Foundation of the National Museum - Volunteering

The date of the creation of the National Museum - at that time the Patriotic Museum (Vaterländisches Museum) - is considered 15. April 1818, when the provincial patriotic nobility approved the proposal to establish a new museum and submitted it for signature to the highest burgrave František Antonín Count Libštejnský of Kolovraty. The proposal for a call for the collection of public contributions and later statutes was drafted by František Josef hr. Klebelsberg with the support of his relatives František Josef hr. Šternberka-Manderscheida and Kašpara Marii hr. Šternberk. The text of the call was published in the daily press - 18. April in a non-political annex to Krameri’s Prague News, the German version of An die vaterländischen Freunde der Wissenschaften, 25. April 1818, then Jungmann’s Czech translation to the Patriotic Friends of the Sciences of the Arts of Lovers. The first statutes were officially confirmed by the Emperor only in 1822. According to them, the museum was managed by the newly established private Society of the Patriotic Museum in Bohemia.