Czechoslovak Republic and the formation of ethnographic science during the “First Republic” (1918-1938): Part I

Abstract

Our target is to assess how the Czech and the Slovak ethnography developed in the period of the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938), whether it displayed international connotations, and to what extent it responded to the common European development of this discipline. Research contacts between Slavic ethnographers and geographers influenced one of the ethnographic research lines in Czechoslovakia, and the evidence for this are the application of Jovan Cvijic’s Anthropogeographic School and the application of cultural and geographical research line in interwar Czechoslovakia’s science. Between the world wars, Czechoslovak ethnographers paid attention to Slovakia and to Carpathian Ruthenia, where forms of traditional folk culture still actively lived on. Ethnography in the interwar Czechoslovakia can be considered to be an important part of evolving European ethnology. Unfortunately, this advancement was interrupted by political development after World War II.Key words: Czechoslovakia (1918–1938), ethnography, anthropogeography, Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia, history of science