Choosing Czech Identity in Nineteenth-Century Prague: the Case of Jindřich Fügner

Jindřich (Heinrich) Fügner played a significant role in the evolution of Czech national culture in the nineteenth century. As the first President, or starosta, of the Sokol (Falcon), the Czech gymnastic club that was modeled on the older German Turnverein movement, he worked together with the club's Gymnastic Director, Miroslav Tyrš, to build the foundations of the most successful Czech nationalist organization of the nineteenth century. A prominent and respected figure in the society of mid-century Prague, he was also somewhat of an anomaly, a German businessman who abandoned the status that his wealth and national origin conferred to cross-over to a Czech identity. Although such conversions evoke images of “national promiscuity” or “national transvestitism” in the modern world, where national identity is viewed as inevitable, they were not uncommon in nineteenth-century Prague, and Fügner's choice was unusual only because it was not motivated by a desire for social advancement or economic opportunity. Rather, in a world where political expression was limited, it appears as a statement of personal values and ideological conviction whose motives must be sought not in material concerns, rather in the more abstract regions of the soul.