A Specialist Interest in Minorities in the Beginning of the 20th Century and the Minority Museum in Prague
Abstract
The paper outlines selected issues which illustrate a specialist and political interest in minorities in the beginning of the 20th century. The author relies on the collections of the "Minority Museum 1909-1920" as kept by the National Archives in Prague.
He focuses on the period before WWI when Czech national interests were represented by societies, whose objective was to act as protective elements of national unity against Germans. The platform to achieve the objective was provided by the Central Educational Fund, the National North Bohemian Union, the National Bohemian Forest Union, the National Union for Eastern Moravia, the National Union for South-West Moravia, and the Opava Fund for Silesia.
The wide range of topics dealt with by these institutions culminated in 1909 when the building of the Minority Museum in Prague as a union institution started. The article shows three areas of activity of the Minority Museum in Prague before WWI, namely (a) holding a private census in reaction to the official census where the state identified for example the communication language, which was considered by the Czech activists detrimental to the rights of the Czech minority; (b) collecting questionnaires aimed at the enquiry regarding the national, economic and cultural situation of the Czech minority in the mixed Czech-German regions; (c) attempts to publish a specialized minority journal, i.e. the Minority Collection journal (1914) which indirectly followed the journal entitled the Minority Revue (1912-1913) published by the Union of Fund Teachers and Foster Mothers.