Abstract
Two pupils of historian Václav Novotný - Rudolf Urbánek (1877-1962) and Vlastimil Kybal (1880-1958) - were bound by a lifelong friendship that begun at secondary school in Slaný and continued throughout their studies at the faculty of arts of Charles University in Prague. The older of the two, R.
Urbánek, influenced Kybal's political ideas at secondary school, as well as his decision to become a historian. Urbánek was influenced by the political realism of T.
G. Masaryk, to which he would lead his younger friend.
The friendship of both historians overlapped the time of the first Czechoslovak republic, when R. Urbánek worked at faculty of arts of Masaryk University in Brno and V.
Kybal as a diplomatic representative of Czechoslovakia. During the Nazi occupation,V.
Kybal went into exile in the USA. After the end of World War II, their friendship was renewed.
Vlastimil Kybal never returned to Czechoslovakia, however their letters continued till the death of Vlastimil Kybal.