Prague’s Urban Elites and the Problem of Spreading Hunger, 1914–1918

Prague’s Urban Elites and the Problem of Spreading Hunger, 1914–1918 vojtěch Pojar KEY WORDS: First World War — Bohemian Lands — Urban Elites — Hunger — Social Legitimization Among scholars there is broad agreement that the crucial part in the breakdown of social consensus in the Habsburg monarchy was the disruption of food supply in the last years of the war.1 Through an analysis of discourses related precisely to the impact of a lack of food and other goods of daily consumption on the human organism this study strives to understand the sense that the actors attached to their actions in time of the Great War. At the same time, I endeavour to answer in this study the question whether hunger in the context of the shattered social consensus became the cause of delegitimisation of the social actors, or, on the contrary, a source of their public authority. I will focus on the urban milieu, which relied for the greatest part on food imports and in which a disruption of supplies had the most drastic corollaries, specifically on the largest city in the Czech Lands, Prague. An important role in the management of food supplies was played by urban elites,2 for whom supplies, care for the poor and healthcare and raising funds to cover these activities went hand in hand in the decisive spheres of their activity.3 In the penultimate year of the war a part of the urban elites, together with other actors, created the charitable organisation Czech Heart [České srdce], which served, inter alia, as a parallel structure for procuring and distributing food in the city. Discourses of these actors are the centre of attention of this study. 1 Rudolf Kučera, Život na příděl. Válečná každodennost a politiky dělnické třídy v českých zemích 1914–1918, Praha 2013, p. 168. For basic information about town supplies during the war see also: Jan Havránek, Politické represe a zásobovací potíže v českých zemích v letech 1914–1918. In: Hans Mommsen — Dušan Kováč — Jiří Malíř (eds.), První světová válka a vztahy mezi Čechy, Slováky a Němci, Brno 2000, pp. 37–52; Peter Heumos, “Dejte nám brambory, nebo bude revoluce.” Hladové nepokoje, stávky a masové protesty v českých zemích v období 1914–1918. In: Ibidem, pp. 207–232; Barbora Lašťovková, Zásobování Prahy za první světové války. In: Jiří Pešek — Václav Ledvinka, Mezi liberalismem a totalitou. Komunální politika ve středoevropských zemích 1848–1918, Praha 1997, pp. 111–117; Václav Ledvinka — Jiří Pešek, Praha, Praha 2000, pp. 549–558; Pavel Scheufler, Zásobování potravinami v Praze v letech 1. světové války, Etnografie dělnictva 9, 1977, pp. 143–197; Ivan Šedivý, Češi, české země a velká válka 1914–1918, Praha 2001. 2 I use this term to define persons whose membership of self-governing bodies gave them executive powers in a municipality. 3 Jaroslav Láník — Jan Vlk et al., Dějiny Prahy. Sv. 2. Od sloučení pražských měst v roce 1784 do současnosti, Praha 1998, p. 272. OPEN ACCESS 56 WISOHIM/ESHP 22 OPEN ACCESS DEBATES ABOUT PREVENTION OF HUNGER AND EPIDEMICS AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR Hunger and epidemics became the subjects of debates of the urban elites right from the beginning of the war. For example, at an extraordinary congress of the Union of Czech Towns [Svaz českých měst] in the summer of 1915 one of the principal speakers thought it was surprising that no epidemic had struck the Czech towns during the war. He saw the cause in the development of modern science, although, in his opinion, the urban elites should not be lulled by it into a sense of false security. On the contrary, for health reasons it was necessary to prevent the spread of another threat — hunger — which might cause an epidemic in the future.4 This speech bore testimony to the continuity of two traditional components of the urban elites’ mentality — mental stereotypes of fears of hunger and epidemic — and their interconnection. Both cases involved mental stereotypes deeply rooted in history because the urban elites of that time lacked a personal experience of widespread hunger, let alone an epidemic. The inhabitants of the Czech Lands had the last direct experience of the threat of hunger in the mid-1840s when a bad potato crop was followed by a bad grain harvest.5 After this last traditional type of famine the possibility of hunger affecting a greater part of society seemed to become decreasingly likely during the modernisation. Before the outbreak of the Great War hunger did not directly affect the majority of the workers.6 Otto’s Encyclopaedia, published at the turn of the century, localised the reality of hunger outside the “civilised countries”, adding that hunger was truly exceptional in Europe.7 In spite of this, a nagging fear of the possibility of hunger in Czech society during the