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PERSONALITIES
VINZENZ PRÖKL
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Vinzenz Prökl
Birthdate: October 23, 1804
Date of death: April 15, 1887
He was born as the eldest son of an owner of paper mill in Hřebeny and after finishing the school in Krajková he became an official articled clerk and then an attorney´s clerk in Karlovy Vary. When he was fourteen years old, he became a technical draughtsman in a construction office of ing. Stöhr, he was apprenticed by the builder Mader and started to direct his own first constructions. In January 1823, the nineteen years old building clerk V. Prökl leaves Karlovy Vary and enters into the services of the magistrate of the town of Cheb where he stayed for another 55 years. For the first ten years he worked as the head of the technical department of the Building Authority, he is the author of building plans of many public and private buildings, he directs the construction of a grammar school, and he supervises the spa springs and does various accounting works. In 1833, he passes the state examination from this profession and Mayor Totzauer calls him to be the town treasury controller.
Another fifteen years of versatile accounting work represents Prökl as an indispensable referent of Administration of the Town of Cheb. He helps as a tax and accommodation referent, he is the accountant and controller of municipal offices, cashier and executive of many associations and funds. In this time he presents himself also as a versatile organizer of the town cultural life, organises balls and parties, he establishes a singing association and he uses his draughtsman’s skills when creating diplomas and town honourable mentions. After 1848, he keeps working as an accountant. In 1856 he became a spa inspector and as a forwarding business executive he travelled throughout the entire Europe. In 1873, he is charged to inspect the construction of the theatre in Cheb and in the years of 1874-1878-before he retires, to administer the archive and the museum administration
Prökl has become a famous figure of the cultural and social life in 1st half of the 19th century due to his various public activities unflagging until his old age. His complaisant loyalty and exaggerated activity in the pre-Biedermeier period and his self -sacrificing for so called public good characterizes him also as the founder of a tradition of as cultural workers as a necessary jack-of-all –trades for everything which may not always be considered good. In addition to this various activity within which he performed different works as he states himself proudly ´which the other ones did not want or could not do´ wrote himself permanently to the cultural history of the town of Cheb by his chronicle and historical work. When he first worked as an archive administrator in 1835-1858, he wrote down five volumes of an extensive chronicle with over one thousand plans and portrayals. Out of it he gained material for his work on the entire history of Cheb and the Cheb region which he issued in 1845 for the first time. Similarly he wrote and richly illustrated the Františkovy Lázně chronicle, he wrote sharpshooters´ memorial books, essays on the Ostroh castle history, about the death of Wallenstein in Cheb etc.
Prökl was also a direct witness of the town entering a new period when all the old things would be destroyed, often recklessly, and when most of more than 50 fortification tower disappeared during a few decades, when the town gates were demolished and insensitive reconstruction of the historical houses was carried out. As the conservator of historical sights Prökl tried strenuously to save the cultural heritage and his angry, ironical outcry: ´Keep it up!´ towards the disinterest in the town historical sights has become a winged motto of many next generations.
Prökl wrote himself distinctively also into the history of museology in the Cheb region. His chronicle had become one of the first collection items of the museum being newly established. He drew 220 coats of arms of known Cheb tribes for the museum, he was also one of the most active collectors when supplementing the collections. Prökl also helped during the installation of the first exposition and then he was charged with the temporary administration of the museum in 1874 – 1878. However, there came already a new generation, represented by the founder of the museum G. Schmid and H. Gradl, which approached the new tasks of the museum and archive with necessary scientific erudition and theoretical clarification of the main goals of the work. The old-aged and ill Prökl, being immersed too much in the past in terms of the museum´s and archive´s contemporary tasks, was not capable of it anymore and he was getting more and more to the role of a fuddy-duddy who does not understand the new time.
In this sense, also the Prökl´s chronicle and his two-volume history was legitimately criticised by the next generations for its romanticising, uncritical approach to the sources and for many inaccuracies in the processing of individual topics. However, taking into consideration that it was the first attempt to write down the entire history of this region and he had only an disorderly and incomplete archive material, we have to, with the awareness of all objections, assign to Prökl the place of the founder of Cheb´s historiography. Especially, the Prökl´s genuine and tireless engagement to preserve the cultural values makes his personality topical also in the time of 180th anniversary of his birth.
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