Prof. Jaromír Čelakovský a Národní strana svobodomyslná zv. mladočeská

This paper is a contribution to the political biography of an outstanding Czech historian of law, who was at the same time significantly involved in the politics. From his early youth he was a strong adherent and later a member of the National Liberal Party, also called the Young Czech Party. As early as the 1860s he cooperated with the radical democratic magazines and stayed in touch with his cousin, a political emigrant, Josef V. Frič. In the early 1870s, Čelakovský became a steady contributor to Národni listy, a daily newspaper of the Young Czech Party. Although his position there was not strong and he did not belong to the key editors of the magazine, it nevertheless helped him to become the deputy to the Bohemian Diet and later the Imperial Council in the late 1870s and early 1880s. His activity there was remarkably limited by political conflicts with his conservative colleagues in the parliamentary club and the publisher of Národni listy, Julius Grégr, as well as the material situation of Čelakovský’s family as his deputy fee was not enough to support them. As a result, Čelakovský resigned from his Imperial Council post and focused exclusively on the academic career. This was made easier by the formation of a Czech university in 1882 and Čelakovský’s amicable behaviour at the Faculty of Law, where he was considered an outsider because of his affinity to Young Czechs. His position at the university improved only after the political ascent of the Young Czechs in the mid-1890s. This ascent took place at the same time as Čelakovský’s advancement within the Young Czech Party. At the turn of the century, he returned to the Imperial Council in Vienna and became a member of his party’s executive committees and its foremost intellectual. His political and academic merits earned him a number of awards from the Austrian government before the First World War. This paper, based on extensive archival materials, thus shows an exemplary combination of academic and political career, typical for the politics and science of the 19th century.