'Czech Regiments for Czech Cities, German Regiments for German Cities': Army Garrisons and Urban Security in Late Imperial Bohemia

• In Event: Politics of Urban Space in the Late Habsburg Bohemian Lands

Abstract

During the late nineteenth century, Czech and German nationalists expended great energy trying to ensure that urban space reflected the “national character” of their towns and cities. In the nationalist imagination, building the right kind of monument or clubhouse provided concrete evidence that Prague was “Czech,” for example, or that Reichenberg was “German.” As this paper shows, nationalist activists were just as eager to ensure that their towns and cities hosted the right kind of soldiers. The emperor’s soldiers had always been a fixture of the urban space – a visible presence in pubs, parks, cafes, and promenades. While the army alone determined which soldiers were stationed in which cities, urbanites in the 1880s and 1890s began demanding more direct involvement in this decision-making process. Nationalists, in particular, argued that Czech soldiers belonged in Czech cities and German soldiers in German cities. This reflected anxieties about the “alien” presence of soldiers from the “other” nationality. Yet this was also a reaction to the waves of street violence and mass protest that wracked Bohemia in the years around the turn of the century. Cognizant of the fact that garrison troops routinely deployed for urban peacekeeping operations, nationalists in both camps considered it a matter of public safety to have their own co-nationals inhabiting local barracks. As I show, nationalists paid close attention to the army’s peacetime garrison assignments and used all sorts of strategies in an attempt to sway the army’s decisions. They passed local resolutions, organized public protests, and even attempted to pay the War Ministry to relocate certain regiments. While these attempts were not always successful, they demonstrate nationalists’ growing recognition that the threat of force represented by soldiers was as crucial for determining the national character of their cities as buildings, monuments, and street signs.

Author

• Kevin Joseph Hoeper, UNC at Chapel Hill