Hluboký vhled do smutného konce úspěšného muže
In her book "Soukromá válka Huga Vavrečky: Mikrohistorie z rozhraní soudobých dějin (1945–1952)" [Hugo Vavrečka’s Private War: A Microhistory from the Edge of Contemporary History, 1945–1952)], the historian Jana Wohlmuth Markupová presents the fate of journalist, economist, manager, diplomat and for a short time also politician Hugo Vavrečka (1880–1952). The first Czechoslovak ambassador to Hungary and then to Austria, in the interwar period Vavrečka was also commercial director of the Baťa Works and, in autumn 1938, at a critical time for Czechoslovakia, a government minister. He was also the grandfather of the playwright and president Václav Havel (1936–2011). According to the reviewer, Wohlmuth Markupová’s book occupies a unique place among Czech biographical publications in that it contains a thorough reflection on the genre of historical biography and examines the relationship between the biography of a particular person and the microhistorical approach to the problem of contemporary history. It is this methodological emphasis which makes it extremely inspiring and valuable. The author focuses on the last eight post-war years of Hugo Vavrečka’s life, when from a former member of the social elite he became an outsider, and attempts to capture his psychological traits and life strategies. The result is a deep, nuanced and gloomy insight into the confrontation of an exceptional personality (but by that time also an old and sick man) with the pressure of changing social conditions, especially the communist regime after 1948.
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