning rich ornamentation, and emphasizing the main formal principles, the leading structural elements.6 The drift toward modern style would be much more evident in “Gothic” iron-framed skyscrapers such as the Woolworth Building in New York, immediately baptized the “Cathedral of Commerce,” or as the “Cathedral of Learning” at the University of Pittsburgh’s campus. But those very late examples of Gothic revival go obviously beyond a strong neo-Gothic language of forms and open up new configurations of eclecticism. Furthermore, in respect to the theory of forms, we must stress the impact of Wilhelm Worringer’s theoretical framework elaborated in the first decade of the twentieth century. His two major books, Abstraction and Empathy (1907)7 and Form Problems of the Gothic (1911)8 deeply inspired the intellectuals and the artists of his time. Defining the Gothic style as a dematerialization of realistic classical art and architecture, Worringer celebrated the “Gothic impulse” to create stylized art, no longer imitating reality but concentrating on spiritual values. Referring to Riegl, who asserted that mimesis is not an inherent feature in artistic production, he argued that stylized art like Gothic does not reveal a cultural aptitude to create realistic representations, but rather a psychological need to represent objects in a spiritual manner. Furthermore, he stressed the dialectical relationship between abstraction and empathy. Riegl had claimed that the aesthetic effect was due to the Stimmung, the atmosphere created by the consciousness of the Alterswert of the monument, which means the value originated by the historical distance between the object’s production and its present observation. Thus the aesthetic effect implies an active relationship between the Kunstwollen (will to art) of a historical age and its appropriation by the spectator who later faces the artifact generated by former times.9 Worringer, going a step further, argued that the Stimmung 5 See David Wilson, “The Roots of Medievalism in North-West Europe: National Romanticism, Architecture, Literature”, in this volume, at pp. 111–138. 6 This is also the case for the late neoromanesque churches. 7 Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraktion und Einfühlung. Ein Beitrag zur Stilpsychologie (München: Piper, 1907). This book is the published version of Worringer’s doctoral dissertation. 8 Wilhelm Worringer, Formprobleme der Gotik (München: Piper, 1911). 9 Alois Riegl, Der moderne Denkmalkultus. Sein Wesen und seine Entstehung (Wien/ Leipzig: Braumüller, 1901). On Riegl, see Céline Trautmann-Waller, “Alois Riegl (1858–1905),”

244

michael werner

is engendered by an act of abstraction, where both memory and rational thinking intervene. And it is precisely this act of abstraction which opens the door to empathy in the psychology of the spectator. Worringer’s theory was fundamental not only for art historians, but also for expressionist artists and modernist architects. However, Worringer still made a fundamental distinction between Gothic architecture and the modern iron-based technique of building. The first was, according to him, a strong constructive effort carried out against the stone material, representing the victory of the spirit over inert matter, whereas the second developed its architectural forms in accordance with the properties of steel and iron. Gothic is a “will to form” of the material, while steel constructions are simply expressions of the possibilities of a new material.10 It was Karl Scheffler who, in his Spirit of the Gothic, took the plunge, strongly assimilating the new architecture and what he called the “Gothic mind.” The new Gothicism, he argued, expressed itself by the modern industrial buildings, the accentuation of the vertical and of “naked forms,” embodying the tendency to economic globalization (der Zug zum Weltwirtschaftlichen) characteristic of the new era: “The engineer-like feature of the new architecture is Gothic. The most revolutionaries are always also the most Gothic (. . .). In the gigantic fabric halls, in the commercial buildings and skyscrapers, in the industrial constructions, railway stations and bridges, in the crude forms of the functional structures the pathos of suffering is at work, it is blowing the Gothic spirit.”11 These emotional declarations, written during the First World War mark a radicalization of the totalizing impetus of medievalist historicism. It addressed the turning point when historicism merged into clearly modern and avant-garde architectural projects. To illustrate this transformation, I would briefly present three examples. IV The first example that shows the link between Gothics and modernists is the central role of glass, and related to this, of light. Light broken by colored glass was, as we know, one of the themes of impressionist artists, and also of neo-Gothics, who see in the interplay of lighting effects a symbol of in Michel Espagne and Bénédicte Savoy (eds.), Dictionnaire des historiens d›art allemands (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2010), 217–28. 10 Worringer, Formprobleme der Gotik, 72 ff. 11  Scheffler, Der Geist der Gotik, 109 ff.



medievalism and modernity

245

the mystical union of sky and earth, of god and nature. For the modernists, it was a central point. Among many others, Bruno Taut’s Glass Pavilion at the 1914 Werkbund-Exhibition in Cologne offers a tremendously persuasive example.12 On the one hand, it was financed by the Association of the German glass industry. The glass makers aimed to demonstrate the possibilities of different types of glass (colored glasses, glass bricks, etc.) for new architectural purposes. The structure, a multi-faceted polygon, was made of concrete and glass bricks, the cupola had a complex design of rhombic faces covered with colored glass projecting a kaleidoscope of colors recalling and multiplying the effects of Gothic rosettes. Between the lower and upper levels two staircases framed a cascading waterfall with underwater lighting. The pavilion was a masterpiece of advanced industrial techniques. On the other hand, the light effects aimed at triggering emotions and at provoking the feeling of a spiritual utopia. The mystical dimension of the construction was emphasized by several inscriptions on the frieze due to the poet Paul Scheerbarth, who the same year published his Glasarchitektur (architecture of glass) dedicated to Taut. Among these verses one could read that “colored glass destroys hatred,” “without a glass palace, life is a burden,” and “the light aims to cross the whole universe and is coming to life within the crystal.” In an early drawing of the pavilion, Taut himself noted that the project had to be conceived in the spirit of a Gothic cathedral.13 More precisely, he wrote on the top of another drawing of the project: “The Gothic cathedral is the prelude to the architecture of glass.”14 This means that the new architecture was founded upon the Gothic Cathedral, but intended to go far beyond. Combining organic forms, verticality, geometry of nature, capture of dynamics and forces coming from the universe, the new architecture aimed at dissolving spatial limitations while dealing with spatial geometry and spatial components. The fundamental element is the play of lights (Fig. 1 and Fig. 2). My second example occurred five years later, in April 1919. Between the two dates took place the First World War, the collapse of the European system of states, of the first stages of European imperialism, and the end of a certain idea of European civilization. The great War generated an apocalyptic vision of European culture now rejected by the masses at a 12 See Angelika Thiekötter, et al., Kristallisationen, Splitterungen. Bruno Tauts Glashaus (Basel/Berlin/Boston: Birkhäuser, 1993). The pavilion was destroyed after the exhibition ended. 13 Richard Weston, Plans, Sections and Elevations: Key Buildings of the Twentieth Century (London: Laurence King Publishing, 2004), 40. 14 Thiekötter, Kristallisationen, Splitterungen, 67.

246

michael werner

Fig. 1. Bruno Taut, Glass Pavilion (Cologne, 1914).

Fig. 2. Bruno Taut, Glass Pavilion, ground floor.



medievalism and modernity

247

level never before seen and a cynical contempt for individual values. The shock caused by the war deeply affected Europeans’ self-understanding. The world seemed broken. The creation of the Bauhaus in 1919 was one of the solutions suggested by German artists and intellectuals to face the new situation. The task was to invent the building of a new world. This task Gropius, the director of the Bauhaus, could not imagine other than under an architectural project. In his manifesto, which announced the opening of the new institution, he argued: The ultimate aim of all visual arts is the complete building! To embellish buildings was once the noblest function of the fine arts; they were the indispensable components of great architecture. Today the arts exist in isolation, from which they can be rescued only through the conscious, cooperative effort of all craftsmen. Architects, painters, and sculptors must recognize anew and learn to grasp the composite character of a building both as an entity and in its separate parts. Only then will their work be imbued with the architectonic spirit which it has lost as “salon art.” The old schools of art were unable to produce this unity; how could they, since art cannot be taught. They must be merged once more with the workshop. The mere drawing and painting world of the pattern designer and the applied artist must become a world that builds again. When young people who take a joy in artistic creation once more begin their life’s work by learning a trade, then the unproductive “artist” will no longer be condemned to deficient artistry, for their skill will now be preserved for the crafts, in which they will be able to achieve excellence. Architects, sculptors, painters, we all must return to the crafts! For art is not a “profession.” There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. In rare moments of inspiration, transcending the consciousness of his will, the grace of heaven may cause his work to blossom into art. But proficiency in a craft is essential to every artist. Therein lies the prime source of creative imagination. Let us then create a new guild of craftsmen without the class distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist! Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.15

This new philosophy of building was accompanied by Lyonel Feininger’s woodcut of a cathedral on the cover of the manifesto: beams of light converge upon the cathedral’s three spires, representing the three arts of painting, architecture (in the center) and sculpture. (Fig. 3) Two main elements 15 One of the originals of the manifesto is held by the Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin.

248

michael werner

Fig. 3. Lionel Feininger, Cover of the Bauhaus-Manifesto (1919).



medievalism and modernity

249

here are particularly important: The first is the symbolism of the cathedral as an allegory of a total work of art and an emblematic figure of social and spiritual unity. Taut had already used the drawing of a Gothic cathedral spire to illustrate his book The City Crown.16 Especially in the disorder and apocalyptic atmosphere following the War, the totalizing symbolism of the Cathedral promised salvation by the creative act performed by the community of artists and craftsmen under the direction of the architect (Baumeister). The second, on a more technical level, was the great unity of artists and craftsmen. This issue refers back to discussions held before the war, especially within the Werkbund (and, at that time, related to the British arts and crafts movement). But what was, in the 1900s, a debate on industrial standardization and individual craftsmanship, now led back to the world of the construction of cathedrals. The well-organized building site where masters, companions and journeymen worked together harmoniously, constituted the model. The cathedral workshop (Dombauhütte), where the pieces were shaped, appears as the idealized place of common work. The religion of art no longer exists, but the concrete craft and workmanship combine manual and intellectual activity. Thus the cathedral is not only a symbolic representation of a unified world, but also a place for the coordinated practices of creation. Of course, the totalizing metaphor of the cathedral would be progressively abandoned by the Bauhaus, when it challenged, in the middle of the twenties, the themes of “new objectivity.” But in the beginning, it fixed a “passage oblige,” a forced passage. The third example returns to Bruno Taut. In autumn 1919, Taut formed an association called Gläserne Kette (chain of glass) gathering 13 avantgarde architects, among them Walter Gropius, Wassili and Hans Luckhardt, Max Taut, Hans Scharoun, Hermann Finsterlin and Hans Hansen.17 The idea was, in a period characterized by unemployment, to form a chain of correspondences by exchanging letters, drawings, watercolors, visual representations and, more generally, ideas. The members of the chain adopted pen-names, Taut, for instance, choose Glas and Gropius Maß (measure). Between November 1919 and December 1920, 84 letters with attached documents were exchanged by the architects. They often used programmatic formulas and wrote in a somewhat expressionist style. One of the pieces sent by Taut was the drawing of a scenic play called “Der Weltbaumeister. Architektur-Schauspiel für symphonische Musik” 16 Bruno Taut, Die Stadtkrone (Jena: Diederichs, 1919). 17 On the Gläserne Kette, see Maria Stavrinaki, La chaîne de verre. Une correspondance expressionniste (Paris: Editions de la Villette, 2009).

250

michael werner

(The architect [literally: building master] of the world. Architectural play for symphonic music) (Fig. 4). The manuscript, published in 1920,18 mixes colored carbon drawings with a few texts, scenic instructions and indications for the music to be played. The play is a Miniaturmodell of a Gesamtkunstwerk mingling pictures, music, colored lightings, but without spoken words. 28 drawings corresponding to 28 scenes punctuate the action in a cinematographic sequence. It relates the story of the construction, destruction and rebuilding of the world. The world built in the first part of the play is shaped by gothic forms. It represents a gothic cosmos (Fig. 5). This world then collapses, falling in ruins and disappearing into the universe. The building of the new world, in part two, arises from the encounter of two stars, one of them the cathedral star, approaching the earth, dancing and swirling, and then vanishing in the universal space. It has initiated the process of rebuilding. Huts and houses grow out of the green organic soil (Fig. 6). On the top of the hill rises THE HOUSE, a luminous crystal house similar to the 1914 Glass Pavilion, reflecting and filtering the light of the stars and showing the mystical union of “Architecture, night, universe” (legend to drawing 27). Even more: Looking back to the cupola of the pavilion, we observe that the top center gathers the crystal cathedral star symbolizing, by the plays of lines and lights, the merging of the inside and the outside, of the cosmos and the new construction (Fig. 7). Two elements should be noted for our argument. First, the leading constructive principle of the ancient world, Gothic building, has broken down, especially through the impact of the Great War. And second, the inspiration for the building of the new world will return, thanks to the cathedral star, which embodies the idea of a totalizing construction based on harmony and common faith. It is a transposition of the “spirit of the Gothic” into a new situation, a re-creation due to the Weltbaumeister, the architect of the world. Of course, the formal principles of the new building would combine several components: Gothic abstraction, geo­ metry based on mathematics, and lines inspired by the idea of organic growth of both cosmic and artificial principles, due to the architects’ interventions, who grasped the lights. Gothic style is no longer there, but the new forms would be permeated by the unifying breath of what had been considered the Gothic idea.

18 (Essen: Folkwang Verlag). The text of the play is reproduced in Thiekötter, Kristallisationen, 65 ff., the pictures of scenes 1 to 13 and 21 in Stavrinaki, La chaîne de verre, 225–32.



medievalism and modernity

Fig. 4. Bruno Taut, Der Weltbaumeister (1919), cover.

251

252

michael werner

Fig. 5. Bruno Taut, Der Weltbaumeister (1919), scenes 7 and 9.



medievalism and modernity

253

Fig. 6. Bruno Taut, Der Weltbaumeister (1919), scenes 20 and 21 (the cathedral star encountering the earth).

254

michael werner

Fig. 7. Bruno Taut, Glass Pavilion, top of the cupola with the crystal representing the cathedral star.



medievalism and modernity

255

Insofar as it deals with a totalizing view of cultural production and social life, late medievalism proved to be the missing link between historicism and modernity. The modern utopia was deeply affected by the representation of the Middle Ages seen as a world where human beings and the universe were in harmony. However, the moderns had no longer any need to come back to the historic conceptions of eclecticism. They went beyond the medieval forms in order to find the elements of a new architectural language. But they zealously retained the universalistic heritage of the Middle Ages, the fundamental condition for imagining and conceiving the task of the present, especially in the German case.

Part Three

MEDIEVALISM IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY PHILOLOGY

A Cross-Country Foxhunt: Claiming Reynard for the National Literatures of Nineteenth-Century Europe Joep Leerssen An important aspect of medievalism is the search for the nation’s vernacular (as opposed to Classical or Christian) roots. In the philologies especially, this interest was, relatively speaking, a novelty. Although historians and antiquaries had shown some interest in the (early-)medieval past throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the study of language and literature rarely reached back further than the century or so before the invention of printing. The earliest vernacular authors to figure in Europe’s literary rearview mirror around 1800 were Ronsard and Villon, Spenser and Chaucer, Dante and possibly some names mentioned in the Codex Manesse. Anything earlier would bypass the Middle Ages altogether and reach straight back into Biblical or Classical antiquity. A number of developments in the period 1770–1800 changed all that. One was the continuing reverberation of the Ossian affair;1 the second was the discovery of the Indo-European linguistic family tree;2 the third was the opening-up of a number of ecclesiastical and noble libraries, bringing their forgotten medieval riches to the notice of a new generation of historians and philologists. A dam burst of literary manuscripts gained renewed availability; not as the result of any single event, but in a highintensity process beginning with the secularization of the libraries of the suspended Jesuit order in the early 1770s. That process reached a high point in the effects of the Josephine reforms, the French Revolution and the secularization of Imperial-independent monasteries after the 1803 constitutional reforms of the Holy Roman Empire. It affected all of Western and West-Central Europe. The Munich Court Library swelled to become one of the largest in Europe, a process mirrored at a slightly smaller scale at the Württemberg Library in Stuttgart. The Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal was

1 See my “Ossian and the Rise of Literary Historicism,” in The Reception of Ossian in Europe, ed. Howard Gaskill (London: Continuum, 2004), 109–25. 2 The process was triggered by Sir William Jones in 1782 and consolidated in its general tenets in Friedrich Schlegel’s Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (1808).

260

joep leerssen

formed in Paris, incorporating many ci-devant monastic libraries from the metropolitan area, and the former Bibliothèque du roi and Bibliothèque mazarine became public research institutes. Even the Vatican library was placed under bureaucratic management in the French civil service, following Napoleon’s annexation of the Papal States in 1808. And men of letters descended in great numbers on these newly accessible hoards, made many discoveries and laid the basis for many a scholarly career.3 The result was, to begin with, a complete re-writing of the histories of the West-European literatures. The foundational texts which now function as the figureheads in the opening chapters of English, German and French history (Beowulf, the Nibelungenlied and the Chanson de Roland) had sunk into obscurity in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were retrieved from obscure holdings between 1770 and 1840, and given printed editions for the first time in, respectively, 1807, 1815 and 1836. Thus the many upheavals of the decades around 1800 were not only markers of a drastic modernization process, but also eye-openers for a new literary historicism and a new medievalism. That medievalism in turn fed into the growth of nationalism, which affected all Europe at the time.4 Each “nation” discovered its medieval rootedness. Editions of Nibelungen and the Chanson de Roland all echoed the old Ossianic ideal: that not just the great civilizations of classical antiquity had had their foundational epic, but that each European nation had one. The term “national epic” became current, and indeed one of its first usages seems to have been in a review written by Jacob Grimm on the first edition of the Nibelungenlied (1807). Jacob Grimm will stand at the center of the philological case study presented here.5 He had developed into a historicist and a philologist

3 Cf. my “Introduction: Philology and the European construction of national literatures,” in Editing the Nation’s Memory: Textual scholarship and nation-building in 19thcentury Europe, ed. D. Van Hulle & J. Leerssen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), 13–27. 4 Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations. The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Anne-Marie Thiesse, La création des identités nationales. Europe XVIIIe–XXe siècle (Paris: Seuil, 1999). 5 There is an extensive body of critical literature on him. I mention only Steffen Martus, Die Brüder Grimm: Eine Biographie (Berlin: Rowohlt, 2009); Murray B. Peppard, Paths through the forest. A biography of the Brothers Grimm (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971); Wilhelm Schoof, Jacob Grimm. Aus seinem Leben (Bonn: Dümmler, 1960); Herbert Scurla, Die Brüder Grimm: Ein Lebensbild (Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1985); Gabriele Seitz, Die Brüder Grimm: Leben, Werk, Zeit (München: Winkler, 1984); and my own “From Bökendorf to Berlin: Private careers, public sphere, and how the past changed in Jacob Grimm’s



a cross-country foxhunt

261

in precisely these crucial years. Originally a middle-ranking librarian, he had (with his brother Wilhelm) studied jurisprudence at Marburg, and his mentor there, the great legal historian Friedrich Carl von Savigny, had influenced his development in a number of decisive ways. To begin with, Savigny had taught the Grimms paleography, the reading of old scripts and old forms of the German language—this being one of the central skills in the craft of a jurisprudence still largely based on case and custom law, involving an accumulation of centuries of legal pronouncements. That system was just then being swept aside by a more systematic Napoleonic Code, technocratically based on a Constitutional Law from which a body of government-made and parliament-endorsed legal rules derived in the fields of Criminal Law and Civil Law. Savigny was among those who resisted the Napoleonic Code as an artificial contrivance frivolously imposed on a conquered population, destroying the long, organically-evolved set of rulings and standards by which each nation had over its previous long history articulated and manifested its moral position in the world.6 Grimm inherited this organicist-historicist outlook from his master.7 He applied it to all other forms of national culture. Law, Mythology, Language, Literature: all these were the emanations of a nation’s character, and to study these was to pursue a type of national anthropology. Even in the study of folk- and fairytales, Grimm believed he was retrieving the debased echoes of an aboriginal Germanic mythology, much as in studying the German language he saw in each modern phrase or word the lifetime,” in Free Access to the Past: Romanticism, Cultural Heritage and the Nation, ed. L. Jensen, J. Leerssen & M. Mathijsen (Leiden: Brill, 2010): 55–80. More generally also: Pier Carlo Bontempelli, Knowledge, power, and discipline: German Studies and national identity (trl. G. Poole; Minneapolis, MA: University of Minnesota Press, 2003); Peter Fritzsche, Stranded in the present. Modern time and the melancholy of history (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). 6 The earliest formulation of this anti-Revolutionary historicism is to be found in Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France: “Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure; but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is [. . .] a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society [. . .]”. 7 Wilhelm Schoof (ed.), Briefe der Brüder Grimm an Savigny (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1953); Ulrich Wyss, Die wilde Philologie: Jacob Grimm und der Historismus (München: Beck, 1979).

262

joep leerssen

etymologies and Germanic parallels that led him back to ancient Gothic. Grimm learned from Savigny the habit of historicism, to see all things in terms of their development and rootedness. This habit went, in his case, hand in hand with a comparative-typological vision, in which he always abstracted from the individual instances of a given thing (words, tales, texts) in order to apprehend the underlying pattern or type (an etymology, a thematic Stoff, a textual transmission). This made him quite sympathetic to the new type of textual scholarship propounded by Karl Lachmann, who in turn had mastered the craft of diplomatics and textual scholarship from his background in Classics, where different variants of a given text can be encountered and must be reconciled.8 Lachmann was the great architect of stemmatological approach, arranging various textual instances with their concordances and divergences into a family-tree-style filiation, allowing the editor to retrace the textual transmission process back to its source, the ideal, abstract Urtext. This practice may be seen as the historicist alternative to the older practice of diplomatic editing, which would reproduce or follow the best available manuscript, and complement lacunae from other MS versions and note variae lectionis marginally in footnotes. All these things came together when Grimm accompanied his mentor Savigny to Paris in order to assist him in jurisprudential library research. The former Bibliothèque du roi, now Bibliothèque nationale, was the treasure-trove that the two scholars worked on, and in the margin of his jurisprudential chores Grimm here came across versions of a medieval animal legend, the Roman de Renart, and with it opened one of the most complex issues of provenance and text transmission in European literary history. Back Story: The Reynard Material 9 Animal fables, often with a satirical intent, are widespread in the European tradition, from Aesop to La Fontaine, and indeed in world culture. A specific corpus of tales involves a wily, amoral fox, scheming against his enemies and his victims (the wolf, the badger, the hens), mostly at

8 Sebastiano Timpanaro, La genesi del metodo del Lachmann (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1963); Albert Leitzmann (ed.), Briefwechsel der Brüder Grimm mit Karl Lachmann (2 vols; Jena: Frommannsche Buchhandlung, 1927). 9 This has been studied more extensively in my De bronnen van het vaderland: Taal, literatuur en de afbakening van Nederland, 1806–1890 (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2006).



a cross-country foxhunt

263

the court of the lion king. The complex of tales crystallized into a specific formula and cast of characters around 1100 ad in Flanders; the first sustained textual form being in Latin and ascribed to one Nivardus of Gent. It quickly, by the mid-to-late twelfth century, gained popularity in the vernacular, in France as the Roman de Renart in various “branches” (episodes), in German as Reinhart Fuchs. An influential version was the slightly later Flemish one, which in turn generated later variants in French (additional “branches”), a Latin retrotranslation, a later Flemish version, as well as Low German and even English adaptations.10 However, this dissemination was largely forgotten in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Following the successes of the Fables of La Fontaine, eighteenth-century antiquaries printed some versions (Gottsched the Low German one in 1752, Le Grand d’Aussy the French one in 1779). Literary interest grew when none other than Goethe, on the basis of Gottsched’s printing, made a rendition in hexameters in 1795, Reineke Fuchs. By 1805 the Reynard story was still wrapped in shadows and uncertainties. All that was known were a low-comic Low-German version and a French one. The dominant idea was that France constituted the senior tradition, backbone of the fable transmission, having inherited the Aesop tradition (witness Marie de France’s Esopet) and continued it, by way of the Roman de Renart, down to La Fontaine. The rest of Europe was just a spin-off. All the same, Grimm was worrying at the riddle. He looked at the manuscripts in the Bibliothèque nationale, and it was with some reluctance that he acquiesced in the idea that Goethe’s Reineke Fuchs derived from a German imitation of what was ultimately a French prototype.11 How tenacious his interest was, is demonstrated by the fact that he had some MSS brought over from Paris to Kassel in 1810 (where he had found employ as court librarian of what was at that time the French puppet state of Westphalia, ruled by Napoleon’s brother Joseph Bonaparte). 10 The nomenclature (“Flemish”, “Dutch”, “Netherlandic”) is intractably vexing; the terms are differently applied to territories or to language, and with their meanings also shifting when applied to medieval, modern or contemporary situations. Here and in what follows, I use the terms in a loose sense (caveat lector), with “Flemish” referring to the form of Netherlandic used in the Southern Netherlands, “Dutch” to the more Northern form, and “Netherlandic” or “Dutch/Flemish” to refer to the language at large. While “Dutch” and “Flemish” can refer to different states, they always refer to one and the same language. 11  Cf. letter to Wilhelm, 27 May 1805, quoted Wilhelm Schoof (ed.), Briefwechsel zwischen Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm aus der Jugendzeit (2nd ed.; Weimar: Böhlau, 1963), 55.

264

joep leerssen

Around that year 1810, an alternative theory was beginning to form in Grimm’s mind. He was aware that a Latin version existed, and that both in the French and in the Latin versions, the principal animals carried names of an undoubtedly Germanic stamp: Rein(h)art, Hersinde, Isengrim. This threw doubts on the prevailing francocentric motions of origin and provenance. And the scent was being picked up of other versions. In Rome, a German version was unearthed by one Gloeckle, who had been appointed by the French authorities to deal with the German holdings of the Vatican Library, the biblioteca palatina.12 In Holland, the antiquary Hendrik van Wyn had printed excerpts of a Flemish version,13 which seemed complemented by a fuller Flemish version found when the librarians at Stuttgart re-inventorizing the manuscripts acquired from the dissolved noble abbey of Comburg. The Latin-French monopoly was eroding, in the very years that French political hegemony was also eroding under the strain of the Peninsular War and the Russian campaign. The Grimms, who around this time were finishing their collection of folk- and fairytales, took action. They published two open letters canvassing support and information concerning the Reynard fable. One appeared in Dutch in the Algemeene konst- en letter-bode for 1811, asking for information on ancient and medieval texts and folktales; the other appeared in Friedrich Schlegel’s Deutsches Museum in 1812, announcing the simultaneous existence and impending publication of various versions: the Vatican [German] one, as found by Gloeckle and now forwarded to them; the Flemish one as signaled by Van Wyn and soon to be printed on the basis of the Comburg-Stuttgart manuscript; all of which tended to subvert the notion that the French version (as printed earlier by Le Grand d’Aussy) was the premier, senior one.

12 This was the erstwhile library of the Counts Palatinate of Heidelberg, taken as war booty in the course of the seventeenth century. 13 The fragments were printed in Hendrik van Wyn, Historische en letterkundige avondstonden (1800) and probably came to Grimm’s attention through the intermediary agency of the legal scholar Tydeman, a correspondent of Savigny. Grimm entered into correspondence with Tydeman and other Dutch men of letters around 1810–1815; cf. Lettres du Dr. Willem Bilderdijk à Mr. Jacob Grimm (Amsterdam, 1837); Karl Theodor Gaedertz (ed.), Briefwechsel von Jakob Grimm und Hoffman-Fallersleben mit Hendrik van Wyn: Nebst anderen Briefen zur deutschen Literatur (Bremen: Müller, 1888); Alexander Reifferscheid (ed.), Briefe von Jakob Grimm an Hendrik Willem Tydeman, mit einem Anhange und Anmerkungen (Heilbronn: Henninger, 1883); Cornelis Soeteman, “Jacob Grimm an L.P.C. Van den Bergh und H.W. Tydeman und andere Grimm-Briefe in der Universitätsbibliothek Leiden,” Brüder Grimm Gedenken, 3 (1983): 249–257; René Van de Zijpe, Jacob Grimm und die Niederlande (Kassel: privately printed, 1968).



a cross-country foxhunt

265

These two open letters also testify to a shift in scholarly attitude. Until 1811, the Grimms had been habituated to collective work in group efforts. Savigny had introduced them to his brothers-in-law Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, who at that time were involved in a convivial effort at folksong-collecting, resulting in the epochal anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1806–08). The Grimms had been part of that enterprise,14 and their Wunderhorn contacts had in turn helped them in gathering folktales—indeed, the Kinder- und Hausmärchen are to some extent a prose continuation of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and collect the collaborative efforts of various informants and collectors. The Dutch open letter was obviously intended to continue that pattern. One year later, however, attitudes were changing. No longer part of the convivial pastime of like-minded cultural amateurs and cognoscenti, the editing of ancient texts became a matter of professional jealousy. The Stuttgart archivists who had identified the Comburg manuscript appeared to be double-crossing the Grimms, as Jacob bitterly remarked in his private correspondence, by means of chicanery and uncollegiality, with the aim of monopolizing for themselves the laurels of a scientific discovery. In the very year 1812, Friedrich David Gräter published the Comburg version in his review Bragur: Ein litterarisches Magazin der deutschen und nordischen Vorzeit, which marked the beginning of a life-long feud between him and the Grimms. Multiple rivalries were obviously at work, the ones between German philologists overshadowing the wider one challenging French claims to primacy. In the following decade, Grimm appears to have turned away from the foxhunt. His early discoveries were being overtaken by various other ones elsewhere. His discovery of an early Latin version in the Parisian National/Imperial Library, on a return visit in 1814, he formally communicated to the Dutch Academy (which had made him a member) in 1817;15 but Dutch enthusiasm remained lukewarm, and hints of the existence of a fuller and older Dutch version than the one published by his enemy Gräter turned out to be a chimera—for the nonce. While other manuscripts turned up elsewhere (a German version, to sit besides the one found in the Vatican, turned up in Hungary and was edited by Johann 14 Heinz Rölleke, “Die Beiträge der Brüder Grimm zu ‘Des Knaben Wunderhorn’,” Brüder Grimm Gedenken, 2 (1975): 28–42. Leerssen, “From Bökendorf to Berlin”. 15 “Notice d’un poème latin du douzième siècle traitant la fable de Renard et d’Isengrin”, reprinted in Jacob Grimm, Kleinere Schriften (8 vols; Berlin / Gütersloh: Dümmler / Bertelsmann, 1864–90), 7: 530.

266

joep leerssen

von Majláth and Johann Paul Köffinger in 1818),16 the French brought out a sumptuous four-volume edition of “their” Reynard: Dominique Martin Méon’s Roman de Renard, d’après les manuscrits de la Bibliothéque du roi des XIIIe, XIVe et XVe siècles (1826). When in 1829 another early MS with the Latin tale was found in Liège, in the Southern Netherlands, Grimm left the editing to one of his adepts, Franz Joseph Mone, who held a position at the university of Louvain, and even allowed Mone the use of his own Parisian transcript for collating purposes. The result, Mone’s Reinhart Fuchs, aus dem neunten und zwölften Jahrhundert / Reinardus Vulpius, carmen epicum seculis IX et XII conscriptum. Ad fidem codd. mss. edidit et adnotationibus illustravit Franciscus Josephus Mone appeared in 1832.17 While, then, Grimm seems to have abandoned his 1812 project, the tide of affairs was once again turning. By the time Mone published his edition (in Tübingen), he had taken flight from the Low Countries. Belgium had been shocked in 1830 by riots against the Orangist Dutch hegemony and had risen in arms to gain its independence, driving a fearful Mone to safer havens east of the Rhine. The year 1832 signals a moment of stalemate, which for Grimm must have been irksome. By now his thunder had been well and truly stolen: the most eye-catching edition of any Reynard version was Méon’s French one, unabashedly proclaiming its franco-français lineage, heedless of ramifications in other languages; the discoveries of Latin, German and Dutch/Flemish variants had been printed piecemeal in what he must have felt were damp-squib-editions,18 and the main rivalry (French or a Frankish descent?) stood undecided, indeed was as yet a non-issue as far as the world of letters was concerned. If any answer was to be forthcoming, it should have been from the French-Frankish borderlands, the Netherlands, but despite early, promising signals that there was

16 Koloczaer Codex altdeutscher Gedichte, Pest 1818, containing many medieval German texts found in a MS in the library of the archbishops of Kalocsa. Wilhelm Grimm’s review in the Leipziger Litteratur-Zeitung 1818 is evidently peeved, mentioning the Reynard content only in passing as, at best, a complement to the announced Grimm edition: “Vom Reinhart Fuchs haben die Gebrüder Grimm längst eine Ausgabe angekündigt, welche hoffentlich die Lücke der Kolotzer handschrift [. . .] zu ergänzen vermag oder über die auch in der pfälzer Handschrift zum Theil anders erscheinende Auslassung Auskunft gewähren wird.” Cf. Wilhelm Grimm, Kleinere Schriften (ed. Gustav Hinrichs; 4 vols; Berlin / Gütersloh: Dümmler / Bertelsmann, 1881–87), 2: 198–206. 17 This oldest Latin version is now generally known as Ysengrimus (named after the Wolf character, that is), to distinguish it from the later Reinhardus Vulpes, a Latin retro­ translation derived from a Dutch/Flemish version. 18 An underwhelming edition of the Low German Reinke de Voss was published in 1834 by Grimm’s ardent admirer Hoffmann von Fallersleben, with a fawning dedication.



a cross-country foxhunt

267

gold in them there polders, Grimm’s pleas for scholarly information and collaboration had fallen flat. And now, that entire country was riven in two, and half of what had at first sight seemed a friendly neighbor on the western marches of Germany had declared its preference for a Parisian orientation. In the North, Grimm saw stolid disregard for the riches of the Middle Ages,19 the nationalism of the secessionist Belgians he viewed sourly as mere French skullduggery and priestcraft: The Catholic, formerly Spanish, then Austrian Netherlands offer a warning example how the neglect of the native language weakens all patriotism. Any nation that surrenders the language of its ancestors is degenerate and without firm footing. The present revolution in the Netherlands cannot be attributed to a properly patriotic movement but merely reflects the longestablished influence of French manners and the plotting of priests. Common folk from Antwerp to Brussels and Gent still speak Netherlandic. The almost-extinct nationality of the Belgians might have been rekindled by closer ties with Holland; but the tremendous torrent of events threatens to sweep away all that remains of it.20

Even so, by 1834, Grimm finally brought out his own edition, with the lapidary title Reinhart Fuchs. It collated all other versions but concentrated on the High German one; and here Grimm finally, almost thirty eventful years after his first journey to Paris, put his cards on the table. In his view, the filiation Aesop—Marie de France—Roman de Renart—la Fontaine was misleading. Instead, there was a mythological substratum of animal

19 Thus he upbraids his Dutch contact Tydeman in 1831: “It is a pity that your compatriots, so patriotically inclined by nature, and so well disposed to great undertakings, seem reluctant to invest proper labour into the old language and let most MSS lie unprinted!” (Grimm to Tydeman, 23 April 1831, translated by me from Reifferscheid, Briefe von Jakob Grimm and Willem Hendrik Tydeman, 83. In the original: “Es ist schade, dass ihre lands­ leute, die von natur so patriotisch gestimmt sind und für alle arbeitsamen unternehmungen grosses geschick haben, an ihre alte sprache keine rechte arbeit wenden mögen, und die meisten hss. ungedruckt liegen lassen!”) 20 Grimm, Kleinere Schriften, 5: 112. “die catholischen, erst spanischen, hernach österreichischen Niederlande sind uns ein warnendes beispiel, wie die herabwürdigung der angestammten sprache den vaterländischen sinn überhaupt schwäche. jedes volk das die sprache seiner vorfahren aufgibt ist entartet und ohne festen halt. die heutige umwälzung in den Niederlanden darf lediglich dem seit lange befestigten einflusse französischer sitte und den umtrieben der priester, keineswegs einer echt vaterländischen bewegung zugeschrieben werden. von Antwerpen aus bis nach Brüssel und Gent redet der gemeine mann noch niederländisch; durch die engere verbindung mit Holland hätte auf diese grund­ lage hin die fast erloschene nationalität der Belgier langsam wieder angefacht werden mögen, aber der gewaltige strom der zeit droht jetzt alles davon noch übrige mit sich fortzureiszen.”

268

joep leerssen

fables, which flourished particularly among the Franks, who took a set of tales with them into their conquest of Northern Gaul. This explains why the most important names are Germanic rather than Romance in character, and why early Reynard materials in French are practically never of Southern-French origin. In this view, the French version may indeed be one of the earliest vernacular ones, but it is still rooted in a Frankish, i.e. Germanic substratum and is only one among many versions (Latin, German, Flemish) that crystallized around the same time. French-German Antagonism: Philology and Politics Grimm’s edition encapsulated a German-French antagonism that dominated the entire century. It worked at a variety of levels which mutually reinforced each other, and which we may group into the concerns of literary seniority and philological method, both of which had political aspects.21 The question of seniority is at the foreground. Grimm’s main concern is to rebut a “Romance” seniority for the Reynard material. The early date of the Latin and French versions would seem to argue for such a Romance seniority, but the names of the central protagonists and the “Frankish” geographical footprint of the distribution of the earliest texts argues for an older Germanic origin. This argument parallels political debates of the time. The Reynard material came on the literary market in Europe when the imperial hegemon was France, and the older Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was crumbling and finally (1806) abolished. Conversely, Grimm’s German counter-claims gained momentum after the defeat of Napoleon. This philological-political parallel may at first sight appear overstretched. Certainly I do not wish to see one as the expression or byproduct of the other. However, the two rivalries, political and philological, did run concurrently, and participants in one were not indifferent to the

21 For French-German philological relations, see Michel Espagne & Michael Werner (eds.), Philologiques I: Contribution à l’histoire des disciplines littéraires en France et en Allemagne au XIXe siècle (Paris: Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1990). My own De Bronnen van het vaderland, while acknowledging and exploring the transfers and exchanges between the philological practices in the two countries as signalled in the Philologiques volumes, insists more on the rivalry between them, inspired by political enmity; regarding which, cf. also my National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006).



a cross-country foxhunt

269

other. We can see numerous cross-connections between the two; they were not of a causal nature but they certainly added politically-inspired vehemence to an academic-philological debate. Let me list a few. [1] The organicist historicism of Grimm was the intellectual influence of a legal scholar, Savigny, who had made it his goal to defend the legal traditions of Germany against the positivistic instrumentalism of a new law-system imposed by Napoleon. [2] Some of Grimm’s Parisian discoveries were made in the context of his work for Savigny; others, when he was sent to Paris after the Congress of Vienna as part of a committee to reclaim ancient manuscripts and books looted by the French occupiers. [3] The rise of an interest in vernacular German literature of the Middle Ages was part of a widespread “cultural turn” born as a reaction to the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire and the disastrous Battle of Jena in 1806. Grimm’s philology, antiquarian and ivory-towered though it might appear at first, took place in the context of many activist writings stressing the need to maintain German nationality at the moral level now it that its political institutions were being swept away. These writings included von der Hagen’s firebrand edition of the Nibelungenlied (1807), Fichte’s lecture series Reden an die deutsche Nation (1808), Arndt’s Geist der Zeit (1806–09) and Jahn’s Deutsches Volkstum (1810). Grimm’s writings, especially his minor book reviews as gathered in the Kleinere Schriften, are suffused with an anti-French undertone, tending to denigrate things French (including things Romance, Latinate or Roman-Catholic) as hypocritical, pretentious, vain and superficial, and tending to praise things German for the “Protestant” qualities of being industrious, self-effacing, conscientious, honest and thorough. Thus, what at first sight should be a scholarly and therefore factual stance turns out to be shot through with ethnic stereotypes, following the larger patterns of Romance-Germanic stereotyping that we know from literary history and authors like Mme de Staël.22 French reactions against Grimm for their part invoke the same stereotypical polarity between German Kultur and French civilité, between German Geist and French esprit. In the French case, the political thorns are the defeat of Waterloo, the humiliation of the Rhine Crisis of 1840 and the disaster of 1870–71. French critics invoke, against German obfuscation 22 On the role of ethnotypes in French-German relations, see Ruth Florack, Tiefsinnige Deutsche, frivole Franzosen. Nationale Stereotype in deutscher und französischer Literatur (Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler 2001) and, more generally, Manfred Beller & Joep Leerssen (eds.), Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters. A Critical Survey (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007).

270

joep leerssen

and plodding ponderousness, their nation’s superior values of reasonable clear-sightedness and deftness. Thus Grimm’s main French opponent in the sphere of medieval philology, Paulin Paris, considered the search for mythological animal totems lurking beneath the surface of the medieval texts to be mere smoke and mirrors. For him, the fox and the fox-tales evinced all the French hallmarks of cleverness and nimble wit, whereas only the later derivative adaptations by “Flemish and German monks” mired the story in gross and cruel farce. Paris was irked by the fact that editions of medieval texts which he considered to be the heirlooms of France (in particular the material revolving around Charlemagne) were being undertaken by German scholars from the Grimm school, and thus in a manner despoiled of their French character.23 Paulin Paris’s son Gaston took this attitude further. Although Gaston is often seen as the founder, or at least the Grand Old man, of French Medieval Studies, and as a mediator with German Diez-style philology, he is in many respects also his father’s son. In the climate of post-1871 revanchisme, Paulin Paris founded the Société des anciens textes français analogous to the Early English Texts Society, whose initial announcement already declared its national-mindedness: We appeal to all those who love France in all its periods, to all who believe that a people that repudiates its past is ill-prepared for its future, and to all who realize that a national consciousness can only be full and vibrant if it ties in a profound sense of solidarity the present generation to its predecessors.24

And two years later, Gaston continued in this vein, with even more breathless and convoluted syntax: Why do they [the non-academic members] pay [their membership fee]? [. . .] They do so because they have been informed that the Société des anciens 23 These attitudes have been gleaned from various occasional writings from different stages of Paris’ illustrious career, such as the open Lettre à M. Michelet sur les épopées du Moyen Âge (Paris 1831), the dedication and introduction of his edition of Li roumans de Berte aus grans piés, précédé d’une dissertation sur les romans des douze pairs (Paris 1832), the lecture “Nouvelle étude sur le Roman de Renart” read before the Institut impérial de France-Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (1860), and the introduction to his edition of 1861, Aventures de Maître Renart et d’Ysengrin, son compère. On Paulin Paris and French medieval studies generally, Charles Ridoux, Évolution des études médiévales en France de 1860 à 1914 (Paris: Champion, 2001). 24 Quoted after Ridoux, Évolution des études médiévales, 412 (my trl.). In the original: “Nous faisons appel [. . .] à tous ceux qui aiment la France de tous les temps, à tous ceux qui croient qu’un peuple qui répudie son passé prépare mal son avenir, et à tous ceux qui savent que la conscience nationale n’est pleine et vivante que si elle relie dans un sentiment profond de solidarité les générations présentes à celles qui se sont éteintes.”



a cross-country foxhunt

271

textes français is a national enterprise, that it aims to acquaint us with old France; that it no longer wishes Germany to be the European country where our ancient linguistic and literary monuments are principally published; that it requires the support of those who realize that ancestral piety is the strongest bond of a nation, the support of those who jealously guard the intellectual and scientific prestige of our country amidst other peoples, the support of all who cherish in all its centuries that “sweet France”, douce France, for which one was already at Roncesvalles prepared to die a good death.25

The reference to Roncesvalles invokes, of course, the epic death-battle of Roland, celebrated in the Chanson de Roland. That national classic was (after its initial publication in 1836) just acquiring in these 1870s a new nationalist propaganda value, with its references to a douce France and its celebration of a heroic defeat; it may therefore stand as the French counterpart to what in Germany was the role played by the Nibelungenlied. Léon Gautier’s text edition of 1872 programmatically proclaimed that “it took the 1870 war to make us understand and love [this text]; Sedan has made Roncesvalles intelligible”; and in 1875 a theatrical spin-off began its great popularity: Henri de Bornier’s drama, La fille de Roland.26

25 Quoted after Ridoux, Évolution des études médiévales, 424–5 (my trl.). In the original: “Pourquoi paient-ils? [. . .] Ils paient parce qu’on leur a dit: La Société des anciens textes français est une oeuvre nationale; elle a pour but de faire mieux connaître la vieille France; elle veut que l’Allemagne ne soit plus le pays d’Europe où il s’imprime le plus de monuments de notre langue et de notre littérature d’autrefois; [. . .] elle a besoin de l’appui [. . .] de tous ceux qui savent que la piété envers les aïeux est le plus fort ciment d’une nation, de tous ceux qui sont jaloux du rang intellectuel et scientifique de notre pays entre les autres peuples, de tous ceux qui aiment dans tous les siècles de son histoire cette “France douce” pour laquelle on savait déjà si bien mourir à Roncevaux [. . .]”. 26 Gautier: “Il a fallu la guerre de 1870 pour nous en donner l’intelligence et l’amour. Sedan a fait comprendre Roncevaux”, quoted in Ridoux, Évolution des études médiévales, 116. Cf also Frank Brandsma, “Het «Chanson de Roland»: Van vondst tot nationaal epos,” in De Middeleeuwen in de negentiende eeuw, ed. R.E.V. Stuip & C. Vellekoop (Hilversum: Verloren, 1996), 155–168; Harry Redman, jr., The Roland Legend in Nineteenth-Century French Literature (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1991); Andrew Taylor, “Was there a Song of Roland?” Speculum, 76 (2001): 28–65. The Bornier play, initially refused in 1865 for fear of offending Napoleon III, premiered in 1875 in the Théâtre français, starring MounetSully and Sarah Bernhardt. It ran to 115 performances, was revived in 1890 and during the 1914–18 war, its author was elected to the Académie française. Cf. Ridoux, Évolution des études médiévales, 117; Albert Gier, “Mit Karl dem Grossen gegen die Privatdozenten. Henri de Borniers ‘La fille de Roland’ im Kontext der Jahre nach 1871 in Frankreich,” in Mittelalter-Rezeption. Gesammelte Vorträge des Salzburger Symposions, ed. J. Kühnel, H.-D. Mück, and U. Müller (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1988), 219–229; Jean-Marie d’Heur, “La fille de Roland d’Henri de Bornier (1875)”, in Charlemagne et l’épopée romane. Actes du VIIe Congrès international de la Société Rencesvals (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1978), 481.

272

joep leerssen

A fearful symmetry, then, between nationalistic philology on both sides of the Rhine, and the fox caught in a tug-o-war of philological appropriation. As regards the contesting methodologies, the same Romance-Germanic or French-German antagonism seems to play its part. Grimm’s claims were advanced on the basis of his looking through the text into its underlying source traditions, its Stoffgeschichte. What matters to him are not the various redactions and renditions of the tale(s), but rather the mythological patterns that each of them exemplifies; much as different speech acts (paroles in Saussurean parlance) each reflect the underlying langue. Indeed this approach reflected Grimm’s approach to language itself, which Grimm saw as an unfolding historical tapestry of a nation’s verbal self-articulation, with each word or text placed in the warp and the woof of dialect relations and etymological origins. And in editorial practice, it reflected Grimm’s Lachmann-derived idea that each text and each manuscript is only a derivation from an underlying archetypical muthos or Urtext. This approach, taken into Romance philology by Grimm’s adept Diez, was famously resisted by a more nativist “French” school headed by Joseph Bédier.27 This relied on the primacy of the “best available manuscript,” with other variants marked marginally. Bédier’s method was advanced as the French reply to Lachmann in, again, the post-1870 decades; but it had been foreshadowed by Paulin Paris. As Henri Wallon put it, He [Paris] followed a literary rather than a critical approach. He wanted to popularize medieval romances, and therefore strove to render his texts as readable as possible, easily accessible to all, leaving to his successors the task of establishing the rules of a more severe method.28

Once again, scholarly proclivities arrange themselves along the lines of French-German rivalry. The “French” school of textual scholarship (Paulin Paris, the École des Chartes, Bédier) emphasize the oldest manuscripts 27 Alain Corbellari, “Joseph Bédier, philologist and writer” and Per Nykrog, “A warrior scholar at the Collège de France: Joseph Bédier,” both in Medievalism and the modernist temper, ed. R.H. Bloch & S.G. Nichols (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 269–285 and 286–307; William W. Kibler, “Joseph Bédier (1864–1938),” in Medieval scholarship. Biographical studies on the formation of a discipline, ed. H. Damico, D. Fennema & K. Lenz (New York: Garland, 1998), 253–266. 28 As quoted by Ridoux, Évolution des études médiévales, 31. In the original: “Il a suivi une voie moins critique que littéraire. Il voulait populariser les romans du Moyen Age. Il s’est donc efforcé à donner à ses textes la forme la plus lisible, la plus accessible à tous, laissant à ses successeurs le soin d’arrêter les règles d’une critique plus sévère.”



a cross-country foxhunt

273

(the age and solidity of the textual transmission in French being unassailable), whereas Grimm attacks the ideal of the solid text, abstracting from it towards a thematics, a discourse (the Stoffgeschichte of medieval epic usually leading to Germanic or British, non-Classical origins). At the same time, the methodology of critical editing and Stoffgeschichte is often seen as a peculiarly German habit of mind, reflecting the transcendental philosophy of Fichte and Hegel, dissolving tangible concrete materials into notional abstractions, while the “French” mentality would, in its lucidly-unimaginative, Cartesian way, proceed rationally within the confines of the available evidence. It was, again, a matter of Kultur as opposed to civilisation.29 Flanders in the Middle It was in this overdetermined polarity that the long-sought older Flemish version finally came to light. The manuscript came on the market as part of the estate of the British bibliophile Richard Heber, who died in late 1833, and the freshly independent state of Belgium realized that it was imperative to acquire it. A newcomer in the European state-system, and as yet unrecognized by the Netherlands from which it had broken away in 1830, Belgium emphasized the long cultural roots of the Southern Netherlands, including the medieval glories of the Duchy of Brabant and the County of Flanders. The Reynard MS was a trump card in this policy. It was accordingly acquired for the Royal Library at Brussels, and entrusted to the editorial cares of the philologist Jan Frans Willems. Independent Belgium sat uneasily in the crossfire of French-German rivalry.30 It was seen as an anti-Dutch and pro-French, and, by implication, anti-German presence in geopolitics: an expansion of the Parisian sphere of influence towards Luxembourg and the Rhineland. The Powers only acquiesced in its existence when its neutrality was internationally guaranteed (something which was to be remembered in August 1914) and its newly-appointed King Albert carefully calibrated to match: of German stock (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) with both British and French connections (his first, deceased wife had been the daughter of George IV, his second wife a daughter of Louis-Philippe). Belgium, in short, was a balancing 29 Arnold Labrie, “ ‘Kultur’ and ‘Zivilisation’ in Germany during the Nineteenth Century,” Yearbook of European Studies, 7 (1994): 95–120. 30 On what follows, cf. Leerssen, De bronnen.

274

joep leerssen

act. between Germany and France. Likewise, internally, a wobbly balance obtained between its two languages. Initially, the state as a whole favored French, partly in reaction to the hamfisted Dutch policies of the ousted Netherlandic regime; yet cities like Antwerp and Gent, as well as the medieval glories of its Northern half, formed part of Netherlandic culture; so did the Reynard manuscript; and so did Jan Frans Willems, an ardent, life-long opponent of the French language and its predominance in public life.31 It is a great irony that when Grimm’s edition appeared, in 1834, after so many years of delay, it was still premature. Had he delayed only a few months more, he could have factored in the missing Flemish link, so long lost, and now just retrieved. As it was, the Flemish version (or rather, its unknown whereabouts) was still a sore point when he signed off his dedicatory introduction: If the friendly indulgence of Professor Tydeman of Leiden, to which I have long been indebted for a transcript of the Van Wyn MS, had not abated, the public would now have access to a printed or collated version of the Amsterdam version. This is a sore lack, which I can only hope will not substantially vitiate my present researches; perhaps I now provoke a speedier edition by a Dutch scholar. Of course this ancient poem is principally important to the Belgians, but who has noticed any fidelity and engagement for their native language in the last centuries? Profound self-denial will always come to grief; and from this fair land, where Poetry felt at home in the Middle Ages, she has fled and withdrawn long ago.32

The peeved tone and the gratuitous, unjustified and ungrateful sidesweep at Tydeman show, not only the rebarbative side of Grimm’s character, but also the degree to which he was upset by his failure to get hold of the 31 On him, Marcel De Smedt, De literair-historische activiteit van Jan Frans Willems (1793–1846) en Ferdinand Augustijn Snellaert (1809–1872) (Gent: Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en letterkunde, 1984); Ada Deprez, Jan Frans Willems, 1793–1846 (Antwerpen: Helios, 1964); Ludo Stynen, Jan Frans Willems (Antwerpen: De Bezige Bij, 2012). 32 Grimm, Reinhart Fuchs, dedication (my trl.). In the original: “Hätte hrn. prof. Tydemans zu Leiden freundschaftliche güte, dem ich längst die abschrift des nunmehr erscheinenden van Wynschen fragments verdanke, seitdem nicht nachgelassen; so würde letzt das publicum den abdruck oder die genaue vergleichung der amsterdamer hs. vor such haben. ein empfindlicher mangel; von dem ich doch keinen wesentlichen eintrag für meine untersuchungen befürchte, und vielleicht veranlasse ich nun die beschleunigte herausgabe durch die hand eines holländischen gelehrten. Zwar geht diese alte dichtung zunächst die Belgier an, doch wer hat bei ihnen seit jahrhunderten anhänglichkeit und theilnahme für ihre muttersprache getroffen? innerste selbstvergessenheit rächt sich allerenden: aus dieser schönen gegend, wo im mittelalter auch die poesie wohnte, ist sie schon lange fortgezogen und entwichen.”



a cross-country foxhunt

275

Netherlandic version. It must have been some discomfiture to him to see that as his book appeared, that elusive MS had been located and bought by, of all people, the maligned Belgians. Willems seized the rhetorical opportunity offered by this remarkable coincidence, and used his editorship of the lost-and-found crown jewel of Flemish literature as a prime chance at vindicating Flemish cultural rights in the Belgian state. He shared Grimm’s bitter feelings about the “degeneracy” of Belgium’s (and Flanders’) drift towards France and the French language, and used Grimm’s bitter words in the preface of his initial version of the text (from that selfsame year 1834; a regular edition would follow in 1836): In a word, with the exception of the Divina Commedia, Reynard is by far the best poem which the Middle Ages have bequeathed to Europe. And this is a Belgian poem! And the Belgians do not know it! It had to be published by Germans! In his dedication, Grimm says that “it is the Belgians to whom Reynard is of greatest consequence, but who (so he continues) has noticed any fidelity and engagement for their native language in the last centuries? Profound self-denial will always bring about its own punishment: from this fair Belgian land, which was home to the poetic art during the Middle Ages, all literature has long vanished.” That reproach, my countrymen, we only deserve all too well because of our aping of all that is French.

And Willems concludes: May this my rendition of the ancient Reynard the Fox contribute to the revival of a language so dear to us, at a time when our country is inundated by so much French refuse!33

Willems thus uses Grimm’s critique of Belgium as a whole in order to bolster his opposition against French hegemony within Belgium. The

33 Jan Frans Willems, Reinaert de Vos, naer de oudste beryming (Eecloo: Van Han, 1834), preface. In the original: “Met een woord, Reinaert is verre uit het beste gedicht, dat de middeleeuwen (Dante’s Divina Commedia uitgezonderd) aan Europa hebben opgeleverd. En dit gedicht is een Belgisch gedicht! En de Belgen kennen het niet! En het moeten Duyt­ schers zyn, die het aen het licht geven! “De Belgen (zegt Grimm, in zyne opdracht,) hebben het meeste belang in den Reinaert: doch wie heeft (vervolgt hij) wie heeft sedert eeuwen by hen nog verknochtheid en belangstelling voor de moedertael aangetroffen? Diepe zelf­ vergetenheid brengt allerwege hare eigen straf mede: uit dit schoone Belgenland, alwaer in de middeleeuwen ook de dichtkunst woonde, is sedert lang alle poësie verdwenen.”—Een verwyt, myne lieve landgenoten! dat wy door het verwaerlozen onzer tael, en door onze naäperyen van al wat fransch is, maar al te zeer verdienen. [. . .] Moge deze myne beärbeiding van het oudere gedeelte van Reinaert den Vos iets bydragen, tot het doen herleven van eene zoo dierbare tael, in een’ tyd waerop ons land van zooveel franschen uitschot wordt overstroomd!”

