Comité for the scientific research into the country of Bohemia

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Title page of a book from the series of publications by the Committee for Scientific Research into the Land of Bohemia

The Comité for the scientific research into the country of Bohemia ( Czech : Komitét pro přírodovědný výzkum Čech ) was a scientific institution founded in Prague in 1864 . In close connection with what was then the Museum of the Kingdom of Bohemia (Muzeum Království českého), the Comité made a significant contribution to the history of science in Bohemia . His work in the 19th century in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy promoted the growing recognition of the Czech language not only as a vernacular, but also as the language of the educated and of science.

history

The founding of the committee

In 1862 and 1863, members of the Society of the Patriotic Museum in Bohemia and the Kk Patriotic-Economic Society tried to create a research facility that would add new results to the museum's collections and ensure independent research in Bohemia . In this way, in 1864, the Committee for the Scientific Survey of Bohemia was established . The term “exploration” was a common expression in the middle of the 19th century when it came to exploring the country. When it was founded in 1849, the Imperial and Royal Geological Institute in Vienna , which is responsible for the entire Austro-Hungarian monarchy, set itself the geological exploration of the country as a central task for the development of the industrialization of the crown lands of the monarchy.

The work to be done by the Comité was done by some of the leading natural scientists in Bohemia. From among their ranks, the committee formed two sub-committees: a Directions Committee and a Research Committee.

The composition of the committee

At the beginning of the Directions Comité were Count Albert von Nostitz-Rieneck and Heinrich Graf zu Clam-Martinitz , the respective presidents of the two initiating societies. Furthermore, the sending companies each nominated three representatives. On the part of the Society of the Patriotic Museum , these were Karl Kořistka , Jan Evangelista Purkyně and Václav Vladivoj Tomek . On the part of the kk patriotic-economic society it was the agricultural scientist Josef Lumbe Edler von Mallonitz and Anton Emanuel von Komers as well as the lawyer and state advocate in Prague Johann Kiemann the Elder (1797–1872). The management of the Directions Committee was elected to appoint Karl Kořistka.

The investigation committee consisted of twelve members. At the time of its establishment, the following were represented:

Karl Kořistka took over the chairmanship of this body; his secretary was Anton Frič (Fritsch). The editorial group for the resulting publications consisted of Kořistka and Krejčí.

Field of activity and further development

Several contemporary scientific works of great importance emerged from the work of the Committee. When it was founded, the main objective of the statute was the topographical and geological mapping of Bohemia. This requirement was therefore reflected in the early writings. With the advancing development of the natural sciences in the Kingdom of Bohemia, the range of topics expanded. The originally set focus was supplemented by further research fields, including a. for the extraction of mineral resources.

Karl Kořistka had started an independent survey of Bohemia in 1856 thanks to the support of the Prague National Museum. This had become necessary because the map material was considered inadequate, which had arisen from previous surveys initiated in Vienna ( mappings 1842–1853). The network of triangulation points was not tight enough. The new committee for scientific research into the state now took over this work under its direction. Bohemia was divided into ten map sections on a scale of 1: 200,000. They appeared in the form of colored elevation maps as color lithographs step by step after their respective completion. This work was discontinued in 1880 because the Imperial and Royal War Ministry in Vienna ordered the re-establishment of the monarchy in 1869, which began in Bohemia in 1877/1878. Kořistka's map series therefore remained incomplete, but formed the basis for the geological survey based on it.

Prague geological survey sheet (1877)

The content of the comprehensive geological map of the State of Bohemia was linked to the geological mapping work of the Imperial Geological Institute in Vienna ( Military Geographic Institute ). In the 1860s it was recognized that from a palaeontological point of view only incomplete knowledge was available and that therefore a more detailed investigation of the fossil record and the stratigraphic conditions in Bohemia was necessary. The samples collected during the recording work in the area expanded the mineralogy , petrography and paleontology collections in the Bohemian State Museum in Prague. This was important because an older palaeontological collection of chalk formations dating back to August Emanuel von Reuss was stored in the Imperial and Royal Natural History Court Museum in Vienna and was therefore only accessible for research in Prague with greater effort.

