Obraz a text: památník z vojny jako médium paměti

For more than one hundred years, Czech ethnology has been working on and analysing diverse kinds of commemorative records, chronicles, and ego-documents. Alongside the research field´s extension beyond traditional themes, friendship books from the time of military service can be considered to be a new source for the study of personal experiencing the military service. Surviving exemplars substantiate the popularity of this form of a commemorative document. Friendship books usually consist of a section intended for photographs, and a section for texts or drawings. These can be made by the friendship book´s owner, or by his friends from a garrison where he served. On the example of several available exemplars, the text tries to apply two theses by Aleida Assmann: memory as remembering, and memory as repository. The author exemplifies to which extent the friendship book bear witness to personal experiencing one stage in the life of the man. While analysing particular records, the author points out diverse functions of the written and drawn records, and he indicates possible directions of further research.