František Palacký

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František Palacký, lithograph by Adolf Dauthage 1855

František Palacký (born June 14, 1798 in Hodslavice , Moravia , † May 26, 1876 in Prague ) was a k. k Austrian historian and politician. The University of Olomouc has been named after him since 1990.

Origin, education and life path

František Palacký was the son of the Evangelical Lutheran village school teacher Jiří (Georg) Palacký in Hodslavice near Olomouc in North Moravia. His father sent him from Christmas 1807 to July 1809 to the free-spirited private school of Countess Maria Walburga von Waldburg-Zeil-Lustenau-Hohenems in Kunewald . There he learned u. a. the German language, in which he later wrote his most important works. From August 1809 to June 1812 he attended the Latin school in Trenčín , then the Protestant theological college in Pressburg until 1819 and then worked as a private teacher in noble families. In 1823 he was first archivist for Count Sternberg in Prague , from 1838 the regional historiographer of the Bohemian estates, from 1827 to 1838 editor of the Czech journal of the Bohemian State Museum, in the establishment and development of which he played a major role as a mouthpiece for Czech intellectuals. In 1830 he was a founding member of the Czech cultural association Matice česká and the association for the construction of a Czech national theater.

František Palacký in Vienna, 1821

In 1832 František Palacký began to write an extensive history of the Czech people in Bohemia and Moravia , which was published in German from 1836 and in Czech in 1848 during the revolution of 1848/1849 in the Austrian Empire under the title Dějiny národu českého v Čechách av Moravě , has been published. He dedicated this major work to the estates of the Kingdom of Bohemia . He also attempted to publish a Czech reference work of the Brockhaus Encyclopedia type . A company that his son-in-law František Ladislav Rieger brought to a conclusion and pressure. In 1848, the year of the revolution, Palacký was invited to the Frankfurt National Assembly by the Committee of Fifties preparing the German National Assembly , but declined to participate and to join the Slavic territories in a German Empire. He was of the opinion that the Slavic areas such as Bohemia and Moravia are not sufficiently taken into account in their historical existence. Therefore, only the 33 members of the German mother tongue from Bohemia , Moravia and Austrian Silesia were represented in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt . Palacký was a member of the Austrian parliament in Vienna and Kremsier , president of the Slavs Congress in Prague, in 1861 a member of the Austrian mansion and from 1861 to 1875 a member of the Bohemian state parliament under the encouraging friendship of the Prague gubernial president Karl Chotek von Chotkow .

František Palacký became a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna , a member of the Royal Bohemian Society of Sciences in Prague, a foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich and numerous other scientific and cultural associations and received the honorary title of "historian" in the Czech press. Otec národa “(Father of the Nation). The University of Olomouc has been named Palacký University Olomouc since 1990.

1827 married Palacky in Předslav after the desired with difficulty marriage bond had applied and committed to Catholic education of their children, Terezie Měchurová (1807-1860), a daughter of the landowner in the West Bohemian Otín (now part of Klatovy ) Jan Měchura and sister by the composer Leopold Eugen Měchura . The marriage came from the geographer and politician Jan Palacký (born October 10, 1830 in Prague; † February 22, 1908 ibid), Dr. phil. and Dr. jur. with study visits etc. a. in Paris, Berlin and Munich; 1891 to 1902 full professor at the Charles University in Prague, whose publications on plant, animal and regional geography have appeared in Czech, German and French, as well as Marie Riegrová-Palacká (1833-1891), who with the politician and editor František Ladislav Rieger (1818–1903) was married.

After the failure of the Whitsun uprising in Prague in 1848, Palacký initially withdrew; was a leading member of the conservative Czechs loyal to the emperor in the 1960s, member of the Austrian manor house since 1861 , but insisted on equal rights for the Czech people within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy . After the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, his attitude towards the Austro-Hungarian monarchy changed and he made contacts with Pan-Slavic circles in Russia .

Effect of his life's work

In the thirties and forties of the 19th century, Palacký strongly supported the Czech national movement , promoted the establishment of the National Theater in Prague and was president of the first Slavic Congress in Prague.

