Abstrakt:
The article attempts to portray the life and work of Pavel Trost, the oldest among the first generation of the distinguished disciples of the Prague Linguistic Circle, as a linguist, literary scholar, university professor and philologist. Surveying the principal areas of Trosťs academic interest - German and Baltic philology, historical linguistics, onomatology, contact linguistics, stylistics, etymology, German and Czech medieval literature - , as well as his method, style and major achievements, the portrayal presents Trost’s scholarly programme as one based on what might be characterized as holistic philology, guided by, and drawing upon, what Trost himself described as “the great unifying power of language”.