276

joep leerssen

country’s true cultural strength and identity, he implies, lies in its Flemish traditions, now undeservedly sidelined by French orientation. Willems’s intervention marks the early beginning of the Flemish movement, that language emancipation movement which gradually opted out of the pan-Belgian patriotism of the 1830s (expressed in French but drawing largely on Flemish-Brabant medieval roots), and which in the following century developed into an increasingly nationalist vindication of Flemishness within, or possibly not within, the Belgian state.34 In that trajectory, German intellectuals would consistently offer the fraternal solidarity of a shared Germanic dislike of France.35 Grimm and Hoffmann von Fallersleben cultivated contacts with Willems and his circle, and realized that the literati of Gent and Antwerp might be more congenial to their philological medievalism than the stolid and unresponsive Northern Netherlands. Indeed medieval studies flourished in Flanders and Belgium from the mid-1830s onwards, partly thanks to active government support, partly through the prestige of texts like the Reynard tale. Only a decade or so later, from the mid-1840s onward, did Grimm-style medievalism take hold in Holland, among philologists who were to a significant extent inspired by Flemish achievements and who cultivated Dutch-Flemish cooperation.36 The final stage in our foxhunt thus leads us back to Holland, where Willem Jonckbloet brought out a Grimm-style critical edition of the Dutch/Flemish Reynard in 1856, and defended the Grimm view of the material against the Paulin Paris version in his Étude sur Le Roman de

34 The best history of the Flemish Movement is in fact an encyclopedia: Nieuwe encyclopedie van de Vlaamse beweging (3 vols; Tielt: Lannoo, 1998). 35 Leerssen, De Bronnen; H.W. von der Dunk, Der deutsche Vormärz und Belgien, 1830–1848 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1966). Indeed, in the years 1914–1944 that pro-Flemish, shared-Germanic solidarity would be extended, not only by philologists and intellectuals, but by pan-German nationalists and uniformed occupiers, fatally attracting certain groups of nationally-minded disaffected Flemings towards a Blut und Boden ideology and the extreme right. Lode Wils, Flamenpolitik en aktivisme: Vlaanderen tegenover België in de Eerste Wereldoorlog (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 1974). 36 Leerssen & Van Hulle, Editing the Nation’s Memory; Lodewijk van Driel & Jan Noordegraaf, De Vries en Te Winkel: een duografie (Den Haag: Sdu, 1998); W. van Anrooij, D. Hoogenelst & G. Warnar (eds.), Der vaderen boek. Beoefenaren van de studie der Middelnederlandse letterkunde. Studies voor Frits van Oostrom ter gelegenheid van diens vijftigste verjaardag (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003); Cornelis Soeteman, “Drei niederländische akademische Reden über Jacob Grimm,” Brüder Grimm Gedenken, 3 (1983): 258–264; Id., “Der Briefwechsel zwischen Jacob Grimm und Matthias de Vries”, Brüder Grimm Gedenken, 4 (1984): 148–182; Id., “W.J.A. Jonckbloet, noch ein Niederländer im Blickfeld Jacob Grimms,” Brüder Grimm Gedenken, 7 (1987): 140–147.



a cross-country foxhunt

277

Renart (1862), a treatise which, predictably, was favourably reviewed by Grimm and scornfully dismissed by Paris. In the literary histories and textual commentaries of the later nineteenth century, we see that each nation claims Reynard as their, and particularly, their fox. For the French, he is a witty operator scheming against those with more muscle but less brain than he; for the Germans, he is a window on ancient mythological animal totems and tales. In Belgium, which cultivated the self-image of a country passively resisting foreign hegemony with hidden mockery and non-cooperation, Reynard is a wily trickster; and in Dutch commentaries, he is described as a free-thinking rebel undercutting the authority of King and clergy.37 Thus, each nation imputes its own self-image to the fox, and thereby tries to appropriate his character as much as his textual provenance. It shows that the use of the past in nineteenth-century nation-building is not just a connection with the past, but a matter of rivalry and competition over the question to whom the past belongs; and that each nation vindicated and outlined its own identity, not from within, but in an elbow contest with its neighbors.

37 Leerssen, De Bronnen. On the Dutch and Belgian/Flemish self-images, see the entries by Tom Verschaffel and Ellen Krol in Beller & Leerssen, Imagology.

Restoration from Notre-Dame de Paris to Gaston Paris R. Howard Bloch On January 29, 1864, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, the astonishingly accomplished architect, with the restoration of Vézelay, Saint-Denis, Notre-Dame de Paris, Pierrefonds, Carcassonne, and Mont-Saint-Michel to his credit, stepped into the lecture room of the École des Beaux-Arts. Opening his mouth to pronounce the word “Messieurs,” he was greeted with “cock crows, elephant trumpets, lion roars, hen clucks, donkey brays, horse neighs.”1 Such a “Babylonian racket” (chahut babylonien), in the phrase of Maxime du Camp, was accompanied by the release of birds, and by apples, eggs, spitballs, and pieces of small change hurled at the bearded professor, who had been escorted to the Quai des Grands Augustins for his “leçon inaugurale” by none other than Prosper Mérimée, director of the Commission des Monuments Historiques, and Count Alfred Émilien van Nieuwerkerke, intendant des Beaux-Arts de la Maison de l’Empereur. A stubborn man, Viollet-le-Duc began his lectures on the general principles of architecture each Friday for six weeks until, finally, he resigned and was replaced by none other than Hippolyte Taine who then assumed the chair of art history and esthetics. The differences separating Viollet-le-Duc from the École des Beaux-Arts ran exceedingly deep. In a series of articles or “entretiens” published from what would have been his lectures, Viollet-le-Duc, refers to “this confused condition of the republic of architectural art” (Entretiens, I, 344), which is as good a phrase as any to describe the struggle that had first erupted violently in 1846 between the partisans of neo-classical architecture, lodged in the Beaux-Arts, and the champions of “le style gothique.” That was the year that the Académie, alarmed at what they saw as the inroads of a specifically French style, launched a manifesto to the Minister of the Interior, Considérations sur la question de savoir s’il est convenable, au XIXe siècle, de bâtir des églises en style gothique? The secrétaire perpetuel of the Académie, Désiré Raoul Rochette, argues both that the “Style gothique,” the product of the century of Philippe1 Cited in Jean-Michel Leniaud, Viollet-le-Duc ou les Délires du Système (Paris: Mengès, 1994), 110.

280

r. howard bloch

Auguste and Saint Louis, expresses “the image of this celestial Jerusalem to which the Christian’s faith aspires,” and that the gothic is not Catholic because it never spread as far as Rome, “the Christian city par excellence.”2 He claims, further, that the truth of Catholicism does not need art; that one can be a Christian without being gothic; that Christianity adapts to all forms of art.3 And, finally, that gothic is not art because it lacks proportions: the ornamentation—that is, sculpture—on the outside of gothic churches is out of sync with the lack of ornamentation on the inside. Gothic sculpture is, moreover, inferior, that is, naive and neither natural nor true.4 The gothic no longer responds to any present need; it is retrogressive, directly opposed to progress in the arts; it is dead.5 Thus, the secrétaire perpétuel argues, “le style gothique” is anti-patriotic. As part of France’s glorious past, gothic buildings should be preserved, along with monuments of the language; but preserved in their original state as 2 “S’il est aussi une notion familière aux artistes, tels que ceux qui remplissent l’Académie, c’est que l’architecture gothique, à quelques exceptions près, absolument sans conséquence, n’a jamais pénétré Rome, dans le centre même du catholicisme. Rome, la ville chrétienne par excellence.” Viollet-le-Duc, Du Style gothique au dix-neuvième siècle, (Paris: Librairie Archéologique de Victor Didron, 1846), 7. 3 “Il y a plus, et c’est sur ce point surtout qu’il importe de réfuter un préjugé qui ne repose sur aucune base historique. On ferait tort au christianisme, on méconnaîtrait tout à fait son esprit, si l’on croyait qu’il ait besoin d’une forme d’art particulière pour exprimer son culte” (Ibid., 7); “Le christianisme n’a donc jamais été exclusif, en fait d’art ni en rien de ce qui touche au régime des sociétés humaines; il s’accommode à tous les besoins” (Ibid., 7). 4 “. . . les détails n’y sont jamais en rapport avec les masses; tout y est capricieux et arbitraire” dans l’invention comme dans l’emploi des ornements; et la profusion de ces ornements à la façade de ces églises, comparée à leur absence complète à l’intérieur, est un défaut choquant et un contre-sens véritable” (Ibid., 9); “. . . aujourd’hui que nous sommes habitués à traiter la sculpture autrement, aujourd’hui que la vérité est pour nous la première condition de l’imitation, et la nature le seul type de l’art! Où trouverait-on parmi nous des artistes capables de désapprendre assez tout ce qu’ils ont étudié, de se détacher assez du modèle vivant qu’ils ont sous les yeux pour refaire des figures gothiques!” (Idem). 5 “Maintenant que l’architecture gothique est morte au sein même de la civilisation qui l’avait produite, avec la sculpture, avec la peinture, qui étaient ses acolytes nécessaires, ses auxiliaires indispensables, entreprendra-t-on de faire revivre de nos jours ce qui a cessé d’exister depuis quatre siècles! Mais où sont, encore une fois, les éléments d’une résurrection pareille, inouïe jusqu’ici dans les fastes de l’art! Où est la raison, où en est la nécessité, dans les conditions de la société actuelle! Où en est la main puissante qui peut soulever une nation entière, au point de la faire rétrograder de quatre siècles en arrière! Où est l’exemple de tout un peuple qui ait rompu avec son présent et avec son avenir pour revenir à son passé! L’Académie ne peut croire à ces prodigues d’une volonté humaine qui s’opéreraient contre la nature des choses, en faisant violence à tous les goûts, à tous les instincts, à toutes les habitudes d’une société” (Ibid., 10); “En résumé, il n’y a, pour les arts, comme pour les sociétés, qu’un moyen naturel et légitime de se produire: c’est d’être de leur temps” (Idem).



restoration from notre-dame de paris to gaston paris

281

archeology and not as architecture. That, he asserts, “is what reason dictates, it is what taste advises; it is what the Academy wants” (C’est ce que veut l’Académie).6 The discovery of the Middle Ages via architecture began a little earlier in the century, with a form of national tourism, on the British model, beginning in 1820, with Baron Taylor’s publication of Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France. François Guizot, who became Minister of the Interior under the July Monarchy, saw the Middle Ages as a privileged moment in the history of France, a stimulator of historical memory, and maker of the nation.7 Almost as soon as he assumed the post of Minister of the Interior, he created the post of General Inspector of Historical Monuments. The medieval impulse from Paris was reinforced by a turn to regional histories and the establishment of local societies like the antiquaires de Normandie under Arcisse de Caumont, who had published as early as 1818 an essay “L’architecture religieuse du Moyen Âge, particulièrement en Normandie,” and will publish from 1830 on his Cours d’Antiquités monumentales, based on his lectures at Caen.8 Ludovic Vitet, Inspecteur général des Monuments historiques, lamented the state of medieval buildings in the Ile-de-France. Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris appeared in 1831 “like a beacon lit on high towers” in the words of Sainte-Beuve.9 Prosper Mérimée assumed Vitet’s post in 1834, and the Commission des Monuments Historiques, which would play a key role in the restoration of medieval buildings, was created in 1837.10 Viollet-le-Duc stands as a touchstone and a crossroads of the burgeoning consciousness of medieval monuments in the 1830s.11 As a boy, he had encountered Sainte-Beuve, who was also present at the famous inaugural lesson of 1864, Vitet, and Mérimée, all of whom frequented his uncle 6 “. . .qu’on les répare avec ce respect de l’art qui est aussi une religion, c’est-à-dire avec cette profonde intelligence de leur vrai caractère, qui n’y ajoute aucun élément étranger, qui n’en altère aucune forme essentielle; c’est ce que demande la raison, c’est ce que conseille le goût; c’est ce que veut l’Académie” (Ibid., 4). 7 See Laurent Theis, “Guizot et les institutions de mémoire” in Pierre Nora, Les Lieux de Mémoire. II. 2. La Nation (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), 569–92. 8 Françoise Bercé, “Arcisse de Caumont et les Sociétés Savantes” in Lieux de Mémoire. II. 2: 533–67. 9 “L’apparition de la Notre-Dame de Victor Hugo fut un événement, un signal et comme un fanal allumé sur les hautes tours,” Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux Lundis (Paris: Michel Lévy, 1867), 159. 10 André Fermigier, “Mérimée et l’Inspection des Monuments Historiques” in Lieux de Mémoire. II. 2, 595–611. 11  Bruno Foucart, “Viollet-le-Duc et la Restauration” in Lieux de Mémoire. II. 2, 613–649.

282

r. howard bloch

Étienne Delécluze’s literary and artistic salon on the rue Chabanais. In keeping with the times, he departed at the age of 17 (1831) on a walking tour of southern France; then, again, in 1833 he left for the châteaux of the Loire and the Southwest. In 1836, a newly married Viollet-le-Duc set out in the company of one of his drawing students, Léon Gaucherel, for eighteen months, during which time he studied by drawing the monuments, ruins, and restorations of Sicily and Italy. Upon his return in 1837, he joined the team of Baron Taylor illustrators of the voyages pittoresques. More important, promoted by Vitet and Mérimée, Viollet-le-Duc was named “sousinspecteur des travaux de l’hôtel des Archives du royaume et auditeur au Conseil des Bâtiments civils.” And, more important still, the young Violletle-Duc, a brilliant young drawer who had travelled, but who had no formal architectural training and had not built so much as a bird house, was awarded, at the instigation of Mérimée, a commission for the restoration of Ste-Marie-Madeleine at Vézelay.12 Viollet-le-Duc was born with the Restoration, and cultural restoration was in his genes. His father, Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, a great collector of medieval works and editor, that is to say, restorer, of several volumes of medieval poetry and theatre, became under Louis XVIII (1814) “sous-contrôleur des services du palais des Tuileries.” Under the second Restoration (Charles X, 1824), he was appointed superintendent of royal residences and “vérificateur des dépenses de la Maison du roi;” and “gouverneur des Tuileries,” after the July Revolution of 1830 and under Louis-Philippe. The restorations of Viollet-le-Duc are well known, beginning with Vézelay, but also including Saint-Denis, Amiens, Chartres, Reims, Troyes, Clermont-Ferrand, Sens, Toulouse, Narbonne, Carcassonne, and Pierrefonds, along with the projects undertaken jointly with Jean-Baptiste Lassus—La Sainte-Chapelle and Notre-Dame de Paris, which Viollet-le-Duc completed on his own after Lassus’s death in 1857. Viollet-le-Duc is, of course, interesting as an architect and restorer, but he is even more interesting and influential as an architectural theorist and writer.13 One of the great pens of the nineteenth century, Viollet-le-Duc published not only the Architectural Dictionary in ten volumes, but a six-volume Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier du moyen âge, an extraordinary compendium of medieval material 12 Kevin D. Murphy, Memory and Modernity. Viollet-le-Duc at Vézelay (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000). 13 Frank Lloyd Wright is said to have said to his son, preparing to be an architect, that all the education he needed was contained in Viollet-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture, and in the example of Frank Lloyd Wright’s own buildings.



restoration from notre-dame de paris to gaston paris

283

culture, including dress; the multi-volume Entretiens sur l’architecture, intended to be his lectures at the École des Beaux Arts; a general book on human habitation from prehistory to the present; multiple volumes on medieval fortification, siegecraft, and warfare; a book of memoirs of his participation in the siege of Paris in 1870; a guide to building a bourgeois house; a geological study of Mont Blanc; a book detailing how to draw; and a child’s book of cats. Of all his writings, the most famous and extraordinary passage may be the definition of the word “Restoration” of the Dictionnaire raisonné: “Restoration, s.f. Both the word and the thing are modern. To restore an edifice means neither to maintain it, nor to repair it, nor to rebuild it; it means to reestablish it in a finished state, which may in fact never have actually existed at any given time.”14 In the spirit of the comparative philology that existed in Germany (F. Bopp, F. Diez), and in anticipation of the professional philology that would come into existence in France after 1865, Violletle-Duc is also interested in the history of words as a key to the history of the thing: “The Romans rebuilt; they did not restore. The proof of this is that there is not even a Latin word that corresponds to our word restoration in the sense in which we understand the word today. instaurare, reficere, renovare—none of these words means ‘to restore’ but rather ‘to reestablish’ or ‘to rebuild anew.’ . . . The Greeks did not do restorations.”15 It is worth considering for a moment what Viollet-le-Duc could possibly have meant by restoration as finishing something “which may in fact never have actually existed at any given time.” He could not have meant “restoration” as understood in the archeological sense, supported in some of the articles of the Annales Archéologiques of the 1840s and 50s, of recovering an “original” or first stage of construction, which, as he knew, was never the first. Nor could he have meant returning a building to some final stage, which, as he also knew, could never be the last. For Violletle-Duc, as a practicing and a theoretical architect, was acutely aware of the folly of trying to locate both an original and a final stage of buildings built upon and incorporating other buildings, maintained, renovated, and repaired over a period of centuries; and, in some cases, changing rapidly in design and execution over a relatively short time. He cites more than once the example, encountered first-hand in the rebuilding of Notre-Dame

14 Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, The Foundations of Architecture, Selections from the Dictionnaire raisonné, tr. Kenneth Whitehead (New York: George Braziller, 1990), 195. 15 Ibid., 196.

284

r. howard bloch

between 1844 and 1864, of the flying buttresses of the nave. Though the first stone of Notre-Dame had been set in 1163, supposedly by Alexander III, the external buttressing of the nave, which must have been an astonishing sight, began in 1180.16 In their initial construction, the flying buttresses of the nave, unlike the reinforcing wall of the choir, which the builder of the nave might have realized aligned with outside the wall too far beneath the springing of the arches of the high vault, originally were of the double type, with the lower flyer placed beneath the roof of the tribunes. They were altered beginning in 1225–30 by an increase in the size of the upper windows and a lowering of the roof angle of the tribunes, replacing the double with single flyers. We know this because of the archeological observations of Viollet-le-Duc who found the traces of five-spoked rose windows on the tribune level that were later enlarged. In the thirteenth century, chapels opening upon the ambulatory were constructed between the contreforts of the nave, and the original spire was added; gargoyles appeared for the first time in the 1230s. Jean Ravy, master architect of Notre-Dame from 1318 to 1344, completed the radiating chapels as well as the tribune windows and single flying buttresses on the northern side.17 For Viollet-le-Duc, there was no final stage of a building, since a great structure like Notre-Dame is a living organism sprung from earlier structures, that developed in the centuries following its first gothic innovations, and that continues to grow even in the present. Restoration is an active process, “a kind of warfare; he [the restorer] must carry out a series of tactical maneuvers, each of which must be modified each day on the basis of constant observations of the successive effects that are being produced.”18 Like a general in the field, the restorer is not an “autopsyist,” in the phrase of Peter Dávidházi. On the contrary, he is a miracle worker, whose role is to bring a building back to life when it either wholly or in part has died. Water is the great destroyer of cathedrals, and the removal of rain from the roof, the great technological challenge. Viollet-le-Duc was called in when the deterioration of the neglected roof of Saint-Denis threatened ruin in the 1840s, and he was convinced that modern lightening rods, 16 Even before that, one witness, Robert de Torigni, was so astonished by the scale of the building that he conjectured in 1177 that if it is ever finished, none will be comparable with it: “Quod opus si perfectum fuerit, non erit opus citra montes, cui apte debeat comparari.” cited by Marcel Aubert, Notre-Dame de Paris. Sa place dans l’architecture du XIIe au XIVe siècle (Paris: H. Laurens, 1928), 28. 17 Aubert, Notre-Dame de Paris, 156–9. 18 Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire, 216.



restoration from notre-dame de paris to gaston paris

285

roofing and gutter systems, as well as modern materials such as iron, were to be utilized for the sake of preservation.19 He objected to the restoration of gargoyles as mere decoration and not as functioning water spouts in Debret’s earlier renovation of Saint-Denis. A wise doctor, more of a psychoanalyst than a pathologist, the restorer tries to the degree possible to enter the thoughts of the original builder: “It is clear that the architect responsible for restoration needs to know the style and forms of the building he is working on, as well as the school of architecture to which it belongs. Even more, the architect needs to know the structure, anatomy, and temperament of the building. He needs to know these things because, before everything else, his task is to make the building live.”20 What the restorer restores, finally, is the living spirit of the structure, which, in the case of gothic cathedrals, had been transgressed, for example, by the neo-classical additions to Notre-Dame. Viollet-le-Duc, particularly offended by Louis XIV’s facing of the interior of the choir with marble, could not at first convince the Commission des Monuments Historiques to pay to remove it, without, according to Charles Blanc, resorting to a dramatic trick: “ ‘I heard it said that one day, a counsel having gathered to consider this matter, Viollet-le-Duc had one of the employees of the workforce enter dressed in medieval costume—that of Phoebus or Little John—capped by a wig à la Louis XIV. Everyone started to laugh, and someone asked him what was the meaning of this mascarade; then Violletle-Duc said coolly: ‘This get-up is not more ridiculous than Notre-Dame will be if we keep the choir that you admire so much.’ ”21 There was for Viollet-le-Duc something deadly against nature in the mixing of styles, for, “Style is for a work of art what blood is for the human body: it develops the

19 Viollet-le-Duc, “Église Royale de St. Denis. Rapport sur l’état des Constructions du 15 décembre mil huit cent quarante six,” 15 December 1846; Archives de la Direction du Patrimoine, Dossier de l’Administration, 1841–46: “Si l’on veut conserver nos monuments gothiques comme monuments d’utilité publique purement et simplement, il est bon alors de leur appliquer chaque jour tout ce que l’industrie moderne ajoute ou change à l’art de la construction, sans chercher à singer un art ancien et auquel nos ouvriers ne sont plus habitués; mais si l’on veut conserver ces monuments non seulement comme des édifices consacrés à un service journalier [sic], mais aussi comme des oeuvres d’art, et des modèles de belles et sages constructions qu’il est bon de transmettre à la postérité dans toute leur pureté, il ne faut pas fausser l’esprit, en modifier le principe plus important encore de la forme ou l’apparence extérieure.” Cited in Kevin Murphy, “Memory and Modernity: Architectural Restoration in France, 1830–1848,” Ph.D. Northwestern, 1992, at p. 168. 20 Idem. 21  Le Temps, 2 Nov. 1879; cited in Paul Gout, Viollet-le-Duc. Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine (Paris: Champion, 1914), 46.

286

r. howard bloch

work, nourishes it, gives it strength, health, and duration; it gives it, as the saying goes, the real blood that is common to all humans.”22 If Viollet-le-Duc is unwilling to fix a time at which a building can be considered to be complete, it is because to do so would be to kill its potential to develop through time, would extinguish its spirit. Restoration represents the last, but not final, stage in a building’s development, giving life not only to the building, but to the nation. In the mode of nineteenthcentury modernism, of Baudelaire’s consciousness of the poetic potential of modern city life and of Marx’s “all that is solid melts into air,” Violletle-Duc imagines restoration as a force for national regeneration; and this in the most concrete terms. Restoration will bring architect and worker closer together: “Restoration work understood as something both serious and practical is something that belongs to our own time, and it does our time honor. Restoration has forced architects to expand their knowledge and develop exciting new methods, which are both expeditious and sure; it has put them in closer touch with construction workers; it has also enabled them to provide instruction to these workers. . . .”23 Viollet-leDuc was conscious that the sacristy of Notre-Dame had been destroyed by mobs in the Revolution of 1830, and he used the argument that its rebuilding would provide employment to disgruntled workers and thus prevent further urban unrest.24 In the provinces, restoration would reverse the “demise of local building traditions and industries,” revive crafts. Unlike the neo-classical education proffered by the École des Beaux-Arts, which drew all of the architectural students to Paris, restoration of gothic buildings would knit the nation in a web of artisanal competence emanating from Paris and spreading outward to the provincial antiquarian societies and the prefects as well as the diocesian authorities, which had been been responsible for preservation until then. Unorganized and unconnected, they had been urged by the Minister of the Interior through the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in 1819 to make an inventory of “architectural patrimony”; but a mere inventory was not sufficient for the new men of 1830. The restoration of the house of Orléans in 1830 marked a watershed year in the architectural restoration of the medieval past, which, until that time had met with official passivity and resistance. The Musée des

22 Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire, 234. 23 Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire, 217. 24 Murphy, Thesis, 273.



restoration from notre-dame de paris to gaston paris

287

monuments français, in which Auguste Lenoir had collected in a haphazard manner some of the scattered debris of revolutionary vandalism, among them the royal tombs of Saint-Denis, was closed in 1816. In 1817 the royal tombs were reinstated at Saint-Denis, whose restoration had been supervised beginning in 1813 by the great incompetent François Debret, whose work resulted in the near collapse of the northwest tower in 1846. Some work had been undertaken on Notre-Dame under the direction of the architect Étienne-Hippolyte Godde, who, primarily a builder of new churches, had before that mutilated the towers of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Abbey of Corbie, one of whose vaults collapsed. Defense of the Middle Ages was, of course, a literary phenomenon among romantic writers like Chateaubriand and Hugo, who turned to architecture with his anti-demolition essays, “La Bande noire” (1823), “Guerre aux démolisseurs” (1825). But the Commission des Monuments Historiques marked the beginning of the era of self-reflexive, systematic, patriotic restoration of gothic cathedrals, henceforth no longer considered religious buildings and the objects of neglect and abuse, but historic and architectural monuments that are part of a national patrimony to be used for national regeneration. As Minister of Education, François Guizot was aware that the field of medieval historical and literary studies was one of the terrains upon which the struggle between Germany, England, and France would continue to be waged, and that it could not be waged without the restoration of documents. The Germans found their national epic The Nibelungenlied in the last century, and they used this story of the defeat of the Burgundians by the Huns as a rallying cry after Napoleon defeated them in 1806. Guizot knew that in 1819 the Germans had founded a “Society for research and publication of documents related to ancient Germanic history” and had launched a huge publishing venture, the Monumenta Historiae Germanica, aimed at editing medieval sources. Guizot also knew that the English were not far behind the Germans. With all their antiquarian societies and clubs, the English had begun to publish Anglo-Saxon historical and literary works, and in 1815, the year of Waterloo, had published their national epic Beowulf. Never mind that the English originally thought Beowulf was written in Danish! An English translation appeared in 1833. This was the year that Guizot dispatched a young Frenchman by the name of Francisque Michel to England to copy Anglo-Norman manuscripts in the British Museum, which led on July 13, 1835 to the discovery in ms. Digby 23 of Oxford’s Bodleian Library of what had been known in another version until then as the “Romance of Roncesvals,” and after that as The Song of Roland. France had at last found a

288

r. howard bloch

national epic to rival the English Beowulf and the German Nibelungenlied. The Song of Roland, published by Michel in 1837, served to direct attention away from the classical past, on the one hand, and away from local provincial histories, on the other. More precisely, in keeping with Joachim DuBellay’s much earlier defense of the French language as the equal of Latin (1549), a medieval work might aspire to the status of a classic. Roland became France’s Iliad, Roland became France. “The essential character of the epic,” wrote François Génin on the first page of his 1850 edition of Roland, “is greatness joined to naïveté; the virility, the energy of man joined to simplicity, to the innocent grace of a child: it is Homer.” Gaston Paris, the man who did more for medieval studies in the second half of the nineteenth century than anyone else, urged on the eve of the Franco-Prussian war that the French should “recognize ourselves as the sons of those who died at Roncevaux and of those who avenged them.”25 Around the same time, his colleague at the Sorbonne Léon Gautier, claimed in his 1872 edition of the poem and in clear resonance with the language of the New Testament that Roland is “France made flesh.” “What we should seek,” Gautier prescribed in a 1892 instruction to school teachers, “is to read with a vibrating voice and a heart filled with emotion, a translation of our old poem so as to make children admire its simple and profound beauty. We should seize the opportunity of this reading to say to these young Frenchmen: ‘Look, my children, how great France already was and how she was loved more than eight centuries ago’.”26 Paul Lehugeur, lecturing officers of the French military academy of Saint-Cyr, showed how alive the homeric Roland still was in 1900—“The Song of Roland,” he reminded the general army staff, “is our Iliad.”27 Guizot’s project of finding and publishing original source texts continued to fulfill the need felt after the Revolution to examine old documents in order to determine ownership, revenues due, and laws. History as a source of law was a venerated feudal principle of the Old Regime in a world in which family memory served as a source of legitimacy and the exercise of rights. But the question now facing the government was how to transform local, seigneurial, and family archives into a national

25 Gaston Paris, “La Chanson de Roland et la nationalité française,” in La Poésie du moyen âge, (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1913), 118. 26 Léon Gautier, Les Épopées françaises: étude sur les origines et l’histoire de la littérature nationale (Paris: Librairie Universitaire, 1892), 749. 27 L’armée à travers les âges: Conférences faites en 1900 (Paris, 1902), cited in Andrew Taylor, “Was There a Song of Roland?” Speculum 76 (2001), 36.



restoration from notre-dame de paris to gaston paris

289

one. The Institute of France had exercised control over archives under the Empire and Restoration. But the old specialists in family history were dying out, and February 22, 1821 saw the royal creation of the École des Chartes, a school for the study of documents, in order to “revive a type of study indispensable to the glory of France.” Just as the kings of the Old Regime had found their history in Greece and Rome, and just as the Emperor Napoleon had continued the dream of empire, Guizot and Sorbonne Professor of Literature Claude Fauriel together felt the need for a national narrative and for a present in which France might hold its own against Germany and Great Britain. In this the Middle Ages, as the cradle of French civilization, represented a privileged terrain. However, one would have to find there works dealing not with Greek and Roman heroes, but with French aristocratic ladies and knights, and with ordinary citizens, the ancestors of the enterprising merchants, lawyers, and bureaucrats who made up France’s “third estate.” Guizot sought to find in the Middle Ages the origins of the French bourgeoisie, “that is to say,” he wrote in a letter to King Louis-Philippe on November 27, 1834, “the first institutions which worked to free and to raise the nation.”28 Guizot sought the rapid construction of a tradition that would embody the new France. In November 1833, the order went out to prefects to seek “documents having to do with our national history” in public libraries and departmental archives. A month later Guizot submitted an increased budget request of 120,000 francs for fiscal 1835 in order to “accomplish the great task of a general publication of all the important and unedited materials having to do with the history of our country.” He had proposed editing himself a thirty-volume Collection of Documents Relative to the History of France from the Foundation of the French Monarchy up to the Thirteenth Century. It was Guizot who transformed Versailles into a national museum. The collection of medieval documents—both vernacular texts and charters—under the July Monarchy was part of the spirit of the times, much as the adaptation to digital technology is part of the spirit of our times. And it was not only a secular phenomenon, for the year 1844 saw the beginning of a massive rescue and publication of religious writings by the Abbé Jacques-Paul Migne, whose Ateliers catholiques du Petit­Montrouge collected manuscripts and earlier printed editions to form the Patrologia Latina in 218 volumes and the Patrologia Graeca, which 28 Cited in Theis, “Guizot,” 588.

290

r. howard bloch

appeared in a Greco-Latin edition (161 tomes in 166 volumes) between 1857 and 1866 as well as in an edition of the Greek fathers in Latin only (81 tomes in 85 volumes). The patrologies combined weigh in at over a million pages by which Migne sought with his Bibliothèque universelle du clergé to combat with textual weaponry the damage of the Protestant Reformation as well as the Revolution of 1789, to rival both the Imprimerie and the Bibliothèque nationale.29 The collection of documents is one thing; but the restoration of the language is another; and there is no more vexed question than that of actually identifying the language of the vernacular works that had been collected by antiquarians like the Comte de Caylus and La Curne de Sainte-Palaye in the eighteenth century, and the first editors of the vernacular in the nineteenth, the Abbé de la Rue, François Guessard, and François Raynouard. It may seem like an obvious question, but it was not so easy at the time to explain the nature of the linguistic medium of France’s earliest vernacular texts.30 I should say, the “linguistic media,” for what the earliest students of historical linguistics discovered, from the outset of the quest for texts, is an epic chaos of verbal forms. Identifiably French manuscripts were scattered geographically, many, like The Song of Roland, the Lais and Fables of Marie de France, or the Hildesheim or the Ashburnham Vie de Saint-Alexis, to be found not only throughout France, but in English and German abbeys, libraries, museums, and castles. There could, in other words, be no direct relation between the location of particular manuscripts and their language of origin. To the geographic dispersal

29 They represent only about one half of his total output. Migne had published approximately 400 books before the first page of the patrologies had even gone to print. The entire corpus, comprised under the general rubric of the Bibliothèque universelle du clergé, includes the: 1) Scripturae sacrae cursus completus (25 volumes, 1838–1840); 2) Theologia cursus completus (25 volumes, 1840–1842); 3) Démonstrations évangéliques des plus célèbres défenseurs du Christianisme (18 volumes, 1842–1843); 4) Orateurs sacrés in two series (66 and 33 volumes, 1844–1866); 5) series of theological encyclopedias, the Première encyclopédie théologique ou première série de dictionnaires sur toutes les parties de la science religieuse (50 volumes, 1844–1852), Nouvelle encyclopédie théologique (53 volumes, 1851– 1859), Troisième et dernière encyclopédie ecclésiastique (66 volumes, 1851–1859); 6) Cours complet d’histoire ecclésiastique (27 volumes, 1862–); 7) Summa aurea de laudibus B. Mariae virginis (13 volumes, 1866–); 8) 150 diverse volumes published between 1840 and 1868. See my God’s Plagiarist: Being an Account of the Irregular Commerce and Spectacular Industry of the Abbé Jacques-Paul Migne (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 30 This is an area that has recently come under radical scrutiny as the result of several books: Gabriel Bergounioux, Aux Origines de la linguistique française (Paris: Agora Pocket, 1994), Charles Ridoux, Évolution des Études Médiévales en France de 1860 à 1914 (Paris: Champion, 2001), and Bernard Cerquiglini, Une Langue Orpheline (Paris: Minuit, 2007).



restoration from notre-dame de paris to gaston paris

291

is added a lack of regularity in conjugations, cases, spelling; an incoherence between and within regions; contradictory lessons found in multiple manuscripts and versions of a single work; and such inconsistency even within a single manuscript as sometimes to give the impression that every copyist writes his own language.31 Indeed, the incongruence between the regular grammar of Latin and the indiscriminate lack of fixed spelling or grammar of the medieval tongues which looked like, but were not quite, French makes it hard to tell what language is at stake. Gaston Paris, the founder of historical linguistics, asks in his founding edition of “La Vie de Saint Alexis”—“dans quel langage notre poème a-t-il été écrit?”32 To the early philologists, used to thinking of French as a universal and ideal language, the chaos of medieval French was a source of confusion and of upset.33 Upset, first, because the lack of grammar made it difficult to link medieval French to classical Latin; and that left only vulgar Latin— “un latin de désespoir,” in the phrase of Bernard Cerquiglini. Upset, second, because the recognition of Celtic and Germanic elements creolized that vulgar Latin, making French the least Romance of the neo-Latin tongues surviving in Italy, Castille, Portugal, or Gaul. If the Middle Ages are counted on to make a unified France, how is it possible to admit such linguistic disunity, which is only compounded by the radical split between the southern language of “la langue d’oc” and the northern “langue d’oïl”? François Raynouard, faced with this question, claimed that Provençal was the original tongue from which evolved all the other Romance languages, including French, an idea obviously unacceptable 31 The Academician Ginguené writes in the Mercure de France, 33 (1808), 402: “On reproche aux Français trop d’indifférence pour leur ancienne langue: cette indifférence qui tient à celle qu’ils ont en général pour les langues étrangères, car cette langue l’est devenue pour eux, peut venir aussi de deux autres causes. D’abord la langue romane est non seulement difficile, mais grossière, sans règles fixes, livrée aux caprices des écrivains qui la maniaient au gré de leur imagination déréglée et de leur ignorance; c’est même dans cette irrégularité, dans cette mobilité de formes, de terminaisons et de constructions de mots que consiste sa plus grande difficulté. Ensuite cette difficulté vaincue ne procure souvent d’autre avantage que d’entendre des ouvrages plus imparfaits et plus grossiers encore pour la plupart que le language dans lequel ils sont écrits, de longues histoires en mauvaises rimes, des contes sans autre sel que des ordures, un style lâche, diffus, et dont le seul mérite est dans une naïveté peu méritoire, puisqu’elle est presque toujours forcée, et qu’elle naît de l’impuissance d’être autre chose que naïf.” The small but magisterial work on the topic is Bernard Cerquiglini, Éloge de la variante. Histoire critique de la philologie (Paris: Seuil, 1989). 32 La Vie de Saint Alexis. poème du XIe siècle et renouvellements des XIIe, XIIIe et XIVe siècles publiés avec préfaces, variantes, notes et glossaire par Gaston Paris et Léopold Pannier (Paris: A. Franck, 1872), 28. 33 Gaston Paris, Grammaire historique de la langue française. Leçon d’ouverture (Paris: Librairie A. Franck, 1868).

292

r. howard bloch

to the philologists of the North, and those of Paris in particular. For it was the French of Paris, the French of the court, of government, of intellectual life, that was at stake. To wit: How, amidst such linguistic chaos, would it be possible to make Paris the center of a unified France, especially when, of all the recognized regions of medieval literary production, there is, with the possible exception of a lyric poem by Conon de Béthune, no body of texts identifiable as having been written within the Ile-de-France? The solution to these two dilemmas, outlined in Gabriel Bergounioux’s 1994 Aux Origines de la linguistique française and in Bernard Cerquiglini’s recent Une Langue orpheline, is the core issue of early French historical linguistics. That is, the question of how to organize, in keeping with Friedrich Diez’s phonetic laws, the great discovery enabling comparative philology on the model of comparative biology, the various medieval Frenches into an orderly account of the evolution from Latin to what we now call Old French.34 Gustave Fallot, who died at the age of only 29 in 1836, is the first to arrange what he refers to as “la confusion inextricable des textes” into dialects: he recognizes three, normand, picard, and burgundian, though none associated with the Ile-de-France.35 Jean-Jacques Ampère, son of the inventor and who had frequented Viollet-le-Duc’s uncle’s salon where he must have discussed the question with fellow medievalist Viollet-le-Duc père, affirms in his Histoire de la formation de la langue française (1841) the existence of a Parisian dialect.36 And all of the historical linguists of this formative period pronounce either, in the line of Fallot, in favor of an early branching from spoken Latin into dialects, and a late fusion into

34 “La tâche de la grammaire historique sera ici de restituer, autant qu’elle le pourra, tous les degrés de l’échelle par laquelle la phonétique latine est devenue la phonétique française, en passant par le latin vulgaire et l’ancien français.” Paris, Grammaire historique de la langue française, 169. 35 Christoph Schwab, who shared the prize of the Berlin Academy of 1783 on the question of “What made the French language the universal language of Europe?”, had recognized the central status of Parisian French: “Il ne pouvait aussi manquer d’arriver que la langue en usage parmi les classes supérieures de Paris, où la cour et beaucoup de savans avoient leur résidence, ne se perfectionnât de bonne heure et que cette langue ne servît de modèle à toutes les autres provinces.” Johan Christoph Schwab, “Dissertation sur la langue françoise,” in Académie de Berlin, De l’universalité européenne de la langue française, ed. Pierre Pénisson (Paris: Fayard, 1999), 298. 36 “Il y a d’abord quelque chose d’étrange à donner le nom de bourguignon au français parlé dans l’Ile-de-France et au bord de la Loire, c’est-à-dire au français qui est devenu la langue de Paris et l’idiome littéraire de notre pays. Il est bien certain que, dès le XIIe siècle, on considérait le langage de l’Ile-de-France comme le meilleur.” J.-J. Ampère, Formation de la langue française (Paris, Didier, 1869), 69.



restoration from notre-dame de paris to gaston paris

293

French;37 or, in the line of Ampère fils and the lexicographer Émile Littré, in favor of early centralization and a split into dialects which are in the end vanquished by the one that Gaston Paris refers to in his inaugural lesson at the Collège de France (1868) as “le latin vulgaire parlé à Paris et dans les alentours.” The dissolution of the old feudal order and of nominal inflection go hand-in-hand. And with them, the evaporation of written dialects into spoken patois, the very patois whose eradication, beginning with the Abbé Grégoire’s 1793 Rapport to the Convention sur la nécessité et les moyens d’anéantir les patois et d’universaliser l’usage de la langue française, will become the central question of nineteenth-century governmental language policy.38 The actual term by which the medieval French is known is a late arrival. “Le francien,” which Gaston Paris coined only in 1889 on the model of Hermann Suchier’s “francisch,” is the koinè of France and has as its predominant dialectical trait the absence of traits, or, a single trait: the neutralization of e and of a before r. Nonetheless, its legacy is rich. In the almost complete absence of texts in “le francien,” medieval literature is assumed to be written in Old French. How, you might ask, did this happen? On one account, every text was written in “le francien,” then subsequently corrupted into dialects by regional copyists, under the assumption that copying is degradation. Alternately, dialectal diversity is the result of the attempt on the part of regional authors to write “le francien.” Finally, according to the mid-nineteenth-century linguist and editor François

37 “Les anciennes provinces de France ont donc eu d’abord un langage identique au fond, mais différent dans le détail. Lorsque l’on a commencé d’écrire, dans chacune de ces provinces, en langage vulgaire, on n’a pu écrire que dans l’idiome, ou, pour mieux dire, dans le dialecte de la province. Ce n’est que plus tard que la langue française proprement dite est née du mélange et de la fusion de ces différents dialectes; et ce n’est que bien plus tard encore qu’elle les a fait déchoir tous au rang de langages écrits, et relégués au rang de patois.” Fallot, Recherches sur les formes grammaticales de la langue française et de ses dialectes du 13e siècle (Paris, Imprimerie royale, 1839), 10. 38 In his “leçon inaugurale” at the Collège de France, which is the birth certificate of the new and systematic historical grammar in France, Gaston Paris declares: “A partir du XIIe siècle, cette prédominance du dialecte de l’Ile de France sur les autres devient de plus en plus sensible; à la fin du moyen-âge il les a tous remplacés comme langue littéraire et s’est même imposé en cette qualité aux peuples qui avaient jadis donné à la langue d’oc une si riche littérature. Langue officielle du royaume, langue de la justice à partir du XVIe siècle, langue de la poésie, et depuis le XVIIe siècle langue aussi de la littérature scientifique, le français, adopté par tous les habitants de notre pays qui ont quelque instruction, a réduit les dialectes, jadis ses rivaux, à l’état de simples patois, qu’on se croit en droit de mépriser et qu’on s’efforce de faire disparaître” Grammaire historique de la langue française, 157).

294

r. howard bloch

Génin, the difference between “le francien” and the dialects of France is simply and solely orthographic, the spoken vernacular being the same. In a striking example of such malleability, Gaston Paris advanced the theory after 1870 that The Song of Roland was a Breton epic, written in the dialect of the Ile-de-France, and of which only Anglo-Norman manuscripts survive. We detect in the reduction of all regional and dialectal difference a great normalization of French, on the republican model, from the center. Indeed, in a speech delivered at the Sorbonne in 1887 to representatives of the schoolteachers of France, Gaston Paris argues that since every citizen can understand his neighbor seated to the left and to the right in a radiating star and chain of national comprehension, “there are in reality no dialects.”39 The restoration of “francien” cannot, of course, be separated from the edition of texts; and when it comes to editing, the Vie de Saint Alexis. Poème du XIe siècle et renouvellements des XIIe, XIIIe et XIVe siècles, ­produced by Gaston Paris in 1872, the year of the founding of Romania, is for the undertaking of critical edition in France what Paris’s inaugural lesson was for historical linguistics. The linguistic debris of the dialects of France must have seemed like so many ruins of the medieval past, and the question of reconstruction is in some deep way analogous to that of architectural restoration. You will remember that for Viollet-le-Duc, restoration of a building, “means to reestablish it in a finished state, which may in fact never have actually existed at any given time.” Which coincides remarkably with Gaston Paris’s ambitions in offering what he refers to as “un essai de restauration intégrale” of the eleventh-century manuscript of Alexis: Les leçons sont établies sur la classification des manuscrits, les formes sont restituées d’après l’appréciation critique de la langue du poète. Ces deux procédés n’ont pu être appliqués aux quatre poèmes de la même façon: la rédaction du XIIe siècle, conservée dans un seul manuscrit, a été reproduite telle qu’il la contient, sauf les corrections nécessaires pour le sens ou la mesure; le poème du XIIIe siècle, bien qu’on n’en possède aussi qu’un texte, 39 “En faisant autour d’un point central une vaste chaîne de gens dont chacun comprendrait son voisin de droite et son voisin de gauche, on arriverait à couvrir toute la France d’une étoile dont on pourrait de même relier les rayons par des chaînes transversales continues. Cette observation bien simple, que chacun peut vérifier, est d’une importance capitale; elle a permis a mon savant confrère et ami, M. Paul Meyer, de formuler une loi qui, toute négative qu’elle soit en apparence, est singulièrement féconde, et doit renouveler toutes les méthodes dialectologiques: cette loi, c’est que, dans une masse linguistique de la même origine que la nôtre, il n’y a réellement pas de dialectes.” Cited in Gabriel Bergounioux, “Le francien (1815–1914): la linguistique au service de la patrie,” Mots 19 (juin 1989): 34.



restoration from notre-dame de paris to gaston paris

295

s’est prêté, grâce à l’étude attentive de ses rimes, à une restitution assez complète pour les formes, mais n’a pu être reconstitué avec la même certitude pour les leçons; les quatrains du XIVe siècle au contraire, grâce au nombre des manuscrits et à leur classification, ont pu être publiés avec une grande sûreté en ce qui concerne les leçons, mais non en ce qui regarde les formes, très difficiles à établir pour l’époque où vivait l’auteur. Enfin le poème du XIe siècle a été soumis à un essai de restauration intégrale, sur le succès de laquelle auront à se prononcer les juges compétents.40

Though no editor of Old French texts has ever found an original, autograph copy of a manuscript and every editor works from copies, which are by definition corrupt, Gaston Paris, using the rule of common error, proposes to “locate to the extent possible the form that the work had when it left the hands of the author.”41 But what does such a restoration produce? Taking a single line, line 4 of Paris’s 1872 edition, and following Cerquiglini’s analysis (Langue orpheline, pp. 61–63), we read: Tot est mudez, perdude at sa color

Consulting the manuscripts, we find, from L and A, which are twelfthcentury, and P, which is thirteenth-century, English; and S, which is late thirteenth-century French: L: tut est muez perdut ad sa colur A: tut est muez perdu ad sa culur P: tot est muez perdue a sa color S: si est muez perdue a sa valour

Which means that Gaston Paris, in an effort at aging, correcting, and Frenchifying the forms of L, has made the following changes: Tot Substitution of the letter o for the anglo-norman u Est No change Mudez Restitution of intervocalic d, that one assumes was subsequently dropped (L, A, P, S) Perdude Idem.; agreement of past participle

40 Paris and Pannier, La Vie de Saint Alexis, vii. 41 “Ces exigences se résument en une seule formule, qui peut s’appliquer à tous les cas. La critique des textes a pour but de retrouver, autant que possible, la forme que l’ouvrage auquel elle s’applique avait en sortant des mains de l’auteur. Ce but, elle ne l’atteint jamais complètement: elle s’en rapproche plus ou moins suivant que les conditions où elle s’exerce sont plus ou moins favorables” (Ibid., 8). Under the assumption that two copyists will not make the same error, the rule of common error is a method of triangulating back to a common source.

296

r. howard bloch At Restitution of final t, that one assumes was subsequently voiced (L, A), then dropped (P, S) Sa No change Color Substitution of the French spelling o for the anglo-norman u

Paris’s aims are multiple: 1) To recreate, despite the potential for exaggeration, the “francien” of the eleventh century (“Supposé même que ça et là je sois allé trop loin en attribuant à l’auteur de l’Alexis telle ou telle forme de langage à l’exclusion de telle autre, je pense qu’on voudra bien reconnaître que le texte de ce poème, tel que je le livre au public, offre un spécimen admissible de la bonne langue française telle qu’elle devait se parler et s’écrire au milieu du XIe siècle”); 2) To make that “francien” of the eleventh century as close as possible to the clear and transparent classical French of the seventeenth century (“Et on ne disconviendra pas non plus que c’était une belle langue, sonore et douce, forte et flexible, riche de mots expressifs et vivants, transparente dans ses formes, simple et claire dans ses constructions”); 3) To make the classical French “francien” of the eleventh century as close as possible to Classical, and not even vulgar, Latin (“Elle n’était pas encore embarrassé de cet insupportable attirail de particules oiseuses qui sont venues l’encombrer depuis; elle avait gardé du latin une ampleur de mouvements qui faisait ressortir encore la grâce qu’elle avait en propre”).42 Finally, and here Gaston Paris brings us back to architecture when he speculates that the “francien” of La Vie de Saint Alexis was spoken by the men who built the churches of Normandy and France (“La langue de cette époque me rappelle ces belles églises romanes construites sur le sol de la France et de la Normandie par les hommes même qui la parlaient”). Churches that, like the language itself, have been renovated over time (“Il est rare qu’elles nous soient parvenues dans leur intégrité et leur beauté naïve: d’ordinaire elles ont été plus d’une fois remaniées, mutilées et surchargées”). What is clear is that, despite the ambition to reproduce the “francien” of the mid-eleventh century, such restoration, for Gaston Paris no less than for Viollet-le-Duc, is a “means to reestablish it in a finished state, which may in fact never have actually existed at any given time”; not to put too fine a point as well upon the fiction behind the fiction, which holds “francien” itself to “have actually existed at any given time.” I am afraid that we conclude not with a “latin de désespoir,” but with a “restauration de désespoir.” What is left when restoration—whether 42 Paris and Pannier, La Vie de Saint Alexis, 135.



restoration from notre-dame de paris to gaston paris

297

of a medieval building, language, or text—turns out to be just another construction? First, it may be that the answer for architecture is not the same as for written works. Except for eyewitness descriptions, drawings, photographs, and a great model of Notre-Dame now in the Trocadero museum, all of which are pre-restoration, but still pretty late, we will never glimpse a cathedral in the state in which it existed prior to the mid- to late nineteenth century. As for literary works, we have manuscripts, which in the digital age have become increasingly accessible. Libraries and museums have begun to put their holdings online, as, for example, the Romance of the Rose project undertaken jointly by Johns Hopkins University and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Manuscripts have begun to be published in digital format, though this may be a temporary medium, since it is expensive, and presses as well as foundations seem to prefer the platform of the worldwide web. The consequences of such a trend are astonishing, since medieval artifacts heretofore available only to scholars and only on site can now be downloaded to the personal computer. All of which makes for a confusing abundance of undigested information. How do we find our way around the 160 plus Rose manuscripts, the seven of The Song of Roland, or the four of Alexis, were they to go online? Frankly, I don’t know, and I am not sure that anyone does. But what I do know is that such textual abundance holds the promise of undoing a vision of the medieval work as an autononmous, authentic, holographic, finished emanation of individual genius, a vision shaped more by romantic notions of literature than by the medieval past, a vision which reduced the richness of the manuscript folio to the dull regularized type of the printed page. And in that undoing, it restores the sheer joy of the medieval work. In keeping with Viollet-le-Duc’s principle of restoration which captures the living spirit of a building, a “philology of variance” (Cerquiglini) restores the joyous play of the medieval work which may, in fact, have actually existed at a given time, but which, among its various restorations or copies, is certainly not the final word.

The Czech Linguistic Turn: Origins of Modern Czech Philology 1780–1880 Pavlína Rychterová Est antiquius facere agrum quam colere. Václav Fortunát Durych, Bibliotheca Slavica (1795)

The building of the modern Czech nation in the nineteenth century depended to a considerable extent on a scientific description of its language and literature. In the course of the struggle between the “Czechs” and the “Germans” at the University of Prague and in the two towns of Prague in the 1420s, the medieval Czech language, with its origins and numerous metamorphoses, was bound up closely with the history of a specific social group which identified itself with the language.1 From the moment when the Czech intellectual elites of the first half of the nineteenth century gained access to the texts transmitted from the Middle Ages, it was very easy for them to interpret and advance their own political and cultural claims in the guise of a ‘natural longing’ which had ‘always been present’, only forgotten for some time, sleeping, waiting for an awakening and a new life. This is how the beginnings of modern Czech nationalism were defined—as a ‘national awakening’. But to make this ‘awakening’ possible, there had to be people who could not only find and read the old texts, preserved in many scattered manuscripts, but could also see them in their mutual relations, and more: give them a higher sense, an idea of historical development, which would let the present look like a necessary result of the past. Among the nineteenth century Czech historians, a case in point is František Palacký, considered to be the true architect of the Czech national historical consciousness. However, this is too simple, since Palacký raised his construction of the national past and national consciousness on two very strong foundations: on the work and partly also on the scholarly principles of Josef Dobrovský (1753–1829) and his generation of scholars. These pioneering philologists provided a solid platform for critical Czech and 1 For the history of the Hussite revolt see František Šmahel, Die hussitische Revolution (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2002); for the problem of the university nations at Prague University in the mid-fourteenth and the first decades of the fifteenth century, see Jiří Stočes, Pražské univerzitní národy do roku 1409 (Praha: Karolinum, 2010).

300

pavlína rychterová

Slavic linguistics and for the ideas about history that found their apex in Palacký’s conception of Czech history. The next few pages are therefore devoted to the origins, formation, methods and goals of Czech philology, as embodied by three generations of scholars from Václav Fortunát Durych and Josef Dobrovský, to Josef Jungmann. The first, and in many respects still unsurpassed, critical cum literary analysis of the historical origins of Czech philology was provided at the beginning of the last century in a detailed history of the literature of the nineteenth century (Literatura česká devatenáctého století ), written by a generation of philologists and literary scholars who were direct pupils of the leading modern philologist of the second half of the nineteenth century, Jan Gebauer, and of his contemporaries.2 The degree of erudition, self-reflection, objectivity and critical sense that the individual authors showed in their studies is very high by current standards, and in many respects cannot become outdated. This is remarkable: they wrote about an issue relevant within the society in which these authors lived and worked, an issue which constituted a sensitive political problem, since it carried the onus of an elaborate mythological structure of a ‘national revival’, a symbolic expression of Czech national identity par excellence.3 Literatura česká devatenáctého století documents the path that Czech philology and nationally defined literary criticism had taken for more than a hundred years of its existence and is its proper culmination: the second and final volume of Literatura česká devatenáctého století, was published in 1917. In the following year the world in which the Czech and Slavic philology was founded and in which it was formed, ceased to exist. The foundation of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, set a new stage for a nationally defined Czech philology which primarily differed from the research of the

2 Literatura česká devatenáctého století I, ed. by Josef Hanuš, Jan Jakubec, Jan Máchal, Jaroslav Vlček (Praha 1911); Literatura česká devatenáctého století II, ed. by Josef Hanuš, Karel Hikl, Jan Jakubec, Lubor Niederle, Jaroslav Vlček, Miloš Weingart (Praha: Nakladatelství Jana Leichtera, 1917). 3 Contemporary Slavonic and Czech studies should not forget about the heroic epochs in their history: Critical reflection upon their own origins and evolution must be an integral part of scholarly discourse. This is the only way to prevent regressions to outdated problems, methods and issues, by knowing the solutions yielded by past research, which are in some cases more balanced, more critical and more rigorous in methodological terms than certain solutions in present-day research. See for example the debate about Dobrovský’s presumed authorship of the old Russian epic poem The Tale of Igor’s Campaign initiated by the book of Edward L. Keenan, Joseph Dobrovsky and the Origins of the ‘Igor Tale’ (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).



the czech linguistic turn

301

preceding years by a shift of the centre of gravity. The actors and the audiences were mostly members of the Czech nation, and its cultural elite, unlike before 1914, when German and international elites had decisively influenced and shaped Czech philology and literary studies. * * * The formative stage of Czech philology at the end of the eighteenth century was subjected to a combination of circumstances of which only a few can be mentioned in the following text. One of the key factors was a new interest in old books and manuscripts in the second half of the eighteenth century, an interest closely associated with the new possibilities that opened up for a number of scholars and educated nobles and officials at the time when the Josephine reforms were being launched. At that time monastic libraries and archives of inestimable value frequently ended up in private hands, often in the hands of people who later became members of an international network of scholars, which was inter alia the creation of the first modern literary and linguistic discourse in Europe.4 In the Czech and Slovak Lands extensive collections of manuscripts and rare books were owned by virtually all the key members of the informal circle of scholars around Josef Dobrovský.5 In addition to some newly established central libraries (the Klementinum library in Prague was founded in 1781),6 these collections constituted a foundation on which generations of scholars of the Enlightenment based their idea of the method and the organisation of scientific inquiry and discourse, from which advanced Czech philology was to evolve over several decades. Dobrovský’s generation of scholars began to focus in on the course of the ever-expanding historical and literary research of the preserved ­medieval 4 For this problem see Joep T. leerssen, “Linguistic geopolitics and the Problem of Cultural Nationalism”, in: The Beloved Mothertongue. Ethnolinguistic Nationalism in Small Nations: Inventories and Reflections, ed. by Petra Boormans, Golfe Jensma, Maarten Van Ginerachter (Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2006): 15–36. 5 The first professor of Czech at Vienna University, a friend of Dobrovský, Josef Valentin Zlobický, owned an outstanding collection of manuscripts and old prints, as well as Olomouc-based Jan P. Cerroni, Bratislava scholars Jiří Ribay and Jan Čaplovič or Těšín-based Leopold Jan Šeršník, author of a treatise about the history of libraries in Bohemia—Leopold Jan Šešrník, “Ueber den Ursprung und die Aufnahme der Bibliothek am Clementinischen Collegium zu Prag”, Abhandlungen einer Privatgesellschaft in Böhmen 2 (1776): 258–86. 6 As for Czech books, in the year when Klementinum library in Prague was founded, Josef II forbade at the request of the Klementinum librarian Karl Ungar the Easter tradition of burning “heretical” books. Confiscated volumes were henceforth delivered to the Klementinum library—after several years they numbered two and a half thousand. See Jakubec, “Studie historické”, in Literatura česká, 100.

