In 1811 Dobrovský wrote to the noted Slovene scholar, Kopitar, that "the cause of the nation is desperate, unless God helps." In his discourse, "Geschichte der Deutschen und ihrer Sprache in Böhmen," dated 1790, Pelcl expressed himself as follows: "The time is approaching when the Bohemian language will be in the same situation at home as the Slavonic language is to-day in Miess, Brandenburg, and Silesia, where German is everywhere prevalent and where nothing remains of the Slavic but the names of cities, villages, and rivers."
It stands to reason that the language, returning to its own after a disuse of almost two hundred years and dug from the grave of oblivion, needed much burnishing, purifying, and modernizing. Terminology of arts and sciences, that flourished while the language lay dormant, had to be created. Dictionaries, grammars, and histories had to be compiled. Above all, the dross of alien forms had to be removed and, while the old Bohemian of Hus, Comenius, and Blahoslav constituted an inexhaustible store of material, it was necessary to borrow from kindred Slavic tongues and to coin many modern terms.
That the older writers composed some of their works in German seems paradoxical (German in these instances was used to defeat German), yet it was natural, considering the low state of Bohemian culture and the corresponding literary excellence in neighboring Germany. Thus, John Kollár, the apostle of literary Pan-Slavism, wrote his main work in German. Josef Dobrovský, already mentioned, composed all his works in German. Josef Safarík's monumental volume on "Slavic Antiquities" was also written in German; even the "Father of his country," Francis Palacký, wrote his "History of the Bohemian Nation"[10] in the tongue of Schiller and Goethe. When, in 1831, a number of writers gathered in a well-known coffee-house in Prague, Celakovský, one of them, remarked, half jokingly and half seriously, that Bohemian letters would perish should the ceiling of the room where they were chatting fall and kill those present.
The literary men and the "vlastenci" (patriots) were looked upon by many people with good-natured tolerance. Enemies of the cause regarded them with ill-concealed suspicion, not infrequently with contempt, while the government, distrusting everything that was new, suspected them of dangerous intrigues against the safety of the state. It must be borne in mind that there was no political freedom in Austria then; matters of public concern were not allowed to be discussed, much less criticised, except among intimates.