Földvári Books

Joyce, Masaryk, Hasek and Benes in The Black Book of The Traitors to Austria-Hungary

[Foreword by]: Zapletal, Florian; [Joyce, James]; [Masaryk, Tomas Garrigue]; [Hasek, Jaroslav]

[Album velezradcu.] Album velezrádců. Velezrádné rejdy Čechů za hranicemi. S předmluvou Floriana Zapletala, štábního kapitána Českosl. vojska na Rusi a byv. redaktora „Čechoslováka“ v Petrohradě. [An Album of Traitors: The Treacherous Intrigues of Czechs Abroad.]

V Praze [Prague]: Alois Hynek, 1919. First edition. In contemporary half cloth with gilt embossed title on the spine. Panels covered with marbled paper. Marbled edges. Decorated endpapers. XXI [1] 263 [1] p. Cover and spine slightly rubbed, bumped. Light foxing here and there, more intensely to the first and last quires. Quire 13-18 moderately wavy from humidity. Overall in fine condition.

The black book of the arch-traitors to Austria-Hungary, listing nearly 1400 persons including James Joyce, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Jaroslav Hašek, and Edvard Beneš. A 1917 directory compiled by the Austrian intelligence services, republished as anti-Austrian propaganda publication in the newly established Czechoslovak state.

Published first by the I&R Presidium of Police in Prague (Präsidium der k. k. Polizeidirektion Prag) in 1917, the alphabetical directory includes the brief biographies and portraits of people accused of engaging in treasonous activities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire during WWI. The list features two of the future presidents of the First Czechoslovak Republic, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937) and Edvard Beneš (1884–1948), as well as the author of The Good Soldier Švejk Jaroslav Hašek (1883–1923), among others. Besides, it also includes James Joyce (1882–1941), listed as “politically suspicious” person living in Zürich. Most probably, Joyce was put on the list because the Tyrolean censors were unable to determine his origin and his actual occupation when monitoring his correspondence with his sister Eileen, who was living in Prague at that time.

The present edition of the directory was published in 1919 as an anti-Austrian propaganda publication to represent the poor performance of the Austrian intelligence services. As Florian Zapetal states in his foreword, in which he gives an overview of the Czechoslovak national liberation movement during the war, the secret services had a “large and expensive apparatus, which was meant to collect data to prosecute the whole Czech nation, but in the meantime only collected documents of its own stupidity. It is no wonder that the state, which had such stupid espionage, fell apart”.

Florian Zapetal (1884–1969 was a Czech art historian, journalist and soldier. He studied art history at the University of Vienna as well as literature and art history at Charles University in Prague where he was a student of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. As an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, he surrendered to Russian captivity right at the beginning of the WWI. In Russia, he actively participated in the Czecho-Slovak resistance movement. From 1915 to 1918 he was an intelligence officer of the Czecho-Slovak National Council in the editorial office of the anti-Austrian weekly Čechoslovák in St. Petersburg and later at Československý denník in Moscow. He returned to Prague after the proclamation of the Czechoslovak Republic in December 1918 where he was appointed clerk of the press department of the Ministerial Council of the Czechoslovak Republic.

Literature: Samek, D.: Czech-Irish Cultural Relations. Prague: Centre for Irish Studies, Charles University, 2009.; Stanzel, F. K.: James Joyce in Kakanien 1904–1915. Mit erzähltheoretischen Analysen des Ulysses im Anhang. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2018.

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Price: €600.00