302

pavlína rychterová

and early modern texts about the earliest history of the Slavs. This concern had a number of reasons: very important was the influence of Rousseau’s teaching, judgments of the German scholars on the history of the Central European Slavs influenced by Rousseau, and finally, the works of Johann Gottfried Herder. German and Danish philologists and historians, who processed the extant sources in their own quest for the beginnings of the history of the Germans, provided in particular, the initial work for systematic linguistic research.7 The German scholarly background and methods of investigation were adopted by the Czech scholars for their own purposes. The professional training of many of them, especially Josef Dobrovský, consisted mainly of critical biblical exegesis—in the German lands the leading centre for biblical studies of the new type was Göttingen University, especially the circle around Johann David Michaelis, Professor of Oriental Studies. The methodological postulates of Michaelis were utterly modern and in principle they are valid to this day: The Bible, according to him, was shaped by historical and local conditions which in turn influence all literary development. Only detailed knowledge of the history, culture and society in which the Bible was created allows for a true understanding of the texts. Based on this assumption, theological, historical and biblical research began to focus on the oldest manuscripts, trying to penetrate the hypothetical “original version” of the Scripture. Slavic Bible translations began to play a notable role in these Bible-based studies from the end of the 1750s. At that time Michaelis himself called upon his colleagues to study Slavic biblical texts.8 Josef Dobrovský and his contemporaries perceived Johann Michaelis as a leading scientific authority: Dobrovský published his first scholarly work, a contribution to the textual study of the Bible, in the journal edited by Michaelis (Orientalische und Exegetische Bibliothek), and later maintained fruitful contact with him. From oriental philological studies Dobrovský

7 Of the highest importance were comparative linguistic studies of Johann G. Wachter, Glossarium Germanicum, continens origines et antiquitates totius linguae Germanicae, et omnium paene vocabulorum, vigentium et desitorum. Opus bipartium et quinque indicibus instructum (Leipzig: Jacob Schuster, 1727) and Johan Ihre, Glossarium Suiogothicum in quo tam hodierno usu frequentata vocabula, quam in legum patriarum tabulis aliisque, aevi medii scriptis obvia explicantur, et ex dialectis cognatis, moesogothica, anglo-saxonia, alemannica, islandica ceterisque Gothicaer et Celticae originis illustrantur (Uppsala: Edmannianis, 1769). 8 Johann David Michaelis, Einleitung in die göttlichen Schriften des Neuen Bundes (Göttingen: Verlag der Witwe Vandenhoek, 1787–88).



the czech linguistic turn

303

and his circle adopted the method of comparative linguistics and applied it to the Slavic languages and dialects. References to analogous properties of the Slavic dialects in comparison with oriental languages can be found mainly in the work of the two founders of Slavic philology, Dobrovský and Václav Fortunát Durych. Comparing the different language versions and translations of the Bible resulted in some spin-off research areas: first, Biblical science having at the centre of each layer the text of the Scripture, and secondly, linguistics, focusing on the language itself, or rather, the language of translation. Michaelis’ critical-cultural comparative method applied to linguistics was further developed by Augustin Ludwig Schlözer (1735–1809). In the 1760s he was a member of the Academy and professor at St Petersburg University in Russia, where he acquired a thorough grounding in the Slavic languages. His investigations resulted in a proposal for a general Slavic grammar and vocabulary which had as its base ten Slavic languages (he called them “dialects”). Comparing the various linguistic phenomena proper to these “dialects” it would be possible, according to Schlözer, to derive the general rules of the “basic” Slavic language, resulting in a general comparative grammar of several alphabets and a comparative Slavonic dictionary. One who was most affected by the German explorations, alongside Dobrovský, was Václav Fortunát Durych. He was a member of the Order of Minims and was ordained a priest in 1758. The study of Slavic languages, according to his recollections, was inspired during his stay in Munich by Andreas Felix von Öfele, who was a librarian at the Court and State Library in Munich and one of the founders of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. After the abolition of the Order of the Minims in 1784, Durych worked in Vienna until 1796, when the Order’s monastery in Vienna was closed. Already his first Slavonic work from 1777, De Slavo-bohemica sacri codicis versione, devoted to the first Czech translation of the Bible, contains a scientific and ideological programme: “I publish this treatise for no other purpose than to encourage the study of the mother tongue and to make known the sources and aids of the Slavic philology, through this experimental contribution to the history of the Czech-Slavonic Church.”9 With substantial aid from Josef Dobrovský, Durych completed in 1795 the 9 De Slavo-Bohemica Sacri Codicis versione Dissertatio F. Fortunati Durich Ord. Minimorum S. Francisci de Paula (Praha: Philip Nickesch, 1777): 3–4: “Non alio sine hanc meam dissertationem in lucem emitto, quam, ut symbolam meam qualemcunque ad historiam rei Ecclesiasticae Slavo—Bohemae conferendo, studium linguae patriae, omnium gentium,

304

pavlína rychterová

first volume of an ambitious work, Bibliotheca Slavica.10 In eight chapters he expounded on the origin of the name of the Slavs—he derives it from the word slovo (= word); then he explained, on the basis of the Greek and Latin sources from the sixth to the ninth century, the oldest Slavic words. In the third chapter he compiled a treatise on the Slavs in Procopius of Caesarea; in the remaining five chapters he examined the beginnings of literary culture for each Slavic people, and analysed the supposed original common language of the Slavs. Bibliotheca Slavica was, at the time, a work which had no parallel or predecessor. It rested solely on the results of the primary research material in the Hofbibliothek in Vienna, the Klementinum library in Prague and elsewhere, to which Durych and his collaborators (apart from Dobrovský these included the curator at the Hofbibliothek in Vienna, the Jesuit Michael Denis, the first professor of Czech language and literature at the University of Vienna, Josef Valentin Zlobický, Franz C. Alter and others) devoted more than twenty years. A remarkable insight into the workshop of the two pioneers Durych and Dobrovský is afforded by their mutual correspondence11 and their methodological discussions of the interpretative possibilities of the material obtained. It illustrates both the consensus and the differences between the two investigators. Durych said that during his reconstructions of early Slavic period he employed three instruments: common sense, historical records, and language and etymology, respectively. Given the utter lack of historical reports about the oldest Slavic period, Durych’s work was almost exclusively etymological: based on old words, their history and use, Durych considers not only the character of the Slavic languages but also the morality and nature, ‘national philosophy’, and the social organisation of the old Slavs. In cultural terms, the Czechs were viewed by Durych, alongside the Russians, as the oldest Slavic nation. In line with the Enlightenment ideals of his German teachers, he assumed that from the earliest times the Slavs possessed a highly developed culture and education, and in particular, a high degree of religious, legal and constitutional development. This image of a high culture focusing on the German Enlightenment notion and concept of statehood (Staatlichkeit) complemented Durych’s praecipue cognatarum exemplo, excitem, atque origines et subsidia philologiae Slavonicae commonstrem.” 10 Bibliotheca Slavica Antiquissimae Dialecti Communis et ecclesiasticae Universae Slavorum gentis. Studio et Opera Fortunati Durich Soc. Scient. Boh. Memb. Primum emittitur (Wien: S. Novakovitsch, 1795). 11  Korespondence Josefa Dobrovského I. Josef Dobrovský, Fortunát Durich (1778–1800), ed. by Adolf Patera (Praha, 1895).



the czech linguistic turn

305

pre-romantic Rousseauesque concept of the “noble savage”: the Slavs were peaceful, freedom-loving, pious and gentle, with great emotionality, labouring mainly as peasants. Bibliotheca Slavica established the concept of Slavic antiquity, which was in many respects to remain dominant throughout the nineteenth century. Dobrovský dissented from Durych in one respect: the nature of early Slavic culture. In their correspondence he opined that the ancient or medieval Slavic culture was derived from the German culture. Durych accepted this opinion in the case of the Christian doctrine but on the other points, disagreed with him, pointing to the Slavs at the Elbe and in Pomerania as teachers of the Germanic peoples who had immigrated later. He expressed his belief in the original mythological and heroic songs of the Slavs. After Durych’s death, Dobrovský took on the task of publishing, on the basis of the former’s material, the remaining four parts of Bibliotheca Slavica. He did not succeed in this in spite of the support of the Austrian government, which commissioned an expert review of the work. In his evaluation, František Matěj Pelcl stated that “the Bibliotheca Slavica is completely new and highly interesting for one of the largest nations in the world, which is the Slavic nation. If the work succeeds, only the Slavic nation can boast of such a work, and to the eternal glory of the Imperial and Royal (K.u.K.) states where it first came to light.”12 Josef Dobrovský was a whole generation younger than Durych and although he could be considered to be in many respects his pupil, which indeed he considered himself to be,13 theirs was far from being a one-way relationship. Václav Durych was his friend, teacher and pupil at the same time (Dobrovský taught Durych Arabic). Their social backgrounds and religious careers, which were drastically affected by the reforms of Josef II, their education, their early specialization in Biblical studies and oriental languages and other aspects were quite similar. In his conception of Slavic studies and Slavic antiquity Dobrovský differed considerably from Durych. He had a stronger focus on methodological issues and on Michaelis and Schlözer’s postulates, and his scholarly talents probably surpassed those of Jaroslav Durych.

12 Quoted after Jakubec, “Studie slavistické,” in Literatura česká, 125–126. 13 Dobrovský wrote about his relationship to Durych in his letter to his friend Jiří Ribay in February 1788: “. . . mein alter Freund Durych, . . . der mich zuerst mit der slawischen Literatur zu einer Zeit, da ich sie verachtete, weil ich voll Eifer war für das orientalische Sprachstudium, bekannt machte . . .” Quoted after Jakubec, “Josef Dobrovský,” in Literatura česká, 163.

306

pavlína rychterová

He started his academic career quiet similarly to Durych, as a Jesuit and a specialist on oriental languages. Initially, his central interest was in the Bible, and in another time and place he would probably have become a very learned theologian and biblical scholar. But under the influence of German philology and its interest in the ancient Slavs and their language and culture, and after the Jesuit Order was abolished, Dobrovský became more and more interested in the study of the history and literature of his own country. His early treatises are significant for an understanding of his scholarly method: In 1779 he revealed in a critical comparative analysis that the so-called Fragment of the Gospel of Mark, brought as an important relic to Prague in the fourteenth century by Emperor Charles IV, did not date from the first century ad but from the ninth century.14 Dobrovský’s work was praised in glowing terms by Michaelis in his journal, where he called it “a gift of the highest importance for criticism.” He also expressed the wish that the author continue to work on the Slavic translation of the New Testament, whose publication was according to Michaelis a major desideratum in philological studies. Dobrovský completed this publication, probably stimulated by Michaelis’ opprobrium for Dobrovský’s further work on Hebrew manuscripts related to the Old Testament.15 Under the influence of František Matěj Pelcl, whom he met in the circles of the aristocratic Nostitz family for which both scholars worked from the seventies as tutors, Dobrovský wrote another source critical account of Czech history, which led him into a journalistic dispute initiated by a militant proponent of the church policy of Josef II, Franz Guolfinger of Steinsberg. Dobrovský refuted in his treatise the historicity of the most important saint of his time: Saint John of Nepomuk. He carefully examined the transmitted accounts of the story and came to the conclusion that John of Nepomuk did not exist. At the time, at the end of the fourteenth century, only a certain Jan of Pomuk was attested in the sources. He had indeed been executed by King Wenceslas IV but he certainly had not been a martyr: “How erroneous must the Church be, if it canonizes people who do not exist!”, thus, Dobrovský wraps up his argument in the perfect enlightenment manner.16 As an exemplary enlightenment thinker

14 See Václav Flajšhans, Počátky literární činnosti Dobrovského, 16ff. 15 Josef Dobrovský, De antiquis Hebraeorum characteribus dissertatio, in qua speciatim Origenis Hieronymique fides testimonio Jos. Flavii defenditur (Praha: Matthaeus Schmadl, 1783). 16 Josef Dobrovský, Streitschrifen über die Existenz des heil. Johann von Nepomuk, Lit. Mag. III, 101–26.



the czech linguistic turn

307

he next investigated Czech medieval heresies, in which he criticised a simplified condemnation of the Utraquist Church as formulated by the Catholic Counter-Reformation religious propaganda.17 Dobrovský regarded philology as ranking higher than any other scientific discipline, even higher than philosophy and metaphysics: “In my youth, Kant held a lot of attraction for me. Fichte and Schelling appeared when I already had my metaphysics formed. I could not find in them anything to my liking. Historical and philological criticism does provide much more than any metaphysics. A literary datum is something [concrete], whereas a new metaphysical system is merely a figment of one’s imagination.”18 His philological interests, education and talent, were put into practice by Dobrovský in his work on the new Czech orthography: “The Czech language has not sunk so deep as to be forced to surrender its rights and leave the legislative power that belongs exclusively to it to grammar bunglers and word cobblers.”19 A literary language must be created, according to him, with special reference to the old “classic” books, popular language, and the other Slavic languages (dialects). In his scholarly striving for a new literary Czech he set himself two goals—to write modern grammar rules, and a “perfect and complete dictionary of the Czech language,” which he considered “the richest of all the Slavic languages.”20 Many of his contemporaries also did some lexicographic work, which led to several competitive enterprises of which the majority were not successfully completed. Dobrovský’s lexicographic views, that he formulated in the ensuing debates, were one of the reasons for his subsequent break with the younger generation, the so-called Jungmannian lexicographers. In the course of time he condemned more and more vigorously, the introduction of neologisms, which the younger generation considered necessary to raise Czech to a level which would go beyond the historicist interest and contain social discourses, a level of discourse which remained closed to Czech for a long time (for example, a number of scientific disciplines and in the first place, philosophy).

17 Josef Dobrovský, Geschichte der böhmischen Pikarden und Adamiten, Abhandlungen BGW IV (1788), 300ff. 18 Korespondence Josefa Dobrovského II. Josef Dobrovský, Jiří Samuel Bandtke, ed. by V.A. Francev (Praha: Česká akademie, 1906), 48. 19 Cited after Jakubec, “Dobrovský,” in Literatura česká, 183. 20 Jakubec, “Dobrovský,” in Literatura česká, I, 218.

308

pavlína rychterová

Dobrovský’s Deutsch-böhmisches Wörterbuch21 was completed by Václav Hanka almost twenty years after the publication of the first volume in 1802. It was a major work that became the foundation of all other lexicographical enterprises, especially of the Czech-German dictionary of Josef Jungmann. Dobrovský complemented the dictionary with the first modern treatise on morphology: Abhandlung über Ursprung und Bildung der slavischen, insbesondere der böhmischen Sprache,22 dealing with Slavonic stem derivations, and a number of grammatical articles. They culminated in Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der böhmischen Sprache.23 Dobrovský valued this work highly because in his opinion it was on a par with the German scientific models. In private correspondence he expressed the opinion that just as Johann Christoph Adelung had discovered the foundation of the German language, he himself had described the basics of the Slavic language.24 Although Dobrovský proceeded strictly inductively, his language skills were so extensive that many of his conclusions and the general grammar rules still apply (e.g. the division of Czech verbs into infinitive classes). In the development of modern Czech philology, the publication of Lehrgebäude inaugurated an entirely new phase: All successive generations of scholars and men of letters obtained from it their theoretical and practical knowledge of the language. Its authority increased even more after Václav Hanka published it in Czech in 1822.25 Dobrovský used the knowledge he had gained from the work on grammar to advance his radical theory of Czech verse, which was also one of the causes of his dispute with the younger generation of writers and literati: He held that accented verse was the only possible verse in the Czech language and utterly rejected attempts to introduce metrical verse, consisting 21  Deutsch-böhmisches Wörterbuch I., ed. by Josef Dobrovský (Praha: Herrlsche Buchhandlung, 1802). 22 This work was first published as foreword to a dictionary by Josef Tomsa, Vollständiges Wörterbuch der böhmischen, deutschen und latenischen Sprache (Praha: Schönfeld, 1791), and separately eight years later: Die Bildsamkeit der slavischen Sprache, an der Bildung der Substantive und Adjective in der böhmischen Sprache dargestellt (Praha: Herrlsche Buchhandlung, 1799). 23 Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der böhmischen Sprache zur gründlichen Erlernung derselben für Deutsche, zur vollkommenern Kenntnis für Böhmen. Von Joseph Dobrowsky, M. d. b. Gesch. d. W. zu Prag, der Ges. d. Fr. der Wissen, zu Warschau (Praha: Herrlsche Buchhandlung, 1809). 24 He was mainly alluding to Adelung’s treatise Umständliches Lehrgebäude der deutschen Sprache (Leipzig: J.G.I. Breitkopf, 1782). 25 Václav Hanka, Mluvnice čili soustava českého jazyka podle Dobrovského (Praha: U Bohumila Háze, 1822). The first modern Polish, Slovenian and Serbian grammars rested on Lehrgebäude.



the czech linguistic turn

309

of alternating long and short syllables. Dobrovský was thus the first to distinguish in the Czech language the length of the vowels and word accent, which, according to him, is always on the first syllable. This was a revolutionary discovery and for a long period of time it affected the entire Czech poetic practice. The analytical work on the Czech language by Dobrovský was the central point in his Slavonic studies,26 and had a direct impact on the following generation of Czech philologists. A very important paper was Vergleichung der russischen und böhmischen Sprache which Dobrovský published as a supplement to his account of a trip to Sweden and Russia, which he took in 1792, at the suggestion of the Czech Learned Society.27 In the paper he supplied many synonyms and near synonyms in the two languages and emphasized the idea of the common origin of the two nations. By a curious paradox, it was precisely this work that encouraged the younger generation to introduce Slavic neologisms in Czech, something that Dobrovský in the course of time, increasingly rejected.28 His texts, devoted to the modern Slavic nations which Dobrovský published in the journals that he founded and edited, Slavín (1806) and Slovanka (1814–1815) also had great impact. Despite their Czech titles, the contributions were in German. However many articles were translated into Czech twenty or more years later and published in Czech magazines, considerably broadening their impact among a Czech-reading and culturally interested public. Dobrovský also held influential views on the affinity between Slavic and Indian mythology which he touched upon in some of his published works and especially in private letters. These views significantly shaped the Slavic scholarly discourse in Europe at the time. However, he considered this question, to be a very complicated one and

26 The most important Slavic works by Dobrovský originated in the last twenty years of his life. They were Glagolitica. Über die glagolitische Literatur: Das Alter der Bukvitza: ihr Muster, nach welchem sie gebildet worden: den Ursprung der römisch-slavischen Liturgie: die Beschaffenheit der dalmatischen Übersetzung, die man dem Hieronymus zuschrieb u.s.w. Ein Anhang zum Slavin (Praha: Herrlsche Buchhandlung, 1807). This was translated into Czech in 1832. Dobrovský’s greatest achievement is considered to be Institutiones linguae Slavicae dialecti veteris, que quum apud Bussos, Serbos aliosque ritus graeci, tum apud Dalmatas glagolitas ritus latini Slavos in libris sacris (Wien: Antonius Schmid, 1822). 27 Josef Dobrovský, Vergleichung der russischen und böhmischen Sprache. Nach dem Wörterverzeichnisse des Petersburger Vergleichungswörterbuches (Praha: Calve, 1796). 28 In the field of ancient Russian literature Dobrovský collaborated very intensively with Josef Müller, the author of German translations of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign and Nestor’s Chronicle.

310

pavlína rychterová

supposed that the fundamental insight into the nature of this “affinity” could only be obtained only after a thorough comparative study. Dobrovský gave his Slavic studies an ideological underpinning that was very important to the subsequent generations of philologists and literary intelligentsia. A remarkable piece of evidence of this is Dobrovský’s speech to the new Emperor Leopold II at the Prague Learned Society in September 1791. This apology of the Czech and Slavic languages contains many of the ideas that would become fundamental for the following generations of the Czech national thinkers. In particular, the idea of the Slavic languages as a “living power of the nations” was new in the thought of Dobrovský and it had an enormous impact on the rise of national consciousness. Dobrovský’s apology was at once translated into Czech and distributed across all strata of the Czech-speaking and reading population. How Dobrovský’s “ideological turn” came about is still something of a puzzle today. It is known that Dobrovský suffered from bouts of manic depression; the extraordinary states of mind produced by his mental affliction are well documented in his correspondence with various Bohemian and European scholars. The first outbreak of the illness probably occurred in 1791–1792, at about the time he read the new volumes of Johann Gottfried Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, which contained the ideas about the glorious future of the Slavs. Shortly after that we can read in one of Dobrovský’s letters a very peculiar but most interesting interpretation of the Slavic future in which, in the manner of a medieval visionary, he evokes an apocalyptic scenario in which the Slavic nations play the crucial role of envoys of freedom and peace. It is evident that Dobrovský himself understood these seizures as messages from a higher authority. This spiritual experience may have had an influence on his views of the Slavs and their history. * * * Miroslav Hroch has divided the effects of the first generations of Czech philologists and writers in his characterisation of the national movements of the nineteenth century into three periods: the period of the scholars, the period of agitation, and the period of politics.29 Dobner and Dobrovský were, according to him, leaders of the first or scholarly period. The following generation, led by František Palacký and Josef Jungmann, represented the period of “national agitation.” According to this schema 29 Miroslav Hroch, Evropská národní hnutí v 19. století. Společenské předpoklady vzniku novodobých národů (Praha: Svoboda, 1986).



the czech linguistic turn

311

the ­representatives of the generation of the scholars viewed the Czech people as the object of their care but did not pursue its emancipation. That changed with the transition to the “agitation” phase, a decisive period in the process of national self-awareness, in which, according to Hroch, various ingredients were mixed: a new concept of the homeland, an integrated language and cultural programme, regional patriotism, the church’s new interest in language education for the clergy and the need for social emancipation of the Czech people. However, very similar characteristics in fact already applied to the period of scholars, if one looks more closely at the influence of Josef Dobrovský. We may underestimate his influence, if we focus only on his most extensive and most important scientific works and ignore his minor works which had a much broader impact on the ­Czech-speaking public. Hroch’s divisions, however, remain valuable, but their distinction lies less in the concepts which Dobrovský had already developed than in the social actors. In the second phase of the Czech national awakening, the first three decades of the nineteenth century, a new social group came into play: These were culturally active members of the petty intelligentsia who sought to achieve social advancement through a career in government service and in education. As Hroch pointed out, in the Czech language community this social group represented the highest layer which was not assimilated to German language and culture. Their attitude towards the mother tongue was therefore slightly different from the attitude of Dobrovský and his generation towards the Czech language.30 The linguist Josef Jungmann31 was one of the most important representatives of this new socio-cultural stratum. He was born in 1773, into the family of a shoemaker and smallholder in a central Bohemian village. A year after his birth the Theresian government issued a General Education Act which made a fundamental break in the education of the social stratum to which Jungmann’s family belonged. Thus, Jungmann completed the first three years of school in the Czech language and only at the age of twelve did he continue with his schooling at a gymnasium in Beroun, where the medium of instruction was German. Jungmann remembered 30 This new attitude was strongly demonstrated in the literary forgeries from the years 1817–1818. For the problem see Pavlína Rychterová, “The Manuscripts of Grünberg and Königinhof. Romantic Lies about the Glorious Past of the Czech Nation,” in Authenticity and Forgery, ed. by János Bak, Patrick Geary and Gábor Klaniczay (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). 31  Robert Sak, Josef Jungmann, Život obrozence (Praha: Vyšehrad, 2007). I draw mostly on Sak’s monograph in the following exposition.

312

pavlína rychterová

throughout his life the traumatic experiences associated with schooling in a language he did not understand: “The teacher . . . . strutted about the school, a cane in his hand, which he loved to employ as an incentive for diligence. Whoever handed in his homework was lucky if he got off without a stroke. This was a bleak prospect because we were mostly Czechs and the catechism was in German only and the teacher was a German. I did well, having extraordinary diligence. I could memorize entire pages although I scarcely understood more than two or three words.”32 At the age of fifteen Jungmann went to the Piarist gymnasium in Prague, where he largely funded his studies by teaching music and giving private lessons to scions of wealthy families. He was one of a number of Czech students who came from rural areas as sons of merchants, traders, artisans, minor officials, and farmers. The author of Jungmann’s latest biography points out that mastery of German was all the more difficult to acquire for these boys because they had often received poor education and because they brought with them a very limited knowledge of their mother tongue, with a poor vocabulary and limited sentence structure. They easily drew the obvious parallel between a poor man and a poor nation, and were moreover burdened with an inferiority complex resulting from a sense of being under constant threat.33 According to Jungmann, if a Czech were to obtain the “German key” to an official career, this necessitated much expenditure and years of hard work in German schools, which were only good for suppressing in the student the last spark of originality. “One cannot learn in them even in five years anything other than memorizing in German. In the end, the pupil who comes out of such a school is even more stupid than he was before he went in.”34 In the year when Jungmann began his studies in the Philosophical Faculty of Prague University (1792), a Czech language chair was established there and its first holder was a distinguished Czech historian and patriot, František Martin Pelcl. At the university Jungmann broadened his knowledge of English and French and developed a liking for French enlightenment writers. In his later years he commented on the ideals of the French Revolution as follows: “Where there’s equality, there’s liberty; liberty that is not unbridled, doing away with all equality, but in line with reasonable equality, liberty to do what is to no one’s detriment, what is reasonable for 32 Quoted after Sak, Josef Jungmann, 22. 33 Ibid., 25. 34 Josef Jungmann, Rozmlouvání o jazyku českém II, Hlasatel český 1(1806). Quoted after Jakubec, “Jungmann,” in Literatura česká, 626.



the czech linguistic turn

313

the laws of nature, laws divine and human.” Being this far from non-conformist judgement, contrasted remarkably with Jungmann’s recollections of the humiliating experiences of being a poor tutor in noble families, a milieu in which a Dobrovský moved with natural aplomb. A man of Jungmann’s sort could best apply his limitations and talents in the civil service: After graduation Jungmann entered the Litomerice gymnasium as professor, a position he held until the end of his life. The founder of Czech philological nationalism was no radical revolutionary or intellectual but an extraordinarily gifted, reasonably educated and diligent official, serving loyally the Habsburg Crown. Jungmann’s first important works in the field of linguistics and philology, in addition to a few stabs at poetry, were translations. In 1805, he published his translation of a novella by François-René de Chateaubriand, Atala. In this work he particularly appreciated the language that he characterised as “simple, full of poetic imagery, chosen from the plain folk language.” Jungmann added to the translation explanations of unusual or unfamiliar words that he had found in old Czech or borrowed them from other Slavic languages. He even left a number of expressions, for which he could not find an equivalent in Czech, in the original language. Jungmann’s translation was in the Czech environment, a completely new approach to the native language that influenced the language of Czech literature for a long time to come. The translation of Atala was followed in 1811 by another equally significant translation, Paradise Lost by John Milton.35 This text was selected by Jungmann, as he said, because it had been the initial source of inspiration for modern German poetry: “the path on which Klopstock, Gessner, Wieland, Bodmer, and others walked in all their glory.”36 A translation should be, according to Jungmann, an inspiration and the first step towards the creation of a universal literary Slavonic language. Vladimír Macura stressed that with his translation of Paradise Lost Jungmann interpreted Milton’s “epic of humankind’s culture for the Slavs which he put on a par with the ancients and old Indian culture, as he transformed in the most integral manner the all-human myth to an all-Slavic myth. He expressed in it the most integral idea of Slavic

35 Jungmann published a number of influential translations, such as the poem Lenora by his great poetic idol, Gottfried Augustin Bürger, Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard by Thomas Gray, Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope, and a number of other works of ancient literature and poets of the eighteenth century. 36 Josef Jungmann, Překlady I. Ztracený ráj, ed. by M. Komárek, (Praha: 1958), 13.

314

pavlína rychterová

universality.”37 Jungmann’s translation work overall was of great literary importance, and in essence became the basis for the poetic Czech language of the first half of the nineteenth century. The ideological concept behind Jungmann’s work with language can best be reconstructed based on his publications, above all, Dvojí rozmlouvání o jazyce českém (Two Dialogs about the Czech Language).38 These are instructional dialogues, as it were, between two or more imaginary speakers, a genre which Jungmann adopted from the tradition of medieval dialogue. In the first, Daniel Adam of Veleslavín (the personification of the sixteenth-century humanist Czech language, which the first Czech philologists regarded as an unsurpassable model) speaks with a “renegade” or assimilated Czech and with a disinterested German. The butts of the criticism are the educated and affluent strata of society, assimilated, either wholly or partly, within German language and culture. Veleslavín strikes up a conversation in the underworld with a compatriot and after a while marvels at his “perversion” or ignorance of his mother tongue. Enter the disinterested humanist German who comforts Veleslavín, saying that a new era is already dawning. In the German figure we can probably find all of the German scientific and philosophical models which Dobrovský and the founding generation started. In the year when Jungmann published his first Rozmlouvání, Dobrovský published Herder’s judgments on the Slavs in his magazine Slavín. Jungmann essentially put into the noble German’s mouth, Herder’s ideas: “There rises, I say, a nobler Czech family, hardy scions of the fatherland. They take over the Czech art and free their homeland of ridicule from the neighbouring nations.” Whether by a “nobler Czech family” Jungmann meant a distinct social class is not entirely clear, but the circle of his patriotic friends very often had the same social origin as himself. The satirical slant and the underworld of the first Rozmlouvání were abandoned by Jungmann in the second Dialogue, in which the allegorical figures ‘Slavomil’ (Slavophile) and ‘Protiva’ (Opponent) debate the sense and significance of the revivalist efforts. Slavomil again follows Herder in his interpretation of the character of a nation and language: A homeland, according to him, is to be understood as part of the country with population of the same tongue. Language is placed by Jungmann above the 37 Vladimír Macura, Znamení zrodu (Praha: H H, 1995), 76. 38 Both texts were published in the year 1806, in the first Czech written journal, Hlasatel český. Quoted after Boj o obrození národa: výbor z díla Josefa Jungmanna, ed. by Felix Vodička (Praha: Kosek 1948).



the czech linguistic turn

315

homeland as a territory (“Who does not love the language of his nation does not love his country”), and he rejects learned enlightenment in the cosmopolitism: “The best people in the educated nations are not cosmopolitan, just the opposite.” Nevertheless, in this concept the mainstay of the nation and its language is the “folk” or the nation by itself: “The people is Czech. Let the nobles speak French or Chaldean, who cares? The people considers them foreigners (which they pretend to be), and loves them the less the less it is loved by them. The peasant is the country’s foremost inhabitant.” In this text, Jungmann reached a remarkable radicalisation of the Herderian philosophical concept when he described the Czech peasant as bearer of culture: all government offices are closed to a mere Czech, “he cannot even be a scribe, but as in Egyptian captivity he is chained to the plough and the cobbler’s stool, while the pretentious foreigner takes into his hands the administration of the land!” This sense of inequality of opportunities leads Jungmann, on occasion, to a paranoid hatred of the Germans and the German language: The Germans like to see renegades among them; they want to expand to the east. “They thrive on official posts and our bread tastes to them like honeycomb.” Jungmann is speaking here primarily for the generation of profiteers from Joseph’s economic reforms with all the contradictions caused by their social advancement. He then develops his argument by endowing the idealized “peasant,” defender of the language and bearer of culture, with the highest moral authority. All possibility of collective and personal success and happiness is derived from there: “For the Czechs, mastery of the Czech language is indispensable if morals, spirit, justice, happiness, and the nation itself are not to perish.” The language is therefore in the first place. Jungmann’s first major and minor translations were essentially a thesaurus of the new Czech language which Jungmann created in his greatest work, the Czech-German dictionary. It was a follow-up to the work begun by Josef Dobrovský and his generation. It was truly his life’s work. Evidence of the work on the dictionary can be found throughout his professional life. Jungmann began the systematic work in 1810, together with a variety of collaborators, using French, German, Polish and English models including lexicographical works by Samuel Johnson, Johann Christoph Adelung, Joachim Heinrich Camp, and Samuel Bogumil Linde. From domestic sources he took, in particular, lexicographical works written under the direction of Josef Dobrovský. As Jungmann was to a certain degree self-taught, the organisation of the material cost him much effort and he made many mistakes. He published the first volume of the dictionary in 1834. It elicited an enthusiastic response and František Palacký

316

pavlína rychterová

wrote that “from this dictionary we all will learn accurate and true Czech, because it is the cornerstone of all the Czech literature.” Five years later Jungmann completed the dictionary and became definitely the “Father of the Nation.” All Czech intellectuals hailed Jungmann’s work as an epochal event, a magnum opus of scholarly literature. In fact, it is still regarded as crucial for the blossoming of Czech literature in the latter two-thirds of the nineteenth century.39 In Vladimír Macura’s view, Jungmann’s dictionary was a cultural creation of the highest level, not only a lexicographic collection but also a gesture demonstrating the ductile richness of the language of a patriotic society.40 The author was the first Czech scholar to receive the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Leopold, entitling him to a peerage. Two years after the publication of Jungmann’s dictionary, František Palacký could declare completion of the phase of the national revival in which the prevailing emphasis lay on cultivating and expanding its vocabulary. On this cultural base, according to him, all literary and scientific disciplines would develop to accomplish an original intellectual or artistic contribution to European culture.41 The Biographer of Jungmann, Robert Sak, notes that the dictionary concluded Jungmann’s mission in the contemporary Czech culture: it was precisely in the thirties and forties that the representative and almost religious role of the language slowly but irreversibly gave way to its natural use as a means of communication in all strata of society and in all cultural areas.42 This was the beginning of a new—political—phase in the history of the modern Czech nation and also in the history of Czech philology and linguistics.43

39 Pavel Eisner, Chrám i tvrz. Kniha o češtině, (Praha, 1946) (Praha: Torst, 21992), 529. 40 Macura, Znamení zrodu, 124. 41  František Palacký, Předmluva k vlastenskému čtenářstvu, Časopis českého Musea 11/1 (1837): 3–8. 42 Sak, Josef Jungmann, 285. 43 For the social and political development of Czech society in the second half of the nineteenth century see Otto Urban, Kapitalismus a česká společnost. K otázkám formování české společnosti v 19. století (Praha: Lidové noviny, 2003).

PART four

MEDIEVALISM AND ITS ALTERNATIVES IN NATIONAL DISCOURSES

‘Medieval’ Identities in Italy: National, Regional, Local Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri* Italy, like many other European nations and the United States, has an intense fascination with the Middle Ages, and the attraction is by no means new. The entire Italian Ottocento was characterized by a keen interest in the medieval period, one revived in different ways in our own era. Medievalism was ingrained in nineteenth-century Italian politics, society, and tastes. Ideas about the Middle Ages were formed and disseminated through novels, patriotic songs, poetry, paintings, etchings, and architecture; the scenery, costumes, and arias of operas; tableaux vivants; and even collectable picture-cards. Nineteenth-century notions of the Middle Ages also forged forms and contents for future generations—images of fairy-tale castles and kings, lute-strumming troubadours, ladies with conical hats and their errant knights—whose powers of persuasion were so profound that they came to constitute what Benedetto Croce described as a true “religion of the Middle Ages.”1 The phenomenon was so prominent that by the 1970s it had become the subject of significant historiographic literature. Since then, a sizeable number of Italian historians have written on the theme, enough for the study of medievalism in Italy—and not only—to have become a virtual branch of historiography unto itself, a place of privileged encounter between scholars of the Middle Ages and scholars of contemporary culture. Today, Italian studies of medievalism tend to take one of two forms. The first consists of a comparative history of ideas, a variety of analysis that scrutinizes both period historical literature and a wide variety of other cultural evidence, be it archaeological, philological, literary, ethnographic, pictorial, architectural, philosophical, or cinematographic. Inquiries of this kind seek to produce a history of historical thought in a very

* I wish to thank Lila Yawn for her invaluable help with the translation of this article into English. 1  Benedetto Croce, History of Europe in the Nineteenth Century, translated from the Italian by Henry Furst (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1933), 49 (orig. edit. Bari: Laterza, 1931, reprinted in Benedetto Croce, Filosofia, Poesia, Storia. Pagine tratte da tutte le opere a cura dell’autore [Milano: Adelphi, 1996], p. 1306).

320

tommaso di carpegna falconieri

broad sense.2 The second kind of study, whose ties to the first are obvious, has been defined as a “historiography of perception,” meaning an attempt at recovering popular perceptions of the Middle Ages in post-medieval eras—perceptions that can then be juxtaposed with what professional historians have to say about the Middle Ages.3 Studies of this sort function on the premise that the practice of history would be incomplete if it did not include common perceptions of the Middle Ages in its purview, since those perceptions obviously belong to the course of history. Whether fictions, falsehoods, or invented traditions, common perceptions—ideas widely shared within a society—can contribute greatly to the formation of the overall idea of a historical period. Historians help to determine those shared ideas and are in turn influenced by them, so much so that the common perceptions in question sometimes have a direct impact upon what comes to be considered historical fact. These circumstances, in other words, affect the work produced by historians of the Middle Ages, even though historians are accustomed to reasoning principally on the basis of sources produced during the medieval millennium itself. The same historians have a strong card to play nonetheless, since they are well positioned to juxtapose the Middle Ages that emerge from primary sources with societal perceptions of the Middle Ages in post-medieval eras. Skilled in forging comparisons and acutely aware of the kinds of issues at hand, professional historians are singularly well equipped to recognize differences, contradictions, distortions, and inventions and to interpret their meanings in historical terms. In Italy, as elsewhere, it is a well-established historical tenet that the nineteenth century was the era when common perceptions of the ­medieval 2 One book merits particular mention: Arti e storia nel medioevo, ed. by Enrico Castel­ nuovo and Giuseppe Sergi. IV. Il medioevo al passato e al presente (Torino: Einaudi, 2004). A joint effort on the part of many scholars, it tackles the phenomenon of medievalism in its many manifestations, from political history to the history of art, music, and other cultural phenomena, with a prevailing but not exclusive focus on Italy. 3 Although currently dormant, the journal Quaderni medievali (founded in 1976) for a few decades included a column of essays focusing on ideas of the Middle Ages held by people who were not professional historians of the era. The column was titled “L’altro medioevo” (“The Other Middle Ages”) and dealt with “the Middle Ages belonging to nonspecialists, the common culture, and the mass-media; the mechanisms that produced and transmitted a specular and deformed image.” (“Il medioevo dei non specialisti, della cultura comune e dei mass media; i meccanisimi di produzione e di trasmissione di una immagine speculare e deformata.”) For “perceptional historiography,” see Giuseppe Sergi, L’idea di medioevo. Fra storia e senso comune (Roma: Donzelli, 1999, 20052), 9. See also Antonio Brusa, “Un prontuario degli stereotipi sul medioevo,” Cartable de Clio 5 (2004); Medioevo e luoghi comuni, ed. by Flavia Marostica (Napoli: Tecnodid, 2004).



‘medieval’ identities in italy

321

past were invented and framed.4 Studies of nineteenth-century constructions of politics and identities based on the Middle Ages are consequently rather numerous. Far less common are studies concerning the ways in which the Middle Ages have been utilized politically from the twentieth century to the present.5 One name suffices to illustrate the relevance of medievalism in nineteenthcentury Italy: Giuseppe Verdi. The vast majority of Verdi’s works are set in the Middle Ages. Those that most concern us were composed almost exclusively in the 1840s and 1850s. They include lesser-known works, such as Oberto Conte di San Bonifacio (1839), I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata (1843), Giovanna d’Arco (1845), Attila (1846), La Battaglia di Legnano (1848), Les Vêpres Siciliennes (1855), as well as some of the composer’s absolute masterpieces: Macbeth (1847), Il Trovatore (1853), Simon Boccanegra (1857), and, from a later period, Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). If we further broaden our purview to include early sixteenth-century themes, the list of operas grows considerably. Verdi’s arias were sung by Italians of all stripes, from nobles to emigrants to patriots, who wrote “Viva VERDI!” on walls and shouted the phrase in theatres, using the composer’s surname as an acrostic for “Vittorio Emanuele Re d’Italia” (Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy). The opera La Battaglia di Legnano was composed in the fateful year of 1848, Spring of Nations, and was performed in Rome just a few

4 Among the most important studies are Italia e Germania. Immagini, modelli, miti fra due popoli dell’Ottocento: il medioevo, ed. by Reinhard Elze and Pierangelo Schiera (Bologna: il Mulino, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1988); and Studi medievali e immagine del medioevo tra Ottocento e Novecento, in Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo 100 (1995–1996). A related book by Bordone has an evocative title, The Mirror of Shalott: Renato Bordone, Lo specchio di Shalott. L’invenzione del medioevo nella cultura dell’Ottocento (Napoli: Liguori, 1993). In it we find the metaphor of the sad story, narrated by Tennyson, of the Lady of Shalott, who could see the world only through a deforming mirror, i.e. a fictitious image of the Middle Ages. A more recent study is Medioevo reale, medioevo immaginario. Confronti e percorsi culturali tra regioni d’Europa. Atti del convegno Torino 26 e 27 maggio 2000, ed. by Daniele Lupo Jalla, Paolo Denicolai, Elisa Pagnucco, Graziella Rovino (Torino: Città di Torino, 2002). Cf. also Paolo Golinelli, Medioevo romantico. Poesie e miti all’origine della nostra identità (Milano: Ugo Mursia Editore, 2011). 5 See, in particular, Il sogno del Medioevo. Il revival del Medioevo nelle culture contemporanee. Relazioni e comunicazioni del Convegno, San Gimignano, 11–12 novembre 1983, in Quaderni medievali 21 (1986); Renato Bordone, “Medioevo oggi,” in Lo spazio letterario del Medioevo. 1. Il Medioevo latino, ed. by Guglielmo Cavallo, Claudio Leonardi, Enrico Mene­ stò, IV: L’attualizzazione del testo (Roma: Salerno Editrice, 1997), 261–99; Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri, Medioevo militante. La politica di oggi alle prese con barbari e crociati (Torino: Einaudi, 2011).

322

tommaso di carpegna falconieri

days before the proclamation of the Roman Republic.6 Chivalry, romantic love, cities, the bourgeoisie, a nation, revolution, parliamentary representation and the constitution, a people in arms fighting against the foreign oppressor—these were the sentiments of the Italian Risorgimento, and Giuseppe Verdi was one of its chief symbolic representatives. Italian medievalisms since Verdi’s century have taken many different and multifaceted forms, and it would be unfair to reduce their complexities, which grew more diverse over time, across space, and among social groups. The Middle Ages of the Restoration were not those of 1848, nor were they those of the newly unified Italy. Meanwhile, up to our own time, the Middle Ages have been interpreted instrumentally in every possible way, including in reactionary, revolutionary, patriotic, and papalist terms, becoming so polyvalent that, in Renato Bordone’s words, they have come to constitute a “great repertoire of ambiguously versatile metaphors.”7 Given these formidable complexities, I would like to limit myself to a few considerations, by concentrating on certain well-known events, texts, and monuments. My aim is to illustrate the themes and problems that nineteenth-century Italians faced and which rendered their political receptions of medievalism peculiar. It is useful, however, to begin in our own time. On February 9, 2009, the mayor of Rome conferred honorary citizenship on the Dalai Lama. China warned of possible damage to its ties with Italy. The Italian Foreign Office Minister answered that the Italian national government is external to such decisions, given that in Italy city governments act in complete autonomy. His answer was perhaps not comprehensible in the People’s Republic of China, but for our purposes it introduces a key theme: the relationship between local realities and the Italian state. The Dalai Lama is now an honorary citizen of Rome, but, significantly, he is not an honorary citizen of Italy.

6 Franco Cardini, “Federico Barbarossa e il romanticismo italiano,” in Italia e Germania. Immagini, modelli, miti, 83–126, at 112–4; Renato Bordone, “Il medioevo nell’immaginario dell’Ottocento italiano,” Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo 100 (1995– 1996): 109–49, at p. 110; Franco Onorati, “Verdi indossa il cimiero. Un’opera sul tamburo: La battaglia di Legnano in prima esecuzione a Roma (27 gennaio 1849),” in Strenna dei Romanisti (Roma: Editrice Roma Amor, 2009), 499–516. See also Christopher Duggan, The Force of Destiny. A History of Italy since 1796 (London: Lane/Penguin Books, 2007), 153–4, 177–8. It may be useful to recall that Duggan’s book, which is the most recent synthesis of Italian history in the last two centuries, takes its title from a celebrated opera by Verdi. 7 “Gran repertorio di metafore ambiguamente polivalenti” (Bordone, “Il medioevo nell’immaginario dell’Ottocento italiano,” 115). Bordone, too, points to the contradictory nature of Italian appraisals of the Middle Ages, e.g. at p. 128.



‘medieval’ identities in italy

323

This contemporary example points to one of Italy’s fundamental characteristics—namely, the existence of two overlapping entities, national and local. Understanding the physiognomy of Italian national identity, including its perceived frailties and the heated debate that continues to surround them, requires an acute awareness of a particular dualism, the bifurcation between the Italian nation, on the one hand, and what we might call piccole patrie (small homelands), on the other.8 If it is true— and it is—that each of us possesses not one but many superimposed and intersecting cultural identities, then in the Italian peninsula the mixture of ingredients consists of a massive portion of localism and a minor portion of nationalism. The discrepancy between national identity and regional and local identities is fundamental to deciphering, among other things, the contemporary phenomenon of the Lega Nord, or Northern League, a political party that would like to see Italy transformed into a federation of states. To that end, the Lega has completely inverted a patriotic myth dearly beloved of the Risorgimento, one of the principal mythomoteurs of the unification of the Italian state: the story of the Lombard communes united in a league against the emperor.9 The breach between the national and the regional/local also permits us to grasp how a small, independent republic, San Marino, a sort of relic of the medieval free communes, can still exist on the Italian peninsula. Never more than partly reducible to a unity, the national and the local in

8 Pertinent works include Giuseppe Galasso, L’Italia come problema storiografico (Torino: Utet, 1979); Umberto Levra, Fare gli Italiani. Memoria e celebrazione del Risorgimento (Torino: Comitato di Torino per la storia del Risorgimento italiano, 1992); Emilio Gentile, La grande Italia. Ascesa e declino del mito della nazione nel ventesimo secolo (Milano: Mondadori, 1997); Ernesto Galli della Loggia, L’identità italiana (Bologna: il Mulino, 1998); Gli italiani e il tricolore. Patriottismo, identità nazionale e fratture sociali lungo due secoli di storia, ed. by Fiorenza Tarozzi and Giorgio Vecchio (Bologna: il Mulino, 1999); Alberto M. Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento: parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell’Italia unita (Torino: Einaudi, 2000); Making and Remaking Italy. The Cultivation of National Identity around the Risorgimento, ed. by Albert Russell Ascoli and Kristyna von Henneberg (Oxford: Berg, 2001); Immagini della nazione nell’Italia del Risorgimento, ed. by Alberto M. Banti and Roberto Bizzocchi (Roma: Carocci, 2002); Erminia Irace, Itale glorie (Bologna: il Mulino, 2003); Duggan, The Force of Destiny; Silvana Patriarca, Italianità. La costruzione del carattere nazionale (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2010). 9 Raffaele Iorio, “Il giuramento di Pontida,” Quaderni medievali 30 (1990): 207–11; ­Stefano Cavazza, “L’invenzione della tradizione e la Lega lombarda,” Iter-percorsi di ricerca 8 (1994): 197–214; Ernst Voltmer, Il carroccio (Torino: Einaudi, 1994), 24–31; Carpegna Falconieri, Medioevo militante, 247–49. The film Barbarossa premiered in October 2009. Directed by Renzo Martinelli, with Raz Degan and Rutger Hauer, it was produced by RAI (i.e. Italian state television) and strongly encouraged by the Lega Nord. See Tommaso di Carpegna Falco­nieri, “Barbarossa e la Lega Nord. A proposito di un film, delle storie e della Storia,” Quaderni storici 132 (2009), 859–78.

324

tommaso di carpegna falconieri

Italy are the two poles upon which I will concentrate in the coming pages, first through a brief discussion of how the Middle Ages were used in constructing the Italian nation, and then via a look at the piccole patrie, and especially at the ways in which single political entities, from communes to regional states, built strong identities for themselves by “rediscovering” their medieval heritages. In any study of our subject matter, the relationship between the Middle Ages and the origin of nations is one of the most important consideration. The principal Western nations have encountered few obstacles to envisioning the Middle Ages as the era when their nationhood was formed, having built theories that, in their respective periods, were both historically plausible and capable of meeting then-current political needs. Maximum success in this endeavor was achieved by France and England, where two great theories, “the theory of conquest” and “the theory of progressive identity between state and nation,” existed side-by-side. For nineteenth-century thinkers in both countries, the Middle Ages began when their free, proud peoples brought down what was left of the by-then decrepit and corrupt Roman Empire. The Middle Ages continued, moreover, when those same peoples, having become the French and the English, founded their respective national kingdoms, a notion that led many historians to believe that state and nation were already practically synonymous in the Middle Ages, with the exclusion, of course, of the Bretons, Provençals, Basques and Catalans, Scots and Irish. It followed logically that the state resulted from the joint effort of crown and people. The Visigoths in Spain were excluded from this model, given their defeat by the Arabs, although the evocative strength of the Reconquista and the attainment of a united kingdom at the end of the Middle Ages nevertheless made it possible to think of Spanish history in a comparable way. Germany, on the other hand, did not have a united state, as the Empire could not be considered a unity. It did have its primeval heroes, however: the Germans, a conquering and victorious people imbued with praiseworthy qualities that made them simultaneously similar to Rousseau’s noble savages and to Tacitus’ Germans. Here the theory of race—and in particular, of the superior, pure, and civilizing Germanic race—reached its high tide. In Italy, too, the Middle Ages were used as an imaginary setting for an explanation of the origins of the nation, as hundreds of examples attest. The Middle Ages of the Risorgimento are a veritable reservoir of medieval political events advanced as symbols of the country’s liberation. We need



‘medieval’ identities in italy

325

only recall the Battle of Legnano against Frederick I Barbarossa (1176), which in the nineteenth century was metaphorically merged with the fight against the emperor of Austria; or the Sicilian Vespers, the bloody uprising against the Angevin rulers (1282); or the Challenge of Barletta (1503), a famous tournament between thirteen Italian knights and thirteen French knights in which the Italians were victorious.10 This is the general picture. In its refashioning of the Middle Ages in service of contemporary politics, Ottocento Italy was very much like other countries. At the same time, its path in the process was a more winding one, due to the fact that its fascination with the Middle Ages was initially imported in part from Germany, France, and England and because the peninsula’s complex history could not easily be subjected to ideological simplification. There were ultimately many reasons why the idea of the Middle Ages as the era of the Italian nation’s birth did not work. Italians, in the first place, have often considered themselves direct descendants of the ancient Romans. Italy’s classical heritage has a weight that competes with its medieval legacy. Nineteenth-century Italians could not fully accept the positive qualities of the (mainly Germanic) populations who conquered the peninsula at the end of the Roman Empire, since the original inhabitants, the Romans, had been defeated well before the Middle Ages. This notion alone is sufficient reason for rejecting the Middle Ages as the founding era of Italian civilization. Italians have never ceased to call both the Franks and the Goths “barbarians,” betraying a negative idea of the Middle Ages that belongs not only to the Enlightenment but to the Renaissance, as well, and the Renaissance as the antithesis of the Middle Ages is a cultural conception forged in Italy. One conquering people was nevertheless extremely significant in the history of medieval Italy: the Longobards. Creators of a kingdom that lasted two hundred years and which would become the Regnum Italiae within the Empire, the Longobards, who gave their name to the region of Lombardy, were and still are considered by some to have been the ancestors of the Italians. A difficult and complex issue discussed with special fervor in the first decades of the nineteenth century, the Longobard question essentially arose from the fact that the Longobards, like the Romans, were ultimately defeated by history and, in their specific case, by the Franks; Manzoni’s Adelchi (1822) brought the story of their demise

10 Giuliano Procacci, La disfida di Barletta. Tra storia e romanzo (Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 2001).

326

tommaso di carpegna falconieri

into Italian theaters.11 That Italy had been born from the union of two defeated peoples was politically uncomfortable to affirm, and so for Italy, the theory of conquest simply did not work.12 The presence of the pope and his States on Italian soil posed a third colossal problem, with a double historiographic and political consequence. The positive value of the Middle Ages could be affirmed by reconnecting that era to the traditions of the Roman Church and its legitimate presence in Italy. The Middle Ages in question here are different ones—not those of the Enlightenment but rather the traditional, Christian Middle Ages created and transmitted by Muratori, Novalis and Chateaubriand and ultimately leading to the political ideas of Vincenzo Gioberti, advocate of “Neoguelfismo.” This particular medievalist tendency produced the fundamental historical contributions of Cesare Balbo, Carlo Troya, Alessandro Manzoni, and Giovan Pietro Vieusseux, the so-called “Catholic Liberals,” who considered the medieval papacy the only creator of order, unity, and independence in Italy, in the face of particularisms and external enemies. This same idea took on a far more reactionary and radical inflection among those who believed that Italy should not in fact be united, due to the weight of the single institutional realities involved and their respective senses of belonging. Even these fiercest conservatives, among them many aristocrats of the pre-unification states, expressed their feeling of separateness by means of a neo-Gothic and Romantic Middle Ages, but absolutely not via a Middle Ages of the Risorgimento. One other possible critique involved the Roman Church and the medieval heritage that it represented, according to a theory proposed by Machiavelli, who saw the Papal States as the main cause of the secular political division of the Italian peninsula. Machiavelli’s critique was an elegant base from which one might then proceed to a broader, Enlightenmentderived condemnation of religion. Cola di Rienzo constitutes the perfect 11  Alessandro Manzoni, Adelchi, critical edition, ed. by Isabella Becherucci (Firenze: presso l’Accademia della Crusca, 1998). 12 Giorgio Falco, “La questione longobarda e la moderna storiografia italiana,” in Atti del primo congresso di studi longobardi (Spoleto: presso l’Accademia Spoletina, 1952), 153–66; Enrico Artifoni, “Ideologia e memoria locale nella storiografia italiana sui longobardi,” in Il futuro dei Longobardi e la costruzione dell’Europa di Carlo Magno, Saggi, ed. by Carlo Bertelli and Gian Pietro Brogiolo (Milano: Skira, 2000), 219–27; S. Gasparri, “I germani immaginari e la realtà del Regno. Cinquant’anni di studi sui longobardi,” in Atti del XVI congresso internazionale di studi sull’alto medioevo (Spoleto: CISAM, 2003), I, 3–28; Simonetta Soldani, “Il medioevo del Risorgimento nello specchio della Nazione,” in Il medioevo al passato e al presente, 149–86: 154–63.



