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<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Vladim\u00edr Bergauer (Document Collection, NML Medical Museum)<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n
The birth of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918 intersected with everyday lives of Czech people in many different ways. The Medical Museum collection preserve a student diary of Vladim\u00edr Bergauer (1898-1942) later Associate Professor of General Biology at the Czech Medical Faculty in Prague, Director of the Czechoslovak Institute for National Eugenics and a resistance fighter against the Nazi occupation, executed in Mauthausen. The diary covers the years 1914-1922. Student love relationships and breakups intertwine with events of small- town and world politics, theater with army training and the constant threat of military conscription and the war, dance, books and art with academic pursuits and first experience of scientific work. The diary in two notebooks was found in 1945 in the furniture confiscated from Bergauer in 1942 and stored by the Gestapo in a Prague department store to be sold cheaply to Nazi Party members.<\/p>\n
Vladim\u00edr Bergauer graduated from the gymnasium<\/a> in the South Bohemian town of Pisek on July 2, 1917 and in October enrolled in the Prague Medical Faculty. He continued to return to Pisek, to his family and friends, to theater, art and music: he was an able pianist, singer and photographer and regularly acted in plays performed by the Prachen cultural association. The account of the fall of 1918 begins with the September premiere of Ladislav Novak\u2019s comedy The Duelists<\/em> (Duelanti<\/em>, 1913), in which Bergauer played a leading role. The Spanish flu epidemic interrupted teaching at the university in early October and some of Bergauer\u2019s fellow students fell ill as well. Together with his father, the pharmacist Julius Bergauer (1860-1923) and three former classmates, Bergauer returned to Pisek.<\/p>\n On October 14, the Central Socialist Council, which represented both socialist parties in the Czech Lands, organized a general strike to protest exports of food and coal from the country. Originally, the strike should have culminated in independence proclamation: this plan was then cancelled as too risky, but the socialist activist Frantisek Hanzlicek, sent to Pisek and believing that the Republic is being declared in Prague, heralded independence in a flaming address from the Town House balcony<\/a>. Pisek citizens tore down symbols of the monarchy, flags, portraits of the emperor and a large eagle from the district office building; the National Committee was constituted, the veterinarian Josef Soukup (1897-)\u00a0 planted three lime trees as symbols of the new Czech state in the city park and celebrations started in the hotel Dvoracek<\/a> in the town center. The following day, 350 soldiers with machine guns came to Pisek from Chomutov, Hanzlicek, Soukup, the private V\u00e1clav H\u00e1la (later an engineer,\u00a0 1897-1900) and a few other soldiers and civilians were arrested and interned at the District Court in Pisek. They were released only after 28 October. Bergauer celebrated the birth of Czechoslovakia with his friend Tom\u00e1\u0161 Soukup (1897-, later a lawyer and Chair of the Pr\u00e1che\u0148 association) and his brother Jiri (later also a pharmacist, 1903-) with a party at the home of a recently demobilized classmate and a future physician Alois Svoboda (1900-) in Volyn\u011b.<\/p>\n \u201eHistorical events\u201c inscribe themselves into everyday lives, but do not suspend them. In the next two weeks of political uncertainty, the diarist\u2019s classmate \u201eKarel Soukup diligently dates Suzie\u201c, friends come together and lovers break up. In early November, Suzie \u2013 by then Bergauer\u2019s girlfriend \u2013 leaves for a mass meeting in Prague<\/a>, at the site of the 1620 White Mountain battle that had started Austrian rule over the Czech Lands. Crowds returning from just this meeting pulled down and destroyed the Marian Column at the Old Town Square in Prague in an act of iconoclastic fervor still well remembered today. And the fabric of history continues to weave the small and the large narratives together.<\/p>\n In September, we have commemorated Vladimir Bergauer\u2019s 120 anniversary. We will return both to his diary and his life on these pages.<\/p>\n Vladim\u00edr Bergauer with his wife Mark\u00e9ta n\u00e9e K\u0148ourek (1904-1942), Director of the Bude\u010d student housing in Prague, in 1938 (\u010cesk\u00e9 slovo May 10, 1938, Medical Museum Archives). The couple engaged in anti-Nazi resistence: in 1942, they hid Ronald Littledale (1902-1944), a British prisoner-of-war escapee, in their apartment in Vinohrady<\/a>. They were arrested on June 30, 1942, imprisoned in the Small Fortress in Theresienstadt and executed in Mauthausen on October 24, 1942. Vladim\u00edr Bergauer was named Extraordinary Professor of Biology in memoriam in 1948.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" October 28, 1918 in the Diary of Professor Vladim\u00edr Bergauer The birth of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918 intersected with everyday lives of Czech people in many different ways. The Medical Museum collection preserve a student diary of Vladim\u00edr Bergauer (1898-1942) later Associate Professor of General Biology at the Czech Medical Faculty in Prague, Director of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-predmet-mesice"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.6","language":"en","enabled_languages":["cs","en"],"languages":{"cs":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1245"}],"version-history":[{"count":61,"href":"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1300,"href":"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1245\/revisions\/1300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/muzeum.nlk.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Medical Museum Collection, 89\/1963.<\/sub><\/p>\n<\/a>