Paper short abstract:

Folk culture was an important element in the Czech national emancipation, which culminated at the turn of the 20th century. The collectors´ interest in folklore expressions led to the creation of a source base which has been used to date. It gave an impetus to the formation of Czech folkloristics.

Paper long abstract:

Traditional folk culture played an important role in national movements in the European environment of the 19th century. So was it in the Czech lands which were part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The development of the interest in folk culture was always linked to social development of a particular region. In the Czech lands, as in other countries, this line related to the ideas of Romanticism (with regard to rendering the Czech language and folklore expressions), however, in the beginnings it was connected with the search for the importance of homeland within the Habsburg Empire. The ideas of Pan-Slavism were associated with the rise of national struggles in the 1880s. This development was crowned by the formation of independent Czechoslovakia in 1918. Although many traditions were closing in their original functions in the countryside at that time, their importance as a symbol of national peculiarity was strengthened mainly through the presentation of folklore expressions. The one-hundred-year long work of collectors and researchers, who created funds with folk songs, dances and literature mainly for societally motivated reasons, was put to good use. Even today those resources are a source of knowledge about spiritual culture in the Czech countryside of last centuries, and they also have become an impetus to the formation of folkloristics (ethnology) as a scientific discipline.