The present work strives to process, present and interpret the available materials relating to the life and work of the catholic priest, Bible scholar, teacher and dean of the Cyril and Methodius Theological Faculty, Jan Merell. The main aim of the work was to document his life path within the context of historical events, mainly in the period when Jan Merell was confronted with anticlerical persecution policy of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century both during the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the army of the Nazi Germany and during the establishment and consolidation of the communist regime. Besides, the present work provides an overview of the rich literary and research work of Jan Merell that has made him one of the most prominent Czech biblical scholars and won him international reputation as well. Despite critical opinions questioning some aspects of his public activity, Jan Merell undoubtedly ranks among the most important personalities of Catholic church both in Czech context and abroad.

Jan Merell (1904-1986) This thesis serves as the output of an enumerative survey of Jan Merell archive fund in the documentary centre of the Centre for History of the Czech Theology. The opening study provides an overview of basic life facts of Jan Merell, a Czech catholic priest, a Bible scholar, an advisor at the first and third period of the Second Vatican Council and a long-time teacher and dean at the Cyril and Methodius Theological Faculty. The presentation introduces the basic information about the archive fund, its development, history and archive characteristics. Furthermore it presents a brief study of the fund content and an overview of the archive tools assembly. Then the presentation brings in selected interesting archival documents and their contents. Output of the enumerative study is an archive tool that forms the third chapter of this thesis. The archive tool contains the list of the particular archive documents according to their inventory and file numbers.

The thesis deals with the life and work of the Prague Franciscan priest Jan Evangelista Urban. Within his writings it looks for the impulses that could help contemporary priests to live their own priesthood authentically. The first chapter introduces Urban's personality, his selected contemporaries and the historical context. The second chapter looks for key topics in relation to priestly life in Urban's speeches and other extant sources. The third chapter is focused on the way how to live the priestly life in everyday conditions; it also presents Urban's idea of a real and authentic disciple of God. The second and the third chapter contain a personal reflection and synthesis that tries to catch the principal message of Urban's thought.

This is a qualitative interview study that examines the life of young Jewish women in Sweden. The purpose of this essay is to investigate what parts of the Jewish tradition that the young women has chosen to maintain in their lives as well as to investigate the relationship between the Jewish girls and their non-Jewish environment. Material was collected with the help ofeighth semi-structured interviews and used to further be discussed and analyzed alongside previous research and chosen theoretical aspects. According to the result, a Jewish community in terms of family, friends or assemblies is crucial for the Jews’ ability to maintain their culture. In their very own community, the young women celebrate several Jewish holidays and create a strong bond to Israel. The religious aspect of Judaism has none or very little impact on the girls’ lives. This can be explained by their secularized environment and the fact the Judaism is more than just a religion. It is an ethnic group that shares history where the young women see themselves as a part of this collective. Furthermore, their relationship with their non-Jewish surroundings turns out to be quite uncomplicated even though they all have experienced antisemitism to a varying degree. The conclusion from this study is that even though the girls are not religious at all and despite their concerns related to being Jewish, the young women are very proud of their heritage and want to pass it on to future generations.

In my master's thesis I will focus on the harpsichord. This instrument is usually classified as a baroque instrument, but in Bohemia the harpsichord experienced its greatest prosperity in Classicism. I will focus on the characteristics of the instrument and differences between the harpsichord and the piano. I will also try to characterize the classical work for harpsichord, the form of a classical solo concerto and the specifics of the interpretation of compositions on harpsichord and piano. Than I will examine the work for harpsichord by Jan Křtitel Vaňhal, put the composition in the context of the author's concert work and determine the diferences between the concerto for harpsichord and the piano concerto in Classicism in Bohemia. Finally, I will comment on the new complete score of Jan Křtitel Vaňhal's Harpsichord Concerto in C major, which I will compare with his Piano Concerto in A major. I also want to create a theoretical basis for the attached new completation of full score of Concerto in C major by J. K. Vaňhal. KEYWORDS Harpsichord, Fortepiano, Jan Křtitel Vaňhal, solo concert, classical period

This dissertation offers a new reading of Jan van der Heyden’s art through an analysis of his depiction of bricks. The minuteness with which the artist rendered bricks is frequently mentioned, their significance however, both in relation to his art and in relation to the early modern Dutch city has largely gone unnoticed. This in-depth study of Van der Heyden’s work and methods not only enriches our understanding of his paintings, but also stresses that his practice as an artist was fundamentally linked to his work as an inventor of technology. Both in his art and inventions Van der Heyden exhibited a profound interest in materials, experimentation, and the urban fabric. Additionally, this study has implications for our interpretation of the Dutch seventeenth-century painted cityscape more broadly. Cityscapes have rarely been examined in light of art theoretical treatises. Van der Heyden’s art, as well as the earliest known commentaries on his paintings however, underscore that such lack of interest is unfounded. Van der Heyden’s bricks, it will appear throughout these chapters, are an embodiment of his broad interests and wide-raging skills. They give expression to both theory and practice, as well to the formation of a Dutch identity. In Van der Heyden’s bricks, therefore, we recognize his interest in and contributions to art, technology, and the city.