long nineteenth century “acted as the key component (…), determining the priorities of life’s certainties,” even, though just to a certain degree, in the urban milieu.8 Repeated considerations of the urban elites of the threatening spread of hunger suggest that in the extraordinary situation of a war conflict this fear returned with much more strength to the order of the day. The roots of the mental stereotype of an epidemic must have reached even deeper, perhaps until the last outbreak of plague. The strength of this component of Czech mentality, shared by the urban elites, was subsequently maintained by cholera epidemics, the last of which struck the Czech Lands in 1866.9 Fears of the epidemic made disease prevention a high priority of the urban elites in the Prague agglomeration, who manifested in this case a far greater degree of willingness to cooperate than in 4 Mimořádný sjezd českých měst z království Českého, Věstník svazu měst v Království českém [“VSČM”], 5/3–4, 31.8.1915, p. 73 an. 5 Jiří Štaif, Peníze a společnost. Několik sond do vztahů mezi tradiční mentalitou a společenskou modernizací v české národní společnosti 19. století. In: Eduard Kubů — Jiří Šouša (eds.), Finanční elity v českých zemích a Československu, Praha 2009, p. 28. 6 Ibid, p. 51. 7 Hlad, Ottův slovník naučný, vol. 11, Praha 1897, p. 329. 8 J. Štaif, Peníze a společnost, p. 22. 9 Servác Heller, Válka z roku 1866 v Čechách, její vznik, děje a následky, Praha 1896, p. 335. vOjtěcH POjar 57 OPEN ACCESS other matters. The charter of the newly established Central Health Commission for Greater Prague [Ústřední zdravotní komise pro Velkou Prahu] named among the diseases whose spread was provided against by the common disease prevention, besides typhus and smallpox and dysentery, the plague and cholera.10 As no epidemic broke out in the first years of the war, subsequent considerations of epidemics receded temporarily into the background. The stances of the urban elites in the first months of the war indicate that the attemp to prevent much feared hunger and epidemics was closely related to the endeavour of the urban elites to legitimise their political position. The urban elites had to legitimise themselves in the eyes of the inhabitants of “their” towns by effective food supplies, with which they tried to put a stop to rising prices, shortages of goods, and their consequences. At the same time, the state administration, which could curb their powers in various ways expected from them, as the urban elites were convinced, to keep law and order in the towns. The efforts undertaken to secure enough food were thus simultaneously efforts to prevent a wave of social protest.11 HUNGER AND THE HUMANISTIC DISCOURSE OF THE BODY In the first half of 1917 the quantity of food delivered to towns through supply depots created by the government was sharply reduced and stocks kept by municipalities were in effect exhausted. Prague went through the first real supply crisis.12 It was not only a lack of fats and some types of meat that was evident in the preceding year, but unavailability of most staple foods, including potatoes and milk. The quality of the last available foodstuff, flour, went down perceptibly before the harvest: it was often musty, it smelled mouldy and contained insects.13 Moreover, the food shortages were accompanied by a lack of coal, already felt in the last months of 1916, which culminated in February to an extent that hit hard not only households, but paralysed the municipal infrastructure.14 In response to the spreading hunger the urban elites revised substantially their views on the current supply policy and the relation between the government supply policy and their ideas of public welfare: Until that time they had strongly advocated government and municipal interventions in the economy but now centralised distribution of food by the state became the object of their criticism. It was clear to them that the end of the war would bring about long postponed municipal elections probably based on a more democratic election system. The spreading hunger undermined the legitimacy of the urban elites in the eyes of their potential voters. They wanted 10 Statut ústřední zdravotní komise pro Velkou Prahu, Věstník obecní Královského hlavního města Prahy [“VOP”] 21/15–16, 17.9.1914, p. 289. 11 Zásobování města, VOP 21/13–14, 27.8.1914, p. 252. 12 P. Scheufler, Zásobování potravinami, p. 147. 13 Zpráva o činnost ředitelství Aprovisačních ústavů král. hlav. města Prahy, Aprovisační věstník Královského hlavního města Prahy [“AV”] 2/8, 10.8.1917, p. 2. 14 Zpráva ředitelství, AV 2/3, 10.3.1917, p. 1. 