František Drtikol — mezi teozofií a komunizací buddhismu

The aim of this article is to verify the thesis that František Drtikol was a ‘patriarch of Czech Buddhism’, an epithet widely used in the scholarly literature. Based on an analysis of biographical materials we find such a characterization to be considerably oversimplified. Although the photographer defined himself in these categories and was fascinated by Buddhism, he is not its representative. Rather, from a philosophical point of view, his biographies and works have an eclectic character, consisting of a conglomerate of artistic, modernist and theosophical ideas. At the same time, Drtikol’s work is an example of the integration of the two logically contradictory paradigms of Marxism and Buddhism, which is related to the larger problem of the communization of Buddhism.