In the second episode of the Povcast.hr History podcast, a Czech historian Veronika Čapská talks about two noble sisters Maria Eleonora Sporck and Anna Catharina Sweerts-Sporck, both practitioners of the word; one being a talented translator while the other, a great patroness ahead of her time. 



Research on the lives of two outstandingly talented and influential sisters Maria Eleonora and Anna Katharina Sporck allows us to peek into the lives of forgotten women of the early modern age. Although Maria Eleonora Sporck died already at the age of 30, she was almost a wunderkind who was translating books for her father’s print shop at the age of fourteen.

Anna Katharina Sweerts-Sporck
Franz Anton Špork

The younger of both sisters, Anna Catharina, was a passionate patroness, ahead of her time, and even a visionary of cultural, social, and educational reforms which were carried out in the Habsburg Monarchy only after her death.

Both were almost forgotten in the 19th century during the age of the histories of great men. One of those great well-known men is their father Franz Anton Sporck, one of the greatest patrons of culture and arts in 18th-century Central Europe but also a notorious figure of Bohemian baroque culture due to his imprisonment.

Today we are traveling to 17th and 18th-century Bohemia and on this journey, we will be guided by prof. Veronika Čapska a Research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences and a professor at Charles University in Prague.

In her work, professor Čapska specializes in interconnecting history with cultural anthropology and visual and literary studies. She focuses on transcultural phenomena in early modern history (history of mobilities, translation history, and correspondence networks).

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U Povijesnom podcastu Tihana Kušter razgovara s domaćim i stranim povjesničarima o recentnim istraživanjima, edukaciji, praksama i događanjima u znanosti i kulturi. Epizode s domaćim istraživačima i stručnjacima snimljene su na hrvatskom jeziku dok su razgovori s inozemnim istraživačima snimljeni na engleskom jeziku.

In the History Podcast, Tihana Kušter talks to historians about their recent research, books, public practices, education or events in historiography and culture. Episodes with Croatian historians are recorded in the Croatian language, while interviews with foreign researchers are recorded in English.