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Recollection of long-standing contacts with Alena Pazderová, archivist at the National Archives
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Laudatio to Alena Pazderová, archivist at the National Archives in Prague
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The author inquires into the memoria phenomenon and its distortion and use in Charles IV’s propaganda, especially in official historiography. As King of the Romans and King of Bohemia, and crowned as Holy Roman Emperor on Easter Sunday, 7 April 1355, Charles IV was aware of the price of ‘historical memory’ for politics and law and he knew how to use it. To legitimate his status in the empire and Bohemia, he primarily used the genealogical ‘memory’, expanded by many fictions and stretching back to the dawn of humans. Furthermore, he used fictitious historical memory to substantiate the status of Bohemia and its sovereign within the Holy Roman Empire, the ruler’s royal title, the elector’s office, and the Prague Archdiocese. Yet, Charles IV put special emphasis on the territorial scope of Bohemia and confirmation of its legitimacy, as well as the possibilities for its further expansion, justifying it by the long tradition and historical ‘memory’. They primarily appeared in the Chronicle of Bohemia by Přibík Pulkava of Radenín who in the spirit of Charles IV showed that all the countries that were part of the Bohemian Crown under Charles IV – including Bohemia, Moravia, Lusatia, most of the duchies in Silesia, and Brandenburg – were settled by Slavs of forefather Čech’s descent, and the Bohemian ruler is fully eligible to rule in these lands. Yet, the Slavs, descendants of forefather Čech, also cultivated and settled other lands – Poland, Russia, Pomerania, and Cassubia – all the way to the Baltic Sea. This concept corresponded with Charles’s political intentions when, by marriage to Elisabeth, daughter of Duke of Pomerania Bogislaw and granddaughter of King Casimir III of Poland, he expanded his political and business interests up to the Baltic coast. But above all, through this historical ‘memory’, he legitimated his claims to Poland, as King Casimir III had no male descendants, and Sigismund, the son of Elisabeth of Pomerania and Charles IV, could be a prime candidate for the Polish throne. Hence, by including Poland and the neighbouring lands in the Bohemian historical memoria, the official propaganda of Charles IV’s court also legitimated Charles’s ambitions to acquire Poland and possibly other territories. The fictitious memoria was thus one of the main tools to justify the territorial interests of Charles IV.
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The article concentrates on the activities of the papal nuncios in Bohemia in the early stage of Rudolf II’s rule. It involves five personalities, varying in profiles and characters, who represented the pope and the curia at the imperial court and whose correspondence has recently been published (Giovanni Delfino, Bartolomeo Porcia, Orazio Malaspina, Ottavio Santacroce) or is currently being edited (Giovanni Francesco Bonomi). In expert literature, Giovanni Francesco Bonomi is repeatedly identified as the first nuncio permanently settled in Prague. Based on the latest published nunciature correspondence, this axiom can no longer be confirmed. It can therefore be assumed that regular nuncios at the imperial court had a permanent residence in Prague as of the end of 1576 (the final stage of Delfino’s nunciature). The study further asks the question of how papal diplomats perceived the Czech lands, lists the most significant ecclesiastical and secular contacts, and looks into the official confessional and ecclesiastical issues in relation to the fight against heterodox movements, the protection of ecclesiastical immunities, and the implementation of the Catholic Reformation programme from the Council of Trent. Some final notes refer to the nuncios’ activities in politics and society.
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The papal nuncios at Rudolf II’s imperial court in Prague were prominent diplomatic and religious functionaries. The Society of Jesus provided them with significant support in the predominantly Protestant metropolis, as markedly documented by Filippo Spinelli, a nuncio active from 1599 to 1603. Not only did he consecrate the recently built Jesuit church, but shortly before the end of his diplomatic mission he also dedicated to the Jesuits a painting featuring Saint Ignatius, which has remained in the church ever since. Moreover, two of Spinelli’s close relatives, who died because of an epidemic that broke out in the Prague residence of the nuncio, were interred in the church.
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The Society of Jesus, a strongly centralised monastic community, had a sophisticated personal policy whose fundamental principles were driven by the effort to maximise individual capabilities and to precisely stipulate the tasks and responsibilities within the community that worked on a hierarchical principle that put the greatest responsibilities in the hands of the superiors. The individual merits and activities usually resulted from the person’s function within the order’s mechanism. A thorough prosopographical analysis of the historical record of the Jesuits, processed at several levels of detail, will help us to reconstruct the careers of the Jesuit procurators – economic administrators, both with respect to the hierarchy of order functions and from the viewpoint of the individual careers of the members of a monastic institution. The study, however, does not seek to fully evaluate the procurator’s role in the hierarchy of the order’s functions, as it would require a wider heuristic basis, but rather, through a probe, it highlights the possibilities to study how the operation and economic background of the Jesuit houses functioned.
