David Kuh

David Kuh was born in Prague, studied in Vienna, and helped to found German-language newspapers in Budapest and Pécs. Though in his youth he was a proponent of Czech nationalism, antisemitic rhetoric and riots during the 1840s led him to reverse his position and support German political parties. In addition to his career as a journalist he was also a politician (he founded the Deutsche Freiheitliche Partei and also served on the Bohemian Diet and the Imperial Diet) and a poet, and in his final years he founded a publishing house in Prague. A legal case against the scholar Václav Hanka, whom Kuh accused of forgery, led to Kuh’s libel conviction, a case that brought out anti-Jewish sentiments.