CHAPTER VI
The Bohemian Museum
THE Bohemian Museum (Museum Kralovstvi Ceskéhö) has a great and twofold interest, both as containing most valuable relics of the past of Bohemia and as constituting the most important monument of the ‘Resurrection’ of Bohemia in the nineteenth century. I have already briefly referred to that movement, of which the Bohemian Museum is, with the National Theatre, the most prominent architectural expression. The society of the Bohemian Museum was founded on April 15, 1818, mainly through the exertions of Counts Kolowrat, Sternberg and Klebelsberg. Almost the whole Bohemian nobility favoured the new enterprise, and among its earliest patrons were members of the Auersberg, Kinsky, Schwarzenberg, Thun, Trautmannsdorf, Waldstein, Wratislaw families. I shall not, I hope, be accused of undue pride if I mention that I find the names of Counts Rudolph and Jerome Lutzow in one of the earliest lists of members. It is of more general interest to note that the list of members for the year 1824 contains as ‘Ehrermietglied’ the name of ‘Von Göthe, Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenachser, Staats minister and Geheimer Rath.’ This fact is noteworthy as proving how entirely the great mind of Göthe was exempt from the narrow-minded racial prejudice, which generally renders the Germans hostile to the development of the Bohemian people.
