Prague in the 1930s through the Eyes of a 16-Year-Old French Girl
| Pages | 56–78 |
|---|---|
| DOI | 10.37520/amnpsc.2021.005 |
| Keywords | Institut dʼétudes slaves Paris (IES) – collection of André Mazon (1881–1967) – correspondence of Jeanne Roche-Mazon (1885–1953) – letters of Jacqueline Mazon (1918–2008) – September 1934 – language stay – family of the businessman Otakar Podhajský (1876–1940) – Prague from the perspective of a French teenager – contemporary witness |
| Type of Article | Peer-reviewed |
| Citation | KAŠPAROVÁ, Jaroslava. Prague in the 1930s through the Eyes of a 16-Year-Old French Girl. Acta Musei Nationalis Pragae – Historia litterarum. Prague: National Museum, 2021, 66(1-2), 56–78. DOI: https://doi.org/10.37520/amnpsc.2021.005. ISSN 2570-6861 (Print), 2570-687X (Online). Also available from: https://publikace.nm.cz/en/periodicals/acta-musei-nationalis-pragae-historia-litterarum/66-1-2/prague-in-the-1930s-through-the-eyes-of-a-16-year-old-french-girl |
An interesting item of Bohemian provenance has been preserved in the archives of the Institut dʼétudes slaves (IES) in Paris, namely in the André Mazon collection, which comprises, among other things, the correspondence of the Mazon family. It is a set of 12 letters sent by a young student, Jacqueline Mazon, daughter of the famous French Slavist André Mazon, to her mother, Jeanne Roche-Mazon, from Paris and Prague. They concern her stay in Prague from the end of August until the middle of October 1934, when the girl lived in the family of the Prague businessman Otakar Podhajský in Hostivař in the company of his daughters of approximately the same age. The correspondence provides insight not only into the personal experiences and feelings of a French teenager living in a culturally different environment and absorbing its language and culture or into the lives of the French intellectual family of the Mazons and the Czech business family of the Podhajskýs, but especially into the lives of the Prague city burghers in the middle of the 1930s. It presents an interesting image of Prague and its inhabitants, artistic monuments as well as cultural and economic situation at that time, an image captured through the eyes of a foreigner, the future Bohemist, which Jacqueline Mazon remained until the end of her life. The article is thus one of the contributions to the history of French-Czech cultural relations of the first half of the 20th century.
Rozumím