Particularly noteworthy are Palacký's research on Czech historiography. On behalf of the Bohemian nobility, he developed a concept of the continuous legal existence of the Bohemian Kingdom within the Habsburg Monarchy ( Bohemian constitutional law ). In a transfiguration, he assumed that the Slavs had been a peaceful and democratic people from the earliest times. His consideration of Czech history in the Middle Ages was based in part on the Königinhofer and Grünberger manuscripts - forgeries of the archivist Václav Hanka , as it later turned out. He saw the Hussites as representatives of a basic democratic attitude, but the defeat of the Bohemian estates in the Battle of White Mountain near Prague and the subsequent re-Catholicization in Bohemia as a national catastrophe. This view of history continued into the 20th century. In the years after 1948 the communist Czechoslovak government used it in a different form against the owners of their own ethnic group.

For his historical research, Palacký traveled to around seventy European archives, and in the Vatican in Rome he made over 400 copies from the archives there. His language skills were also remarkable. In addition to Czech, Latin and Old Slavonic , there were German, Hungarian, Russian, English, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Works

Bust of František Palacký, created by Josef Václav Myslbek

poetry

  • Na horu Radhošť - poem
  • Má modlitba dne 26. července 1818 - hymn
  • Ideál říše - Ode

Scientific literature

  • Staročeský všeobecný kalendář
  • Život Jana Amose Komenského
  • Zběrky ze starožitnosti českoslovanské
  • Počátkové českého básnictví, obzvláště prosodie - (1818)
  • Krásověda čili o kráse a umění knihy patery
  • Okus české terminologie filosofické

Historical literature

  • Staří letopisové čeští od roku 1378 do roku 1527
  • History of Bohemia
    • 1. Volume “The prehistory and the time of the dukes in Bohemia up to the year 1197” - 1836 online at Google Books
      • 1. Book: "Bohemian prehistory, before the immigration of the Čechen" (until 451)
      • 2. Book: "Bohemia under the Čechen before Christianity spread" (451–894)
      • 3rd book: "Bohemia as a duchy under the influence of Germany" (895–1197)
    • 2nd volume
      • 1st section: “Bohemia as a hereditary kingdom under the Přemyslids” (1198–1306) - 1847
      • 2nd section: "Bohemia under the House of Luxembourg, until the death of Emperor Charles IV." (1306–1378)
    • 3rd volume
      • 1st section: "Bohemia under King Wenceslaus IV, until the outbreak of the Hussite War" (1378–1419)
      • 2. Department: "The Hussite War" (1419–1431)
      • 3rd section: "Bohemia and the Basel Council: Sigmund and Albrecht" (1431–1439)
    • 4th volume "The Age of George of Poděbrad" (1439–1471)
      • 1st section: "The time from 1439 to K. Ladislaw's death in 1457" - 1860
      • 2nd department: "K. George's government. "(1457–1471)
    • 5. Volume "The Age of the Jagellonids"
      • 1. Department "King Wladislaw II." (1471–1500) - 1865
      • 2. Section “King Wladislaw II. And King Ludwig I” (1500–1526) - 1867
  • Dějiny národa českého v Čechách av Moravě
    • 1st volume (up to 1125)
    • 2nd volume (1125–1403)
    • 3rd volume (1403–1439)
    • 4th volume (1439–1471)
    • Volume 5 (1471-1526)
  • Pomůcky ku poznání řádů zemských království Českého v druhé polovině XIII. století
  • Appreciation of the old Bohemian historians (1869)
  • Pomůcky ku poznání staročeského práva i řádu soudního
  • Přehled současných nejvyšších důstojníků a ouředníků zemských i dvorských v královstvím Českém, od nejstarších časův až do nynějška
  • Popis království Českého (1848)
  • Sketch of a story of Prague (Czech Stručné dějiny Prahy )

Political work

  • Austria's state idea (1866)

literature

Web links

Commons : František Palacký  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: František Palacký  - sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Palacký, František
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Palatzky, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech historian and politician
DATE OF BIRTH June 14, 1798
PLACE OF BIRTH Hodslavice
DATE OF DEATH May 26, 1876
Place of death Prague