The collection of Milan Uhde documents the life of an important writer, later a signatory of the Charter 77, who at the time of normalisation could not officially publish, and after 1989 a parliamentary deputy and a minister of culture. The collection is composed of Milan Uhde's sequencing material, covering the period predominantly from the 1960s to the present.
Location
Hudcova 76, 612 00 Brno, Czech Republic
Show on map
Languages
Czech
German
Name of collection
Collection Milan Uhde
Provenance and cultural activities
The collection of Milan Uhde documents the life of an important writer, later a signatory of the Charter 77, who at the time of normalisation could not officially publish, and after 1989 a parlamentary deputy and a minister of culture. The collection is composed of Milan Uhde's sequencing material, covering the period predominantly from the 1960s to the present.
The collection was created in the private ownership of Milan Uhde during his lifetime. Uhde kept his papers mainly in his Brno apartment. Milan Uhde decided to dedicate these materials to the museum in 2010, when he was directly approached by this institution as well as by Pavel Kohout, who had already sold his materials to the museum. Uhde chose the Moravian Museum for two major reasons. The first was because it was the location for two things which were important – Brno is where Uhde was born and lives. The second reason was the idea of creating a department collecting and promoting materials of outstanding figures of Czechoslovak dissent and exile.
The relatively small collection was based on Milan Uhde´s selection, who handed it over to the museum after several years of negotiation and preparation. Documents were handed over to the Moravian Museum in September 2014, the gift agreement was signed two years later, in November 2016. At present there is no talk of any further expansion of the collection.
Description of content
The collection of Milan Uhde is quite small, made up of six standard archival boxes. It contains diverse materials, but Uhde's careful selection of documents that will be provided to the public is very apparent. In the selection there is correspondence arising from official activity, and personal documents which did not cause any problems or disagreements, as well as appointments to political or administrative functions which are a part of the collection too. In addition, the collection includes publishing contracts, manuscripts of literary texts, newspaper cuttings and photographs by Milan Uhde, his family, friends and colleagues, etc. The collection does not include diaries, literary texts from the early 1950s or any other documents directly documenting Uhde’s personal dilemmas, the reflection of his previous pro-Communist work etc. The corpus of materials does not contain documents depicting the deep personal moments of his life. The collection is systematised, and a printed catalogue was also created. The archiving was done by Dr. Eleonora Jeřábková, head of the Literary Department of the Moravian Museum.
Content
grey literature (regular archival documents such as brochures, bulletins, leaflets, reports, intelligence files, records, working papers, meeting minutes): 10-99
