Commemorative Plaque to Daniel Sloboda at Rusava

19. century, 1961 

The memorial plaque of Daniel Sloboda (1809-1888) commemorates the place where this evangelical priest worked in Rusava, where he spent 51 years of his life. He loved the local area so much that he turned down a professorship at the University of Vienna in order to stay here. Sloboda`s scientific involvement encompassed many natural sciences and humanities, but his most important works are in the field of botany. Sloboda is the author of the first Czech botanical key to plant identification.

 

Daniel Sloboda was originally from Slovakia. He spent his student years in Bratislava, but from 1837 he worked as an evangelical pastor in Rusava and died there in 1888. His extensive natural science activities ranged from geology, zoology, entomology, meteorology and physics to botany, which he developed most intensively during his scientific career. The result of several years of botanical observation was Sloboda`s 784-page book from 1852 Plantology, or Instructions for the easy naming and identification of plants in Bohemia, Moravia and other countries of the Austrian Empire, which was published by the Czech (today National) Museum. The basis of this book, which included all the plants of the Habsburg monarchy, was Joseph August Schultes`s book Österreich´s Flora (Flora of Austria), which Sloboda supplemented with the results of his own botanical research. It contained over 3,000 species of plants from 660 genera and was intended to provide a practical botanical key for identifying plants. Sloboda took the technical terminology from Jan Svatopluk Presl`s Plant dictionnary. If Sloboda did not find the appropriate nomenclature in Presel, he used regional folk names for plants. After writing this important botanical work, Sloboda continued his work in natural history. For almost thirty years (1858-1886) he made daily phenological observations, both in the field of botany and zoology. The results of this work were partly published by Sloboda in 1863 in an essay entitled Flowers of Hostýn. In 1859-1860 Sloboda carried out daily meteorological observations. In the following years he was part of the network of meteorological observers and cooperated with the Central Institute for Meteorology and Earth Magnetism in Vienna, the Austrian Meteorological Society and the Moravian Meteorological Society in Brno. Thanks to his scientific commitment in the field of geology, Sloboda was a member of the Imperial Institute of Geology in Vienna. In the field of physics, he was particularly interested in daguerreotype. 

Sloboda`s deep commitment to the landscape of Hostýn is evidenced by the fact that he refused to become a professor of natural sciences at the University of Vienna because he did not want to leave Rusava. Sloboda`s personal friends and collaborators in the field of natural sciences included teachers working at the Piarist grammar school in Kroměříž, such as a native of Rajnochovice and prominent botanist František Xaver Veselý or and Kassián Rachlík, who lent Sloboda the necessary books for his botanical research from the grammar school. Together with Rachlík, Sloboda worked to establish regional geological, mineralogical, zoological and botanical collections in local schools.

 

The commemorative plaque to Daniel Sloboda was unveiled on the rectory of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren on 28 October 1961. It was designed by the academic sculptor and painter Miloš Bublík. Josef Svátek, the then director of the Holešov Municipal Museum of local history and science, gave a speech on this occasion.

 

 

References

Svátek, J.: K odhalení pamětní desky Danielu Slobodovi na Rusavě. Zprávy Oblastního muzea Jihovýchodní Moravy v Gottwaldově. 1961, s. 121–122.

Svátek, J.: K vědeckému a osvětovému dílu Daniela Slobody. Zprávy Oblastního muzea Jihovýchodní Moravy v Gottwaldově. 1962, s. 7–13.

Svátek, J.: Z dějin přírodovědeckých výzkumů v okrese Kroměříž. Zpravodaj muzea Kroměřížska. 1984/1, s. 22–23.

Vaňková, H.: Výročí významných přírodovědců kroměřížského regionu. Sborník Muzea Kroměřížska, 1999/II., s. 131–132.

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