The Protection of Privacy Rights and Professional Secrecy in the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938)

The protection of personality and the legal aspects of maintaining professional secrecy have a complicated history of development in many countries of the world. The evolvement of privacy rights and the protection of professional secrecy remain fairly known in the period of the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938) in both contemporary and historical legal scholarship, despite a substantial number of cases were heard before the courts of the First Czechoslovak Republic upon the said subject. The research shows, that the protection of various privacy-related rights was anchored by different norms of the Civil Code, the Penal Code and other legislative acts; several outstanding court cases heard before the Supreme Court of the First Czechoslovak Republic displayed that the most frequent violations of this type were defamations, privacy violations and insults to the honor of the deceased. In some other cases, the Supreme Court discussed the issues of inviolability of letter correspondence and the admissibility of evidence containing a professional secret.