East European Quarterly, Vol. XV, No. 1
PALACKÝ AND HAVLÍČEK:
THEIR POLITICAL RELATIONSHIP
Thomas G. Pešek
Washington State University
During the nineteenth century one of central Europe’s more important, though lesser-known, political partnerships was that of František Palacký (1798–1876) and Karel Havlíček (1821–56). As the leading Czech liberals of their time, they contributed singularly to the formation of Austro-Slavism, the first modern Czech political program. In accord with that doctrine, they led the Czech struggle for the preservation and federalization of the Habsburg Monarchy and against the establishment of a Great German state. They also warned, with remarkable foresight, against the extension of Russian power into central Europe. Yet only a few scholars have examined their relationship in detail.
Judgments made in the last century by both admirers and adversaries of the two men have confused subsequent inquiries into their relationship. The Radical Democrat J.V. Frič, for example, saw little difference between them. Havlíček was strictly a junior partner of Palacky, and both were spokesmen for a middle class that was blind to social change.1 Jakub Malý, an early historian of the Czech renascence, considered their relationship ambiguous. He accorded Palacký an important place in Czech politics, but categorized Havlíček as one whose attacks on his opponents hurt rather than enhanced the Czech political cause.2 Later writers, such as Karel Tůma and T.G. Masaryk, wrote more positively. Tůma exonerated Havlíček from most of Maly’s charges, while Masaryk explained how the two could develop contrasting political styles and tactics and still maintain their ideological unity. But these later analyses, in the two or three decades before World War I, were themselves controversial. Masaryk’s supported a new, quasi-religious interpretation of the Czech national awakening which many historians considered untenable.3 Tůma’s served the occasionally spurious purposes of the Young Czech Party as it vied in the 1880’s for leadership of the Czech people.4
Judged strictly by their backgrounds. Palacký and Havlíček would seem to be unlikely political collaborators. They were reared in small, homogeneous Czech towns, remote from the Austrian Empire’s multinational cities. They received good educations, as well as strict religious upbringings (Palacký, Lutheran; Havlíček, Catholic). And they converted