58 WISOHIM/ESHP 22 OPEN ACCESS to fend this off by criticising the government supply policy. In the eyes of the city dwellers the criticism was to relieve them of the responsibility for the prevailing dearth of goods and, at the same time, to serve as an argument in negotiations with state administration, from which they expected an improvement of the supply situation in the city. Concurrently, their standpoints from the beginning of 1917 began to resonate with a humanistic discourse of the body, which became, in addition to criticism of the government supply policy, the second foundation stone for the consensus built among the urban elites from all political parties. In the humanistic discourse of the body man is endowed with human dignity and starving means utter degradation. Human life and health are viewed from this perspective as values which must be protected without fail. Watching the spread of hunger in a modern country was perceived as being unacceptable in moral terms. Struggle against of hunger was furthemore a value in itself that was supposed to help the urban elites to forge broader coalitions. The humanistic discourse of the body resonated strongly in a memorandum from September 1917 submitted by the Prague City Council to the Council of Ministers and its Presidium. A key passage from the text analysing the health impact of hunger on the human organism of Prague’s inhabitants came from a report from Prague’s principal physician. It accorded with the overall intent of the memorandum which was to inform the government about the threatening lack of food and its ramifications — the “terrible state of miserable existence, drawn-out dying, in which entire strata of poor and less wealthy inhabitants already find themselves” — to make the government reform food production and distribution leading to bigger and better allocations of goods for Prague. The urban elites were convinced that the rations were to guarantee people a dignified life rather than mere survival, which would degrade man to the level of an animal.15 This report supported the argumentation of the urban elites with the authority of medical science. According to the Prague physicians, the consequence of the shortage of food was perishing of the city dwellers and spread of infectious diseases. According to their statistics, mortality rates were increasing and tuberculosis spread among the population. Dysentery mortality rose from 5% to 20%, with the disease afflicting for the most part old people and children. The report saw the principal cause of the worsening state of health of the city dwellers in insufficient quantity of food.16 Its supplies were moreover irregular and of late, incomplete. It identified a further cause in insufficient quality of food, which contained into the bargain parts which were irritating or indigestible for the human organism. Apart from substances that bakers added to flour illegally, some officially permitted additives were also unsuitable for digestion. The mandatory excessive degerming of flour was also inimical to health.17 By presenting the sufferings of the city dwellers as a product of the govern15 Z pamětních spisů obce Pražské o zásobovací bídě obyvatelstva v hlavním městě českého království, VSČM 6/5–6, 31.12.1917, p. 214. 16 Pamětné slovo, VOP 24/18, 27.9.1917, p. 272 an. 17 Ibid. vOjtěcH POjar 59 OPEN ACCESS ment policy it implicitly called in question the argumentation of the state administration and some experts, who suggested that the starving ones were to blame for their hunger. The argumentation in the memorandum was to be supported by a report from the Prague Poor Relief Department. According to the report, thousands of mothers suffered from hunger and came to the Poor Relief Department to ask for food, children who were hungry had to beg in the streets, and inmates of poorhouses and hospices languished as they could not get food with what money they had. The report suggested that care for the poor which the urban elites understood as one of their moral obligations and which represented one of the sources of their legitimacy failed with the lack of food and spreading hunger.18 The report from Prague’s principal physician shows that the role of the natural sciences was ambivalent during the war. Their generally accepted authority could be used to legitimise the government policy leading to shortages, as well as to criticize, often radically, its consequences and its human costs. What standpoint it would adopt about this was determined by its institutional underpinning and the value judgements of a specific scientist. The strength of the natural sciences as a tool for criticism of the government supply policy also lay in the fact that their public authority and hoped-for objectivity were taken at their face value by the wartime censors. Scientists from these disciplines could therefore voice their criticism publicly without much hindrance. HUNGER AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY DISCOURSES The war brought about a marked increase in vertical social