Formation and Function of Cultural Identity in German Society in Prague

关于世纪之交布拉格的多民族气候，本研究项目分析了讲德语的少数民族文化认同的意识形态形成与年轻一代审美现代性的反运动之间的社会文化相互作用，他们中的许多人是犹太血统。自19世纪80年代以来，波希米亚的民族冲突变得严重，由自由派汉堡领导的德国社区在布拉格和波希米亚政府中失去了政治权力。这促使他们把自己的社会活动从政治舞台转移到中央机构德意志赌场（Deutsche Casino）下的各种自愿协会，这些协会的主要知识分子可能会把他们的文化作为只属于捷克人民的政治的优越对手来讨论。然而，事实上，德国文化的概念与其说依赖于论战的内容，不如说是依赖于他们自身紧密的人际关系和敏锐的交际条件。以文化的正式特征为基础的民族认同的努力使布拉格的德国社区更加孤立于捷克的环境，成为所谓的新形成的社会贫民窟。面对社会文化孤立的趋势，年轻的知识分子试图设计一种与审美现代主义接近的文化替代，以不同于老一辈人的方式定义文化的概念。

As to the multiethnic climate in Prague at the turn of the century, this research project analyses sociocultural interactions between the ideological formation of cultural identity by the German speaking minority and the counter movement of the aesthetic modernity by their younger generation, many of whom were of Jewish origin. Since 1880s national conflicts in Bohemia became serious, when the German community conducted by liberal burgers lost their political power both in Prague and Bohemian government. This urged them to remove their social activities from political scene to various voluntary associations under the central organ Deutsche Casino, whose leading intellectuals were likely to discuss their culture as a superior counterpart of the politics occupied only by the Czech people. In fact, however, the concept of German culture depended rather on their own closed human relationship with keen communicative conditions than on polemical content. The effort for national identity based on the formal character of culture functioned to make the German community in Prague more isolated from its Czech circumstances to so called a newly formed social ghetto. Against the tendency of sociocultural isolation younger intellectuals tried to design a cultural alternative with an affinity with aesthetic modernism in order to define the concept of culture in a different way from the elder generations.