The Czech historian and statesman Frantisek Palacky (1798-1876) was the father of 19th-century Czech nationalism. He is known for his monumental History of Bohemia and his federalistic concept of Austro-Slavism.

Frantisek Palacky was born at Hodslavice, Moravia, on June 14, 1798, into a petit bourgeois Protestant family with strong Hussite traditions--a fact of considerable influence on his future outlook. After he attended school in nearby Kunewald (where he learned German), his father, a schoolmaster, sent him to Hungary to study at the Evangelical schools of Trencsén (now Trençin in Slovakia) and Pozsony (Pressburg, Bratislava). Particularly important was his stay at Pozsony (1812-1820)--then Hungary's administrative center--for there he came into contact with the already powerful Magyar national movement and with the nascent and rising Slavic (Slovak, Czech, pan-Slav) national consciousness, as represented by the works of such intellectuals as J. Palkoviç, J. Benedicti, J. Koll...