Defenestration of Prague Window (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Defenestration of Prague Window (2019)

atlasobscura.com

60 pointspepys43 comments

Given that this is the reason the word “defenestration” entered the English language - I’d just like to remind everyone: it’s only defenestration if it comes from the Prague region of Bohemia, otherwise it’s just “sparkling window-yeet”.

Or "Putin's Promotion".

My favorite thing about the plaque is that it explains it’s commemorating the Second Defenestration but makes no reference to the first. I’d say it raises more questions than it answers…

The first defenestration in 1419, that started Hussite wars (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague), was far more "successful", because the people who were thrown out of the window actually died.

That tends to happen if you land on a sea of spikes and other sharp instruments of war. Which AFAIK the victims of the first defenestration did.

I wonder if "defenestration of Prague" became a memorable term 1) because of its historical significance, 2) because "defenestration" sounds funny, or 3) because nobles at the time just thought it was absolutely hilarious and became obsessed with it to the point that it just stood the test of time.

I would think that the start of the Thirty year war is of historical significance, like the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Also, it’s pretty cool to think that the term “defenestration” survived for several hundred years. Imagine if, two hundred years from now, people were still adding the suffix “gate” to signify a scandal.

Not to be a dick but "historical" and "significance" are much older words. Old Greek and Latin (as is defenestration).

Reddit is obsessed with defenestrations of Prague.

I have a u/DefenestrationPraha handle there and when I created it, I thought "no one is ever gonna know what this obscure event was". Since then, I ended up on the beetlejuicing subreddit quite a few times.

For me it occupies an early memory because of Latin class ("de" + "fenestra" literally "down from the window") where we all found the story quite amusing.

Jára Cimrman has the answer: "When Cimrman contemplated Czech history, he pointed out an interesting phenomenon. Major European events often begin in the Czech Republic, specifically in Prague, and usually through a so-called defenestration. The first Prague defenestration ignited the revolutionary storm of the Hussites and thus the whole European Reformation. The second defenestration in the 17th century plunged our continent into the turmoil of the Thirty Years' War. As is typical for Cimrman, he subjected the term defenestration to thorough examination. In his work Die Fensterpolitik he writes: Defenestration is generally understood as throwing one or more people out of a room through the window. However, this is not accurate. Not every act of throwing out of a window is defenestration. If it happens, for example, during a marital dispute or in the final phase of a dance party, then it is not a defenestration in the true sense of the word. The people being thrown through the window must hold some significant public function. He also asked the question, why did our ancestors prefer to get rid of uncomfortable actors through the window rather than the door? According to him, the old experience, succinctly expressed in the proverb: "if you throw him out of the door, he will return through the window", probably had an effect. By the reverse process, namely defenestration, the danger of returning to function is minimized." (CIMRMAN, Jára; SMOLJAK, Ladislav; SVĚRÁK, Zdeněk. Hry a semináře : úplné vydání. Praha a Litomyšl: Ladislav Horáček – Paseka, 2010. ISBN 978-80-7432-036-1. S. 368. Dále jen Hry a semináře.)

It's articles that these that remind me of how much we English-speakers are missing in the full breadth of human literature. For every Shakespeare, there is a Jára Cimrman, and for every Jára Cimrman, there is another who goes unnamed.

Fortunately, there's an English Wikipedia article that's also fun to read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A1ra_Cimrman

It really is a curious event. Apart from the two occurrences in Prague, you seldom hear about defenestrations. I can recall some movies where people are thrown out through windows, but apart from that, very little. I wonder if there was a symbolic meaning to it. Such as, meant to be humiliating. Or was it improvised in the moment?

Seems to happen in Russia all the time

A couple of lists of those recent defenestrations:

https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-russians-fall-windows-put...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_deaths_of_Russian_b...

There's a brief description of the event in C.V. Wedgwood's book I found rather amusing. It's supposedly taken from Vilem Slavata's memoirs, though I'm curious how much is embellished.

"A hundred hands dragged them towards the high window, flung back the casement and hoisted them upwards. Martinitz went first. 'Jesu Maria! Help!' he screamed and crashed over the sill. Slavata fought longer, calling on the Blessed Virgin and clawing at the window frame under a rain of blows until someone knocked him senseless and the bleeding hands relaxed... One of the rebels leant over the ledge, jeering: 'We will see if your Mary can help you!' A second later, between exasperation and amazement, 'By God, his Mary has helped,' he exclaimed, for Martinitz was already stirring."

The detail not mentioned here is that they landed on a heap of manure which cushioned their fall, but probably further bruised their egos.

Interesting writing, except the mention of “jealously” being the motivation rather than the suppression of religious freedom in the red hot Reformation time.

> rather than the suppression of religious freedom in the red hot Reformation time.