‘medieval’ identities in italy

327

hero of such a discourse, given that he was considered an anti-clericalist, a forerunner of the united Italy, a revolutionary hero who tried to free the populace from papist oppression, a predecessor of Simon Bolivar and Giuseppe Garibaldi.13 That Cola di Rienzo is the protagonist of a play by Engels and of Wagner’s famous opera Rienzi comes as no surprise.14 The fact is that in Italy an individual of liberal upbringing could be enchanted by the charming medioevo of knights and damsels and, at the same time, condemn the grim, ultraconservative Middle Ages of the papacy, a conflict that has yet to be resolved. If the papacy posed a major impediment to reconsidering the Middle Ages with a clear eye, the second state formed during the Middle Ages and still in existence in the nineteenth century, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, presented equal difficulties. Once again, the realm in question was a nation destined for defeat. Michele Amari’s Guerra del Vespro Siciliano (War of the Sicilian Vespers) is especially revealing. In the first edition (1842), Amari saw Sicilians as the heroic, patriotic protagonists of the founding event of what would become the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This Sicilian nationalist vision involved an internal dialectic between insular Sicily and Naples, the capital of the other of the two Sicilies, meaning the south of Italy; for Amari, a Palermitan, “continental” Italians were foreigners. Remarkably, in further editions, Amari, who had embraced the cause of unity when the southern Kingdom ended in 1860, transformed the War of the Sicilian Vespers into a story of national heroism valid for all of Italy.15 Another, parallel problem—one considerably easier to summarize— derived from the fact that it was simply not possible to think of a united Italy during the Middle Ages, not even under the German guise of the Empire. There simply had been no united state. Thus, inventing one in retrospect was impossible. In summary, the historical weight of the Romans, the Longobards, the papacy, and Sicily, together with the absence of a united state in the Middle Ages, furnished Italy with a scenario completely different from that of 13 Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri, Cola di Rienzo (Roma: Salerno Editrice, 2002), 217–59; Cola di Rienzo. Dalla storia al mito, ed. by Gabriele Scalessa (Roma: Il Cubo, 2009), 79–327. 14 Italo Michele Battafarano, Cola di Rienzo. Mito e rivoluzione nei drammi di Engels, Gaillard, Mosen e Wagner. Con la ristampa del testo di Friedrich Engels Cola di Rienzi (1841) (Trento: Dipartimento di studi letterari, linguistici e filologici, 2006). 15 Michele Amari, La Guerra del Vespro Siciliano o un periodo delle istorie siciliane del secolo XIII (Capolago: Tip. Elvetica, 1842).

328

tommaso di carpegna falconieri

any other Western country; and yet he who seeks shall find—or at least pretend to find. Unable to rely on instruments of conceptual simplification, such as the theory of conquest or the identity between state and nation, Italy traced its path back to the Middle Ages via two other broad and readily negotiable routes. The first of these two avenues belonged to a centuries-old tradition that was strongly rekindled in the nineteenth century. Founded on the concept that the Italian nation existed many centuries before the Italian state, it envisioned the Italian state as a simple but necessary consequence of the nation’s conversion into an institution. The Italian nation, in its turn, was presented primarily as a cultural fact, defined almost exclusively by its artistic and linguistic uniformity—the “Italian glories” celebrated in Ugo Foscolo’s Sepulchres (1807).16 Giotto and Cimabue, Petrarch, Boccaccio and above all Dante, father of the country, represent Italians, according to this way of thinking, because they themselves already were Italians. One could rightly say that in the Middle Ages, starting with Dante, a single nation already existed: “il bel paese dove il sì suona” (“the fair land where the ‘Sì’ doth sound”).17 That Dante considered the Empire the best of institutional forms and wrote the treatise De Monarchia created no impediments; those considerations were of minor importance. If nineteenth-century Italians were not very certain of their own identity, that, too, was a trifling matter, notwithstanding the postunification axiom generally attributed to Massimo d’Azeglio, “Now that we have made Italy, we must make the Italians,”18 a thought entirely contrary to the long-cultivated idea that the birth of the Italian nation preceded that of the state. Based on a linguistic unity typical only of certain elite elements of Italian society, Dante’s nation was presented as synonymous with the entire populace, whose native languages, in reality, consisted of a vast number of regional and local dialects. The idea nevertheless worked well because people were in love with the Middle Ages. Everyone sang Verdi. Many knew Dante by heart. 16 Ugo Foscolo, Poesie e carmi: Poesie, Dei Sepolcri, Poesie postume, Le Grazie, ed. by Francesco Pagliai, Gianfranco Folena, Mario Scotti (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1985) (Edizione nazionale delle opere di Ugo Foscolo, vol. I). On this subject, see especially Irace, Itale glorie. 17 Inf. XXXIII, 80. It merits mention, in passing, that the current Italian two-euro coin bears an image of Dante’s profile as painted by Raphael. 18 On the origin of this expression, see the introduction of Fare gli italiani. Scuola e cultura nell’Italia contemporanea, ed. by Simonetta Soldani and Gabriele Turi (Bologna: il Mulino, 1993).



‘medieval’ identities in italy

329

The common nineteenth-century conception was, then, that the Italian nation originated in the Middle Ages and that, dominated by foreigners and ever suffering, it remained unfree, disunited and without a state, like various countries of central-eastern Europe, especially Poland. Contemporaries perceived Italy and Poland as having similar destinies. The Italian national anthem mentions Poland, while Poland took the military march of the Polish Legion (1797) as its national anthem.19 The second Italian path toward a nineteenth-century Middle Ages—specifically, the role played by the piccole patrie (small homelands)—is of equal interest.20 Well before the Ottocento, during the ancien régime, the piccole patrie had developed proud local identities. In the Middle Ages and sometimes also during the modern era, cities in central and northern Italy were not only economic centers but political centers, as well.21 Some Italian historians have written about what Signorotto calls “multiple identity perceptions in the Peninsula.”22 By that they mean feelings of belonging created principally by the ruling classes, especially by the urban nobility, but also current among the lower classes due to their close relationships with local institutions of the Church and religious traditions.23 Sometimes these civic identities found their ideal origins in the Middle Ages, but apart from the cases of Florence and a few other cities, the Middle Ages were not the main consideration. Rather, municipal origins and feelings of belonging were found far away, in the antiquitates, following the common principle that nobilitas is vetustas. Generally, the myths 19  Piotr Stefan Wandycz, Il prezzo della libertà. Storia dell’Europa centro-orientale dal medioevo a oggi (Bologna: il Mulino, 2001), 199, 214 (orig. edition: The Price of Freedom. A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 20 Ilaria Porciani, “Identità locale-identità nazionale: la costruzione di una doppia appartenenza,” in Centralismo e federalismo tra Otto e Novecento. Italia e Germania a confronto, ed. by O. Janz, P. Schiera, H. Siegriest (Bologna: il Mulino, 1997), 141–82; Stefano Cavazza, Piccole patrie. Feste popolari tra regione e nazione durante il Fascismo (Bologna: il Mulino, 1997). 21  Among the most recent syntheses is Mario Ascheri, Le città-stato (Bologna: il Mulino, 2006). 22 Gianvittorio Signorotto, “Interessi, ‘identità’ e sentimento nazionale nell’Italia di antico regime,” in Studi in memoria di Cesare Mozzarelli (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2008), I, 399–420: 400. 23 Cesare Mozzarelli, “Stato, patriziato e organizzazione della società nell’Italia ­moderna,” Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico di Trento 2 (1976): 421–512; Bandino Giacomo Zenobi, Le ben regolate città: modelli politici nel governo delle periferie pontificie in età ­moderna (Roma: Bulzoni, 1994); Irace, Itale glorie; Luca Baccelli, Sergio Bertelli, Giuliano Milani, “Le città-stato e l’identità italiana,” Archivio storico italiano 166 (2008), 321–32.

330

tommaso di carpegna falconieri

of Antiquity, on the one hand, and of the Middle Ages, on the other, were both present and important in the creation of civic identities. Often, the origin of the urbs, meaning the built city, was perceived as Roman or preRoman, while the origin of the civitas, the living city of the citizen, was regarded as medieval. The identities of regional states existed on another, broader level: Piedmont, Lombardy, the Republic of Venice, Tuscany, the Papal States, continental southern Italy, Sicily. Their perceived identities were, and still are, weaker than civic identities and were particularly present in the court system, the armed services, and administrative offices. Today, some regions of Italy, for example Sicily and Sardinia, still have strong identities, while others, the Marches for example, have none all, and as always the nineteenth-century’s Middle Ages contributed to the construction of these identities. A notable instance spread in Sicily over the course of the Ottocento, the Opera dei Pupi, a popular marionette show in which puppeteer-storytellers portrayed the deeds of Charlemagne and his noble paladins against the Saracens, as well as the adventures of Guerin Meschino and other characters, in a cycle of consecutive spectacles that lasted for more than a year. Some puppeteers, who were often illiterate, knew ­Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato, Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata, Pulci’s Morgante Maggiore, and reworkings of the Chanson de Roland by heart.24 Widespread at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first half of the twentieth, this sort of performance still forms a strong element of Sicilian identity—in 2001, UNESCO declared the Teatro dell’Opera dei Pupi a Masterwork of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Although the Teatro dei Pupi’s themes are clearly medieval, its roots do not strech back to the Middle Ages. On the contrary, it was a nineteenth-century creation and, by the end of the century, had already been studied ethnographically by the anthropologist Giuseppe Pitrè.25 The Marches offer a diametrically opposed case. Of this region—one of the few whose name designates it as perfectly “medieval” (the Marches were the southern border of the Empire)—we have a unified perception

24 The Arthurian legends, on the other hand, were almost never performed. 25 Giuseppe Pitrè, Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane (Palermo: L. Pedone Lauriel, 1881) (Biblioteca delle tradizioni popolari siciliane, n. 12); Giuseppe Pitrè, Usi e costumi, credenze e pregiudizi, vol. I (Palermo: L. Pedone Lauriel, 1889) (Biblioteca, n. 14), 121–341: “Le tradi­ zioni cavalleresche popolari.” The Biblioteca delle tradizioni popolari siciliane was published between 1871 and 1913.



‘medieval’ identities in italy

331

essentially determined by the nineteenth century, by the landscape, and by Leopardi.26 The present geopolitical divisions do not correspond to the medieval ones, and the idea of marchigianità (Marchigian identity) is only a few decades old. Administrators of the Marches recently created a slogan to promote tourism: the Marches are “Italy in one region,” which is the same as saying, “If you haven’t enough time to visit Italy at large, then come here.” The subtext—certainly not intended by the administrators— is: “Our region has no identified personality.” In continental Italy, in short, one often makes the leap from civic to national identity, while bypassing any attachment to regional identity.27 In order to understand how the medieval piccole patrie assumed a supreme protagonist’s role in the political construction of Italian identity we must turn to the Antiquitates Italicae Medii Aevi of Ludovico Antonio Muratori, published between 1738 and 1743. The most important erudito of the Italian Settecento, Muratori was also the first to establish “a long-lived, reciprocal relation between liberty and ‘republican forms.’ ”28 At least as influential, and perhaps more so, were the volumes of the Histoire des Républiques Italiennes by the Swiss scholar Jean-Charles Léonard ­Simonde de Sismondi, first published between 1807 and 1809 and subsequently re-edited many times. Beginning with a historical consideration of the Helvetic confederation but transferring the concept to Italy, Sismondi formulated the principle that municipal freedom represented the maximum expression of the progress of the individual and of civilization. Italy, as we know, is a land of cities, which during the Middle Ages really did possess their own very proud identities. Sismondi’s ideas, translated and revived in many different ways, consequently found fertile ground in Italy. One did not speak of a nation, or not only, but rather of the fascinating and lively world that had been the glory of Italian life for centuries: the experience of local freedom obtained through the institution of the communes. Italy had finally found a political theory perfectly in accordance with its own historical realities, both of the Middle Ages and of the nineteenth century. The founding of the communes meant freedom, the issuing of

26 Giorgio Mangani, Fare le Marche. L’identità regionale fra tradizione e progetto (Ancona: Il Lavoro editoriale, 1998). 27 Porciani, “Identità locale,” 164; Cavazza, Piccole patrie, 20. 28 Massimo Vallerani, “Il comune come mito politico. Immagini e modelli tra Otto e Novecento,” in Il Medioevo al passato e al presente, 187–206: 187.

332

tommaso di carpegna falconieri

laws autonomous from oppressive, centralized imperial ­power.29 Their founding also signified the triumph of the political theory of progress, understood as the constant perfectibility of the people’s capacity to be represented politically. In Italy this principle could well be given a local turn. The free election of magistrates and the ability to issue laws were to Italy what the medieval Estates-General, the Magna Charta and Parliament, and the Cortes were to the great Western nations, respectively France, England, and Spain. Emphasizing the cities, furthermore, evoked at once the reconquest of Italy’s Latinity (in contrast to Germanism), and the rise of a social class, that of the merchants, which the nineteenthcentury middle class had no difficulty considering its own direct medieval antecedent. In short, envisioning medieval Italy as the Italy of the communes—proud, independent, rich, Latin, bourgeois, avant-garde and thus superior to other places while, nevertheless, awaiting liberation from the foreign oppressor—was the perfect solution. It was from this medieval Italy that the Ottocento drew its image of the Lombard League as the occasion when, for the first time, Italians joined together to fight, with the Oath of Pontida (1167) and the Battle of Legnano (1176).30 At this point, we need to consider the phases into which the Italian Ottocento can be divided with respect to separate identities, local and national, and the extent to which the uses of the Middle Ages were significant. Two different phases are clearly discernible: a first phase between the French invasion of 1796 and the unification of Italy; and a second spanning the years between Italian unification and 1911, a year that marked not

29 See Nicolangelo D’Acunto, “Il mito dei comuni nella storiografia del Risorgimento,” in Le radici del Risorgimento. Atti del XX Convegno del Centro di studi Avellaniti (Fonte Avellana: s.n., 1997), 243–64; Carlotta Sorba, “Il mito dei comuni e le patrie cittadine,” in Almanacco della Repubblica. Storia d’Italia attraverso le tradizioni, le istituzioni e le simbologie repubblicane, ed. by M. Ridolfi (Milano: B. Mondadori, 2003), 119–30; Soldani, “Il medioevo del Risorgimento nello specchio della Nazione,” 163–73; Vallerani, “Il comune come mito politico;” Jens Petersen, “L’Italia e la sua varietà. Il principio della città come modello esplicativo della storia nazionale,” in Centralismo e federalismo tra Otto e Novecento, 327–46. 30 The image is first attested in the pages dedicated to these events by Sismondi, in the poetry of Giovanni Berchet, and finally in Luigi Tosti’s Storia della Lega lombarda illustrata con note e documenti (Montecassino: pe’ tipi di Monte Cassino, 1848). In addition to the studies cited in the preceding footnote, see Ernesto Sestan, “Legnano nella storiografia romantica,” in Ernesto Sestan, Scritti vari, vol. III: Storiografia dell’Otto e Novecento, ed. by Giuliano Pinto (Firenze: Le Lettere, 1991), 221–40; Mario Fubini, “La Lega lombarda nella letteratura dell’Ottocento,” in Popolo e Stato nell’età di Federico Barbarossa. Alessandria e la Lega lombarda (Torino: Deputazione Subalpina di storia patria, 1970), 399–420; Piero Brunello, “Pontida,” in Luoghi della memoria. Strutture ed eventi dell’Italia unita, ed. by Mario Isnenghi (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1997), 15–28; Voltmer, Il carroccio, 13–21.



‘medieval’ identities in italy

333

only the fiftieth anniversary of unification but also the inauguration of the monument to Victor Emmanuel in Rome, the Italo-Turkish War, and the affirmation of a strong Italian nationalism that would later lead to war and then to Fascism. Over the course of the period beginning with the French invasion of 1796 and ending with the revolution of 1848, the conviction that Italy should become a unitary state grew stronger. The dream was this: if Italy were to obtain unity and independence, the ancient nation long defined by its culture could at long last coincide with the state. This dream was also a common theme among protagonists of the Risorgimento, but the possible ways of achieving it were myriad. For a long time, the most promising political solution was federalist, an option that grew out of a consciousness of the strong weight of local identities. A simple reductio ad unum was considered impossible for two reasons, one of them administrative—the regional states were still alive— and the other cultural, deriving from the fact that, beginning with Sismondi, it became common to envision the roots of the Italian nation in the glorious communes of the Middle Ages. The supporters of federalism could make comparisons with the Swiss model and the German Zollverein of 1843; the customs union of the German states, in particular, contributed greatly to diffusing the federalist idea. For a while in Italy, the federalist solution prevailed and led to an attempt at forming a customs league in 1847 between the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and the Papal States. By placing regional and national identities on the same level, the idea of the Italian nation could be married, in a federal sense, to the idea of a unitary state. Many architects of public opinion solved the local-national problem in this manner.31 They included Carlo Cattaneo and Vincenzo Gioberti, both of whom promoted federalist ideas, albeit substantially different ones born of fundamentally incomparable cultural assumptions. Secularminded and republican, Cattaneo was a rigorous promoter of federalism who viewed Italy’s plethora of highly varied cities as a source of abundance, rather than decadence.32 Catholic and papalist, Gioberti, on the other hand, not only expressed national sentiments—the title of his Del primato morale e civile degli italiani (The Moral and Civil Supremacy of the 31  Marco Meriggi, “Centralismo e federalismo in Italia. Le aspettative preunitarie,” in Centralismo e federalismo tra Otto e Novecento, 49–64. 32 Carlo Cattaneo, “La città considerata come principio ideale delle istorie italiane,” Il Crepuscolo IX (1858), fasc. 42, 44, 50, 52.

334

tommaso di carpegna falconieri

Italians) of 1843 is telling; he also proposed a practical means of federal union, suggesting that the pope, Pius IX, become leader super partes of all Italians. Both Gioberti and Pellegrino Rossi, author of Gioacchino Murat’s Rimini Proclamation to the Italians (1815) promoted a solution called NeoGuelphism, whose name makes its ties to the Middle Ages clear. The word “Guelph” evokes the medieval papacy as a unifier of Italy via the Guelph League and at the same time identifies the Ghibellines—that is, the Austrians—as the enemy. The Middle Ages are thereby presented as a symbol and a solution for the present, following a familiar rule. The federalist idea also inspired radical exponents, such as Mazzini, but it was shattered after the murder of Pellegrino Rossi, who was papal prime minister. The pope refused to enter the anti-Austrian coalition, and a fragile Roman Republic followed in 1849. After this period, we still find important traces of federalist thought, but they faded when the Piedmont came to the fore, uniting Italy in 1860 following a series of annexations.33 The myth of the communes constitutes yet another aspect of the Middle Ages that can be considered a locus of formation of the Italian nation. As already mentioned, beginning with Sismondi’s Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, medieval communes were considered historical (if, for us, they are mythical) places of freedom, independence, wealth, and the birth of the bourgeoisie and, thus, of the Italian middle class. In addition to the emblematic cases, previously noted, of the Oath of Pontida and the Battle of Legnano, I would like to mention two other interesting cases, those of 33 The federalist idea—dear to the Lega Nord party—together with a consequent reevaluation of the nineteenth-century thinkers who proposed it have come to the fore again recently on the occasion of preparations for the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Italian Unification (1861–2011). The pertinent government website is located at: http://www .italiaunita150.it/ (accessed 12 March 2012). The official document outlining the program by Sandro Bondi, Italian Minister for Cultural Heritage and Activities, has been harshly contested by authoritative Italian historians. See especially Paolo Conti, “Cattaneo-Gioberti coppia federalista. No degli storici,” Corriere della Sera, 13 September 2009, p. 6. The same document was examined by the Comitato dei Garanti, the committee responsible for monitoring programs associated with the celebrations and presided over by the former President of the Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (Considerazioni in merito alle linee programmatiche del Governo per la celebrazione dei 150 anni dell’Unità d’Italia, 5 October 2009, published at the website http://www.italiaunita150.it/media/73635/05.10.2009%20-%20 abstract.pdf, accessed 12 March 2012). The committee explicitly underlined the necessity of affirming a shared idea of national unity, in contradistinction to the general inspiring principle of Bondi’s document, which is instead identifiable in the “polycentric concept of Italian history” (“concetto policentrico della storia italiana”). According to the committee, “It is necessary to maintain a just equilibrium between this accent on polycentrism and the reasons of unity” (“È necessario mantenere un giusto equilibrio fra questo accento sul policentrismo e le ragioni dell’unità”): see especially 4 and 26.



‘medieval’ identities in italy

335

Ancona and Brescia. Dozens of nineteenth-century literary works represented the siege of Ancona, a city that resisted an imperial assault in 1173.34 If anything, the example of Brescia is even more telling. In 1849 the city revolted against the Austrian government and, after a long siege and a forceful repression, was called by the men of the Risorgimento the “Lioness of Italy.” Where did they find this name? They found it in Pier delle Vigne. In 1238 Brescia, one of the cities of the Second Lombard League, fended off an imperial siege. Pier delle Vigne, Frederick II’s chancellor, wrote that the city was a “roaring Lioness,” a leena rugiens.35 In short, we are to understand that the Brescia of 1849 is the same, proud town as it was 1238, while the Lombard League is an Italy that revolts against the emperor, who is at once Frederick II and Franz Joseph.36 The choice of many medieval episodes points to the same dialectic relationship between the idea of an Italian state/nation and the necessity of attributing great importance to local realities. The episodes in question all belong to the “Canon of the Risorgimento,” as Alberto Banti writes, meaning that they formed part of an overall cultural production (poetry, literature, music, painting, etc.) that formed the minds and hearts of future Italians.37 The most effective political medievalism, corresponding to the ideas of the Risorgimento, occurred between approximately 1820 and 1848. During this period, retellings and representations of specific mythmaking episodes—the Oath of Pontida (1167), the Battle of Legnano (1176), the Sicilian Vespers (1282), the Challenge of Barletta (1503) and the Battle of Gavinana (1530)—circulated practically everywhere, via every means. These episodes have several features in common: a) They are all either medieval, or they date to the first half of the sixteenth century at the latest and thus, in the latter case, to the period of the Wars of Italy, which, according to common opinion, represented the beginning of the country’s decadence.

34 Boncompagno da Signa, L’assedio di Ancona. Liber de Obsidione Anconae, ed. by Paolo Garbini (Roma: Viella, 1999), 100–7. 35 Alphonse Huillard-Bréholles, Historia diplomatica Friderici Secundi, V (Paris: H. Plon, 1875), 143. 36 Paolo Grillo, “Velut leena rugiens. Brescia assediata da Federico II (luglio-ottobre 1238),” Reti Medievali Rivista, VIII (2007) www.rmojs.unina.it/index.php/rm/article/­ download/127/108 (accessed 12 March 2012); Marco Brando, Lo strano caso di Federico II di Svevia. Un mito medievale nella cultura di massa, prefazione di Raffaele Licinio, postfazione di Franco Cardini (Bari: Palomar, 2008), 103–7. 37 Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento, 45–6.

336

tommaso di carpegna falconieri

b) They identify the nation’s enemies—in three cases the Empire, in two France—and in so doing create a common identity defined by a shared enmity, a “reactive identity,” a concept very common in our studies. c) They are geographically well defined, with examples from the north (Pontida and Legnano in Lombardy), the center (Gavinana in Tuscany), and the south (Palermo in Sicily, Barletta in Apulia), and symbolically represent efforts towards the nation, through oaths, battles, revolts, challenges. Goffredo Mameli’s song to Italy, written in 1847 and the national anthem since 1946, can be read in this sense. “Dall’Alpi a Sicilia ovunque è­ Legnano [. . .] il suon d’ogni squilla i vespri suonò” (From the Alps to ­Sicily, Legnano is everywhere [. . .]; every tolling of a bell calls [the people] to Vespers). Many problems were of course hidden behind this reconstruction of medieval events. An especially notable complication was the non-organic character of the chosen episodes, which were told in forms that were absolutely out of context. They could work as stereotypes, but not inside a historically developed tale.38 Examples of Italian bravery, they were also proofs of failure, because, after all, the nation was invaded over the course of many centuries, and it remained invaded in the nineteenth century.39 These episodes also bore witness to Italy’s internal struggles; Alessandro Manzoni’s tragedy Il conte di Carmagnola (1816) provides the best example.40 As a result, they also had a negative connotation, derived from any reading, even a superficial one, of communal history, with its fierce factional struggles, which in Dante found their most famous victim. The communal epic could represent, all at once, the story of a union of forces—for example, in the Lombard League—and a condemnation of a fratricidal war, either between Guelphs and Ghibellines, or among Italian condottieri who found themselves aligned along two fronts, as Ferruccio and Maramaldo did at Gavinana. Giuseppe Ferrari offered this interpretation in his Histoire des Révolutions d’Italie ou Guelfes et Gibelins (Paris 38 Ivi, 75; cfr. Salvatore Settis, Futuro del classico (Torino: Einaudi, 2004), 7, regarding the “decomposition of the antique into fragments decontextualized and thus all the more ready for reuse, in the most arbitrary reassemblies” (“scomposizione dell’antico in frammenti decontestualizzati, e perciò tanto più pronti al riuso, ai più arbitrati rimontaggi”). 39 On this characterizing aspect of the Italy’s history, see Girolamo Arnaldi, L’Italia e i suoi invasori (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2002). 40 Alessandro Manzoni, Il conte di Carmagnola, critical edition, ed. by Giovanni Bardazzi (Milano: Fondazione Alberto e Arnoldo Mondadori, 1985).



‘medieval’ identities in italy

337

1858), with obviously destructive results, for it bore witness to divisions, rather than unity, during the Middle Ages. The presence of two parties locked in eternal struggle is precisely the reason why medieval Italy could never have experienced the establishment of a sole monarchical power ruling over the entire nation. Notwithstanding these various obstacles to the presentation of the Middle Ages as the bedrock of Italian national identity, episodes illustrating the Italianness of medieval Lombards or Sicilians went into the “Canon of the Risorgimento” and were maintained in the public imagination for multiple reasons. They were considered explicit allegories and anticipations of the necessary redemption of the nation—that is, its transformation into a state—and demonstrated that the Italians knew how to fight. They were also perfectly in keeping with the era’s tastes. In concluding this section, we can say that the first of the two phases of Italian political medievalism (1796–1860), characterized by federalism, Neo-Guelphism, civic glories, and medieval heroes, is by far the more important of the two. Amazingly, its ways of presenting the political Middle Ages was part of school textbooks even when I was in elementary school in the 1970s. When we spoke of the communes, we were already speaking of Italy. The wars of the Lombard League against the emperors were exactly like the nineteenth-century wars for independence. When we studied the Battle of Legnano, we would never have dreamt of using Rahevinus as a source because the only true source was the poetry of the Italian Risorgimento, the works of Prati or Berchet or Carducci. A second, distinct phase in the history of Italian medievalism coincides with the half-century following Italian unification in 1861. The myth of the piccole patrie converging into one great nation became very popular, a trend amply attested by local historical commemorations, the founding of numerous local commissions of national history, and above all by the construction of an incredible number of buildings in styles evocative of the Middle Ages. A great many public edifices in central and northern Italian cities were heavily restored during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, among them the so-called Palace of King Enzo in Bologna (by Alfonso Rubbiani) and the Sforza Castle in Milan (by Luca Beltrami).41 41 Bologna Re Enzo e il suo mito, ed. by Anna Laura Trombetti Budriesi, Valeria Braidi, Raffaella Pini, Francesca Roversi Monaco (Bologna: Clueb, 2002); Michela Scolaro, “ ‘Revival’ medievale e rivendicazioni nazionali: il caso di Bologna,” in Il medioevo al passato e al presente, 521–36; Neomedievalismi. Recuperi, evocazioni, invenzioni nelle città dell’Emilia

338

tommaso di carpegna falconieri

Each city expressed its belongingness to the Middle Ages using the best means at its disposal. Relying on its strong traditions of art and language, Florence became a building yard of neo-Gothic palaces, while stationers’ shops invented a faux-medieval “paper of Florence,” which is still sold today. In Siena, where the Palio had a centuries-old tradition, knights, flag-wavers, and other participants began, for the first time, to wear medieval costumes. In Turin, where the invention of the Middle Ages was wedded to the exaltation of the Savoy family, an entire medieval district, the Borgo del Valentino (by Alfredo d’Andrade), was erected from scratch.42 Nineteenth-century historical literature bent on celebrating the House of Savoy concurred in its efforts. No longer of French or German origin, as they had proclaimed for centuries, the Savoy were now considered Italians ab origine, descendants of Berengar II and Arduin, kings of Italy, who in the depths of the Middle Ages had fought against the emperors to unite Italy. As Duggan observes, from the 1870s onward, “politicians, writers and artists glorified the monarchy in speech, print and paint, trumpeting the devotion of Victor Emmanuel and his father, Carlo Alberto, to national unity and claiming that the dynasty had for centuries been committed to the Italian cause.”43 To identify an idea of the Middle Ages that began to be diffused in public opinion, we have to go forward to the final decades of the nineteenth Romagna, ed. by Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli (Bologna: Clueb, 2007); Luca Beltrami e il restauro dei castelli, 1893–1993 [. . .], atti del seminario, Milano 11 Decembre 1993 (Roma: Istituto italiano dei castelli, 1997). 42 Paolo Marconi, “Il Borgo medievale di Torino. Alfredo d’Andrade e il borgo medie­ vale in Italia,” in Il medioevo al passato e al presente, 491–520. 43 Duggan, The Force of Destiny, 308–9. Regarding historical writings about the royal family, see Levra, Fare gli Italiani cit., 173 ff., and the case studied by Enrico Artifoni, “­Scienza del sabaudismo. Prime ricerche su Ferdinando Gabotto storico del medioevo (1866–1918) e la Società storica subalpina,” Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo 100 (1995–1996): 167–91. An emblematic example is Pietro Corelli, La stella d’Italia o nove secoli di casa Savoia (Milano: Ripamonti, 1860–1863, 5 voll.); see in particular the preface dedicated “To the Italians” (“Agli Italiani”), vol. I, p. VI: “For nine centuries now, the Prince-caretakers of the Alps want Italy to be for the Italians. Historical documents have proven to men of ancient wisdom that the House of Savoy draws its principal origin from Berengar II and from Arduin, both kings of Italy. Berengar II, across nine centuries, extends his hand to Victor Emmanuel II. It is a sublime epic poem. It is to a purely, exclusively Italic work that I, today, consecrate all the powers of my intellect” (“Ma sono ormai nove secoli che i Principi custodi delle Alpi vogliono che l’Italia sia degli Italiani. Storici documenti hanno fatto toccar con mano a uomini di senno antico, che la Casa di Savoia trae la sua principale origine da Berengario II e da Arduino, entrambi re d’Italia. Berengario II, attraverso nove secoli, stende la mano a Vittorio Emanuele II. È una sublime epopea. È un’opera puramente, esclusivamente italica, alla quale io oggi consacro tutte le forze del mio intelletto”).



‘medieval’ identities in italy

339

century and the beginning of the twentieth. It was then, paradoxically, that the medievalism of high culture began to ebb. Over the course of the Ottocento, the secular religion of nationalism had gradually metamorphosed from a learned phenomenon into a mass movement, and medievalism, because of its persuasive links to the idea of the nation, followed at close range. That was where national identities, as well as local and regional ones, discovered their foundations, their incipits. This process was helped along considerably by the “education” of the masses in national sentiment through the draft, mandatory schooling, and broadened suffrage, which in Italy became universal for men in 1913, with the result that an elementary patriotism emerged, but without analogous results in the form of a shared identity. If history was held to be one means of educating the populace, as it certainly was, the Middle Ages of the nation, of the Christian faith, and of heroes as recounted by professional educators, landholders, elementary-school teachers, parish priests and veterans worked well.44 The common people, at last, were equipped with tools with which to think about and represent history, and simultaneously realized that they had a history, a past. Never before had such a widely diffused and pervasive model been put forth other than religion. Born in a period when all of Europe was pervaded by romantic feeling for the Middle Ages, popular literature and literature aimed at young readers received a sort of medieval imprinting. People, in sum, learned to love their country by singing patriotic songs, reciting national nursery rhymes from memory, and listening to stories that centered on medieval themes. The phenomenon reached even the semiliterate masses, who recited late medieval works that had become extremely popular, such as Il Guerrin Meschino and I Reali di Francia by Andrea da Barberino. Meanwhile, performances of the Opera dei Pupi proliferated in Sicily.45 Prior to the unification of Italy, nevertheless, medievalism had already passed through its most acute phase. After 1861 medievalism was still massively present both in popular culture and in its political uses. Yet it was on the verge of exhaustion. When the Savoy became the kings of Italy, it became necessary to find new elements of common identity that unified 44 See Duggan, The Force of Destiny, 274–97. 45 Andrea da Barberino, Il Guerrin Meschino, edizione critica secondo l’antica vulgata fiorentina, ed. by Mauro Cursietti (Roma-Padova: Antenore, 2005); Andrea da Barberino, I reali di Francia, introduzione di Aurelia Roncaglia, note di Fabrizio Beggiato (Roma: Casini, 1967).

340

tommaso di carpegna falconieri

the north and the south, albeit without emphasizing localist elements. The Savoy, on the one hand, could not be seen as coming exclusively from the Piedmont; southern Italian cities, on the other, had not lived the experience of the communes, a bond that until then had explained Italian identity. The choice of capital cities for the united kingdom of Italy makes the solution to this new set of problems immediately intelligible. The first capital was Turin, Italian cradle of the royal dynasty; then came Florence, the cultural capital; and finally Rome, a move that also represented a return, for it was in Rome that a distinct Italian identity was discovered—or rather rediscovered—in romanitas. We need only look at the Victor Emmanuel Monument, “the most colossal and ambitious of all the national memorials constructed after 1860,”46 that enormous block of white limestone, a grandiose assemblage of classical motifs, that encroaches upon Capitoline Hill and which Romans call “the Wedding Cake” or “the Typewriter.” The Vittoriano is definitely not a medieval castle like the Borgo del Valentino in Turin, and, indeed, when we think of Rome as a capital city, we think not of medieval Rome but rather of the Rome of Augustus. In tandem with the political uses of the Middle Ages, the problem of the relationship between core and periphery also changed when Italy became “one and indivisible” under Savoy rule. A strong centralism on the French model characterized the new Italian state. Great importance was given to the peripheral administration through the institution of prefects and provinces but, notably, not of regions. Despite the firm will to “make Italians” via compulsory schooling and military conscription, the heavy weight of local powers and identities endured.47 The national Parliament amounted, in large part, to a juxtaposition of the needs of territorial oligarchies. Members of Parliament were elected in provincial constituencies and were generally the notables of their respective areas, who brought their own special interests and those of their electors before Parliament. What were the political uses of the Middle Ages in this situation? Three are distinguishable, and the first is still politically relevant. Propaganda resulting from the sharp division between Liberals and Catholics, a fracture that remained strong until the first decade of the

46 Duggan, The Force of Destiny, p. 291. 47 See, in general, Fare gli italiani. Scuola e cultura nell’Italia contemporanea. On obligatory conscription, see Duggan, The Force of Destiny, 283–90.



‘medieval’ identities in italy

341

twentieth century, showcased glowing examples of illustrious victims of the Roman Catholic Church, including many from the Middle Ages—Arnaldo da Brescia, Iacopone da Todi, Cola di Rienzo, Girolamo ­Savonarola—and others from the early modern period, such as Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei. The Roman Catholic Church responded with centenary celebrations for St. Francis of Assisi (in 1882) and Pope Gregory VII (in 1885).48 At the time, a second political use of the Middle Ages was moving toward extinction. How was it possible to continue to represent the Italian nation, which was finally unified, with medieval examples? Doing so was definitely not a simple matter. The idea was not dead; entrenched in scholastic programs, the mythomoteurs had become stereotypes and were not lost. Medieval communes and heroes were part of the national pantheon. The House of Savoy was always presented as a very ancient Italian dynasty, rooted in the medieval past. The Middle Ages persisted because they were considered a necessary part of the historical path that inevitably led to the nation, but they were no longer the main myth constitutive of national identity. The construction was weakened by its very size: Italy during the Middle Ages had never been a state, and no such state could be invented. The Italian solution thus differed greatly from those of the French and English, who had had national states since the Middle Ages. Although very different, Germany, too, had a medieval empire that could be renewed. Meanwhile, the Italian Middle Ages were losing ground to an army of new heroes in every corner of Italy. Dante, father of the patria, and Alberto da Giussano, the first “Italian” military leader and the first speaker in a Parliament, maintained their important place but shared it with Mazzini, Cavour, Victor Emmanuel and, above all, Garibaldi.49 Modern heroes outstripped their predecessors because the heroes from the distant past had been allegories, anticipations, figures of independence and nationhood, whereas the modern heroes genuinely were those who “made” Italy. The same held true for battles. San Martino (1859) and Porta Pia (1870) were closer than Legnano. If we want to use ­Aristotelian ­categories, the Middle 48 See, in general, San Francesco d’Italia. Santità e identità nazionale, ed. by Tommaso Caliò and Roberto Rusconi (Roma: Viella, 2011). 49 Carducci exalts the figure of Alberto da Giussano in the poem Il Parlamento, of 1879 (Giosuè Carducci, Della canzone di Legnano, parte prima, Il Parlamento, in Giosuè Carducci, Poesie, ed. by Raffaele Sirri (Napoli: F. Rossi, 1969), 557–670. See Voltmer, Il carroccio, 19–20; Duggan, The Force of Destiny, pp. 239–40. On 1876, the septicentennnial of the Battle of Legnano, see Sestan, “Legnano nella storiografia romantica,” 237–40.

342

tommaso di carpegna falconieri

Ages were the potentiality, the modern era the actuality. Here, too, we can observe a great divergence—for example, in the persons of Joan of Arc and Frederick Barbarossa, who were not allegories of their respective countries’ futures. Rather, they were considered the actual protagonists of France’s liberation and Germany’s glory. In Italy, therefore, we find a solution of compromise. Local feeling was able to emerge within national feeling but not on a par with it. Many instances and illustrations come to mind, for example the way in which children learned Italian cities by tying them to characters from the theater—Venice with Pantalone, Naples with Pulcinella, Bergamo with Harlequin. Specific to individual cities, these characters joined others in a metaphorical Commedia dell’Arte of the entire nation. Equally emblematic were the Royal Societies for the History of the Patria (Regie Deputazioni [or Società] di Storia Patria), many of which were formed between the 1860s and the 1880s. Then as now, these societies sought out and published local historical documents for the purpose of glorifying the nation.50 The basic idea, in short, was to create an Italian feeling of belonging by means of local peculiarities. Only language was completely excluded from the program. Beginning with Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, Italy was the Italian language, with no place for dialects. Italian medievalism of the second half of Ottocento was thus still strong, but its point of reference was not so much the nation as the nation’s cities. Accordingly, a national parliament building erected in Gothic revival style, like that of Hungary (1885–1902), makes no sense in Italy. Using that style, on the other hand, for the rebuilding of public palaces and town halls, such as the Palace of King Enzo in Bologna (1905), does make sense. Why? The answer is simple. In the cities, what seem to be identity-­constituting allegories are not allegories at all. There, the medieval heroes were civic heroes, who retained a strong, specific significance and continued to be the heroes of their respective piccole patrie. In Italy’s cities the Middle Ages also still existed, then as now, on a material level. Everyone could see them in the public palaces and cathedrals. After Italian unification, a real dichotomy emerged. The nation-state accepted the Middle Ages as part of its historical journey, and yet it sought a different symbolic pathway to express itself. Italy held to one symbolic exposition of its history—Rome—while its cities used the Gothic style

50 Ernesto Sestan, “Origini delle società di storia patria e loro posizione nel campo della cultura e degli studi storici,” in Sestan, Scritti vari, vol. III: Storiografia dell’Otto e Novecento, 107–140; Porciani, “Identità locale,” 154–164.



‘medieval’ identities in italy

343

as a characteristic means of representing themselves. With some cities, especially Florence, Siena, Arezzo, San Gimignano, Genoa, Bologna, Turin, and the cities of Umbria, this use of the Middle Ages was extremely pronounced and long-lived, continuing into the 1930s. All in all, the message seems to have been, “Italy is Rome; Italian cities are the Middle Ages.” A synthesis of the ideas of ‘nation’ and ‘Middle Ages’ came about in only one place in the Italian peninsula: the diminutive Republic of San Marino. Built between 1884 and 1894, the Palazzo Pubblico of this bona fide citystate is the seat of both the local and national government, and its style is conspicuously medieval. What we are dealing with, though, is a stereotyped Middle Ages, a formula also found, for example, in Florence, for the piccole patrie always narrated their medieval pasts in the same way, following a common idea of the Middle Ages that paradoxically did not correspond to their specific histories. Even particularism was resistant to representation in a particular way. The Palazzo Pubblico of San Marino is a Florentine Palazzo della Signoria in miniature, while many Italian cities’ celebrations closely imitate Siena’s Palio.51 The Vittoriano, or Victor Emmanuel Monument, in Rome is the monument that best represents our dichotomy. Begun in 1885, it was built to glorify king Victor Emmanuel II. After the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was added to it in 1921, following the First World War, it came to be called the Altare della Patria, the Altar of the Patria.52 The patria, represented in the monument itself, is decidedly Roman, a fact made patently clear by the classical architectural vocabulary and the statue of the goddess Roma centered at the top of the first ramp of stairs, a giant, ancient warrior, with helmet and spear and supporting a winged Victory.53 The king, Victor Emmanuel II, “the Soldier King,” “Father of the Patria,” is portrayed in nineteenth-century attire, and not, as his father Carlo Alberto had been represented, in the dress of a medieval knight.54

51  See Cavazza, Piccole patrie, 200, 205. 52 On the monument, see Catherine Brice, Monumentalité publique et politique à Rome. Le Vittoriano (Rome: École française de Rome, 1998); Maria Rosaria Coppola, Il Vittoriano (Roma: Istituto poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 2008). 53 The original plan for the monument included a statue representing Rome, but the statue itself, sculpted by Angelo Zanelli, was not installed until 1921 (Brice, Monumentalité publique, p. 283). 54 On Carlo Alberto the “medieval knight”, see Bordone, Lo specchio di Shalott, 77–96. A perfect homology established between king Carlo Alberto and his ancestor the Green Count (“Il Conte Verde”), Amedeo VI (Bordone, 92–5).

344

tommaso di carpegna falconieri

The base of the king’s statue, however, which we are to read as the very foundation of the monarchy, is adorned with statues of fourteen Italian cities, all of them former capitals of independent states with unsurpassable political and cultural histories: Urbino, Ferrara, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, Ravenna, Pisa, Amalfi, Naples, Florence, Turin, Venice, Palermo, and Mantua.55 Almost all of these personified cities are represented wearing medieval dress. Ravenna, for example, is dressed like the empress Theodora, while Turin is a woman in medieval armor. The vertical axis of the monument functions as a symbolic chronology. Below is Rome; above her, the medieval cities; above them all, the king of Italy.56 More or less contemporary with the Vittoriano, the Kyffhäuser-­Denkmal (1890–1896), also known as the Barbarossa Monument, or Kaiser Wilhelm Monument, in central Germany provides an informative comparison.57 There, we find Wilhelm I and Frederick Barbarossa, the former shown as the renovatio of the latter. Sleeping under the mountain, Frederick has just been awakened by Wilhelm, re-founder of the Reich. The Italian and German monuments appear to be similar in their symbolically vertical arrangement of history. In each case, the Middle Ages, the origin and foundation of the patria, is located beneath the modern sovereign. In Germany, however, those same Middle Ages are represented in the person of Frederick Barbarossa, while in Italy they are epitomized by the cities. The two medieval eras clearly differ from one another. The first is symmetrical with respect to its contemporary counterpart; the other is not. The first narrates an ancestral nation and empire undergoing renewal; the second represents a new kingdom arising from the felicitous union of a host of venerable cities, all of them sisters. In the German monument, furthermore, there is no personified Rome.

55 Sculpted, like a large portion of the ornaments of the Vittoriano, by Eugenio Maccagnani, on whom see Alessandra Imbellone, Maccagnani, Eugenio, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 66 (Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 2006), 781–5. On other projects for sculptures of Italian cities for the Vittoriano, see Brice, Monumentalité publique, 202–6; on the base, dated 1908, Brice, p. 289. A photogallery of the city statues is located on the official website of “Presidenza della Repubblica”: http://www.quirinale.it/qrnw/statico/ simboli/vittoriano/Vittoriano_galleria5.htm (accessed 12 March 2012). 56 On the monument’s upper frieze the sixteen regions are also represented, two of them (Lombardy, Piedmont) in the garb of medieval warriors (Porciani, “Identità locale,” 173–4; Brice, Monumentalité publique, 289). 57 Concerning the monument, see Gunther Mai, Das Kyffhäuser-Denkmal 1896–1996. Ein nationales Monument im europäischen Kontext (Wien-Köln-Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 1997).



‘medieval’ identities in italy

345

The Middle Ages, then, were put to use in both of the historical phases that we have identified. During the first phase, they were one of the main myths for the nation to come, serving as witnesses to a glorious past and as allegories of a possible future. In the second phase, they lost their significance with respect to the nation-state and yet continued to represent local identities very well—identities understood as complements, rather than antagonists, to the construction of Italian identity, which was at once Roman and medieval.58

58 This dual symbolism of classical nation and medieval cities was also maintained during Fascism (1922–1943). On celebrations of a medieval-Renaissance flavor during this period, see Cavazza, Piccole patrie, 171–244; Diana Medina Lasansky, The Renaissance ­Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle, and Tourism in Fascist Italy (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004).

Between Slavs and Old Bulgars: ‘Ancestors’, ‘Race’ and Identity in Late Nineteenth-Century Bulgaria Stefan Detchev In the Bulgarian quest for origins Romanticism and the study of history both served the needs of forging the nation. The national narrative was marked by the organicist teleologies inherent in the prevailing romantic concept of the ‘tribe-nation.’ In this historical narrative, the national framework and Slavism were of crucial importance. The very idea of Bulgarian nationality was extended back to the ninth and even seventh centuries, referring to the establishment of the medieval state near the Danube. In the very beginning, with the Slavic domination of national ideology, the fact that the establishment of the state was a result of the activities and political tradition of a non-Slavic, Old Bulgar (Proto-Bulgarian)1 tribe posed a serious problem. Thus it was not surprising that the origin of the Old Bulgars became a point of contestation and contradiction. The problem of origins and ‘ancestors’ was rife with tensions and underwent substantial reconsideration. It began with the Slavs as the only ‘ancestors’ of the contemporary Bulgarian nation at the expense of marginalized Thracians and ProtoBulgarians, who in some popular histories were also imagined and represented as Slavs. Even the image of the ethnic mixing that followed did not pose an obstacle to the construction of a linear national high narrative dominated by Slavic and Christian (Orthodox) identity. Ethnic diversity was not only subsumed under the idea of a Slavic and Bulgarian nation, but the medieval Bulgarian kingdom was credited with the mission of the unification of the Slavs, called the ‘Bulgarian Slavs.’ The other basic pillar of the grand narrative remained the Slavic alphabet and literature and the role of the medieval Bulgarian kingdom in its dissemination in the medieval Slavic Orthodox world.

1 In this text the terms ‘Proto-Bulgarians’ and ‘Old Bulgars’ are used synonymously; in this way they are distinguished from the early medieval Slavic population or contemporary Bulgarians.

348

stefan detchev

The Herderian idea of a Volk (people) that formed a Blutsgemeinschaft (community of blood), the Volksseele (national soul), and the Volksgeist (national spirit), prevailed in the newly developing Bulgarian national identity. Therefore a highly romanticized and imagined abstract image of the Slavic Volk that was simple and pure emerged as a projection of the intelligentsia seeking emotional identity as a substitute for a more complex reality. For this reason the idea of a ‘national character’ that has been fixed once and for all through its immemorial laws and customs was accepted as the essence of the nation.2 Thus the crucial concept of ‘national character’ emphasized moral values and actually became a-historical. This study is based on primary sources, such as historical studies, more popular historical notions and descriptions, studies in the field of physical anthropology, historical accounts and references from newspapers and journals, memoirs, parliamentary debates, and political speeches. In consulting these sources, I try not only to follow the internal historiographical development on the topic of origin (Slavic/Old Bulgar) within supposedly professional Bulgarian scholarship, but also to investigate the political instrumentalization of the quest for origins in the modern political public sphere. How were the Bulgarian medieval period and the topics such as ‘origin’ and ‘race’ appropriated, used and misused by contemporaries in the last decades of the nineteenth century? How did different public figures in Bulgaria use the topics of ancestors and ‘race’ (Slavs/Old Bulgars) to energize the process of forging the nation, to interpret national unification, to legitimize foreign policy, to create intimacies with the subjects, to place individuals and groups in social hierarchy, and to interpret processes of modernization in the period under examination. The National ‘Revival’ and the Historiographical Heritage The Bulgarian myth of common ancestry and origin was markedly more closely connected to the political context, ‘Aryan myth’ and international politics than to intellectual achievements in the nineteenth century. It was dominated by the idea of ‘our Slavic ancestry,’ and notions of the ‘Tartar’, ‘Hun’, ‘Turkic’, ‘Finn’, or ‘Hungarian’ origins of the ‘Old Bulgars’ were either rejected, neglected or marginalized. Even authors like Gavril Krăstevich, who in his History regarded the Old Bulgars as Huns, considered the very 2 Donald Kelley, Fortunes of History: Historical Inquiry from Herder to Huizinga (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 325.



between slavs and old bulgars

349

Huns to be Slavs.3 To a great extent, this Slavic identity was determined by the search for a symbolic escape from the Turkic-dominated Ottoman Empire and a way to better position the Bulgarians vis-à-vis the ‘Aryan myth’ and the established ‘racial’ hierarchy in Europe.4 Moreover, it took into consideration the context of international politics and the ambitions of Russian policy towards the Ottoman Empire. Since the contemporary Bulgarians were seen as descendants only of the ancient Slavs, situated between the Germans and the Turkic groups, the topic of origins, or ethnicity and race, was of crucial importance and revealed a telling idiosyncrasy in the Bulgarian intellectual mind. This idiosyncrasy was even more evident in the literature that was supposed to be impartial and scholarly. Following Pavel Jozef Šafárik and his pioneering work ‘Slovanské starožitnosti’ [Slavic Antiquities] (1837), the first professionally trained Bulgarian historian Marin Drinov (1838–1906)5 and the Czech scholar Konstantin Jireček presented the Bulgars of Asparukh as originally a ‘Finnish tribe.’ In 1869, in the foreword to his ‘A look into the origins of the Bulgarian people and the beginnings of Bulgarian history,’ Drinov explicitly stated that a nationally framed history of the ‘Bulgarian people’ was a priority for him. He also emphasized that ‘the past’ and ‘ancestors’ were inextricably connected with education, enlightenment and the national context, and that history was strongly associated with forging the national consciousness of the people. Moreover, Drinov described how during the ‘dark ages’ of ‘spiritual slavery,’ ‘our people’ had to ‘forget that it had had such ancestors’ and in the nineteenth century this people appeared ‘without past, without history, without ancestors.’6

3 Gavril Krăstevich, Istoriya blăgarska [Bulgarian History] (Carigrad: pechatnicata na ‘Makedonia’, 1869). 4 Stefan Detchev, ‘Who are the Bulgarians? ‘Race,’ science and politics in fin-de-siècle Bulgaria,’ In We, the people. Politics of National Peculiarities in South-East Europe, ed. by Diana Mishkova (Budapest: CEU Press, 2009), 245. For more details see the recently published monograph by Stefan Detchev, Who are Our Ancestors? ‘Race’, Science and Politics in Bulgaria 1879–1912, (Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publisher LAP, 2010), 23, 33–4, 53, 61. 5 More on Marin Drinov see in Liudmila Gorina, Marin Drinov—istorik i obshtestven deec, [Marin Drinov—historian and social activist], (Sofia: Akademichno izdatelstvo‚ Marin Drinov’ 2006), 35. See also Ivan Dujchev’s foreword in Marin Drinov, Izbrani sachinenija [Collected Writings], t. 1. (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1971), 7–34. 6 Marin Drinov, Pogled vărhu proizhozhdenieto na bălgarskiya narod i nachaloto na bălgarskata istoriya [A look into the origins of the Bulgarian people and the beginnings of Bulgarian history] in Marin Drinov, Izbrani săchineniya. Vol. I (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1971, orig. 1869), 43.

350

stefan detchev

In Drinov’s narrative the Slavs definitely had a privileged position, while the ancient Thracians and Proto-Bulgarians (Old Bulgars) were neglected. The military campaigns, the Roman conquest, and the barbaric raids of Visigoths, Huns and Ostrogoths in the fourth and fifth centuries ad were presented as an explanation for why the Balkans had been totally deserted.7 Speaking about the Proto-Bulgarians, ‘the band of Asparukh,’ Drinov described them as a small number of people who allegedly even lacked culture. ‘Moreover,’ Drinov added,—‘they were not the descendants of Slavic kinsmen, but had a quite different lineage, part of the Chud or Finnish tribe, called Bulgars.’8 Relying explicitly on Šafárik’s achievements, Drinov emphasized: ‘The new historical-critical thought proved that the Volga Bulgars were neither Slavs nor pure Tartars, but a tribe from the great Chud or Finnish people at one time.’9 Strongly influenced in his judgments by Slavophile ideas, Drinov represented Slavic settlement south of the Danube as ‘the beginning of our people and its history.’ He attempted to represent the Slavs—not the Old Bulgars—as ‘ancestors’ of the contemporary Bulgarians from the nineteenth century. That is why Drinov underlined the following: We are in a hurry to notice that we are too little concerned about the lineage of those Bulgars because this question has no place in the history of our people, who are not their descendants and have nothing in common with them, except for the name it obtained from them by accident.10

In order to be even more explicit, Drinov wrote: ‘ “Not the Volga Bulgars, not Asparukh’s band, are the ancestors of our people, but these Slavic tribes [that settled on the peninsula before the Bulgars of Asparukh] to whom Venelin11 did not consider it necessary to pay adequate attention.’12 As Patrick Bahners has noted, ‘Where to start and where to stop depends on the historian’s point of view.’ In this regard, ‘inclusion and exclusion’

7 See for more Drinov, ‘Pogled,’ 48, 52–7, 58. 8 Ibid., 81. 9 Ibid., 121. 10 Ibid., 81. 11  Jurij Venelin (1802–1839) was an Ukrainian amateur with an interest in Bulgarian folklore, language, ethnography, and history. In the late 1820s he defended the thesis that even Old Bulgars were Slavs by origin. Weak from the perspective of its scholarly value, the thesis was very popular among the Bulgarian educated and literate public in the following decades. For more on Jurij Venelin see in Dimităr Rajkov, Jurij Venelin i Bălgarskoto Văzrazhdane [Jurij Venelin and the Bulgarian Revival] (Sofia: NBKM, 1994). 12 Drinov, ‘Pogled,’ 121.



between slavs and old bulgars

351

are of crucial importance.13 This is why, adopting the same logic, Drinov quite overtly opposed the inclusion in Bulgarian history of the past of Volga Bulgaria, the relations between Volga Bulgaria and Byzantium in the fifth and sixth centuries, and their relations with the Avars in the sixth and seventh centuries.14 He announced that ‘. . . the Slavic tribes that settled in the Balkan Peninsula in the sixth and seventh centuries’ were ‘the ancestors of the present-day Bulgarians’ and that it is on the basis of their history that ‘our history should start to be told.’ ’15 Drinov even drew direct parallels between the Bulgarian ethnogenesis derived from the Bulgars and the Slavic tribes, on the one hand, and French (Franks and Gauls) and Russian cases (Varangians and Slavs), on the other. He underlined how the Bulgars, Franks and Varangians (Rus) were a people small in number and ‘except for their name, almost nothing has remained of them.’16 Another important work that formed the academic canon about the ‘Bulgarian ancestors’ was Konstantin Jireček’s ‘History of the Bulgarians’ (1876), in Czech and German editions—Geschichte der Bulgaren and Dějiny národa bulharského. The importance of this work is confirmed by the fact that it became a model for school textbooks in Bulgaria for more than two decades. Identifying himself as ‘an enlightened Slav,’ the Czech historian K. Jireček17—like Drinov—gave priority to the Slavs as well. His initial history had two chapters on the Slavs and just one that covered Proto-Bulgarians. Moreover, the chapters devoted to the Slavs were more than four times longer than those addressing the Old Bulgars. About the Bulgarian origins and Bulgarian ethno-genesis the Czech historian wrote explicitly: Therefore, ancestors of the contemporary Bulgarians were not the handful of Bulgarians of Asparukh who conquered one part of Danubian Moesia, but the Slavs, who much earlier settled in Moesia, as well as in Thrace, Macedonia, Epirus, and almost the whole peninsula. The blood of Finnic Bulgarians that flowed predominantly in the veins of the noble clans in the true

13 See Stefan Berger, Mark Donovan and Kevin Passmore, Writing National Histories: Western Europe since 1800 (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 57. 14 Drinov, ‘Pogled,’ 122. 15 Ibid., 122. See also Marin Drinov, ‘Zaselenie Balkanskogo poluostrova slavjanami,’ [Settlement of the Balkan Peninsula with the Slavs], in Marin Drinov, Izbrani săchinenija, t. I. (Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1971 orig. 1872), 226–69. 16 Drinov, ‘Pogled,’ 83–5. 17 About the Bulgarian period of his life see Vasil Zlatarski, Dejnostta na d-r Konstantin Irechek v Bălgaria [Konstantin Irechek’s Activity in Bulgaria] (Sofia: Preiodichesko spisanie, 1905).

