Search

For the exiles, who were active co-workers of the exile organization Opus Bonum, the phenomenon of the home was one of the most important issues in life. We will examine how this fact influenced the attitudes of the Opus Bonum meeting's participants. We are interested in how much it was a conscious or, on the contrary, unreflected inspiration and whether its application in different social positions differs. We will outline the influence of the idea of a happy home on further work in exile on the examples of the priest Anastáz Opasek, lay Catholic activist Vladimír Neuwirth and art theorist Petr Spielmann.

In the post-war years, the German Democratic Republic competed against the Federal Republic of Germany for providing a new beginning in Nazi-Germany. Thus, the ruling Socialist Unity Party started a broad campaign to acknowledge the new order as a prerequisite of Heimat. An emotional regime forms the backdrop to the theory of socialist Heimat, in which the people loves the state, the party and its neighbours. This paper examines the ideology of a socialist Heimat and the emotional regime, which used the political leaders of the country to direct the patriotic feelings of their inhabitants towards socialism. At the end, this essay additionally offers some remarks on the impact of this process and focuses on how Heimat became a special notion in the GDR with particular aspects.

The contribution will focus on the philosophical conception of cultural and national identity of Erazim Kohák and journalistic thinking of the history of Pavel Tigrid in 20th century. In both cases, the aim is to find the concept of national identity. Kohák formulated his concept clearly and peculiarly in the book Hearth and Horizon (2009), Pavel Tigrid somewhat indefinitely in the book Pocket Guide of an Intelligent Woman After Her Destiny (1988). Both authors were political exiles after February 1948. In terms of opposition to the Communist regime, Kohák and Tigrid represent not only prominent figures, but also a sample of diversity, which was characterized by anti-communist exile.

In the 1960s the communist-controlled Czechoslovakia strongly ideologically opposed the Western countries both in terms of public promotional activities as well as in the internal materials of the Czechoslovak state authorities. Their anti-Western rhetoric was also focused on the system of government and economic situation. It is also the focus of this contribution which uses France as an example. It is based on contents and linguistic analysis of the materials of the Czechoslovak diplomatic service and the newspaper Rudé právo.

The life topic of Hélène Iswolsky (1896–1975), Russian émigré, was her lost homeland, Russia. In her texts, she describes Russia as a profoundly spiritual nation, resisting the communist regime. Raised in a Protestant-Orthodox family, Iswolsky embraced the Catholic faith in 1921, and the Church became her second home. The personal experience of conversion profoundly affected her work: on the level of the interconfessional dialog, she strove for a better understanding between Orthodox and Catholics; on the politico-social level she stood for the creation a of a new system – anticapitalistic, anticommunist, built on the bases of the Christian ethics. The book L'Homme 1936 en Russie soviétique, in which Iswolsky reflects on the situation of the coeval Soviet Union, will be analyzed with regard to the political context of the 1930s. The crucial questions will concern the image of Russia the author presents, and the reception of this image by the French public.

There was published a pamphlet called Aké bude Slovensko o sto rokov? (1920), [What will Slovakia be like in 100 years?] just a century ago. It offered a vision of Slovak national state's future – the state flourishing with social welfare, scientific and technological progress and moral maturity of citizens. Adaptation of "happy national home" idea for future, written by engineer Jozef Dohnány (1873 – 1947), carries marks characteristics for utopias. The conference paper approaches to Dohnány's vision as to a branch of modern dynamic utopic phenomenon, creating a communication space, especially in the 19.th and 20.th century, for expressing desires and ideals, testing possibilities of mental borders and calling for social or political mobilization in favour of achievement realistic, or even unrealistic aims. The paper uses interdisciplinary interpretative approach for analysis of Dohnány vision's ideological structure, compares it in relation to More's prototype of utopia and refers to representations of "period's presence" in utopic genre.

Years after February 1948 was a difficult period for the Czechoslovak Church. Although the ideologically divided church had a partially negative attitude towards the communist regime, another significant part of ordinary believers and priests (including church leadership) saw the communist state as an opportunity to fulfill the idea of Christian socialism. Czechoslovakia was to become a happy home for unbelievers and Christians alike. The paper is focused on the daily life of the religious communities of the Czechoslovak Church in Brno between 1948 and 1960. It seeks answers to the questions of how the vision of the coexistence of the communist state and the Czechoslovak Church was accepted among the believers themselves at the local level and how the relationship of believers to their new home developed during the dynamic 1950s.

This study focuses on the door-to-door agitation based on the ideology of the communist system. As the everyday practice of propaganda and mass mobilization, the agitators were appearing in the homes of families in Budapest regularly between 1948 and 1953. The documents of agitation uncover how the Hungarian communist party intended to mobilize the society to support the party-state and what was the social perceptions of this attempt. Since the home was considered female territory, the work of the local party organizations also offers insights into the role of women in the agitation campaigns.

