Pražská Městská knihovna a její lidé – Pocta Janu Thonovi
The Prague Municipal Library: A Tribute to Jan Thon

An Edition of Selected Letters

Summary/Abstract: The 95th anniversary of the Public Libraries Act provides a good opportunity to consider the lives and works of the people who deserve credit for that legislation and of people who, with their enthusiasm, education, professional qualifications, and the daily carrying-out of their duties, made that legislation a reality. Since the Prague Public Library (est. 1891; today called the Municipal Library of Prague) was the main initiator and guarantor of this law, just as its employees and associates were the key specialists for the development of Czech library sciences, this edition of correspondence focuses on central figures of the library. The correspondence, selected after extensive research in the holdings of the Museum of Czech Literature, focuses on Jan Thon (1886–1973), František Hrubín (1910–1971), Miroslav Heřman (1903–1971), and Jan Grmela (1895–1957). The selection from the great quantity of correspondence deposited here was guided by the criteria of time and content. Mutual correspondence was given priority. We are publishing here both a complete set of the preserved correspondence of some individuals and parts of the correspondence of others. The edition provides a concise picture of the period just before the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic, as well as the period when the library was being built up in the 1920s, followed by its efflorescence in the 1930s, the difficult years under German occupation during the Second World War (15March 1939 to 9 May 1945), the three years of the ‘phoney democracy’ immediately after the Liberation, and the difficulties and tragedies experienced by some people in the early years of Communist totalitarianism. The choice of period is also ultimately based on the criterion of arrangement. We see that the special nature of personal correspondence, by its immediacy of experience and expressiveness, helps to illustrate events and the atmosphere of the period better than any official documents. The selected correspondence manifests a wide variety of subject matter and points of view: the work, specialist problems, education, relations amongst colleagues and friends, social standing and social problems, everyday private joys, interests, worries, and hardships, and coping with the pressures of dramatic political events. The edition contains correspondence from fourteen people sent to four recipients. It comprises a selection of 97 picture postcards, postcards, letters both of private and of official provenance, and manuscripts with personal dedications as well as printed poems. These were divided into five sections: (a) Thon’s Earliest Colleagues, (b) Poet-Friend (František Hrubín), (c) Hardships during the Protectorate and the War Economy, (d) Post-war Freedom, and (e)After ‘Victorious February’ (the Communist take-over), 1948. The aim of this edition is not, nor can it be, to provide a complete picture of the activity of the Municipal Library of Prague and the people who worked there or were associated with it. Instead, its more modest aim is to provide other scholars with source material and inspiration to conduct further research in this area. The story of the Municipal Library of Prague and ‘its’ people, told by means of their correspondence, was discovered and recorded in honour of one of the most important Czech scholars of book culture – Jan Thon.

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