Language loyalty and language shift in Bohemia in the long 19th century based on the language biography of Friedrich (Bedřich) Smetana

Abstract

ABSTRACT Language loyalty can be viewed from the perspective of both language stability and language shift. The paper focuses primarily on the latter as it shows how the Bohemian composer Friedrich Smetana (1824–1884) shifted from a predominate use of German to Czech in private and official correspondence and his diaries to become known as the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana. This change serves as a model of the collective language and social shift in Bohemia in the long 19th century. The paper shows, however, that Smetana encountered difficulties in making the language shift from German to Czech due to the stability of his previous language loyalty to German, tracing both Smetana’s subsequent evaluation of the limited language shift’s success and his explanation of its failure. In this regard, the study also considers the narrative of a Germanisation Smetana invokes to explain his loyalty to the German language during his education and beyond due to the Germanisation of educational institutions. The paper thus shows how Smetana’s narrative of his own language biography is a model narrative for his generation as whole.