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Masaryk’s Concept of Central European and Whole-European Democratic Unity
Bednář, Miloslav
By 1915 in London Thomas G. Masaryk publicly identified and described the origins of WW I as the neuralgic mid-European belt of minor nations between Germany and Russia presenting the geo-political core of the so called Eastern Question. For Masaryk, this Central Europe presented the most exigent and acute impetus for the allied democratic transformation of the political organization of Europe. By 1919 Halford J. Mackinder proclaimed his famous Heartland concept in the same vein. Masaryk’s plan was to gradually establish a United States of Europe out of transatlantic cooperation between a confederation of European old and new democracies and the U.S. Masaryk’s concept of democratic European unity obviously contradicts the core concept of the European Union that aims at a gradual elimination of European democracies.
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Philosophical and Sociological Contexts of Masaryk’s Meaning of Czech History
Svoboda, Jan
In the Czech Question (1895) Masaryk laid the foundation for his conception of the meaning of Czech history. Masaryk found the main idea, which qualitatively creates the continuity of Czech history and as a national emancipation programme has the necessary potential to give meaning to all its partial contexts, in the idea of humanity. The purpose of this paper is to point out the fundamental connection between the democratizing efforts of Masaryk’s political realism for a kind of permanent humanization of society, the aim of which was to transform the dysfunctional ancien régime of federalized Austria into a modern civil society. However, the theoretical basis for these considerations had already been given in earlier works, most notably in the book Foundations of Concrete Logic (1885).
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A genetic doubleness. The National Councils in the political system of Socialist Czechoslovakia
Gjuričová, Adéla
The article focuses on the National Councils in Czechoslovakia during the under-researched period of Socialist parliaments in the 1970 and 1980s. The author demonstrates their functions in the political system. She argues that they were expected to represent the Czech and Slovak "peoples" in the country's complicated representative structure, but their national(ist) trait was a part of the federalization of 1968 and "woke up" immediately after the Velvet Revolution.
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Plague, massacre, Mary: Anti-Jewish Aspects of Late Medieval Piety
Soukup, Daniel
The so-called Plague persecutions from 1348 to 1350 affected a large majority of the Jewish communities in the Empire, who were accused of poisoning the wells. Though the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia were spared from these violent attacks, Czech medieval literature was mirroring contemporary events and anxiety. Along with economical as well as political reasons, the atmosphere created by the overwhelming threat of the Black Death was also shaped by specific aspects of late medieval piety - passion and Marian devotion, favoured by Emperor Charles IV himself. The paper focuses on mimetic passion piety, partly represented by the flagellant movement and officially expressed by devotional literature, and its influence on anti-Jewish rhetoric and violence. Analysis of vernacular prayers, poems and laments of the Virgin Mary (planctus Marie), the most powerful and emotional texts of spiritual edification modelled by the compassionate spectatorship, presents those anti-Jewish aspects which could pave the way for physical aggression against the Jewish community. Besides contemplative literature, timeless and universal Marian tales could echo actual massacres and legitimized anti-Jewish violence. This may be the case of a Bohemian version of the Marian miracle De Imagine S. Mariae in Lidda, preserved in the 14th century manuscript Liber depictus, which formulates the maxims of medieval society against the background of hagiographies that were updated for that time.
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The Emmaus Cycle and Liturgy
Kubínová, Kateřina
The article tries about a new scope on the medieval mural paintings in the cloister of Emmaus monastery. The clue was found in connections of iconography of paintings and daily liturgy. Some paintings probably reflected the liturgical events in monastery.
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