Nejen Výstavka darů Klementu Gottwaldovi. Využití darů pro budování kultu obdarovaného

Abstract

The official and personal expression of respect and support of the President of the Republic has been often expressed through gifts. Gifts range from the material to the symbolic, from honorary citizenship to conventional congratulations on personal anniversaries and important days. In the context of Czechoslovak presidents, Klement Gottwald represents something unique – not in terms of the quantity or variety of gifts, but in the way they were presented to the public. The separate exhibitions (the plural is appropriate in this case) and the inclusion of archival materials and objects from the preserved collection of gifts in the exhibitions devoted to Gottwald, even in the decades after his death, are one of the concrete forms of how the cult of the leader was manifested in state socialism. This deviates from the previous norm of a strong cult of the leader in the case of his predecessors, presidents T. G. Masaryk and Edvard Beneš. It is also a Czechoslovak example of official excessive ‘adoration’, which did not continue under his successors at Prague Castle. The text is based primarily on archival funds and collections that have not yet been subject to publication. The main aim is to highlight the phenomenon of presentation of gifts to the president and to capture how this way of promoting Klement Gottwald evolved. The largest part of the text is devoted to the permanent exhibition from 1952–1958, which became a branch of the Klement Gottwald Museum and was, in particular, the material basis for the subsequent presentations of Gottwald until 1989 and, in fact, even until today.