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HEINRICH GRADL
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Heinrich Gradl
Birthdate: February 13, 1842
Date of death: March 3, 1895
The son of a poor, provincial painter. In 1853-1860, he graduated from the Cheb grammar school, and then he spent a few years by studying history and German studies in Prague. He was forced to leave the study because of the constant lack of financial means, poverty and illness and because he could not work in any teacher´s position due to his severe hearing impairment he started to work as a clerk in the savings bank in his home town. In 1877, he took over the lead of the Municipal Archive in Cheb after V. Prökl, considerably increasing the scientific level of this institution. Besides the work in the archive, he wrote himself into the awareness of the general public by his multifaceted activity as –writing, scientific, journalism. Since 1809 he was leading the political column of the main Cheb daily Egerer Zeitung) and he ranked among the most distinct personalities of the Cheb public and cultural life during seventies and eighties of the 19th century. He died suddenly in the middle of his tireless and various work; after falling down from a ladder in the archive he had to have his leg amputated and the consequences of the operation lead to a fast end. Gradl has imparted the spirit of modern archival science to the gloomy premises of the Cheb archive. He followed up the first approaches of his predecessors V. Prökl, G. Schmid and F. Kürschner and considerably deepened and particularized the arrangement of the three main groups of archival documents (deeds, sheets, writings). He moved the archive to the modern building, so called Rudolfinum (latter a grammar school) and wrote also a new archival order to which he incorporated also the progressive opinions on the placement and conservation of archival documents. By having both personal and official contact with a number of significant German and Czech archivist and historians (T. Sickel, A. Bachmann, J. Emler, A. Gindely) he has contributed to the penetration of the Cheb archival files to a wider Middle Europe awareness and has made conditions for their scientific utilisation.
However, he drew from the treasures of the Cheb archive himself. H. Gradl is the first really scientific historiographer of the Cheb region. After a lot of preparatory articles and studies he published a series of crucial works which meant a breakthrough towards a serious research of the Cheb history at that time and which, to a certain extent, have not lost their price until today; the edition Die Privilegien der Stadt Eger (1879), Die Chroniken der Stadt Eger (1884), Monumenta Egrana (1886) and the first scientific processing of the Cheb history Geschichte des Egerlandes bis 1437 (1893). There can be much reproached to these works in terms of the details, conception, craft, the technique of the edition work but the pioneering scientific attitude of their author is the basis of their indisputable value. Gradl elaborated on smaller historical topics for various specialized magazines and magazines focused on the national history and geography (Mitteilungen des Vereines für Geschichte der Deutschen in Böhmen, Archiv für Oberfranken etc.) and for the local yearbooks and anthologies (Egerer Jahrbuch, Kalender für das Egerland). Besides history, Gradl devoted himself to scientific research on linguistics, especially the Cheb dialect. Although he did not achieve so much recognition in this area and some of his trials were not very successful, yet some of the works are on a pretty good level and the toponomastic work Die Ortsnamen am Fichtelgebirge (1891) is usable until today. For the author himself, It must have been a satisfaction that he was entrusted with the task to portray the German dialects in Bohemia in the representative work of the Habsburg Monarchy – Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie im Wort und Bild. Not negligible in terms of significance, the study has considerably promoted his social prestige; the Crown Prince Rudolf himself was holding his protective hand over this work. Because of his frantic activity, Gradl was penetrating into many other branches of science (his entomologic studies are of a certain significance), he tried his good luck also at the field of belles-lettres. In all that, however, Gradl did not avoid the often and typical mistake of people with similar dispositions; he would start new things constantly, move from plan to plan, from project to project, ending up most of the time on the surface and not concluding the things. Even in the last period of his life, he was fully occupied with plans to establish a scientific company which was to organize the research on history, language, nature and ethnography of the Cheb region. However, it did not come to fruition. H. Gradl was one of the distinct figures of the Cheb region in the period towards the end of the 19th century which was very potent in terms of culture. The contradictory features consisting of a renaissance polyhistorism and brave projects of abounding amateurism have never been transformed into the form of genuine scientism but his significance for raising public awareness and culture of Cheb is yet indisputable. He was not only the first modern archivist but also the first real historian of his town, the most west district town of our republic.
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