Prague

Bohemia, once the heart of a prosperous independent kingdom, was the westernmost province of the multinational Habsburg monarchy before the Great War. Prague was the provincial administrative capital, a position many notches down from its former medieval status as royal capital city. Nineteenth-century Prague’s population was mixed, with a Czech majority and a German minority. In addition to individuals with strong national ties, there were also those who resisted identifying with one nation. Religious diversity, too, characterized the city’s population. A Jewish minority of roughly 10 per cent lived among a much larger Christian majority. In 1900 roughly half the Jewish population of the city identified themselves as Czechs. Due in significant part to the strengthening of Czech national identity in the decades before World War I and memories of Prague’s pride of place in the Kingdom of Bohemia, an increasing number of Czechs came to see Prague not simply as the administrative capital of a Habsburg province, but also as the cultural capital of a Slavic nation living under imperial domination.