mobility, both descending and ascending. Despite this, the urban elites were still convinced in the first years of the war of the validity of their pre-war way of perceiving social inequality. Spreading hunger first brought into their position on this issue a considerable dose of uncertainty19; but after certain peripetiae the opinion spread among the urban elites that for description of urban society a dichotomic model of social stratification was most appropriate. This idea was reinforced by the conviction that social decline and hunger now struck the middle classes.20 According to the urban elites, society was divided by the size of property and income that determined the possibilities and limits to access to food. The office of the Prague principal physician divided in the cited report the urban population into two groups: a large majority that depended on food rations and 18 Z pamětních spisů obce Pražské o zásobovací bídě obyvatelstva v hlavním městě českého království, VSČM 6/5–6, 31.12.1917, p. 220 an. 19 Archiv hlavního města Prahy [“AHMP”], Magistrát hl. města Prahy. Protokoly sborů městské správy [“Magistrát — protokoly”], Inv. č. 854, Protokol ze schůze z 2.4.1917; Zpráva o činnosti Aprovisačních ústavů za měsíc březen 1917, AV 2/4, 10.4.1917, p. 1. 20 AHMP, Magistrát — protokoly, Inv. č. 854, Protokol ze schůze ze 4.6.1917; Ibid, Protokol ze schůze z 3.9.1917. 60 WISOHIM/ESHP 22 OPEN ACCESS suffered from undernourishment, dysentery and hunger, and “a wealthy population minority which lacked nothing”, as they could procure food on the black market.21 The reference to the differences in the access to food in the towns and in the country played a relatively small role in the argumentation of Prague’s urban elites, which was further weakened by the growing willingness of the Czech Agrarian Party to cooperate with the urban actors, which found its expression in the creation of a common supply department of the Union of Czech Towns [Svaz českých okresů] and Union of Czech Districts in the summer of 1917, and in the operations of the charitable organisation Czech Heart, created in October 1917. “COMPASSION FOR INNOCENT SUFFERERS”: THE DISCOURSES OF CZECH HEART Czech Heart was a parallel structure supplementing or substituting public food supplies and the existing charities, which cared for nutrition of the poor inhabitants of Prague and young people with support from Prague’s urban elites before the war and in the first years of the conflict. In many aspects Czech Heart was a follow-up to them: Apart from organisational similarities there was a non-negligible personnel continuity among them. It was precisely the failure of legal supplies and charitable societies under the pressure of a lack of food that made some members of Prague’s urban elites and individuals associated with this milieu to begin to consider in the spring of 1917 an alternative supply method and assistance for the hungry people. The growing food shortage in the Prague agglomeration was also responded to by members of the Czech intelligentsia. The fight against hunger became in their texts a source of reinforcing their public authority, of which they made use in appeals for assistance for the sufferers and overcoming the threatening social polarisation. In texts of Ivan Olbracht and Růžena Svobodová, published at the beginning of October 1917, there was already an incipient humanistic nationalist line of argument, appearing subsequently in the documents of Czech Heart. It was above all the motif of the nation whose existence is threatened by hunger and the motif of a suffering child which would take the central place in the appeals of Czech Heart.22 The necessity of helping the starving people together with the conviction that it is necessary to reconcile social differences in a polarised society became the core around which the basic consensus was built among the actors taking part in the creation of Czech Heart. Two groups of actors were formed at the end of the summer of 1917, in both cases led by doctors (Ladislav P. Procházka and Jan Deyl), related to the Prague Council.23 As their aims overlapped, it was decided to merge both planned campaigns and on 12 October 1917 the first conference could be held of a newly formed 21 Pamětné slovo, VOP 24/18, 27.9.1917, p. 273. 22 Ivan Olbracht, Návrh radě českých spisovatelů, Kmen 1/35, 11.10.1917, pp. 1–2; Růžena Svobodová, Nedejme zahynouti, Lípa 1/2, October 1918, pp. 29–30. 