Acta Ethnographica Hungarica
Volume/Issue:
Volume 64: Issue 1
Slovaks on Display. Otherness of the ‘Eastern Brothers’ at the Czechoslavic Ethnographic Exhibition in Prague 1895
Author:
Milan Ducháček Centre for the History of Sciences and Humanities – Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague
Department of History, Faculty of Science, Humanities and Education, Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic

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Pages:
177–199
Online Publication Date:
Jun 2019
Publication Date:
01 Jun 2019
Article Category:
Journal Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1556/022.2019.64.1.10
Keywords:
Czechoslavic Ethnographical Exhibition 1895; Slovak ethnology; Otherness; Czechoslovakism; Dušan Jurkovič; Geography of Knowledge; Groupness
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Abstract

This paper is devoted to how the Slovaks were staged, encountered and recognized by the Czechs at the Czechoslavic Ethnographic Exhibition organized in Prague in 1895. The Slovaks, living during the last period of the Hungarian Kingdom, were perceived by the Czechs as an ostensibly familiar collective of ‘Slavic relatives.’ The less the Czech urban society in the last decades of the 19th century kept its ties with the slowly, but inevitably modernized countryside, the more the picture of the ‘Czechoslavic’ imagined community required a different area for placing its ‘native cottages’ into. In reconceptualizing the modern Czech ‘geography of knowledge’, even the most notable Czech specialists in Slavic studies have adopted the notion that Slovaks were in fact an ‘eastern branch’ of the ‘Czechoslavic people settled in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia as well as the Northwest of Hungary’. Consequently, the idea of an ethnocentric, ‘national’ exhibition needed a demonstrative extension of the ‘Czech territory’ on to the East. To achieve a public demonstration of the idea, the later renowned architect Dušan Jurkovič invited a small group of people from the Trenčín and Zvolen/Detva regions to act as ‘Slovaks’ at the exhibition and so they did, wearing ‘typical’ folk costumes, singing and dancing in a peculiar style. They were viewed as a strangely exotic ‘Slovak colony’ by visitors and Czech journalists alike. The public response to the show only reinforced the petrification of the Czech collective stereotype of the ‘Slovak people’ as an underdeveloped poor community, ‘unspoiled’ by ‘western’ civilization, yet still resisting Hungarization. This ingrained discourse of ‘otherness’ survived among most of the Czechs until the establishment of the Czechoslovak republic in 1918, resulting in a growing wave of mutual misunderstandings.

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Cover Acta Ethnographica Hungarica
Acta Ethnographica Hungarica
Print ISSN:
1216-9803
Online ISSN:
1588-2586

Senior Editors

Editor-in-Chief: Ágnes FÜLEMILE
Associate editors: Fruzsina CSEH;
Zsuzsanna CSELÉNYI
Review Editors: Csaba MÉSZÁROS; Katalin VARGHA

Editorial Board
  • Balázs BALOGH (Institute of Ethnology, Research Centre for the Humanities)
  • Elek BARTHA (University of Debrecen)
  • Balázs BORSOS (Institute of Ethnology, Research Centre for the Humanities)
  • Miklós CSERI (Hungarian Open Air Museum, the Skanzen of Szentendre)
  • Lajos KEMECSI (Museum of Ethnography)
  • László KÓSA (Eötvös University, Budapest)
  • lldikó LANDGRAF (Institute of Ethnology, Research Centre for the Humanities)
  • Tamás MOHAY (Eötvös University, Budapest)
  • László MÓD (University of Szeged)
  • Attila PALÁDI-KOVÁCS (Institute of Ethnology, Research Centre for the Humanities and Eötvös University, Budapest)
  • Gábor VARGYAS (Institute of Ethnology, Research Centre for the Humanities and University of Pécs)
  • Vilmos VOIGT (Eötvös University, Budapest)
Advisory Board
  • Marta BOTÍKOVÁ (Bratislava, Slovakia)
  • Daniel DRASCEK (Regensburg, Germany)
  • Dagnoslaw DEMSKI (Warsaw, Poland)
  • Ingrid SLAVEC GRADIŠNIK (Ljubljana, Slovenia)
  • Dmitriy A. FUNK (Moscow, Russia)
  • Chris HANN (Halle, Germany)
  • Krista HARPER (Amherst, MA USA)
  • Anya PETERSON ROYCE (Bloomington, IN USA)
  • Ferenc POZSONY (Cluj, Romania)
  • Helena RUOTSALA (Turku, Finland)
  • Mary N. TAYLOR (New York, NY USA)
  • András ZEMPLÉNI (Paris, France)

Further credits

Translators: Elayne ANTALFFY; Zsuzsanna CSELÉNYI; Michael KANDÓ
Layout Editor: Judit MAHMOUDI-KOMOR
Cover Design: Dénes KASZTA

Manuscripts and editorial correspondence:

Acta Ethnographica Hungarica
Institute of Ethnology
Research Centre for the Humanities
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
H-1453 Budapest, Pf. 33
E-mail: actaethnographicahungarica@gmail.com

Reviews:
Mészáros, Csaba or Vargha, Katalin review editors
Institute of Ethnology
Research Centre for the Humanities
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
H-1453 Budapest, Pf. 33
E-mail: meszaros.csaba@btk.mta.hu or vargha.katalin@btk.mta.hu

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2024  
Scopus  
CiteScore 0.5
CiteScore rank Q2 (Music)
SNIP 0.162
Scimago  
SJR index 0.159
SJR Q rank Q2

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Acta Ethnographica Hungarica
Language English
Size B5
Year of
Foundation		 1950
Volumes
per Year		 1
Issues
per Year		 2
Founder Magyar Tudományos Akadémia
Founder's
Address		 H-1051 Budapest, Hungary, Széchenyi István tér 9.
Publisher Akadémiai Kiadó
Publisher's
Address		 H-1117 Budapest, Hungary 1516 Budapest, PO Box 245.
Responsible
Publisher		 Chief Executive Officer, Akadémiai Kiadó
ISSN 1216-9803 (Print)
ISSN 1588-2586 (Online)

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