Příběh posledního lidického faráře
The Story of Lidice’s Last Pastor

Summary/Abstract: In his biography "Nejvyšší oběť: Poslední lidický farář Josef Štemberka (1869–1942)" [The Ultimate Sacrifice: The Last Parish Priest of Lidice, Josef Štemberka (1869–1942)], the church historian František Kolouch tells the life story of a Roman Catholic priest who was executed by the German occupiers on 10 June 1942, along with other male inhabitants of the destroyed Central Bohemian village of Lidice. The biography of the extraordinary personality of Josef Štemberka, who had served as a parish priest in the village since 1909, is intertwined with the political, economic and social history of the village of Lidice, the local region and the entire country from the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy through the whole period of interwar Czechoslovakia, until to the fourth year of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The author stays mainly at the level of regional history. The reviewer points out that Kolouch has managed to collect an impressive amount of mostly unpublished sources, which enabled him to reconstruct Štemberka’s fate from his youth to its tragic climax in a detailed and engaging way, while at the same time, correcting many traditional clichés. The reviewer’s objections are directed at the absence of a broader context of Church and religious history, the narrow range of the literature used, and the nonnegligible number of factual and interpretive errors.

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