The book Legends from Bohemia by Josef Virgil Grohmann (1831–1919), a significant domestic German-speaking mythologist, is the historically first collection of Czech legends. However, this unique work is almost unknown to the general public – not so much because nearly 150 years have passed since its first and only edition, but rather because it was published only in German. Due to this purposeful forgetting, primarily caused by national prejudices, Grohmann's Legends were known only to a narrow handful of specialists and are being published in Czech translation for the first time now. Grohmann's collection is valuable not only for its historical precedence but also for its unprecedented scholarly level, which surpasses even numerous later collections of domestic oral folklore. The author understood folk legends as a value and source in their own right, which does not need any literary adjustment, and thus presented his readers with a comprehensive and authentic picture of the folk legend tradition for the first time in our country.
