Dear editors,
At the helm of the Midway Plaisance, just steps from the halls of the University of Chicago, there is a 35-foot statue of the first Czechoslovak president, Tomáš Masaryk. Erected in 1955, the statue was commissioned by Czech Chicagoans to preserve the memory of their community and the role of the University in Czechoslovak independence. With the support of Chicago’s large Czech diaspora and of the University of Chicago—where he lectured in 1902—Tomáš Masaryk secured the legitimacy to lead his newly established country after World War I.
Just as the University of Chicago commemorated its first academic hall in the 1890s, Czech life began to flourish in this city, its center outside of Central Europe. By the turn of the twentieth century, about 100,000 Czechs called Chicago home.
While the University of Chicago was not founded with the intention to steward Czech history or culture, it has adopted the cause over the last century. University leadership and the first Czechoslovak government had much in common—not least of all the pursuit of free expression and democratic ideals. Today, the University houses the largest archive of Czech and Slovak diaspora resources in the world, offers extensive Czech language classes, and has hosted figures ranging from Czech-born Madeleine Albright to Czech President Petr Pavel. It’s no wonder that a statue honoring this cultural connection should stand beside it. After all, where else in Chicago could the statue go?
Institutional memory endures while communities tend to disperse. The only remnants of Czech life in the city are the façades of renovated, repurposed, or abandoned buildings. Czechs have assimilated and resettled in the suburbs. There is one Czech restaurant left in Chicago after the penultimate closed down in 2018. The foundations of Chicago’s Czech network have faded.
A century ago, Czechs worked hard to consciously fashion a national identity under Austrian rule, often paying with their lives. Now, the dwindling legacy of Chicago’s Czech diaspora parallels the cultural trajectory of entire countries. As diasporic linguistic and historical traditions recede, culture increasingly homogenizes. Writing this letter, I am flying back to Chicago from the Czech Republic, where an archivist in Prague informed me that Czech students learn very little about the history of Czechs in America, yet are learning English more than ever.
Tomáš Masaryk and the Czech community of Chicago were wise to leverage the power of the University of Chicago. Not only were their collaborative efforts instrumental in achieving Czechoslovak independence, but also in safeguarding its memory. America is dotted with institutions of higher learning, many of which are reaching an age where they must confront a responsibility long understood by their Old World counterparts: they must conserve the past because they have helped shape it, and because they have endured through it.
That Czech history persists at the University of Chicago is commendable, but it is also a warning. In the boxes of its archives, one can trace the undulating waves of utopian ascent and fractious decline, told by Czech Americans as they reacted to each successive political order: monarchy, democracy, fascism, communism, and beyond. Through this legacy of conservation, one finds Czech consciousness in action, be it the thousands of Czech Chicagoans volunteering for military service, the enormous sums raised for support of Czechoslovak independence, or the rallies for Czech independence which, on one day in 1918, drew a crowd of over 150,000 Czechs in downtown Chicago. Tragically, these stories are little known. Archival work is well and good, but to be useful, the public must be familiar with its content.
There is everything left to conserve. But who has the will to conserve? And who has the courage to leverage lessons of what is conserved? If the memory of a people is to outlast their fleeting physical presence, it will not do so by accident, but because institutions—and the people in them—choose to carry it forward. Perhaps such conservation can inspire future action.
Archivally,
Noah Lee
Image: Alphonse Mucha, detail of the Apotheosis of the Slavs from The Slav Epic cycle, egg tempera on canvas, 1926 (Moravský Krumlov Castle, Moravský Krumlov).