Bedřich Machulka was born on June 22, 1875. Since his youth he had been interested in Africa. However, only after meeting Richard Štorch he was able to realize his dreams. Together they parted for Africa. They settled in Tripolis in Libya and dedicated themselves in hunting and stuffing animals. Afterwards they moved to Sudan where they established a base for hunting expeditions. In the year 1927 Štorch died. Machulka moved his interest to eastern Africa. Since 1929 he had established a partnership with Duke Adolf Schwarzenberg (1890–1950). At the beginning their collaboration went on without problems. However, after Machulka failed to organize film recording in Kenya, the Duke did not entrust him anymore with organizing of other expeditions. This period of life of Machulka, until the year 1935, is well illustrated by letters that he exchanged with the Duke through the Schwarzenberg Office. Schwarzenberg valued Machulka highly for his professional and organizational qualities. Therefore, in spite of the mutual disagreements he found him a place of preserver and curator of small museum of ethnographic artifacts and trophies in the castle Ohrada (on the manor of Hluboká). There Machulka had worked throughout the Second World War until the year 1947, when all the properties of the Schwarzenbergs on the territory of Czechoslovakia were nationalized. Machulka finished his life in Prague in humble conditions. He died on March 6, 1954.
Besides many dispersed fragments related to theory of sleep, dreams and their interpretation, Babylonian Talmud contains a long passage dealing with those issues, which includes also several series of dream-interpretations. The passage is often referred to as „Rabbinic dream-book” in specialized scholarly literature. The present article analyses contain and compositional patterns of the text and indicates the presence of mutually exclusive theories of dreams and their interpretation, as well as typically Talmudic methods of organization such as association and agglutination. Since the final composition does not communicate any uniform statement, we claim it incorrect to call the text „Rabbinic dream-book” and suggest it is not more than a mere agglutination of pre-existing textual fragments.
My study aims to conduct a comparative analysis of two theorists in what were probably the most formative years of postwar Austrian history, the era of the conservative government of Josef Klaus. Specifi cally, I compare the conservative philosophy of right of Austrian philosopher of Croatian origin René Marcic and the Marxist humanism of Ernst Fischer. In doing so, it is my intention to describe the ideological foundations and intellectual horizons of Josef Klaus’s right-wing government and, at the same time, to discuss how this policy was confronted by Ernst Fischer from the left. A further purpose of my study is to inquire into the intellectual foundations that laid the ground for Austrian civil society, and to ask how these foundations were confronted by the Austrian Communist Party’s chief ideologist, Ernst Fischer.
Kniha francouzské autorky pojednává o osudech francouzských archivů, které nejprve za druhé světové války zabavily a do různých míst ve střední Evropě evakuovaly německé úřady, posléze je převzaly a do své země odvezly úřady sovětské, přičemž mnohé tyto dokumenty dosud zůstávají v Rusku. Autorka zdánlivě nezáživné téma podává jako strhující příběh, zasazuje je do historického rámce využívání archivů jako válečné trofeje a vnáší do aktuálních diskusí o historické paměti nový důležitý rozměr. and This volume, by a French historian, considers the fate of the French archives that were first confiscated during the Second World War and carted off to various places in central Europe by the German authorities, before eventually being taken by the Soviet authorities and brought to the USSR. Many of the records have remained in Russia to this day. The author presents this potentially lacklustre subject as an exciting story. She puts it into the historical framework of archives as war booty, and adds a new, important dimension to current debates about historical memory.
Článek je zkrácenou verzí studie, kterou autor publikoval pod názvem „‘No Action’: Die USA und die Invasion in die Tschechoslowakei“ ve sborníku: Karner, Stefan – Tomilina, Natalja – Tschubarjan, Alexander – Bischof, Günter – Iščenko, Viktor – Prozumenščikov, Michail – Ruggenthaler, Peter – Tůma, Oldřich – Wilke, Manfred (ed.): Prager Frühling: Das internationale Krisenjahr 1968, sv. 1: Beiträge. Köln/R. – Weimar – Wien, Böhlau 2008, s. 319-354. Autor rekonstruuje postoj americké vlády k intervenci vojsk Vašavské smlouvy do Československa v srpnu 1968. Připomíná, že v květnu toho roku náměstek ministra zahraničí Eugene W. Rostow – s odvoláním na průběh a vyústění komunistického převratu v Československu a sovětské intervence v Maďarsku na podzim 1956 – doporučoval svému ministrovi Deanu Ruskovi Moskvu jasně jasně varovat Moskvu před násilným zásahem. Rusk doporučení odmítl dvěma slovy: „No Action.“ Tento lakonický komentář podle autora vystihuje celou americkou reakci na československou krizi. Administrativa prezidenta Lyndona B. Johnsona invazi nepředpokládala a byla jí překvapena. Jednoznačně se shodla na tom, že Spojené státy nemohou do situace vojensky zasáhnout, a soustředila se na odvrácení Sovětů od případného rozšíření intervence na Rumunsko, Jugoslávii a snad i Rakousko, které však bylo spíše psychologickou než reálnou hrozbou. Kromě toho musel Bílý dům čelit podezření, vyjadřovanému značnou částí západního tisku, ale třeba i francouzskými oficiálními kruhy, že dal předem Kremlu volnou ruku k vojenské akci. Prioritním cílem americké politiky bylo tehdy pokračování v procesu uvolňování mezinárodního napětí, což se promítlo do jejich nekonfrontačního postoje vůči Sovětům. Ovšem neočekávanými důsledky intervence bylo podle autora posílení soudržnosti Severoatlantické aliance a přehodnocení plánů na stažení amerických vojsk z Evropy. and This article is an abridged version, in Czech translation, of the article ‘“No Action”: Die USA und die Invasion in die Tschechoslowakei’, from the volume of essays by Stefan Karner, Natalja Tomilina, Alexander Tschubarjan, Günter Bischof, Viktor Iščenko, Michail Prozumenščikov, Peter Ruggenthaler, Oldřich Tůma, and Manfred Wilke, Prager Frühling: Das internationale Krisenjahr 1968, vol. 1, Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 2008, pp. 319–54. In the article the author reconstructs the US Administration’s response to the Warsaw Pact military intervention in Czechoslovakia in August 1968. He points out that in May of that year Deputy Secretary of State Eugene V. Rostow, referring to the Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956, recommended to his superior, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, to give Moscow a clear warning against intervening by force. Rusk rejected the recommendation with two words: ‘No action’. This laconic statement, according to the author, embodies the whole US reaction to the Czechoslovak crisis. The military intervention none the less took the Johnson Administration by surprise. The Administration unanimously agreed that the United States could not get involved in the crisis militarily, and concentrated instead on deterring the Soviets from further possible interventions in Romania, Yugoslavia, and perhaps even Austria, a threat that was, however, probably more psychological than real. Apart from that, the White House had to face the suspicion, expressed by a considerable part of the Western communications media and also, for example, by French official circles, that it had given the Kremlin the green light for the military operation. The primary aim of US policy here was to continue the process of international détente. This was projected into their non-confrontational approach towards the Soviets. Two unexpected consequences of the intervention, argues the author, were increased unity in the North-Atlantic Alliance and a reconsideration of plans to withdraw US troops from Europe.