Trial and Error: František Graus's Difficult Journey out of Ideological Imprisonment
Zkušenost omylu Nesnadná cesta profesora Františka Grause z ideologického zajetí

Summary/Abstract: The article is concerned with the intellectual development of the leading Czech medievalist František Graus, particularly in 1953-69, as Editor-in-Chief of the Čes-koslovenský časopis historický, the most important journal of history in Czechoslovakia at the time. He was born in Brno in 1921, and as a Jew spent most of the war years in Theresienstadt (Terezín) and other concentration camps. After the war he took a degree in history and began, with exceptional industry, a career as a historian. He devoted himself to medieval history, and as an educated, dyed-in-the-wool Marxist he was entrusted with running Československý časopis historický. This enabled him to influence people well beyond the bounds of his field, and ultimately to shape the development of Czechoslovak historiography in general. In the 1950s he consistently applied the ideas and methods of dialectic materialism in his writing, lectures, and work as an editor, and he advocated a politically expedient conception of historiogra¬phy. Belief in laws of development based on Marxist-Leninist theory and legitimating the dictatorship of the Communist Party became the basic prerequisites of his work as an historian.

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