Tvorba Hanse Watzlika v letech 1917–1919
The Work of Hans Watzlik Between 1917 and 1919

Summary/Abstract: Hans Watzlik was the laureate of the Czechoslovak State Award for Literature (1931), but in 1946 he was convicted of propagating and supporting the Nazi movement by the Special Peoples’ Tribunal in Klatovy. This paper focuses on Watzlik’s novel O Böhmen! (Oh, Bohemia!, 1917), in which he had for the first time revealed his sympathies for the German nationalistic movement. The circulation of the novel reached in the following quarter of a century 50‚000 copies. In this novel, evincing traits of a grenzlandroman, Watzlik does on the one hand show his admiration for the rise of the Czech nation during the nineteenth century, yet, on the other, he warns against the danger of Czechs penetrating into the border areas of Czech Kingdom, which were populated by Germans. He goes on to think through the consequences of an escalated ethnic conflict. The novel relies on a number of stereotypical depictions (eg.: Germans as the bearers of culture in Central Europe, the Hussite movement as primarily anti-German, the melancholy softness of Slavonic songs), it contains a number of ideas typical for various groups from the pre-war period (Schöner’s German nationalistic movement in Austria, the anti-Catholic movement Los von Rom! [Away from Rome!]) or for the general cultural atmosphere of that era (Wagnerism, the cult of the Nibelungs). After the First World War and the establishment of Czechoslovakia, Watzlik’s attitude to the German question does not change. In his small book of poems Zu neuen Sternen (To the New Stars, 1919), the author responds to the violent suppression of a German demonstration in the border areas from March 4, 1919 and calls upon his readers to overcome the hard times and to have faith in a better future awaiting the humiliated nation.

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