In the years 2004 and 2005 a survey was conducted that focused on recording of authentic testimonies about the everyday lives of women in the country predominantly in the second half of the 20th century. Correspondents of the Czech Ethnographical Society, students and female seniors from different parts of the Czech Republic took part in the survey. this report reveals the results including characteristic quotations. The information was obtained from different localities on an uneven basis. There is a compact set of records from four villages in eastern Moravia and four authentic testimonies from Těšín region in the foothills of Beskydy Mountains. The information was either handwritten by the respondents, or their narration was recorded by the Czech Ethnographical Society correspondents, students of Silesian University or by a local chronicler. The outline of the research was available to everyone. We were above all interested in the changes which rural families had to go through in the second half of the 20th century due to collectivization of land and changes in social and economic conditions.
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.