Vladislav Kruta Collection
Readers of the MU Campus Library can enjoy the collection of 1375 books and journals which Professor Kruta donated to Masaryk University as he approached the end of his life. You can read more about the history of the Kruta collection in an article by Professor Bravený and review the contents of this collection. Professor Kruta’s life was also captured in a biography by authors who knew him personally.
History of the Vladislav Kruta Collection
In their later years, successful researchers are often attracted to the history of their discipline. The analytical approach is gradually replaced by synthetic thinking and they turn their attention from individual details to relationships and contexts, including the temporal context. Vladislav Kruta (1908–1979) was an exception: he had been interested in the history of physiology, medicine and science in general from his very youth.
Kruta’s early interest in history is documented by his contribution of four biographical entries to the 1935 edition of Otto’s Encyclopaedia. Two years later, when he had already published some of his most revelatory research and won international renown, F. K. Studnička selected him as the co-editor of the collected works of J. E. Purkyně, a famous Czech physiologist of the 18th century. Around the same time, Kruta begins his systematic study of the body of research produced by another well-respected Czech physiologist, J. Procháska (1749–1820). Kruta’s manuscript on Procháska won an award bestowed by Charles University but was never published. He spent a number of years studying Procháska’s legacy and published an excellent monograph on that scholar in 1956.
From the very beginning, Kruta’s interest in the history of science went hand in hand with his passion for collecting documents and publications of historical value. He did not hesitate to spend his modest savings on finds in the antiquarian bookshops of Prague or among the Bouquinistes of Paris. Unfortunately, most of his pre-war purchases were lost. He left Prague in a hurry and empty-handed in 1939 and what he managed to hide in France during the war was lost in air raids. (A note on the endsheet of one of his books reads: “Rescued from the rubble of the house in Saumur”. Habent sua fata libelli.) Coming back home from England in 1945, Kruta had six boxes to his name: four of those contained nothing but books, journals and individual papers on science, art and philosophy as well as fiction and Czech exile literature, including a unique collection of publications by physicians in exile, who mostly served in the army. The contents of these boxes, over 300 volumes in total, became the starting point of an ever-growing collection that he often moved from place to place. Almost three decades after his death, his personal library has now finally found its proper resting place.
The publication of Purkyně’s collected works continued after the end of WWII, with Kruta as the main publisher from 1951 on. His study of Purkyně (1787–1869) became a lifelong passion. He wrote scores of papers and monographs on Purkyně, edited collective works on related topics and gathered nearly everything that had ever been written on Purkyně. Naturally, he became the world’s leading expert on Purkyně’s research and his effort culminated in a very well-received international conference in Prague to mark the 100th anniversary of Purkyně’s death.
Besides his personal library, Kruta was also the custodian of the library at the Department of Physiology in Brno, which he headed from 1951. The department library was founded by E. Babák and afterwards maintained by two of Babák’s students and successors, J. Petřík and L. Drastich. When the supply of international literature came almost to a halt in the 1950s, Kruta found alternative channels: he would send Czech fiction to his friend, assistant professor J. Brumlík in the USA on cine film and, in return, he received medical literature. Eventually, the journal Scripta Medica issued by the faculty and edited by Kruta proved to be an even better commodity. Under Kruta’s lead, the journal became so well-respected that Kruta was able to exchange it for scores of international journals from all over the world to add to the collection of the Central Library at the Faculty of Medicine.
Kruta signed the famous reformist manifesto “The Two Thousand Words” in 1968 and, as a consequence, he was forced to retire early in 1970 and was denied any further access to the university. His books, which far exceeded the space of his beautiful home study and were piled up all over the department, had to go too. Even as his health failed, Kruta continued his research. He published fifty more papers, mostly on Purkyně, but in his very last paper he returned to Procháska and completed the proverbial circle.
Shortly before his death, Professor Kruta expressed a wish that his valuable library be moved from its makeshift storage to the university. For various reasons, fulfilling this wish was impossible for a long time. The books were stored first in Kruta’s garage and then in the basement of the Department of Physiology. It almost seemed that with the explosion of scientific knowledge and the advent of electronic libraries, all interest in Kruta’s library would wane and these books would be lost forever. Against all odds, however, the story of Kruta’s library recently reached a happy ending: Kruta’s legacy was taken on by the Masaryk University Campus Library, which catalogued the collection in record time and made it officially available to readers.
In recent decades, the development of medicine and science has accelerated to a degree where knowledge – other than a few key pieces of information – quickly becomes obsolete. Research rushes forward so fast that there is hardly any time to stop and look back on the paths that science has taken in the past, how it struggled to get to where it is now and the blunders that it frequently made. Unfortunately, this also makes us forget – and rediscover – some of what we used to know. While older scientific literature is admittedly of limited relevance to modern science, it is still an important source for understanding the development of scientific thought and research as key tools of civilisation. Scientific institutions in general and universities in particular must treat historical collections with respect and preserve them as a cultural heritage and a permanent reminder of their own value. Masaryk University is the proud owner of several such collections and the Vladislav Kruta Collection will now join those of Antonín Novák, Otokar Březina and Leoš Janáček to mark the 100th anniversary of Kruta’s birth.
Pavel Bravený