Antonín Václavík and His Luhačovice Zálesí — A Book That Captures a Vanishing World

A Teacher from Pozlovice Who Became a Professor

Antonín Václavík was born on July 12, 1891, in Pozlovice—a village that is now part of Luhačovice. He grew up in a region where traditional costumes were still worn, where people sang at harvest festivals, and where every farmstead had its own distinctive character. This world fascinated him from childhood and shaped his entire professional life.

After studying at a teacher training college, he began working as a rural teacher. But even then, he knew he wanted to capture what he saw disappearing around him—the traditional culture of the Luhačovice Zálesí region, which was rapidly changing under the pressure of modernization. Together with his brother František, he began systematically collecting ethnographic material: he transcribed folk songs, documented traditional costumes, photographed buildings, and recorded customs and traditions.

The Founding of the Museum in 1918

A turning point came with the founding of the regional museum. During the difficult years of World War I, the Václavíks managed to gather so many exhibits that on July 28, 1918—even before the establishment of Czechoslovakia—it was possible to open a museum exhibition in a building known as the Zámeček above the spa colonnade.

Less than a month later, on August 12, 1918, the Museum Society in Luhačovice was founded, continuing Václavík’s systematic collecting and documentation efforts. Václavík classified the collections and oversaw their installation, thereby laying the foundation for an institution that remains active to this day.

The 1930 Monograph — The Culmination of a Lifetime’s Work

The publication of the monumental monograph “Luhačovské Zálesí” in 1930 marked the culmination of the Museum Society’s work and of Václavík’s own career. The full title of the work was: Luhačovské Zálesí: A Contribution to the Ethnographic Boundaries of Wallachia, Slovakia, and Haná.

Spanning 672 pages, the monograph discusses traditions, folk customs, art, demographic and economic aspects, education, and healthcare in the Luhačovské Zálesí region. The text is supplemented by 800 illustrations—photographs, drawings, and reproductions. Leading Moravian artists, including Joža Úprka and František Hlavica, contributed to the visual documentation.

The book captures a region situated at the crossroads of three cultural areas—Wallachia, Slovácko, and Haná—and demonstrates how these influences intertwined in Zálesí to create a distinctive local culture. This remains the work’s primary scholarly contribution to this day: Václavík not only described but also analyzed and situated these phenomena within a broader context.

What Václavík Captured

The scope of the monograph is staggering. Václavík documented:

• Traditional Costumes — detailed descriptions of men’s and women’s clothing, materials, embroidery, and their regional variations
• Customs and ceremonies — from birth through marriage to burial, including annual holidays and festivals
• Crafts — weaving, pottery, basketry, and other traditional crafts
• Architecture — types of farmsteads, building materials, house layouts
• Dialect — the frontier dialect with its specific expressions and phrases
• Demographics — population composition, typical surnames, migration patterns

Much of what Václavík recorded would have been irretrievably lost without his work. Many customs and crafts disappeared during the 20th century, and his monograph remains the only reliable record.

Academic Career

Václavík’s work did not go unnoticed. From a rural teacher, he became a respected scholar—a professor of ethnography at Masaryk University in Brno. He lectured, mentored students, and continued his research into Moravian folk culture. He died on December 4, 1959, in Brno, at the age of 68.

His Legacy

The Luhačovice Zálesí Museum continues to operate today as a branch of the Museum of Southeast Moravia in Zlín. The permanent exhibition “Luhačovice: Familiar and Unfamiliar” showcases the region’s way of life at the beginning of the 20th century—interiors, wooden tools, straw products, ceramics, faience, painted eggs, and folk costumes.

The monograph Luhačovské Zálesí is now a collector’s rarity. A facsimile reprint was published in 2005 by the Atelier IM Luhačovice publishing house, but even that is now difficult to find. Information about the book can be found in the Book Database.

Václavík’s legacy remains relevant for today’s visitors to Luhačovice. Anyone wishing to understand this region—its history, customs, and the character of its people—will find the best guide in his work.

More articles in the series: Surnames That Have Lived Here for Centuries · Luhačovice Under the Scientists’ Microscope · The Prehistoric Sea Beneath Luhačovice