A very interesting overview of key periods in the
four-millennia-old history of central Europe's great "gateway" city
(one of the meanings of the Czech Praha), which has also served as
a bridge between the Slavic region to the east and the Germanic and
Latin areas to the west. A Prague-born and -raised literary and
intellectual historian, Demetz traces the enormous changes the city
underwent between the Middle Ages and the eve of WW II. (Strangely,
he does not extend his story to encompass either the brief "Prague
Spring" of 1968 or the "velvet revolution" of 1989 that, with
amazing swiftness, brought about communism's collapse.) Demetz is
particularly interesting on the revolt led by followers of the
martyred Jan Hus, a precursor to Luther, in the early 15th century,
and on how the city affected, and sometimes dazzled, the host of
literary and other creative figures who lived there or passed
through, from Goethe to Andre Breton. He also captures repeated
moments of tension, and rather more uncommon ones of harmony,
between the city's two large ethnic communities: Germans and
Czechs. Both groups periodically turned violently against the
city's third great community, the Jews, who also provided a
disproportionate share of cultural and scientific leadership.
Demetz's style is both richly anecdotal and well grounded in a wide
range of secondary sources, and he does an excellent job of
balancing political and cultural history. (As a city "insider,"
Demetz seems particularly knowledgeable about Prague's
neighborhoods and architecture.) However, he does have a propensity
to overwhelm the reader with myriad names and, on occasion, to
become bogged down in narrative details. In general, however, this
is a fine introduction to a city that, like Rome or Jerusalem, has
equally compelling legendary and actual histories. (Kirkus Reviews)
Millions of visitors come to Prague each year, drawn by its rich cultural heritage and visual splendour, yet knowing little of its extraordinary past. In this erudite, paradoxical history Peter Demetz dispels the popular sentimental image of his hometown as he tells the story of this great city from its origins through the devastation of the Thirty Years' War, the elegant eras of Mozart and Dvorák and the bleak, modern city depicted in Kafka's work, to the euphoria of the Velvet Revolution of 1989.
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