The study analyses the ethnographical articles in selected periodicals published in the second half of the 19th century in Moravia: the Koleda calendar (1851-1858), the Koleda magazine (1876-1881) and the Komenský magazine (1873-1902). This study comments on the contribution of these publications to the documentation of folk culture in Moravia and formation of ethnology as a scientific discipline. It highlights the share of the editors and
contributors in the formation of the calendar and both magazines and points out some motives which led to the publication of the ethnographical texts. It recalls some fundamental articles. The analysed periodicals primarily focused on folklore in the Czech lands as well as other Slavic countries, family and annual customs and superstitions. In all three cases, ethnography was a supplementary, not a primary theme. The occurrence of ethnographical texts depended on current situation.
In the 1830s, thanks to the highest representatives of the land administration and the estate community, the first nursery schools were established in the Czech lands to offer day care to pre-school children, especially from working-class families. The article analyses the ways of representation of these institutions in public space using the example of nursery schools in Prague (Na Hrádku), Mladá Boleslav and Česká Lípa: the argumentation strategies in their establishment and subsequent evaluation of activities in the first years of their existence. Special attention is paid to the comparison of the nursery schools with the Czech and German languages of instruction and their legitimation motivated by charitable assistance or national agitation and differences in the content of the curriculum.
The paper offers a synthetic overview of the historical and social sciences writings on 19th and 20th century Romanian elites. Following the original local sociological constructs developed
during the interwar period, the early socialist regime stopped almost all research on the topic for the next two decades. The interest rose again slowly in the 1970s and 1980s, when preliminary investigations highlighted some of the future research subjects: intellectuals,
economic, and political elites. After 1989, historians were the first to enter the field, opening workshops on the previously mentioned categories, and more recently on ecclesiastical, military, and administrative elites. Social and political scientists followed shortly, focusing mainly – but not exclusively – on the socialist and post-socialist elites. Despite the flourishing period of the last two decades, and the generally positive trend, the historical research on elites in Romania produced mainly empirical studies. The methodological and theoretical framework was left unapproached, partly due to a lack of tradition, partly because of the low level of collaboration between historians and social scientists.
This study seeks an answer to the question when and how the Czech romantic K. H. Mácha (1810–1836) started to be seen as a “modern” poet who could inspire authors writing decades after his death. The study proves that the image of “modern” Mácha as the first Czech poet to achieve the autonomy of art already existed between 1860 and 1890, and that Mácha’s artistic reputation grew constantly throughout the second half of the 19th century. This argument is based on a vast amount of evidence, mostly taken from literary journalism and criticism between 1858 and 1910 (the latter year seeing the centenary of Mácha’s birth).