An investigation of German-language chapbooks issued by the printing workshop of Jan Spurný and his heirs – Kristina Spurná, Josef Janů (Kristina’s second husband), and their son Julius Janů – until the takeover of the printing company by the Czecho-Slavonic Joint-Stock Book-Printing Company…

This study examines how the ethnic and linguistic situation in South-East Bohemia was reflected in publishing and printing production, with particular emphasis on the activities of the Landfras printing works in Jindřichův Hradec. Special attention is paid to the reflection of the Czech-German…

Eduard Rüffer (1835–1878), a German from Prussia who settled in Prague, is one of the forgotten writers of the nineteenth century. As a journalist, he collaborated for many years with Jan Stanislav Skrejšovský, the press magnate of the Old Czech Party (Staročeši). In addition, Rüffer published —…

In the Czech lands of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, incantation manuscripts were used primarily by members of the lower social classes, often in rural areas, as a means of coping with everyday problems. These magically oriented texts circulated predominantly in manuscript form, as printed…

The study focuses on the output of Brno printing houses at the turn of the nineteenth century and its impact on the development of the book market, literacy, and cultural life. During this period, several prominent printing houses operated in Brno, notably those of Josef Georg Trassler, Johann Georg…

This article presents the history of the longest-running library in Liberec, founded alongside the museum in 1873. Like the museum itself, the library initially operated under the auspices of the city’s most influential association, the Gewerbevereine. Following the museum’s institutional…

The Reichsgewerkschaft der deutschen Presse in der Tschechoslowakei was founded in 1919 with the aim of improving the economic, social and professional conditions for German-speaking journalists in the newly established Czechoslovak Republic. Under the leadership of Franz Becher, editor of the…

This paper traces the fate of the private library of the second president of Czechoslovakia, Dr Edvard Beneš (1884–1948), which was looted during the Nazi occupation. Systematically assembled from the early twentieth century, the library is estimated to have comprised approximately 12,000 items by…

The preservation of volumes in danger of acid-paper degradation is the principal criterion for selecting documents for digitisation at the National Library of the Czech Republic. The most affected group comprises periodicals printed on low-quality paper, which are often severely damaged and cannot…