Zum politischen Profil von František Kordač

Abstract

This article deals with the political involvement of Archbishop Frantisek Kordac of Prague in the years before WWI. He became involved in the world of politics in the 1880s during his work in Liberec in Northern Bohemia. At that time he inclined towards the National (Old Czech) Party and worked in its right-wing conservative, Catholic wing, whose guiding principle was Catholicpolitical unity for the Kingdom of Bohemia. From his early years onwards he was drawn to seeking solutions for the social problems of society and this was reflected in his publications at the time. At the beginning of the 20th century when the Catholic political parties found themselves in transition from representing privileged social groups to becoming mass organisations, Kordac, after much soul-searching, turned towards the Christian-Social movement and became one of the most important representatives of its conservative-oriented wing. Over a period of several years before the outbreak of WWI he endeavoured to gain acceptance for his plan of uniting the Bohemian Catholic political parties and hence prepared the ground for the founding of the Czechoslovak Popular Party in 1919.