František Ladislav Rieger

František Ladislav Rieger (December 18, 1818 – March 3, 1903) was a Czech politician and publicist made famous for his leadership of the early Czech nationalist movement.

Rieger was born into the household of a miller in the small town of Semily in northern Bohemia. His departure from this rural environment came with his enrollment in Prague University where he was to become acquainted with the nationalist fervor among students there. Rieger studied at the university to become a lawyer, and also received a strong education in economic science, a subject which would later be the topic of much of his published political literature. He and his fellow “national awakeners” found inspiration for their patriotism in the Polish uprising of 1830. Many political Polish refugees fled to Prague where they shared their ideas with the young Czech nationalists there. Rieger’s sympathy for the Poles was so that he was even arrested for hiding a refugee in his room at the University.

Rieger’s first venture into the political scene of Czech politics came with the Revolution of 1848. Rieger was among the attendees to the constituent assembly meeting in July 1848 in Vienna. His appearance at the assembly was spectacular. He exemplified his skill in oration, and reputedly gained a reputation for his righteous defense of popular sovereignty. For the first time, he was rubbing shoulders with prominent Czech intellectuals and leaders, including the historian František Palacký, with whom he was soon to become close friends. The constitution which he and his fellow assembly members together drafted was woven from the notions of Austroslavism, which advocated allowing Bohemia to become an autonomous federal state within the empire. The new emperor, Franz Joseph, found the constitution too radical to accept and flatly rejected it.

Following the defeat of the proposal for the Bohemian constitution, Rieger spent the next two years in voluntary exile between France and Great Britain. On his returning to Prague in 1851, he applied to become a professor of economics at Prague University where he studied. However, his application, which included his doctorate on economics, was refused by the administration for political reasons. Rieger continued to pursue economic science and became a prolific writer of economic literature. For his contribution, he has been accredited with begin the founder of Czech economic literature. For the next several years, he set to work on a number of projects intended to advance the Czech cultural heritage. In 1858 he started the Slovník naučný ("Reference Book"), the Czech encyclopedia of general knowledge, the first volume of which was published in 1859, the 11th and last in 1874. He was also instrumental in founding the first Czech political daily newspaper published in Prague; which appeared on January 1, 1861, and of which he was for a while the editor. In 1853 Rieger married Marie Palacká, the daughter of his close friend and political associate from the assembly, František Palacký.

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