National Museum

Of the paid employees of the museum a person who carried out auxiliary tasks received an annual sum of 200 guldens, an assistant 240 guldens and a custodian 300 to 500 guldens. Young enthusiasts worked for whole months without payment, however, being paid a regular wage only later on.
After the death of Kaspar Sternberk, who held the function of president until his death on 20 December, 1838, Josef Nostic, till then the agent of the Society, was elected to its head. In 1831 a special establishment originated in connection with the "Museum Committee for the Czech Language and Literature" and was given the name MATICE CESKA. Its task was to publish Czech instructive books and belles-lettres and it was the first purely Czech national institution to concentrate all significant contemporary writers in its framework. Among other things, its publishing of Jungmann's Czech-German Dictionary gained it immortal renown. In spite of the fact that its first independent publication was "The Voices of Patriots on 1 March, 1832, in Commemoration of the Forty Years of the Glorious Region of His Majesty the Emperor and King Franz I", the Vienna government continued to maintain its suspicious and distrusting attitude towards this Czech institution for long decades.

Practically all personalities of then contemporary Czech scientific and cultural life participated in the building-up of the museum: Josef Dobrovsky, the founder of Slavonic studies, Josef Jungmann, translator and historian of literature, Frantisek Ladislav Celakovsky, poet, translator and Slavonic scholar, Vaclav Hanka, writer, translator and philologist, Karel Jaromfr Erben, poet and historian, Jan Erazim Vocel, archeologist and art historian, Pavel Josef Safafik, philologist, historian and Slavonic scholar, the brothers Jan Svatopluk (naturalist) and Karel Borivoj (botanist) Presl, Vaclav Vladivoj Tomek, historian, Jan Evangelista Purkyne, naturalist, and many others. The historian Frantisek Pa-lacky, who was first intended to fulfil the post of librarian, but was later entrusted with the editorship of the two museum magazines — one Czech and one German, will always be vitally connected with the museum. Later he became the agent of the Society of the Czech Museum.

Pages from the diary of Krystof Vilem Harant of Polzice and Veselice (great-nephew of KryStof Harant, executed on 21 June, 1621, in Old Town Square in Prague) in which his friends and acquaintances wrote their wishes and illustrated them them­selves.

 

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