Public Presentation of Non-European Cultures at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Part 2: “From Worlds Afar” – The Lecture Activity of Enrique Stanko Vráz

Abstract The way in which the Czech public learned about exotic countries at the end of the 19th and 20th centuries was dependent above all on the ability of travellers to convey their experience in literary form, as travelogue, or to communicate their experiences directly – in lecture form. From the 1890s lectures were accompanied by the projection of slides. One of the best-known travellers, and an excellent lecturer, was Enrique Stanko Vráz (1860–1932). The Náprstek Museum holds an extensive collection of glass slides from his estate. Vráz filled the periods in between his various world travels with intensive lecture activity, and the themes of his lectures grew wider with the increasing number of journeys he undertook. Information gained from Vráz’s lectures had a marked effect on the outlook of broad swathes of the population of the Czech lands on the life and cultures of non-European areas.