352

stefan detchev Bulgarian country between the river Danube and the Balkan Range, as can be seen, evaporated long ago.18

That is also why Jireček was quite definite about the linguistic issue when he wrote: ‘The Old Bulgarian Finnish language had no influence on the Slavic one.’19 Jireček’s narrative and observations reflect contemporary popular European racial thinking and the application of physical anthropology to the study of ancestry. This fashionable idea, which allied the humanities and social sciences with biology, exercised a particularly strong influence on foreign scholars, some of them even authorities in physical anthropology, who also studied and wrote on the issues concerning Bulgarian origins. Jireček also paid attention to human physiognomy from a historical as well as a contemporary perspective. In previous decades many foreign observers had made racial observations or had ventured explanations based on allegations concerning race. Following this blind alley in science, some of them contended that Bulgarians had elongated faces and ‘aquiline noses,’ and that ‘the Tartar nose overcomes the Slavic one.’20 The Austro-Hungarian geographer, ethnographer, archeologist and a curator of the Anthropological society in Vienna Felix Kanic (1829–1904) published travel notes well known to the Bulgarian public, Donau-Bulgarien und der Balkan. Influenced by the racial thought, Kanic wrote about ‘a permanent struggle for existence, a struggle in which the weak nationalities (narodnosti S.D.) have been absorbed by others stronger spiritually and physically.’21 He even offered very detailed descriptions of the peculiarities of the human body and physiognomy, including the form of the skull, face, cheek-bones, forehead, nose, eyelids, eyes, eyebrows, hair etc. In fact, Kanic situated a ‘non-degenerate Bulgarian type’ in the Western Balkans, where the ‘non-Slavic population was very sparse, and where the most pure-blooded Bulgarian population was preserved.’ Moreover, sometimes the description of these bodily and facial features turned to a more profound observation of temper.22 The Austro-Hungarian scholar even associated facial features of contemporary Bulgarians with a ‘blood mixture with Finno-Uralian conquerors,’ concluding overtly that ‘fewer traces 18 Konstantin Jireček, Istoriya na bălgarite [History of the Bulgarians] (Sofia: Nauka I izkustvo, 1978, first ed. 1876), 153–4. 19 Ibid., 154. 20 Ami Boué, La Turquie d’Europe, vols. II–III, Partie ethnologique (Paris: A. Bertrand, 1840), 61. 21  Felix Kanic, ‘Ethnograficheski ocherk’ [Ethnographic Feature], trans. A.P. Shopov, in Nauka, 2, (1882): 45. 22 Kanic, ‘Ethnograficheski ocherk,’ 55–6.



between slavs and old bulgars

353

of the Finnish tribe are left in the language of contemporary Bulgarians than in the outside appearance and structure of the body.’23 In the 1870s the authorities in physical anthropology were still such figures as the Polish anthropologist Izydor Kopernicki (1825–1891), the French linguist and anthropologist Abel Hovelacque (1843–1896), the Russian anthropologist and zoologist Anatoliy P. Bogdanov (1834–1896), prehistorian and anthropologist Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), and the English ethnologist and anthropologist John Beddoe (1826–1911). Basing their conclusions on observation or different craniological measurements, they all devoted some attention to the Bulgarians and their ‘race.’ In their studies they suggested that the Old Bulgars had not been Slavs; that the Old Bulgars, despite their Finnish or Turkic origins, had come to the Balkans as a mixed tribe; that the Bulgarian skull was peculiar and different from the other Slavic skulls; that the Slavic language came in the course of the history of the Bulgarians in order to substitute the native Turanic, Finn or Turkic ones; that in the contemporary Bulgarian skulls one could find traces of the Ancient Thracian or the Old Bulgar skulls; that there were in the Bulgarian skulls racial similarities with the Turks, ‘Tartar type’ and ‘Turanic elements’; that there was ‘Greek blood’ in Thrace and Macedonia among the Bulgarians. In general, all these scholars were certain about the racial complexities of the Bulgarian past, and they all argued that the contemporary Bulgarians were a very mixed population. They also insisted that according to craniological data, the contemporary Bulgarians definitely were not Slavs, and they did not find many borrowings in the present-day Bulgarian language from the Old Bulgarian one. And last, but not least, they were convinced that future excavations and methods of physical anthropology could offer answers to the question of the ethnicity or nationality (narodnostta) of different tribes of the past.24 In some cases, even racial type was regarded as crucial in defining temper and character. In particular, J. Beddoe spoke of ‘tribal differences’ and ‘ethnic descent,’ 23 Ibid., 56. 24 All these insights and arguments can be seen in J. Kopernicki, ‘Sur la conformation des crânes bulgares,’ in Revue d’Anthropologie 4 (1875): 68–96; Avel Hovelacque, ‘Sur deux crânes bulgares,’ in Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris. Serie II, 10 (1875): 426–429; Anatoliy P. Bogdanov, ‘Zhiteli drevnih bolgar po kraniologicheskim priznakam,’ Antropologicheskaja vistavka Imperatorskogo obshestva liubitelej estestvoznanija, antropologii i etnografii, т. III, ч. 1, (1879): 363–77; Rudolf Virchow, ‘Die nationale Stellung der Bulgaren,’ Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte. Sitzung von 11. II. 1877. 9 (1877): 70–76; Lorenz Diefenbach, Die Volkstämme der Europäischen Türkei, (Frankfurt a M: Christian Winter, 1877); John Beddoe, ‘On the Bulgarians,’ in The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 8 (1879): 232–9.

354

stefan detchev

on the one hand, and ‘physical and moral temper disposition’ on the other. Moreover, he found the Bulgarians different from the heroic, masculine and chivalrous Serbs.25 Many foreign and Bulgarian intellectuals, without being racists, sincerely believed that physical anthropology and craniology held the key to answering many questions concerning ethnic origins in the past and the ancestry of the peoples. However, in some racial studies there were definitely attempts to take racial features into consideration in order to explain or justify contentions concerning temper and culture, especially regarding means of livelihood and assertions relating to intelligence, heroism, masculinity, and other mental and social qualities. The currents of European historical thought, as well as the above-mentioned studies in physical anthropology, had some influence on popular historical perceptions of origins and ‘ancestors’ among the educated or literate Bulgarians. In the nineteenth century, following European models, every educated Bulgarian who was part of ‘educated society,’ ‘enlightened society,’ ‘the reading public,’ or the ‘public’ in general26 regarded himself or herself as the direct descendant of the Slavic tribes that had populated the Balkan Peninsula in the sixth and seventh centuries, or even earlier. At the very beginning of the story, explicitly or implicitly (following the fashion of Romanticism), the moral purity, democratic tendencies, and freedom of the Slavs were juxtaposed with the exhausted ancient world of Byzantine civilization. Moreover, it seemed on the basis of the historical narratives that despite all exchanges of population and migrations over the course of the centuries there had always been an ethnic entity that was called ‘Bulgarians.’ This entity managed to preserve the ‘blood links’ with their ‘Slavic ancestors’ and maintain their peculiarity and uniqueness. The Slavic settlement south of the Danube received a status of ‘primary acquisition of territory,’27 represented as a kind of ‘legal’ invasion and juxtaposed with all the other ‘illegal’ ones in the following centuries. Thus, Slavic settlers received a status of original inhabitants of the vaguely defined ‘Bulgarian lands.’ This territory belonged to the SlavoBulgarians, rather than to every other ethnic community that populated

25 Beddoe, ‘On the Bulgarians,’ 232–9. 26 For more detail see in Stefan Detchev, ‘ “The People” in the Bulgarian Press and Politics in the 1880s and 1890s’, in The Spectre of the People. New forms of populism, in Critique & Humanism, 23 (2007): 9–30. 27 About the role of primary acquisitions see Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 11–2.



between slavs and old bulgars

355

the area before and after the primary acquisition. In fact, it was somehow assumed that the Slavic settlement and to a certain extent the arrival of the ‘Bulgars of Asparukh’ were predetermined by destiny, and all the subsequent raids and settlements occurred merely by chance. Moreover, the complex origins of the Bulgarian nation were known but acknowledged only reluctantly by the historiography that dominated within the national framework. When acknowledging this complex ethnogenesis, one was loath to consider oneself a direct descendant of a non-Slavic ‘tribe’-ProtoBulgarians, Pechenegs, Cumans, Tartars, Turks, Armenians, Arnauts or Vlachs. The basic concepts of this narrative were not questioned and any evidence that might have threatened the story was marginalized. This image of the past was even more one-dimensional in the public political sphere and in the historical accounts in newspapers and periodical journals that contributed to an oversimplified and selective vision of history on the popular level. From conservatives to revolutionaries and their publics, the Slavic origin of the Old Bulgars was a crucial topic in identity discourse.28 In this regard, the comment on D. Ilovajiski’s book29 on the Bulgarian origin written by the Bulgarian émigré in Romania Liuben Karavelov was very representative. According to Karavelov, There are hundreds of critical articles and reviews in Russian literature in which the happy professors want to prove that, despite the fact that all their conclusions are based on a total zero, the Bulgars were a Finno-Chud, Mongol, Tartar, even Ural-Kinezean tribe, that they lived by the Volga river (the name of which is the origin of their name), that they came to the Balkan peninsula and conquered peace-loving Moesians and Thracians, and that in time they slavicized themselves and received the temperaments and the customs of their subjects. The same story is told about the Russians. The Russian Slavs were peaceful and hard-working people, therefore, their war-mongering neighbours, Varangians or Normans, made efforts to conquer them, to tame them, to give them their own name ‘Rus,’ and so they slavicized themselves. Lord, how many volumes have been written on these things, how many scientific dissertations and studies, adorned with quotations in several languages!

28 See Desislava Lilova, Văzrozhdenski znachenija na nacionalnoto ime [Revivalist meanings of the national name] (Sofia: Prosveta, 2003), 262–79, and esp. 268–9. 29 In fact, D. Ilovaisky was the last representative of the Slavic hypothesis about the Old Bulgars’ origin.

356

stefan detchev

With the same superficial disdain L. Karavelov attacked and easily resolved one of the main arguments—about the non-Slavic origins of the Old Bulgars—writing the following: So, for example, one can encounter among the names of the Bulgarian kings—which, as it is known, were written down, copied and finished by Greek chroniclers—names that do not sound Slavic, but which made us think that these names were chewed too often by the Greek historians and that they were spoiled even more often by copyists and translators.30

In general, one finds in scientific and popular literature a notion widespread among the educated and literate intelligentsia of a small, warlike, powerful and centralized tribe capable of guaranteeing order on the one hand, and on the other, hard-working, peaceful Slavs more oriented towards agriculture who were at the same time known for their democratic tendencies and their love of freedom. Moreover, especially among some Bulgarian intellectuals there was a notion of a kind of specific SlavicBulgarian dualism embodied in the distance between horizontal Slavic communities and the vertical hierarchy of the Old Bulgars, intermixed however with a Hellenized state elite. The Slavs were represented as bearers of the idea of equality and democracy, embodiments of modernity that were allegedly ‘innate’ to them and opposed to the Old Bulgars, with their centralized, autocratic power.31 However, although the national narrative was ethnocentric and in some cases defined Bulgarianness in ‘racial’ language, the Bulgarian national leaders and intellectuals did not think in terms of a ‘pure race’ and they had no intention of ‘purifying’ it. Nevertheless, in this regard Slavic ­ideology subsumed ethnic multiplicity into the Slavic and Orthodox nation, reconfiguring the Christian and Slavic-speaking population into an ‘ethnic’ people. Therefore, in a very early stage Bulgarian historiography imagined a quite peculiar medieval nation-state, as if one could find in it different modern institutions, such as a flourishing print industry or compulsory education, forging the medieval Bulgarian kingdom into a kind of a modern nation-state.

30 See Liuben Karavelov, ‘Za slavjanskoto proizhozhdenie na dunavskite bylgare [On the Slavic Origins of the Danubian Bulgarians], Izsledovanie ot D. Ilovajski, Bucharest, 1875,’ in Znanie, I, no. 8, 30 April (1875): 126–7. 31  See Macedonia, III, no. 24, 10 May (1869), 1.



between slavs and old bulgars

357

The Bulgarians between the European ‘Aryan Race,’ the Slavs and the Old Bulgars The Russo-Turkish war of 1877–78 and the establishment of the modern Bulgarian State in 1879 that followed it further strengthened the already axiomatic idea of the Slavic origin of the contemporary Bulgarians both in the Bulgarian public sphere and in the perception of the elite, according to which the Bulgarian nation was a part of the ‘Slavic tribe.’32 For many Bulgarian intellectuals the historical narratives written by Drinov and Jireček in the 1860s and 1870s, in which the notion of Slavic origins dominated, remained of primary importance.33 Moreover, in school textbooks the interpretation of the ‘ancestors’ followed the version that had already been established in the late 1860s.34 The ‘Finnish Bulgarians’ were seen as easily melted into the Slavs, and the ‘Bulgarian people’ were said to come from a ‘pure Slavic tribe.’35 Prominent representatives of the Bulgarian intelligentsia believed that before the arrival of Asparukh’s Bulgars, ‘all the Slavic tribes’ composed ‘one common Slavic nation (slavjanska nacia)’ and ‘there were no Bulgarians, Serbs, Russians, Czechs, Poles, Croats, but only Slavs.’ At the same time, the culture of this community was depicted as ‘very high,’ ‘agricultural,’ not ‘nomadic,’ in opposition to Proto-Bulgarian culture.36 Slavic dominance was salient and explicit even in the most serious academic narratives when the story was told about the ‘Slavs’ and ‘Asparukh’s Bulgarians,’ who founded ‘the Slavic Bulgarian state and nationality (narodnost).’37 The narrative covered the following

32 Detchev, ‘Who are the Bulgarians,’ 246; See also Detchev, Who are Our Ancestors?, 77–8. 33 See for example Svetoslav Milarov, ‘Cherkovnij văpros. Istoricheski opit’ [The Church Question. Historical Experience], Nauka, 2, (1882): 115–33. 34 Dobri Ganchev, Uchebnik po bălgarska istoriya [Textbook on Bulgarian History], Za dolnite klasove na gimnaziite i za triklasnite uchilishta, (Plovdiv, 1888), 5; Uchebnik po bălgarska istoriya [Textbook on Bulgarian History], Za dolnite klasove na gimnaziite i za triklasnite uchilishta, 2–ro preraboteno izdanie, (Plovdiv, 1892), 6. 35 Stefan S. Bobchev, Kratăk uchebnik vărhu bălgarskata istoriya [Short Textbook in Bulgarian History], Za nachalni i sredni uchilishta spored programite v Bălgarsko (Plov­ div: Izdanie i pechat na Hr. G. Danov, 1882); Kratăk uchebnik vărhu bălgarskata istoriya [Short Textbook in Bulgarian History], Za tretoklasni i sredni uchilishta spored programite v Bălgarsko. Vtoro preraboteno izdanie (Plovdiv: Izdanie i pechat na Hr. G. Danov, 1883). 36 Dimităr Nikolov, ‘Bălgarskij literaturen ezik’ [The Bulgarian Literary Language], Trud, 5 (1890): 597. 37 See Liubomir Miletich, Dimităr Agura, ‘Dako-romynite i tjahnata slavjanska pismenost’ [The Daco-Romanians and Their Slavic Writing], in Sbornik za narodni umotvorenija, nauka i knizhnina, 9 (1893), 212.

358

stefan detchev

two centuries, narrating how ‘the two hostile elements: Finno-Tartarian and Slavic gradually fused into one and formed a Bulgarian people,’ or how ‘the Slavic element dominated so the foreign element left no traces in the popular language.’38 At the same time, it was very well known to the Bulgarian educated public that a ‘strong Turko-Finn tribe’ gave its name to the state (which was considered ‘ancestral’) in the late seventh century.39 In these years the interdependence of the modern concept of ‘race’ and the modern idea of ‘ancestry’ became more obvious. In fact, some authors demonstrated a predisposition to racial thought and the idea of the ethnic complexity of the Bulgarian past. Although the word ‘race’ is rarely used, one nonetheless can recognize such ideas in the Romantic expression about ‘popular organism.’ In the mid-1880s the philologist Alexander Teodorov-Balan (1859–1959) wrote in the most important academic journal about ‘the spiritual Bulgarian individuality’ and the ‘political originality [samobitnost] of the Bulgarian tribe.’40 On another occasion he evoked the ‘centuries-long work of the Bulgarian spirit.’41 In the second half of the 1880s Dimiter Nikolov, a secondary school teacher of history, spoke about the asides of some Western and Byzantine historians, urging people to become ‘one proper organism.’42 Nevertheless, in general Bulgarian authors did not use the term ‘race’ at all. Racial language appears rather in the works of foreign journalists, writers and scholars who made detailed descriptions of physiognomy and the human body. Again, in the beginning of 1880s Jireček noticed and emphasized that the population in some regions consisted of what he characterized as ‘real Slavic types.’43 Given the attraction, authority and prestige of foreign thought, it was inevitable that this dominant racial discourse would influence Bulgarian authors. In the late 1870s Marin Drinov

38 Nikolov, ‘Bălgarskij literaturen ezik’, 598. 39 ‘Slavjanskite narodi na Balkanskij poluostrov. Iz rech na profesora po slavjanskata filologija D-r A. Leskin, kazana v Tărgovskoto druzhestvo v Leipzig,’ [The Slavic Peoples on the Balkan Peninsula. From a speech made by a Professor in Slavic philology Dr. A. Leskin, delivered at the Touristic association in Leipzig], Kritika, 7–8 (1891): 277. 40 Alexander Teodorov, ‘Stariat bălgarski ezik i novobălgarskite narechija’ [The Old Bulgarian Language and New Bulgarian Dialects], in Periodichesko spisanie na BKD, 14 (1885): 257. 41  Ibid., p. 258. 42 Dimităr Nikolov, ‘Materiali po Bălgarska istoria,’ [Materials on Bulgarian History], Trud, 2, no. 1, (1888): 87. 43 Konstantnin Jireček, ‘Ot Nova Balgaria,’ [From New Bulgaria], Nauka, 1 (1881): 137.



between slavs and old bulgars

359

analyzed human faces and types.44 Later the Bulgarian philologist and university scholar Liubomir Miletich (1863–1937)45 made observations concerning facial features in order to grasp the genealogy and origins of some groups of people.46 However, many Bulgarian academic and nonacademic authors, despite their substantial contribution to the broadening of the picture concerning a rich ethnic mixture in the medieval period, were against the idea of race and racial theory. Nevertheless, over the course of the nineteenth century the category of ‘race’ grew in importance in European culture as a whole. The word ‘race’ was used more broadly, and David Blackbourn emphasized, less self-consciously than today, as a synonym for ethnic group. It did not imply necessarily classification as superior or inferior. However, arguments about ‘race’ in the discriminatory sense became much more common in prewar Europe.47 At that time the concept appeared as an amalgam of biological theories on social change known since the 1890s as ‘Social Darwinism.’48 It possessed potency to attract and incorporate both racial thinking and nationalism into a new matrix. ‘Nation’ was portrayed already as a social organism with its historical development and unity. First in England and after that in Germany and France, appeals were made to Darwinism in support of theories of mental and physical degeneration through heredity and acquired traits, and nations were regarded as biological entities with specific ‘race psychology’ determined by ancestry and inheritance.49 As a 44 Quoted in Liubomir Miletich, ‘Nashite pavlikjani’ [Our Paulicians], Sbornik za narodni umotvorenija, nauka i knizhnina, 19 (1903): 3. 45 About Liubomir Miletich’s life and career see Stoyan Romanski, Liubomir Miletich. Chovek, uchen, uchitel i obshtestvenik [Liubomir Miletich. Person, Scholar, Teacher, and Public Figure]. (Sofia: Darzhavna pechatnica, 1940). 46 Liubomir Miletich, ‘Arnautite’ v Silistrensko i sledi ot nosovki v tehnija ezik’ [‘The Arnauts’ in the Silistra region and traces from nasal sounds in their language], Periodichesko spisanie na BKD, 61 (1900): 629. 47 See David Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780–1918, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998): 432. 48 Paul Weindling, Health, Race, and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 56. 49 For more details see especially Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West (Washington, DC: Widrow Wilson Press, 1996), 279, 289–90; 292–3, 298–302, 306, 323, 326–7, 330–1, 337–9, 340; Neil MacMaster, Racism in Europe 1870–2000 (Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001), 36–7, 42, 44, 53–6; Weindling, Health, 52, 81–2, 86, 91–3, 96; Antony Smith and John Hutchinson, Nationalism: Critical Concepts in Political Science (London: Routledge, 2000), 1399; Léon Poliakov, Le mythe aryen. Essai sur les sources du racisme et des nationalismes (Paris: Editions Calmann-Lévy, 1971), ch. 5. According to Michael Ignatief one can find in Germany not only a native German intellectual tradition about race, but also Anglo-Saxon anti-Semitism, French eugenics, and American neo-Darwinism. See Michael Ignatief, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (London: Vintage, 1994), 64.

360

stefan detchev

result of these developments, by the end of the nineteenth century it was accepted that a man could be recognized for what he was on the basis of the immediate signs of his physical appearance. ‘Race,’ it was thought, determined ‘national character’ and ‘institutions.’50 Many examples from the late 1880s and the first half of 1890s demonstrated how in Bulgaria the vision of a racial mixture was seen as something superior, and not something that would lead to the nation’s ‘degeneration.’51 Although still strongly influenced by romanticism, the interpretations offered by scholarly authors were far from actual racial thought and explanation. Moreover, in history textbooks there was no real shift to more race-based language.52 However, the impregnation of the public space with language about ‘race’ and ‘heredity’ derived from the wider European intellectual environment and the politicized and cultural journalism in Bulgaria led to some very new tendencies in the thematization of ‘race.’ With ‘progress’ and ‘modern science’ that arrived in Bulgaria in the last half of the century from Western Europe, some people accepted the prevailing racial thought of the last decades of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century as the last word in science and progress, and thought that it should be applied in the Bulgarian context to explain local phenomena. ‘Race’ and racial thought became a European fin-de-siècle fashion. Thus in the Bulgarian context ‘racial’ thought was an appropriation, accommodation and assimilation of the racialist discourse of the West.53 The term ‘race’ itself was used very rarely. Its meaning was ambiguous, fluid and multiple, representing both common descent based on a language family (‘Slavic race,’ ‘German race,’ ‘Latin race’) and a biologically differentiated people sharing ‘common pure Bulgarian blood.’ The very concept of ‘race’ was not essential to any of these designations or explanations, and very often racial differentiation itself was understood as limited to physical characteristics, without acceptance of race typology as an element that could serve as any foundation for causal cultural and social

50 Berger and others, Writing National Histories, 85–6; Hugh A. MacDougall, Racial Myth in English History: Trojans, Teutons, and Anglo-Saxons (Montreal: Harvest House, 1982), 122–4. Hannaford, Race: A History, 328. 51  Detchev, ‘Who are the Bulgarians,’ 247. 52 See with more details Detchev, Who are Our Ancestors, 78. 53 See Detchev, ‘Who are the Bulgarians,’ 241. See also Detchev, Who are Our Ancestors, 28, 33.



between slavs and old bulgars

361

explanations.54 Moreover, in history textbooks there was never any shift to more racialist language. The very term ‘race’ was not used at all.55 However, in the last two decades of the nineteenth century the Bulgarian reading public was not unfamiliar with achievements that had been made and theories that had been proposed in the field of biology, since organs of the press, including serious academic journals, covered topics fashionable in the European context, such as the theory of natural selection, the problem of heredity, and the concept of germ plasm.56 Some of these publications overtly drew the attention of the Bulgarian public to the allegedly important role of biology in human development. In this regard biology was opposed to the role of pedagogy and different educational efforts. As a result, it was ‘heredity’ that was described as the most important factor in social and human life, as a product of biological determination. The increasingly racial language and intellectual environment enforced the importance of the word ‘race,’ and the word ‘tribe’ was considered as referring primarily to the biological nature of a people, transmitted through ‘genes.’ In this regard, the racialization of Bulgarian thought was visible and to a certain extent completely unavoidable. At the turn of the century, primarily under foreign influence, even serious Bulgarian academic scholars like the philologist Liubomir Miletich and the literary scholar Ivan Shishmanov (1862–1928) considered ‘the type’ to have crucial importance in the search for the truth concerning the origins of some segments of the contemporary population, as the ‘type’ could reveal possible ‘ancestors.’ Thus faith in physical anthropology and crani­ ology was faith in modern science.57

54 Detchev, Who are Our Ancestors, 65–7, 112. 55 Detchev, ‘Who are the Bulgarians,’ 248. 56 From several examples see ‘Dokazatelstva za uchenieto za izmenjaemostta i teorijata za estestvenija otbor,’ [Proofs for the teaching of mutability and the theory of natural selection], Prevel G.C.G., Trud, 8 (1890): 828–829; Metodij Popov, ‘Săotnoshenieto mezhdu jadro i proto-plazma i negovotio znachenie za citologijata’ [The proportion between nucleus and proto-plasma and its importance for cytology], Periodichesko spisanie na BKD, 22 (1910): 1–126; I. Denisov (prev. ot ruski Jordan Ivanov). ‘Nasledstveni zakoni’ [Laws of Heredity], Periodichesko spisanie na BKD, 4, no. 15, May–June (1885): 375–88. 57 See Ivan Shishmanov, ‘Kritichen pregled na văprosa za proizhoda na prabălgarite ot ezikovo gledishte i etimologiite na imeto ‘bălgarin’ ’ [Critical review on the question of the origins of the Proto-Bulgarians from the linguistic point of view and the etymologies of the name ‘Bulgarian’], Sbornik za narodni umotvoreniya, nauka i knizhnina, 16–17 (1900): 748–49. For more details about Ivan Shishmanov’s case see also Detchev, ‘Who are the Bulgarians,’ 256–7 and Detchev, Who are Our Ancestors, 100–2, 111–2 and esp. 127–8. See also Miletich, ‘Nashite pavlikjani’, 3.

362

stefan detchev

Moreover, the importance of the ‘Aryan’ idea and the term ‘Aryan’ was no less salient. In the late nineteenth century the term even came to be used in school textbooks, in which the allegedly ‘Aryan’ origins of the Slavs were presented.58 The very term ‘Aryan’ also gained scientific respectability in the works of prominent academic scholars, such as historian Vasil Zlatarski (1866–1935) and Ivan Shishmanov.59 However, along with other authors they took solely physical characteristics into consideration, and nothing more that might have involved racial explanations of social and cultural issues. Nevertheless, later authors such as the Russophile politician and scholar of history of Bulgarian law Stefan S. Bobchev (1853–1940) would insist that the Slavs were among the ‘representatives of the Aryan race’ with ‘an already quite advanced culture.’60 By and large, in the late nineteenth century and particularly in the early twentieth century the idea of Turkic or Turanic origin of Old Bulgars was already regarded in a more unemotional, distant and ‘normalized’ way, at least as one of the possible ancestors of the contemporary Bulgarians. At that time the idea about the Slavic origins of the Old Bulgars, which had been defended in the previous decades by Venelin, Ilovajski, and others, was considered as contrary to the facts and based on completely arbitrary linguistic etymologies.61 In 1900 Ivan Shishmanov represented the first balanced analyses of the problem of the origins of the Proto-Bulgarians.62 He considered the question one of ‘social significance’ and part of a ‘political trend,’ and he was very serious about physical anthropology, emphasizing and subscribing to the prevailing hypothesis of ‘Turkic-Tartarian origin’ as a conclusion based on linguistics.63 Moreover, in the academic year

58 Georgi Dermanchev, Sredna istoriya na bălgarite [Medieval History of Bulgarians]. Vtoro preraboteno izdanie (Sofia: Pechatnica Vylkov, 1896), 114; Stefan S. Bobchev, Istoriya na bălgarskija narod [History of the Bulgarian People], Uchebnik za gornite klasove na gimnaziite i srednite uchilishta. Spored programite uredeni ot Ministerstvo na narodnoto prosveshtenie. Treto, săvsem preraboteno izdanie, (Plovdiv: Pechatnica Hr. G. Danov, 1899), 9. 59 See Vasil Zlatarski, Bălgarska istoriya. Lektzii cheteni prez lyatnoto polugodie na uchebnata 1901–1902 godina [Bulgarian history. Lectures read during the summer semester of the academic year 1901–1902]. (Sofia, 1902), Shishmanov, ‘Kritichen pregled’ . 60 See Stefan S. Bobchev, Bălgarskata cheljadna zadruga v segashno i minalo vreme. Istoriko-juridicheski studii [Bulgarian Family Labor in the Present and in the Past] (Sofia: Darzhavna pechatnica, 1906–1907), 3. 61  For example see Alexander Pironkov, Parvobitni li zhiteli sa slavjanite v Evropa? [Are the Slavs Primordial Inhabitants of Europe?] (Sofia: n.p., 1905), 2. 62 See Shishmanov, ‘Kritichen pregled’. More detailed analyses in Detchev, ‘Who are the Bulgarians’, 256–7. 63 Shishmanov, ‘Kritichen pregled’, 749–50.



between slavs and old bulgars

363

1901–02, in the lecture course read before the Military Academy in Sofia, Zlatarski openly presented Old Bulgars as a ‘people close to the Huns’ who had been part of the ‘family of the Turkic peoples’.64 The same thesis about the Old Bulgars as a ‘Turkic horde’ could be found in a study about the establishment of the Bulgarian medieval kingdom that was published by Zlatarski in the beginning of the twentieth century.65 However, even then the Slavic idea and paradigm continued to be influential, as did idiosyncrasies concerning the alleged Turkic origin of the Old Bulgars. Despite some very isolated interpretations privileging non-Slavic origin (analyzed below) the Bulgarians were still normally ­represented as Slavs and as having a special, privileged role in the history of Slavdom concerning Christianization and the preservation of the ‘Slavic alphabet.’66 Such a representation emphasized the cultural superiority of the Slavs.67 And most importantly, even in the state-approved textbooks the interpretation of ‘ancestors’ adhered to the version from the 1880s and the beginning of the 1890s, where despite the presence of some ‘Finnic Bulgarians’ the contemporary Bulgarians were still characterized as a ‘pure Slavic tribe.’68 This interpretation of origins continued to be crucial as long as the historical priority of the Medieval Bulgarian State among the Slavs continued to be important as the ‘primary cradle of the Slavic script.’69

64 See Zlatarski, Bălgarska istoriya. Lektzii, 214–19. 65 Vasil Zlatarski, Studii po bălgarska istoriya [Studies on Bulgarian History] (Sofia: Darzhavna pechatnica), 1902. 66 See also Stefan Detchev, ‘Dva proekta za bălgarska nacionalna identichnost ot kraja na XIX vek’ [Two Projects of Bulgarian National Identity from the late nineteenth c.] in Balkanskijat XIX vek. Drugi prochiti [The Balkan Nineteenth Century. Other Readings], ed. by Diana Mishkova, (Sofia: Riva, 2006), 273–312. 67 Petăr Ojakov, Istoriya na bălgasrkoto pravo [History of Bulgarian Law. Overview of the State and Social Life of the Bulgarians] Chast obshta, Kniga pyrva. Obozrenie na gospodarstvenija i obshtestven zhivot na balgarite (Vidin: Knigopechatnica D. Mirchev, 1894), 47. 68 Stefan S. Bobchev, Istoriya na bălgarskija narod [History of the Bulgarian People]. Uchebnik za gimnaziite i srednite uchilishta, spored programite uredeni ot Ministerstvoto na Narodnoto prosveshtenie. Vtoro, preraboteno i dopălneno izdanie (Plovdiv: Hr. G. Danov, 1897); Dobri Ganchev, Uchebnik po bălgarska istoriya [Textbooks on Bulgarian History]. Za dolnite klasove ot gimnaziite i za triklasnite uchilishta (Plovdiv: Hr. G. Danov, 1899), 8. 69 Detchev, ‘Dva projekta’, 289–91.

364

stefan detchev ‘Blood’ of the Old Bulgars against ‘Pure Slavs’

In addition to such racial language and moderate attempts to introduce racial explanations into scholarship, all largely the product of German romantic thought and European physical anthropology, there were more overt abuses and misuses of classical and medieval ethnography in popular writing and discourse. Such manipulations served as a means of resolving contemporary cultural, social and political issues and, during the years and in the context of growing nationalism and coming war in Europe, these examples grew in number and importance. While scholars were generally still cautious in their adoption of racial methods to explain or resolve social, political and cultural issues, in political journalism and popular literature, and popular press these ideas were much better received. They became part of new directions in the thematization of the difference between the Bulgarian nation and foreigners, opposing political and cultural figures, different segments of contemporary Bulgarian population, and the means of ‘mapping’ some regions of the country. The authors who adopted these ideas did so with no measure of the restraint shown by the Bulgarian scholars, whatever their national biases may have been. These authors applied the category of ‘race’ and current racial thought in Europe, freeing their fantasies and imaginations and discarding the caution that still prevailed in philology, history, and ethnography. Outside of the professional academic community, the authors used, in a frivolous way, concepts like ‘blood,’ ‘race,’ ‘talent’ and ‘gifts.’ They were much more led by feeling and intuition, they ignored evidence and often relied on pure speculation concerning alleged characteristics of a race. Their conclusions were little more than pseudo-history. This popular racial essentialism was also present in political discourse. Ideas about ‘blood’ and ‘types’ served to offer explanations for contemporary internal and international politics. Thus, despite the continuous Slavic ideological dominance, during Stefan Stambolov’s rule (1887–1894)70— when diplomatic relations between Bulgaria and Russia were broken for a period of almost ten years—other interpretations concerning the Tartar, Finn, or Turkic origins of Asparukh’s Bulgars were invoked by some representatives of the ruling elite as well as writers and journalists close to them. Important political figures such as Prime-Minister Stambolov and

70 For more details see Duncan Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria 1870–1895 (Durham N.C. Duke Univ. Press, 1993).



between slavs and old bulgars

365

the politician and newspaper editor D. Petkov stated publicly the benefits of duality or plurality of ‘blood,’ ‘talent,’ and ‘instinct,’ with the Tartars and the Old Bulgars in mind. When the Serbian newspaper Velika Syrbia (‘Greater Serbia’), in order to insult the Bulgarian side, subscribed to the popular foreign conception that ‘Bulgarians are not Slavs, but Slavicized Tartars’ and promised a new war (after the one of 1885), a war that Serbia, this time, would win, this notion was appropriated by the Bulgarian governmental newspaper Svoboda, but with a twist. Acccepting Bulgarian ethnogenesis, Petkov announced defiantly: ‘We, the Bulgarians are not insulted by the name Tartars, we confess that in our veins there is certain Tartar blood. History shows us this. But the same Tartar blood makes us laugh at the brotherly Slavic threats.’ 71 Petkov tried to play with the established stereotypes of the ‘peaceful’ Slavs72 and warlike Old Bulgars or Tartars with ‘cruel tempers’73 in order to represent the Bulgarians, because of their mixture with ‘Tartar blood,’ as intrinsically superior in military terms in comparison with the Serbs because of the alleged purity of their Slavic blood.74 It seems that this discourse, to a certain extent, was part of an already widespread colloquial wisdom, at least among the educated public. According to the Russian writer Galicin (Muravlin), who visited Bulgaria in 1900 and afterwards published some articles in the Russian newspaper Novoe vremja, the representatives of the Bulgarian intelligentsia he had met in Sofia told him the following: ‘We are like the Russians, a mixture of Slavs and Tartars, and that is why, like you, we are a vital people.’75 The similar flight from the paradigm of Slavic identity can be discerned in a speech held by the Bulgarian Prime-Minister St. Stambolov before the members of the Grand National Assembly in Veliko Tărnovo on May 17th, 1893. Addressing the question of why the Poles had been conquered by

71  Svoboda, IV, 20 Dec. 1889, No. 326. 72 About Herder’s vision regarding the ‘peaceful’ Slavs see Bruno Naarden, Socialist Europe and Revolutionary Russia: Perceptions and Prejudice 1848–1923 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 28–9. 73 Alexander Gilferding, Sobranie sochinenija [Collected Works], t. 1 (S. Peterburg: Pechatnja V. Golovina, 1868), 27–8. 74 In fact, claims that some barbarian groups could boast superiority of blood were still advanced in the seventeenth century in England. See MacDougall, Racial Myth, 272. 75 Quoted in Gavril Zanetov, Bălgarskoto naselenie v srednite vekove: Istiriko-juridicheski skici [The Bulgarian Population in the Middle Ages: Historical and Juristic Sketches] (Ruse: skoropechatnica Spiro Gulabchev, 1902), 74–5. I am indebted to Petăr Părvanov for turning my attention to Stefan S. Bobchev’s review on this publication, and through it to elements relevant to my research.

366

stefan detchev

the Russian Empire, but the Bulgarians, on the contrary, had managed to overcome the Russian threat during the political crisis of 1886–87 and in the following years, Stambolov commented:  . . . there is a certain talent in the Bulgarian, an innate instinct to govern and organize . . . When our ancestors came here, . . . they managed to absorb the Slavic tribes they encountered, they managed to organize a strong state to which they gave state organization, in spite of adopting their language. The reason is that there is a certain gift in the Bulgarian, innate instinct to govern.

To these state-building virtues Stambolov juxtaposed the failed ‘Poland, populated by pure Slavs.’76 This example and the previous one were still isolated, and the ideas were not formulated in detail or coherently. However, they situated contemporary Bulgarians higher than ‘pure Slavs’ as a whole (e.g. Serbs and Poles) within the framework of military qualities and heroism.77 Perhaps the position of Old Bulgars on the European racial scale, combined with political conjecture and the traditionally strong element of Slavism in Bulgarian national ideology, were obstacles to more enthusiastic and open adoption of similar visions. However, these notions concerning Slavic and Proto-Bulgarian origins, without being central to Bulgarian political life, never completely disappeared. They encouraged a kind of partisan scholarship or political abuse by some prominent political figures. It is very telling that thoughts and speculations concerning the ‘Bulgarian type’ appeared in works of scholarly literature that made no mention of racial issues in their titles. In 1902 Gavril Zanetov, a lawyer, historian and literary critic, born in Romanian Bessarabia and Gagauz (Turkic-speaking Orthodox Christian) by descent, raised the question of the possible vestiges of the Old Bulgars in an open and arbitrary way: However, didn’t the warlike and brave Bulgars, who brought among the Slavic population a new consciousness and a new striving for power, authority, and glory, didn’t they leave in contemporary Bulgarians their own spiritual features in blood, in the race?78

76 Dnevnici (stenograficheski) na Chetvărto Veliko Narodno săbranie văv Veliko Tarnovo [Stenographic Diaries of the Fourth Bulgarian Grand National Assembly] (Sofia: Knigopechatnica i litografia na Janko S. Kovachev, 1893), 57. 77 See Detchev, ‘Who are the Bulgarians,’ 247–8. 78 Zanetov, Bălgarskoto naselenie, 23.



between slavs and old bulgars

367

Zanetov gave very detailed anthropological descriptions of foreheads, cheekbones, hair, eyes, noses, etc., attributed that had nothing to do with history of law but exemplified the cultural atmosphere and fashion of racial thought at the time. He openly turned to the relation between spoken language and race, postulating four Bulgarian types according to language, cloths, customs, and most of all physical features.79 Zanetov described how among the Bulgarian groups wearing black clothes one could find more ‘non-Slavic types,’ e.g. ‘low stature, wide faces, often with protruding cheekbones of the face, and small eyes.’ He mentioned two more versions of Turanic type—the first one with ‘big ox eyes, sharp and short, low jaws’ and the second one with ‘low stature, bony, long, sharp noses and low foreheads.’80 Zanetov was even quite overt and arbitrary in showing contemporary descendants of the Old Bulgars, referring concretely to the political realm. He wrote: Bulgarian-Turanic types from the Bulgarian people are distinguishable for their peculiar temperament and peculiar store of intellect. For instance, one can find most Bulgar-Turanian types among the so-called ‘Stambolovists’ (i.e. supporters of the Prime-Minister Stambolov and activists of the party that he had established).81

Therefore, the non-Slavic Bulgarian ancestors were definitely represented as ancestors of the political activists from the force that supported antiRussian Bulgarian foreign policy in the period 1886–1894. It seems that for Zanetov the contemporary Stambolovists, with their ‘peculiar temperament and peculiar store of intellect,’ were the segment of the Bulgarian population to be recognized descendants of the Old Bulgars, in opposition to the early medieval Slavs. Prince Ferdinand between the Huns and the Slavs However, it was not only representatives of the Bulgarian elite—politicians, statesmen, writers and journalists—who played games and shifted between different versions of identity discourse and notions of ‘ancestry.’ The Bulgarian ruler indulged in such debates as well. In 1886, only seven years after his election by the Bulgarian Grand National Assembly, the first Bulgarian Prince Alexander von Battenberg had to abdicate, a victim 79 Ibid., 94–5. About these four different Bulgarian types see 95–111. 80 Ibid., 109. 81  Ibid., 110.

368

stefan detchev

of Russian interference that provoked political crisis.82 In the summer of 1887, after several unsuccessful attempts to replace him with another monarchical figure, the Third Bulgarian Grand National Assembly elected Prince Ferdinand Saxe-Coburg Gotha as the new Bulgarian Prince.83 It is not surprising that like many other monarchical figures Ferdinand had lineage and ancestry that tied him to various monarchical courts and bodies of nobility in Europe and the world. He could show blood ties with Austro-Hungarian high nobility, as well as with the nobilities of Germany and Slovakia, including also the Orleans and the Bourbons, former courts of France, the courts of Belgium, Great Britain, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Brazil. This is why he was able to exploit different options regarding the narrative of origins in order to play different ‘games’ with identity discourse. The above-mentioned versions of the Bulgarian quest for origins and ‘the Bulgarian ancestors’ in the middle ages, including the close tribal ties between Bulgarians and Hungarians, were very well known to the Bulgarian intelligentsia, at least from the 1860s onwards. These narratives were determined by and gave opportunity for their use in different political contexts. This is why in the early 1870s Bulgarian journalists emphasized how, until recently, many ‘Hungarian political men’ had thought of the Bulgarians as a people ‘relatively small and Slavic’ who would not have enough strength for ‘autonomous development.’ However, in 1873, noticing that the Austro-Hungarian policy of Count Andrássy was favorable to the Bulgarian movement, the author of an editorial in the newspaper Pravo (‘Justice’), edited in the Ottoman capital of Istanbul, made an attempt to demonstrate the historical roots of these common interests between the contemporary Bulgarians and Hungarians. At the time many representatives of the Bulgarian political elite in the Ottoman Empire were already aware of the possible multiplicity of Bulgarian origins. This is why, beginning with an apology to Marin Drinov (described as an ‘unbiased interpreter’) and readers sensitive to the topic of origins, the journalist from Pravo contended in an editorial that:

82 For a detailed English language source see Charles Jelavich, Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism: Russian influence in the internal affairs of Bulgaria and Serbia, 1879–1886 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958). 83 For more about Prince Ferdinand see Stephen Constant, Foxy-Ferdinand 1861–1948. Tsar of Bulgaria (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1979).



between slavs and old bulgars

369

among the other ties that join our people with the Magyars one should add this one as well: that our glorious ancestors, the Bulgarians who conquered the Balkan Peninsula and liberated the indigenous Slavs from Greek yoke, were a people of the same tribe with the Hungarians.

Moreover, this overt and unambiguous statement was followed immediately by the next thoughts: The blood of the Bulgarians of Asparukh cooled down and disappeared in the blood of the Slavs, but it left its traces, and we have entire regions where among the population a certain hardness and vividness of the features have been preserved that is typical of the Hungarian people.84

Many years later, in 1894, during the time of conflict with Russia the official Bulgarian governmental newspaper Svoboda wrote again explicitly: The Hungarians and the Bulgarians, as is known, are of Turkic origin, but the Hungarians have kept their language, while the Bulgarians have adopted a Slavic one.85

Keeping the lineage of the Bulgarian ruler Prince Ferdinand in mind, it is not surprising that he played similar games and made shifts with different versions of Bulgarian ‘ancestors.’ His Bulgarian language teacher, Dobri Ganchev, made explicit mention of it in his memoirs: He had some knowledge of Bulgarian history, reading Jireček, before coming to Bulgaria. He very much liked to invoke the theory about the UgroFinnic origin of Asparukh’s Bulgars. When he had already travelled around Bulgaria, he began showing the places where Ugro-Finnic blood had been widespread. He regarded Stambolov as a typical representative of Asparukh’s Bulgarians of olden times.86

As we shall see, it was not the first time in the late 1880s or the beginning of the 1890s that the Bulgarian Prime Minister Stambolov was depicted as a person with Proto-Bulgarian features. Moreover, traces of this kind of thought about Prince Ferdinand’s ancestry could be found in historical studies as well. In 1902, discussing the absorption of Turanic Bulgars by the Hungarian nation, Zanetov explicitly asked in one of the footnotes:

84 Pravo, VIII, no. 18, 13 July 1873, 1. 85 Svoboda, VIII, no. 1388, 14 May 1894, 1. 86 Dobri Ganchev, Spomeni za Knjazheskoto vreme [Memoires about Prince Times] (Sofia: Izdatelstvo na Otechestvenija front, 1973), 23.

370

stefan detchev Is not there in His Royal Highness Prince Ferdinand’s veins, who is to a certain extent from Magyar descent, some Bulgarian-Turanic blood?87

However, the political constellation changed after 1894. Then, on the eve of the reconciliation between Bulgaria and Russia, when Ferdinand had to fulfill the Russian stipulation for Orthodox re-baptism of the heir to the throne, Prince Boris (future king Boris III), he already subscribed to the idea of Slavic origins. In this regard, Ganchev is explicit again: ‘This bias towards the Ugro-Finnish theory did not last in him for his whole life. It was changed according to policy. When he enunciated his famous phrase, according to which ‘the sunbeam for Bulgaria rises from East,’ the UgroFinnish theory was substituted in him with a purely Slavic one. Even in his own veins he found Slavic blood. He enjoyed talking on this topic with the Russian correspondents when they came for the re-baptism of the heir of the throne. And in order to engrave his Slavic origin in the memory of the generations to come, he ordered a slab of stone, hewn out of marble, to be inscribed with this and built in one of the portal columns of the ‘Alexander Nevski’ Cathedral.’88 As one can see, Prince Ferdinand was able to use the complex lineage of all monarchical figures in order to look for proximity and intimacy with his own subjects, at a first glance quite alien, subjects who were predominantly Orthodox, considered to be Slavs, but shaped as a modern nation in the preceding centuries within the cultural zone of the Ottoman Empire. In this regard, the Central European aristocrat tried to establish at least ideologically some imaginary ‘blood links’ with his socially, culturally, and ethnically different subjects. With the use of the historical past and the idea of ancestors, he even tried to legitimize Bulgaria’s foreign political choices, within the context of international politics in the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. This is why he shifted from the well-known theory of the Ugro-Finnish origin of the Old Bulgars to the ‘discovery’ of some Slavic blood in his own veins.

87 Zanetov, Bălgarskoto naselenie, 66. 88 Gantchev, Spomeni za Knjazheskoto vreme, 23–4. And it is true that in the beginning of 1896, following the political juncture between Sofia and St. Petersburg, in one of his correspondences with the Russian newspaper Svet, the Russian journalist Visarion Komarov, writing from Sofia, represented Prince Ferdinand as a Slav by descent. The ‘SlavicBulgarian descent’ of the monarch was later ridiculed by the famous Bulgarian writer and journalist Aleko Konstantinov. He also represented as ridiculous how from their fathers’ sides Saxonian dukes were depicted and represented with a ‘Slavic descent.’ See Mlada Balgaria, 26 Febr. 1896, No. 73.



between slavs and old bulgars

371

Europe, Civilization, the Slavs and the Old Bulgars The above-mentioned description of anti-Russian Stambolovists as des­ cendants of warlike, brave, non-Slavic Old Bulgars was not just a curiosity. There were many similar statements by people from the Stambolovist political camp, or Stambolov himself, claiming to be descendants of Old Bulgars and representatives of their racial type. The Old Bulgars or Proto-Bulgarians were at the very center of different racial speculations in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. These were evident in one of the descriptions by Bulgarian writer and poet Kiril Hristov of his first encounter with the president of the Bulgarian parliament, then militant Stambolovist, Zahari Stoyanov in 1889. One should remember that at that time the diplomatic relations between Bulgaria and Russia were broken and during the previous three years, as the main journalist of the Stambolov government, Stoyanov had been the one who had legitimized ideologically the antiRussian foreign political course. In describing Stoyanov’s appearance Hristov wrote the following: ‘I saw a knotty figure of a clumsy peasant, an ill-looking, dark, yellow face with the wide cheekbones of a ProtoBulgarian and the pretty eyes of a smart, cheerful look . . .’89 It seems that such descriptions of contemporary Bulgarian faces were part of popular wisdom, at least among the educated elite familiar with a bit of history. Another telling example is a description in typically racial language by the journalist Petăr Neykov.90 Very well educated and familiar with intellectual thought and fashion at the time, Neykov was fond of descriptions and explanations that rested on suppositions concerning race.91 In his memoirs, Neykov described his own impressions of the Prime Minister St. Stambolov’s appearance in the following way: ‘His head was Proto­Bulgarian, with high cheekbones, small sharp eyes, lurking under thick

89 Petko R. Slaveykov, Liuben Karavelov, Hristo Botev, Zahari Stoyanov v spomenite na savremennicite si [Petko R. Slaveykov, Liuben Karavelov, Hristo Botev, Zahari Stoyanov in the Memories of the People of their Time] (Sofia: Bălgarski pisatel, 1967), 666. 90 For more details see the foreword written by Petăr Dinekov in Petăr Neykov, Spomeni [Memoires] (Sofia: Izdatelstvo na Otechestven front, 1990), 7, 10–11. See also the foreword written by Liuben Georgiev in Petăr Neykov, Zavchera i vchera. Skici ot minaloto [The Day before Yesterday. Sketches from the Past] Vtoro izdanie (Sofia: Izdatelstvo na BZNS, 1981), 6. 91  He also spent part of his life in Istanbul and Budapest, and he was very familiar with French and German literature as well. See in Neykov, Spomeni, 1990, 10–11; in Neykov, Zavchera 6.

372

stefan detchev

eyebrows: this distinguished him right away.’92 Referring more concretely to the beginning of the 1890s, when he was a pupil at school, Neykov added: ‘We the Bulgarians are Slavs, that is at least how they thought of us at school, but the effigy of the Lord was seen everywhere: pure Mongolian, I would say now, Proto-Bulgarian from the time of Krum.’93 It seems that this description of the Prime Minister as a ‘Mongolian’ became a kind of popular wisdom at the time. It is not by accident that in her memoirs Sultana Racho Petrova, ex-wife of the Minister of War Racho Petrov, speaking about 1887 and Prime Minister Stambolov, described ‘his brilliant, wide forehead, his typically Tartar face, his keen eyes . . .’94 These descriptions expressed popular thinking about Stefan Stambolov and his face and physiognomy, at least among intellectuals who were familiar with the main lines of the Bulgarian historical narrative. These instances were clear examples of how racial descriptions were based on the available historical knowledge at the time, the way contemporary Bulgarians normatively imagined their ‘ancestors,’ and the actual knowledge of the ethnic complexity of the Bulgarian past. In this regard, symbolically the ‘Slavic’ was supposed to mark what was closer to the European norms of politeness and morality. Anything ‘ill-looking,’ ‘dark,’ ‘yellow,’ ‘Mongolian,’ ‘Proto-bulgarian,’ or ‘Oriental-Tartarian’ was seen as designating something ‘Asian,’ ‘barbaric,’ ‘primitive,’ ‘plebeian,’ and ‘uncivilized.’ By the end of the school year in 1892, Neykov, then about ten years old and a pupil in Svishtov, saw Stambolov during his visit to the town of his wife, Poliksenia Stanchova-Stambolova. The meeting took place at a site about three or four kilometers out of town at the monastery. Stambolov went there to have a picnic with his spouse’s relatives. According to Neykov, the meeting embarrassed the small boy. He separates in his description the people who accompanied Stambolov into two symbolic groups. On the one side, Neykov puts the bodyguards, the servants, and two of the males—one of them Stambolov, dressed in ordinary, rougher, careless clothing. Neykov adds that he recognized immediately the features of the Prime Minister from the portrait he saw many times—‘cheekbones and small concave eyes.’ On the other side, Neykov puts the women and most of the men, some of them in ‘light, Viennese suits.’ The females 92 Neykov, Zavchera, 38. 93 Neykov, Spomeni, 58. 94 Sultana Racho Petrova, Moite spomeni [My Memoires] (Sofia: Izdatelstvo na BAN, 1991), 199.



between slavs and old bulgars

373

were dressed ‘not for a picnic or an excursion in the country, but as if for a reception,’ in fashionable clothes. Their faces were ‘pale, with thin lips, which were barely touched by forks, held with the ends of the fingers.’95 Having narrated this symbolic separation, Neykov commented: I was still too young to be able to distinguish between the most typical in different faces. But in my memory something definitive was left, which now permits me to clarify the difference as a difference between people from different tribes. More precisely, as a difference between Proto-Bulgarians and, let us say, Greeks and Arnauts. . . . The Stanchovs were proud with their Arbanasian descent and noble lineage. The profiles of those men and women were delicate, but Stambolov almost had no profile, his cheek-bones darkened it. It is easy now to say and understand all this. But at that moment, I had only a vague feeling that the group of humans was a combination of two worlds, somehow incompatible, hostile in blood.96

These analyses of differences invoked racial categories. The characterization and classification in terms of ‘race’ designated as ‘tribe’ was organized in order to differentiate between social and class lines inherited through ‘blood.’ This ‘blood’ had transmitted biological characteristics, social and cultural qualities that had to represent differences between the ‘two worlds’ as fundamental differences. In this regard, as one can see, facial features such as ‘profiles,’ ‘cheekbones,’ ‘small concave eyes,’ ‘thin lips’ were not the only ‘racial’ signs of something that was typical of ‘Greeks’ or Orthodox ‘Arnauts.’ Moreover, mannerisms, affectations, habits and tastes, and even clothes, those ‘light, Viennese suits,’ could function as racial signs as well. They followed the same logic that differentiated the ‘tribes’ defined by the author as ‘two worlds, somehow incompatible, hostile in blood.’ Therefore, one could see in the above-mentioned text in the internal political debate or social context the non-Bulgarian logic according to which Orthodox noble Greek or Arnaut/Albanian culture was seen as something even tribally superior to Proto-Bulgarianness. Neykov thus stressed intra-national racial differences, differences dissociated from nation and associated with classes or social groups that function symbolically in the Bulgarian social, cultural and ethnic contexts as ‘aristocracy,’ on the one hand, and as plebeian milieu, on the other. Svishtov was one of the Bulgarian towns with a traditional local commercial elite that could be distinguished on the basis of its affluence and culture. Located on the river Danube, it was much more strongly influenced, 95 Neykov, Zavchera, 39–40. 96 Ibid., 40.

