István Deák’s “Czech” School

Students of István Deák have been at the forefront of problematizing the Czech national narrative, particularly following the fall of Communism. The Czech nationalist interpretation of history casts the Czechs as an imprisoned nation within Austria (and later inside the Soviet bloc). In this schema, the 1620 Battle of White Mountain ushered in an era of temno (darkness) during which the Germanic Habsburgs suppressed the Czech national language and culture. This article examines how scholars who studied with Deák complicated this narrative by investigating national indifference and fissures within the nineteenth- and twentieth-century national movements.