František Palacký a Theodor Mommsen. K paralele pomníků
František Palacký and Theodor Mommsen. On the Parallel of Two Monuments

Summary/Abstract: The article provides a comparison of two monuments – one of František Palacký in Prague and the second of Theodor Mommsen in Berlin. Both men were the key historians of their nations in the 19th century. Palacký has offered a master-narrative of Czech national past in his famous book The History of Czech Nation in Bohemia and Moravia and set the main structures of narrating Czech history for two centuries. Theodor Mommsen has become a worldwide known historian due to his extraordinary History of Rome, for which he has obtained Nobel Price for Literature in 1903. Monuments of these historians were built at the beginning of the 20th century (Palacký’s in 1912, Mommsen’s in 1909). The paper focuses on structural similarities between the monuments, especially in the area of collective memory. Using the theory of Maurice Halbwachs formulated just before World War II the essay points out that there is a fundamental connection between memory and space. The essay argues that there is no significant difference between Palacký’s and Mommsen’s monument in terms of shaping the collective memory.

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