Publications

The research results were published at irregular intervals. The series of publications created for this purpose was called the Archive for Scientific Research into the Land of Bohemia ( Archive pro přirodovědecký výzkum země České ). It was a series of publications that was published between 1869 and 1920 by the Commissions-Verlag Fr. Commivnáč. This series was conceived as a series of annual volumes, so that each volume consisted of individual thematic issues (six to eight issues per annual volume), which appeared piece by piece over the course of the year. The authors published their texts in German and in Czech. The Bohemian Academy of the Emperor Franz Joseph for Science, Spoken Word and Art granted financial support for individual publications in the 1890s.

Thin sections of melaphyrene , historical illustration from 1876

The work topics extended to the following areas, each of which formed separate departments in the volumes of the archive for natural scientific research into the country :

The main focus of the work published since 1864 was the processing of topographical data and overview maps of the Kingdom of Bohemia, geological and mineralogical research, hydrological, biological and agronomic studies.

In the archive for scientific research through the country of Bohemia basic scientific knowledge on the geology of Bohemia were published. These include, for example, the research results on the structure of the Bohemian chalk formations by Jan Krejčí, the geologist Rudolf Helmhacker and Antonín Frič , as well as the geological research of the petrograph and mineralogist Emanuel Bořický (1840–1881), professor at the University of Prague since 1880, regarding basalt rocks in northern Bohemia . Also noteworthy is the early use of thin-section preparations for microscopic examinations in this sector. This thin section collection was acquired by the Bohemian State Museum after the death of Emanuel Bořický. Due to its age and size, it is one of the valuable collections.

The new version of the statutes

When the Kk Patriotic-Economic Society dissolved in 1872 , its representatives in the Comité for scientific research into the country of Bohemia were able to continue working, as they had been elected for this task for life. It was not until the death of individual members in 1882 that new ideas about the future direction of the work were forced. The Landes-Culturrath of the Kingdom of Bohemia was asked for its cooperation. The Landes-Culturrath took on this concern and ensured that agricultural science topics were also included in the research spectrum. The list of goals of the committee in its statutes had to be supplemented accordingly.

A small group of people took on the elaboration of a new draft statute and presented it in a joint meeting in 1885. The two sub-committees were re-elected. The Landes-Culturrath named as a representative in the Directions Comité:

Substitute delegates were Count Rudolf Czernin von und zu Chudenitz and Ottakar Nickerl (1838–1920), entomologist at the Technical University in Prague .
The Society of the Bohemian Museum named as a representative in the Directions Comité:

Replacement delegates were Bergrat Hrabak and Adalbert Náprstek .
From then on, the Presidium was headed by the President of the Landes-Culturrathes , Karl III. Prince zu Schwarzenberg, and if he is unable to attend, the President of the Society of the Bohemian Museum , Heinrich Graf zu Clam-Martinitz.

The Comité in the face of growing tensions between nations in Bohemia

All public affairs in 19th century Bohemia were more or less shaped by the manifestations of the national rebirth of the Czechs . Many representatives and institutions of the natural sciences were also affected. The National Museum of the Fatherland (now the National Museum) in Prague played an important role in this. Its sponsors from the ranks of the Bohemian aristocracy were keen that an independent research related to the country of Bohemia should take place. As one of the spokesmen for the Czech-oriented nobility, Heinrich Graf zu Clam-Martinitz campaigned for a federal structure of the Habsburg monarchy according to the motto of a “historical-political individuality of the countries” . The Imperial Diploma of October 20, 1860, to regulate the internal constitutional relationships of the monarchy , the so-called October Diploma , a compromise between centralist and federalist efforts, had encouraged him to do so. But a year later, a centralized constitution was adopted instead, the February patent . This development led to a political rapprochement between Clam-Martinitz and the Czech bourgeois politician František Palacký and his son-in-law František Ladislav Rieger . Together they stood up for the demand for a “Bohemian constitutional law”.

As a result of these internal political tensions, from 1860 onwards there was an increasing number of organizations in Bohemia that were demonstratively separated into Czechs and Germans in almost all areas of public life. The division of Charles University in Prague into a Czech and a German-speaking university in 1882 was particularly symbolic and had a subsequent impact .

