Encyclopedia of the Life and Work of T. G. Masaryk
A number of local entries on the map In the Footsteps of TGM are taken from the forthcoming Encyclopedia of the Life and Work of T. G. Masaryk, one of the long-term core team projects of the Masaryk Institute and Archives. It is being created in the Department for Modern Political and Intellectual History and involves more than sixty internal and external contributors. Interdisciplinary and inter-institutional cooperation is enabled by support from the Strategy AV21.
The aim of this reference work is to summarize current knowledge about the life and work of T. G. Masaryk in a clearly and uniformly structured format. It will include topical entries covering the various stages and events of Masaryk's life, his family and personal ties, academic, public, and political activities, his works (all separately published books including political brochures), key concepts of his philosophy and political programmatic ideas, as well as organizations and institutions associated with him or bearing his name, his ideological and political legacy (the Masarykian tradition in changing times and regimes), different interpretations of Masaryk’s work, impact, and historical role, and finally the various forms of commemoration of his personality. Entries will be supplemented with references to sources and a representative selection of literature. The entire encyclopedic work will conclude with supplements including a chronology of Masaryk’s life and work, a name index, and possibly a geographical index.
A parallel, stand-alone volume will be the Bibliography of Published Works of T. G. Masaryk (1876–2023), containing hundreds of records. The bibliography was compiled by Jana Malínská in cooperation with Lukáš Holeček and Tereza Šnellerová.
The encyclopedia will provide a specific synthesis of Masaryk’s life, work, and legacy in the form of interconnected, alphabetically arranged dictionary entries. These concise texts will concentrate a large amount of factual information and, thanks to their structure, will offer quick and well-founded insight not only into Masaryk’s biography and bibliography of his works, but also into a wide range of topics, personalities, historical events, and issues associated with his influence and name. It will summarize the results of existing Masaryk-related research and, in the form of a reference guide and later a web application — which has so far been lacking in both scholarly and popular literature — will make it accessible to a broad range of users from both expert and general audiences.
The core of the authorial team is made up of staff from the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences; the preparation of the project and then the actual work on the encyclopedia will be managed by the executive editorial board (composed of Josef Tomeš, Lucie Merhautová, Jana Malínská, and Martin Klement). The board will assign entries for processing, ensure expert, linguistic, and technical editing of all texts, select and process illustrations and accompanying materials, and oversee all project-related administration (author contracts, communication with authors, consultants, etc.).