Turning the pages back... June 10, 1884 (06/14/98)

Turning the pages back...

June 10, 1884

Florian Zapletal, a Czech scholar and journalist, was born in Bochor, Moravia, on June 10, 1884. In 1905-1910 he studied journalism at Charles University in Prague and then art history at the University of Vienna. At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army and, stationed in the Presov (Priashiv) region, was sent off to fight Russia's imperial forces (viewed sympathetically by many Czechs), who had made incursions into the northern Carpathians.

In November 1914 Zapletal surrendered to the Russians along with his unit and spent the rest of the war studying in Moscow and Petrograd, as well as writing polemics in support of Czech and Slovak independence. He returned to Prague at war's end.

The loosening of imperial Austrian fetters prompted a flurry of activity throughout its former territories, including the building of schools, publication of books and establishment of newspapers, and the new Czecho-Slovakian government aimed to foster this development in the Pan-Slavic ethos of its President Tomas Masaryk.

After Transcarpathia, including Presov, was made part of the new Czecho-Slovak state, a number of officials were dispatched to establish an administration for the newly acquired territories. Zapletal was appointed chief of the region's governmental press office. He renewed his interest, piqued in the fall of 1914, in the local folk customs, art and architecture, and collected historical and ethnographical materials.

His reports became increasingly critical of the Prague government's policy in the region, and in July 1921 he resigned his post and returned to the Czech capital and became associated with the country's military establishment, first as an advisor to the General Staff and in 1929-1939 working in the military archives.

However, Zapletal retained an abiding interest in Transcarpathia's people, amassing a priceless archive on their history and culture, and wrote over 160 articles on the history, culture, architecture and politics of Transcarpathia. He published monographs on the history of Transcarpathian Ukrainians including, "Rusini a Nasi Buditele" (Ruthenians and Our Awakeners, 1921), and a study of Austria's Ukrainian vice-regent in Transcarpathia, Adolf Dobriansky (1929).

In 1967 he turned over part of his priceless archive and library to the Svydnyk Museum of Ukrainian Culture. Mr. Zapletal died in Prague on October 16, 1969. In 1973 Mr. Zapletal's widow entrusted over 500 of his photographic glass plates documenting his research in Transcarpathia in the 1920s to Presov-based Ukrainian activist and scholar Mykola Mushynka, and nine years later a book based on these plates was published in Austria through the efforts of Dr. Paul R. Magocsi of the University of Toronto Chair of Ukrainian Studies.

Sources: "Zapletal, Florian," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 5 (University of Toronto Press, 1993); Florian Zapletal, "Wooden Churches in the Carpathians" (Vienna: W. Braumüller, 1982).