Jiří Kořalka

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jiří Kořalka (born February 7, 1931 in Šternberk , Czechoslovakia ; † January 30, 2015 ) was a Czech historian.

Life

Kořalka comes from a Czech family of teachers with a few German ancestors. In addition to his teaching profession, his father Jaroslav was also active in the cultural life of the mostly German-speaking town of Sternberg. When the city fell to Germany in 1938 as a result of the Munich Agreement , the mother fled with the two children to Prostějov , where they stayed until the end of the war and where Jiří attended various schools. In 1948 he received a scholarship from the American Field Service and the Czechoslovak Ministry of Education, which allowed him to spend almost a year as an exchange student in Pennsylvania . After his return he made the Abitur in Prostějov in 1950. Because his career aspiration was to become a diplomat, he enrolled at the newly founded University of Politics and Economics in Prague. His academic teachers there included u. a. Jiří Hájek and Ota Šik .

After the Faculty of Social Sciences at the university was merged with the Philosophical University of Charles University in 1952 , Kořalka turned around and began studying history. His diploma thesis in 1954 dealt with the emergence of the socialist labor movement in the Reichenberg region . Initially active as a research assistant, he moved to the Historical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in June 1955 . In 1958 he became a candidate for history, which corresponded to the Western European doctorate. During those years he dealt mainly with the history of the Czech and German labor movements. In addition, there were soon questions of nationalism research, for example in the study published in 1963 on the Pan-German Association and the Czech question. Lively contacts with Austria and the Federal Republic of Germany developed.

After he had been a visiting professor at the University of Kent in Canterbury in 1969 , Kořalka was relieved of all functions in 1970 after the forced dissolution of the Prague Historical Institute and was banned from traveling. At first he received employment contracts for one year at a time, but in 1975 he was forced to change to a position at the Museum of the Revolutionary Hussite Movement in Tábor . After 1979 trips abroad were possible again, in 1987/88 he received a visiting professorship at Bielefeld University . In those years the history of the bourgeoisie and Czech historiography received special weight in his research.

After 1990, Kořalka's scientific recognition continued to grow. Between 1990 and 1995 he was secretary of the Czech-Austrian Commission of Historians. In 1992 he received the Herder Prize , in 2007 the Anton Gindely Prize .

Kořalka was married and had a son.

Works (selection)

  • František Palacký (1798–1876): the historian of the Czechs in the multi-ethnic Austrian state . Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-7001-3769-6 (first in Czech: Praha 1998).
  • Czechs in the Habsburg Empire and in Europe 1815–1914: socio-historical connections of the modern nation-building and the nationality question in the Bohemian countries , Vienna 1991 (that. Czech: Praha 1996).
  • Severočeští socialisté v čele délnického hnutí českých a rakouských zemí . Prague 1963.
  • Vznik socialostického dělnického hnuti na Liberecku . Liberec 1956.
  • Constance as a travel destination for Czech hus enthusiasts around the middle of the 19th century , in: Writings of the Association for the History of Lake Constance and its Surroundings , 105th year 1987, pp. 93–130 ( digitized version )

literature

  • Nationalism, společnost a culture v středni Evropě 19. a 20. století: pocta Jiřímu Kořalkovi k 75. narozeninám , ed. v. Jiří Pokorný, Prague 2007.
  • Arnold Suppan : Rodem Moravan, Národem Čech - a Moravian by birth, a Czech nationally. A bio-bibliographical sketch for Jiří Kořalka's 60th birthday. in: Jiří Kořalka: Czechs in the Habsburg Empire and in Europe 1815-1914. Vienna 1991, pp. 9-18.

Web links