“The Prague Peace Congress – an event full of paradoxes”

Often, a particular historical event, phenomenon or process “defies” inclusion in a specific ideal type or terminology which we are used to using to indicate the particular event. One example of note is the Prague Peace Conference of 1813, which does not meet the“requirements” that a historian might make of a typical peace congress. This is even more reason not to be deterred from attempting to describe, structuralise and systematise it. In this regard, three interconnected paradoxical circumstances come to the fore. First of all, the above-noted conflict between expectation and reality. Secondly the paradox of historiographical disinterest in this “crucial event”, and finally the misappropriation of an event taking place on Czech territory from Czech “national history” and our historical consciousness.