Acta Musealia

Personal Collection of PhDr Karel Pekárek in the Museum of South East Moravia in Zlín

In 1967, the Museum of South East Moravia in Zlín acquired the estate of a historian and ethnographer PhDr Karel Pekárek (1911 - 1966). The aim of this article is, while cataloguing the estate, to introduce the personality of the originator, the contents of the collection as well as to indicate its usability for research and publishing activities. Karel Pekárek, born in Dolní Ves near Fryšták, was originally a teacher and later the author of very well regarded Old Zlín Tales. Having finished studies of ethnography and folkloristics at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague, he began, from 1951, to collect material for a historically-ethnographic monograph Gottwaldov-Zlín, the aim of which was to describe the transformation of this rural town into an industrial centre. Thematically widely conceived work was to offer four basic chapters: the countryside and its characteristics - settlement and inhabitants, material culture of the inhabitants, social culture of the inhabitants and spiritual culture of the inhabitants. The main contents of the personal estate is material for the above mentioned single chapters of the monograph, which remained unfinished, because of the untimely death of its author. This study draws attention to those parts that might have potential for research. These are, above all, transcripts of interviews with the contemporary witnesses, data from informers and drafts of unpublished works. The most detailed are the chapters on business, handicrafts and trade in old Zlín (shoemaking and pearl button making) and some topics pertaining to social culture. Of no less importance are a multitude of topics containing interviews with contemporaries from Zlín and Fryšták, as well as a survey among pupils, which documented various manuscript records of local tales, superstitious stories, sayings, proverbs, local customs and games. An important part of this collection are photographic and pictorial documents, especially a collection of quality photographs by Jan Lukáš (1920 - 1984), which show the near surroundings of Jasenná between 1920s and 1950s.

Keywords: Karel Pekárek, Zlín, Fryšták, personal collection, estate, archive documents, monograph, contemporary witnesses