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ALOIS JOHN
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Alois John
Birthdate: March 30, 1860
Date of death: August 2, 1935
One of the first pioneers of a new arrangement of the spiritual life, emphasising the home basis, was born on 30 March 1860 at the Adler´s homestead in Horní Lomany near to Františkovy Lázně. His ancestors came to Germany from the Netherlands in the 14th century and soon (1400) to the eastern Bohemia and to the Broumov area. They settled down as farmers and millers in the Cheb area in 1629. Alois John was an eloquent speaker of his home due to his deep internal familiar relationship to the peculiar essence of the Cheb people. His friend and a close co-worker Anton Krauß who took over the spiritual heritage of John in the next generation wrote the following characteristic sentences: “The more accurately we observe the activity of Alois John and the more we immerse ourselves into his writings the more we are astonished by the fullness of the thoughts which lived in this extraordinary man and which were ahead of their time. However, the strength coming out of his soul seems to be decisive for his work and his way of life“. After studying the grammar school in Cheb and in Litoměřice and years at the university in Vienna, Innsbruck and Munich, Alois John lived as a free writer in Cheb since 1884. In the meantime he acquired a villa Waldheim as a summer residence at Antonínova výšina (Antonín´s Hill) in Františkovy Lázně where he resettled and in 1922 the spa town Františkovy Lázně entrusted him with the leadership of the town museum and town archive.
He passed away 2 August 1935 at the age of 76 years. The first, very stormy period of his activity in the eighties and nineties was given by the spiritual courses of that time. He kept especially close relationships with M.G. Konrad, the publisher of the Gesellschaft magazine, the speaker of modern realism in Munich. However, from the other side he was influenced by the Nietze´s individualism. He connected his cohesion with traditional values of his home place with these general thoughts and the thoughts at that time. He wanted his home to be connected with all scientific disciplines and to be given in connection with the national and world whole, in contradiction to small, lifeless, incoherent research. The magazine Literarische Jahresberichte (1887–1890) and later a yearbook Literarisches Jahrbuch (1891 – 1896) in the continuation as Deutsche Blätter by Hans Nikolaus Kraus (1887–1890) served his as a basis to spread his opinions. In 1893, he had to give up the idea of establishing a literal society. However his thoughts remained alive and, being gradually implemented in several permanent facilities, for instance in Kreuzinger´s folk library, in the multifaceted endeavour of the folk education and the Cheb´s regional and cultural movement. In his second life period, Alois John was moving more and more away of his literal reforms and focused solely on the research and revitalisation of the Cheb history and geography. He founded the association “Spolek pro chebský národopis” (Association for Cheb Ethnography) and the Unser Egerland magazine which was published in 1897 for the first time.
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