8. on January 2021, in connection with the 80th anniversary of his death, we are commemorating the personality of Associate Professor of Law Vladimír Mandl, who is known to the world community as the founder of space law and who was the owner of the Czechoslovak patent from 1935 for the “high-ascending rocket”. The National Technical Museum is preparing an expert seminar dedicated to his personality and his family for the beginning of May 2021 and is working on a collective monograph.

Vladimír Mandl was born on 20 March 1899 and came from a prominent family from Pilsen. His father, lawyer Matouš Mandl, was a long-time Pilsen politician and the first Czechoslovak mayor of Pilsen. From his youth, Vladimír Mandl’s interests were directed towards technology, but at his father’s request he studied law. However, due to his unorthodox views and attitudes in life, he later had difficulties in achieving habilitation at the Faculty of Law of Charles University and the Czech Technical University. He succeeded only at the German University of Erlangen.

Vladimír Mandl wrote a number of publications in the field of automotive and aviation law, but his most pivotal works include the Czech and German studies “The Problem of Interstellar Transport” and “Space Law” (“Das Welt-Raum Recht”). He corresponded with a number of spaceflight pioneers such as Hermann Oberth, Guido von Pirquet, Robert Esnault-Pelterie, Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, Nikolai Alekseevich Ryninen, Willy Ley and others. In addition, he became a convinced technocrat, a man who believed that the development of technology and the rule of technicians were the only cure for the ills of mankind, especially after the World War.

Michal Plavec, curator of the NTM aviation collection, added: “Vladimír Mandl is, together with Ludvík Očenasek, who spent his childhood in Dražná in the Pilsen region, the only two Czechoslovaks who can be considered pioneers of space flight. Together with Vladimír Karmazín, the long-time curator of the aviation collection of the then Czechoslovak Technical Museum, the predecessor of the National Technical Museum, he tried to establish a separate Czechoslovak Aviation Museum. He himself also gravitated towards flying. He became a certified Czechoslovak pilot. However, he died prematurely of tuberculosis in a sanatorium in Plesa on 8 January 1941.”

The National Technical Museum is preparing an expert seminar on the person of Vladimír Mandl and his family for the beginning of May 2021. If the epidemiological situation permits, it will be held on Thursday, May 6, 2021, at the NTM Plasy Centre of Building Heritage. In addition to the organising institution, experts from Charles University, the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, the Pilsen City Archives and the Czech Technical University Archives in Prague have promised to attend. The National Technical Museum will publish a collective monograph on the family and work of Vladimír Mandl in 2022

Press release of the National Technical Museum on 8 January 2021.

Contact:
Bc. Jan Duda
Head of PR and Public Relations Department
Email: jan.duda@ntm.cz
Mob: +420 770 121 917
National Technical Museum
Kostelní 42, 170 00 Prague 7