Journal of Ethnology 4/2016 deals with the theme “Migration Flows in Europe and Their Cultural Remnants”. In his study, Zdeněk Uherek devotes himself to various forms and aspects of migration with research into which ethnology can contribute in an inspiring way to the theory of migration in general (Migration in Czech Ethnology: topics to enrich the theory of migration). Alena Kalinová introduces a one-hundred-year long activity of the Anabaptist sect in Moravia. Anabaptists lived in Moravia in the 16th and 17th century and left their remarkable traces also in traditional folk culture (Anabaptists in Moravia and Their Cultural Legacy). Sandra Kreisslová writes about the issue in what manner the Czech society treats the theme of the forcible displacement of German inhabitants after World War II (“The Displacement“ of Germans in Czech Commemorative Culture). Jana Nosková introduces a case study devoted to the construction of cultural memory with displaced German inhabitants of Brno, settled in Germany after 1945 (The Unwanted “Yo!“. The Memory Politics of the Representatives of Forcibly Displaced Brno Germans at the Outset of the 1950s). Milena Šipková presents lexical material whose focus is on the words used for peddlers at the turn of the 20th century (The Vanished World of Peddlers in Dialect Denominations). Hana Goláňová analyses the dialectal lexicon in relation to Carpathian shepherds´ culture (Dialectal Lexicon in Eastern Moravia and the Carpathian Shepherd Colonization).
The Transforming Traditions column publishes a contribution Dance and Sing for a Better Life? Results of a Research into Folklore Movement in Estonia (written by Stanislav Nemeržitski – Iivi Zájedová). In Review Section, Helena Beránková remembers the 100th birthday of the photographer Karel Otta Hrubý (1916–1998) and Marta Toncrová writes about the identical anniversary of Jožka Severin (1916–1991), an important Moravian singer of folk songs. In Interview Section, Daniela Stavělová conducts an interview with the choreographer and teacher Eva Kröschlová (*1926) on the occasion of her 90th birthday. Social Chronicle is devoted to anniversaries of the ethnomusicologists Hana Urbancová (*1956) and Lubomír Tyllner (*1946), anthropologist Miguel León-Portilla (*1926) and it publishes an obituary for the archaeologist Zdeněk Měřínský (1948–2016). Other regular columns contain reports from the discipline and reviews of new books.
Migration in Czech ethnology: topics to enrich the theory of migration
The article is based on an argument that in the Czech and Moravian ethnologies, there is quite a big amount of information about migration and adaptation of people to a new environment whereby those information have not been fully utilized and they are rarely used in the relation to the theory of migration. The data were often collected in the past with different intentions than to explain the issue of migration, and they comment on that rather by accident and in a non-systematic way. However, especially the older works can become a good source that can no longer be replenished with experience from the field. The author of the text mentions works of classics of the Czech ethnology, such as Karel Chotek, Antonín Václavík, Iva Heroldová, Olga Skalníková or Mirjam Moravcová, and he shows how several themes served well to their successor to complete the depiction of processes that are connected with the issue of migration, or that could serve for this purpose. In the conclusion, he draws attention to some of new themes which are in-process in the field of ethnology and social anthropology in the Czech Republic. Due to the publication activity in the discipline, those themes are examples, not a systematic enumeration.
Anabaptists in Moravia and Their Cultural Legacy
In South Moravia, a sect of Anabaptists lived in the past, who were a product of the 16th-century reformation. The Anabaptists took a refuge in the Moravian environment that was tolerant of various religions, and they arrived in 1526 for the first time there. They lived in accordance with their principles in the farmsteads they founded in Moravia, and they practised a lot of crafts at an advanced level. Moravian lords admitted them helpfully at their domains. However, after 1622, the Anabaptists as non-Catholics were forced to leave their Moravian settlements. Most of them went to their brothers in today‘s southwestern Slovakia, where they continued their activities until the local Anabaptist communities fell apart. The one-hundred-year long activities of the Anabaptists indisputably contributed to the economic development of Moravia. The Anabaptists also left carefully written chronicles, literary works, spiritual songs and inspiring system of education behind them. However, it is the faience pottery that became the most tangible proof of their activity. Anabaptist faience expresses a level of handicraft at that time. The production of faience became a basis on which the production of peculiar folk pottery grew, which is an inherent part of folk culture in Moravia and Slovakia.
