Abstract
The celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Gregor Johann Mendel's birth featured many events with differing focuses and qualities. The disproportionate production of articles, pamphlets, and scholarly publications, as well as works falling more into the realm of pop culture, are still awaiting evaluation. However, this year's celebrations also offer us the opportunity to compare this year's events with those of previous decades. It is 120 years since the first public celebrations of Mendel's birth in 1902, so they have a long tradition. The dozen stops that take us up to the present day offer a clear overview of the development of the perception of the famous naturalist not only among the scientific community but also among the public and political figures.
The celebrations of 1910, 1965, and 2015 were not celebrations of Mendel's birth and will not be given significant attention in this article, although they cannot be completely omitted either. The article focuses mainly on the course of the celebrations and the atmosphere of the time, or on something that can be characterized as a lasting memory or result of these celebrations. The result is a review of the situation in Brno regarding the preservation of the legacy of G. Mendel, which attempts to capture the more general trends of the time. Hugo Iltis, Jaroslav Kříženecký, and Vítězslav Orel discussed the course of earlier events in their essays. Since the 1970s, this information can be found in articles published in Folia Mendeliana.