PALACKÝ’S HISTORY OF THE CZECH NATION
At the end of this paragraph he adds the sentence: “Protož historie národu českého má-li důkladna býti, obou krajin, Čech a Moravy, stejně šetřiti musí, jelikož dějinám obou, jakožto částkám jednoho celku, jedněm bez druhých dorozuměti se nelze.” | |
(7/I) |
If we turn our attention to the textual problems of the third part of the History, we cannot attempt to solve them without giving due attention to the interference of censorship, to which this volume, above all others, was subject. This constitutes another category of textual changes, modifications due to censorship. Since Karel Köpl treats this problem in depth in his “Palacký und die Censur,”13 we shall not deal with any details but only with the material directly relevant to our article.
Almost half of Palacký’s literary endeavors were subject to the pre-March (1848) censorship. This means that the already-mentioned three parts of the German edition were also censored. The attitude of the Austrian censorship toward Palacký and his literary work was not as unfriendly as the one invoked toward other representatives of Czech cultural life. Palacký’s status in the domestic scholarly world, which from the beginning insured sincerity and respect, and also the patronage of the Czech nobility, assured a more considerate posture on the part of the censorship. Palacký was supported primarily by the highest burgrave, Count Chotek. Count Chotek, who practically treated the censorship of the work as his own affair, enclosed his personal letters to the president of police, Count Sedlnitzky, with each consignment of Palacký’s manuscript sent to Vienna for censoring purposes. Thanks to this support from the Czech provincial administration, the censoring of the first part of the German version took place without many conflicts or long delay. (Each part of the manuscript was returned separately from Vienna after about a month.)14
The only controversy referred to a single problematic spot in the first chapter of the third book, “The Murder of St. Wenceslas,” and concerned the personage of Drahomíra. The conflict between Palacký and the censorship in Vienna started as early as 1834. At the time, Palacký’s article dealing with the newly-discovered old Slavic legend about St. Wenceslas