Podlipanské Museum in Český Brod

The founding of the Podlipanské Museum at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was one of the great achievements of the local patriots and scholars in their effort to culturally uplift the town.  Since then, the museum has expanded its collections and has become an important place of education. From a natural history point of view, the collection of the traveller Josef Zounek is remarkable, and it includes mummified animals.

The origins of the museum collections in Český Brod date back to 1893, when people were called upon to start submitting interesting items for the Museum to the editorial office of the local magazine Naše hlasy (Our Voices). The first exhibition was held here in 1894 (!) and included geography and geology departments. Its success is attested by the fact that some of the exhibits were then loaned to the National Czechoslavic Ethnographic Exhibition in Prague (1895). After these successes it was possible to establish the County Museum Association at the end of 1895. Josef Kebrle became the first president. The collections were first displayed in rented rooms and opened to the public in 1906. The activities of the Association were disrupted by the First World War, but were successfully restored in 1920. During the 1920s, despite financial difficulties, the Association managed (also thanks to the contributions of benefactors) to build the present Art Nouveau building, which was opened to visitors in 1931. During the 1930s, the Liechtenstein collections (probably from the Kostelec nad Černými lesy estate) were acquired. During the Second World War, part of the collections and archives were saved thanks to a radical measure: they were bricked up in the basement of the Museum. The end of the war brought a great boom of museum-related activities, often, unfortunately, strongly politically coloured. The battle at Lipany, as well as the entire Hussite movement, was interpreted in terms of national and class ideology and the Podlipanské museum became a place of presentation of the state doctrine.  In 1966 the Museum became part of the Regional Museum in Kolín. The museum`s collections currently number approximately 40,000 objects.

 

Josef Zounek (1856–1927) was a great benefactor of the Museum. He was a landowner, traveller, collector, beekeeper and cactus grower. His decent financial background enabled him to travel to the Balkans and the Middle East in 1910, where he acquired his extensive collections (especially numismatic, archaeological and Egyptological). The numismatic collection was donated to the National Museum in Prague, the rest of the objects, including mummified animals, were acquired by the Podlipanské Museum.

JOUZA Ladislav (red.): Podlipanské muzeum v Českém Brodě. Vydalo regionální muzeum v Kolíně, 2005.

Art Nouveau museum building (Author: RF)

The relief on the museum building commemorates the alleged visit of Jan Hus to Český Brod. (Author: RF)