The book Historiography between Scholarship and Politics represents three highly diverse approaches to the history of modern historiography. In these studies, the author reflects on the entanglement of historical thinking with contemporary social imaginaries and political conditions—factors that are not immediately visible, yet fundamentally constitute the underlying framework of historical reasoning.
The first chapter, entitled Genesis, examines the contours of the scholarly workshop of V. V. Tomek and the beginnings of social historiography influenced by the Younger Historical School of Economics among Czech and German historians from the late nineteenth to the first half of the twentieth century. The central figure of this dual-track narrative is Bedřich Mendl.
In the chapter In the Grip of Marxism, the author analyses continuities and discontinuities in Hussite studies in the 1950s and 1960s and the impact of contemporary social and ideological frameworks on their transformation. Using the figure of František Graus, he demonstrates the causes behind shifts in interpretative approaches to the key question of the crisis of the late Middle Ages. Through an examination of the reception of French historiography in the Czech scholarly milieu from the 1950s to the 1980s, he further seeks to uncover the reasons for the lag of Czech historiography behind research inspired by new methodological approaches.
In the concluding chapter, Innovation and Inspiration, the author adopts a more subjective perspective to explore three key innovative approaches within contemporary historiographical discourse—prosopography, microhistory, and social art history—often emphasising both their resonance and their, at times, simplified or flattened reception in the Czech context.
Author(s):
Martin Nodl
Publisher: Centrum pro studium demokracie a kultury
Place: Brno
Language: Czech
Year: 2007