Comics feature many topics – Homes or their absence are among those. No famous comic focuses on home only, many bring stories or subplots revealing the artists' view. In this contribution, those views are being analysed and compared, focussing on master narratives within and interpretations of the works. A selection of comics from Belgium and France has been made limiting the research field to two of the most active/innovative markets for comics. Three of the most important comic series are being analysed, covering a time between 1929 and the 1990es: Chlorophylle, Tintin and Sibylline.

During the state socialist era in the GDR, the People's Republic of Poland and Czechoslovakia, care for the elderly and people in need of help was often provided at home. Volunteers from the national Red Cross societies, the East German organization People's Solidarity or neighborhood helpers from the residential area cared for needy people in the place that determined their reality of life – their own home. The way in which the home shaped social voluntary care for helpers and those in need before and after 1989 will be the subject of this paper. Keywords: care, elderly, home, volunteering, state socialism, German Democratic Republic, People's Republic of Poland, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.

The article concerns itself with the evolution of the perception of the affiliaton with the "old country" among the Bukovina Slovaks before 1947, and namely with the retrospective construction of the myth of the preservation of identity in abroad post reemigration to Slovakia in 1947.

The study deals with the issue of emigration propaganda in the Habsburg Monarchy during 19th century until the outbreak of the First World War in the context of emigration issues. Specifically, it focuses on the analysis profit by selling one-way ticket to overseas, in fact to USA. This service was provided by agents of shipping companies, who often operated at the edge of the law. The Habsburg monarchy, due to liberalism, did not want to change the established system and tolerated emigration from the country. It never prohibited the operation of agents or travel agencies in its territory and left them relatively calm.

This paper analyses the image of home in memoirs of members of the Czechoslovak Legion. It focuses not only on retrospective memories recorded during the service, but also on introductory, biographical and closing sections that are a part of many memoirs, as well as on the visions of the future free state and home they hoped to return to. The paper utilizes sampling method, picking three memoirs of members of the Legion and submitting to comparison the temporary and situationally diverse ideas of home found in them, as well as their development in time. Upon this sample are then demonstrated the repetitive motives and development tendencies observed in memoirs of members of the Legion and hypotheses are drawn to identify the background and causality of such tendencies. The article concludes with summarizing the results and outlining the possible further research in this yet sparsely researched field.

Libuše Bráfová, granddaughter of František Palacký and daughter of František Ladislav Rieger, decided to set up a museum in the house where her family had lived for several generations. In my paper I will focus on the following questions: What did the idea of home mean to Bráfová? Why did she decided to open her house to public? What were functions and purpose of the museum and why was setting it up so difficult? Besides, I will be interested in the functionig of the museum in the first years of its existence, the popularity of this institution among the Czech public and the experiences of visitors of the home of the most important Czech family in the 19th century.

The study deals with the development and instrumentalization of the Handlová strike (1940) in the historiography before 1989. In the paper, I will provide the situation that preceded the strike and then the analysis of its process. It will also be necessary to determine who initiated the strike and what role the illegal communist movement played in it. I am going to compare the forms of instrumentalization with some of the claims made by historiography after 1989. In the context of instrumentalization of a strike, several questions arise. Was this a significant historiographic milestone? For what purpose was it used? Who and why was he the maintainer of his instrumentalization? How much influence had the communists during the strike?

The exile organization Opus Bonum has become more widely known by organizing the symposiums in the Bayern town Franken. Especially the first meeting in February 1978 became a milestone in the history of the association and one of the most important activities of exile after the Soviet occupation in 1968. On a common platform debated the representatives of so-called "winners" together with "losers" from February 1948, e.g. Zdeněk Mlynář and Pavel Tigrid The focus of the organization thus changed from the original cultural-religious one to a discussion meeting with a strong political accent. We will examine how and why this change occurred and how the new concept influenced Opus Bonum itself and also the Czech exile milieu in Western Europe.

Communist Czechoslovakia was looking for opportunities for ideological action in western countries at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. It should have the widest possible range, at the same time it had to be however so inconspicuous so that it did not prompt a negative reaction of local authorities. Purpose-built updating of selected anniversaries of historical events was an interesting tool of Czechoslovak propaganda. In the case of France, particularly events related to Germany were remembered. Actually, the aim of that propaganda was – first of all – to point out the alleged danger arising from the cooperation of western countries with the Federal Republic of Germany, which resulted for example in the Élysée Treaty in 1963.

This paper focuses on selected historiography concepts of the soviet historian and ethnologist L. N. Gumilev (1912–1992). The main aim is to present Gumilev's revision of the Kulikovo battle (1380). Paper is based on his two articles published in 1980 on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the event. Primary sources are supplemented by Gumilev's correspondence deposited in Prague and St. Petersburg. Paper clarifies alleged Eurasianist aspects of Gumilev's articles and consequences of their ambivalent reception in the intellectual milieu of Russian nationalists.