Životní anabáze jednoho krajana. Ludvík Feigl – Čech známý neznámý (Anabasis of one Countryman. Ludvík Feigl known and unknown)

Ludvik Feigl was born in 1861 in Tábor, South Bohemia, in the family of the local small Jewishbusinessman. He studied at the Grammar School in Tábor, Linz and Prague and at the first Schoolfor Economy and Finances in Vienna, where he graduated. He settled in Lvov (Polish Lwów,Ukrainian Lviv) than part of Austrian Galicia, where he represented several Bohemian companies producing printing machines. Later Feigl opened his own shop in Lvov. Feigl took an active part in the life of the small Czech community in Lvov. He became active member of the local Czech club (Česká beseda). Feigl published the two volumes history of the Czech community in Lvov. The text of the third volume, however, was never published and the manuscript disappeared. As an ethnographer-amateur Feigl collected various products of people’s culture, mainly among the Huculs, ethnographical group living in Eastern Ruthenia (Podkarpatská Rus), now part of Ukraine. During the First World War Lvov was occupied by the Russian army in 1914 and Feigl with all his family was evacuated to Prague. He returned to Lvov in 1918 and remained there throughout the inter-war period when the city with all Galicia became part of Poland. Feigl was an adherent of Czechoslovak – Polish cooperation and helped to promote Czech culture among the Poles. His folklore collections were bought by the Polish ministry of culture and displayed in the State Ethnographical Museum in Warsaw, where they were unfortunately destroyed at the beginning of World War II. In 1938 Ludvik Feigl returned to Prague where lived his son Pavel. In 1939 the Czech lands were occupied by the Germans and incorporated to the German Reich as the so-called Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia. Feigl became a victim of his Jewish origin, despite the fact that he converted to Christianity after World War I. However, fortunately, he died in 1942 in Prague by natural death.The natural death saved him from the deportation to the concentration camp.