A highly influential Czech historian and politician, František Palacký (1798–1876) became in 1825 the first editor of the journal of the Bohemian Museum, a key cultural institution in the development of Czech nationalism. He was actively involved in the nineteenth-century Czech national revival, helping also to found the Czech national theatre. Entering politics in 1848, he served as president of the Prague Slavic Congress, and later became a member of the Austrian senate as a supporter of greater Czech autonomy. In this extensive work, comprising ten separate parts - published in German between 1836 and 1867 - Palacký gives a detailed account of Bohemian history until 1526. It remains an important and ambitious feat of scholarship, still relevant to students of central European history. Volume 5 covers the era of the Jagiellonian dynasty; this first part (1865) deals with the era of Vladislaus II from 1471 to 1500.