374

stefan detchev

especially among this local ‘aristocracy,’ by Viennese culture. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the first years after the establishment of the modern Bulgarian state Svishtov was one of the strongholds of the Conservative party. The local ‘nobles’ were really established families that were thought to have at least cultural, if not ethnic, ‘Greek’ and Orthodox Albanian descent. In this regard, the Bulgarian Prime Minister did not appear in the story as an embodiment of ‘Bulgarianness,’ but rather of the lower status, something like a ‘barbarian by birth,’ the newcomer among the real elite, his ‘blood’ hostile to their ‘lineage.’ Such descriptions suggest that Bulgarian politicians and public personages could be described as certain human types. One could look like a ‘rebel,’ or a ‘peaceful man,’ like an ‘honest and morally thinking citizen,’ but not because of his ‘cheek-bones,’ ‘eyes,’ and ‘lips.’ Of course, a politician became a liberal, or a democrat, or a conservative, or a dictator, not because he was a member of a certain ‘tribe,’ not because of his ‘Slavic’ or ‘Proto-bulgarian,’ or ‘Tartarian’ facial features, the ‘blood’ in his veins, or lineage. Instead of assuming that such characteristics were racially inherited, they were the results and consequences of elements that deserved sociological, historical and cultural explanations, not simply racial ones. Such writing on heredity at the turn of the century elevated the importance of ‘blood’ and ‘genes’ as defining aspects of temper, character and culture, whether someone or some group of people were ‘civilized’ or ‘barbaric.’ Moreover, it strengthened the view according to which ‘race’ could be recognized on the basis of the human face, relating the concept to the historical knowledge of the Bulgarian past and its ethnic complexity. The legacy of theories of the division of humankind into fundamentally different ‘types’ also linked the term ‘race’ with physical or visible difference. Explicitly or implicitly, this conveyed the notion that populations were marked by a characteristic appearance and therefore were biologically different from one another. In the beginning of the twentieth century fashionable racial thinking, the increasing number of anthropological publications, expanding notions of biological heredity and its application to criminal psychology, led to a rise in the number of writings on racial diversity, particularly on racial types, and detailed descriptions of human physiognomy expressed in racial language. These descriptions very often overlapped and intersected with politics. To the extent that the Bulgarian nation was defined as ‘Slavic,’ it somehow formed an imaginary normative gaze and a perspective from which to thematize deviations from the established norm. Thus ‘race’ could be a real way of seeing, a perspective on the Bulgarian



between slavs and old bulgars

375

population that exists in some Bulgarians’ perceptions, interpretations, representations, classifications, and categorizations. Undoubtedly, this gaze and the judgments that were drawn from it were based on stereotypes and exclusions that were in essence examples of pre-modern ethnocentrism, not scientifically or biologically conceived racism. However, they were strengthened by modern biological determinism and ‘scientific’ assumptions about the relationship between physical types and the corresponding mental capacities of different races. Conclusion In the second half of the nineteenth century, romantic assumptions about distinctive, identifying features of a nation, its ‘spiritual essence’ or ‘national characteristics,’ were a dominant force in the evolution of a vaguely defined Bulgarian national ideology. While initially the Slavs dominated as imagined ancestors, at a certain point the ‘band’ of ProtoBulgarians came to share a place in this ideology. In the end, the ProtoBulgarian horde were even regarded as important ‘ancestors,’ whose role in the establishment of the ‘Slavic state’ in the Balkans, near the Danube, had been crucial. In this regard, although the Proto-Bulgarians eventually came to take their place as ‘ancestors,’ no similar role was given to the Turkic groups, which were marginalized in the narrative. In most of the cases, the thinking of professional historians was restricted by the national framework of their meta-narrative, the linear history from the late seventh century onwards, or the implicit or explicit idea that a Bulgarian nation or ethnic community, dominated by a Slavic component, had existed in medieval times. There were no speculations based on race in academic studies. Moreover, in scholarly historical writing, despite all the biases, when nationalism was present, it was characterized in a Rankean style, with a certain enlightened universalism or an Enlightenment kind of cosmopolitanism reminiscent of Herder. Different abuses and misuses of alleged Old Bulgar origins show the instability of the meaning of this concept in Bulgarian culture. In some cases it was possible for the notion of ‘Proto-Bulgarian’ to symbolize and function as a designation of something Asian, primitive, uncivilized. In others, however, ‘Proto-Bulgarian’ was understood as implying power and military strength, as well as a gift for state-building and organization. In the third context ‘Proto-Bulgarian’ was used to designate and embody a tyrannical and anti-democratic power. Moreover, while the ‘pure Slavs’

376

stefan detchev

could be peaceful and submissive agricultural workers with no military inclinations, in other cases the Slavic was seen as an embodiment of Europeanness and opposed to the Proto-Bulgarians, imagined as primitive and uncivilized. In this regard, the designations ‘Tartar’ or ‘Mongolian’ were long seen as pejorative, and they never fully lost this negative connotation. Ultimately, of course, the question of origins in the distant past or the remote ancestry of contemporary peoples is irrelevant for scholarly research. Whether Bulgarians are descendants of the Slavs who settled in the second half of the sixth or seventh century or of the Old Bulgars, who came at the end of the seventh, no contemporary Bulgarians could responsibly claim to be a ‘pure’ descendant of either the Slavs or the ProtoBulgarians, nor would any historian venture such a claim regarding the majority of Bulgarians living today. There are many gaps in our knowledge of the historical demography of the territory where the modern Bulgarian state is established. Therefore, the Slavs or the Proto-Bulgarians could be one of a number of strains that shaped the modern Bulgarians. However, the only way to understand the origins is thus to reveal the whole ethnic landscape of the past in its full complexity. In fact, the very claims regarding the ‘discovery’ of the ‘ancestors’ of contemporary peoples, whether groups of a population or a whole nation, in remote history is a denial of history as such and the lessons of history concerning change in human life. The peoples of the remote past have nothing to do with contemporary social and cultural issues. In this regard, one of the limits of history as a discipline is to reveal convincingly the remote ancestors of people living today. Nevertheless, the Bulgarian case demonstrates how ancestors could be imagined, chosen, combined, changed, and endowed and depicted with different and controversial qualities, vices and virtues. In this regard, the shift from the Slavs to the Proto-Bulgarians or the change in the balance of their representation in historical writings and the public imagination is very instructive regarding the wider cultural, political and social issues.

With Brotherly Love: The Czech Beginnings of Medieval Archaeology in Bulgaria and Ukraine Florin Curta Bay Ganyo, Aleko Konstantinov’s “incredible tales of a contemporary Bulgarian,” first published in 1895, contains a relatively long account of his hero’s travel to Prague as a member of the Bulgarian delegation to the World Exhibit of 1891. When finally in Prague, after a long trip by train, the Bulgarian delegates were given an elaborate reception, most appropriate for those whom many Czechs at the time regarded as their “Slavic brothers.” Part of that reception was a band playing in the train station the Czech anthem, “Kde domov můj” (Where is my home). In the late nineteenth century, a Bulgarian version of that anthem, complete with translated lyrics, was so familiar to most Bulgarians that Bay Ganyo, who did not know that the Bulgarian song was in fact a “native” version of a Czech original, was very touched to see that the Czechs had taken the time to learn a Bulgarian song in order to play it for the occasion.1 Konstantinov’s irony could be easily lost on any English-speaking reader, who unlike Bulgarians, does not know that responsible for the translation and popularity of the Czech anthem in Bulgaria were Czech émigrés. The blurring boundaries between Self and Other in this case are meant to point in a most comical way to the background for Bay Ganyo’s remark, namely, that Czechs and Bulgarians were regarded as “brothers” with related languages and important parts of history to share. Indeed, at the Exhibit, every meeting seems to have been an opportunity to mention the great Slavic people, Jan Hus, and especially Cyril and Methodius. Visibly annoyed, Bay Ganyo therefore asked the leader of the Bulgarian delegation to give a speech on Asparukh, for some balance.2 Again, his gaffe can be understood only by knowing that in the 1890s, many still believed the Bulgars to have been of Slavic origin.3 This was apparently on Bay Ganyo’s mind as well, when 1 Aleko Konstantinov, Bai Gan’o (Sofia: Zakharii Stoianov, 1999), 118. 2 Konstantinov, Bai Gan’o, 120–1. 3 Here, as well as elsewhere in this paper, “Bulgars” refers to the people living in Bulgaria before the conversion to Christianity in the late ninth century and speaking a nonSlavic, most likely Turkic language. By contrast, “Bulgarians” is the name reserved for the inhabitants of Bulgaria after the conversion to Christianity (and the subsequent adoption

378

florin curta

asking for a shift of emphasis from Slavic-speaking churchmen such as Cyril, Methodius, and Jan Hus to political and military leaders, like Asparukh. But there is another, perhaps even deeper irony in Bay Ganyo’s remark. At the time of the story, the Bulgar past of Bulgaria was in the process of being discovered through the efforts of a Czech, Karel Škorpil, who knew very well that Asparukh’s successors were no Slavs. An indefatigable archaeologist, Škorpil spent sixty years of his life in the field. In 1884, he began excavations on the Zăbuite Hill near Preslav, where he discovered two large buildings, later interpreted as the palace of Symeon the Great (893–927).4 Together with his brother Hermenegild, Škorpil first

of the Old Church Slavonic liturgy) to the present day. The first to draw the distinction between Bulgarian Slavs and the Turkic Bulgars was Marin Drinov in his Pogled vrăkh proiskhozhdaneto na bălgarski narod i nachaloto na bălgarskata istoriia [Contribution to the origin of the Bulgarian people and the beginnings of the Bulgarian history], (Plovdiv: Khr. G. Danov, 1869). 4 Karel Škorpil, “Belezhki za starata bălgarska stolica Preslav [Remarks on the old Bulgar capital at Preslav],” Izvestiia na Bălgarskoto arkheologichesko druzhestvo 4 (1914): 129–47; Karel Škorpil, “Pametnici ot stolica Preslav” [Monuments from the capital at Preslav], in Bălgariia 1000 godini, 927–1927 (Sofia: Izdatelstvo na Ministerstvogo na narodnoto prosvieshienie, 1930): 193–4 with pl. 10. Škorpil returned to Preslav for excavations in 1892, 1905, and 1926. He was still working there in 1927, when Bulgarians commemorated 1,000 years since the death of Symeon the Great. See Stancho Stanchev, “Preslavskiiat dvorec. Săstoianie i zadachi na prouchvaneto mu” [The Preslav Court. The results and perspectives of its investigation], Preslav. Sbornik 1 (1968): 49–50; Margarita Vaklinova, “Preslavskiiat dvorec (glavnite dvorcovi postroiki prez stolichniia period)” [The Preslav Court (the main palatial buildings of the period during which Preslav was the capital)], in Istoriko-arkheologicheski izsledvaniia v pamet na prof. dr. Stancho Vaklinov, ed. by Vasilka Tăpkova-Zaimova, Georgi Danchev, Kazimir Popkonstantinov and Stefan Iordanov (Veliko Tărnovo: Universitetsko izdatelstvo “Sv. sv. Kiril i Metodii”, 1994), 45–6; Stoicho Bonev, Carskiiat dvorec văv Veliki Preslav. Ploshtadăt s fialata (IX–XIV v.)(Veliko Tărnovo: Universitetsko izdatelstvo “Sv.sv. Kiril i Metodii”, 1998); Margarita Vaklinova, Irina Shtereva, and Snezhana Gorianova. “Preslavskiiat dvorec sled Stancho Vaklinov” [The Preslav court according to Stancho Vaklinov], in Prof. d.i.n. Stancho Vaklinov i srednovekovnata bălgarska kultura (Veliko Tărnovo: Universitetsko izdatelstvo “Sv. sv. Kiril i Metodii”, 2005), 11–2. In 1886 Škorpil also began excavations in Veliko Tărnovo, the old capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire. He continued to work in Veliko Tărnovo between 1891 and 1894, in 1905, 1910, 1911, and 1930. See Krăstiiu Miiatev, “Nauchnoto delo na Karel Shkorpil” [The scholarly activity of Karel Shkorpil], in Izsledvaniia v pamet na Karel Shkorpil, ed. by Krăstiiu Miiatev and Vasil Mikov (Sofia: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata Akademiia na Naukite, 1961): 8–9; Ludvík Skružný, “Karel Škorpil a Slovanský Ústav v Praze (ve svědectví materiálů, uložených ve vědeckém archívu BAV v Sofii a z majetku rodiny Škorpilovy)” [Karel Shkorpil and the Slavic Institute in Prague (on the basis of the material in the archives of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the archives of the Škorpil family)], Češi v cizině 7 (1993): 183; Ludvík Skružný, “Bratři Karel a Hermenegild Škorpilové a bulharská středověká archeologie” [The Škorpil brothers Karel and Heremengild and the Bulgarian medieval archaeology], Archaeologia historica 26 (2001): 492.



with brotherly love

379

photographed and drew the massive rock relief carving on the cliff in Madara, henceforth known as the Madara Horseman. On the basis of the associated inscriptions, he attributed the relief to the Bulgar ruler Krum (ca. 803–814).5 However, his most important discoveries, which eventually established Škorpil’s reputation as the founder of the Bulgarian school of medieval archaeology, are those on the outskirts of the village of Aboba in northeastern Bulgaria. On the basis of an inscription of the Bulgar ruler Omurtag (814–831), Škorpil identified the ruins in Aboba as the first residence of the Bulgar rulers. The inscription had been carved on a column recycled as spolium in the Church of the Forty Martyrs, which was erected in 1230 in Veliko Tărnovo, some eighty miles to the southwest from Aboba. Correctly surmising that the column (and inscription) had been brought to Veliko Tărnovo from Aboba, Škorpil noted that the text of the inscription mentioned a new “house,” which Omurtag had apparently built on the bank of the Danube, at a distance said to have been 40,000 fathoms (i.e., 53 miles) from his “old home” at an unnamed location.6 A second inscription found in 1905 in Chatalar (present-day Khan Krum), some sixteen miles to the southwest from Aboba, specifically mentioned Omurtag to have lived in “the camp of Pliska,” a detail which Škorpil used to locate in Aboba the ruler’s “old home” mentioned in the inscription from the Church of the Forty Martyrs.7 Škorpil was also the first to excavate the site. To be sure, funds

5 Hermenegild and Karel Škorpil, “Albulgarische Inschriften,” Archaeologisch-epigraphische Mitteilungen 19 (1896): 237–248. The relief and the inscriptions are republished in Karel Škorpil, “Pamiatniki v okrestnostiakh Abobskoi planiny: Stana, Provadiiskiia gory, vodorazdel’nyia vozvyshennosti i Shumenskiia gory” [Monuments in the Aboba region: Stana, the Provadiia hills, the hills separating the two valleys, and the Shumen hills], Izvestiia Russkogo arkheologicheskogo instituta v Konstantinople 10 (1905): 385–442. In 1924, Karel Škorpil re-examined the Madara inscriptions and (wrongly) concluded that the relief was Thracian, while dating the inscriptions to the reigns of three ninth-century rulers of Bulgaria—Krum, Omurtag, and Malamir. For a recent mise-au-point, see Uwe Fiedler, “Bulgars in the Lower Danube region. A survey of the archaeological evidence and of the state of current research,” in The Other Europe in the Middle Ages. Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, and Cumans, ed. by Florin Curta (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008), 202–7. 6 Hermengild Škorpil and Karel Škorpil, Mogili [Barrows] (Plovdiv: Pchela, 1898; reprinted Sofia, 1999), 153. 7 Both inscriptions have been published by Veselin Beshevliev, Die protobulgarischen Inschriften (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1963), 246–50. For Škorpil and the Bulgar inscriptions, see Veselin Beshevliev, “Karel Shkorpil kato epigraf ” [Karel Shkorpil as epigraphist], in Izsledvaniia v pamet na Karel Shkorpil, ed. by Krăstiiu Miiatev and Vasil Mikov (Sofia: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata Akademiia na Naukite, 1961), 25–27. By 1925, Škorpil’s interpretation of the site had gained so much acceptance that the name of the village officially changed to Pliskov (Pliska since 1947). Upon his death in 1944, Karel Škorpil was buried

380

florin curta

were secured by the founder and director of the Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople, the prominent Byzantinist Fedor I. Uspenskii, who, together with Škorpil, conducted excavations in Pliska between 1899 and 1900. The results of those excavations, complete with a detailed plan of the entire site and a photo album of 117 plates were published in the tenth volume of the Institute’s annual reports.8 The main focus of this research was the Inner Town, the stone enclosure which, on the basis of the two inscriptions he had discovered, Škorpil dated to the reign of Omurtag. He found a large rectangular building, which he promptly interpreted as Omurtag’s “throne palace.” He also called “court basilica” the three-aisled church, which he discovered immediately to the west from the “throne palace.” The numerous graves he encountered when removing the first layers above the “court basilica” were carefully excavated and the precise location or depth of each one of them were duly recorded, as Škorpil was convinced that the “court basilica,” a building younger than the “throne palace,“ was the first church built in Bulgaria after the conversion to Christianity under Prince Boris-Michael (864/5).9 The excavations in Aboba-Pliska had a great impact on the scholarly perception of pre-Christian Bulgaria and established the reputation of Karel Škorpil among historians and archaeologists.10 In a single year of in the middle of the archaeological site at Pliska with a late eleventh-century high cross from Kalugerica as tombstone. 8 For a thorough description of the site, see Karel Škorpil, “Postroiki v Abobskom ukreplenii” [Buildings in the Aboba fortification], Izvestiia Russkogo arkheologicheskogo instituta v Konstantinople 10 (1905): 62–152. For small finds, see Karel Škorpil, “Oruzhie” [Weapons], Izvestiia Russkogo arkheologicheskogo instituta v Konstantinople 10 (1905): 38–321. For barrows and “megaliths,” see Karel Škorpil, “Megaliticheskie pamiatniki” [Megalithic monuments], Izvestiia Russkogo arkheologicheskogo instituta v Konstantinople 10 (1905): 372–84. For coins and seals, see B.A. Panchenko, “Vizantiiskiia pechati i monety” [Byzantine seals and coins], Izvestiia Russkogo arkheologicheskogo instituta v Konstantinople 10 (1905): 291– 300. For inscriptions, see Fedor I. Uspenskii, “Nadpisi starobolgarskiia: kolonny s imenami gorod’; nadpisi s fragmentami dogovor’; nadpisi istoricheskago soderzhaniia; fragmenty nadpisei raznago soderzhaniia i proiskhozhdeniia” [Old Bulgarian inscriptions: columns with city names; inscriptions with fragmentary treatises; inscriptions of historical significance; fragments of inscriptions of various significance and origin], Izvestiia Russkogo arkheologicheskogo instituta v Konstantinople 10 (1905): 173–242. 9 For Škorpil as responsible for the introduction of the notion of precision, of a cult of work, and of a sense of mission, for which there was no tradition in Bulgaria, see Rasho Rashev, “Karel Shkorpil—izsledovatel na rannosrednovekovnata bălgarska kultura” [Karel Shkorpil—a student of the early medieval culture of Bulgaria], in Kulturnata integraciia mezhdu chekhi i bălgari v evropeiskata tradiciia. Materiali ot VII liatna nauchna sreshta, Varna, 25–27 iuni 1999 g., ed. by Dimităr Ovcharov, Petia Vasileva and Darina Vasileva (Sofia: Obshtina Varna, 2000), 146–7. 10 Lubor Niederle, then a renowned professor of archaeology at the University of Prague, wrote to Karel Škorpil in 1906 to congratulate him on the publication of the results of



with brotherly love

381

archaeological excavations, with the assistance of the Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople, Karel Škorpil was able to reveal the remains of the first capital of medieval Bulgaria, believed to be the residence of its rulers from Asparukh to Symeon the Great, and to lay the foundations of Bulgarian medieval archaeology. Those were remarkable achievements, especially for someone who had lived in Bulgaria for only 25 years. Škorpil had no formal training in archaeology. Born in 1859 in a middle-class family in Vysoké Mýto (near Pardubice, in northeastern Bohemia), he studied mathematics and physics at the University of Prague, no doubt preparing for a career in science.11 However, shortly after he graduated in 1882, he joined his older brother Hermenegild in Plovdiv, the main city of East Rumelia, the semi-autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire created by the congress convened in Berlin in 1878 at the end of the Russo-Turkish war.12 The Škorpils were close relatives of Konstantin Jireček (1854–1918), who at that time was the Bulgarian minister of education in the cabinet of the general Leonid Sobolev. Their mother, Anna, was the sister of Josef Jireček (1825–1888), a prominent historian of the Czech literature, a member of the Bohemian Landtag and of the Austrian Reichsrat. Konstantin was Josef ’s son by the daughter of Pavel Jozef Šafárik (1795–1861), one of the founders of the discipline of Slavic studies and a most prominent advocate of Panslavism. Konstantin Jireček studied history at the University of Vienna and in 1876 published a history of the Bulgarians, the first major work of European historiography on that topic.13 The book made a great impression on Bulgarian intellectuals and politicians and, after finishing his studies in Vienna in 1879, Konstantin Jireček went to Bulgaria to help with the building of the administrative, school and economic infrastructure of the new state. the Russo-Bulgarian excavations in Aboba-Pliska. See Skružný, “Karel Škorpil a Slovanský Ústav,” 188 with n. 11. 11  Martin Šámal, “Rodina Škorpilova” [The Škorpil family], in Krásný život žili, krásnou práci konali . . . Nejslavnější generace rodu Škorpilů (Vysoké Mýto: Regionální muzeum, 2006), 12; Ludvík Skružný, “Bratři Škorpilové průkopníci bulharské vědy” [The Škorpil brothers—pioneers of Bulgarian science], Češi v cizině 3 (1988): 99. 12 East Rumelia was incorporated into the Principality of Bulgaria in 1885. In 1908, Ferdinand I (1887–1918) proclaimed himself tsar and declared Bulgaria an independent country. 13 Konstantin Josef Jireček, Geschichte der Bulgaren (Prague: Tempský, 1876). For the impact the book had on the Bulgarian intelligentsia, see Roy E. Heath, “Konstantin Jireček’s History of the Bulgarians and its relation to the events in Bulgaria of 1876–1878,” Bulgarian Historical Review 9, no. 3 (1981): 33–41. Jireček never returned to Bulgaria, but later published a book on the principality of Bulgaria, thus shifting the emphasis from the medieval to the more recent history of the country. See Konstantin Josef Jireček, Das Fürstentum Bulgarien (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1891).

382

florin curta

He entered the service of the Bulgarian government in 1879 and served first as secretary to the minister of education, then as minister of education in the cabinets of generals Kazimir Ehrenrot (April–July 1881) and Leonid Sobolev (June 1882–September 1883), before returning to Prague in 1884.14 It is in Jireček‘s capacity as minister that Hermenegild Škorpil approached him to introduce his younger brother.15 Karel first went to Plovdiv as a gymnasium teacher of mathematics and science, but four years later the Škorpil brothers moved to Sofia, where Karel taught at the local gymnasium until 1888. Perhaps prompted by the success of his other brother, Vladislav, who lived at that time in Crimea, Karel began his first archaeological excavations in 1888 in the early Christian and medieval cemetery around the Church of St. Sophia in Sofia.16 When, eleven years 14 František Kutnar and Jaroslav Marek, Předhledné dějiny českého a slovenského dějepisectví. Od počatků národni kultury až do sklonku třičatých let 20. století [Czech and Slovak historiography from the beginning of the national culture to the 1930s] (Prague: Lidové noviny, 1997), 407–8. 15 See the two letters dated March 10 and April 10, 1881 published by Petăr Miiatev and Georgi Iantarski, “Korespondenciia na Khermengild i Karel Shkorpil s Konstantin Irechek (1881–1899)” [Hermengild and Karel Shkorpil’s correspondence with Konstantin Jireček], in Izsledvaniia v pamet na Karel Shkorpil, ed. by Krăstiiu Miiatev and Vasil Mikov (Sofia: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata Akademiia na Naukite, 1961), 29–48. 16 Miiatev, “Nauchnoto delo,” 8. Vladislav Škorpil (1853–1919) studied Classical and Slavic philology in Prague and was one of the Czechs who responded to the call of Tsar Alexander II, who wanted to introduce more Latin and Greek into the Russian schools, in order to make them compatible with those of west European countries. On a stipend from the Russian ministry of education, Vladislav Škorpil studied Classical philology in Leipzig, before moving in 1878 to Russia as a teacher of Latin and Greek. He taught for a year in St. Petersburg, then moved to Crimea, first to Yalta (1879), then to Kerch’ (1886). Vladislav Škorpil became famous when discovering the large late antique cemetery on the Hospital Street (Gospital’naia) in Kerch’, one of the first major cemeteries excavated in Crimea. See Karel Sklenář, “Ladislav/Vladislav Škorpil,” in Krásný život žili, krásnou práci konali . . . Nejslavnější generace rodu Škorpilů (Vysoké Mýto: Regionální muzeum, 2006), 31. Vladislav’s younger brother, Hermenegild, also developed an interest in Classical archaeology, as he excavated the basilica at Dzhanavar tepe and the rock-cut monastery at Aladzha, both near Varna. See Ludvík Skružný, “Profesoři Hermengild a Karel Škorpilové působící v Bulharsku.” I [Professors Hermengild and Karel Shkorpil working in Bulgaria], Theatrum historiae 3 (2008): 244; Aleksandăr Minchev, “Novi danni za rannokhristianskata bazilika pri s. Shkorpilovci, Varnensk” [New data on the early Christian basilica in Shkorpilovci in the region of Varna], Izvestiia na Narodniia muzei Varna 32–33 (1996–1997): 130–50; Stefan Boiadzhiev, “Prinosăt na K. Shkorpil i A. Rashenov za izsledvaniiata na cărkvata na Dzhanavar Tepe văv Varna” [A hommage to K. Shkorpil and A. Rashenov in the study of the Dzhanavar Tepe church near Varna], in Kulturnata integraciia mezhdu chekhi i bălgari v evropeiskata tradiciia. Materiali ot VII liatna nauchna sreshta, Varna, 25–27 iuni 1999 g., ed. by Dimităr Ovcharov, Petia Vasileva and Darina Vasileva (Sofia: Obshtina Varna, 2000), 185–94; Valeri Kinov, “Bratia Shkorpil i Aladzha Manastir” [The Shkorpil brothers and the Aladzha Monastery], in Kulturnata integraciia mezhdu chekhi i bălgari v evropeiskata tradiciia. Materiali ot VII liatna nauchna sreshta, Varna, 25–27 iuni 1999 g., ed. by Dimităr



with brotherly love

383

later, he began excavations in Pliska, Karel Škorpil was already an archaeologist with a solid reputation and plenty of experience on a variety of sites ranging from prehistory to the late Middle Ages.17 However, it was particularly in medieval archaeology that his activity would have a more lasting impact. In that respect, Škorpil may be compared to the other pioneer of medieval archaeology in Southeastern Europe, the Franciscan Lujo Marun (1857–1939), who excavated the episcopal church of St. Mary in Biskupija, as well as the adjacent cemetery with some of the richest burial assemblages known for early medieval Croatia.18 Marun’s excavations,

Ovcharov, Petia Vasileva and Darina Vasileva (Sofia: Obshtina Varna, 2000), 195–202. Hermenegild and Vladislav published together their research on the so-called Erkesiia dike, which in the ninth century marked the boundary between Bulgaria and Byzantium. See Hermenegild Škorpil and Vladislav Škorpil, “Pohraničný val v jižním Bulharsku” [A border dike in southern Bulgaria], Slovanský sborník 3 (1884), 464–71; Pavel Georgiev, “Bălgarovizantiiskata granica pri Khan Omurtag i Erkesiiata” [The Bulgar-Byzantine border during Khan Omurtag and the Erkesiia], in Arkheologicheski i istoricheski prouchvaniia v Novozagorsko (Sofia: Izdatelsvto za Bălgarskata Akademiia na Naukite, 1999), 131–40. 17 Velichko Todorov, “ ‘Okupaciiata’ kato civilizatorska rolia ili vmesto otgovor na pisatelia Iordan Vălchev” [‘The occupation’ as a civilizing force or about the interview with the writer Ivan Vălchev], in Chekhi v Bălgariia—istoriia i tipologiia na edna civilizatorska rolia I. Sbornik statii po sluchai 120–godishninata ot izdavaneto na “Istoriia na bălgarite” ot Konstantin Irechek, ed. by Velichko Todorov (Sofia: Universitetsko izdatelstvo “Sv. Kliment Okhridski,” 1995), 23, has suggested that Ivan Vazov’s Golden Mountain (Zlatnata planina) was a jab at Karel Škorpil, supposedly the character behind Dr. Karlo, a “foreigner” who knows very little about Bulgarian politics, but is obsessed with becoming the “Columbus of Bulgaria.” However, the story was published in 1888, when Karel Škorpil was not yet the accomplished archaeologist he would become during the first decade of the twentieth century. Dr. Karlo is certainly a jab at the Czech emigrés, with their pretensions to civilize a barbarian country, but Vazov does not appear to have had in mind anyone of them in particular. 18 See Franjo Radić, “Hrvatska biskupska crkva Sv. Marije u Biskupiji i kaptolska crkva Sv. Bartula na sadašnjem Kapitulu kod Knina” [The Croatian episcopal church of St. Mary in Biskupija and the Capitol Church of St. Bartul on present-day Kapitul near Knin], Starohrvatska prosvjeta 1 (1895), 1: 35–39 and 3: 150–56; Franjo Radić, “Srebrne ostruge i saponi iz starohrvatskog groba u biskupskoj bazilici S. Marije u Biskupiji kod Knina” [Silver spurs and buckles from Old Croatian graves in the episcopal basilica St. Mary in Biskupije near Knin], Starohrvatska prosvjeta 2 (1896), 1: 5–9; Franjo Radić, “Grobna raka u starohrvatske biskupske bazilike S. Marije u Biskupiji kod Knina i u njoj nađeni mrtvački ostanci” [The coffins found in the Croatian episcopal basilica St. Mary in Biskupija near Knin and the skeletons found in them], Starohrvatska prosvjeta 2 (1896), 2: 71–86; Franjo Radić, “Mrtvački ostanci iz triju starohrvatskih grobova uz ruševine biskupske bazilike kod Knina Sv. Marije u Biskupiji kod Knina” [The skeletons found in three Old Croatian graves within the episcopal basilica of St. Mary in Biskupija near Knin], Starohrvatska prosvjeta 3 (1897): 31–8; Lujo Marun, “O najznamenitijim starohrvatskim grovobima na groblju odkrivene biskupske bazilike S. Marije u Biskupiji kod Knina” [On the significance of the burials found in the episcopal church of St. Mary in Biskupija near Knin], Starohrvatska prosvjeta 4 (1898), 3–4: 113–18. For Lujo Marun’s life and work, see Maja Petrinec, Lujo Marun (Split: Muzej hrvatskih arheoloških spomenika, 1998).

384

florin curta

however, post-date Škorpil’s work in Preslav and Veliko Tărnovo by almost a decade. Unlike Father Marun, Škorpil was not primarily interested in the archaeology of Christian monuments. Moreover, he was not a native of the country, the medieval past of which became the object of his lifelong career as an archaeologist. What prompted Karel Škorpil to leave his native Bohemia and establish himself in Bulgaria? Why was this gymnasium teacher of mathematics and science so profoundly interested in the medieval past of his adoptive homeland? To answer those questions, one needs first to turn to Karel Škorpil’s background. His entire family had Slavophile and Russophile views.19 Although he never explicitly linked his research to politics, Škorpil shared the Panslavist views of his Jireček relatives. For example, while excavating an Iron-Age burial mound near Varna, he stumbled upon the remains of those who had fallen in the battle which had taken place on that site on November 10, 1444 between the Ottomans and the crusading army of Ladislas I, King of Hungary (1440–1444). Together with his brother Hermenegild, Karel began to plan the erection of a monument that would commemorate the Slovaks, Serbs, Bulgarians, as well as the 300 Czech Hussites, who had died in the battle together with their king.20 Although perceived as Czechs in Bulgaria, both Hermenegild and Karel Škorpil preferred to be viewed as Bulgarian whenever they felt threatened by the AustrianHungarian monarchy in their new country. It is because of his Slavophile views that Karel turned to Russia and Russian support for his excavations in Pliska. The political significance of that choice was recognized by Emperor Nicholas II who, in 1901 awarded Karel Škorpil the Order of St. Anne, most likely at the recommendation of Fedor I. Uspenskii, the director of the Russian Institute of Archaeology in Constantinople, who had meanwhile become a member of the Russian Academy. However, Škorpil’s friendship with Fedor I. Uspenskii went beyond scholarly cooperation: the Russian historian was the sponsor at the baptismal font for Škorpil’s son Václav born on June 14, 1899.21 In that same year, Škorpil created the Slavic Association (Slavianska Beseda) of Bulgaria, the declared 19  Skružný, “Bratři Karel a Hermenegild Škorpilové,” 488. 20 Skružný, “Profesoři Hermengild a Karel Škorpilové,” 245–6; Skružný, “Bratři Karel a Hermenegild Škorpilové,” 492. 21  Skružný, “Karel Škorpil a Slovanský Ústav,” 183. Václav’s mother was Marie née Bernkopfová, whom Karel had married in Plovdiv and who was the daughter of a Czech lawyer responsible for the establishment of the standards of European jurisprudence in East Rumelia. See Karel Sklenář, “Karel Škorpil,” in Krásný život žili, krásnou práci konali . . . Nejslavnější generace rodu Škorpilů (Vysoké Mýto: Regionální muzeum, 2006), 62.



with brotherly love

385

purpose of which was to promote cooperation between all Slavic nations.22 When the Russian Institute of Archaeology in Constantinople was created, in 1906, a Bulgarian-Russian-Serbian commission for the archaeological study of the Balkans, Karel Škorpil became its member. An important goal of that commission was to diminish the Austrian influence in the Balkans following the transfer of the administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria-Hungary (1878). At a quick glimpse, the activity of the commission appears to have been paralyzed first by the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), and then by World War I. However, during the Balkan Wars, acting on behalf of the commission, Karel Škorpil carried out field surveys on the Turkish and Bulgarian sides of Istranca Dağlari (1912) and in the valley of the Lower Marica River (1913). In 1917, he was employed by the general staff of the Bulgarian army to carry out excavations in the northern part of Dobrudja, which the Bulgarian troops had occupied when Romania entered World War I on the side of the Entente. In 1918, Škorpil began the excavation of a cemetery site in Trebenište near Ohrid (Macedonia), which was dated between the sixth and the fifth century bc and instantly gained European notoriety for its princely burials displaying such extraordinary finds as gold face-masks and sandals.23 After the war Škorpil turned to the newly established Czechoslovakia to help restore the Balkan Commission project initiated by the then defunct Russian Institute of Archaeology in Constantinople. To that purpose Škorpil directly contacted the president of the Czechoslovak republic, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, with whom he met in Prague in 1919. It is important to note that in order to persuade Masaryk to incorporate a restored Balkan Commission into the Slavic Institute established in 1922 in Prague, Škorpil did not hesitate to play out the danger of the new activity of the Hungarian diplomats in

22 The first Slavic Association was established in 1880 in Sofia. Škorpil simply expanded that initial organization to the national level, including the territory of East Rumelia, which had been incorporated into Bulgaria in 1885. See Růžena Havránková, “Czech fervor in the Balkans,” The New Presence (2006), no. 4, 45. 23 Skružný, “Karel Škorpil a Slovanský Ústav,” 184–5. For Dobrudja, see Karel Škorpil, “Starobulgarské stany (lagery) i valy na poloostrově balkánském” [Old Bulgarian forts and dikes in the Balkan Peninsula], Sborník české společnosti zeměvědné 25 (1919): 41–47; Karel Škorpil, “Ukrepleniia na părvata bălgarska dărzhava v severna Dobrudzha krai Dunava i Chernomorskiia briag” [Fortifications of the First Bulgarian Kingdom in northern Dobrudzha next to the Danube and the Black Sea coast], in Sbornik v pamet na Prof. Petăr Nikov, ed. by Sv. Georgiev, Veselin Beshevliev and Ivan Duichev (Sofia: Kultura, 1940), 525–35. The results of Škorpil’s excavations in Trebenište were published by Bogdan Filov, Die archaische Nekropole von Trebenischte am Ochridasee (Berlin/Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1927).

386

florin curta

Bulgaria and their claims that the Bulgars and the Magyars shared a common non-Slavic, Turanic origin and history.24 No Balkan commission was eventually created within the Slavic Institute, but Škorpil was appointed in 1923 as honorary consul of the Czechoslovak Republic in Varna. He also became a foreign member of the Institute in 1929.25 In the 1940s, Karel Škorpil opposed the “Turanic” trend in Bulgarian historiography, which, by extolling the pre-Christian, Bulgar past, attempted to deny the Slavic character of the Bulgarian nation. Because the pro-German camarilla of Tsar Boris III (1918–1943) did not approve of his Slavophile views, during the last years of his life, Škorpil was marginalized politically and his influence in Bulgarian cultural politics diminished considerably.26 Nothing indicates, however, that Karel Škorpil’s Slavophile views had Bulgarian roots. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that he had such views well before moving to Bulgaria in 1882. In that respect, he was not different from any of the Czechs who, like him, migrated to Bulgaria after 1878. To be sure, there have been Czechs in Bulgaria before the RussoTurkish war of 1877–1878, mostly engineers employed for the building of the railroad between Vienna and Constantinople, which had been commissioned to the Austrian entrepreneur Hirsch.27 However, shortly after 24 That, at least, is the main point of Karel Škorpil’s letter to President Masaryk dated to June 25, 1923. See Skružný, “Karel Škorpil a Slovanský Ústav,” 193. Škorpil was playing out the fears of post-war Hungarian irredentism and restoration of Habsburg power which had led to the creation, in 1921, of an alliance between Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia known as the Little Entente. The Hungarian diplomat whom Škorpil had in mind was Géza Fehér, who was appointed cultural attaché of the Hungarian embassy in 1922. For Fehér’s ideas of a common Bulgar-Magyar protohistory, see Géza Fehér, “Bulgarischungarische Beziehungen in dem V.–XI. Jahrhunderten,” Keleti szemle. Közlemények az uralaltaij nép- és nyelvtudományi 19 (1920): 5–190; Géza Fehér, “Immenikăt na părviiat bălgarski khanove. Lătochislenieto na prabălgari” [The List of Bulgar Khans. The calendar of the Bulgars], Godishnik na Narodniia Arkheologicheski Muzei 4 (1922–1925): 237–313. Škorpil may have resented the intrusion into his scholarly territory of a Hungarian scholar who, on the basis of a new reading and interpretation of the inscriptions associated with the Madara Horseman, was about to challenge the date and ethnic attribution of the monument advanced by Škorpil after his excavations of 1924. See Géza Fehér, “A madarai lovasszikladombormű és őstörténeti vontkozásai” [The Madara Horseman and its relation to prehistory], Ethnographia 38 (1927): 16–29 and 64; Géza Fehér, Die Inschrift des Reiterreliefs von Madara (Sofia: Staatsdruckerei, 1928). 25 Skružný, “Bratři Karel a Hermenegild Škorpilové,” 492–3. 26 Sklenář, “Karel Škorpil,” 69; Karel Sklenář, Z  Čech do Pompejí. Příběhy a objevy českých archeologů ve světě [From Bohemia to Pompei. The stories and discoveries of Czech archaeologists around the world], (Prague: Československý spisovatel, 1989), 292. 27 The first concession to build a railroad between Vienna and Constantinople had been granted to a Belgian firm in 1868, but then the concession passed to Baron Hirsch. In 1869 and 1870, his own company faced financial difficulties, and he formed a second company, the Oriental Railway Company, which was to operate the line for 99 years. During the



with brotherly love

387

the war, a great number of Czechs, many of them relatively young, moved to Bulgaria. Several already spoke Bulgarian and knew much about the country from Bulgarian students in Prague and other cities in Bohemia. Some of them laid the foundations of new industries in Bulgaria (e.g., sugar factories), others started new businesses, like the brothers Jiří and Bohdan Proškovi who opened a brewery in Sofia, as well as a restaurant and a community center. The Czech emigré Jindřich Wiesner was the first conductor of the Sofia opera, while Jan Václav Mrkvička established the art school known as Risuvalno, which later turned into an architecture and design school, before morphing into the Bulgarian Art Academy.28 Václav Dobruský, a teacher of Greek and Latin, founded the National Museum of Archaeology in Sofia, together with Hermenegild Škorpil.29 Most Czechs came to Bulgaria because it was the only opportunity they had to fulfill their professional aspirations, given the surplus of unemployed intelligentsia and specialists in the Czech lands, a situation aggravated by the economic crisis of 1873.30 This may explain why, like Karel Škorpil, the majority of the Czechs immigrants initially worked as teachers in local gymnasiums. A study of the Czech contribution to the development of the Bulgarian secondary education identified over 40 individuals, men and women, who came to Bulgaria to teach different subjects at middle school

political upheavals of the mid-1870s, Hirsch re-negotiated the contract with the Ottoman government and managed to reduce the lease to 50 years, while confirming the responsibility of the government in Constantinople for the completion of the construction of the remaining lines in the Balkans. The Treaty of Berlin transferred that responsibility to the governments of the newly created states, Serbia and Bulgaria. The first through train from Vienna to Constantinople reached Sofia in 1888. See Richard J. Crampton, Bulgaria 1878–1918. A History (East European Monographs, 138), (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 242–3. 28 Havránková, “Czech fervor,” 45. 29 Dimităr Ovcharov, “Václav Dobruský i Narodniiat Muzei” [Václav Dobruský and the National Museum], in Kulturnata integraciia mezhdu chekhi i bălgari v evropeiskata tradiciia. Materiali ot VII piatna nauchna sreshta Varna, 25–27 iuni 1999 g., ed. by Dimităr Ovcharov, Petia Vasileva, and Darina Vasileva (Sofia: Obshtina Varna, 2000), 91–98; Ludvík Skružný, “Gymnazijní profesor Karel Škorpil, spoluzakladatel bulgarské archeologie” [The gymnasium professor Karel Shkorpil as a co-founder of Bulgarian archaeology], Archeologické rozhledy 52 (2000), 1:155. 30 Růžena Havránková, “Český podíl na přeměně bulharské společnosti v počatcích novodobého bulharského státu” [The Czech contribution to the transformation of the Bulgarian society at the beginning of the new Bulgarian state], Práce z  dějin slavistiky a česko-jinoslovanských vztahů 17 (1997): 88–9; Georgi Vălchev, “Chekhite v kulturno razvitie na sledosvobozhdenska Bălgariia” [Czech in the cultural development of newly independent Bulgaria], in Kulturnata integraciia mezhdu chekhi i bălgari v  evropeiskata tradiciia. Materiali ot VII piatna nauchna sreshta Varna, 25–27 iunii 1999 g., ed. by Dimităr Ovcharov, Petia Vasileva, and Darina Vasileva (Sofia: Obshtina Varna, 2000), 9.

388

florin curta

level. In doing so, many responded to the call of Ioakim Gruev, the minister of education in East Rumelia between 1879 and 1884. The first Czech teachers, therefore, came in 1880 not to Sofia, but to Plovdiv: Jan Wagner, Ludvík Lukaš, Václav Dobruský, Antonin Šourka, Josef Bureš, and Hermenegild Škorpil.31 With the arrival of new immigrants (one of whom was Hermenegild’s brother, Karel), the Czech colony in Plovdiv grew rapidly in the five years until East Rumelia was incorporated into Bulgaria (1885). Very few Czechs established themselves permanently in the city, as the majority of them, much like Hermenegild and Karel Škorpil, moved elsewhere, primarily to Sofia. Although initially hired as teachers, many Czech immigrants would later turn to other professions. Karel Škorpil came to Plovdiv to teach mathematics and science. He later became a prominent archaeologist. Similarly, Ludvík Lukaš was hired to teach chemistry and physics, but would soon dedicate himself to the improvement of Bulgarian agricultural techniques by means of pomi- and viticulture.32 Agriculture and archaeology were also intertwined in the career of a Czech emigré to Ukraine, Čeněk (Vikentyi) Chvojka (1850–1914). Born in a farming family of Semín (near Chrudím in northeastern Bohemia, not far from Vysoké Mýto, Karel and Hermenegild Škorpil’s hometown), he was the oldest of ten children.33 Unlike Karel and Hermenegild Škorpil, Chvojka studied ancient history and archaeology in Prague, and at age 18, began travelling through the Czech lands and to Germany, where he was particularly interested in newly opened museums of history and archaeology.34 In 1877, at the initiative of, and together with one of his relatives, he moved to Kiev where he remained for the following 38 years of his life. The exact reasons for Chvojka’s migration to Russia are not known, for he did not like to talk about this issue with his relatives or friends, and left no written explanation. Nor is it clear why he went directly to Kiev instead of St. Petersburg, at that time a much more cosmopolitan 31  Skružný, “Bratří Škorpilové,” 93. The first Czech to come to Bulgaria proper was Václav Krásný. See Slavko Churý, “Prínos českých pedagógov k budovaniu stredného školstva v Bulharsku po oslobodení krajiny z tureckého jarma v roku 1878” [The contribution of the Czech teachers to the establishment of the middle school system in Bulgaria after the independence from the Turkish yoke in 1878], Slovanský přehled 3 (1978): 191. 32 Churý, “Prínos českých pedagógov,” 194; Havránková, “Český podíl,” 89. 33 Vlastimil Vokolek and Vit Vokolek, “V.V. Chvojka, průkopník ukrajinské archeologie” [V.V. Khvoika, a pioneer of the Ukrainian archaeology], Acta Musei Reginaehradecensis. S.B: Scientiae Sociales 9 (1965): 127; Ivan Cherniakov, Vikentiy Khvoyka (1850–1914) (Kiev: Arkhetyp, 2006), 12. 34 The National Museum in Nuremberg and the Römisch-Germanisches Museum in Mainz opened in 1852.



with brotherly love

389

metropolis and the city in the Empire to which most emigrés were attracted, at least for the first years of their staying in Russia.35 Whatever prompted Chvojka to leave his homeland for Ukraine, in Kiev he first worked as a teacher. He was also very much involved in agricultural education, promoting a local variety of millet known as rosichka (Syntherisma sanguinalis), on which he wrote a book.36 In 1893, he began excavations in Kiev at 59–61, Kirilev Boulevard, the site of his first major discovery, a Palaeolithic camp site, complete with the skeleton of a mammoth.37 Three years later, he was leading excavations in Trypillia near Obukhiv, where he discovered a Neolithic village with abundant ceramic material, later attributed to the Tripolie culture named after the eponymous site.38 Chvojka’s 1899 excavations in Zarubintsi (across the river Dnieper from PereiaslavKhmel’nyts’kyi, 59 miles to the south from Kiev) brought to light a cremation cemetery, the remains of which led to the establishment of another culture dated between the second century bc and the second century ad. In 1899 and 1900 (while Karel Škorpil was working in Pliska), Chvojka also excavated two cemeteries near the villages of Romashky and Cherniakhiv (near Kaharlyk, 44 miles to the south from Kiev), the latter of which gave its name to the (Sântana de Mureş)-Chernyakhov culture of the early Migration Period (third to fourth century ad).39 Chvojka also excavated a number of early medieval assemblages in the Iron-Age stronghold in Pastyrs’ke (near Smila) and the barrows in Brovarki on the left bank of the river Dnieper, in the Poltava region, which he attributed to the the tribe of the Severians mentioned in the Russian Primary Chronicle.40 In 1907, he 35 G.M. Shovkoplias, “Vikentiy V’iacheslavovych Khvoyka—vidatnyy ukrains’kyy arkheolog” [V.V. Khvoika, a prominent Ukrainian archaeologist], in Vikentiy V‘iacheslavovych Khvoyka ta iogo vnesok u vitchyznianu arkheologiiu (do 150–richchia vid dnia narodzhennia). Tematichnyy zbirnyk naukovykh prats‘, ed. by N.G. Kovtaniuk (Kiev: Natsional‘nyy muzei istorii Ukrainy, 2000), 4; V.A. Kolesnikova, Storinky zhyttia Vikentiia Chvoyky (Kiev: Instytut arkheologii NAN Ukrainy, 2008), 11. 36 Vikentyi V. Khvoika, Rosichka (Kiev: E.A. Sin’kevich, 1885). 37 Shovkoplias, “Vikentiy V’iacheslavovych Khvoyka,” 5. 38 Chvojka was one of the first archaeologists of Europe to employ the concept of “archaeological culture” (first in reference to Tripolie). See C.F. Meinander, “The concept of culture in European archaeological literature,” in Towards a History of Archaeology, ed. by G.E. Daniel (London: Thames & Hudson, 1981), 107; Kolesnikova, Storinky, 65–6. 39 Vikentyi V. Khvoika, “Polia pogrebenii v srednem Pridneprov’e (raskopki V.V. Khvoika v 1899–1900 godakh” [Urn fields in the Middle Dnieper region (V.V. Khovika’s excavations of 1899–1900)], Zapiski Russkogo arkheologicheskogo obshchestva 12 (1901), 1–2: 172–90. 40 Vikentyi V. Khvoika, “Gorodishcha srednego Podneprov’ia [Stronghold in the Middle Dnieper region],” in Trudy XII Arkheologicheskago săezda v Kharkove, vol. 1 (Moscow: Imperatorskoe Moskovskoe Arkheologicheskoe Obshchestvo, 1905), 93–104. See Oleg M. Prykhodniuk, Pastyrs’ke gorodyshche [The stronghold in Pastyrs’ke](Kiev/Chernivtsi:

390

florin curta

returned to Kiev, where he began excavations on the Starokyivs’ka Hill, next to what is now the building at 2, Volodymyrs’ka Boulevard. The excavations revealed a palatial compound with stone buildings dated to the tenth and eleventh centuries, which Chvojka regarded as Princess Ol’ga’s palace vne goroda mentioned in the Russian Primary Chronicle under AM 6453 (ad 945). 41 In the same area, Chvojka uncovered the remains of a monumental structure in the form of an open, circular area of compact clay paved with four rectangular extensions marking the points of the compass. A number of fireplaces and a great quantity of animal bones convinced him that he had discovered a pagan sanctuary dated just before the conversion to Christianity of Ol’ga’s grandson, Vladimir.42 However, the great surprise of his excavations on the Starokyivs’ka Hill was a pit with a mass burial, which Chvojka dated to the time of the Mongol sack of the city in 1240. While Chvojka’s extraordinary finds on the Kirilev Boulevard, especially the mammoth skeleton, and the painted pottery from Tripyllia, quickly turned him into a celebrity of the European archaeology of the late nineteenth century, the excavations on the Starokyivs’ka Hill were compared with those taking place at that same time in the Forum of Rome. To many in Russia, Chvojka’s discovery of Ol’ga’s Palace and of the pagan sanctuary turned the Starokyivs’ka Hill in Kiev into a Rus’ Capitolium.43 The excavation site was visited by a number of prominent Russian scholars and specialists in Byzantine art, such as Nikodim P. Kondakov (1844–1925),44

Zelena Bukovyna, 2005), 7–8. The results of the excavations in Brovarki remain unpublished to this day. 41  Vikentyi V. Khvoika, Drevnie obitateli srednego Pridneprov’ia i ikh kul’tura v doistoricheskiia vremena (pro raskopkam) [The old inhabitants of the Middle Dnieper region and their culture during prehistory (on the basis of archaeological excavations)] (Kiev: E.A. Sin’kevich, 1913), 66–9. The palace was richly ornamented with frescoes and decorated with slate and marble. See Mikhail K. Karger, Drevnii Kiev. Ocherki po istorii material’noi kul’tury drevnerusskogo goroda [Ancient Kiev. Essays on the history of the material culture of a Rus’ town], vol. 2 (Moscow/Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1961), 59–67; Petr P. Tolochko, Istorychna topografiia starodavn’ogo Kyieva [The historical topography of ancient Kiev] (Kiev: Naukova dumka, 1970), 56–7. Chvojka’s dating and attribution of the palace were later challenged by Karger, Drevnii Kiev, 67. 42 Khvoika, Drevnie obitateli, 66; Mikhail K. Karger, Drevnii Kiev. Ocherki po istorii material’noi kul’tury drevnerusskogo goroda [Ancient Kiev. Essays on the history of material culture of a Rus’ town], vol. 1 (Moscow/Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1958), 105–12. 43 Shovkoplias, “Vikentiy V’iacheslavovych Khvoyka,” 14. 44 Together with Fedor Uspenskii, Kondakov was the co-founder of the Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople, which had provided the funds for Karel Škorpil’s excavations in Pliska.



with brotherly love

391

Dmitrii V. Ainalov (1862–1939), and Count Aleksandr A. Bobrinskii (1823– 1903). When Emperor Nicholas II came to Kiev in 1911, it was Chvojka who was designated to give him a tour through the permanent exhibit of the newly opened Museum of Antiquities and Art and to introduce to the tsar the extraordinary archaeological discoveries in the city.45 Although nothing is known about the conversation Chvojka had with the tsar, it is likely that he did not miss the opportunity to claim, once again, that the Slavs were native to the Middle Dnieper region since times immemorial. He has in fact long stressed cultural (e.g., the existence of sunken-featured buildings) and economic (agriculture) factors to argue, in essence, that the bearers of the Tripolie culture were Slavs, the ancestors of those who had buried their dead in Zarubintsi and Cherniakhiv, of those who had built the palace on the Starokyivs’ka Hill for Princess Ol’ga, and of those who were massacred by Batu Khan’s troops in 1240.46 In doing so, Chvojka was in fact advocating the idea of a succession of human communities in the Middle Dnieper region, each one of them characterized by a greater degree of economic and cultural development and sophistication than its predecessors. However, Chvojka’s was not a form of evolutionary archaeology of the kind championed in Great Britain at that time by John Lubbock.47 When interpreting as Slavic the Neolithic village in Tripyllia, as well as the cemeteries in Zarubintsi, Romashky, and Cherniakhiv, Chvojka was simply following a number of prominent Czech scholars, from Jan Erazim Vocel (1802–1871) to Lubor Niederle (1865–1944), all of whom had already attributed to the Slavs the prehistoric assemblages uncovered in Central Europe.48 For his theory of Slavic continuity in the Middle 45 Shovkoplias, “Vikentiy V’iacheslavovych Khvoyka,” 11 and 14. 46 Khvoika, Drevnie obitateli; Shovkoplias, “Vikentiy V’iacheslavovych Khvoyka,” 7; Kolesnikova, Storinky, 68. 47 For evolutionary archaeology and John Lubbock, see Bruce G. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 114–8. 48 Among them, Khvoika specifically mentioned Lubor Niederle. See Khvoika, “Polia pogrebenii,” 190; Vikentyi V. Khvoika, “K voprosu o slavianakh [On the question of the Slavs],” Kievskaia starina 6 (1902), 496; Khvoika, Drevnie obitateli, 97 and 100. Lubor Niederle’s ideas about the prehistoric Slavs were first presented in his Lidstvo v době předhistorické. Se zvláštním zřetelem na země slovanské [People in prehistory, with a particular regard to the Slavic lands] (Prague: Bursík & Kohout, 1893), a Russian translation of which was published five years later as Chelovechestvo v doistoricheskie vremena: doistoricheskaia arkheologiia Evropy i chastnosti slavianskikh zemel‘ [People in prehistory. The prehistoric archaeology of Europe and parst of the Slavic lands] (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo L.F. Pantelieeva, 1898). In addition, Chvojka’s interpretation of the material found in the 251 graves excavated in Cherniakhiv was modeled after Josef Ladislav Píč’s interpretation of his excavation of the Dobřichov cemetery in Bohemia. See Cherniakov, Vikentiy Khvoyka, 97–8. (That Chvojka was in contact with both Niederle and Píč results

