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Review of: JAKUB RÁKOSNÍK, MATĚJ SPURNÝ, JIŘÍ ŠTAIF – Milníky moderních českých dějin. Krize konsenzu a legitimity v letech 1848–1989, Praha 2018, Argo, 396 s., ISBN 978-80-257-2518-4.
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Review of: SARAH LEMMEN – Tschechen auf Reisen: Repräsentationen der außer- europäischen Welt und nationale Identität in Ostmitteleuropa 1890–1938, Köln 2018, Böhlau, 358 s., ISBN 978-341-2507-985.
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Review of: ALAIN CORBIN, JEAN-JACQUES COURTINE, GEORGES VIGARELLO (edd.), Histoire des émotions, díl 1: De l’Antiquité aux Lumières, Paris 2016, Seuil, 536 s., ISBN 978-2021177299; ALAIN CORBIN, JEAN-JACQUES COURTINE, GEORGES VIGARELLO (edd.), Histoire des émotions, díl 2: Des Lumières à la fin du XIX e siècle, Paris 2016, Seuil, 470 s., ISBN 978-2021177367
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The book entitled "Praha, hlavní město dvacátého století: Surrealistická historie" is a Czech translation of the original English edition "Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History" (Princeton – Oxford, Princeton University Press 2013) by British-Canadian cultural historian Derek Sayer. It deals with a number of events, phenomena and figures from the artistic and cultural history of Prague and the Bohemian lands from the late nineteenth to the second half of the twentieth century, with a special focus on the interwar period. The reviewer is primarily concerned with the author’s method. Sayer, she argues, takes inspiration from the methods of the German philosopher and sociologist Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), and in the style of montage and collage (as a “ragman of memory”, as Benjamin himself put it) freely transitions between different time periods, fields of art and culture, and the perspectives from which he examines the phenomena under study. The surrealist movement from the book’s title is only one of the topics which reveal the author’s predilection for the myth-making genius loci of “magical Prague”, in the spirit of the Italian writer and Bohemianist, Angelo Maria Ripellino (1923–1978). But Sayer does not equal Ripellino in poetic quality. In terms of the scope and diversity of the facts and events discussed, Sayer’s book is a monumental achievement, but the reviewer points to methodological problems in the handling of literary texts, a limited knowledge of Czech scholarly literature and a sensationalizing tendency. What is innovative about the book is not the point of view or the facts presented, but their arrangement, which represents a postmodern way of writing about cultural history.
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The well-known art historian Milena Bartlová presents the fates of three women with whom she is connected by family ties and who are nowadays largely forgotten. All of them joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia due to their leftist beliefs and were later expelled from it. The author’s paternal grandmother, Vlasta Müllerová (1900–1983), from 1945 Mlynářová, worked in lower party positions after the war and later became director of a retirement home in Prague. Bartlová’s maternal grandmother, Hana Budínová (1903–1965), born in Ukraine as Chana Kojfman, was active in the Zionist movement, worked as a journalist in interwar Czechoslovakia and spent the war years in exile in the U.S. After her return to Czechoslovakia, she made a living mainly as a translator. Her husband was the journalist Bencion Bať, known under the pseudonym Stanislav Budín (1903–1979). The most famous is the author’s mother, economist and diplomat Rita Klímová (1931–1993). In her youth, Klímová was involved in youth and party functions. Later, in the 1960s, she worked as a lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy in Prague. During the normalization period, she joined the dissent and made her living as a translator. She then served asambassador to the United States from 1990 until her death. Her first husband was the reformist communist politician and political scientist, dissident and exile Zdeněk Mlynář (1930–1997). In her book "Ženy, které nechtěly mlčet: Tři československé příběhy" [Women Who Would Not Be Silent: Three Czechoslovak Stories], the author finds reasons why these women are forgotten, mainly in the patriarchal structure and mentality of society, as well as in the lack of interest from contemporary historians in ex-communist personalities. The reviewer partly challenges these answers, reflecting critically but with empathy on the author’s complex position as a personally engaged biographer and appreciating her inspiring approach.
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The German historian Sabine Stach’s monograph "Politika odkazu: Jan Palach a Oskar Brüsewitz jako političtí mučedníci" is a Czech translation of her published PhD thesis "Vermächtnispolitik: Jan Palach und Oskar Brüsewitz als politische Märtyrer" (Göttingen, Wallstein 2016) in which she examines, from the perspective of the culture and politics of memory, two cases of politically motivated suicides in socialist Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic: the self-immolation of the university student Jan Palach (1948–1969) on 16 January 1969 on Wenceslas Square in Prague; and the evangelical pastor Oskar Brüsewitz (1929–1976) on 18 August 1976 in a public market in the Saxon town of Zeitz. While the better-known Palach tried to arouse Czechoslovak society to resist the Soviet occupation and the so-called normalization of conditions, Brüsewitz protested primarily against the socialist and atheist education of East German youth. In her comprehensive work, Stach recalls the political context of both events. Based on a discursive analysis of the recollections, she offers a complex picture of how these personalities who, through their own decision and idealistic motives, sacrificed their lives, have been commemorated in the dissent of their countries, in the East German Protestant Church and in West Germany, and also, after 1990, in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic and the Bundesrepublic. In doing so, Stach points out the difficulties of appropriating the political legacy of such an extreme act and the dilemma between the martyr and hero narratives and their contestation. The reviewer concludes by claiming that Stach meritoriously debunks some of the myths that have survived in connection with Palach and Brüsewitz to the present day.