„The Displacement“ of Germans in Czech Commemorative Culture
The focus of the study is on the issue in what manner the Czech society treats the post-war forcible displacement of German-speaking inhabitants. After decades of taboo on the side of Communist regime, opportunities opened up after 1989 to revise the Czech-German coexistence, and gradually the commemorative culture of the “displacement” was formed. The text follows both official political attitudes to the German past, and the public reminding thereof as well as its presentification initiated “from below”. It turns out that especially the commemoration of tragic events related to forcible persecutions of Germans during the so-called wild resettlements becomes a source for the dispute between the different imagines of the past and the all-societal tension; at the same time, however, such acts of collective recollections serve as a means to overcome the traumatic past and be equal with it. The complicated process of facing up to the “displacement” of Germans is illustrates with a particular example of the public reminding of the so-called Brno death march.
The Unwanted “Yo!“. The Memory Politics of the Representatives of Forcibly Displaced Brno Germans at the outset of the 1950s
The case study deals with the politics of memory and the constructing of cultural memory within a group of forcibly displaced German inhabitants of Brno in Germany at the outset of the1950s. The study works with basic empiric material, which is a hit (song) Ich bin aus Brünn I am from Brno published in Brünner Heimatbote, a magazine of this group of inhabitants, in 1953, and four letters sent to the club Bruna, and to editors of Brünner Heimatbote. Authors of those letters, important representatives of the group of forcibly displaced Brno inhabitants and representatives of official organizations of the “Sudeten Germans”, responded negatively to the song text, whereby their major reproaches related to the use of Czech words in the song text (e.g. the slang word ´tě pic‘´ = yo) and the depiction of certain life conditions that were evaluated as being unsuitable and unrepresentative for the group of Brno Germans. The author of the study puts the analysis of empiric material (interpretations contained in it) into the context of the policy the organizations of “Sudeten Germans” applied in Germany after the Second World War. The study can be understood as a contribution to the research into the formation of identities of that group of inhabitants after 1945 and the role of their official organizations and journalism in this process.
The Vanished World of Peddlers in Dialect Denominations
When compiling the Dictionary of Czech Dialects, which has been arising at the Department of Dialectology of the Institute of the Czech Language of the CAS, v. v. i., in Brno since 2011, extensive linguistic material concerning vernacular names of the vanished world of peddlers was gathered. It comes from the Archive of Folk Speech founded in 1952 and the collecting of material excerpted from published, handwritten as well as electronic dialect sources, mainly from the all-national correspondence lexical survey carried out in the 1950s. Based on the example of names sorted into 5 semantic groups (l. common names, 2. names reflecting the local origin of peddlers, 3. names reflecting the kind of goods, 4. names reflecting the type of vessel (hamper, basket), and 5. names indicating the amount of goods), the author presents the denominations of peddlers from the turn of the 20th century, both in their dialect diversity and geographic projection. Each group has its specific feature. The change in the geopolitical arrangement of Europe, e.g., shows that some of the terms from the second group (grán, kočebrák) can currently be identified only with the help of the dictionary. The end of the First Republic, however, brought an end to the colourful world of the peddlers and hawkers; together with the evolving industrialization and electrification the peddlers were replaced by “travelling agents” selling already different type of products (vacuum cleaners, sewing machines etc.).
Dialectal Lexicon in Eastern Moravia and the Carpathian Shepherd Colonization
The focus of the contribution is on the analysis of dialectal lexicon in relation to the Carpathian shepherd culture. It also introduces the Obščekrapatskij dialektologičeskij atlas, 1987–2003 Carpathian Language Atlas which also displays Moravian and Silesian locations and which is a support to the author in her analysis of the chosen dialectal lexicon. This is connected with the Carpathian geographic area and mostly includes “carpathisms” recorded in Moravia and Silesia, and facts about Carpathian shepherd culture. For the lexical analysis, a group of words has been chosen that contains names of sheep (or other) milk products and foods made from it: the group consists of the following words: brynza, oščepek, žynčyca, čýr, domikát and kyselica. The linguistic material has also been drawn from the all-national Slovník nářečí českého jazyka (A–C) Dictionary of Czech-Language Dialects and from the Nářeční slovník jihozápadního Vsetínska Dictionary of Dialects in the South-Western Part of the Vsetín Area. The dialectal vocabulary in the above region contains diverse language layers of domestic and foreign origin.
