Since the mid-1990s, the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences has been engaged in an ambitious project to reissue the works of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937)—philosopher, sociologist, editor, politician, and first president of the Czechoslovak Republic. The series—Spisy T. G. Masaryka—has now reached thirty-nine volumes, arranged in a roughly, though by no means strictly, chronological order. More importantly for researchers, scholars, and teachers, the individual volumes in the series cohere thematically and include, alongside Masaryk's major published works, scattered studies, articles, reviews, and polemics—all valuable material for historical context and flavor.

Such rich contextualization is evident in the two volumes under review here. Titled Hilsneriáda (a colloquialism denoting the Hilsner Affair), the volumes bring together numerous writings by Masaryk from the years 1898 to 1900, during which time the sensational trial—and retrial—of Leopold Hilsner, an underemployed, lay-about Jewish man from Polná on the Bohemian-Moravian border, for the murder of nineteen-year-old Anežka Hrůzová (and eventually a second woman) took place. The Hilsner Affair was itself one of a series of public trials that were mounted in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia between 1882 and 1913 in which the prosecution's case rested—whether overtly or by suggestion—on a revival of the medieval accusation of Jewish “ritual murder,” the blood libel. Masaryk, then a professor of sociology at the Czech University in Prague as well as the leader of the small, progressive wing of the Czech national movement, famously intervened in the affair—condemning popular belief in the ritual murder accusation and examining the scientific procedures that preceded the indictment—and publicly demanded that the verdict of the first trial at Kutná Hora be overturned. Masaryk's involvement on behalf of the widely despised defendant and his challenge of the state's criminal procedures provoked riotous demonstrations by students at his own university and earned for him, in the short run at least, the opprobrium of Czech public opinion.

Readers familiar with Masaryk's better-known publications from this period (including Nutnost revidovati proces polenský [The Need to Review the Polná Trial, 1899], “O pověře rituální” [On the Ritual Murder Superstition, 1900], and Význam procesu polenského pro pověru rituální [The Meaning of the Polná Trial for the Ritual Murder Superstition, 1900]) will note with satisfaction not merely their presence in these two volumes, but the assiduous work that Luboš Merhaut has done to demonstrate their embeddedness in turn-of-the-century Czech (and Habsburg) political culture. The extensive reference notes that accompany each work painstakingly lay out their full contextuality, if you will: their publication history, the languages and places in which they appeared, the frequent struggles that they faced from government censorship, and the public reactions and the polemics that they at times elicited.

The Need to Review the Polná Trial is a good case in point. The notes lay out the complicated publication history of what was originally a sixteen-page brochure, which was confiscated by the state as soon as it appeared on November 6, 1899. In a tactical move, the Reichsrat deputy Ferdinand Kronawetter, a Masaryk ally, read a German translation into the record as an interpellation of the Austrian Minister of Justice. This effectively rendered the confiscation mute and gave Masaryk and his Czech publisher the opportunity to publish a second edition. Merhaut's notes also inform the reader that Masaryk's brochure was reprinted in the Czech Social-Democratic paper, Právo lidu, while the German edition (Kronawetter's interpellation) appeared as a special offprint of the Viennese weekly Die Zeit; various other newspapers (including the Prager Tagblatt) published abstracts. And the scholarly apparatus does not stop here. It includes a brief synopsis of the 1899 case and trial; information about Masaryk's journalistic coverage of the affair for Čas, Neue Freie Presse, and Die Zeit; reports and commentary on Masaryk's struggles with government censors; his analysis of the connections between antisemitic riots in Moravia and the language controversy; and a brief guide to other materials relating to the brochure, the stages of its publication, and efforts at suppression. One finds the same care addressed to each major publication reproduced in Hilsneriáda, including, of course, The Meaning of the Polná Trial for the Ritual Murder Superstition. To make things even more convenient for the researcher, most of the minor pieces mentioned in this paragraph can also be found reproduced as individual titles in these volumes.

The chronological framework of the volume allows the reader to observe how Masaryk's interventions during the Hilsner Affair connected to the broader array of his writings. Noteworthy in this regard are his series on Church and State, published in Naše doba in 1898; a string of articles from 1898 and 1899 on the so-called “crisis” within Marxism (published, variously, in Naše doba and Die Zeit), which were collected in 1899 and published in book form in both German and Czech editions; his lectures and columns in favor of the eight-hour work day; and his “Handbook of Sociology,” published as a series of articles in Naše doba in 1900–1901, selections from which have been translated into English and included in his Constructive Sociological Theory (edited by Alan Woolfolk and Jonathan B. Imber, 1994). Equally instructive is the placement of the Hilsner material alongside other writings by Masaryk on Jewish identity, culture, and politics during the same years—such as a long review of Jaroslav Vrchlický's epic poem “Bar Kochba” in 1898, an article on Zionism that appeared in 1900 in a German volume, and opinion pieces on antisemitism in the Bohemian lands.

One major drawback to the series Spisy T. G. Masaryka—which applies equally to the Hilsneriáda volumes—is the fact that every document is presented only in Czech, regardless of the original language of publication. To me, this choice is particularly unfortunate as many of Masaryk's writings first appeared in German (and occasionally in other languages). Researchers who wish to consult those editions need to track them down—a task that ends up undoing some of what the editors of the series have so marvelously accomplished. Clearly, Spisy and Hilsneriáda are aimed at a Czech readership and, especially, at citizens of the Czech Republic. The entire project comprises an important act of filial devotion to one of the creators of Czech democracy, one whose larger goal is to have an impact on Czech political culture, to realize the possibility of a national identity free of ethnic hatreds and superstitions, and compatible with human rights: a liberal democracy and a progressive nationalism.