This paper attempts to reconstruct the now lost aide-memoire notes of Hradec Králové chroniclers, who at the end of the 16th and in the first half of the 17th century used the second dedition of Veleslavín's Historical Calendar (1590) for their notes, recording events of a local nature in particular. In contrast to others which were used by their owners for personal purposes, the Hradec copy of Veleslavín's Calendar came into being in 1590 at the order of the Hradec political representatives and was housed at the Hradec town hall until the 19th century. Today we only learn indirectly of its existence from the testimony of Jan Soukup (1867-1933) and an analysis of the preserved Hradec Králové history by Karel Joseph Biener of Bienenberk (1731-1798) and František de Paula Švenda (1741-1822).
In 2016, 150 years will have passed since the Austro-Prussian War. Near the fortress of Hradec Králové, the decisive battle of this conflict took place, with Austria losing. The fortress was besieged and its immediate surroundings were flooded. Using eyewitness accounts and historical realities, the author describes the until recently-rarely revisited life of the civilian populations in the besieged fortress.
The historical Unity of Brethren produced a relatively large amount of literature, mainly intended for the clergy and members of this community. From the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, the diversity of genres increased, and after 1609, when Rudolf II issued the Letter of Majesty granting religious freedom, the censorship measures were relaxed in Bohemia. As a result, the printing house that the Unity ran in the Moravian town of Kralice nad Oslavou was falling short of production capacity. The Unity’s leadership thus had to approach commercial printing companies, especially in the capital of the kingdom (Prague), but also in Hradec Králové, to satisfy the growing demand of Brethren literature. This study seeks to explore the main reasons for choosing specific printing enterprises to produce publications with Brethren religious texts and the extent to which these preferences were influenced by the printers’ confessional attitudes. The findings of this study show that what played an important role was not only the printers’ confessional affiliation, or their inclinations for the Unity of Brethren, but also their personal ties to the authors of the published texts, or to the contractors of the publication production. Especially noteworthy for this research is the preserved correspondence from the archive of a Unity of Brethren bishop Matouš Konečný, who worked in Mladá Boleslav between 1609 and 1620 and was responsible for the entire literary production of the community as well as its dissemination among the followers. The archive of Matouš Konečný was discovered quite recently in 2006 and is now gradually being released in a scholarly edition. The main contribution of this study is the analysis of the ties between the commercial printers who printed books for the Unity of Brethren in the early 17th century and this relatively small in number but culturally and socially influential confessional community.
The study focuses on the history of the regional, royal and dowry town of Hradec Králové in the latter years of the Enlightenment, at the end of the first stage of the formation of the modern Czech nation. Within the small territory of this fortress town, the seat of both regional authorities and a bishopric, there was a tertiary, secondary and primary school, a printing house and a theatre. At the episcopal seminary, grammar school (Gymnasium) and main school (Hauptschule), the teaching staff were connected with a petite bourgeoisie that had potential to participate in the future national movement. Graduates of the episcopal seminary and the Hradec Králové grammar school became an educated social elite who later used their cultural and social capital in various areas of religious and cultural life, in state or ecclesiastical administration. Although taught in Latin and German, and despite the growing importance of the German language as a means of communication among state and private employees, these men went on to play an active part in the formation of the modern Czech nation. At the same time, the Hauptschule provided essential skills in literacy and numeracy for multitudes of young people, teaching them the fundamentals of Czech and biblical history, natural science, and even the basics of Latin. The development of amateur theatre (the first documented amateur theatre performance in Hradec Králové, in which townspeople and officers participated, dates back to 1790; the theatre company acquired its own building six years later), and the establishment of a publishing house (formerly a printers), as well as the creation of a readers’ community, were important for the acceleration of social communication – a prerequisite for the formation of a civic society.