František Matouš Klácel

1808 – 1882 

František Matouš Klácel (1808-1882) was an educated monk, but because of his restless nature and unconventional views his superiors were hostile to him. Naturalists may still be intrigued by his elaborate theory of the natural origin of human art. He found a quiet place for his work on the Liběchovice estate.

 

František Matouš Klácel (1808–1882) is a unique figure in Czech cultural history and science. He spent part of his life as a monk in the Augustinian monastery in Brno, where the much better known Johann Gregor Mendel also worked. Klácel was both a controversial and popular teacher, literary scholar, aesthetician, philosopher and naturalist. His restless nature and strongly leftist political orientation caused him to change his place of residence frequently, and he eventually moved to the United States. He stayed in Liběchov in the 1840s and was supported by the local patron, the landowner Antonín Veith. The sculptor Václav Levý even carved an artistic “hermitage” for Klácel here.

František M. Klácel is important for the natural sciences because of his romantic conception of order and “evolution”, of the universe and life. According to him, the entire cosmos is imbued with the principle of beauty, which is evident from inanimate nature, through plants and animals to humans. The ultimate manifestation of this principle is human art, which is actually a continuation of natural laws. According to Klácel, the culmination of this development is music and poetry. The development of life should be directed towards a more perfect human society, which will be highly cultural and socially just, and at the same time sensitive to nature. Religious and scientific knowledge should complement and not oppose each other. In a hermitage in nature, therefore, a person can encounter the forces of nature and the action of God in unity. Klácel`s ideas are clearly a continuation of romantic science and nature-philosophy, although in his time this style of thinking was already on the wane and rational, rigorous natural science was coming to the fore. At the Liběchovice estate, where the beauty of nature and the creations of man are combined, we can experience the atmosphere of romantic science for ourselves.

 

References

Jan Kilián: Dějiny Liběchova. Vydalo město Liběchov: 2016.

Karel STIBRAL, Ondřej Dadejík, Vlastimil ZUSKA: Česká estetika přírody ve středoevropském kontextu. Praha: Dokořán 2009. 

RF