Emanuela Nohejlová-Prátová (1900-1995) was a Czechoslovak numismatist, archaeologist and historian. She is considered to be a founder of modern Czech numismatics.
Nohejlová-Prátová was born on 3 June 1900 in Opatovice nad Labem, east Bohemia, then part of Austria-Hungary.[1] Her father, Emanuel Nohejl, was the doctor and mayor for the village.[1] Her mother was Berta Schmidt and the couple had three daughters, of which Nohejlová-Prátová was the youngest.[2]
In 1918 Nohejlová-Prátová caught influenza as a result of the pandemic of Spanish flu that swept Europe, and this illness delayed her graduation.[2] Nevertheless, she graduated from high school and went on the study History at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague; one of her tutors was the Czech historian, Professor J V Šimák.[1] Initially, her father encouraged to Medicine like him, but she preferred History - as soon as her eldest sister settled on Medicine, it meant that Nohejlová-Prátová could pursue her historical studies.[2] During her time at University, she became engaged, however in 1923 her fiancee died as a result of injuries received during the World War I.[2]
By the end of her university studies, Nohejlová-Prátová had already begun to make a name for herself as an excellent historian.[2] Her final dissertation on the history of the Opatovice monastery was published soon after she graduated.[2]
From 1923 to 1926 she worked as a scientific officer at the National Museum in Prague.[2] In 1926 she returned briefly to teaching in schools in Chrudim, Ivančice and Dvůr Králové, but in 1927 she returned to Prague.[2]
In 1930 Nohejlová-Prátová was appointed as a curator in the Numismatic Department at the National Museum in Prague, where she worked until her retirement in 1959.
Nohejlová-Prátová was arrested by the Gestapo on 4 February 1942, she was interrogated at Petschek Palace and imprisoned because she had used crystals from the mineralogy department to build radios, which supplied news at odds with Nazi propaganda.[2] She was released from prison in May 1943.[2] At that time she was forbidden from working in Prague, but was allowed to find work elsewhere and through a connection to Professor Fritz Dworschak, director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, found work there for two years.[2]
After the end of the war, her colleagues in Vienna were keen for her to remain, however Nohejlová-Prátová was keen to return to her work in Prague.[2]
Nohejlová-Prátová had been a pioneer of the use of photographic enlargement in her research prior to the World War II.[1] Post-war, she returned to her job in the Department of Numismatics and began to research and catalogue the collections extensively.[1]
In 1949 she was appointed as a lecturer at Masaryk University in Brno, alongside her museum work.[1] She worked extensively on hoarding practices in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, examining deposits from the ancient period up to the nineteenth century,[3] In her research she worked across many periods, with her specialisms lying particularly in Czech coinage, especially of Bohemia,[4] and metrology.[5] She was also considered an expert on medieval counterfeits.[6] In Nohejlová-Prátová's work on Czech coinage in the tenth and eleventh century, she believed that numismatics tended to over-estimate the link between iconography and contemporary politics.[7] In 1958 she was awarded a doctorate.[1] In 1964 was appointed Professor at the Charles University.[1] By 1960, she was Keeper of Numismatics and President of the Czech Numismatic Commission.[8]
She died on 19 November 1995, aged 95, in Pardubice, Czech Republic and is buried in the cemetery there.[1]
^Metcalf, D. M. (1960). "Review of Numismatický Sborník (Historical Institute of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences, Numismatic Commission)". The Numismatic Chronicle and Journal of the Royal Numismatic Society. 20: 297–298. ISSN0267-7504. JSTOR42662745.
^Nohejlová-Prátová, Emanuela (1929). Z příběhu pražské mincovny; nástin jejích osudu v letech 1537-1618 (in Czech). V. Praze: Nákl. České akademie věd a umění. OCLC12604398.
