Young Czech Party
The 1848 Revolutions, starting in Sicily before spreading to the rest of Europe, led to the formation of the first Czech political parties in the Austrian Empire.
In June 1848 the Prague Slavic Congress, led by the historian František Palacký, who had rejected his mandate to the Frankfurt Parliament, demanded a federation of the Austrian states and the withdrawal from the German Confederation.
The Czech people were given a taste of freedom of assembly and government only to experience defeat, which was completed with the failed Vienna Uprising and the dissolution of the Kremsier Parliament in 1849.
As a result of the failed revolution, in 1851 the decreed March Constitution was abolished and a non-constitutional system was put in place under Interior Minister Baron Alexander von Bach, deemed "Bachist neo-absolutism".
[3]: 88 Yet by 1860, due to the lost Second Italian War of Independence, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria was forced to revoke absolutist policies with the October Diploma in an attempt to pacify internal dissent, including the implementation of an Imperial Council parliament.
The National Party sought to achieve a large measure of political and cultural autonomy for the Czech people within a federated Austria.
Yet, with the February Patent of 1861 by Interior Minister Anton von Schmerling, an abrupt reversion to centralized ideas spread once again throughout the Czech lands.
Their major areas of contention were: the extent to which the party should cooperate with the conservative landowners, how best to define and advance Bohemian state rights, whether or not to passively resist centralization of the monarchy, and their difference of opinion with the January Uprising in Russian Poland.
The Old Czech faction, under the leadership of Palacký and Rieger, sought to act conservatively against the monarchy through working with the great landowners to achieve greater political influence and by refusing to attend the imperial council (Reichsrat) meetings.
At war the monarchy sought the financial aid of its lands and Hungary, also seeking imperial recognition of its autonomy, refused to provide assistance as long as their demands for self-government were not fulfilled.
[3]: 89 The Ausgleich, Compromise, gave a unified Hungary a large measure of internal autonomy and an equal status with Austria, but kept oversight and ultimate power in the monarch's hands.
This defiance, led by Alois Pravoslav Trojan and Edvard Grégr, heralded the decision to form an independent Young Czech party in December of the same year.
After 1874, the Young Czechs claimed to be the heirs of Karel Havlíček Borovský, a journalist and martyr who advocated Slavic reciprocity and criticized the authoritarian Russian government.
When Justice Minister Count Schönborn set up the Weckelsdorf District Court to align with the language border, the Young Czechs wanted to bring him to trial.
[7] Both Julius and Eduard were involved in the leadership of the Young Czech Party, which exerted influence in Bohemian politics in the later nineteenth century.
Beginning in the early years of Dualism, the Young Czechs were ambitious and arrived on the scene with a striking political agenda of national demands.
Julius and Eduard Grégr attacked the Old Czechs for sacrificing liberal nationalist goals in favor of the aims of the Bohemian feudal nobles during the accepted boycott of the Diet in Prague and the imperial Parliament in Vienna.
A few months later, the founding congress of the Young Czech Party proclaimed its independence and issued a wide-ranging agenda that differed substantially from its predecessor.
After eight years (1871–79) of boycotting the Reichsrat in protest against the collapse of a negotiated agreement with Emperor Franz Joseph, the Young Czech chose to compromise.
[9] The supporters of the Young Czechs came from petty tradespeople, lawyers, progressive intellectuals, teachers and university students, some leaders in the Sokol gymnastic organization and middling farmers hurt by Hungarian and North American competition.
