From the 1860s to 1939, three groups that were divided by generations dominated Slovak cultural life. First, the Lutheran patriots of the first post-L̕udovít Štúr generation of the national movement (1860s to 1914) located in Turčiansky Sv. Martin, including Ján Francisci, Štefan Marko Daxner, and Svetozár Hurban Vajanský. The second group were the progressive, urban-thinking intellectuals, educated at the Charles University in Prague and Vienna University, who adhered to Czechoslovakism (the idea of the unity of Czechs and Slovaks in one state) and socialism (1890s to 1920s), among whom were the founders and adherents of the Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk-inspired journals Hlas (The Voice) and Prúdy (Currents), including Vavro Šrobár and Milan Hodža. Hodža would become the leader of the Agrarian Party and Czechoslovak Prime Minister in 1935. Vladimír Clementis and Ladislav Novomeský, prominent members of the second generation of the second group (1920s to 1950s), founded the leftist journal DAV in Prague in 1924. The third group were the Catholics of the 1920s and 1930s who joined the HSĽS (Hlinka's Slovak People's Party), including the moderate Martin Rázus and the radical Vojtěch Tuka, whom one might call the Slovak Julius Streicher.
Sabine Witt's study focuses on the third group: the Catholic nationalist intellectuals. A study of Slovak intellectuals' careers from the democracy of the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938) to clerical fascism in the Slovak state (1939–1945) is a most welcome contribution to the field. Witt aims at demonstrating how Slovak intellectuals used culture to defend their national and political identity against the dominant Czechs. By creating Slovak culture as a defensive tool, the Catholic intellectuals supported the autonomy movement led by Andrei Hlinka in the 1920s; some of them ended up supporting the clerical-fascist regime of Jozef Tiso. Witt is the first western author to delve into this hitherto-neglected aspect of Slovak history, focusing on literature.
As method of inquiry, Witt used Pierre Bourdieu's theory of culture as practice (Kultur als Praxis), which “focuses on agency, not the intentions of the actors” (38–40). I did not understand how one could possibly separate one's thinking from one's activities, especially in the intellectual-cultural sphere, which was of immense political importance: as an intellectual, my activity and intention is to write, to express myself to a wider public. Witt created a contradictio in adjecto: on the one hand, she concentrated on a description of the lives of nationalist intellectuals; on the other, she analyzed their literary works, that is, to my knowledge, the result of one's thinking, using Bourdieu's theory, whose focus is on agency, not theory. So, what is it now? Agency or intention? Overall, Witt's theoretical approach makes no sense, neither in terms of cultural studies nor political theory. In contrast to western Europe, it was impossible for an intellectual in those years in politically-contested central Europe not to be political, another aspect of Slovak cultural life the author failed to understand.
Chapter 2 (9–52) is well written, presenting brief summaries of the best-known theories of nationalism—but again, what is the goal of this chapter if the author used Bourdieu's approach? A lesson in studies of nationalism? Chapter 2 has no theoretical connection to Witt's main research interest. A clear definition of the peculiarities of Slovak nationalism, based on Slovak academic analysis of the nineteenth-century national movement, would have sufficed to prove that the intellectuals the author scrutinized were de facto nationalists and patriots.
The volume's strongest part is Chapter 8, “Literarische Praxis” (293–385). Witt summarizes the works of Slovak authors Tido Gašpar and Milo Urban, and their literary support for the Tiso regime's conception of Slovak nationhood. I particularly enjoyed reading about the weak Slovak book market (295–98).
Apart from the non-functioning theoretical approach, three issues render this book problematic in scholarly terms: the sheer abundance of non-sequiturs, Witt's quotation policy and lastly, the problematic contextualization and ignorance of Slovak scholarly literature.
First, non-sequiturs: in one example, Witt writes about the Catholic Church's efforts to nationalize Slovak society, that is, the autonomy movement in the 1920s (50). What is missing in this context is an explanation of why the Protestant Slovak intellectuals did not commit themselves to the autonomy movement—because they supported Czechoslovakism, thus President Masaryk's state theory.
Second, quotation policy: in another example, on page 59, Witt mentions Ľudovít Štúr's great work Das Slawenthum und die Welt der Zukunft (Slavdom and the World of the Future). A professionally trained academic knows that one has to add a source here. Where did the author get this information?
Third, contextualization and scholarly literature: a further proof of the author's limited understanding of Slovak cultural and political history is visible in the title. In the Slovak cultural and political landscape, the enlightenment (Säkularisierung, 1890s to 1920s) preceded the sacralization (Sakralisierung) of the 1920s and 1930s, not the other way around, as the title suggests. This is sloppy. Lastly, writing about Slovak intellectuals of the twentieth century while ignoring the studies of Vlasta Jaksicsová, the number one Slovak expert on intellectuals and cultural history, is like writing about the history of football and ignoring Lionel Messi.
Owing to the above-mentioned scholarly misgivings, Witt's book works better as a librarian's summary and survey of Slovak literature than a serious academic study based on sound theoretical basis and analysis.
