[HN Gopher] Defenestration of Prague Window (2019)
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Defenestration of Prague Window (2019)
Author : pepys
Score : 31 points
Date : 2023-07-15 14:55 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| baron816 wrote:
| 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.
| mongol wrote:
| 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?
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| 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.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| 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.
| jakubmazanec wrote:
| Jara 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, Jara; SMOLJAK, Ladislav; SVERAK, Zdenek.
| Hry a seminare : uplne vydani. Praha a Litomysl: Ladislav
| Horacek - Paseka, 2010. ISBN 978-80-7432-036-1. S. 368. Dale
| jen Hry a seminare.)
| inglor_cz wrote:
| 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.
| afthonos wrote:
| 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...
| jakubmazanec wrote:
| 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.
| jaredhallen wrote:
| 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.
| julianeon wrote:
| I credit this event as being The Reason, the only one, why people
| in the US know the word defenestration.
| philiplu wrote:
| 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.
| thombat wrote:
| 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.
| afthonos wrote:
| "Defenestration" was also the best slang for quitting Windows,
| back in the day.
| dkga wrote:
| Interesting writing, except the mention of "jealously" being the
| motivation rather than the suppression of religious freedom in
| the red hot Reformation time.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > 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.
| usrusr wrote:
| 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
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| 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.
| usrusr wrote:
| 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.
| dventimi wrote:
| 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/
| smcl wrote:
| 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)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| A pile of bullshit was called a divine miracle!
| stormdennis wrote:
| Lots of windows in those pictures, which one was it?
| apienx wrote:
| Second window (the large ones on the left).
| badrabbit wrote:
| [flagged]
| jareklupinski wrote:
| > The flingees survived their fall with only minor aches and
| pains, being cushioned by the flocculence of a manure pile
|
| a trope is born
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