This thesis is devoted to the analysis of the realist view in the dispute about the nature of universals at Prague university during the reign of Wenceslas IV. At the same time, I explore the realism of the beginning of the fifteenth century in the Czech intellectual environment with regard to its international influences, with which I deal both synchronically and diachronically. I inquire into Prague realism as an original tradition of thinking, which is inspired by the philosophy and logic of foreign thinkers, but such influence is recontextualized into the Czech intellectual environment in a completely unprecedented way. My epistemological framework is based in inductive research, which I conduct by combining the results derived from the analysis of independent datasets of primary data. Such methodological choice enables me to carry out triangulation, i.e. finding the objective truth through approaching the topic from various viewpoints. I reach the conclusion that the dispute about the nature of universals at Prague university at the beginning of the fifteenth century cannot be reduced to the opposition between the nominalism of German masters and the realism of Czech masters, but realism can be apprehended as an important school of thought in terms of establishing an independent tradition of...

This study examines the Cultural Trauma associated with the Jedwabne pogrom, as portrayed in three Polish newspapers. The essay seeks to answer the following questions: How did the chosen three Polish newspapers with varying ideological and political views depict the discussion about the Jedwabne pogrom in their articles in the years 2016-2018? In what ways do these usages and representations reflect or challenge the dominant narratives of Polish national mythology? How has the discussion on Polish antisemitism in relation to the Jedwabne pogrom changed after the conservative Law and Justice party came to power in 2015? The source material used consists of 45 newspaper pieces from Gazeta Wyborcza, Tygodnik Powszechny, and Polonia Christianapublished between 2016-2018. The theory applied was inspired by Barbara Törnquist-Plewa's studies which originate from the theory of Cultural Trauma and Collective Memory and Geneviève Zubrzycki's theory of National Mythology. The method used to analyze the source material could be best described as a qualitative close reading of the sources, where the theory of cultural trauma with its associated diagnosed coping strategies and the perspective of national mythology is used as an analytical lens to highlight how the Jedwabne pogrom discourse is being portrayed intertextually. The study's results found two camps with different stances on the topic concerning the Jedwabne pogrom and Polish antisemitism, namely, the pro-Gross/identity-transformative camp and the anti-Gross/Gross-skeptical camp. The presented two camps used two different strategies concerning the pogrom debate, namely, the politics of shame and the politics of pride, which suggested a laboriously political state of the discourse in the years 2016-2018. The resulting politicization of these two political strategies was explained by their link to cultural trauma responses used by the camps conforming to Törnquist-Plewa's results. The study found that the national myth of Polish messianism was used in the source material. However, it was predominantly used mindfully by the newspaper's authors in an attempt to combat this national myth, which was tied to a cultural trauma response and political usage. The study found that the debate on Polish antisemitism tied to the Jedwabne pogrom has regressed after the Law and Justice party came to power in 2015, as their political meddling with state institutions sabotaged the Polish scholarly debate and effectively polluted the public debate in various scandals

This study is an adaptation analysis focusing on the portrayal of Sweden in Jan Troell´s film The Emigrants (1971) and Eric Poppe´s film The Emigrants (2021), which is based on the book by the same name, written by Vilhelm Moberg. Both the films and book are discussed and analyzed to find similarities and differences between them. The purpose of this paper is to identify the changes and similarities that have been made due to the different contexts of the adaptations and how they reflect the Swedish society in which they were released with the fallacies in contemporary adaptation theory that points out wrong assumptions about the similarities of this classic story.   All through this study I have shown the context specific attributes that have contributed to the differences between the contexts of the adaptations but also reported the similarities in the overall story. The context in the representation of Sweden has changed a lot between the different adaptations, many of them appear more clearly when you look closer at the time in Swedish society in which they were released. Context specific differences are behind much of this, through the adapter's interpretation of the source text. The representation of Sweden as a nation can be based on this, but also through Vilhelm Moberg´s, Jan Troell´s and Erik Poppe´s choice to emphasize specific societal problems as a central part of their interpretation. The fallacies in contemporary adaptation theory have shown that the assumptions about how The Emigrants have been adapted are in some cases incorrect. This paper can shed light on the changes and similarities that take place when a work is adapted into different time periods in a nation's history.

Note: