
Josef Jireček (9 October 1825, in
Vysoké Mýto – 25 November 1888, in
Prague) was a
Czech scholar.
He was born in Vysoké Mýto (then part of the
Austrian Empire).
He entered the Prague bureau of education in 1850, and became minister of the department in the
Hohenwart cabinet in 1871. His efforts to secure equal educational privileges for the Slav nationalities in the Austrian dominions brought him into disfavour with the German element. He became a member of the Bohemian
Landtag in 1878, and of the Austrian
Reichsrat in 1879. His merits as a scholar were recognized in 1875 by his election as president of the
Royal Czech Society of Sciences. He died in Prague on 25 November 1888.
In 1862, he and his brother
Hermenegild Jireček
Hermenegild Jireček, Ritter von Samokov ( cs, Hermenegild Jireček, rytíř ze Samokovu; 13 April 1827 – 29 December 1909), Bohemian jurisconsult, who was born at Vysoké Mýto (then part of the Austrian Empire), was an official in the Prague ...
strove to defend the genuineness of the
Königinhof Manuscript discovered by
Václav Hanka
Václav Hanka (also written as ''Wenceslaus Hanka'') (10 June 1791 – 12 January 1861) was a Czech philologist.
Biography
Hanka was born at Hořiněves near Hradec Králové. He was sent in 1807 to school at Hradec Králové, to escape the ...
. He published in
Czech an anthology of Czech literature (3 volumes, 1858–1861), a biographical dictionary of Czech writers (2 volumes, 1875–1876), a Czech hymnology, editions of
Jan Blahoslav's ''Czech grammar'' and of some Czech classics, and of the works of his father-in-law
Pavel Josef Safarik
Pavel (Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian and Macedonian: Павел, Czech, Slovene, Romanian: Pavel, Polish: Paweł, Ukrainian: Павло, Pavlo) is a male given name. It is a Slavic cognate of the name Paul (derived from the Greek Pavlos). Pa ...
(1795–1861).
His son was the Slavic specialist
Konstantin Josef Jireček, and his brother was the historian
Hermenegild Jireček
Hermenegild Jireček, Ritter von Samokov ( cs, Hermenegild Jireček, rytíř ze Samokovu; 13 April 1827 – 29 December 1909), Bohemian jurisconsult, who was born at Vysoké Mýto (then part of the Austrian Empire), was an official in the Prague ...
.
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jirecek, Josef
19th-century Czech people
Slavists
People from Vysoké Mýto
1825 births
1888 deaths
Burials at Vyšehrad Cemetery