University of Prague

Algology and protistology at the German University in Prague in the inter-war period, II. Ernst Georg Pringsheim and Institute for Plant Physiology The study focuses on the life and work of Ernst Georg Pringsheim and his co-workers Viktor Czurda and Felix Mainx at the German University in Prague. In the years 1923–1938 E. G. Pringsheim was the director of the Institute of Plant Physiology at the Faculty of Science. Present study recapitulates Pringsheim′s career and shows how his studies established cultivation of microalgae and protists as one of the main research tools in this field. Besides the studies on cultivation, the present study also deals with Pringsheim′s studies on vascular plant development and his views on evolution of microorganisms. Finally, the study analyses the research of V. Czurda, F. Mainx and E. G. Pringsheim focused on sexual phenomena in microorganisms, including their controversy with Max Hartmann concerning the nature and substance of sexual reproduction.

Algology and protistology at the German University in Prague in the inter-war period, I. Adolf Pascher and his legacy The study focuses on the life and work of Adolf Pascher, one of the most prominent phycologists and protistologists of the 20th century. Almost for his entire life Pascher worked at the German University in Prague. Since 1933 he was the director of the Botanical Institute and Botanical Garden of the Faculty of Science. Present study illustrates Pascher’s career and shows that his studies was largely based in application of Haeckels biogenetic rule to microorganisms and algae. Finally, Pascher’s work and life in times of the Third Reich, as well as later significance of his studies are discussed.

PhDr. Karel Absolon, professor at the Charles University in Prague, an outstanding natural historian and praehistorian died in Brno on October 6, 1960. He was born on June 16, 1877 in Boskovice, Moravia. He was deeply interested in speleological investigations of which he took active part, for the first time, in the Moravian Karst in 1897. In 1903 he graduated at the Czech University in Prague and became doctor of philosophy. In 1907 he was appointed private docent in physical geography at the same university. In 1908 he became custodian of zoological collections in the Moravian Museum in Brno where he founded a separate departement containing rich diluvial findings. He had given up his work at the museum shortly before he retired. In 1926 he was appointed unpaid assistant, and in 1927 unpaid professor of geography, with special regard to palaeoanthropology and zoogeography. In Brno he lived until his death and wrote his numerous scientific works. In his speleological investigations he was at first interested in zoology. Later he was attracted by numerous morphological problems in our karst, especially the Moravian Karst, as well as the karst of Dinarian Mountains. He was the greatest expert of karst morphology and zoology of the Moravian Karst, where he made his best speleological investigations. He started in the Sloup Caves, Holštýn ponors "V Rasovnách", the Emperor's Cave and in several other in the whole area of the Moravian Karst. The most difficult task of the problem of Macocha Chasm, was to find some way that would lead to its bottom. After several discoveries, Absolon finally succeeded in reaching its floor through the Punkva Caves in January, 1914. Absolon's greatest achievement (1933) was to find access to the Macocha Chasm from the surface by boat. Extraordinary success he achieved in his explorations of the Dinarian Mountains, Yougoslavia, where upon an area of 60 000 km2 he studied the geomorphological development of individual poljes and caves, and solved a series of complicated problems in karst hydrography. He compiled 62 detailed maps of this region, in scale of 1 : 75 000. He also occupied himself with the problem of the hydrography of the Ombla and Timavo rivers. He discovered many new genera of cave fauna most of which he described in different zoological magazines. Praehistory was another scientific branch in which Professor Absolon took interest. His archaeological investigations made Moravia famous as the second largest (after France) European area inhabited in the past by the Pleistocaene man. His works present a detailed documentation of localities, displaying pictures of the rich findings, especially of the Aurignacian culture of the Palaeolithic man. As a result of these explorations he compiled a palaeoethnological atlas which comprises about 20 000 pictures. It has remained an only document depicting the findings since the findings themselves were destroyed in 1945 in the course of war operations in the Mikulov Castle, Southern Moravia. Professor Absolon wrote many works about speleological problems of the Moravian Karst, and it rests a voluminous work on the Moravian Karst called "The Macocha Chasm and the Subterranean River Punkva in the Devonian Limestones of the Drahany Plateau, Moravia", which is due to be issued by the Academy of Sciences, Prague. Worth mentioning are also his works on the Dinarian Karst. In Professor Karel Absolon Czechoslovakia lost one of its greatest scientist of extraordinary knowledge in several scientific branches, known and highly estimated also abroad. His name will for ever remain combined with Czech natural sciences, geography and praehistory.