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The book "Adolf Eichmann – architekt holocaustu: Zločiny, dopadení a proces, který změnil dějiny" [Adolf Eichmann – Architect of the Holocaust: Crimes, Capture and the Trial that Changed History] by the acclaimed non-fiction author Roman Cílek is intended for a wider audience with an interest in twentieth-century history, but this, the reviewer argues, does not diminish its scholarly integrity. Although it is not based on original research of previously unstudied archival sources, the reviewer believes that Cílek’s book deserves attention for its engaging presentation, the appropriate and impressive use of various types of documents and its clear, but not declarative, ethical message. By depicting the career of Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962), Cílek zooms in on the genesis and implementation of the Nazi idea of exterminating the entire Jewish people. Central to the book are the chapters devoted to Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem in 1961, in which the author critically examines the failure of Czechoslovak diplomacy to provide the prosecution with evidence of Eichmann’s decisive role in the murder of the children of Lidice.
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Review of: Thomas Lorman: The Making of the Slovak People’s Party. Religion, Nationalism and the Culture War in Early 20th-Century Europe. Bloomsbury Academic. London u. a. 2019. 307 S., Ill. ISBN 978-1-3501-0937-7. (£ 31,99.)
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Reviews of: Płk. Józef Beck (1894–1944). Żołnierz, dyplomata, polityk [Oberst Józef Beck (1894– 1944). Soldat, Diplomat, Politiker.] Hrsg. von Sławomir M. Nowinowski. (Biblioteka Oddziału Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej w Łodzi, Bd. 41.) Instytut Pamięci Narodowej. Łódź - Warszawa 2017. 472 S. ISBN 978-83-63695-20-0. (PLN 40,-.) Marek Kornat, Dariusz Wołos: Józef Beck. Biografia [Józef Beck. Biografie.] Wydawnictwo Literackie. Kraków 2020. 1148 S., Ill. ISBN 978-83-08-06961-5. (PLN 119,90.)
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Review of: Raec’ka kniha mista L’vova (1460-1506) / Liber Consulum Civitatis Leopoliensis [Das Ratsbuch der Stadt Lemberg (1460-1506). Hrsg. von Myron Kapral’ und Bohdana Petryšak (L’vivs’ki istoryčni praci. Džerela / Opera Historica Leopolitana. Fontes, Bd. 9.) Central’nyj deržavnyj istoryčnyj archiv Ukraïny. L’viv 2020. 848 S., Ill. ISBN 978-617-7746-69-9
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Review of: Amir Sijamhodžić, Monografija Islam i muslimani bužimskog kraja, BZK “Preporod” Bužim, Bužim, 2022
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![Spojrzenie „bez podmiotu”. [Recenzja książki Aleksandry Ubertowskiej „Historie biotyczne. Pomiędzy estetyką a geotraumą”. Warszawa: Instytut Badań Literackich PAN, 2020]](/api/image/getissuecoverimage?id=picture_2023_78022.jpg)
The text is a review of Aleksandra Ubertowska’s book, Historie biotyczne. Pomiędzy estetyką a geotraumą [Biotic histories. Between aesthetics and geotrauma]. The starting point becomes the biocentric lens applied by the researcher and the geo-story behind it. Equally interesting and important are the possibilities of ecocritical theories in interpretation and their application in the Polish ground.
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Review of: Željko Karaula, Dubravko Habek, Prim. dr. Josip Jagodić (1897.-1973.) Pravednik među narodima, Družba „Braća Hrvatskog Zmaja” - Opća bolnica „Dr. Anđelko Višić”, Bjelovar, 2023.
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Review of: Željko Karaula, Dubravko Habek, Prim. dr. Josip Jagodić (1897.-1973.). Pravednik među narodima, Družba „Braća Hrvatskog Zmaja” - Opća bolnica „Dr. Anđelko Višić” Bjelovar, Bjelovar, 2023.
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Review of: Magdalena Skoblar, ur., Byzantium, Venice and the Medieval Adriatic: Spheres of Maritime Power and Influence, c. 700-1453, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, 400 stranica
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The subject of the review is the book "„Stretnú sa v lietadle…“ Politický vtip v druhej polovici 20. storočia a v súčasnosti" [“Three Blokes Meet On a Plane...” Political Jokes in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century and Today] by Slovak ethnologist Eva Šipöczová. The reviewer first reminds us that folk humour has long been a privileged object of interest of folklore studies and ethnology and that historiography only recognized its research potential in connection with methodological innovations in the second half of the twentieth century. He points to the basic works on this topic produced in Czech history in recent decades, and then introduces in detail the content of Šipöczová’s book and her main findings. Šipöczová’s research is based on an ethnological or historical-anthropological perspective. She first situates folk comicality within broader narrative cultural frameworks, then summarizes the genesis of anecdotes as a genre from the remote past to the present, discussing their motivation, targeting, and formal construction. She then studies the “casuistry” and typology of political jokes in Czechoslovak (and, Czech and Slovak) society through the changing times and political conditions up to the present day. In so doing, she proves that folk creativity in this respect by no means disappeared with the end of the communist regime but finds “fertile ground” also in the conditions of democracy. The reviewer considers the last chapter, in which Šipöczová presents an analysis of Internet memes and humour disseminated through the online environment, to be pioneering and particularly inspiring. The added value of the book is the reciting of many contemporary anecdotes.
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