This study explores the collection of Czech books in the Strängnäs Cathedral Library. The books were taken to Sweden as war booty at the end of the Thirty Years’ War and are today the most compactly preserved collection of books of Czech provenance in Sweden. This so-called war library, which the Chapter received as a gift from Queen Christina I, was not seen by the new administrators as an integral part of the Church’s property. This paper aims to answer two questions: First, when and how the Chapter’s mental barrier broke down; second, what factors played a role in the reorganisation of Cathedral Library in 1764–1765 and the selection of books for the auction sale. To answer these questions, I analysed the manuscript catalogue of the Cathedral Library from the 1750s and the printed auction catalogue of 1764. In addition, I surveyed preserved copies, particularly those auctioned by the Cathedral Library. My findings reveal that it took more than a century for the looted books to integrate into the new cultural environment in Strängnäs. Their merger with the original Cathedral Library did not take place until the 1750s and 1760s as part of a reorganisation aimed at creating a modern historical collection. This reorganisation included massive disposal of books, a large amount of which came from the Czech book spoils. The research findings also indicate that the war origin played no significant role in their selection and sale. The fate of the Czech book spoils in Strängnäs represents a complex case of incorporating books from war booty into a new cultural environment. The study is one of the first contributions to the question of the so-called second life of Czech book spoils in Sweden.
The Czech Republic is comprised of different regions at the sub-national level. These are the historical lands of Bohemia, Moravia, and (part of) Silesia, small ethnographic regions, and administrative units. Their objective hierarchy derives from their former historical role, from their administrative function today, and their regional importance. In this article the authors attempt to describe the subjective hierarchy of these regions in the minds of their inhabitants, drawing on a survey of 1203 respondents from throughout the Czech Republic conducted in 2003 by the Centre for Public Opinion Research. The historical lands of Bohemia and Moravia are two regions whose existence Czechs recognise without question, while Silesia is in a weaker position and garners only two-thirds of the level of recognition accorded the other two historical lands. The cultural or ethnographic regions and the administrative units are on an approximately equal level, which is distinctively lower than that of the three Czech historical lands. More of these small regions are located in Moravia than in Bohemia or Silesia. The best known Czech regions are: Wallachia, Moravian Slovakia, Hana (all of which are in Moravia) and the Region of Khods (Bohemia). The best known region that is neither ethnographical nor one of the administrative units is the former industrial region of Ostrava.
Sborník příspěvků z konference zaměřený na problematiku článkových bibliografiích nejrůznějších oborů., Editorka: Markéta Holanová, Obsahuje bibliografie a bibliografické odkazy, Anglická resumé, and born digital