The aim of the current paper is to assess the Bulgarian reflections on T. G. Masaryk's death in 1937. I am going to apply the theoretical approach of the German historian Reinhart Koselleck, who asserted that the "political cult of the dead" should be explored in a certain historical context and the commemoration of the "dead hero" was intended to reconstruct historical events and images. Therefore, before approaching my main objective, I will make a brief overview of the Bulgarian image of TGM in the context of the Bulgarian-Czechoslovak political relationship during the interwar period. I rely mainly on Bulgarian and Czechoslovak periodical press as well as on archival sources, published documents, and secondary literature, related to the subject. In my case study the periodical press assumes the role of intercultural communication and a mechanism of constructing cultural and national stereotypes.
Libuše Bráfová, granddaughter of František Palacký and daughter of František Ladislav Rieger, decided to set up a museum in the house where her family had lived for several generations. In my paper I will focus on the following questions: What did the idea of home mean to Bráfová? Why did she decided to open her house to public? What were functions and purpose of the museum and why was setting it up so difficult? Besides, I will be interested in the functionig of the museum in the first years of its existence, the popularity of this institution among the Czech public and the experiences of visitors of the home of the most important Czech family in the 19th century.
This essay is thinking about the sense and the reasons of Czech supremacy over Poland, which the chronicler Cosmas attributed to Vratislav II. (1061–1092). It is said that Vratislav boasted about the title "King of Bohemia and Poland" since 1085.
The article focuses on the letter of Gustav Friedrich, the professor of auxiliary historical sciences at the Prague University, addressed in 1906 to Emil Ottenthal, the director of the Institute for the Austrian history (Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung). In this letter Friedrich intervened in favour of Václav Hrubý, who later become the first professor of auxiliary historical sciences at the Masaryk University in Brno. This unique document further illustrates the relationship of Fridrich and his students and the interrelationships of the younger generation of historians, otherwise known mostly from inconsistent personal testimonies.
Parametres of the opening of the political arena to women were also dealt by the Czech Catholics, especially in 1912, when the first woman-deputy was elected into the Assembly of the Czech Kingdom. The paper asks whether the election of Božena Viková-Kunětická was considered to be "a disgrace" to the catholic vision of women's public activity. The contribution based on the content analysis of catholic political periodicals is going to prove that there was a wide range of opposing approaches from rejection to a neutral and positive attitude on active and passive women's rights.
The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century was a period of growing interest in historical topography and local history. At that time, two substantial topographical works were being created in Moravia: the collective work Vlastivěda Moravská and the topography of Ladislav Hosák. Although some had intentions, a comparable work was not produced for Bohemia. This article presents one of the few attempts at a topography for the whole of Bohemia, the work of the peasant and politician Jan Barták (1861–1941) from the village of Kaliště near Ondřejov. In the years 1895–1941, Barták wrote and prepared for publication 193 volumes of his topography of Bohemia, based on extensive archival research and study of regional literature. During his lifetime, the author only managed to have one volume published, the one for the Jílové district near Prague. His topographical work, stored today in the State District Archive in Prague-West, based in Dobřichovice, has subsequently fallen into obscurity. The article provides information about Barták himself, his family, education, career, and political views. It focuses on Barták 's motivation for his topographical work, his inspiration, goals, sources, and methods of work. It also describes the scope and content of the work and its destiny after Barták' s death.
The presented study is trying to analyze the development of the image of the president's birthday celebrations in 1919–1953. The day was one of the most important rituals during the common year. It was also one of the key factors in forming of the collective memory of the Czechoslovak society at that time. That was especially valid in the years when the independent Czechoslovak state was endangered. By comparison, the study is trying to show, how the form of the feast has changed during the reflected period, which was characteristic by dynamic changes of regimes and ideologies.
The paper focuses on Antonín Bedřich I, the count of Mitrovice (1770– 1842), a native of Brno and a benefactor, who was a governor of Moravia and Silesia in 1815–1827. It analyses his contribution to his hometown, to the development of Moravian studies and the foundation of the museum of Brno. By way of citing contemporary periodicals the study documents the significance of Mitrovský's personality.
Soon after his appointment to the Archiepiscopal See (1892) the Archbishop of Olomouc Theodor Kohn (1845–1915) sought to economically consolidate his diocese, which also meant trying to ensure that no-one "carried out illegal business activities" on the archbishop's land. Kohn was involved in several legal disputes over property, and one particularly famous dispute with a farmer called Dubják, who utilized anticlerical circles to attack the church and its representatives, lasted several years. Other events put further pressure on Archbishop Kohn, and his case was even debated in the Austrian Parliament (April 1903). The only person to "back" Kohn in the press was Josef Svatopluk Machar. The case of Archbishop Kohn was utilized to great effect in anticlerical campaigns (e.g. in newspaper articles and the pamphlet "the tyranny of Archbishop Kohn and the nature of clericalism"). All of these factors eventually contributed to the resignation of Theodor Kohn from the Archiepiscopal See in Olomouc (1904).
The study is devoted to the Anglo-French relations in India during the French Revolution, specifically in the years 1787–1794. The author in the introduction recapitulates historiography devoted to the impacts that the French Revolution had in European territorial possessions in India and the Indian Ocean. It refers to dominantly used to date the French sources stored in the National Archives in Paris, and especially the National Archives of Overseas Territories in Aix-en-Provence. On the basis of this analysis, and referring to sources from the office of Governor-Generals of the Presidency of Fort William in Calcutta untapped until now, he tries to reconstruct the Anglo-French relations in this area. In introduction he describes the political situation in India after the American War of Independence and the genesis of the French Company for India and China, the main partner of the British side in the observed period. On the basis of relevant documents analysis he defines two subsequent phases of mutual Anglo-French relationship: the period of friendship, business partnership and mutual assistance, which the French Revolution only disrupted to a limited extent (1786–1792) and the period of hostility after the French declared war on the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, which, however, for France in India brought about nothing but loss of important trading colonies (1793–1794).