Polyglot páter Otakar Method Pecháček. První lektor českého jazyka při káhirské univerzitě
Polyglot P. Otakar Method Pecháček. First lecturer of Czech Language at the Cairo University

Summary/Abstract: There is not much official information regarding the personality of the orientalist Otakar Pecháček (born in Přeštice on 29 March 1901). The paper is based on fragmentary documents from various Czech archives and on references about Pecháček in the posterior prosaic literature, e. g. in the memoirs of the Abbot in Břevnov monastery Anastáz Opasek, in the war reports by Jiří Mucha or by the war journalist in Cairo Eduard Rulf that referred to him as to a linguistic genius. The paper is amended with six letters of his that are kept in the Náprstek Museum. Otakar Pecháček came from a family with a strong interest in Oriental cultures and he was encouraged to study languages from his early youth. His grandfather was the Pilsen mayor František Pecháček and his father the Pilsner brew master. After graduating at the military academy, Otakar Pecháček studied law and travelled through Europe and Latin America. In the 1920s he entered the Břevnov monastery and studied Arabic and Hebrew and, after falling ill with tuberculosis, he left for Egypt. He improved his Arabic here, at the same time, he mastered some of local dialects as his correspondence shows. In the 1950s, Pecháček worked as a Czech language lecturer at Cairo University, at the time when the Czechoslovak Institute of Egyptology was being established. The letters where Pecháček describes in detail the linguistic milieu in which he moved in during the 1930s in Egypt and his encounters with several important academics both from Egypt and abroad – linguists, historians and archaeologists – represent a valuable and unique testimony.

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