23 Ochrana mládeže v Praze, VOP 24/20, 25.10.1917, p. 291 an. vOjtěcH POjar 61 OPEN ACCESS Committee for the Rescue of the Prague Population [Komitét na záchranu pražského obyvatelstva], renamed at this meeting to the more suggestive Czech Heart.24 The names of the attendees show that those that made their mark in the nascent Czech Heart were Prague’s urban elites, municipal officials, doctors associated with the new isolation ward in the hospital Na Bulovce.25 Others who were represented in the society were middle-class women and representatives of Sokol sport movement. Naturally enough, the participation of representatives of the agrarian party was crucial. As early as September the Agrarian Party deepened its collaboration with the urban elites on the platform of the Union of Czech Towns and Districts. Agrarian politician Adolf Prokůpek, president of the Czech Section of the Agrarian Council [Český odbor České zemědělské rady] and deputy chairman of the joint supply committee of these unions, was elected to head Czech Heart.26 The agrarian press served as one of the tribunes publishing appeals of Czech Heart to help the starving. At a congress of the Agrarian Party, held on 17 November 1917, Antonín Švehla sided with Czech Heart: “If we are to starve, we must all starve, and there must not be among us people dying of hunger on one side and sated ones on the other side.”27 It follows from this speech that the Agrarians expected from Czech Heart that it would prevent further polarisation of society and it would enable the building of a new consensus, on whose basis the Agrarian Party could seek after the war coalition partners among the urban parties. It was precisely the participation of the Czech countryside that distinguished Czech Heart sharply from the existing charitable societies, and was a condition for successful achievement of the society’s goals: Although Czech Heart turned also to the Czech bourgeoisie, its appeal was directed in the first place at the countryside. Already in the early phase of the organisation’s existence, the activists of the Czech Heart succeeded in forging a wide consensus over the necessity of helping those suffering from hunger. This ambition was manifest in the programme text ambition was manifest “Don’t let them perish”, written by a writer popular in the country, Růžena Svobodová and an editor of the Agrarian daily Večer, Josef Vraný, which the newspapers published on 25 October 1917. It appealed to Czech peasants to provide the starving inhabitants of the capital with food. This was to be followed by Czech banks and the Czech bourgeoisie making financial donations. This appeal was given authority by a number of the actors’ signatures, perceived as leading members of the Czech national elite.28 Their names affirmed that a consensus existed not only among the Agrarians and the Young Czechs, preponderant among the founders of Czech Heart, but it was built among all the main Czech political powers. 24 Pět let Českého srdce. 1917–1922, Praha 1922, p. 4. 25 Adolf Prokůpek, Jan Deyl, Councillor Fischer, Josef Groh, Jaroslav Kvapil, Ladislav P. Procházka, Josef Scheiner, Václav Štěpánek, Jan Vošický, Josef Vraný, Anna Podlipná and Růžena Svobodová. Pět let Českého srdce, p. 4. 26 Pět let Českého srdce, p. 4. 27 Pět let Českého srdce, p. 8. 28 The declaration was signed by Jan Deyl, Gustav Habrman, Alois Jirásek, Josef Holeček, Václav Klofáč, Karel Kramář, Anna Podlipná, Jaroslav Preiss, Adolf Prokůpek, Josef Scheiner, Antonín Švehla, Renata Tyršová. Pět let Českého srdce, p. 5. 62 WISOHIM/ESHP 22 OPEN ACCESS The humanistic-cum-nationalist discourse permeating the texts of Czech Heart worked actively with representation of hunger as an utterly unacceptable abuse, using images of the shortages in Greater Prague, symbols of a starving mother, a suffering child, and the “endangered existence of a perishing nation”. The texts of Czech Heart were to mobilise their readers with the parable of a dying Prague, where hunger and misery have swamped the suburbs and even reached some of the middle classes. In this interpretation, who did not have money to shop on the black market was condemned to die of hunger as the state was unable to provide the city population with foodstuffs.29 Authors associated with Czech Heart pointed out the catastrophic extent of the hunger — speaking on several occasions, with some exaggeration, of a famine30 — supporting their claims with an alarming estimate of the number of starving people. According to the estimate, in Prague and its suburbs 200,000 people starved, including 28,000 children.31 The first sentence of the appeal made by the Children’s Section of Czech Heart, written by Růžena Svobodová for country readers brought to mind the deep degradation caused by the failure of central distribution of food and coal: “Today’s individual is born in the dark, starves in the dark, and dies in the dark”.32 The key role in the mobilisation of readers by the texts of Czech Heart was played by drastic descriptions of the suffering of starving human bodies. Hunger had reduced their figures to emaciated shadows dragging themselves along in the streets.33 In most texts of Czech Heart the shadows took a more