The Nusle Brewery's transformation into a joint-stock company within the context of Prague's "brewery fever" of the 1890s, as depicted by the contemporary press
Abstract
In the 1890s, the Nusle Brewery was the fourth-largest producer of beer in Bohemia. Then, however, new competition appeared on the market in the form of breweries in Holešovice and Královské Vinohrady, and soon the company located along Botič Creek began to encounter difficulties.
Its situation was further complicated by an anti-Semitic boycott of Nusle beer, organized in order to cause damage to the brewery's Jewish owner, Sigmund Waldstein. In 1897, Waldstein decided to sell the brewery, and joined with the Credit Bank in Kolín, which took charge of the transaction.
The bank - one of the country's strongest national Czech financial institutions - transformed the brewery into a joint-stock company, thus launching a new era in the history of the Nusle company. This transformation, however, was not without complications, and the bank faced long-term attacks by anti-Semites and certain brewery experts.
The "Nusle affair" - which filled the pages of many Bohemian newspapers for half a year - perfectly illustrates the immense changes experienced towards the end of the 19th century by Prague's brewery industry and all of Czech society, leaning as it did towards economic nationalism and anti-Semitism.