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Good Deed Lost: The Story of the Straka Foundation in Historical Context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 April 2017
Extract
What a beautiful day, Emil Franke may well have been thinking to himself as he hurried through the streets of Prague on a cool November morning in 1937. If only that day he had not been confronted by an unpleasant member of parliament's interpellations! The representatives of the Sudeten German Party were going to be asking about the wages of German minority teachers and Karel Domín, the rector of Charles University, was planning to ask about Straka Academy. Franke knew the situation in the academy very well—by the beginning of the 1920s, his Ministry of Supply had already occupied some of its rooms, and Domín shed some light on this situation. In his interpellation Domin described the state of the foundation as the most painful chapter in the existence of foundations in Czechoslovakia. He finished his speech by asking a question: “Are you, as Minister of Education, willing to arrange for both the foundation and academy to be returned and kept for our students as the founder of this foundation intended?” As Franke very well knew, at that moment in time the academy had barely any students. It was basically useless, it served no purpose.
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Footnotes
My special thanks to Národohospodářský ústav Josefa Hlávky. This study would have never come into existence had it not been for its financial support in the beginning of my research.
References
1 Emil Franke (1880–1939) studied philosophy and law at the universities in Prague, Berlin, and Vienna. He was the librarian for the University Library in Prague and minister of railroads (1919–20), supply (1922–25 and 1934–35), post and telegraph (1929–34 and 1935–36), education (1936–38), and even finance minister (1936) in the interwar Czechoslovak governments.
2 Karel Domín (1882–1953) was a university professor and rector of Charles University between 1933 and 1934. Between 1935 and 1939 he was an MP for Národní sjednocení. During the Second Republic, he was a member of the organization Akce národní obrody. After World War II, due to his right-wing thinking, he could not return to either political or scientific work.
3 “Interpellation,” Session of Chamber of Deputies, 15 November 1937, accessed 8 September 2016, http://www.psp.cz/eknih/1935ns/ps/tisky/t1115_01.htm.
4 The word nadání (bequest) is the Czech version of the German word Stiftung and the Latin donatio and fundatio. This meaning of the word can be traced back to the fifteenth century. From the middle of the nineteenth century, the word nadace (foundation) began to be used in administrative Czech.
5 Studijní nadání v Království českém [Study Foundations in Kingdom of Bohemia], vol. II (Prague, 1895), 59–60.
6 The Land Diet was the most important political institution of the estates. The estates were fundamental to the structure of society, still theoretically based on the medieval doctrine of the threefold people: lords, clergy, and others. In the narrower sense, the estates were those whose ownership of land gave them political rights. In this sense the estates were a political community, and each Bohemian crownland (Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia) had its own estate. See Agnew, Hugh Le Caine, Czechs and the Lands of the Bohemian Crown (Stanford, 2004), 57Google Scholar. The term royal governors came into use in Bohemia in the middle of the sixteenth century. The governors ruled Bohemia from 1627, when Ferdinand II left Bohemia permanently, until 1749, when it was dissolved and a new representative body was established.
7 Závěť zakladatele akademie Jana Petra hraběte Straky [The last will of the founder of the academy of Jan Petr Count Straka] (Prague, 1900), 23–24.
8 Fideicommissum refers to secure, indivisible, inalienable family property held in trust for the benefactors. It was established to prevent benefactors from imprudent use of family property and the impoverishment of the family. The holder of a fideicommissum was obligated to support all the other family members. With the death of the last family member, the fideicommissum expired.
9 Agnew, Czechs and the Lands, 73.
10 The Bohemian Tables Office was a registry body of the Bohemian court. In terms of its powers and the number of officials, this office was one of the most important institutions in the Kingdom of Bohemia. Its top officials were appointed by the king and became royal officials.
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21 A new seminary was then opened in the 1830–31 academic year. It was to have had forty-two spaces for scholarship students, of which twenty-two at most were financed by Straka's foundation. In 1848, however, by a decree issued by the Austrian Ministry of Education, the seminary was again abolished, and the practice of paying scholarships was reintroduced.