After 1882, the development of the University of Prague and its division reflected the situation of Czech and German society in the Czech Lands. While German Studies at the German university of Prague since 1882, when the University of Prague was divided into two autonomous – German and Czech – institutions, continued its pedagogical and scientific activities, it was necessary to establish German studies at the Czech university of Prague. Despite the progressive specialization of German Studies in German language and literature and the following internal differentiation of German Studies into older and newer German language and literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, great attention was traditionally paid to the older German language and literature in the curriculum of German Studies. The teaching here focused mainly on the analysis and interpretation of Gothic, Old and Middle High German texts from a linguistic and literary point of view. After 1900, the content of diachronic courses changed for German Germanists in favor of prehistory, dialectology and onomastics, and for Czech Germanists it was directed towards German-Czech language contacts, especially in the lexicon. These changes in the teaching profile and scholarly area were related not only to the development of German Studies, but also to social changes, especially in the 1930s and 1940s.

More than 40 environmental health scien? tists, from 15 countries of Eastern, Central, and Western Europe and the United States, gathered from 12-15 April 1993 at Charles University in Prague, the Czech Republic, to participate in the con? ference, Human Health and the Envir? onment in Eastern and Central Europe. This conference, convened by the Conte Institute for Environmental Health, represented a unique nongovernmental effort by international scientists to develop a regional approach to research on the health effects of environmental contamination in

The German University in Prague was founded in 1348 by the German Emperor Karl IV. However, it was not until 1808 that an eye clinic was established there, by Johann Nepomuk Fischer; the clinic was incorporated into the university in 1820. Fischer retired in 1847 and was succeeded by Ferdinand Arlt, though not as professor in ordinary. Fortunately, the chair in Prague was offered to Arlt before he had definitively accepted a call to Leipzig. During the period 1856 to 1883 Ferdinand Ritter von Arlt held the chair of ophthalmology in Vienna, an ophthalmic center of high repute. One of his most famous pupils was Albrecht von Graefe, of Berlin. Josef von Hasner directed the Prague Eye Clinic from 1856 to 1883, followed by Hubert Sattler (1886-1891). Isidor Schnabel was professor in Prague from 1891 to 1895, before going to Vienna. His successor, Wilhelm Paul Czermak, directed the Prague Eye Clinic from 1895 to 1906. He was followed by Isidor Schnabel's most outstanding pupil, Anton Elschnig, a Styrian by birth, who held the chair from 1907 to 1933. Under Elschnig's guidance the Prague University Eye Clinic reached a high international standard. Professor Elschnig retired in 1933 and died in Vienna in 1939 following a street accident. Elschnig's successor was his former assistant Jaroslav Kubik; he had to relinquish the chair after the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia because his wife was Jewish.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

This study investigates the organisation of teaching of botany at the German University in Prague and the functioning of the Institute of Botany of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the same university, with emphasis on the financial management, staff, and technical and other facilities. The article also investigates the role of heads of the Institute of Botany in 1920–1945: they had to be not only capable scientists and teachers but above all managers. In other words, they had to be familiar with the contemporary bureaucratic machinery and deal with it in a way that secured the maximum of what was possible for their institute. This contribution also references the incorporation of botanical charts by the Archive of the Charles University.

