The large compendium titled Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild contains two volumes devoted to Bohemia (1894 and 1896) and one volume devoted to Moravia and Silesia (1897). Chapters on folk culture are accompanied by a plethora of pictures, a significant number of which depict rural residents wearing traditional dress. However, the informative value of illustrations depicting folk costumes from Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia as a source for ethnological research is limited. The unbalanced selection of examples from individual regions is problematic. Understandably, a great emphasis was placed on the German ethnic group, but even ethnographic regions inhabited by Czech population are not represented proportionally to the preservation of traditional culture, so the resulting visual perception does not even correspond to the reality in the late nineteenth century. Czech painters were addressed to illustrate two volumes about Bohemia, but the Moravia and Silesia volume was illustrated almost exclusively by artists with ties to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, where they studied or taught, and to the imperial court. However, not only Viennese, but even all Czech painters had no direct experience with the folk culture in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. They worked according to supplied photographs, the availability of which eventually influenced the choice of illustrations. The successful level of both the drawing and painting templates and their xylographic treatments posed a positive aspect. And what is essential - the comparison with the traced model photographs confirms their basically faithful interpretation. Even so, the ethnologist cannot underestimate the critical insight into the documentary value of the illustrations accompanying the admirably monumental work Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild, named Kronprinzenwerk after its initiator and partly co-author, Crown Prince Rudolf.
Autor naznačuje způsob, jak uplatnit fenomenologii při studiu takových společenských jevů, jako je autorita. Ty představují osobní zážitky ve veřejném prostoru, zároveň subjektivní a objektivní, tedy doslova fenomena. Potíž s fenomenologií je její sklon k subjektivismu, který Husserl neúspěšně řeší pojetím transcendentálního ega a Heidegger pojetím rozhodné přítomnosti. Problém se jeví jako neřešitelný, pokud chápeme svět jako prvotně nesmyslný. Řešení je možné, pokud svět chápeme vitalisticky jako z podstaty smysluplně uspořádaný teleologickým zaměřením života k naplnění. Ani transcendentální ego, ani rozhodné Dasein nepotřebuje svět osmyslnit. Svět je předreflektivně smysluplný jako svět života, jak vystupuje u francouzských fenomenologů či v a-subjektivní fenomenologii Jana Patočky., The purpose of this study is to suggest a way of making phenomenology available for the study of social phenomena like authority, which the subject experiences in a public space. Phenomenology is ideally suited to the purpose – except for its inherent tendency to subjectivism. Neither Husserl’s solution – the transcendental ego – nor Heidegger’s solution – the entschlossene Dasein – will do. The problem remains insolvable as long as we regard the world as initially meaningless. It disappears when we set out with a vitalist conception of the world as intrinsically meaningful in virtue of the initial purposive orientation of life to fulfilment. Neither a transcendental ego, nor a determined Dasein, but life itself is the key to prereflective intelligibility, as in the work of French phenomenologists or in Jan Patočka’s a-subjective phenomenology., and Erazim Kohák.