Nedožité devadesátiny profesora Jana Křena
Unfinished ninety years of Professor Jan Křen

Summary/Abstract: The obituary remembers the leading Czech historian Jan Křen (1930–2020). He was one of a generation of historians which was initially influenced by Marxist views and which worked its way toward critical thinking in the 1960s. He joined the reformist movement during the Prague Spring, was expelled from the Communist party for his attitudes, and was working in a menial job in the 1970s and 1980s. However, he continued to devote himself to history privately. He was among the first signatories of the Charter 77 and was participating in the production of historical samizdat works and in “underground” historical seminars. Since 1989, he was intensively participating in scientific life as a researcher, lecturer and organizer. He established the Department of German and Austrian Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Charles University, and was the director of the Institute of International Studies which the department transformed itself into for many years. He participated in activities of institutions focusing on past and present Czech(oslovak)-German relations and also cooperated with the newly established Institute for Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences as a member of scientific councils. Many of his works have been translated and published in Germany. In the 1960s, Jan Křen was dealing with, in particular, Czechoslovak emigration in the West during WW2, and later especially with the history of Czech-German relations and the history of Central Europe, which his impressive work "Two centuries of Central Europe" (Dvě století střední Evropy. Prague: Argo, 2005) was devoted to.

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