The article that rememorates the seventieth anniversary of death of the founder of the journal „Český lid“, Čeněk Zíbrt, reviews the earlyphase of the career of this ethnographer and historian of culture. The period in which Zíbrt entered the Czech science had been marked by the conflicts between the Czechs and the Germans living on the territory of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. In the year 1891 started the preparation of the Czech-Slavic Ethnographic Exhibition that took place in the year 1895. This period represented the climax of the „ethnographic movement“ that absorbed in itself the national emancipation movement with certain aspects of political resistance against the government of Austria-Hungary. Zíbrt joined this movement only in its early phase. Together with several Czech ethnographers that were engaged around the National Museum in Prague he kept aloof of the preparations for the Czech-Slavic Ethnographic Exhibition. The reasons were not political, the most important was the question of a professional prestige. The group of ethnographers and historians of culture from around the National Museum felt double-crossed by the politicized exhortations around the ethnographic exhibition, since they had organized an ethnographic section, the so called Czech House, that formed part of the Land Jubilee Exhibition in the year 1891 and then continued their work within the frame of the National Museum. The exhortations to organize a new exhibition they perceived as alienation of thier own ideas and as a neglect of their credit. The article is based on one letter of the archaeologist and, at the time, redactor of the journal „Český lid“, Lubor Niederle, adressed to Čeněk Zíbrt. By using the facts mentioned in the letter, the author of the article tries to elucidate the broader political and social circumstances of the time and explains the divergence in opinion of the two redactors that at the end led to their break with one another.