Abstract

The University of Prague and its graduates, unlike universities in Anglophone countries, for example, had a certain “preadaptation” to the reception of Portmann, in that it was a “German type” university with a tradition similar to that which produced Portmann himself. Two Czechs studied under Portmann, but wider intellectual interest in him, however, came from Protestant theology circles. At the semi-legal “ecumenical seminar” at the Protestant Theological Faculty in Prague, a paper on Portmann’s anthropology was given in the 1963–64 winter semester by Jan Miřejovský and Jan Milíč Lochman. Philosopher and psychologist Jiří Němec came to know Portmann’s work through these seminars, and, at his encouragement, biologist Zdeněk Neubauer and philosopher Václav Benda translated Neue Wege der Biologie into Czech and “published” it in typewritten samizdat form in 1979. In the same year, zoologist Stanislav Komárek was introduced to Portmann’s thought by Zdeněk Neubauer at a seminar at the Faculty of Natural Sciences; since his return from exile in Austria in 1990, he has lectured regularly on Portmann, and his doctoral students Karel Stibral, Karel Kleisner, Filip Jaroš, and Ivana Ryška Vajdová belong to the new generation of Portmannian researchers in the Czech Republic.