concrete form and attracted followers by emotional appeals to gender aspects of the hunger threat — by speaking about suffering and dying bodies of women and children and walking skeletons dressed in rags. The middle-class female authors and writers of the texts represented the woman in the first place as mother sacrificing herself for her family dying of hunger.34 In the texts of Czech Heart mothers are represented as innocent victims, about whom the authors speak without hesitation as martyrs. According to them, children were compelled to live in conditions lacking fundamental civilisation gains: they did not breakfast, went about barefoot or had rags wrapped around their feet. They lived and died in rooms without furniture, blankets and clothes.35 According to the Czech Heart workers, such suffering affected deeply their physical constitution. Just like their mothers, hunger transformed children into dying skeletons.36 29 Provolání “Nedejte zahynouti”. In: Pět let Českého srdce, pp. 4–5. 30 LA PNP, f. Růžena Svobodová, Materiály týkající se činnosti Českého srdce, Oběžník pro místní zástupce Českého srdce, LA 39/66/3209. 31 Ibid. 32 První provolání dětského odboru Českého srdce [2.12.1917]. In: Pět let Českého srdce, p. 27. 33 LA PNP, f. Růžena Svobodová, Materiály týkající se činnosti Českého srdce, Oběžník pro místní zástupce Českého srdce, LA 39/66/3209. 34 Provolání “Nedejte zahynouti”, in: Pět let Českého srdce, pp. 4–5. 35 První provolání dětského odboru Českého srdce [of 2.12.1917]. In: Pět let Českého srdce, p. 27. 36 Růžena Svobodová, Dědicům, Venkov 13/125, 1.6.1918, p. 2. vOjtěcH POjar 63 OPEN ACCESS The logo of Czech Heart, a red heart encircled with a thorn wreath, symbolised, with an obvious Christian implication, love for innocent sufferers.37 Love was to be inspired by the representation of hunger with which Czech Heart worked. The readers were to be inspired to help by their humanistic convictions but also by their national identity. A serried national community was to contribute, together with the results of the society‘s charitable activities, to blur social distinctions and to lessen polarisation of society. The texts of Czech Heart therefore emphasised that a great part of the Czech nation was dying as a consequence of hunger.38 Lest the nation perish, the country folks and well-to-do city dwellers should realise that they are all part of the same nation, which was to find an expression in their material assistance for the hungry.39 The notion that national identity was to bridge the divide between town and country was summarised in the society’s poster depicting a Czech peasant woman handing a loaf of bread to a poor urban family. Symbolic representations of hunger in the texts of Czech Heart in the context of a dissolving consensus over the preservation of the Habsburg monarchy were intended to become a source for the forging of a consensus about a new community based on humanistic assistance for the hungry and the national identity, which was to bridge all dividing lines in modern Czech society. NATIONALISATION OF THE HUMANISTIC DISCOURSE OF THE BODY The shortage of food in 1918 was catastrophic.40 Shortages of meat, fats and milk (not to speak of insufficient coal supplies) before the harvest were accompanied by parallel shortages of flour, bread and potatoes.41 The City Council had to reduce the weekly bread ration to half a loaf per person but this quantity did not often reach the starving population. Likewise, the weekly ration of 250 grams of flour per person belonged in the realms of fantasy.42 The shortages of food, coal, clothes and footwear assumed such proportions that hunger and other manifestations of human suffering could not be ignored in Prague’s public space. As this suffering was constantly in view the urban elites acquired a ‘direct’ experience of it, as it were, which became in 1918 a frequent point in their speeches. With the growing shortage of food the urban elites reached an accord that the best way to describe the situation in which the lower and middle classes were was in principle famine.43 In this situation the key role was played by medical science, which advanced arguments surrounded by an aura of objectivity, on the basis of which the urban elites 37 Dvacet let Českého srdce 1917–1937, Praha 1937, p. 27. 38 Růžena Svobodová, Dědicům, Venkov 13/125, 1.6.1918, p. 2. 39 LA PNP, f. Růžena Svobodová, Materiály týkající se činnosti Českého srdce, Oběžník pro místní zástupce Českého srdce, LA 39/66/3209. 40 P. Scheufler, Zásobování potravinami, p. 184. 41 Pro celkový přehled o nedostatku potravin viz Aprovisace obce pražské za války a po válce 1914–1922, Praha 1923, passim. 42 Slavný sbore obecních starších!, AV 3/7, July 1918, p. 2. 43 II. pamětní spis o zásobovací bídě obyvatelstva pražského, VOP 24/23, 6.12.1917, p. 341.