Published on 19 September 2016
On Tuesday 13 September 2016, an internal workshop with our Norwegian colleagues dedicated to the continuation of the project within the BFB initiative took place in Prague. During the intensive meeting, we exchanged experience in carrying out provenance signs research, publicising it and sharing it with both experts and the public.
In his introduction, Tomáš Foltýn, the principal project implementer, summarised the course of action in the first follow-up BFB initiative and repeated our goals. Marcela Strouhalová, the project historian, introduced the progress in categorising the original owners of the books documented in the course of the original project. She gradually created an elaborate system of sorting owners into subgroups, from which certain representatives were selected so that the microstories are as varied as possible, covering the whole range of diverse owners.
After a short break, Jitka Bílková from the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes took the floor. She was among the first historians to participate in the archive research for the elaboration of the original owners. First, she described her working procedure and the use of archive materials. Then she introduced a biography of Wilhelma Weizsäcker, the legal historian at the German University in Prague and convinced Nazi.
Next, Zuzana Foltýnová - an expert on the history of trade, economy and finances at the University of Pardubice - followed with her contribution. She prepared the story of the extended Jewish family of Petschek, which may be thought of as the Czech Rothschilds. This family acquired great wealth during the time of the first Czechoslovak Republic from banking, coal mining and other business activities. However, their business was seriously affected by World War II. They managed to save their lives, but lost their wealth.
Twenty microstories of original owners are to be prepared in total; five of them by our Norwegian colleagues. Mirjam Kristensen introduced the progress in the preparation of the microstories and the problems they must face. Three of the five texts are almost finished; the two remaining ones are being intensively prepared and shall be submitted by the end of the month.
After lunch we discussed the promotion of the microstories. We explained our intention to release the texts of the microstories, including an extensive textual apparatus, in an electronic compilation intended especially for experts and future researchers, providing them with structured information in a single place. Originally, we did not plan to publish an eBook, but on seeing the high quality of the elaborated microstories we came to the conclusion that their publication is desirable. In her presentation, Nina Seyčková then introduced options for presenting the microstories in a lightened and visually more interesting form. This study was based upon research nto various current trends in internet-based promotion. Naturally, these visually more interesting forms were selected with respect to the project's nature – the input material available to us and the necessity to prepare two language versions. Tomáš Foltýn then introduced the collaboration just starting with students of library studies at the Masaryk University in Brno on the creation of multimedia microstories, which followed a successful and highly regarded lecture on the project delivered last year. The students will have a chance to try ways of introducing cultural heritage to the general public and, at the same time, learn more about the nature or our international project.
Throughout the workshop we discussed the best ways of meeting our set goals. Gro Kvanvig’s presentation was aimed at how to make the best of the microstories about the dispossessed or confiscated books and their owners, which we made available to the general public in the original project in the form of a virtual exhibition.
In the afternoon, there was time for discussing organisational and financial aspects of the project, issues related to the budget and financing and to continuous monitoring reports submitted to the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic as the broker of the Fund for Bilateral Cooperation at programme level.