O KLUBKU ZMIJÍ A ŽÁBĚ NA PRAMENI. PROCES S REKTOREM STŘÍTESKÝM, LITOMYŠL A ZDENĚK NEJEDLÝ. K POETICE HRŮZY
ABOUT A NEST OF VIPERS AND DOGS IN THE MANGER. THE TRIAL WITH RECTOR STŘÍTESKÝ; LITOMYŠL AND ZDENĚK NEJEDLÝ. TO THE POETICS OF TERROR.

Summary/Abstract: In October 1950, the staged trial with the Rector of Piarists’ College František Ambrož Stříteský took place at Litomyšl. The study devotes its attention to the incident between the Minister of Education and Enlightenment Zdeněk Nejedlý and the parents of tried young men, included in the “group” of Stříteský. They asked the minister for help but he refused to receive them and shouted that “the reaction had to be exterminated as a nest of vipers”. Nejedlý played an important role in organising the music festival called Smetana´s Litomyšl as a regular event. He made friends with various inhabitants from Litomyšl, among them clergyman and musician Jaromír Metyš, who asked Nejedlý to help his son in 1950. The author analyses models of Nejedlý’s manners in conflict situations. He has his doubts about the con-frontation, if it had happened in the way it has been interpreted by the families of the persecuted. The saying about “the nest of vipers” could be heard two years later in Gottwald’s speech connected with the trial of Rudolf Slánský. The study also deals with a mechanism of forming collective memory. The character of a historian is important as well as that of all learners.

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