392

florin curta

Dnieper region Chvojka therefore found inspiration not in evolutionism, but in Czech Panslavism. Under the influence of Ján Kollár (1793–1852), Czech Panslavism in the 1820s was primarily viewed as a matter of similarity and affinity between the Slavic languages. Ján Herkel’s grammar of Slavic languages defined panslavism as “unio in litteratura inter omnes Slavos, sive versus Panslavismus.”49 However, in the 1860s, espousing Panslavist views became a way to oppose Habsburg policies perceived as anti-Czech. The new meaning attached to Panslavism coincided with a current of admiration for Russia under the reformist rule of Alexander II (1855–1881). Following the Ausgleich of 1867, a number of prominent leaders of the Czech national movement (including František Palacký, the hero of 1848) went to Moscow to participate as a Czech delegation in the ethnographic exhibit organized by the Russian government as a demonstration of its own Panslavist aspirations.50 The Czech delegates met with the tsar, a gesture quickly interpreted in Vienna as a Czech endorsement of Russian Panslavism and as a proof that Czech nationalists were ready to conspire with a foreign power against Austria. From a Czech perspective, though, the “pilgrimage” to Moscow was little more than a means to protest against

from their letters preserved in the Chvojka archive at the National Institute of Archaeology in Kiev. See Shovkoplias, “Vikentiy V‘iacheslavovych Khvoyka,” 17). Jan Erazim Vocel, the founder of Czech archaeology and the first professor of Czech ancient and art history at the University of Prague, linked the historical Slavs to prehistory in his Die Bedeutung der Stein- und Bronzealterthümer für die Urgeschichte der Slaven (Prague: Verlag der königlichen böhmische Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 1869). Furthermore, Heinrich Wankel, Beitrag zur Geschichte der Slawen in Europa (Olmütz: J. Wankel, 1885), 9, attributed to the Slavs the early Iron-Age Hallstatt culture of upper Austria. 49 Ján Herkel, Elementa universalis linguae Slavicae et vivis dialectis eruta et sanis logicae principiis suffulta (Buda: Typis Regiae Universitatis Hungaricae, 1826). See Radomír Vlček, “Slovanství, panslavismus a rusofilství při formování moderního českého národa” [Slavdom, Pan-Slavism and Russophilia in the formation of the modern Czech nation], Slovanské historické studie 30 (2005), 65. Kollár expanded Herkel’s definition to include history and literature as elements of commonality. 50 Milan Hlavačka, “Ještě jednou pout’ Slovanů do Ruska v roce 1867” [Once again on the Slavic pilgrimage to Russia in 1867], in Slavmé slavné slávu Slávóv slavných. Slovanství a česká kultura 19. století. Sborník přispěvků z 25. ročníku sympozia k problematice 19. století, Plzeň, 24.–26. února 2005, ed. by Zdeněk Hojda, Marta Ottlová, and Roman Prahl (Prague: KLP, 2006), 38–55. For Panslavism and Russophilia as major components of the Czech nation-building, see Radomír Vlček, “Panslavismus či rusofilství? Pět tezí k otázce reflexe slovanství a panslavismu českou společnosti 19. století” [Pan-Slavism or Russophilia? Five theses on the impact of Slavdom and pan-Slavism on the Czech society in the 19th century] in Slavme slavné slávu Slávóv slavných. Slovanství a česká kultura 19. století. Sborník přispěvků z 25. ročníku sympozia k problematice 19. století, Plzeň, 24.-26. února 2005, ed. by Zdeněk Hojda, Marta Ottlová, and Roman Prahl (Prague: KLP, 2006), 9–20.



with brotherly love

393

the anti-Czech measures of the Habsburg government. However, while leaders of the Old Czech (National) Party subsequently toned down their Panslavist claims, the Young Czechs had much a stronger commitment to pro-Russian and Panslavist views. One of the founders of the Young Czech party, Karel Skladkovský went as far as to convert to Orthodoxy. The editor-in-chief and publisher of the newspaper Národní listy, Julius Grégr (a member of the delegation to the 1867 ethnographic exhibit in Moscow), openly advocated closer Czech-Russian relations, urging the Czechs to accept the Orthodox liturgy and the “Cyrillian-Methodian” idea.51 The Russophile euphoria lasted well into the 1870s and culminated in the involvement of the Czech nationalists in the Balkan affairs of 1875– 1878.52 A key moment in that involvement was the visit to Prague of the Russian general Mikhail G. Cherniaev (1828–1898), a veteran of the Crimean War in charge of the organization of the anti-Ottoman resistance in Serbia. Národní listy compared him to Lafayette.53 The Czech opinion was already and overwhelmingly on the side of Russia and the Balkan Slavs.54 In a period of heightened nationalistic sentiment, the Czechs followed the events in the Balkans with great interest and felt a great sense 51 Stanley B. Winters, “Austroslavism, Panslavism, and russophilism in Czech political thought, 1870–1900,” in Intellectual and Social Developments in the Habsburg Empire from Maria Theresa to World War I. Essays Dedicated to Robert A. Kann, ed. by Stanley B. Winters and Joseph Held (New York/London: East European Quarterly, 1975), 179; Vlček, “Panslavismus či rusofilství?” 93. 52 To be sure, a Czech interest in the Balkans long pre-dates the events of 1875–1878 and goes back to Václav Hanka and Pavel Jozef Šafárik, who lived for twenty years in Novi Sad (Serbia). His son, Janko, taught in 1843 in a high school in Belgrade. In 1869, Václav Křížek, a teacher at the gymnasium in Tábor, moved to Vidin (Bulgaria). Young Bulgarians—sons of refugees from Ottoman Turkey—were at the same time studying in Czech schools in Tábor, Písek, and Hradec Králové. Bulgarian delegates came to Bohemia in 1869 for the celebration of the 500th anniversary of Jan Hus’s birthday, and to Moravia in 1873 to participate in the celebration of 1,000 years since the mission of Sts. Constantine/Cyril and Methodius. See Vladimír Sis, “Kratăk pregled na bălgaro-cheshkite kulturni snosheniia” [A brief survey of the Bulgarian-Czech cultural relations], in Iubileen sbornik na slavianskoto druzhestvo vă Bălgariia 1899–1924 (Sofia: Balkan, 1925), 40. The Austro-Hungarian police closely followed the activity of both Bulgarian revolutionaries and their Czech sympathizers. A scandal erupted in 1872, when information was leaked to the press that the much celebrated writer Karel Sabina (who authored the libretto of Smetana’s Bartered Bride) was an informer of the Austrian police responsible, among other things, for denouncing Vasil Stoianov, a Bulgarian student in Prague. See Růžena Havránková, “Mladí Bulhaři v českých městech v 19. století” [Young Bulgarians in Czech towns in the 19th century], in Češi a jižní Slované, ed. by Jan Havránek, Jiří Kořalka, Mirjam Moravcová, and Miloslava Turková (Prague: Karolinum, 1996), 165–6. 53 Vlček, “Panslavismus či rusofilství?”, 93. 54 The only dissenting voice was that of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who expressed compassion for the “unfortunate” Turks, who “are to blame for everything, but now they

394

florin curta

of sympathy for the Serbs and the Bulgarians. Národní listy regularly published articles on the events in the Balkans, and the public opionion was greatly influenced to espouse anti-Turkish and pro-Slavic views by means of popular calendars and folk songs performed at fairs.55 Despite the economic crisis of 1873, money collections, cultural events, and even bootcamps in support of the Bulgarian rebels appeared in the Czech lands, often under the guise of associations for helping the wounded, in order to avoid the Austrian censors. Associations of women throughout the Czech lands contributed substantially with donations of money for the “Slavic brothers” in the Balkans. That of Vysoké Mýto, Hermenegild and Karel Škorpil’s hometown, sent money to Belgrade in 1876 and was recognized for that in the pages of Národní listy.56 The practical effect of all those activities was minimal, but such gestures of brotherly solidarity must also be regarded as signs of a deep frustration with the official passivity of the Czech political elite confronting the Austrian government. Getting involved in the national effort on behalf of Bulgarians was viewed, especially by the Young Czechs, as an alternative to the boycott of the Old Czechs.57 In 1877–1878, during the Russo-Turkish war, in power in Austria-Hungary were the Liberals under the leadership of Adolf Auersperg, with Count Gyula Andrássy—one of the main artisans of the Ausgleich of 1867—as foreign minister. The downfall of the Auersperg cabinet, whose position had already been weakened by the economic disaster brought about by the great crash of 1873, came with the Austrian-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878.58 Vehemently opposed to the addition of more Slavs to the empire, the Liberals refused to provide the funds needed for the administrative take-over in the Balkans, and thus angered fight for all that is holy; who wouldn’t like to side with them?” See Zdeněk Nejedlý, T.G. Masaryk, vol. 1 (Prague: Melantrich, 1930), 315. 55 Růžena Havránková, “Česká veřejnost na pomoc protitureckým povstáním jižních Slovanů v letech 1875–1877” [The Czech public support of the anti-Turkish insurrection of the Southern Slavs in 1875–1877], Slovanské historické studie 6 (1966), 20–22. The Panslavist inspiration of those songs is betrayed by their frequent use of the phrase “Slavic brother(s).” 56 Havránková, “Česká veřejnost,” 35; Havránková, “Czech fervor,” 44. 57 Růžena Havránková, “Jak jsme budovali Bulharsko v 19. století [How we were building Bulgaria in the 19th century],” in Slavme slavné slávu Slávóv slavných. Slovanství a česká kultura 19. století. Sborník přispěvků z 25. ročníku sympozia k problematice 19. století, Plzeň, 24.–26. února 2005, ed. by Zdeněk Hojda, Marta Ottlová, and Roman Prahl (Prague: KLP, 2006), 135. 58 Barbara Jelavich, Modern Austria. Empire and Republic, 1815–1986 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) 93–5.



with brotherly love

395

the Emperor Franz Joseph, who replaced them with a new cabinet led by his childhood friend, Count Eduard Taaffe (1833–1895). Because they endorsed the Austrian administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the political reshuffling encouraged the Old Czechs to abandon their boycott and in 1879 to enter the parliament in Vienna, in which they joined hands with the German-speaking conservatives in the so-called “iron ring” coalition on which the Taaffe cabinet would rely for the next thirteen years. It is under that cabinet that the Czech language came to be first used in the civil service, and the university in Prague to be split into a German and a Czech institution, respectively, with separate faculties.59 At the same time, following the creation of Bulgaria through the Treaty of Berlin at the end of the Russo-Turkish war, the solidarity of the Czechs took a new form, namely that of technical and specialist assistance for the consolidation of the new state and the building of its infrastructure. Instrumental in such efforts were a number of individuals, such as Ondřej Kolář and Adolf Patera, as well as prominent families of Czech intellectuals. Foremost among the latter was the family of Josef Jireček, the father of Konstantin Jireček.60 This was the political context in which a relatively large number of highly educated Czechs moved to Bulgaria and Ukraine. Among them were Čeněk Chvojka and Karel Škorpil. Unlike the members of the delegation to the Moscow ethnographic exhibit of 1867, Chvojka did not intend to visit, but to stay. Similarly, Škorpil did not spend a few years in Bulgaria, like Konstantin Jireček, in order to gain the experience necessary for landing a good job back home in Bohemia. Instead, he was there to stay. Both Chvojka and Škorpil maintained contacts with fellow Czechs, families in Bohemia, as well as friends abroad. There is even evidence that they had common friends through whom they may have been in touch with each other. Hermenegild Škorpil wrote to Chvojka to let him know that after seeing his publications on the excavations in Tripyllia, he believed that culture to be the same as that identified in Romania in Cucuteni.61 At the initiative of the Bulgarian and Serbian members of the Russian Institute of Archaeology in Constantinople, Chvojka was recommended as a member

59 Winters, “Austroslavism, panslavism,” 176 and 178. 60 Havránková, “Český podíl,” 89. For Adolf Patera, see Růžena Havránková, “Zur Geschichte der tschechisch-bulgarischen Kulturbeziehungen während der nationalen Wiedergeburt,” Bulgarian Historical Review 15 (1987), 4: 85–88. 61 Letter of October 16/29, 1907 now in the archive of the National Achaeological Museum in Kiev, published by Skružný, “Profesoři Hermengild a Karel Škorpilové,” 250.

396

florin curta

of that same Balkan Commission, which Škorpil would later struggle to restore within the Slavic Institute in Prague.62 Although nothing is known about Chvojka and Škorpil’s opinions about the political developments taking place in the Czech lands of Austria-Hungary after their departure for Ukraine and Bulgaria, respectively, it is likely that maintaining contacts with families and friends contributed to the strengthening of their Panslavist views. In their new, adoptive countries, neither Chvojka, nor Škorpil looked for the past glory of Czech medieval history. Theirs was a different, much more encompassing goal. Practicing what would later be known as culture-historical archaeology, Chvojka and Škorpil had no nationalist agenda. Chvojka never claimed that those living in the Neolithic village of Tripyllia or those who buried their dead in Cherniakhiv were either Russians or Ukrainians. Similarly, Škorpil knew very well that those living in the palaces he was the first to excavate in Pliska and Preslav were Bulgars, not Bulgarians. Behind the life-long efforts of both archaeologists is the idea of a deep similarity and affinity between all Slavic nations. If, in the process, Chvojka and Škorpil managed to lay the foundations of a mature archaeology of the Middle Ages in Bulgaria and Ukraine, it was not because they focused on that period as the one with the greatest potential for the nationalist ideology. In fact, both archaeologists established the Bulgarian and Ukrainian schools of medieval archaeologists almost by accident, while busy exploring much earlier periods, such as the Neolithic age in Chvojka’s or the Iron Age in Škorpil’s case. The Panslavist vision they both embraced was rooted in the formative years of the Czech nationalist movement, from which it took a profound sense of belonging to a much larger community based on linguistic and cultural affinity. The ancient Slavs Chvojka and Škorpil strived to find underneath the palaces built for Ol’ga, Omurtag, or Symeon were not only the ancestors of the Ukrainians (or Russian) and of the Bulgarians. They were the historical pillars of the bridge linking all Slavic-speaking nations in the present. In his simple-mindedness, Bay Ganyo was ultimately right: it’s amazing how those Czechs managed to learn those foreign tunes so well as to play them for the occasion!

62 Shovkoplias, “Vikentiy V’iacheslavovych Khvoyka,” 11. Chvojka organized a special exhibit in the local museum in Pardubice (Bohemia) on the archaeology of Ukraine. Through Chvojka’s donation, the museum in Plzeň, which had been organized by Karel’s older brother, Josef Škorpil (1856–1931), came into the possession of a number of items from Ukraine. See Shovkoplias, “Vikentiy V’iacheslavovych Khvoyka,” 16.

The Study of the Archaeological Finds of the Tenth-Century Carpathian Basin as National Archaeology: Early Nineteenth-Century Views Péter Langó The conquest of the Carpathian Basin by the Hungarian tribal alliance has always been an important topic of Hungarian national history. The emphasis on eastern origins and the expansion of a warrior nomadic people was a focal point of nineteenth-century Romanticism. This period forms part of the basis of national identity as well. In early research, the image of a noble, eastern warrior was very popular, and the notion that the archaeological remnants of the conquering Hungarians were to be sought in the East took shape at that time as well. Hungarian scholarship later classified the period between Late Antiquity and the kingdom of the Árpád dynasty in relation to national scholarship. In the case of the finds of the Conquest Period, they were all regarded to be of eastern origin. The biased, national character of research on early Hungarian archaeological finds caused further problems. Foreign scholars specialising in the study of the ninth to eleventh centuries rarely touched on the issue. It was primarily scholars from neighbouring countries who studied the problem, mainly because such finds had been made in their countries as well. The conclusions drawn by researchers in Hungary and in the neighbouring countries, however, were often contradictory, usually because of political factors. Various nations created different narratives about the period, in which archaeological sources were interpreted very differently. From a distance, this dispute about the archaeological interpretation of the tenth-century Carpathian Basin must have seemed nonsensical and lacking in any scientific foundation. Thus, it is understandable that specialists of other areas rarely investigated the archaeological remains of the Carpathian Basin more thoroughly. Their interest in the findings and scholarship of the region was further hindered by the fact that the approaches to archaeology adopted in Hungary and the surrounding countries sought to answer questions that were uninteresting in the international research environment.

398

péter langó

After a while, this one-sided oriental preference in Hungarian archaeological research has changed.1 Interest in the contemporary remains of the wider region appeared first in connection with the supposedly eastern finds of the so-called “horizon of crushed silver.”2 It later became clear that there were even closer relationships between the contemporary finds from Byzantium and the Carpathian Basin.3 At the end of the eighteenth and for much of the nineteenth century, most historians and social theorists were proponents of nationalistic concepts. As emphasized by Daniele Conversi: “By glorifying the heroism of the great figures of the national past they tried to justify historically their own political goals.”4 The early history and ethnogenesis of a nation has a fundamental role in the formation of its historical consciousness, and the problem of the origin is often connected to various political views. This sense of the origin often contains completely fictitious elements, which were intended to serve the political aims of a given group and strengthen its claims to legitimacy. This practice can be observed in the formation of Hungarian historical consciousness as well. The assessment of the foundation of the state, the conquest, and the preceding period have always been influenced by modern political interests, although this interaction was mutual: political views fed and influenced historical assessments, and in turn

1 Csanád Bálint, “On ‘Orient-preference’ in archaeological research on the Avars, protoBulgarians and conquering Hungarians,” in Post-Roman Towns, Trade and Settlement in Europe and Byzantium, ed. Joachim Henning (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 545–62. 2 Béla Szőke, A honfoglaló és kora Árpád-kori magyarság régészeti emlékei [The archaeological remains of the Conquest and the Early Arpad Periods] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1962), 35–52. 3 Károly Mesterházy, “Bizánci és balkáni eredetű tárgyak a 10–11. századi magyar sírleletekben I” [Byzantine and Balcanic objects in Hungarian graves of the 10th-11th centuries I], Folia Archaeologica 41 (1990): 87–115; idem, “Bizánci és balkáni eredetű tárgyak a 10–11. századi magyar sírleletekben” II, [Byzantine and Balcanic objects in Hungarian graves of the 10th–11th centuries II] Folia Archaeologica 42 (1991): 145–177; idem, “Der byzantinischbalkanische Handel nach Ungarn im 10–11. Jahrhundert im Spiegel der Gräberfunden”, in Byzance et ses voisins. Mélanges à la mémorie de Gyula Moravcsik. (Szeged: József Attila Tudományegyetem, 1994), 117–28. Csanád Bálint, “Mediterráneum és a Kárpát-medence kapcsolatai a kora középkori régészet szemszögéből” [Relations of the Mediterranean and the Carpathian Basin. A viewpoint of early medieval archaeology], in Változatok a történelemre. Tanulmányok Székely György tiszteletére [Studies in honour of Gy. Székely], ed. Gyöngyi Erdei and Balázs Nagy (Budapest: Budapesti Történeti Múzeum, 2004), 37–41. 4 Daniele Conversi, “Reassessing theories of nationalism. Nationalism and boundary maintenance and creation,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 1 (1995): 85.



the study of the archaeological

399

took inspiration from them. The thinking of scholars investigating early ­Hungarian antiquities was strongly influenced by their sense of belonging to the natio Hungarica. Their main goal was to reveal the early history of the ‘noble Hungarian nation’ and present its archaeological remains.5 The national ideal of the era and the ambition to collect all the historical sources of the past of the nation greatly facilitated the discovery of tenthcentury Hungarian antiquities. After the unearthing of the treasures of Nagyszentmiklós (Sânnicolau Mare, Ro.) or later the grave of Benepuszta, this ambition ensured greater attention to later finds (Fig. 1).6 The other determining factor was the expansion, over the course of the eighteenth century, of the nobility’s long-lived (lateral) concept of the nation. This attitude, and within it the ideal of the noble conquerors, saturated early historical and archaeological research.7 The birth of modern Hungarian archaeology could be dated to 1761, when Johann Ferdinand Miller published his study on Pannonian small finds.8 Scientific fieldwork was launched by István Schönvisner (1738−1818), the earlier prefect of the Theresianum in Vienna. In 1777 he became the first lecturer of the department of archaeology and numismatics at the

5 Éva Ring, Államnemzet és kultúrnemzet válaszútján [At the crossroads of nation state and culture state] (Budapest: Eötvös Kiadó, 2004), 143−53. 6 Ernő Marosi, “Survival or Revival? The Nagyszentmiklós treasure in Hungarian art history,” in The Gold of the Avars. The Nagyszentmiklós Treasure, ed. Éva Garam (Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum and Helikon Kiadó, 2002), 134–142. 7 The foundations of this attitude were fixed already in the Tripartitum, a collection of unwritten law compiled by István Werbőczy at the beginning of the sixteenth century: István Werbőczy, Tripartitum opus juris consuetudinari regni Hungariae (Budapest: Tudománytár, 1990), I. Part, Titulus III. 64−7. See Arnold Suppan, “Cuius regio eius natio. Nationale Abgrenzung und Ausgrenzung in Ostmitteleuropa,” in Szomszédaink között Kelet-Európában. Emlékkönyv Niederhauser Emil 70. születésnapjára, [Studies presented to E. Niederhauser on his 70th birthday] ed. Ferenc Glatz (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Történettudományi Intézete, 1993), 361. István Fodor, “The Culture of Conquering Hungarians,” in Tender Meat under the Saddle, (Krems: Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 1997), 30. Rudolf Chmel, “A magyarkomplexus és a szlovák–magyar megbékélés” [Hungarian complex and Slovakian–Hungarian reconciliation], Limes 49 (2001/5): 64−65. As shown by the debate between the law professor Mihály Bencsik and the theologist Jan Baltazar Magin from Dubnice. Bencsik wanted to exclude the Slovakian-speaking population of Trencsén County from the natio Hungarica with the argument that ‘they are not of Hungarian origin, but the descendants of Svatopluk, who were subjugated in the battle with the Hungarians’. Ring, Államnemzet, 130. 8 Gábor Vékony, “The history of archaeological fieldwork in Hungary,” in Hungarian Archaeology at the Turn of the Millennium, ed. Zsolt Visy and Mihály Nagy (Budapest: Ministry of National Cultural Heritage of Hungary and Teleki László Fundation, 2003), 15−6.

400

péter langó

Fig. 1. Lithography of Miklós Szerelmey from the book ‘Magyar hajdan és jelen’ [Hungarian past and present.] published in 1847 about the finds held as ‘ancient Hungarian’: the find from Benepuszta and the ornaments of the Nagyszentmiklós Treasure.

university. The Ratio Educationis issued (1777) by Maria Theresa stressed the importance of the development of university collections, which were relevant to the university, originally founded in Nagyszombat and later moved to Buda and then to Pest. Schönvisner continued his work there until 1794, when he was appointed as the director of the University Library. In his first work he described the Roman bath unearthed in Óbuda at Florián Square. His debate with István Szalágyi (Salagius) was the first of its kind in Hungarian archaeology. It concerned the Roman road system.9 The work of András Blaskovich and Antal Balla in this field is also worthy 9 Imre Szentpéteri, A Bölcsészettudományi Kar története (1635−1935) [The history of the Faculty of Arts (1635−1935)] (Budapest: Királyi Magyar Egyetemi. Nyomda, 1935), 297; Albert Gárdonyi, A történelmi segédtudományok története [The history of the auxiliary sciences of history] (Budapest: Magyar Történelmi Társulat, 1926), 12; Domokos Kosáry, Művelődés a XVIII. századi Magyarországon [Culture in 18th century Hungary] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1996), 577; Ernő Marosi, “Utószó. Programok a magyar művészettörténetírás számára” [Postface. Programs for Hungarian art history], in A magyar művészettörténet-írás programjai. Válogatás két évszázad írásaiból [Programs for Hungarian art history. A selection of the writings of two centuries] ed. Ernő Marosi (Budapest: Corvina Kiadó, 1999), 328−9; Endre Tóth, “A továbbélő ókor” [Antiquity continued], in Történelem-Kép



the study of the archaeological

401

of mention, together with that of Péter Katanics (1750−1825), who, coming to the University from Eszék (Osijek, Hr.), continued Schonvisner’s work as his successor. Archaeological research at the time was closely connected to the high education, dominated by Classical and Roman archaeology. Thus research on artefacts of Hungarian origin was minimal or non-existent. The first Hungarian artefacts that awoke interest were the Holy Crown and the royal insignia. A monograph written by Péter Révay (1659), the keeper of the insignia, marked the inception of interest in Hungarian artefacts, followed in 1790 (when the crown was returned to Buda) by the work of Elek Horányi and József Peczely and five years later Istvan Weszprémy and István Katona. The end of this period was marked by the work of József Koller, published in 1800. In 1788, a debate flared up concerning Lehel’s Horn (oliphant) from Jászberény (Fig. 2).10 Count Révay was the first person to pay attention to the antiquities relevant to an understanding of national history. The popularity of his work is best reflected by the fact that it was reprinted several times. The study of the material remains of the national past received a strong impetus when the reforms initiated by Joseph II reached the royal insignia and the legal claims of the aristocracy and nobility attached to them. Due to the national resistance provoked by the reforms of the emperor, there was increasing scholarly interest not only in the actual royal insignia, but also the oliphant of Jászberény, which has also been considered an early symbol of power. Already at the time it was associated with Lehel, the Hungarian commander known from written sources, whose legendary life came to an end in 955, after the defeat at Augsburg. He is reported to have been executed by Heinrich, the Bavarian duke of Regensburg.11 During the eighteenth century aristocratic tradition firmly connected the [History-Image], ed. Árpád Mikó and Katalin Sinkó (Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 2000), 265–75; Vékony, The history, 16−17. 10 Gárdonyi, A történelmi segédtudományok 15; Marosi, Utószó, 328. Etele Kiss, “A jászberényi Lehel kürt—kései recenzió néhány elfeledett tanulmányhoz” [Lehel’s Oliphant from Jászberény—some late remarks to forgotten studies], in. Szállástól a mezővárosig, [The development of a dwelling place to an oppidum] ed. Péter Langó (Jászfényszaru, 2000), 67–82. idem, Lehel kürtje, in Történelem-Kép [History—Image], ed. Árpád Mikó and Katalin Sinkó (Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 2000), 520–6. 11  István Bóna, A magyarok és Európa a 9–10. században [Hungarians and Europe in the 9th–10th centuries] (Budapest: História, 2000), 55. Chief Lehel and his horn appear also in the Hungarian chronicles. “Cui Leel ait: ‘Afferatur michi tuba mea, cum qua primum bucinans postea hec tibi respondebo.’ Allataque est tuba ei et appropians cesari, cum se ingereret ad bucinandum ipsum cesarem sic fortiter in fronte cum tuba fertur precussisse, ut illo solo ictu imperatot moreretur.” Chronicon Pictum (Budapest: Magyar Helikon Könyvkiadó, 1964), 95.

Fig. 2. The pagan burial’ at Vereb. The second “coin dated” grave came to light in 1853. The grave of a male, (20–24 years old youth) buried together with his horse, and a horse harness. After: Érdy, A verebi pogánysír.

402 péter langó



the study of the archaeological

403

oliphant with the Hungarian conquest. Among the early national relics, there were some other early medieval treasures, which had been found in the territory of the Hungarian Kingdom, but came to be kept in the treasury in Vienna. Due to its general features, the treasure from Szilágysomlyó (Şimleu Silvaniei, Ro.) was not associated with the Hungarians.12 As István Sándor, one of the most influential scholars at the time, has remarked, “this treasure was given by a Byzantine Emperor to one of his trustworthy officials in the province, who had distinguished himself in his position.”13 The fate of the treasure found at Nagyszentmiklós was quite different. Immediately after its discovery and first publication the treasure became one of the key pieces relevant to national archaeology. István Sándor interpreted the signs as runes and consequently assigned the objects to the ‘Hun-­Hungarian-Cuman-Sicul group’, which he considered as part of the same ethnic entity. His opinion exerted a determinative influence on research and the interpretation of these objects for a long time. The story is quite similar in this respect to the narrative associated with the oliphant of Jászberény.14 The treasure of Nagyszentmiklós is still considered by most Hungarians as belonging exclusively to the nomadic tradition,15 and Lehel’s oliphant still belongs to the Hungarian and early Iassian national tradition.16 The founding of the Hungarian National Museum in 1802 was a turning point, since for the first time it provided a framework for a collection suitable for scientific analysis. Institutions similar to the Hungarian National Museum founded by Ferenc Széchényi, appeared in the region at the same time. For instance, in 1804, two years after the founding of the Hungarian National Museum, S.K. Potocki opened his collection in Wilanów. A number of other Polish aristocrats followed his example. In Prussia, Frederick William III established the Berlin Museum (which later came to be known as the Altes Museum) in 1815. The Prague Museum (1818), Zagreb Museum (1821), and Ljubljana Museum (1821) were also founded in the same period. 12 Alfred Bernhard-Walcher, “Der Schatzfund I von Szilágysomlyó,” in. Barbarenschmuck und Römergold. Der Schatz von Szilágysomlyó, ed. Wilfried Seipel (Wien and Milano: Skira, 1999), 22. 13 István Sándor: “Némelly Jegyzetim Schönvisner Úrnak betses Munkájához,” [Some remarks on the invaluable work of Mr. Schönvisner] Sokféle 9 (1808): 134. 14 Júlia Papp, Művészeti ismeretek gróf Sándor István (1750–1815) írásaiban, [Connoisseur­ ship in the writings of count István Sándor (1750–1815)] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1982), 55, 150. 15 Marosi, Survival, 134–135. See: Csanád Bálint: A nagyszentmiklósi kincs [The treasure of Nagyszentmiklos. Archaeological studies], (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 2004), 246–56. 16 Kiss, Lehel kürtje, 524–5.

404

péter langó

Local wealthy aristocrats with strong national enthusiasm played a crucial role in these initial stages. In Hungary the Széchényi family helped to establish these collections, in Poland Potocki, J. Ossoliński and Lubomirski, and in Bohemia Count Sternberg. The beginning of the nineteenth century witnessed significant changes in public thinking in Hungary. The strengthening of national feelings is reflected in the contemporary literature and historical studies (in the works kihúzandó!).17 The increased interest in the early history of the Hungarians helped to develop the discipline of archaeology, still in search for its institutional framework, identify the surviving material artifacts of the conquering Hungarians. The archaeology of the Conquest Period began in 1834. The finds from the vicinity of Ladánybene were first given to sub-prefect Móricz Szentkirályi and then delivered to the Hungarian National Museum. Szentkirályi informed the famous collector Miklós Jankovich of the antiquities, and Jankovich immediately published a study identifying the assemblage as artefacts of the early Hungarians.18 This study enabled the identification of other finds from the tenth century, which were similar to the material of Benepuszta but contained no coins.19 A relatively long time (19 years) passed before a scholarly study on the next group of Hungarian antiquities, the burial from Vereb presented by Miklós Érdy, was published. These two collections and studies can be considered as the starting point of the archaeological research on the Conquest Period (Fig. 3).20 As mentioned above, the archaeological remains of the conquering Hungarians had been recognized by the period of Romanticism. At the beginning of the nineteenth century ancient, early mediaeval Hungarian chronicles became popular. The increase in interest in the early history of the Hungarians is reflected by literary works with historical topics, such

17 Kosáry, Művelődés, 321−3. 18 Miklós Jankovich, “Egy magyar hősnek,—hihetőleg Bene vitéznek,—ki még a ‘tizedik század’ elején, Solt fejedelemmel, I. Berengár császárnak diadalmas védelmében Olas­ zországban jelen volt, újdonnan felfedezett tetemeiről, ’s öltözetének ékességeiről” [The newly discovered grave and the adornments of the costume of a Hungarian hero—most probably warrior Bene—who, at the very beginning of the tenth century, participated together with prince Solt in the glorious defence of Emperor Berengar I in Italy], A Magyar Tudós Társaság Évkönyvei 2 (1832–1834): 281–96. 19 Péter Langó, “A nemzeti múlt ‘mívbeli emlékei.’ A honfoglaló magyarság régészeti emlékanyagának felismerése” [Vestiges of national past. The recognition of the archaeological legacy of the Hungarians of the time of the Conquest], in A nemzeti tudományok historikuma [The historicity of national disciplines] (Budapest: Kölcsei Intézet, 2008), 271. 20 Miklós Érdy, “A verebi pogánysír,” [The pagan grave from Vereb] A Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Évkönyvei 9 (1858): 14–27.



the study of the archaeological

405

Fig. 3. Árpád on the mountain of Pannonia. Framing the romantic historical approach on the gravure of János Blascjke and Josef Axmann in 1822.

406

péter langó

as the epos of  Zalán futása (The Flight of Zalán) by Mihály Vörösmarty (1825), a tale of the conquest that arguably marked the beginning of the nationalist romantic movement It was also reflected by the widespread popularity of István Horvát, who declined membership in the Academy of Sciences and developed his own pan-Hungarian theory (Fig. 4). As a consequence of the antiquarian approach of the time, archaeology was considered as a curiosity, thus archaeological studies, unlike works of history, did not play a significant role in the presentation of the traditional ideals of national historiography. Obviously the search for national identity in the first half of the nineteenth century was present to some extent in these works as well, since scholars interested in antiquities were indeed influenced by the romantic concept of a nation, as demonstrated by the examples of Miklós Jankovich, János Jerney and János Érdy. Érdy’s patriotic attitude is nicely illustrated by the anecdote, always cited by his reviewers and which—quite probably—he also often recounted. According to the story, upon his visit to Budapest famous contemporary historian Theodor Mommsen ‘recognized an original Hun-Hungarian race in Érdy and was surprised when our honourable president, the late Baron József Eötvös, told him Érdy’s origin and former ancient German name.’21 (Fig. 5) The turning point in the archaeological research followed political events. The revolution of 1848, the passive resistance of the Hungarian political elite following its suppression, and the Compromise with the imperial house in 1867 were followed by significant changes in academic life. Due to the economic upswing following the political consolidation and the more liberal cultural policy, the number of sites were explored and finds delivered to the museums grew rapidly. As a consequence of the subsequent projects undertaken with the intention of creating a kind of national infrastructure (which included the construction of railways and the regulation of rivers), workers disturbed numerous archaeological sites. The tremendous surge in the amount of physical material available and the scholarly work on this material was also facilitated by the national character of the research as well. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the national thinking became even stronger. Changes in attitudes towards culture also spurred the increase in material. The role of the earlier private collectors was taken over by local archaeological societies and

21 Iván Nagy, “Érdy János emlékezete” [In memoriam János Érdy], Értekezések a történelmi tudományok köréből II. 9. (1873): 19.



the study of the archaeological

407

Fig. 4. János Érdy. His original name: János Luczenbacher (1796–1871) The archaeologist of Belgian origin published the second grave from the Hungarian conquest period.

Fig. 5. The ancient Hungarian artefacts’ from a historical poster of the Millenium of the Hungarian conquest. After: Marczali, A vezérek kora.

408

péter langó

museums. In the period dominated by Flóris Rómer and Ferenc Pulszky, one of the most prosperous periods of modern Hungarian history in many respects (at least from the perspective of economic and infrastructural developments), the foundations of professional research were laid. Archaeology was not involved in the economic development and minority issues characterizing the period.22 Hungary’s legal status was restored after the Compromise. The treaty was facilitated by a number of internal and external factors. One of the most acute interior problems was the management of the aspirations of the various national minorities living in the Habsburg Empire. In Hungary the formation of these aspirations was influenced by the xenophobia underlying the concept of a “natio Hungarica” and the Romantic theory of cultural relativity, which had gained even more ground since the end of the eighteenth century. After the achievement of linguistic unity in the Reform Era and the continuing lack of national independence, the Hungarian political elite, like elites in other European states, emphasized the importance of historiography and the ‘rediscovery of the national past,’ while giving priority to the unity of the state. The so-called ‘Ugric– Turkic war,’, which represented the most prominent research trends of the period, not only clarified the origin of the Hungarian language, but also demonstrated that, within the context of the Herderian concept of nation (based on language and culture), national myth-making had become independent from disinterested scholarship.23 For the public, the debate seemed to revolve around the question of whether the Hungarians were relatives of the ‘poor fish-scented FinnoUgrics’ or the ‘Turanian high cultures.’ Although the debate had no ‘worthwhile stake whatsoever,’ it exerted a lasting influence on research on the prehistory of the Hungarians.24 As pointed out by István Fodor, contemporary Darwinist thinking also figured in the debate, since the scholars of the period ‘knew about Antal Reguly’s reports in the middle of the nineteenth century on the Ob-Ugric (Vogul, Ostjak) peoples, who lived under miserable and primitive circumstances and whose language 22 Péter Langó, “Archaeological research on the conquering Hungarians: A review,” in Research on the prehistory of the Hungarians: A review, ed. Balázs Gusztáv Mende (Budapest: Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2005), 227. 23 János Pusztay, Az “ugor-török háború” után [In the wake of the ‘Ugric-Turkic’ war]. (Budapest: Magvető Kiadó, 1977). 24 Csanád Bálint, “A honfoglaló magyarok és Európa” [The conquering Hungarians and Europe], in Honfoglalás és Árpád-kor, ed. János Makkay and József Korbály (Ungvár: Kárpátaljai Magyar Kulturális Szövetség, 1997), 14.



the study of the archaeological

409

was the closest to ours, and considered it impossible that our ancestors could have ever lived under such conditions.’25 The most prominent scholars, among them Henrik Marczali and Gyula Pauler, renowned Hungarian medievalists of the nineteenth century, and influential public figures of the time (such as poets János Arany and János Vajda and novelist Mór Jókai) supported Ármin Vámbéry’s theory of the Turkic origin of the Hungarians.26 The participants in the debate—with good reason—did not consider archaeology as an independent discipline yielding new conclusions that would contribute to the solution of the—primarily linguistic—problems. As a consequence of the debate, the world of both ‘the district judge in love with Attila’s ancient ancestry’ and the educated, nationalistic middle-class, rejected the Finno-Ugric theory. The public—heated by nationalism in part because of the fact that in the debates that took place in Hungary, Budapest, the Academy, or in the newspapers about Hungarians, the Hungarian language, and its origins were discussed and decided by non-Hungarian scholars (Pál Hunfalvy; József Budenz)—favored Vámbéry’s version of the myths of earlier times. Among contemporary Hungarian archaeologists, only Ferenc Pulszky’s work was followed in the academy because of his role in Hungarian politics and cultural life. The influential museum director was an enthusiastic supporter of Vámbéry’s theory—who was also a relative of his—and described the Hungarians in his studies as mounted, conquering, ‘Turanian’ nobles. The ideal of a noble nation in his works harmonized well with the national mythology of the ‘glorious conquest’ and the ‘thousand year-old Hungarian state.’27 The celebration in 1896 of the one-thousandth anniversary of the conquest and the works published on or created for the occasion—including the Millennial Monument—fitted the general trend of the interpretation of the past in nineteenth century Europe.28 Archaeology, as an auxiliary discipline that offered palpable illustrations of the events of the conquest in the form of objects and artifacts, also played an important role in the celebrations of the ‘Millennial year.’ The 25 Fodor, The Culture, 29. 26 Péter Domokos, Szkítiától Lappóniáig. A nyelvrokonság és az őstörténet kérdéskörének visszhangja irodalmunkban [From Scythia to Lapland. Literary reactions to the problems of linguistic affinity and prehistory] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1990), 109. 27 András Gerő, Der Heldenplatz Budapest als Spiegel ungarischer Geschichte (Budapest: Corvina, 1990); Ernő Marosi, “A honfoglalás a művészetben” [The Hungarians’ landtaking as reflected in the arts], Magyar Tudomány 103 (1996): 1028−9. 28 Sebastian Brather, Ethnische Interpretationen in der frühgeschichtlichen Archäologie (Berlin–New York: de Gruyter, 2004), 19−22.

410

péter langó

first detailed, comprehensive archaeological study of the period, a work by József Hampel, was published. It bore little resemblance to the often turgid and hyperbolic, nationalistic style of contemporary historians. An excerpt concerning the mission of Árpád and the conquering Hungarians from a review by Kolos Vaszary, published in 1895 on the occasion of the Millennium, offers a good example of the tendency towards exaggeration in the historical works of the time: ‘What nation on our continent, however great it may be, has a thousand year-old past like ours?! Hellas, the cradle of culture, did not survive for a thousand years. Rome, the greatest state the world has ever known, was barely 800 years old when it started to perish in the wake of the death of Augustus. Its great emperors were little more than signs of the last bursts of vitality during the agony! And our nation? Over the course of this one- thousand years not only has it not aged, but on the contrary, it marches forward with new vitality at the dawn of the second millennium!’29 A similar example is the description by the historian Henrik Marczali, according to whom the Hungarian conquerors could be characterized as ‘jaunty, gallant, turbulent chaps, stolid, withstanding all the trials of life, full of confidence in their own strength and abilities, indefatigable when driven by their passion, insatiable when the time comes for relaxing, eating and drinking.’30 (Fig. 6) Later, influenced by factors previously mentioned, he reclassified the archaeological finds and connected the poor burials to the Slavs, the richer graves, in which the remains of horses, horse harnesses, weapons, and objects made of precious metals were also found, to the Hungarians. His work reinforced the concept—not free of the influence of evolutionary thinking—of ‘triumphant and rich conquering Hungarians’ often found in contemporary historical reviews, and it lent weight and corroboration to nationalist explanations. Non-scientific views popular in Europe at the time had less significant effect on the archaeology of the Conquest Period. Contemporary social-anthropological concepts and political views can be found primarily in the work of Géza Nagy. However, he expressed his political opinion overtly only in newspaper articles, and not in scholarly publications. This was less characteristic of the scholarship of other

29 Kolos Vaszary, “Bevezetés”, [Introduction] in A magyar nemzet története I. Magyarország a királyság megalapításáig [The History of the Hungarian Nation. Hungary till the foundation of the kingdom] ed. Sándor Szilágyi (Budapest: Athenaeum Könyvnyomda, 1895), 10. 30 Henrik Marczali, “A vezérek kora és a királyság megalapítása” [The age of the chief­ tains and the foundation of the kingdom], in A magyar nemzet története I, ed. Szilágyi, 56.



the study of the archaeological

411

Fig. 6. The Millennial Monument (1896).

outstanding archaeologists of the time, even in the case of Béla Pósta. His work is a good example because it demonstrates clearly the relationship between archaeology and politics in the dualist state. The politically active university professor carefully separated his political activities from his scientific research.31 The anti-Pan-Slavic attitude of the Hungarian political elite appeared in the works only indirectly (e.g. in the interpretation of poor burials as Slavic).32 Contemporary schools of thought and their political background, however, did leave their mark on the discipline. Examples of this influence include the emphasis on particular peoples or populations and their alleged qualities, in contrast with oppressed groups, and the assertion of different forms of legitimacy through focus on military superiority.33 Although some of the stereotypes connected to the notions used in those studies—considered nowadays pejorative—were generally accepted

31  István Schneller, “Pósta Béla”, Közlemények az Erdélyi Nemzeti Múzeum Érem- és Régiségtárából 1 (1919) [1941]: 22−4. 32 On contemporary anti-Pan-Slavic attitude see Kálmán Thaly, Az ezredévi országos hét emlékoszlop története [The history of the seven memorial columns of the Millennium] (Pozsony: Wigand F.K. Könyvnyomda, 1898), 7−13; Judit Hamberger, “A csehek a magyarokról” [The Czechs on the Hungarians], Limes 49 (2001/5): 32−3. 33 Timothy Kaiser, “Archaeology and ideology in southeast Europe,” in Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology, ed. Philip. L. Kohl and Clare Fawcett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 101−3.

412

péter langó

around the end of the nineteenth century, scientific aspects always had priority.34 In the research on the prehistory of the Hungarians, Turanism became popular after the turn of the century.35 This hypothesis, according to which Hungarians were related to early Turkish mounted nomads and hailed from a common homeland (Turan), was a sort of reaction to PanSlavic movements. This theory, however, always remained in the background, and even scholars who sympathized with the idea did not promote it. Later Turanism—like other prehistorical oddities—became popular in non-scientific circles.36 Just as the approach to research in Hungary was often influenced by a nationalist agenda, the evaluation of tenth century archaeological data served nationalist goals in the Slavic areas of the Monarchy as well, not to mention the neighbouring countries. The intellectual leaders of Slavic and Romanian-speaking national minorities considered the Hungarian state politic as the main obstacle to their national development. Consequently, the integrative nation-building nationalism in these areas used archaeology to further the aim of emancipation.37 The intellectual leaders of the nationalists, who expressed their aspirations in cultural life tried to separate themselves from the Hungarians. They felt that Hungarian politics hampered the emancipation of their nation, binding it rather to its own assimilative politics. The desire for greater national autonomy, nourished by a number of different sources pointing in the same general direction, had an effect on the historical consciousness of these groups and their concepts of prehistory.38 The reclusion from 34 Derogative remarks about Slavs in Hungarian studies from the end of the 19th century can be regarded as contemporary stereotypes which were not the products of archaeology. See Judit Hamberger, “A szlovákok magyarságképének alakulása” [The formation of the Slovaks’ image of the Hungarians], Európai tükör 9 (2004/3): 80. 35 Paikert v. Alois, “Der touranische Gedanke”, Turan (1917): 291−301; George G. Arnakis, “Turanism, An aspect of Turkish nationalism”, Balkan Studies 1(1960): 19−32. Éva KincsesNagy, “A turáni gondolat”, [The concept of Turanism] in Őstörténet és nemzettudat 1919–1931 [Prehistory and national selfconsciousness] ed. Éva Kincses-Nagy (Szeged: Balassi Kiadó, 1991), 44–9; Ildikó Farkas, “Turanizmus”, [Turanism] Magyar Tudomány 100 (1993): 860– 868; A.V. Ratobylskaya, “Vengerskiy turanizm”, Slavjane i kočevoj mir 10 (2001): 219–27. 36 Géza Nagy, “Népvándorláskori turán öltözet”, [Turanic dress in the Migration Period] Archaeológiai Értesítő 21 (1901) 318–323; Miklós Zsirai, “Őstörténeti csodabogarak”, [Prehistorical oddities] in A magyarság őstörténete, ed. Lajos Ligeti (Budapest: Franklin Kiadó, 1943), 266−89. 37 On the general character of the process see Conversi, Reassessing 85. Philip L. Kohl and Clare Fawcett, “Archaeology in the service of the state: theoretical considerations,” in Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice of Archaeology, ed. Philip. L. Kohl and Clare Fawcett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 3–18. 38 Ferenc Glatz, “Regionális történelemszemlélet Közép-Kelet-Európában. Magyarok és szomszédaik az államalapítás korában”, [Regional view of history in East Central Europe.



the study of the archaeological

413

­Hungarian—noble—values and the rejection of a common history based on shared geography were defensive reactions. These groups attempted to construct a prehistory for themselves that was different from the history of the Hungarian Kingdom. The prehistory and the early history of the Slavs had an important role in the creation of an independent historical identity, and the demonstration of the allegedly aggressive nature of the formation of the Hungarian state was used as legitimization of their own political national rights.39 Pan-Slavic historiography, which gained momentum in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the strengthening of the idea of Turkic-Hungarian affinity (Turanism) were parallel and closely related phenomena.40 Hungarian popular consciousness, the concepts of Daco-Romanian and Illyrian-Croatian continuity, emerged at the same time. The growing prominence of theories of continuity illustrates the contemporary political practice of founding arguments concerning national emancipation and corresponding territorial claims on the assertion of early origins. The most influential among the national movements of the Monarchy was first Austro-Slavism, then later Pan-Slavism. This was one of the reasons why one of the most important centers of Slavic archaeology in the second third of the nineteenth century was at the University of Vienna. The first professor of the university to specialize in Slavic archaeology was Jan Kollár, one of the creators of the Pan-Slavic idea, together with Šafárik and Palacký.41 These concepts were based primarily on the common history of Slavic peoples, and the theories of prehistory that were based on them had a considerable influence on the interpretation of the archaeological sources.42 Previously, the identification of Slavic finds was not evident, and Hungarians and their neighbours in the age of state foundation] Történelmi Szemle 43 (2001): 99−100. 39 Emil Niederhauser, “ ‘. . . megosztották az addig egységes szláv területet’. A honfoglalás a lengyel, a cseh és a szlovák történeti irodalomban”, [The conquest of Hungary by the Magyars in Polish, Czech and Slovak literature] Magyar Tudomány 102 (1995): 1404–15; Gábor Vékony, “ ‘. . . alapított most Swatopluk oly birodalmat’. Viták a morva fejedelemség történetéről” [Debates on the Moravian pricipality] Magyar Tudomány 102 (1995): 1454–61; Lucian Boia, Geschichte und Mythos. Über die Gegenwart des Vergangen in der rumänischen Gesellschaft (München: Böhlau Verlag, 2003), 62−76. 40 Langó, Archaeological research, 229–30. 41  Bozidar Slapšak and Predrag Novaković, “Is there national archaeology without nationalism? Archaeological tradition in Slovenia,” in Nationalism and archaeology in Europe, ed. Margarita Díaz-Andreu and Timothy Champion (London: UCL Press, 1996), 274. 42 Sebastian Brather, Archäologie der westlichen Slawen (Berlin–New York: de Gruyter, 2001), 11−18; On the political background of Pan-Slavic archaeological concepts see also Victor A. Shnirelman, “The faces of nationalist archaeology in Russia”, in Nationalism and

414

péter langó

for a long time scholars tried to separate early Slavic material from Celtic and German finds with the help of historical and linguistic sources. This research was defined by the fact that Šafarik—inspired by Herder— assumed that early Slavic history, the ‘dark age’, could be delineated on the basis of linguistic sources. This opinion was shared by other Slavicspeaking scholars in the second half of the nineteenth century.43 The method they used was the following: in areas in which sources or place names indicated the presence of Slavic people, scholars attempted to determine the characteristic objects that could be connected to the Slavs in the given region. The German Friedrich Lisch, who played a leading role in this research, attempted to isolate the Slavic material with the help of the typological method, which was new at the time.44 Objects at that time were often considered as ethnic markers, so once it was suggested (following the work of Lubor Niederle) that S-terminated rings and pottery with incised, wavy lines could be artifacts left behind by peoples of Slavic origins, it very rapidly became a general rule (Fig. 7).45 The studies of the archaeology in Europe, ed. Margarita Díaz-Andreu and Timothy Champion (London: UCL Press, 1996), 223−5. 43 Włodzimirez Rączowski, “ ‘Drang nach Westen’? Polish archaeology and national identity,” in Nationalism and archaeology, ed. Díaz-Andreu and Champion, 198−9. Florin Curta, The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region c. 500– 700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 7−8. 44 Sebastian Brather, “Slawenbilder ‘slawische Altertumskunde’ im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,” Archeologické rozhledy 53 (2001): 725−8. 45 Lubor Niederle, “Die Skelettgraber aus der letzten prähistorischen Zeit in Böhmen,” Mitteilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 20 (1890): 105. idem, Slovanske starožitnosti. Původ a počátky Slovanů vỳchodnich. A. IV. (Praze: Bursík a Kohout, 1924). On the contemporary reception of the study see József Ernyey, “Lubor Niederle: Slovanské starožitnosti,” Archaeológiai Értesítő 34 (1914): 38−44, 139−45. Decoration with wavy lines was first connected to the Slavs by Ferdinand Kruse, and it became generally accepted by Czech scholars. See Lubor Niederle, “Bemerkungen zu einige Charakteristiken der altslawischen Gräber,” Mitteilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 24 (1894): 51−4. Josef Ladislav Pič, Přehled česke archaeologie (Praze: Komise při České Akademii císaře Fr. Josefa Pro Vědy, Slovesnost a Uměni, 1908), 75−8. On the relationship of Pič and Niederle see Włodzimirez Antoniewicz, “Hołd wielkości Lubora Niederlego,” Światowit 20 (1948): 2−3. Hungarian research, following first Pulszky, then Hampel, also connected the pottery with wavy lines to the Slavs because they assumed that nomadic peoples did not manufacture pottery, but acquired it from the inhabitants of the conquered areas. Ferenc Pulszky, “Néhány magyarországi és ősmagyar leletről,” [On some early Hungarian and other finds from Hungary] A Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Évkönyvei 17 (1878): 224; József Hampel, Újabb tanulmányok a honfoglalási kor emlékeiről [New studies on the remains of the Conquest Period] (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1907), 51. On the history of research of the issue see also Miklós Takács, Die árpádenzeitlichen Tonkessel im Karpatenbecken, (Budapest: Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1986) 10−12.; Tivadar Vida, Die awarenzeitliche Keramik I. (Budapest: Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1999), 16−7.



the study of the archaeological

415

Fig. 7. S-terminated rings

very talented professor in Prague reflected neo-Slavic attitudes popular at the beginning of the twentieth century. These works were translated into several languages and became the pillars of Slavic research.46 These volumes, however, focused not only on the archaeological record. Using historical and ethnographical sources, Niederle attempted to prove that there had been a Slavic population with homogeneous material culture in the Carpathian Basin well before the Hungarian conquest. He believed that most of the archaeological record from the tenth century in the Carpathian Basin could be connected to the Slavs, and in many cases he explained the appearance of certain object types in the material culture

46 He started to study the prehistory of the Slavs after his first Russian journey in 1893. Emil Niederhauser, A történetírás története Kelet-Európában [The history of historiography in Eastern Europe] (Budapest: História, 1995), 167. His views were influenced by Vykentyi V. Khvoika, Alexandr Spicin and other Russian (Ukrainian) scholars. Shnirelman, The faces, 222−3. Florin Curta, “Pots, Slavs and ‘imagined communities’: Slavic archaeologies and the history of the early Slavs,” European Journal of Archaeology 4 (2001): 368. His connection with contemporary neo-Slavic groups is shown by the fact that his comprehensive study was published first in Russia in 1909, and was published in Czech only in the following year. He intented to accomplish the aims defined by Šafarik in two six-volume monographs. Niederhauser, A történetírás története, 128, 167.

