Religious images and national symbols in the creation of Czech identity, 1890-1938

This dissertation explores how Czech nationalists created a tangible national identity through monuments and festivals with religious motifs. Nationalists revived the symbol of Jan Hus, the fifteenth-century church reformer who was burned as a heretic. Since Hus advocated the use of the Czech vernacular and criticized the hierarchy of the Church, his image was used to evoke the quest for an identity separate from the dominant Catholic and German culture of Imperial Austria.; The study begins in 1890 with the movement to build a Jan Hus Memorial in Prague through the controversial unveiling during the First World War. It then explores the brief revolutionary period in the first years of the Czechoslovak Republic when radicals attacked Catholic symbols in the name of the nation. The next section examines the resurgence of the political Catholic movement and the attempt to create a new nationalist representation with Catholic symbols. Next, a discussion of the lavish state festivals dedicated to Jan Hus and Saint Wenceslas highlights the international and domestic conflicts the celebrations engendered because of their religious connotations. he final section explores the role of religious symbols in the growing disenchantment of Slovaks and Germans, and in the 1930s.; The work relies on sources from Czech and American archives and draws on theoretical debates from history, anthropology, art history and feminist scholarship. The study also enters current debates about nationalism and modernity by grappling with Ernest Gellner's thesis that nationalism creates a shared culture and set of symbols, instantly comprehensible to those who belong to that nation. Yet, the symbols that arose out of the Czech national movement carried multiple meanings and led to conflicts among nationalists. Last, the study analyzes the complex relationship between religion and nationalism in a modern, secular state.; Breaking the traditional periodization of European history was also key to the thesis. Rather than choosing between the Habsburg period and the interwar era, by breaking at the First World War, the study extends from 1890 to 1938. Thus, the dissertation demonstrates that nationalism and representation continued to be contested despite the shifts of new historical periods.