Bohumír Menzel

This article aims to present the relatively unknown personality of Bohumir (Gottfried) Menzel (1798–1879) and connect his writings to the beginning of the Czech mass immigration to Texas. Adopting the thematic and discourse analyses, we can observe that his letters contain positive information on Texas that coincides with the main concerns of Czech society in the 1840s and early 1850s. Therefore, we can assume that his letters were published by the general Czech press and served as an influence for immigration to Texas. Furthermore, the passenger lists also show us that he probably led one of the first groups of migrants to Texas. The main finding of this article is that Menzel was wrongfully omitted by Czech and American historiography and should be put alongside other persons who influenced Czech mass immigration to Texas, Josef Arnošt Bergmann or Josef Lidumil Lešikar

Czech · Immigration · Linguistics · Mass migration · Political science · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · European Cultural and National Identity · Law · Philosophy · Polish Historical and Cultural Studies