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Marie Maximiliane von Sternberg (1583–1646) descended from the noble family of the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen counts of Swabia but she spent most of her life in Bohemia. She first married Jáchym Oldřich of Hradec (Joachim Ulrich von Neuhaus, 1579–1604) in 1598 who died six years later. She remarried in 1605, this time to Adam II von Sternberg (1554–1623). They both hailed from significant Bohemian aristocratic families. After Adam’s death in 1623, the countess did not marry again and led an exemplary widow’s life for twenty-five long years.Marie Maximiliane von Sternberg paid special attention to the upbringing and education of young people. Perhaps it is the reason why she primarily supported the Society of Jesus. While living in Jindřichův Hradec, the residential town of her first husband, she dedicated a large amount of money to the Jesuit seminary. The countess further continued to support the Jesuits after her move to Prague. A great financial gift enabled her to found the Jesuit College in the New Town of Prague. In addition, Marie Maximiliane von Sternberg established a local gymnasium and earmarked a sum of money to found Saint Francis Xavier Seminary. She was instrumental in building the chapel of the dead (capella defunctorum) at the Jesuit church of Saint Nicholas in the Lesser Town of Prague where the members of the fraternity of the Loyal Dead assembled. After the premature death of her son Adalbert Ignatius Eusebius von Sternberg in 1633, she commissioned a tomb for him and herself in the Jesuit church of Saint Salvator in the Old Town of Prague. Since the countess lived up to the expectations of a widow’s virtuous life, the Jesuit historian Bohuslav Balbín mentioned her in his book Bohemia sancta as an archetype of a person with a spotless reputation.
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The many cases dealt with by the officials of the Bohemian Chamber and vicegerency in the second half of the 17th century exposed two attempts to falsify Liberec cloth quality brands. In the first case Jewish merchants from Prague and Mladá Boleslav were accused, in the second case, the defendant was a burgher from the Old Town of Prague. The documents in the National Archives, the New Manipulation Fonds, enable one to follow the unequal investigative approach of the officials who in the case of the Old Town’s burgher acted faster and more leniently than in the case of the Boleslav and Prague Jews.
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The article presents Dr Bedřich Jenšovský’s activities in the State School for Archivists, a specialised educational institute that was founded in 1919, after the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic. An archivist with the Czech Lands Archives, Bedřich Jenšovský was not present at the start of the school, but he taught there from nearly the very beginning; first the history of administration and archival science from 1926 forward. He basically taught these two subjects till the end of his engagement at the school. In the early 1930s, as a member of the Czechoslovak Archives Association, he co-designed the school’s curriculum reform that became effective from 1934. In addition to his educational role, Bedřich Jenšovský was also the school’s secretary. In the second half of the 1930s, he fully represented the headmaster, Professor Gustav Friedrich, and he was appointed director in 1940, despite the difficult situation in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. For many years, Bedřich Jenšovský was also editor and contributor of the School for Archivists’ Periodical, strongly influencing its form and development, and he is also credited for the school’s development and operation in propitious and unpropitious times.
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Selected bibliography of the archivist and historian Bedřich Jenšovský
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Programme study on Czech historical research in Rome and the tasks of the Czechoslovak Historical Institute in Rome.
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Introduction to the monothematic issue of the journal on Crisis and State. On the Example of Czechoslovakia in the Interwar Period
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The study presents the attempts to apply sociology to the management of (modern) society based on the founders of sociology and from the strong influence of T.G. Masaryk that was especially significant in the Czech environment. Along with other pioneers, Masaryk introduced sociology to Czech society as early as the late 19th and early 20th century. The success of his exile politics during the Great War that resulted in the establishment of independent Czechoslovakia further enhanced the importance of sociology as an emblematic science of the state. In inter-war Czechoslovakia, sociology enjoyed a prominent status (in the European context) and further developed, even though its contribution to the solution of the social problems and crises of the time was only marginal. It proved more usable during the first occupation by the Nazis during World War Two, and primarily as part of the post-war restoration before the communist power (temporarily) eliminated it. Even then, sociological attempts to manage society only reached the rhetoric and preparation levels, and even then sociology did not become a widespread modern cameral science in Czechoslovakia.
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Analysis of the work of edvard beneš and his analysis of the post-war crisis.
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All of the dramatic events of the first half of the 20th century affected JUDr. Jan Karlík. Although he had no personal disposition for military service, he actively participated in the fighting on the Great War fronts. Not only did he acquire battlefield experience, but he also received an excellent specialised military education. He eventually used all of it as a member of the Czechoslovak Legion in France and thus contributed to the establishment of an independent state. Although he remained in the new Czechoslovak Army after the war, his disputes with political and military leaders of the time constantly worsened. At last, he left the armed forces, but did not cease his diligent research and publishing in the field of military science and military theory. Politically, he drew closer to the Czechoslovak far right, even though he again kept his distance and went his own direction. During World War Two, he actively participated in the anti-Nazi resistance movement, risking his own life and the lives of his closest relatives. At long last, he was executed and despite his contradictory personality and political opinions, his family received recognition and accepted a special award for Karlík. His military-scientific beliefs published in the 1920s continue to have a permanent input in the profusion of ideas about the Czechoslovak theory of state defence, although they can be regarded as nearly forgotten today.