416

péter langó

of the conquering Hungarians with reference to Slavic mediation. In addition to the conclusions of Müller and Lissauer, he based his theory on the ideas of Slavic Studies. For many years his works provided the guidelines for Slavic-speaking scholars in their approach to the problems of early history.47 The publisher of the eleventh century commoners’ cemetery at Bielo Brdo, Josip Brunšmid, also built on Niederle’s conclusions when he identified the cemetery as Slavic (Croatian).48 The nineteenth century scholars of the national minorities of the Monarchy represented a very different opinion on their own history than their Hungarian colleagues. Their ideas were related primarily to Pan-Slavic concepts, marking their own past as separate from the history of the Hungarian Kingdom. In connection with their aspirations for autonomy, and in opposition to the Hungarian conquest, they attempted to emphasize their own values through the principle of autochthony and to interpret the early archaeological record so as to demonstrate the illegitimacy and violent character of the Hungarian conquest and the foundation of the Hungarian state.49 The archaeological

47 Niederle’s role in Slavic research became so important because—beside his comprehensive reviews—he could establish an archaeological school as well. As a professor of the university in Prague—he received this title in 1891—then the director of the Archaeological Institute in Prague he educated generations of scholars. Antoniewicz, Lubora Niederlego 2−3. His conclusions about 10th century material were carried on mainly by two of his students. Curta, Pots, Slavs, 368. The most outstanding of his students was Jan Eisner, who, after Niederle’s death, became the most prominent person of the research on the Migration Period in Slovakia. Jan Eisner, “Slované a Maďaři v archeologii,” Slavia Antiqua 7 (1960): 189–210. 48 Josip Brunšmid, “Hrvatske sredovječne starine,” Viestnik Hrvatskog arkeologičkog društva 7 (1903–1904): 38−40. Csanád Bálint, Südungarn im 10. Jahrhundert (Budapest: Akadémia Verlag, 1991), 160. Željko Tomičić, “Novi prilozi vrednovanju ostavštine srednjovjekovnog groblja Bijelo Brdo II,” Prilozi 8 (1991): 95–148. idem “Neuere Erforschung der Bijelo Brdo-Kultur in Kroatien,” Prilozi 9 (1992) 113–130. Following Niederle and Brunšmid, Croatian, Serbian and Slovakian research generally accepted the role of S-terminated hairrinds as Slavic ethnic markers. Miklós Takács, “A Kárpát-medence, az Alpok délkeleti része és a Balkán-félsziget kapcsolatai a 7–9. században. A jugoszláviai kutatások újabb eredményei,” [Relations between the Carpathian Basin, the southeastern Alps and the Balcan peninsula during the 7th-9th centuries. Recent results of the investigations carried out in Yugoslavia] Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve 1984–1985/2 [1991]: 506−7; Ágnes Ózer, “A szerb történetírás magyarságképe,” [The Image of Hungarians in Serbian Historiography] in A honfoglalás 1100 éve és a Vajdaság, ed. Győző Bordás et al. (Újvidék: Fórum Könyvkiadó, 1997), 230–7. 49 Emil Niederhauser, “Honfoglalás és millennium,” [The Hungarians’ landtaking and the Millennium] Magyar Tudomány 103 (1996): 1011–7. The ‘conqueror’ attitude frequent in Hungarian-centred historiography at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was confronted with the contemporary Slavic approach emphasizing the contrast between barbarian Hungarians and civilized Slavs. See Bernard Wailes and Amy L. Zoll, “Civilization, barbarism, and nationalism in European archaeology,” in Nationalism, Politics, and



the study of the archaeological

417

studies on Slavic unity and the ideas concerning the primarily Slavic autochthonous population of the tenth century Carpathian Basin sought to confirm the stereotype, inherited from Niederle, that the Hungarians were intruders who had driven a wedge between the Slavic peoples of the Carpathian Basin and made the development of a unified Slavic area impossible.50 A considerable amount of time passed before the collections of objects and artifacts previously thought to belong to Slavic peoples were reinterpreted, a lapse that may seem a bit paradoxical in light of the changes that took place within the discipline. It was not until the 1950s, when the orthodox Soviet politics of science had a great impact on Central European scholarship, that new readings of the materials were offered. After this, Hungarian research came to consider these material remains as the legacy of the poorer social groups of the period, the so-called commoners, rather than Slavs.51 Today these poorer cemeteries are connected, independently of linguistic and ethnic boundaries, to the peoples of the Hungarian Principality and the Hungarian Kingdom ruled by the Árpád dynasty.52 Thus, the differing interpretations of the history of the groups of Central Europe were determined by the intersections of the national historical traditions which were elaborated in the nineteenth century. Until this day, these opinions are tightly connected to the role of objects and groups of remains as carriers of symbolic meanings. However, the social sciences, embedded in a national framework, were not always able to free themselves of these nineteenth century traditions. Current events often demonstrate this clearly, for instance when the representative national value of such an object is emphasized (one thinks of the cases of the Nagyszentmiklós treasure, the Nagymacséd cross, the horn of Lehel, or even simple objects such as the so-called hair-rings with S-terminals), and the generally accepted and established scientific opinions are relegated to the background.53 In the study of archaeological finds the various national the Practice of Archaeology, ed. Philip L. Kohl and Clare Fawcett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 23−4. 50 Niederhauser, A történetírás története, 126, 167, 332−333, 401−404, 487; Takács, A Kárpátmedence, 507. 51  Béla Szőke, “A bjelobrdoi kultúráról,” [On the culture of bjelobrdo], Archaeológiai Értesítő 86 (1959): 32–47. For a historical background see Langó, Archaeological research, 219–21. 52 Bálint, Südungarn, 159–93. 53 Bálint, A nagyszentmiklósi kincs, 105–32, 246–54. Titus Kolník, “Ikonografia, datovanie a kultúrno-historický význam enkolpiónu z Veľkej Mače,” Slovenská archeológia 42 (1994): 125–53.

418

péter langó

mythologies and often contradictory narratives cannot be ignored, since—pointing beyond the phases of the history of research—they shed light on the cultural background that connects and at the same time, on an interpretative level divides the peoples of the wider region.54 In Central Europe, the interpretation of archaeological remains and their ascription to particular ethnic groups (among them the nomadic peoples of the steppe) can be regarded as a juncture that has been a significant motivating force since the beginnings of archaeological thinking, independent of whatever the symbolic meaning of these objects may have been in their original environment. Thus, these objects tell the story of the past on multiple levels: they are witnesses to their own pasts; through the historical traditions attached to them, however, they not only assume a place in the cultural canon, but also reflect historical milestones and transformations, since through the various interpretations of the past (which changed both in time and space) they are connected to the historical events of later periods as well.

54 Kiss, Lehel, 525; Bálint, On “Orient-preference”, 546.

Notes on Contributors Anders Andrén is professor of Archaeology at Stockholm University. His main interests are in Historical and Urban Archaeology, and Archaeology of Religion. His books include Den urbana scenen. Städer och samhälle i det medeltida Danmark [The Urban Scene. Towns and Society in Medieval Denmark] (1985); Between Artifacts and Texts. Historical Archaeology in Global Perspectives (1998); Old Norse Religion in Long-term Perspectives. Origins, Changes, and Interactions (2006). Sverre Bagge is professor emeritus of medieval history, University of Bergen. Research interests: medieval historiography, state formation and political culture. His publications include: Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla (1991); Kings, Politics, and the Right Order of the World in German Historiography c. 950–1150 (2002) and From Viking Stronghold to Christian Kingdom. State Formation in Norway, c. 900–1350 (2010). R. Howard Bloch is Sterling Professor of French and Chair of the Humanities Program at Yale University.  He is the author of Medieval French Literature and Law (1977); Etymologies and Genealogies. A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages (1983); The Scandal of the Fabliaux (1986); Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (1991); God’s Plagiarist: Being an Account of the Fabulous Industry and Irregular Commerce of the Abbé Migne (1994); The Anonymous Marie de France (2003); A Needle in the Right Hand of God (2006). Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri is “ricercatore confermato” (permanent researcher) and professor of Medieval History at the University of Urbino. His principal research themes are the history of Rome, the Roman Church, and Central Italy in the Middle Ages, and the use of the Middle Ages in contemporary politics. Selected publications: Medioevo militante. La poli­ tica di oggi alle prese con barbari e crociati (2011); The Man Who Believed He Was King of France: A True Medieval Tale (2008); Il clero di Roma nel medioevo. Istituzioni e politica cittadina (secoli VIII–XIII) (2002). Florin Curta is professor of Medieval History and Archaeology at the University of Florida. His books include The Making of the Slavs: History and

420

notes on contributors

Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, ca. 500–700 (2001); Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1250 (2006); Text, Context, History, and Archaeology. Studies in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (2009); and The Edinburgh History of the Greeks c. 500 to 1050. The Early Middle Ages (2011). He is the editor of four collections of studies: East Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages (2005); Borders, Barriers, and Ethnogenesis (2005); The Other Europe in the Middle Ages (2007); and Neglected Barbarians (2011). Stefan Detchev teaches courses in Modern and Contemporary Bulgarian History and Historiography at South-West University of Blagoevgrad and University of Sofia. His research interests are in the field of nationalism and identity, political ideologies and the public sphere, historiography, history of masculinity, gender and sexuality, and history of food and cuisine. He is the author of “Who are the Bulgarians? ‘Race’, science and politics in fin-de-siècle Bulgaria” in We, the people. Politics of National Peculiarities in South-East Europe (2009); Politics, Gender and Culture: Articles and Studies on Modern Bulgarian History (2010—in Bulgarian). He is also the editor of In Search of Bulgarianness: The Networks of National Intimacy XIX–XXI c. (2010—in Bulgarian). Ahmet Ersoy is Associate Professor at the History Department at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. He received his PhD in art and architectural history from Harvard University in 2000. His work deals with issues related to politics of cultural representation, art, and architecture in the late Ottoman world. His publications include: (co-authored with Maciej Gorny and Vangelis Kechriotis), Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeastern Europe (1775–1945), vol. III (2010); and “Architecture and the Search for Ottoman Origins in the Tanzimat Period,” in Muqarnas 24 (2007). Patrick J. Geary is professor of Medieval European History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has published numerous books and essays on medieval social and cultural history including Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (1978); Aristocracy in Provence: The Rhone Basin at the Dawn of the Carolingian Age (1985); Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World (1988); Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (1994); The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, 2002); Women at the Beginning: Origin Myths from the Amazons to the Virgin Mary (2006).



notes on contributors

421

Maciej Janowski is a research fellow at the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, and a recurrent visiting professor at the Central European University, Budapest. His research interests are in political thought, historiography and culture in modern Poland. His books include Polish Liberal Thought before 1918 (2004). He is Editor of East Central Europe/L’Europe du Centre-Est. Eine wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift. Gábor Klaniczay is professor of Medieval Studies at the Central European University, Budapest. His interests are in the historical anthropology of medieval and early modern Christianity (sainthood, miracle beliefs, visions, stigmatics, magic, witchcraft), and comparative history of “medievalism”. His books include The Uses of Supernatural Power (1990); Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses (2002); ed. with Ernő Marosi and Ottó Gecser, The Nineteenth-Century Process of “Musealization” in Hungary and Europe (2006); ed. with Éva Pócs, Witchcraft Mythologies and Persecutions (2008); ed. with Michael Werner and Ottó Gecser, Multiple Antiquities—Multiple Modernities. Ancient Histories in Nineteenth-Century European Cultures (2011). Péter Langó is archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology of the Hungarian Academy of Science. Research interests: Early Hungarians, Archaeology of the Hungarian conquest period; Middle Byzantine Archaeology; History and archaeology remains of the oriental tribes (Alans/Jász, Cumans) in the Kingdom of Hungary in the Middle Ages. Principal publications: “Archaeological Research on the Conquering Hungarians: A Review,” in Research on the Prehistory of the Hungarians: A review, ed. by Balázs Gusztáv Mende (2005), 175–340; “Crescent-shaped Earrings with Lower Ornamental Band,” in Byzanz—das Römerreich im Mittelalter. Teil 3. Peripherie und Nachbarschaft, Hrsg., Falko Daim—Jörg Drauschke (2010), 369–410. Joep Leerssen is Royal Netherlands Academy Professor at the University of Amsterdam, where he holds the chair of Modern European Literature. He was awarded the Spinoza Prize in 2008. His publications address cultural stereotyping and national self-images (Imagology, co-edited with Manfred Beller, 2007; Spiegelpaleis Europa, 2nd ed. 2011); Irish and British intellectual history (Mere Irish & Fíor-Ghael, 2nd ed. 1996; Remembrance and Imagination, 1996; Comparative Literature in Britain, 1800–2000, with Elinor Shaffer, 2013), Romantic nationalism (National Thought in Europe, 2nd ed. 2008; De Bronnen van het Vaderland, 2nd ed. 2011). He is at present preparing a large-scale comparative Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe (see www.spinnet.eu).

422

notes on contributors

Ernő Marosi is art historian, ordinary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, former director of the Institute of Art History of the HAS, professor emeritus of the Budapest Eötvös Loránd University. Main research fields: medieval art—mainly history of architecture and sculpture, historiography of art history. His books include Die Anfänge der Gotik in Ungarn. Esztergom in der Kunst des 12.–13. Jahrhunderts (1984); Kép és hasonmás. Művészet és valóság a 14–15. századi Magyarországon [Image and Likeness. Art and Reality in 14th–15th century Hungary] (1995); ed., A magyar művészettörténetírás programjai [Programs of the Hungarian Art History] (1999). Walter Pohl is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Vienna and Director of the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His fields of study cover the transformation of the Roman world and early medieval history, especially the role of ethnicity, migration and identity formation, the history of Eastern Central Europe and of the Eurasian steppe peoples, Italian cultural and political history, early medieval historiography, and the uses of the medieval past in the modern period. His most important books are: Die Awaren (1988), Die Germanen (2000), Werkstätte der Erinnerung—Montecassino und die langobardische Vergangenheit (2001), Die Völkerwanderung (2002). Carmen Popescu is an independent art and architectural historian. She works currently as an Adjunct Professor at the University Paris I-Sorbonne. She has worked on issues relating architecture to identity. Her publications include Le style national roumain: construire une nation à travers l’architecture 1881–1945 (2004); “Being specific: limits of contextualising (architectural) history,” Journal of Architecture, 16 (2011), 821–853. She is guest editor of Architecture and Identity, special issue of National Identities, 8 (2006). Pavlína Rychterová is work group leader at the Institute for Medieval Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences and principal investigator in the ERC-starting grant “Origins of the Vernacular Mode”. Her books include two monographs about the late medieval Central European reception of the Visions of Bridget of Sweden (2004, 2009) and a collaborative volume on Charisma: Funktionen und symbolische Representationen (2008). Her research interests include vernacular theological and catechetic literatures in the late Middle Ages, women’s religious experiences and authority, the



notes on contributors

423

development and changes of religious-political discourses in medieval Europe and history of modern historiography and literary studies. Michael Werner is directeur d’études at the EHESS (Paris), where he is head of the Centre of Interdisciplinary Research on Germany (CRIA, UMR 8131 CNRS-EHESS) and teaches European cultural history (19th and 20th century). Since 1993, he is co-director of the Annales. Histoire, science sociale. His books include (with Bénédicte Zimmermann), De la comparaison à l’histoire croisée (2004); (with Hans-Erich Bödecker and Patrice Veit), Espaces et lieux de concert en Europe, 1700–1920 (2008). David M. Wilson is a former Director of the British Museum. He is a specialist on the early medieval period in Northern Europe. Among many publications he has written a number of articles on Romanticism. His books include Anglo-Saxon Ornamental Metalwork 700–1100, in the British Museum (1964); The Vikings and Their Origins (1980); Anglo-Saxon Art From The Seventh Century To The Norman Conquest (1984); The Bayeux Tapestry (2004); Vikings in the Isle of Man (2008).  Ian Wood is professor of history at the University of Leeds. His interests are in Late Antiquity, the barbarian successor states, history of mission, Bede, historiography of the Fall of the Roman Empire. Major publications:  The Merovingian Kingdoms (1994); The Missionary Life (2001); The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages (2013).

Index of Proper Names1 Abdülhamid II, Ottoman Sultan, 225 Abildgaard, Nicolai, 112 Aboba, see Pliska Absalon, 147 Adalbert, 36, 37 Adam, Robert, 117 Adelung, Johann Christoph, 308, 315 Aesop, 262, 263, 267 Agder, 79 Ainalov, Dmitrii V., 391 Al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din, 221 Alaric, King of the Visigoths, 18, 19 Albert, King of Belgium, 273 Alberto da Giussano, 341 Alboin, King of the Longobards, 19 Alexander II, Emperor of Russia, 382*, 392 Alexander III, Pope, 284 Alexander, Michael, 133, 135 Allen, C.F., 81 Alps, 20, 42, 47, 336, 338*, 416n Alter, Franz C., 304 Alton Castle, Staffordshire, 129 Amalfi, 344 Aman, Theodor, 204 Amari, Michele, 327 Amiens, 282 Ampère, Jean-Jacques, 292, 293 Amsterdam, 421 Ancona, 335 Andrade, Alfredo d’, 338 Andrássy, Gyula, 369, 394 André, Oscar, 195 Andrea da Barberino, 339 Andrén, Anders, 7, 419 Angevin dinasty, kings of Hungary, 167, 325 Anthony, St, 75 Antonescu, Petre, 196 Antwerp (Antwerpen), 267, 274, 276 Apulia, 336 Arany, János, 409 Arduin, King of Italy, 338 Arezzo, 343 Ariosto, Ludovico, 330

Arminius, 18 Arnaldo da Brescia, 341 Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 61, 269 Arnim, Achim von, 265 Árpád, leader of the Hungarian tribal ­federation, xi, 32, 34, 397, 405, 410, 417 Asachi, Gheorghe, 191 Asbjørnsen, P. Chr., 87 Asmundtorp, 153 Asparukh, Khan of Bulgaria, 349–351, 355, 357, 364, 369, 377, 378, 381 Assorodobraj, Nina, 89 Athens, 101, 209 Attila, ruler of the Huns, 20, 31, 321, 409 Aubin, Hermann, 68 Auersperg, Adolf, 394 Augusta of Sachsen-Weimar, Princess (later Queen) of Prussia, 123 Augustus, Roman Emperor, 340, 410 Austria, 7, 9, 11–50, 56, 162, 163, 267, 305, 325, 334, 335, 381, 384–386 395 Azeglio, Massimo Taparelli d’, 328 Baár, Mónika, 96*, 107 Babelsberg, Potsdam, Germany, 123 Bachmann, Adolf, 22, 23, 32, 47, 48 Backer, Herman Major, 144 Bagge, Sverre, 7, 419 Bahners, Patrick, 350 Balbo, Cesare, 60, 326 Balkan Peninsula, 196, 351, 354, 369, 416* Balkans, 350, 385 Balla, Antal, 400 Baltic, 6, 147, 150 Banti, Alberto Mario, 335 Barletta, 325, 335, 336 Baron Taylor, 281, 282 Barry, Charles, 127, 130 Basarab, Matei, Voivode of Wallachia, 215 Basarab, Neagoe, Voivode of Wallachia, 192 Battenberg, Alexander von, Bulgarian Prince, 367 Baudelaire, Charles, 286 Baudry, Ambroise, 194

1 Entries marked with a * are found in the footnotes, the proper names of which have been in general not included.

426

index of proper names

Bay Ganyo, 377, 378, 396 Becker, M.A., 41 Beckford, William, ix, 117, 118 Beddoe, John, 353 Belgium, 7, 52, 54, 55, 68, 106, 266, 273, 275–277, 368 Beltrami, Luca, 337 Benepuszta, 399, 400, 404 Benisch, Carol, 210 Berchet, Giovanni, 337 Berengar II, King of Italy, 338 Bergamo, 342 Bergen, ix, 4, 144, 145 Berger, Stefan, 14 Bergounioux, Gabriel, 292 Berindei, Dimitrie, 197 Berlin, ix, 38, 122–124, 137, 141, 198, 209, 292*, 381, 387*, 395, 403 Beroun, 311 Bhabha, Homi, 217 Billinge, 153 Birmingham, ix, 125, 127, 128 Biskupije, 383* Bjørnson, Bjørnstjerne, 87 Blackbourn, David, 359 Blanc, Charles, 285 Blanc, Louis, 198 Blaskovich, András, 400 Bloch, R. Howard, 8, 419 Bobchev, Stefan S., 362 Bobrinskii, Aleksandr A., 391 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 328, 342 Bodmer, Johann Jakob, 313 Boehm, Joseph Daniel, 162 Bogdanov, Anatoliy P., 353 Bohemia, 8, 16, 20–23, 34–36, 39, 41–46, 98, 99, 101, 301*, 381, 384, 387, 388, 391*, 393*, 395, 396*, 404 Bohuslän, 153 Boiardo, Matteo Maria, 330 Boisserée, Sulpiz, 166, 167 Bolivar, Simon, 327 Bollé, Hermann, 185 Bolli, 72, 76, 77 Bologna, 337, 342, 343 Bona Sforza, Queen of Poland, 90 Bonaparte, Joseph, 263 Bonaparte, Louis (see Louis Napoleon) Bonneuil, Etienne de, 150 Bopp, Franz, 283 Borck, Martin, 148 Bordone, Renato, 322 Boris III, King of Bulgaria, 370, 386 Bornier, Henri de, 271

Botto, Július, 49 Boulanger, François, 209 Brâncoveanu, Constantin, Voivode of ­Wallachia, 205, 215 Braşov, 210 Bregenz, 43 Brentano, Clemens, 265 Brescia, 335 Britain, 3, 116, 126, 133, 289, 368, 391 British Isles, 143 Brünhild, 71 Brunius, Carl Georg, 131, 140 Bruno, Giordano, 341 Brunšmid, Josip, 416 Brussels (Brussel/Bruxelles), 54–56, 267, 273 Bucharest, x, 194–201, 206, 210, 211, 215 Budapest, 4, 9, 42, 130, 172, 406, 409, 421, 422 Bulgaria, 6, 9, 14, 209, 347–376, 377–396, 420 Bülow, Bernhard von, 39 Burebista, King of the Getae and Dacians, 23, 37 Bureš, Josef, 388 Bürger, Gottfried August, 134, 313* Burges, William, 129, 225 Burke, Edmund, 109, 261* Burrow, John, 96 Bursa, xi, 226, 228, 229, 234* Bury, John Bagnell, 53 Byzantium, 81, 351, 383* Caerhays Castle, Cornwall, 117* Cambridge, 53, 125 Camp, Joachim Heinrich, 315 Camp, Maxime du, 279 Carcassonne, 279, 282 Carducci, Giosue, 337 Carinthia, 16, 21, 23, 28, 29, 34, 37, 42, 48 Carlo Alberto, King of Sardinia, 338, 343 Carol I, King of Romania, 205, 214, 216 Carpathian Basin, vii, 9, 31–33, 397, 398, 415, 417 Carpegna Falconieri, Tommaso di, 9, 419 Casimir the Great, King of Poland, 102 Cattaneo, Carlo, 333 Cavour, Camillo Benso di, 341 Cerquiglini, Bernard, 291, 292, 297 Chambers, William, 115 Charlemagne, 18, 31, 34, 45, 57, 330 Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor, 306 Charles X, King of France, 282 Chartres, 282



index of proper names

Chatalar, 379 Chateaubriand, François-René de, 5, 287, 326 Châteauneuf, Alexis de, 131 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 257 Cheadle, Staffordshire, 129 Cherniaev, Mikhail G., 393 Cherniakhiv, 389, 391, 396 China, People’s Republic of, 322 Christian, Frederik, 83 Christiania, 82 Chvojka, Čeněk (Vikentyi), 388–392, 395, 396 Cimabue (pseud. of Cenni di Pepo), 328 Clark, Kenneth, 115 Clermont-Ferrand, 282 Clovis, King of the Franks, 18, 57 Cola di Rienzo, 326–327, 341 Cologne, 171, 245 Coloman, 38 Comburg, 264–265 Comte de Caylus, 290 Conon de Béthune, 292 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Byzantine Emperor, 27, 29 Constantinople, 99, 212, 380–381, 384–386, 387*, 390*, 395 Conversi, Daniele, 398, 412* Copenhagen, ix, 71, 82, 114, 131–132, 148–149 Cornelia, 77 Cornelius Tacitus, 1 Costin Petrescu, x, 215 Cracow, 30, 43 Craiova, 212 Crimea, 382 Croce, Benedetto, 319 Crom, Stefan, 166 Cucuteni, 395 Culzean Castle, Ayrshire, Scotland, 117 Cumans, 355, 421 Curta, Florin, 9, 379*, 415*, 419 Curtea de Argeş, 192, 194–195, 199–200, 203, 205, 210, 212 Custine, Marquis Astolphe de, 99 Cyril, St., 36, 377–378, 393* Czacki, Tadeusz, 91 Czechoslovakia, 385, 386* Dagny, 73 Dahn, Felix, 63 Dalmatia, 21–22 Daniel Adam of Veleslavín, 314 Dante Alighieri, 259, 275*, 328, 336, 341, 342

427

Danube, 19, 24, 27, 39, 43, 45, 347, 350, 352, 354, 373, 375, 379, 385, 420 Daukantas, Simonas, 107 David, Jacques-Louis, 112 Dávidházi, Péter, 284 De Caumont, Arcisse, 281 De la Rue, Abbé, 290 Debret, François, 287 Delécluze, Etienne, 282 Denis, Michael, 304 Denmark, 6–7, 61, 71, 79–87, 131, 133, 143, 145, 147–149, 151, 153, 157–158, 419 Derby, St Mary’s, 128 Des Marez, Guillaume, 55 Detchev, Stefan, 9, 349*, 354*, 361*, 362*, 420 Dickens, Charles, 77 Diez, Friedrich Christian, 283 Disneyland, 116 Dnieper, 389, 390*, 391–392 Dobner, Gelasius, 310 Dobrovský, Josef, 8, 37, 299–311, 313–315 Dobruský, Václav, 387–388 Dopsch, Alfons, 56 Dowspuda, Poland, 117, 119 Dreux, xiii, 29 Drinov, Marin, 349–351, 357–358, 368, 378* Du Camp, Maxime, 279 du Nouÿ, André-Emile Lecomte, x, 198*, 203, 205, 212 Dudík, Bela, 36* Duggan, Christopher, 322*, 323*, 338 Duruy, Victor, 218*, 221* Durych, Jaroslav, 305–306 Durych, Václav Fortunát, 8, 26, 300, 303–305 Dvorník, Francis, 30 East-Central Europe, 1, 6, 99–100 Eaton Hall, Cheshire, ix, 117, 119 Eckersberg, C.W., 112 Edinburgh, 126, 134 Eglington, 13th Earl of, 136 Egypt, 220, 225 Ehrenrot, Kazimir, 382 Eitelberger von Edelberg, Rudolf, 162 Eleanor crosses, 123–124 Elias, Norbert, 97 Engel, Carl Ludwig, 155 Engels, Friedrich, 327 England, 3, 54, 61, 65, 77, 90, 111, 115, 117*, 123, 125–126, 128–130, 132, 137, 147, 287, 324–325, 332, 359, 365* Eötvös, József, 406

428

index of proper names

Epirus, 351 Erdmannsdorf, Friedrich Wilhelm, 121 Érdy (Lutzenbacher), János, xi, 406–407 Erslev, Kristian, 147 Ersoy, Ahmet, xi, 14*, 226*, 420 Eslöv, 153 Essenwein, August, 174 Estonia, 147, 150 Eszék (Osijek, Hr.), 401 Europe, 1–7, 13–14, 17–18, 26, 37, 42–43, 50, 80–81, 91–92, 95, 97, 100, 112, 114, 115*, 116*, 131, 134, 136, 139–140, 155, 191, 197, 218–219, 228*, 230, 239–240, 243, 259–260, 263, 268, 275, 292*, 301, 309, 339, 349, 359, 364, 368, 389*, 391*, 401*, 409–410, 420–422 Fallot, Gustave, 292, 293* Fauriel, Claude, 289 Feininger, Lyonel, xi Ferdinand Saxe-Coburg Gotha, Bulgarian Prince, 368 Ferguson, Adam, 105 Ferrara, 191*, 344 Ferrari, Giuseppe, 336 Ferruccio, Francesco, 336 Feszl, Frigyes, 173 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 273, 307 Finland, 6, 150–151, 153–156, 157 Finsterlin, Hermann, 249 Florence, 60, 191*, 329, 338, 340, 343–344 Fodor, István, 399*, 408 Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire, England, ix, 117–118 Formigé, Jean-Camille, x, 195–196 Foscolo, Ugo, 16* Foucault, Michel, 21 France, 1–3, 5–8, 57–60, 62, 65, 68, 90, 94, 102, 104, 106, 111, 114, 126, 129–130, 147, 163, 170, 196, 230, 263, 268, 270–271, 274–276, 281–283, 285*, 287–294, 296–297, 324–325, 332, 336, 359, 368 Francis of Assisi, saint, 341 Franz Joseph, Emperor of Austria, 335, 395 Fredegar, 27, 39 Frederick I Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor, 325 Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, 335 Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, 40 Frederick William III, King of Prussia, 403 Fredericq, Paul, 51–52 Freeman, E.A., 64, 66 Freiherr von Ankershofen, 28 Freising, 37

Friesinger, Herwig, 22*, 43 Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis, 62 Gabrielescu, Nicolae, 203 Galicin (Muravlin), Dmitrij Petrovich, 365 Galilei, Galileo, 341 Gallen-Kallela, Akseli, 155 Gamillscheg, Ernst, 67 Ganchev, Dobri, 357*, 363*, 369–370 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 107, 327, 341 Gaucherel, Léon, 282 Gaul, 3, 268, 291 Gautier, Léon, 271*, 288 Gavinana, 335–336 Geary, Patrick, 13*, 15, 311* Gebauer, Jan, 300 Geijer, Erik Gustaf, 133 Geiseric, King of the Vandals, 18 Génin, François, 288, 294 Genoa, 343–344 Gent, 263, 267, 274, 276 George IV, King of England, 135, 273 Germany, ix, 2–3, 5–7, 18–19, 51–52, 55–56, 60–61, 63–65, 68, 79, 83, 111–113, 121–123, 133–134, 143, 147, 150, 243, 267, 269, 271, 273*, 274, 283, 287, 289, 324–325, 341, 344, 359, 368, 388, 423 Gessner, Salomon, 313 Ghika-Budeşti, Nicolae, 208 Gibbon, 59, 105 Gioacchino Murat, King of Naples, 334 Gioberti, Vincenzo, 326, 333–334 Giotto di Bondone, 328 Gisela, Queen of Hungary, 164 Gloeckle, 264 Gloeckle, Ferdinand, 264 Gniezno, 43 Gobineau, Arthur de, 65*, 66 Godde, Étienne-Hippolyte, 287 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 111, 122–123, 133–134, 263 Gol, ix, 142 Goll, Jaroslav, 39 Gorizia/Görz, 21 Gornostaev, Alexey, 156 Gothenburg, 153 Göttingen, 302 Gottsched, Johann Christoph, 263 Grado, 43 Gräter, Friedrich David, 265 Graz, 30, 42 Greece, 1–2, 14, 163, 209, 212, 289 Greeks, 80, 283, 373 Grégoire, Abbé, 293



index of proper names

Gregory VII, pope, 341 Grégr, Julius, 393 Grimm, Jacob, 61, 260, 265* Grimm, Wilhelm, 263*, 266* Gropius, Walter, 247, 249 Grosvenor, Earl (1st Marquis of ­Westminster), ix, 117, 119 Grundtvig, N.F.S., 80–82, 86*, 111, 113, 133 Gudrun, 71–72, 76–77 Guerrin Meschino, 339 Guessard, François, 290 Guizot, François, 58, 59*, 281, 287 Guizot, Louis, 129 Gummow, Benjamin, 117 Gumplowicz, Ludwig, 30 Gunnar, 73, 86* Guolfinger of Steinsberg, Franz, 306 Gyalus, László, 174 Habsburg Empire, 14, 19, 42–43, 45, 164, 408 Hagen, Friedrich von der, 269 Håkon Håkonsson, King of Norway, 74, 87 Håkon, V., 84 Hallam, Henry, 105 Halland, 153 Hamann, Johann Georg, 137 Hampel, József, 410, 414* Hanka, Václav, 308, 393* Hann, F.G., 28–29 Hanno, Wilhelm von, 131 Hansen, Hans, 249 Hansen, Theophil von, 209 Harald Finehair, 85 Harlequin, 342 Håslöv, 153 Hauser, Karl Baron, 28 Heber, Richard, 273 Heer, Friedrich, 17 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 111, 273 Heiberg, Johanne Louise, 71 Heideloff, Karl von, 166 Heil, Emmanuel, 53 Heinrich, Duke of Bavaria, 401 Helfert, Joseph von, 40, 45* Helsinki, ix, 155–156 Helvetic Confederation, 331 Henszlmann, Imre, x, 160–164, 166–170, 172–173, 182–183 Herculaneum, 2 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 302, 310 Herholdt, Johan Daniel, 131 Herkel, Ján, 392* Herman, Otto, 33, 144

429

Hertz, Henrik, 133 Hesz, János Mihály, ix, 164 Hitler, Adolf, 68 Hjørdis, 73–74 Hoffmann von Fallersleben, 276 Hoffstadt, Friedrich, 166 Holberg, Ludvig, 139 Holstein, 61–63, 79, 133 Homer, 112, 288 Horányi, Elek, 401 Horváth, István, 406 Hovelacque, Abel, 353 Howorth, Henry H., 30 Hristov, Kiril, 371 Hroch, Miroslav, 13*–15*, 310–311 Huber, Alphons, 41–42 Hugo, Victor, 5, 281*, 287 Hume, David, 105 Hunfalvy, Pál, 24–25, 409 Hungary, 7, 9, 16, 23–24, 32*, 33, 41–42, 45, 47, 91, 94, 99–101, 159, 162–164, 166, 170–171, 173, 182, 265, 342, 384, 397, 399*–400*, 404, 408–409, 410*, 412, 413*–414*, 421–422 Iacopone da Todi, 341 Iaşi, x, 199, 202, 205, 207, 215 Ibsen, Henrik, 72, 74–77, 78*, 84–85, 87 Iceland, 72 Ile-de-France, 281, 292, 294 Ilovajski, D., 356*, 362 Ingeborg, 71–72, 77 Ingemann, Bernhard Severin, 132 Innsbruck, 42 Inverary Castle, Argyll, 116* Iorga, Nicolăe, 25 Ipolyi, Arnold, 162, 182 Istanbul, 204, 218*, 225, 228, 231, 368, 371*, 420 Istria, 21–22 Italy, 3, 7, 9, 26, 56, 60, 96*, 191*, 204, 282, 291, 319–344, 368, 404*, 419 Jahn, Friedrich Ludwig, 269 Jan of Pomuk, 306 Jankovich, Miklós, 160–161, 182, 404, 406 Janowski, Maciej, 7, 30*, 421 Jatgeir, 75 Jelling, ix, 146 Jena, 51–52, 269 Jews, 17, 45, 80 Jireček, Hermenegild von, 38 Jireček, Josef, 381, 395 Jireček, Konstantin, 349, 381, 382*, 395

430

index of proper names

Joan of Arc, 342 John of Nepomuk (saint), 306 Johnson, Samuel, 315 Jókai, Mór, 409 Jonckbloet, Willem Jozef Andries, 276 Jönköping, 153 Jordberga Gård, Skåne, Sweden, 131 Josef II, Emperor of the Habsburg ­Monarchy, 301*, 305–306 Jung, Julius, 24, 48 Jungmann, Josef, 8, 300, 308, 310–316 Kanic, Felix, 352 Kant, Immanuel, 307 Karamzin, Nikolai, 91 Karavelov, Liuben, 355–356, 371* Kaspar Maria von Sternberg, Bohemian count, 404 Katanics, Péter, 401 Katona, István, 401 Kazinczy, Ferenc, 164 Kemal, Namık, 220*, 221 Kemp, George Mikle, 134 Keyser, Rudolf, 82, 84, 85 Kiel, 141 Kiev, 388–391, 392*, 395* Kladruby, Czech Republic, 115* Klaić, Vjekoslav, 49 Klaniczay, Gábor, 4, 13*, 15*, 163*, 173*, 311*, 421 Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 313 Kofczinski, Zigfrid, 210 Köffinger, Johann Paul, 266 Kolář, Ondřej, 395 Kollár, Jan, 392, 413 Koller József, 401 Kondakov, Nikodim P., 390 Kopernicki, Izydor, 353 Kopitar, Jernej, 36 Kořalka, Jiří, 40*, 44*, 393* Koselleck, Reinhard, 240 Kossinna, Gustav, 63–64, 66–67, 69 Koźmian, Kajetan, 90 Krain, 16, 26, 45, 46* Krăstevich, Gavril, 348 Kristiania (Oslo), 142–143, 145 Krones, Franz, 41, 43 Krum, Bulgar ruler, 372, 379 Krumenauer, Stefan, 166 Kugler, Franz, 170 Kurth, Godefroid, 55 Kyffhäuser, 344 La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, 290 La Fontaine, Jean, 262–263, 267

Lachmann, Karl, 262, 272 Ladislas I, King of Hungary, 384 Lagerbring, Sven, 139 Lahovary, Iacob, 194, 197 Lamprecht, Karl, 51, 52*, 53–56, 63–64, 67, 69 Langó, Péter, xi, 9, 401*, 404*, 408*, 417*, 421 Lassus, Jean-Baptiste-Antoine, 130, 282 Latvia, 150 Lecomte du Noüy, x, 198*, 203, 205, 207, 212–214 Leerssen, Joep, 8, 21*, 61*, 269*, 273*, 276*, 277*, 301*, 421 Legnano, 325, 332, 334–337, 341 Lehel, 401, 417 Leiden, 274 Lelewel, Joachim, 7, 89–108 Lenoir, Alexandre, 114 Leopardi, Giacomo, 331 Leopold II Friedrich Franz, Duke of Anhalt-Dessau, 121 Leopold II, Emperor of the Habsburg ­Monarchy, 310 Leopold III, Margrave of Austria, 38 Lichnowsky, Eduard Fürst, 40 Liège, 54, 266 Ligne, Prince de, 122 Linde, Samuel Bogumil, 315 Ling, Carl, 133 Linhart, Anton Tomaž, 26 Lisch, Friedrich Georg Christian, 414 Lissauer, Abraham, 416 Lithuania, 97, 107 Litomerice, 313 Littré, Émile, 293 Liutprand of Cremona, 31 Liverpool, Greenbank, 125 Ljubljana, 16, 403 Lombardy, 147, 325, 330, 336, 344* London, ix, 54, 69, 115, 117, 120, 141 Lönnrot, Elias, 155 Loserth, Johann, 38 Louis I (the Great) of Anjou, King of ­Hungary and Poland, 100 Louis XIV, King of France, 285 Louis-Philippe, King of France, 273, 282, 289 Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen of Prussia, 122 Louvain (Leuven), 266 Loviisa, 156 Low Countries, 42, 266 Lower Austria, 16, 38, 44



index of proper names

Lubbock, John, 391 Lübeck, 61, 147 Lubomirski, Henryk Ludwick, prince, 404 Luckhardt, Hans, 249 Luckhardt, Wassili, 249 Ludwig II, King of Bavaria, 116 Lehugeur, Paul, 288 Lukaš, Ludvík, 388 Luleå, 153 Lund, 131, 133, 140–141, 151 Luschin von Ebengreuth, Arnold, 47–48 Lysekil, 153 Mably, Gabriel Bonnot de, abbé, 59 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 105 Macedonia, 351, 353, 385 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 326 Macura, Vladimír, 313 Madara, 379, 386* Maglarp, 153 Magni, Giulio, x, 198, 201, 205 Maior, Petru, 23 Majláth, Johann von, 266 Mameli, Goffredo, 336 Mantua, 344 Manzoni, Alessandro, 60, 326, 336 Maramaldo, Fabrizio, 336 Marburg, x, 128, 172–173, 261 Marcel, Alexandre, 198 Marches (the), 330–331 Marczali, Henrik, 409–410 Mareš, František, 41 Maria Medici, 90 Marie de France, 267, 290 Marosi, Ernő, ix, 7, 162*, 166*, 170*, 174*, 421–422 Martin, monk, 81–82 Marun, Lujo, 383–384 Marx, Karl, 59 Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue, 15, 385, 386*, 393*–394* Matthias Corvinus (Hunyadi), King of Hungary, 31, 164, 167 Maurras, Charles, 63 Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, 40 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 107, 334, 341 Mediterranean, 1, 72, 82, 228 Méon, Dominique Martin, 266 Mérimée, Prosper, 129, 279, 281–282 Mertens, Franz, 170 Methodius, St., 28, 36–37, 377–378, 393* Michael the Brave, Prince of Wallachia, Transylvania and Moldavia, 200 Michaelis, Johann David, 302–303, 305–306

431

Michaud, Joseph F., 220, 222 Michel, Francisque, 287–288 Michelangelo, 105 Michelet, Jules, 5 7, 105 Mickiewicz, Adam, 99 Migne, Abbé Jacques-Paul, 289–290 Miklosich, Franz, 45 Milan, 42, 337, 344 Miletich, Liubomir, 359, 361 Miller, Johann Ferdinand, 399 Miller, Sanderson, 115 Milton, John, 313 Mincu, Ion, x, 194–196, 200, 205–206, 212 Mitzka, Walter, 67 Mocker, Josef, 185 Moe, Jørgen, 87 Moesia, 351 Mogoşoaia, 195 Molbech, Chr., 81 Moldavia, 189–191, 203, 205, 208 Möller, Georg, 166 Mommsen, Theodor, 62, 406 Mone, Franz-Joseph, 266 Mont-Saint-Michel, 279 Montani, Pietro, 226, 228 Montesquieu, 93, 97, 105 Montlosier, François Dominique de ­Reynaud, Comte de, 58 Moravia, 20, 22–23, 27, 34–36, 42, 49*, 393* Morris, Roger, 116* Morris, William, 127 Mrkvička, Václav, 387 Muhlack, Ulrich, 106 Müllenhoff, Karl, 64 Müller, Adam, 112 Müller, Max, 64 Müller, P.E., 113 Müller, Richard, 29 Munch, Peter Andreas, 75, 78, 82–86 Munich (München), 209, 259, 303 Munkácsy, Mihály, 34 Muntz, J.H., 115 Muratori, Ludovico Antonio, 326, 331 Nagy Géza, 410 Nagymacséd (Veľkej Mače, Slovakia), 417 Nagyszentmiklós (Sânnicolau Mare, ­Romania), 399–400, 403, 417 Nagyszombat (Trnava, Slovakia), 400 Nantes, 129 Naples, 2, 60, 191*, 327, 342, 344 Napoleon I, Emperor of France, 57–58, 112, 114, 268–269, 287, 289 Narbonne, 282

432

index of proper names

Naruszewicz, Adam, 90–91, 104 Netherlands, 62, 263*, 266–267, 273, 276, 421 Neuschwanstein, Allgäu, Germany, 116 New York, 243 Neykov, Petăr, 371–373 Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia, 384, 391 Niebuhr, B.G., 82 Niederle, Lubor, 380*, 391, 414–415, 416*, 417 Nikolas Arnesson, bishop of Oslo, 75 Nikolov, Dimităr, 358 Nivardus of Gent, 263 Noricum, 19, 22, 28 Normandie, 281, 296 Northern Europe, 114, 116, 132, 423 Norway, 4, 6–7, 71–72, 74, 78–80, 83–87, 140–141, 143, 145, 149–150, 156, 157–158 Nousiainen, ix, 154 Novalis (pseud. of Georg Friedrich Philipp Freiherr von Hardenberg), 242*, 326 Nyerup, Rasmus, 114 Odin, 81 Odobescu, Alexandru, 192–193, 212, 216 Oehlenschlaeger, Adam, 71–73, 75, 77, 79, 81–82, 86–87 Oexle, Otto Gerhard, 240 Öfele, Andreas Felix von, 303 Ol’ga, Princess of Rus, 390 Olav Haraldsson (St Olav), King of ­Norway, 86 Olav På, 77, 81 Olav Tryggvason, King of Norway, 72 Omurtag, Bulgarian ruler, 379–380, 396 Orăscu, Alexandru, x, 209–210 Oscar, Crown Prince (later Oscar I), 131 Oslo, 56, 75, 79, 82, 131, 142–143, 145 Ossian, 112, 218, 259 Ossoliński, Józef Maksymilian, Polish count, 404 Othon, King of Greece, 209 Otto III, Emperor, 164 Ottokar, King of Bohemia, 39 Ottoman Empire, 6, 13, 189*, 190, 192, 209, 214, 220, 349, 368, 370, 381 Pac family, 117 Palacký, František, 25, 27, 35–36, 299, 310, 315–316, 392, 413 Palermo, 336, 344 Pancevo, 210 Pannonia, 19, 37, 399 Pantalone, 342

Papal States, 260, 326, 330, 333 Paris, 54, 114, 141, 192–197, 198*, 200, 202*, 203, 222*, 260, 262–263, 267, 269, 281, 286, 292, 423 Paris, Gaston, 288, 291, 293–296 Paris, Paulin, 270, 272, 276 Parvillée, Léon, 226, 230* Pastyrs’ke, 389 Patera, Adolf, 395 Paul the Deacon, 28 Pauler, Gyula, 32*, 409 Peczely, József, 401 Pelcl, František Matěj, 305–306, 312 Peter (Orseolo), King of Hungary, 182 Petkov, Dimităr, 365 Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca), 328, 342 Petri, Franz, 67–69 Petrov, Racho, 372 Petrova, Sultana Racho, 372 Philip II, King of Spain, 104 Philippe-Auguste, King of France, 280 Piedmont, 330, 334, 340, 344* Pier delle Vigne, 335 Pierrefonds, 130, 239, 279, 282 Pirenne, Henri, 51–52, 55–57, 62–63, 66, 68–69 Pisa, 60, 344 Pitrè, Giuseppe, 330 Pittsburgh, 243 Pius IX, pope, 334 Places, 43, 103, 117, 130, 332, 334, 369 Pliska, 379–380, 381*, 383–384, 389, 390*, 396 Plovdiv, 381–382, 384*, 388 Pohl, Walter, 6, 13*, 422 Poland, ix, 89–92, 94–104, 106–107, 117, 119, 329, 366, 404, 421 Pompeii, 2, 191* Pontida, 332, 334–336 Popescu, Carmen, x, 7, 205*, 422 Porden, William, ix, 117, 119 Pósta, Béla, 411 Potocki, Stanisław Kostka, 403–404 Prague, 22, 42, 185, 299, 301, 304, 306, 310, 312, 377, 380*, 381, 382, 385, 387–388, 392*, 393, 395–396, 403, 415, 416* Prati, Giovanni, 337 Preslav, 378, 384, 396 Prince Regent (later George IV of ­England), 117 Procopius of Caesarea, 304 Provençal, 291 Prussia, 97, 122, 145, 147, 403 Pugin, A.W.N., 125–127, 129



index of proper names

Pulci, Luigi, 330 Pulcinella, 342 Pulszky, Ferenc, 161–162, 408, 414* Rahevinus, 337 Ranke, Leopold von, 112–113, 241 Raoul Rochette, Désiré, 279 Ravenna, 19, 212, 344 Raynouard, François, 290–291 Regensburg, 43, 401 Regino of Prüm, 31 Regnum Italiae, 325 Reill, Peter Hans, 106 Reims, 282 Remigius of Auxerre, 31 Renan, Ernest, 221* Repton, Humphry, 115, 121 Révay, Péter, 401 Rhineland, 66, 147, 273 Rickman, Thomas, 125–126, 129–130, 135 Riegl, Alois, 163, 243 Roesler, Robert, 24, 48 Roman Empire, 2–3, 5, 18–19, 57–58, 259, 268–269, 324–325, 423 Roman Republic, 101, 322, 334 Romania, 6, 14, 23*, 189–190, 193*, 194, 196–198, 200, 203, 208–209, 212, 214, 294, 355, 385, 386*, 395 Romanian Principalities, 189 Romans, 19–20, 22–23, 26, 47, 80, 96, 105, 283, 325, 327, 340 Romashky, 389, 391 Rome, 1, 19, 58–59, 92, 190*, 191, 264, 280, 289, 321–322, 333, 340, 342–344, 390, 410, 419 Rómer, Flóris, 408 Roncesvalles, 271 Ronsard, Pierre de, 259 Rosamunda, 19 Rossi, Pellegrino, 334 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 302 Rubbiani, Alfonso, 337 Rudolf I, Roman King, 40 Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, 44 Rügen, 147 Ruskin, John, 127, 129–130, 210 Russia, 9, 13, 95, 99, 101, 104, 145, 150, 303, 309, 364, 369–371, 382*, 384, 388–390, 392–393, 413*, 415* Russian Empire, 153–156, 366 Russo, Alecu, 189 Ruthenia, 97 Rychterová, Pavlína, 8, 15*, 26*–28*, 37*, 311*, 422

433

Šafárik, Pavel Jozef, 26–27, 349, 381, 393*, 413–414, 415* Saint-Beuve, Charles-Augustin, 281 Saint-Cyr, 288 Saint-Denis, 170, 279, 282, 284–285, 287 Saint-Germain des Près, 287 Saint-Louis—Louis IX, King of France, 280 Sak, Robert, 311*, 316 Sallust, 96 Salzburg, 28, 43–44 Samo, Prince of the Western Slavs, 20, 27–28, 34–35, 39 San Gimignano, 343 San Marino, Republic of, 323, 343 San Martino, 341 Sándor, István, 403 Santini, Jan Blažej, 115* Sardinia, 330, 333 Savigny, Friedrich Carl von, 61*, 261–262, 264*, 265, 269 Savonarola, Girolamo, 341 Savoy, house of, 338*, 341 Săvulescu, Alexandru, 210 Saxo Grammaticus, 86, 147 Scandinavia, 1, 3, 6, 82, 84, 99, 112, 131, 139, 145, 147, 150–151, 157–158 Scharoun, Hans, 249 Schedel (Toldy), Ferenc, 161 Scheerbarth, Paul, 245 Scheffler, Karl, 242, 244 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, 307 Schiller, Friedrich von, 137 Schinkel, Karl Friedrich, 122–123, 129 Schlegel, Friedrich, 122 Schlesinger, Ludwig, 34 Schleswig, 79, 145 Schlözer, Augustin Ludwig, 303 Schmidt, Friedrich von, 171–172, 182, 185 Schnaase, Karl, 170 Schönvisner, István, 399–400, 403* Schulcz, Ferenc, 171 Schulek, Frigyes, 171–174, 177, 185 Schwab, Johann Christoph, 292* Scott, Walter, 129, 132, 134, 135*, 137 Sedan, 62*, 271 Seine, 1 Semín, 388 Sens, 282 Serbia, 14, 209, 365, 387*, 393 Serejski, Marian Henryk, 91, 96*, 105–106 Shishmanov, Ivan, 361–362 Shrewsbury, 16th Earl of, 129 Sicily, 72, 282, 327, 330, 336, 339

434

index of proper names

Siegfried, 67* Siena, 338, 343 Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland, 104 Sigismund of Luxemburg, King of ­Hungary, Holy Roman Emperor, 167 Signorotto, Gianvittorio, 329 Sigurd, 73–74 Silesia, 42 Simonde de Sismondi, Jean-Charles ­Léonard, 331 Skåne, 131, 151, 153 Skladkovský, Karel, 393 Škorpil, Hermengild, 379* Škorpil, Karel, 9, 378, 379*, 380–381, 383–389, 395 Škorpil, Vladislav, 382*–383* Skule, 74–76, 78–79 Slavici, Joan, 45 Slovaks, 33, 48, 100, 384, 412* Słowacki, Juliusz, 90 Snorri Sturluson, 143 Sobolev, Leonid, 381–382 Socolescu, Ion, 203*, 205 Sofia, 363, 365, 370*, 382, 385*, 387–388, 420 Sommerad, A. du, 114 Sorø, 147 Šourka, Antonin, 388 South-Eastern Europe, 3, 5 Spain, 91, 95, 97, 99, 102–104, 223, 324, 332, 368 Spenser, Edmund, 259 St. Cyril/Constantine, 393* St. Gall, 43 St. Henrik, 154 St. Methodius, 28, 36–37, 377–378, 393* St. Petersburg, 155, 370*, 382*, 388, 391* Stambolov, Stefan, 364–367, 369, 371–373 Stanchova-Stambolova, Poliksenia, 372 Steffens, Henrik, 79 Steinbach, Franz, 67–68 Steindl, Imre, 167, 171–172, 185 Stephen I (Saint), King of Hungary, ix, 38, 100, 164 Sterian, George, x, 198, 202–205 Stockholm, ix, 131, 151–153, 157, 419 Stolzenfels, Koblenz, 123 Storck, Karl, 192 Stoyanov, Zahari, 371 Strängnäs, 157 Strasbourg, 122 Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, England, ix, 115–116, 118, 121, 137

Street, George Edmund, 129, 134, 225 n. 17 Strutt, Joseph, 135 Sturla Tordarson, 74 Stuttgart, 259, 264–265 Styria, 16, 42, 48 Suchier, Hermann, 293 Suger, Abbot of Saint-Denis, 170 Šuman, Josef, 26, 45 Sundsvall, 153 Sverre, King of Norway, 75 Svishtov, 372–374 Sweden, 6, 83–84, 131, 139–141, 143, 149–151, 153, 157–158, 309, 422 Symeon the Great, Bulgarian Emperor, 378, 381 Szacki, Jerzy, 89 Szalágyi (Salagius), István, 400 Széchényi Ferenc, 403 Szentkirályi, Móricz, 404 Szilágysomlyó (Şimleu Silvaniei, Romania), 403 Taaffe, Eduard, 395 Tacitus, Publius Cornelius, 1, 26, 90, 324 Taine, Hippolyte, 279 Tartars, 99, 101, 350, 355, 365 Tasso, Torquato, 330 Tattarescu, Gheorghe, 191 Taut, Bruno, xi, 245, 249 Tegnér, Esaias, 133, 137, 150 Teodorov-Balan, Alexander, 358 Thackeray, William, 77 Thausing, Moritz, 172 Theed, William, 136 Theoderic, King of the Ostrogoths, 18 Theodora, Byzantine Empress, 344 Thierry, Augustin, 5, 58–60 Thomsen C.J., 114 Thorkelin, Grímur Jónsson, 61, 113 Thrace, 351, 353 Tîrgovişte, x, 212 Tomek, Václav, 40 Toulouse, 282 Trajan, Roman Emperor, 23 Transylvania, 21–22, 24, 34, 43 Trebenište, 385 Trentino, 22 Trieste, 210 Trinqueti, Baron Henri de, 136 Trøndelag, 79 Trondheim, 145 Troya, Carlo, 60, 326 Troyes, 282



index of proper names

Trypillia, 389 Tschischka, Anton, 166 Tübingen, 266 Turin, 60, 338, 340, 343–344 Turku, 156 Tuscany, Grand Duchy of, 333 Two Sicilies, Kingdom of the, 327 Tydeman, Hendrik Willem, 264*, 267*, 274 Tyrol, 16, 21–22, 48 Uhlirz, Karl, 48 Uhlirz, Mathilde, 48 Umbria, 343 United States of America, 121, 319 Upper Austria, 44, 392* Uppsala, 150 Ural, 355 Urbino, 344, 419 Uspenskii, Fedor I, 380, 384, 390* Vaasa, 156 Vajda, János, 409 Valea Albă, 189 Vámbéry, Ármin, 32* Van Nieuwerkerke, Alfred Emilien, 279 Varna, 382*, 384, 386 Västra Vram, 153 Vaszary, Kolos, Hungarian Cardinal, 410 Vatican, 83, 260, 264–265 Veliko Tărnovo, 365, 378*, 379, 384 Venelin, Jurij, 350*, 362 Venice, 27, 43, 54, 191*, 212, 342, 344 Venice, Republic of, 330 Verdi, Giuseppe, 321–322 Verlinden, Charles, 69 Versailles, 66, 289 Verussi, Petru, 202–203 Vézelay, 129, 279, 282 Viardot, Louis, 221 Viborg, 149 Victor Emmanuel II, King of Italy, 338 n. 43, 343 Victoria, Queen of England, 136 Vienna (Wien), 4, 16, 24–25, 30*, 38, 141, 163–164, 166–167, 171, 172*, 191, 209–210, 226, 303–304, 352, 381, 386, 387*, 392, 395, 399, 403 Vieusseux, Giovan Pietro, 326 Viken, 78 Villard de Honnecourt, 170 Villari, Pasquale, 60 Villon, François, 259

435

Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène-Emmanuel, 8, 129–130, 140, 170, 205, 212, 226, 229*, 230, 234, 279, 280*, 281–286, 292, 294, 296 Virchow, Rudolf, 353 Vitet, Ludovic, 281–282 Vlach, Jaroslav, 45 Vladimir, Grand Prince of Rus, 390 Vocel, Jan Erazim, 391, 392* Volga, 350–351, 355 Voltaire, François Marie Arquet de, 95, 105, 111 Vörösmarty, Mihály, 406 Vysoké Mýto, 381, 388, 394 Wagner, Jan, 388 Wagner, Richard, 39 Wagner, Wilhelm Richard, 39, 116, 327 Walicki, Andrzej, 99 Wallachia, 190–191, 204, 215 Wallon, Henri, 272 Wallot, Paul, 197–198 Walpole, Horace, 115–116, 121 Waterhouse, Alfred, 117 Wedgwood, Josiah, 122 Wellington, 1st Duke of, 135 Wenceslas IV, King of Bohemia, 306 Wenceslas, Duke of Bohemia, 36 Werner, Michael, xi, 4*, 8, 268*, 421, 423 Western Slavonic region, 147 Weszprémy, István, 401 Wieland, Christoph Martin, 313 Wiesner, Jindřich, 387 Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, German Emperor, 344 Wilhelm, Prince of Prussia (later King ­Wilhelm II), 123 Willems, Jan Frans, 273–276 Willson, Edward, 126 Wilson, David M., ix, 7, 112*, 423 Windt, Harry de, 197 Wolfram, Herwig, 28*, 40 Wood, Ian, 7, 423 Wordsworth, William, 111, 137 Wörlitz, Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany, 121–122 Worringer, Wilhelm, 243–244 Worsaae, J.J.A., 145 Wrede, Ferdinand, 67 Wyatt, James, 117–118 Wyn, Hendrik van, 264, 274 Xenopol, Alexandru, 25* Zala, György, 182, 187

436

index of proper names

Zanetov, Gavril, 365*, 366–367, 369 Zarubintsi, 389, 391 Zettervall, Helgo, 140–141, 150–151

Zeuss, Kaspar, 22 Zlatarski, Vasil, 351*, 362–363 Zlobický, Josef Valentin, 301 n. 5, 304