In the text, the authors demonstrate that a Czech open-air museum was founded in Prague in 1895, well ahead other European countries. It was the first open-air museum in the then Europe south of Scandinavia. It was far ahead of its time also through the connection with a large collection museum. The original exhibition village changed into a permanent open-air museum. The Czech "skansen", likewise the Swedish one, meant an inspiration for further exhibition and museum projects. From the very beginning of the existence of an ethnographic village at the Czechoslavic
Ethnographic Exhibition, it was planned to maintain it. For subsequent six years, the village was used for ethnographic and cultural purposes, just as current open-air museums are. Its spaces were not closed and non-functional. For this reason, we could consider the ethnographic village to be “wooden heritage”, which does no longer exist now. Despite its uniqueness, and scholar, social and cultural benefits, the ethnographic village from the year 1895 has not survived. Its extinction in the year 1901 was caused by a wood-decay fungus. The authors believe there is still a possibility of renewing this ethnographic village
For fifty years since its establishment in the early 1890s, the Czechoslavic Ethnographical Society was the principal representative of the field in the area of present-day Czech Republic and Slovakia. It was the centre of folk culture research; no other comparably significant institution existed in this area. The history of the Czechoslavic Ethnographical Society is interwoven with interdisciplinary relationships.The reason is that the people, who had helped to create this association up to the 1930s, did not engage themselves fully and professionally in ethnography as their only or at least main discipline. It was due to the fact that there was sparsely any workplace where they could find any existential and scholarly background. Inspiration was thus brought in by people from different fields that had a close relationship to folk culture. The same went for principal bodies of this ethnographical institution which were formed by experts from different disciplines, including the membership base which often counted above a thousand people actively interested in folk culture. the leadership of the society endeavoured to actively employ these people, often experts from different disciplines or significant regional workers, in documentation of folk culture. This was apparent predominantly during preparation and compilation of ethnographical encyclopaedia in the 1920s and 1930s. Although it remained unfinished, it has been one of the chief projects of Czech ethnography in its history.