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The article is dedicated to the Czechoslovak Catholic philosopher and essayist Rudolf Ina Malý. It emphasises the basic aspects of his political philosophy that opposed the ideological trends that prevailed in the First Czechoslovak Republic and Malý hoped it would be applied in the period after the Munich Agreement, the so-called Second Czechoslovak Republic. The article thus also deals with Malý’s attempts to approach the Second Republic’s political establishment and his efforts to influence and then change Czecho-Slovak cultural politics.
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Based on the peace conditions stipulated by the Versailles Treaty, Czechoslovakia was confronted with a wide array of crisis situations during the first years of its existence. The First Czechoslovak Republic was a multinational state which caused many problems, especially when the members of these ethnic groups often did not identify themselves with the independent republic. Taking into account the economic and social issues as well as many disputes with the neighbouring states, the initial situation in Czechoslovakia was very complicated. However, it was crucial for future development to find out whether and how the new state’s representatives would deal with critical moments.The first elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the National Assembly of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1920 definitively confirmed the democratic path on which Czechoslovakia embarked after its establishment in 1918. Despite great efforts, the elections did not take place throughout the Czechoslovak territory due to plebiscites that were under way, and in Carpathian Ruthenia, the elections were postponed to 1924. Social democrats were clear winners of the elections, although this success did not mark the end of the nationwide crisis or the crisis inside the party. The newly assembled government did not last long. Its fundamental destabilising element was the increasing dissension among the social democratic party members.As a consequence, the elections were inconclusive and could not bring a quick end to the crisis, but they were tangible evidence of the distribution of power in society and, in many aspects, the catalyst of the internal political situation. The solution in the form of a caretaker government produced a plethora of polemics and doubts whether such a government could be associated with democratic principles and constitutionality. The government based its legitimacy on gaining trust for the Chamber of Deputies and on support of the political parties forming the majority in the parliament. Executive power was stabilised, but further stabilisation was endangered by the escalating dispute in the social democratic party provoked by the adherents of the communist – Bolshevik ideology. The President, one of the crucial stabilisation elements in society, became ill at the beginning of 1921 which caused further instability. In this situation, the rather unique Pětka (Five) grouping of five state-forming ‘Czechoslovak’ political parties was established. The grouping had a majority in parliament and substantially influenced (not only) the political milieu. It was instrumental in the entire state’s stabilisation, but it was also an object of criticism for its non-institutional status. Little by little, Czechoslovakia overcame all of the crises and became a successful democratic country in post-war Europe.
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After the First World War, the new Czechoslovakia quickly stabilized. It created an internal republican regime of parliamentary democracy and consolidated its international position. However, relations with Hungary remained a serious problem . Indeed Budapest still give up the hope of re great Hungary in headed ruler with habsbu r tion Dynasty. The overthrown emperor and king Charles in exile, his aristocratic adherents as well as various monarchist groups and movements in the territory of the former Habsburg Empire they still did not cope with its disintegration. At the same time, they also relied on monarchist and conservative circles in Germany, France and Great Britain, as well as other European countries. They began to make plans to restore the Habsburg monarchy and restore the ex-Emperor and ex-King Charles to the throne. Hungary, which did not accept the disintegration of historic Hungary and had a strong monarchist and especially nationalist movement, openly opposed the post-war constitutional order of Central and South-Eastern Europe and the existence of successor states, seemed most favorable. They first assumed the re-establishment of Charles as the king of Hungary. Then, under appropriate internal and especially international conditions, to restore the Habsburg Empire, perhaps in some reformed form of a constitutional and federal monarchy. Historically, the term "restauration of the Habsburgs" has been used for these efforts. Charles and his followers first tried to return to Hungary in March 1921, but failed due to the internal resistance of regent Horthy, who did not want to give up his position of power, and the international power pressure on Hungary, which was instigated by Czechoslovakia. Then again in October 1921 he tried again to return to Hungary. This time regent Horthy deployed an army against his supporters and Czechoslovakia mobilized part of its army. Karel was interned and transported to the Portuguese island of Madeira.
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The letter prepared for publication by the Hungarian Prime Minister Count Pal Teleki dates back to August 6, 1920. The author of the letter, using the reports of Hungarian civil servants who massively left the territory of Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus, draws the attention of representatives of the Allied military mission of the Entente countries in Budapest to two key, from his point of view, questions. Firstly, the letter deals with the situation of the Hungarian population remaining in the territories that had ceded Czechoslovakia under the Trianon Peace Treaty. Secondly, the Hungarian Prime Minister draws the attention of representatives of the Entente countries and their allies to the growth of revolutionary sentiments in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Rus and to the strengthening of the “left wing” of the Socialist Party of Slovakia. All these processes are associated with events in Soviet Russia and the suppression of the Soviet Republic in Hungary.This document is interesting for everyone who is interested in the history of the first years of the Czechoslovak state.
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