The Mechanism of Epinephrine Action. II. The Influence of Epinephrine and Insulin on the Carbohydrate Metabolism of Rats in the Postabsorptive State (Cori, C. F., and Cori, G. T. (1928) J. Biol. Chem. 79, 321–341)

<h3>Antituberculosis Congress</h3> The first Czechoslovak scientific congress against tuberculosis was held in Prague, May 19 to 21. The purposes of the congress were: to discuss scientific problems in tuberculosis with special reference to conditions prevailing in the Czechoslovak Republic; to disseminate knowledge of new methods in the fight against tuberculosis; to stimulate cooperative research in tuberculosis, and to foster friendly relations among the tuberculosis workers of the country. Dr. Ladislav Syllaba, professor of internal medicine at the Czech university in Prague, presided, and Dr. O. Horak served as general secretary. The congress was divided into three sections. The first section was devoted to clinical problems, the second to social questions and the third to veterinary problems. The sessions were arranged so that there were three general sessions in which the main papers were read by the most prominent representatives of the three sections. After the general sessions, separate meetings were

HF02-09 FATHER OF UKRAINIAN AND CZECH BIOCHEMISTRY: IVAN HORBACHEVSKY

In the spring of 1989, I delivered a series of lectures on American literature at Charles University in Prague, Czechoslovakia. After one of the lectures, a student asked me what Americans thought about the Czech dissident playwright Václav Havel, who at that time was under arrest and facing the possibility of a long prison sentence. My honest answer was that aside from a few intellectuals and experts on Central Europe, Americans did not know of Havel's existence. When I returned to lecture at Charles in the spring of 1990, no one bothered to ask the question. The gala Washington reception given the new Czechoslovak president had been seen on television by nearly everyone.

When Fritz Ringer published The Decline of the German Mandarins in 1969, the history of education and of the professions occupied a very modest position in the historiography of modern Germany. In the Federal Republic, the reprinting in the mid-1960s of Friedrich Paulsen's History of Scholarly Instruction in the German Schools and Universities and German Universities and University Study, both dating from the turn of the century, highlighted the lack of more recent scholarship, although it also heralded a major revival of interest in the field. In the United States, the experience of the two world wars had almost completely eroded the older admiration for aspects of German education ranging from the kindergarten to the research seminar. The search for the roots of National Socialism had led many historians to criticize German schools and universities for their teaching of authoritarian, militaristic, nationalistic, and even volkisch values. Yet during the two decades after World War II, a brief condemnation of the universities by the German exile Frederic Lilge was the only book-length study on any area of German educational history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to appear in the United States.

Marty (1847–1914), a Swiss pupil of the philosopher Franz Brentano, was called to the German University in Prague in 1880. According to Brentano’s ‘empirical standpoint’, he devoted a great deal of his philosophy of language to descriptive semasiology. His model intertwines general grammar, logic and psychology. Two case studies are considered: the theory of judgment vs. sentences without subjects, and the theory of relationships vs. case theories. He wishes to establish agreement with linguists he feels close to, both because of their knowledge of linguistic facts and rules and because they, too, are keen on the enquiry regarding language functions and invariant structures – which remains a desirable objective.

The beginnings of modern legal education in the Czech Republic began in 1882, with the establishment of the Czech University in Prague. In Czechoslovakia, the Austrian model of legal education was adopted, which survived throughout the interwar period. The aim of the article is to determine whether the education of lawyers in independent Czechoslovakia after World War I differed from the model developed in Austrian times, and to what extent the takeover of power by the communists in 1948 resulted in a break with the previous method of educating lawyers. The problem raised in the article is also the transformation of law education in the Czech Republic over the last 30 years. The author points out that the Czech model of legal education is quite conservative, and after 1998 references were made to institutions known from the period before 1948. At the same time, didactic methods known from Anglo-Saxon countries began to be introduced.

D URING THE YEARS 1615-18 the Uskok War was waged in northeastern Italy between the Republic of Venice, supported by mercenary troops from England, Holland, and the Protestant regions of the empire, and the Catholic forces mustered in support of Archduke Ferdinand of Styria, soon to become king of Bohemia and second German emperor of that name. The immediate occasion, providing the name for this conflict, was the activity of the piratical Uskoks, descendants of the military colonists settled in Croatia by the first emperor Ferdinand. It is to the history of these men and their relations with Venice that this article is devoted. The Uskoks, a name commonly used during the sixteenth century for the hardy and warlike Christian refugees fronm the Tuikish occupied areas of the Balkans, originally were settled in Croatia-Slavonia to provide the Hapsburg lands with a cheap but effective screen against Turkish incursions.' Freed by special charters from the usual manorial obligations, the Uskoks were liable to continuous military service as frontier guards and light troops. Starting with a