22 The deficit was the result of the military conflicts and the small income generated by the foundation property. The Bohemian estates covered the deficit with resources from the “domestic” fund.
23 This was a foundation for a home for poor students (domus pauperum) studying at St. Wenceslaus Jesuit Seminary. In 1630 the emperor ordered the existing institution to be renamed seminarium ad sanctum Venceslaum, and for it to create room to admit twenty young men from noble families as students. See Studijní nadání, vol 1.
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43 Návěští o Akademii hr. Straky [Count Straka Academy's letter of advice] (Prague, 1896): 7–8.
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52 For example, there were ideas to establish a sanatorium on the foundation's land or to use the available resources to pay subsidies to university associations in Prague.
53 The government adopted an act on its establishment on 9 October 1919. The work of this association included taking care of the reading room, the library, a publishing house, running the refectory, and above all the collection of funding for the construction of a large and comfortable home for students. “Návrh člena Národního shromáždění Dra O. Srdínka a soudruhů, aby vydán byl zákon o zřízení fondu k vybudování a udržování ‘Akademického domu’ v Praze” [The proposal of the PM Dr. O. Srdinko and comrades to issue an act on establishing the fund for building and maintaining the “Academic House” in Prague], Chamber of Deputies, National Assembly of Czechoslovakia 1918–1920, accessed 25 January 2015, http://www.psp.cz/eknih/1918ns/ps/tisky/t1515_00.htm; and “Zpráva kulturního výboru o návrhu člena Národního shromáždění dra. O. Srdínka a soudruhů” [The report of the cultural committee on the proposal of PM Dr. O. Srdinko and comrades], Chamber of Deputies, National Assembly of Czechoslovakia 1918–1920, accessed 25 January 2015, http://www.psp.cz/eknih/1918ns/ps/tisky/t1654_00.htm.
54 One example was the Antonín Švehla Foundation, established by representatives of the Agrarian Party in the mid-1930s and named for the distinguished Agrarian politician and former prime minister Antonin Švehla. See Doležalová, Antonie, “Kdo je tady bližní? Jepičí život Nadace Antonína Švehly jako příklad fungování klientelistických struktur v agrární straně” [Who is the neighbor here? The short-lived Antonin Švehla Foundation as an example of running clientelistic structures in the Agrarian Party], in Agrarismus ve střední a východní Evropě 19. a 20. století [Agrarianism in Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th century], ed. Rychlík, Jan, Holeček, Lukáš, Pehr, Michal et al. (Prague, 2016), 78–94 Google Scholar.
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58 Masarykův slovník naučný [Masaryk's encyclopedia] (Prague, 1925), 305.
59 The Office of the Permanent Representative of the Commissar of Public Order was closed in 1941 and replaced by the Office of the Commissioner for Organizations, which was later renamed the Office of the Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia. The banks were the Czech Union Bank, Czech Escount Bank, German Credit Bank, and German Central Savings Bank.
60 Fremund, Karel, Heydrichova nadace—Důležitý nástroj nacistické vyhlazovací politiky [Heydrich Foundation—An important tool of Nazi exterminatory policy] (Prague, 1964)Google Scholar; Wiedemann, Andreas, Die Reinhard-Heydrich-Stiftung in Prag (1942–1945) (Dresden, 2000)Google Scholar. The only foundations and funds not subject to abolition and confiscation of property were ones that had been established for funerary or memorial purposes.
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63 These organizations included, for example, the Czechoslovak Peace Committee, the Czechoslovak Youth Union (later the Socialist Youth Union), the Czechoslovak Women's Union, the Czechoslovak Union of Physical Education, the Czech Association of Fine Artists “Dílo,” the Union of Czechoslovak Dramatic Artists, the Union of Czechoslovak Composers, the Union of Czech Writers, the Union of Czech Doctors, the Union of Anti-Fascist Combatants, the Association of Catholic Priests “Pacem in terris,” Svazarm, the Czechoslovak Red Cross, and the Czech Peace Council; in the short term also Sokol (1953–56) and the Union of Czechs from Volhynia (1945–58).
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