Flâneur from South Moravia: An Appendix to ESPES 10(2)

Abstract

The following text is inspired by a special issue of the journal ESPES vol. 10, no. 2 (2021) entitled Everyday Aesthetics: European Perspectives and returns to the theme of flâneurie. It focuses on the Czech environment and, after a brief outline of the artistic flâneurism associated mainly with Prague, it moves on to the specific phenomenon of the Brno štatl and štatlaři, which are to some extent related to flâneurism. The štatl community followed the tradition of the plotna, a more closed group of socially weaker inhabitants of the city in the first half of the twentieth century, whose features included a special dialect – hantec. Štatlaři recruited more from the milieu of the educated people, bohemians, and artists, adopted, and transformed. The aim of the study is to show which characteristics flâneurism and “štatlař-ism” have in common and in what ways they differ. Furthermore, we will address the question of how knowledge of the phenomenon of štatlaři can influence the perception of flaneurs when they are walking around the city of Brno.