That sentence seems pretty misleading to me, as it implies that "religious freedom" was something that really even existed at that time. Neither side wanted "religious freedom", they just wanted their side to win by exiling, killing or converting adherents on the other side.

What makes you think that? They absolutely did have religious freedom before [0], just not on an individual level unless you happened to be a lord. And lowborn individuals who didn't have a go at some ecclesial career weren't in a position to require much exiling or getting killed, they just went to whoever was put in charge of their local church.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Augsburg?wprov=sfla1

The link on the Peace of Augsburg is exactly the point I was making:

> It officially ended the religious struggle between the two groups and made the legal division of Christianity permanent within the Holy Roman Empire, allowing rulers to choose either Lutheranism or Roman Catholicism as the official confession of their state. However, the Peace of Augsburg arrangement is also credited with ending much Christian unity around Europe. Calvinism was not allowed until the Peace of Westphalia.

That is, basically this carved up the middle of Europe into Protestant and Catholic areas, but in no areas was there really "religious freedom" as we think of the term today.

Nothing of what happened in Prague that day was about individual religious freedom, that much is true. But claiming that therefore it wasn't about religious freedom at all when it was quite literally about agreements guaranteeing religious freedom getting effectively revoked (just not guaranteeing it to everybody), that's a pretty wild case of time-traveling goalposts.

The Chapo Traphouse podcast did an entertaining miniseries on the 30 Years War (including the defenestration of Prague) in their Hell on Earth series:

https://hellonearth.chapotraphouse.com/views/podcast/

This series was a real missed opportunity for me. The Chapo guys’ strengths are in their off-the-cuff banter and the little in jokes that pop up again and again. Large parts of this series involved Matt reading flatly from a script, and somehow fucking up nearly every place name (referring to Magdeburg as Madge-burg was like nails on a chalkboard). I am sure they wrote their own script but that gave the series the vibe of a High-School student reading out a Wikipedia article. When Chris and Matt were bantering about Beer George and such it was great, but the rest was a bit disappointing.

I’m one of the few within my friend group who love CTH (btw definitely check out their companion cast “Chapo FYM” - I’ve found myself more drawn to those guys and the bizarre lives of the YouTubers they focussed on over the last year or so)

If you ever have a chance to see a production of Niccolo Machiavelli's (yes, that Machiavelli) play "The Mandrake" I highly recommend it. It's rarely produced, but well worth seeking out. It's a riot, and defenestration features prominently.

Lots of windows in those pictures, which one was it?

Second window (the large ones on the left).

C.V. Wedgwood's book on the Thirty Years War is a really good read! The devastation to the people and the country side is heart breaking, as in all wars.

Looking out of the window made me wonder how they could have survived. Prague is a must see city for travelers.

I think "flungees" is a better word. I also think the use of the word “jealously” was incorrect.

A pile of bullshit was called a divine miracle!

> The flingees survived their fall with only minor aches and pains, being cushioned by the flocculence of a manure pile

a trope is born

> The flingees survived their fall with only minor aches and pains

Huh, I always assumed they died, given the general drama surrounding the incident. If you were writing the script for this, you'd definitely have them die.

Defenestration is a pretty cool word, but it seems like it should mean removing a window. Maybe boarding it up, or replacing it with a wall.

From the title I thought that they defenestrated someone (or even the window itself!) yet again in 2019.

My favorite tidbit has to do with the third defenestration of Prague (1948):

It was widely viewed as a likely assassination by the communists of foreign affairs minister Jan Masaryk. A clever poem emerged from it, with typically dark eastern bloc humor:

“Jan Masaryk was a very tidy man. He was such a tidy man that when he jumped he shut the window after himself.”

- David L. Roll, George Marshall: Defender of the Republic (2019)

I credit this event as being The Reason, the only one, why people in the US know the word defenestration.

“Defenestration” was also the best slang for quitting Windows, back in the day.

When are where was that? I've never heard that usage

I remember it verbally in the mid-2000s.

Heh, sorry to disagree, but that's a big nope. I learned the word in my teens, back in the 70s, from the Arthur C. Clarke story "The Defenestration of Ermintrude Inch" in his "Tales from the White Hart" collection of SF-oriented tall tales.

TIL that "Tales from the White Hart" had at least some readership in the USA - I would have feared that its air of post-war English constraints (rationing and London grime) felt almost more fantastical than the accounts of Harry Purvis.

As an avid SF reader back then, I pretty much devoured everything by the big 3 of Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein. And lots of others, of course - the Callahan's Bar shorts by Spider Robinson were a fun update of the Tales from the White Hart idea.

I learned the word from the band REM, specifically lyricist Michael Stipe commenting that their 1991 song, Belong was NOT a song about defenestration.

https://www.songfacts.com/facts/rem/belong

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