The objective of the submitted study is to point out the fact that examples of unusually mature protoethnological texts, which focus on the urban environment in a surprisingly modern way, could be found as early as in the mid-19th century. As an example for the aforementioned statement, a study from the year 1841 is analysed, which was written by Johann Georg Kohl (1808–1878), a German ethnographer and traveller. Kohl’s text deals with Odessa, a town which – due to its special features – drew attention of many Russian and foreign observers immediately after it had been found. Kohl’s hitherto unusual sensibility for the perception of the town as a specific social space resulted in an unusually modern synthesis. The texts of Kohl’s type can be viewed as valuable sources for ethnographically directed information which is relevant even today due to the diachronic analysis of populations thematised in them; in addition, those texts are important sources usable for the study of the history of European ethnology.
The study is devoted to the idea background to the discussions about the national character of so-called folk culture of the Czech lands inhabitants. On analysed examples from Western Bohemia, the ethno-cultural ambivalence of local ethnographic facts is thematised and the national and political tools of the discussions regarding their ethnic origin is explained. In this connection, the ethnography of that time is interpreted a “national science” that had a specific task consisting in the explication of national particularity. The author makes a conclusion that to recognize the “Slavonic” or the “German” feature of particular cultural artefacts or even larger cultural systems in the ethnographic production of that time was rather an ideological wish of the given interpreter than a scientific reflexion.
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