On the part of the Czech intelligentsia, the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences had existed since 1784 and the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts from 1890 . The scientifically interested German-Bohemian population founded the Society for the Promotion of German Science, Art and Literature in 1891 and the German Scientific Society in Reichenberg in 1904 .

This dichotomy was reflected in the different paths that leading personalities in the Comité took for the scientific research into the country of Bohemia . The geologist Johann Krejčí was politically active as a member of the Bohemian Landtag and in the Imperial Council of Vienna. During this time he became the first university professor in his field to give lectures in the Czech language. Nevertheless, Krejčí did not follow the escalating tendency of the young Czech leader Rieger unreservedly, he increasingly distanced himself from some of his positions. The recognized geologist Gustav Laube , professor and rector of the German Karl Ferdinand University in Prague, left the Comité. In any case, the entire work in the Comité was under considerable tension.

In 1902, the geologist Jindřich Ladislav Barvíř (1863–1952) called in an article in the magazine Hornické a hutnické listy ( Journal of Mining and Metallurgy ) to found his “own” (Bohemian-Czech) state geological institute . He argued that the forms of scientific organization from the 19th century no longer met the expectations of the Czech intelligentsia at the beginning of the 20th century.

After the First World War

After the establishment of Czechoslovakia, many of the Comité's research projects were taken up and continued by the Státní geologický ústav Československé republiky (State Geological Institute of the Czechoslovak Republic) founded in 1919 . Its director was Cyril Purkyně (1862-1937), professor of geology and mineralogy at the Technical University in Prague. The new State Geological Institute officially declared itself to be the successor to the Imperial Geological Institute on the territory of Bohemia and Moravia, but could not in fact continue its activities because that Vienna authority had no branch in Prague. As a result, the State Geological Institute of the Czechoslovak Republic tied scientifically and personally primarily to the Committee for the Scientific Survey of Bohemia , as well as to the corresponding departments of the Česká akademie věd a umění (Czech Academy of Science and Art) under the direction of Karel Vrba .

literature

  • Karl Kořistka: Overview of the activities of natural scientific research into the country of Bohemia from 1864 to 1890 . Ms. Řivnáč, Prague 1891.
  • Ernst Nittner (ed.): A thousand years of German-Czech neighborhood . Institutum Bohemicum, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-924020-12-4 .
  • Friedrich Prinz: German history in Eastern Europe. Bohemia and Moravia . Siedler, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-88680-773-8 .

References and footnotes

  1. ^ Wilhelm von Haidinger : The task of the summer of 1850 for the Imperial Geological Institute in the geological exploration of the country . In: Yearbook of the Imperial Geological Institute , vol. 1 (1850), Verlag Wilhelm Braumüller, Vienna, pp. 6-16.
  2. ↑ To Ludwig Schmidl: * 1811 in Mirotice, Bez. Pisek , † 1882 in Pischel , Royal Vineyards near Prague, head forester in the prince. Lobkowitz's service.
  3. ^ Karl Kořistka: The Eastern Bohemia . Ms. Řivnáč , Prague 1903, pp. III-IV.
  4. ^ Johann Krejčí, Anton Frič: Geological maps of Bohemia. Section VI. Surroundings from Kuttenberg to Böhmisch-Trübau . Ms. Řivnáč, Prague 1891, p. 3.
  5. ↑ Vladimir Jos. Procházka: The East Bohemian Miocaen . Ms. Řivnáč, Prague 1900, p. 5.
  6. ↑ On Rudolf Helmhacker: * 1840; † 1915 in Royal Vineyards near Prague, 1885 professor of mineralogy, geology and paleontology at the Bergakademie in Leoben , after 1881 mining engineer in Eastern Siberia.
  7. ↑ Joseph Klvaňa: The Moldau valley between Prague and Kralupy. A petrographic study . Ms. Řivnáč, Prague 1895, p. 3.
  8. ↑ Jindřich Ladislav Barvíř: O potrebe zemského geologického ústavu u nás. Organizace geologického výzkumu . In: Hornické a hutnické listy , vol. 3 (1902), issue 8, p. 123 ( digitized version ).
  9. ^ Josef Svoboda: Ústřední ústav geologický 1919–1969 . Nákladem Československé Akademie Věd, Praha 1969, pp. 9–12.